by Kate Morris
“See?” he says and pulls back to cup her soft cheek. “It could be like that all the time, not just when we’re alone.”
She swallows hard and nods. “I know. It’s just not a good time, Cory. We’ve got this highwaymen thing going on and Simon’s mad and the situation with the sick kids in town is horrible. It’s really…”
“In case you haven’t been keeping up with the current state of the world, it’s kinda’ always like this, Red,” he reminds her and gets a small laugh.
“True.”
“It’s cool,” he says, forgiving her hesitancy. “I’m a patient guy. I can wait a little while longer.”
“What if it’s more than a little longer?”
“Then I’ll throw you over my shoulder like the Neanderthal you always call me and kidnap you for a few months to somewhere.”
“It better not be somewhere Simon could find us,” she says with a snort.
“But you’re ok with the kidnapping part?”
She smiles and offers a light chuckle, “Maybe.”
He nods and grins. “That’s progress. I think you might just like me a little.”
“Maybe,” she repeats.
Cory chuckles this time and kisses the side of her head.
A clanging sound somewhere in the street below them alerts Cory, and he holds up a finger to his lips. She nods as if she, too, has heard it.
He hunkers down, and Paige follows suit. Forgoing the telescope on the tripod, Cory uses his binoculars. Laughter from below echoes vertically up the building wall and reaches them. Cory peers over the side carefully so as not to make noise or knock loose, crumbling brick mortar down into the parking lot.
“There,” he whispers, pointing about forty yards out past the parking lot near a restaurant. “Half dozen of them.”
“Do you think it’s the highwaymen?”
“This close to their lair? Yeah, it’s them. I don’t think anyone else would be able to get that close without being spotted by their sentries.”
She inches a tad closer. “What do you think they’re doing?”
“Probably supposed to be keeping watch. Out screwin’ around instead.”
He wants so badly to go down there and take them out, punish them for what they’ve done.
“They aren’t wearing night-vision gear,” she observes.
“No, they’re not, are they?” he agrees, watching them carelessly swing flashlight beams around in front of them.
“Or body armor,” she notes next.
Cory looks more closely and realizes she’s right. It would be so easy to go down there and eliminate them, but then the dead bodies would signal the highwaymen that someone knows of their location.
“Look, some of them are splitting off and going that way,” she alerts him and points to their south.
“Heading toward the area Henry and Sam are hiding out,” he says.
“What do you want to do?”
“Kill them all,” he expresses with honest longing.
He can tell she is smiling by her voice, “Yes, but we’re just supposed to be spying on them, not killing them.”
His palms itch. He wants blood, revenge.
“Why don’t you be my spotter and let me know when the others come back or if any others come by?”
“Cory, are you crazy?” she hisses and then ducks behind the knee wall afraid they heard her.
He presses his ‘talk’ button, “Permission to take out a few stragglers.”
“The CO’s are out of range,” Henry says. Then he warns with humor in his voice, “Whatever you’re about to do, do it silently.”
“Not a prob,” he returns. “There’s a few heading in your direction, too.”
“Got it,” he returns.
“Spot for me?” he asks her again.
“Cory,” she pleads, clearly not wanting him to do this.
He smiles and cups her cheek, “Dave said he was gonna send me on some maneuvers tonight.”
“I don’t think this is what he had in mind,” she argues softly.
He leans in and kisses her. “I’ll cover our tracks. By the time they realize some of their people are missing, it’ll be morning, and we’ll be gone. Ok? Are you cool with this?”
“Yes, be careful, Cory,” she says and rises at the same time as him.
Then she throws herself against him and kisses Cory on the mouth.
“Come with me to the door. There’s a piece of pipe. Slide it through to keep people off this roof. If something happens to me, call Kelly. He’ll come and get you.”
She frowns with fear.
“Don’t worry,” he reassures her.
“Go,” she urges. “Hurry.”
He flips down his night-vision headset and rushes quietly from the rooftop and down the stairs again. The way he sees it, the more men he can take out with stealth is a few less he’ll have to deal with later. The same thing Kelly and Dave are doing right now.
Cory jogs across the employee access lobby behind the theaters of the multiplex and takes the back exit since he can open it from the inside now He stuffs his backpack in the partially open door so that he can re-enter there.
“They’re moving toward the theater,” she whispers in his earpiece.
“Roger,” he returns.
He needs to go at this quietly or else the whole mass of the highwaymen living in the Gaylord will be after them, and that could put Paige in danger.
After sprinting to a nearby car, he takes a knee and surveys the area looking for them. They have disappeared but not for long. Cory rises just as his earpiece goes off.
“Crap!” she hisses. “They’re coming inside. Cory, they’re coming into the building!”
“I’m on it. Stay where you are,” he orders. “Do not come down from the roof.”
He takes a quick glance around and doesn’t see anyone else. This will be easier now. Inside the massive building, he won’t have to be so quiet. Sprinting back quickly, he slings his discarded backpack and re-enters the building. He keeps his movements tight and ready for close-quarters combat or a hand-to-hand confrontation. He’s glad he pulled his hair back into a low ponytail, or it would’ve gotten in the way. Sue threatened to shave his head if he didn’t let her cut his hair soon. Paige had once told him as she was strumming her fingers through it that his hair was soft. She was also naked at the time, so that had made it stick in his brain even better. He’s not cutting it. Sue will just have to live with it the way it is until Paige asks otherwise. He can even put up with his brother calling him a girl and John razzing him about trying to reboot the hippy era.
The men in the building are laughing and joking it up. He can hear them somewhere to his right, so Cory creeps that way. There is debris littering the aisles and pathways, and he steps gingerly around all of it lest it might crackle, break, or make a noise underfoot that would draw their attention. He reminds himself that these men have some experience in combat, at least when it comes to looting and killing people. He hopes Paige stays on the roof.
He takes a knee behind a cardboard sign of a movie advertisement and removes his silencer from his pack. Then he screws it into the barrel. The silencer is something he manufactured at the farm from parts he’d salvaged over the years. John and Derek had been impressed at the amount of suppression it gave his .45. John, ever the gun nut, told him that it was better than most commercially manufactured silencers.
He pushes the safety release on his sidearm, now sporting a piece of silver pipe on the end and leaves the pack on the floor. It will only get in his way now. His rifle rests comfortably against his back as he moves toward them, stalking silently, the second hand ticking in his brain. He can barely make out their conversation. Interested in gaining insight, should it prove helpful, he pauses and listens to them.
“…yeah, that one’s got some fine real estate, if ya’ know what I mean,” a man with a young voice comments bawdily.
“All that matters is if she can cook,” someone else says
, another male voice. “Pass it over, asshole.”
Cory assumes they are sharing liquor or cigarettes.
“Fuck that,” the first one argues. “I want someone to keep me warm at night. She’d do just fine, and winter’s comin’.”
“One of the fucking goats would do for you, moron,” a third voice puts in.
“Besides, you know how the boss feels about that,” the second one reminds them. “The women are for doing work, not screwin’ around with. You’re gonna get yourself shot like Mark.”
“Bullshit,” he says back. “Y’all know we ain’t livin’ like monks anyways.”
“The more women that get knocked up, the more mouths to feed,” the second says. “Till we get that new compound up and running, we can’t afford any more mouths to feed. We can barely feed ourselves.”
“Then we need to be hittin’ more of the farms in the area. I know there’s some around. I’ve heard. Remember those people up north we raided a few months ago? Remember they said they didn’t have nothin’ but that they knew of some farms and towns in the area that did?”
“Yeah, well, the farms and towns have their own firepower,” the third one says. “This shit’s a lot easier when they ain’t fuckin’ shootin’ at us.”
Cory would like to laugh but doesn’t want to give away his position.
“He never shoulda’ made us give up our forts in the woods. I wasn’t scared of no mercenaries after us. I’d kill those fuckers, too. We were buildin’ places of our own,” the first one complains. “Plus, we lost our crops. I was growin’ some grade A shit.”
Cory wonders why they would refer to the McClanes as ‘mercenaries’.
“You know why,” the second one states. “Someone was on to us. Probably those military assholes up west of Hendersonville. Goddamn assholes.”
He means Dave’s compound. Good. They should be afraid of the Mechanic. He is probably right now, along with Kelly and Simon, killing more of these jerkoffs’ friends. He squats and walks toward the end of the wall where he should be able to see them and not be seen if he’s careful. He easily spots them standing around out in the open as if they have nothing to fear passing around a bong full of foul-smelling pot, probably the last of his ‘grade A shit.’ They are definitely in their twenties and maybe the one man in his thirties. They are fit, average in height, and clean-cut. All of the ones they’ve killed so far have been. It was one of the deciding factors of their intel on the group that they must have a permanent residence somewhere with running water, heat, and food supplies in order to appear thriving in this world. Now they know they were right.
“Seems sometimes like we’re gettin’ the shit end of the stick, you ask me,” the first one whines.
“Nobody did,” the second one replies with sarcasm, causing the other to laugh at their friend’s expense. “Doesn’t matter. The bosses call the shots. The big boss is planning a move for us later anyways. He’s keepin’ it going, so what do I care? I ain’t been sick in over a year since I joined up. Got a roof over my head. What else do I need?”
The third man says, “Or hungry. Got sick of being fucking hungry all the damn time.”
“That’s why we need women,” the first one tells them. “They can grow gardens and make food and do the shit we don’t know how to do. And, you know, screw around with us, too.”
“Not till we’re settled in the permanent place,” the third one says as if reminding him of the plan.
Cory knows that a few of the women on the roads, their victims, were raped. Someone or several of them within the group are raping women and not just taking them back to their compounds. Plus, he’s seen many who were murdered, probably those who put up a fight.
“It’s gonna be awesome,” the first one says.
They don’t sound very mature, and he wonders if they had much of an education before the fall. It doesn’t matter to Cory. They have killed many innocent people, and it will come to an end soon. For tonight, it is time to make his move. Sneaking out closer to the end of the wall where he can swing around it quickly, Cory rises to a standing height.
He pulls out his small pen light and reflects it off of the wall of mirrors across the wide hallway from the men. He is probably fifteen yards from them. If they turn and look in his direction, they could see him, even in the dark.
“This beer is piss warm,” the third one moans.
“You better never get caught taking it, neither,” the first one says. “Boss’ll kill us.”
“He’d never kill me,” the third one says with confidence. “He likes me. He might kill you.”
The second laughs at his friend again. Apparently, the first man is the brunt of many jokes.
“You assholes don’t… what the fuck…is…that…?”
He has caught sight of the flashlight’s sparkling glimmer in the mirror. Cory waits until all three turn to look at it like moths drawn to a flame. Then he pulls the trigger and pop, hits one between the shoulder blades. The other two swing on him with their rifles drawn up and ready, realizing they’ve been discovered and stalked. Too late. Cory shoots again and takes out the one holding the beer. He hits him in the neck, and the man flies backward, sprawling on his back and holding his wounded neck. The third gets smarter and dives for cover.
The friend with the neck wound is trying to call his buddy for help, but the sound mostly comes off as an eerie sort of wet gurgling. Cory does not care, nor does he feel guilt. He presses forward a few feet keeping his pistol raised.
The remaining man pokes his head around the corner and barks off a few rounds on fully-auto. Cory aims, squeezes, and dives for cover. He has laid down suppressive rounds, but he still must kill the man so that he doesn’t escape the theater and run to get backup.
He waits two seconds before making his move again. Only it doesn’t come because the last man alive takes off at a sprint, his feet making a lot of noise on the carpeted concrete floors. He’s also kicking debris as he goes. Cory doesn’t even pause. He pursues.
He chases the man down one of the long hallways that leads to the gaming center and pauses at the end of it. He listens a moment and picks up on the man’s noise again. He has turned to their right. Just as Cory suspected, he’s going to make a run for it. He’s going to make a mad dash for the nearest exit doors at the front of the building where people used to enter and go directly into the arcade.
Cory sprints after him and finally catches sight of the man, who slips on papers and almost goes down. He rights himself and flees through the doors to the arcade and disappears again. Cory follows, making less noise.
The virtual reality games stand empty, the rock-climbing wall has more spiders crawling on their own webs than humans having used the apparatus in years, and the arcade games are covered in thick layers of gray dust and dirt. Some of them have been destroyed in a fit of anger, but he doesn’t think it was a rage-quit by a gamer who was losing to an opponent but by someone with post-apocalyptic angst instead.
A rattling noise about thirty feet away lets him know where the womanizer has gone. Cory goes after him and is seconds too late. He sees him blast through the glass exit door, which apparently was not stuck closed like the ones he’d tried in the rear of the building earlier. They swing out easily and clang noisily against the exterior brick wall.
“Damn it,” he swears under his breath. Cory has to catch him before he makes it back to the Gaylord to recoup some friends for help. The situation could turn on him quickly.
“Cory!” she says into his ear, obviously spotting the man making his escape.
“Stay where you are,” he repeats.
Cory follows the man through the glass doors and runs after him in the parking lot. Discipline in his work-outs and physical fitness give him the upper hand, and Cory catches up to him and makes a solid tackle, taking him to the concrete where weeds have taken hold to the point that the landing is padded. The man shoves and manages to push Cory over and onto his back, but Cory doesn’t let go. His opp
onent obviously thought throwing him off would be the key to his escape, but he couldn’t have been more wrong. Cory clings onto him and gets the man in a chokehold. The man struggles and kicks at the sky, but Cory doesn’t relent. He wraps his legs around the man’s so that he cannot force Cory’s grip to loosen. He locks his forearm down on his throat with the other hand. Then it is a study in waiting as he patiently chokes the life from the man, first causing him to panic, thrash, weaken himself and pass out. He loses consciousness, and then finally expires from lack of oxygen to his deflated lungs.
He rolls the dead man off of him and rises to his feet.
“Cory, there’s two more coming!” she screeches in his ear.
“Which direction?”
“That way…I mean to your right…I think they’re the ones who left earlier,” she stammers out quickly.
“How far?”
“Couple blocks?”
“Roger,” he says. “Stay where you are.”
Cory quickly drags the man’s body behind a vehicle and leaves it. Then he purposely sprints back to the movie theater complex and does not attempt to be quiet about it. He wants them to follow. He enters the building again and waits.
“These guys have on night-vision goggles,” she informs him. “You’re safe. I don’t think they saw you.”
“Got it,” he returns, hoping they’ll still come into the theater. “How close now?”
Her voice lowers to a whisper, “They’re right at the edge of the building. Wait. I can’t see them now.”
“I do,” he returns as he spots the men coming toward the building and the main entrance.
They enter the theater as he is concealing himself behind the massive snack bar to their right.
“He better be in here,” one says to the other. “Asshole owes me a pack of smokes.”
