The Badlands Trilogy (Novella 2): Vengeance in the Badlands

by Brian J. Jarrett

  Ricky got to his feet. Shrieking now, he tried once more to retrieved the shears buried in his back. This time he got an index finger in the handle. With one mighty tug, he yanked the blade out of his back, releasing a copious stream of blood and an inhuman screeching wail.

  Slowly he brought the shears up. Bright, crimson blood covered the metal blades. Droplets of the stuff fell to the floor, the carpet soaking it up greedily.

  “You like stabbing people?” Ricky asked. His nostrils flared wide. His eyes were saucers. “Well, I can give as good as I can get, bitch.”

  Audrey stood, but Ricky was too fast. He lunged toward her, grabbing a handful of her hair in his bloody hands. He yanked hard, arresting her movement and canceling out any idea she might have of escape.

  He had her now. She’d put up a good fight, but this was how it ended.

  She could only hope it was quick.

  Ricky chuckled. “Got you now, don’t I? It’s playtime, bitch,”

  Audrey struggled, but the more she tried to get away, the harder Ricky pulled.

  Then a voice called out from behind them. “Let her go, Ricky.”

  Gia.

  Ricky turned toward the door. There Gia stood with Johnny’s pistol in hand and a look of wicked determination on her face. “Now, Ricky.”

  Ricky paused, still clutching Audrey by the hair. “You won’t do it.”

  “Try me.”

  “You never killed anybody. You told me so.”

  “Maybe I was lying.”

  That seemed to give Ricky pause. “I’ll make you a deal,” he said. “You can walk out of here right now, no questions asked.”

  “Go on,” Gia said.

  “I only want her,” Ricky said, eyeing Audrey. “You and those other two assholes are free to go.”

  Gia shook her head. “No deal. I’m not leaving Audrey behind.”

  Ricky’s eyes narrowed. “Take the deal, little one. Don’t make me kill you both.”

  Gia paused. The gun began to shake in her hands.

  Ricky’s face split into a smile. “Oh, little girl. Don’t worry. I’ll be gentle—”

  A loud crack echoed through the room as warm blood painted Audrey’s cheeks. Releasing his grip, Ricky staggered away from the two women.

  He clutched his chest and glared at Gia.

  “You shot me,” he croaked. “You bitch.”

  Then he fell to the floor in a motionless heap, dark-red blood seeping into the carpet around him.

  Chapter Twelve

  “What the hell happened?” Johnny asked, blinking sleep from his eyes. “And why am I tied up?”

  “Ricky happened,” Audrey said. She stepped forward with a knife she’d retrieved from the kitchen.

  Johnny recoiled. “Whoa, what do you think you’re doing with that thing?”

  “Just hold still,” Audrey replied. She sawed away at the ropes binding Johnny’s hands. “Ricky drugged us. All of us except for Gia.”

  “He took a liking to me,” Gia said. “He wanted to talk to me about Lord of the Rings stuff. I didn’t know what else to do, so I just kept talking. It went on for hours.”

  “He put something called Ketamine in the Ramen,” Audrey said. One of the ropes fell free, severed. “His fucking flavor dust.”

  “Where’s Dave?” Johnny asked.

  “Beside you,” Audrey replied.

  Johnny glanced over at Dave’s sleeping form. “My head is killing me.”

  “It’s the drug,” Audrey said. “It’ll pass.”

  “Where’s that son of a bitch now?” Johnny asked.

  “Dead,” Audrey said. “Gia shot him.”

  “After Audrey stabbed him with a pair of scissors,” Gia added.

  “No shit?”

  “No shit.” Audrey cut through the last of the ropes securing Johnny’s wrists. The nylon bindings fell away.

  Johnny rubbed his rope-burned wrists. “Thanks.”

  Audrey went to work on Dave next. “Don’t mention it.”

  Dave began to stir as Audrey cut through the nylon ropes.

  “I figure we stay here tonight where it’s safe. Tomorrow morning, we stock up on Ricky’s stash here and then get on our way.”

  “Who made you boss?” Johnny asked.

  “We just saved your life, if you didn’t notice. Count yourself lucky that you’re still alive and able to be bossed around by a couple of girls.”

  Johnny didn’t argue.

  “We found a body in the spare bedroom. A woman. He’d been starving her for some time. Dressed her up in some kind of outfit he stitched together. He cut her ears into points.”

  “Like an elf,” Gia said. “He kept telling me about how he always wanted to marry an elf.”

  “Fuck me,” Johnny said.

  The last rope fell away from Dave’s wrist as his eyes fluttered. “What the hell?” he croaked.

  “It’s a long story,” Audrey said. “Johnny can fill you in while Gia and I baton down this place for the night.”

  She left the room, followed by Gia.

  Dave sat up, wincing at the pain in his head. “Johnny, what the hell is going on around here?”

  Johnny grinned. “I think we just significantly upped our chances of taking out your boy Calvin when we find him.”

  * * *

  The following morning, Johnny and Dave checked on their Jeep. Everything remained where it had been the night before, untouched. The four of them searched Ricky’s house and recovered a half-dozen boxes of matches, several large packages of toilet paper, and various sizes of Ziploc bags. They discovered dozens upon dozens of canned food items that they loaded into their trailer. Anything that was not commercially sealed they left. Ricky had a penchant for drugging, so it wasn’t beyond the stretch of the imagination that he’d also dabbled in poison too.

  Once the house had been cleared of anything valuable, Johnny found a half-full gasoline can in the garage behind Ricky’s house. He doused the carpet in all the rooms with the fuel, dumping the remaining portion on Ricky’s corpse.

  He spat a wad of phlegm on Ricky’s lifeless body. “Fuck you, Gandalf.”

  He lit a match and tossed it to the floor. The fumes ignited with a poof, and within a few moments, the bedroom floor danced with flame.

  Johnny exited the house quickly as flames climbed the walls behind him. The living room floor caught fire next, the curtains and the couch going up with enthusiasm. Within minutes the house became an inferno, the angry orange flames doing their best to eradicate any evidence of Ricky’s twisted existence from the planet.

  The quartet silently watched the flames burn for some time.

  “A fitting end,” Audrey said. She turned away from the burning house. “Let’s go. We have another killer to find.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  While the effects of the Ketamine had effectively worn off, the impact of the group’s experience with Ricky remained clear and present. Both of Gia’s eyes had blackened overnight, and her nose had swollen. According to Johnny, it wasn’t broken, so there was that. And they were all still alive, so there was that too.

  The encounter with Ricky had been a near miss, and Dave couldn’t help but chastise himself for making such a huge mistake. As the Jeep rumbled along the defunct highway, he considered and then reconsidered their decision to trust a man dressed in a wizard costume. In hindsight, the very idea had red flags planted all around it, but he’d made the mistake anyway.

  But even Johnny had fallen prey to Ricky’s duplicity, and he was as battle-worn and skeptical as they came. Little consolation after seeing the mess Ricky had made of Gia’s face, but in the end, it was a lesson hard-learned.

  And Dave Porter decided that he would never make that mistake again.

  The ruined landscape passed slowly by on either side of them as the Jeep made slow progress around the stalled cars. Thankfully, no large trees were growing nearby this area of the road. One downed tree could make the road impassable, and they didn’t have
a chainsaw to remove it. Dave made a mental note to look for one at a subsequent stop.

  The landscape opened up a little as they left the outskirts of what had once been a city. Out in the open, the roadway cleared a little, so Johnny got more forceful with the accelerator to make up for lost time.

  Some of the frozen vehicles appeared to have been intentionally parked alongside the road before being abandoned, their owners opting to take off on foot. Maybe they’d run out of gas, or perhaps they decided the traffic was too congested to go further on four wheels. Maybe they’d had a last moment of clarity before they turned into the animals they were bound to become.

  Hard to say after this many years. And hard not to give up hope from just looking at the sheer devastation of it all.

  As Dave scanned the area around them for carriers, humans, and another one of Calvin’s calling cards, his mind began to wander. His thoughts drifted back to the early days just after the virus reared its ugly head; when he’d been traveling with his wife, Sandy, and their friend, Jim. Dave’s memories of Jim were already fading; he could hardly remember what their friend had looked like.

  And Sandy…the clearest and most present memory he had of his wife was the look on her face as she died in his arms, gasping for air as blood poured from the massive bullet wound in her throat.

  He shifted his thoughts away from Sandy, attempting to force himself back into the present. Instead, a vision of Annette appeared, pregnant with their child. How naïve he’d been to think that he and Annette could have ever had anything resembling a real life. They’d had a semblance of a normal life for less than a year together back in St. Louis, protected behind a fragile fence. But the fence fell, and the outside world found its way inside.

  And so did Calvin Summerville.

  “Over there,” Johnny said, snapping Dave out of his daydream. Johnny pointed to an abandoned Costco, sitting just off the highway. “Water’s running low. It’d be a good idea to pick up some more.”

  Dave considered it. Buildings were dangerous, but a discount warehouse held a lot of promise. Even with the looting, these places often contained massive quantities of valuable food and supplies. He might also be able to find a chainsaw there.

  In the end, Dave thought it was worth the risk. He nodded as he gave Johnny a thumbs up.

  They exited the highway, making their way around an overturned semi, its rusting trailer twisted and broken. Hundreds of waterlogged cardboard boxes lay strewn about, disintegrating, their contents exposed and weathered. Dave glanced at the find, wondering if they might procure some valuable items from the wreckage. He made a mental note to look it over after they investigated the Costco.

  A few minutes later they rolled into the parking lot, dodging broken glass and other debris before bringing the vehicle to a halt. Johnny killed the engine and held a finger up to his lips. He listened hard for several seconds before retrieving his pistol. He pointed it skyward and pulled the trigger once. The report was deafening in the silence. Bullets weren’t a thing to waste in the post-virus world, but nothing worked better to flush out carriers than a loud bang. Better to spend one bullet now than to have to expend dozens more as they shot their way out of a carrier-infested building.

  They sat, muscles tensed, waiting for a reply. A full minute passed with no response.

  “Good enough,” Johnny said. He turned to Audrey and Gia. “Dave and I will go in and check things out. Audrey’s coming with us.”

  “I want to come too,” Gia said. Her face looked a wreck.

  “No way. We need somebody right here to keep an eye out.”

  Gia frowned. “This is bullshit.”

  “And yet it is what it is,” Johnny said.

  “It’ll be fine,” Audrey said to Gia. “We’ll be back in a flash.”

  “It’s not fair,” Gia said.

  Johnny stepped out of the Jeep, closing the door behind him. “You see anything funny you lay on that horn, got it?”

  Gia only looked at him.

  “Got it?”

  “Fine,” Gia replied, arms crossed.

  Dave stepped out of the Jeep, followed by Audrey.

  Audrey shot Gia a weak smile. “We’ll be back before you know it.”

  Gia nodded, though she didn’t appear to be convinced.

  “Everything will be fine,” Audrey said before shutting the passenger door. “I promise.”

  The trio headed toward the building, weapons in hand.

  It was only later, once everything had gone so wrong that Dave wondered if Audrey regretting making a promise she couldn’t keep.

  Chapter Fourteen

  They entered the dilapidated discount warehouse building with Dave in the lead this time. Audrey followed, with Johnny bringing up the rear, pistol in hand. They carried their weapons with them, chambers loaded. The overhead sun’s bright rays filtered in through broken windows and a shattered skylight above. The incoming light chased away most of the shadows, the darkness retreating to the most recessed corners of the building.

  Audrey found a functional shopping cart. One of the wheels flopped from side to side like a fish out of water, and its counterparts squeaked loudly, but it rolled well enough for their purposes.

  They headed into the building with Audrey manning the cart, penetrating the interior as far as the infiltrating sunlight would allow. Debris littered the floor; spent potato chip bags, waterlogged cardboard boxes, animal droppings, rotting leaves, jagged sticks and a healthy layer of dirty grime blown in by years of weather cycling.

  As he walked, Dave considered the overzealous way Mother Nature had taken back her land. In a decade, the forest would retake much of the earth. In a hundred years, humanity would be remembered only for its crumbling skyscrapers, decaying silently while their builders turned into animals around them. And in a thousand years, humankind’s footprint on the earth would be completely erased.

  It would be as if homo sapien never existed.

  Some days, Dave wondered if that wasn’t for the best.

  Johnny scanned the inside of the building. “Water first,” he said. “The last thing I want is to be shitting my brains out from Giardia-infected stream water while we try to hunt down a killer.”

  “What about canned foods?” Audrey asked.

  Johnny shook his head. “Most of that stuff has turned by now. This place has gone from a deep freeze to an oven a hundred times over now. Besides, we got enough of the canned stuff to last us, I think.”

  “This place brings back memories,” Dave said. “A few years after the outbreak, on our way to St. Louis, we met a guy named Mitchell who lived in an abandoned Sam’s Club. I don’t know what you’d call him…a gunslinger, I guess.” He glanced at Johnny. “He was an even better shot than you.”

  Johnny grinned. “I wish I could’ve met this guy.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “What happened to him?” Audrey asked.

  “He died on the bridge just outside St. Louis.”

  “That’s too bad,” Audrey said.

  “Yeah, it was,” Dave agreed.

  * * *

  They snaked their way around several trashed aisles, their eyes wide and alert. They stopped every few minutes to listen for anyone or anything that might be hunting them. Each time only silence answered them, occasionally broken by the chirping of birds and the sound of wind sweeping through the broken windows.

  They cleared another aisle, and Dave peeked around it, his rifle ready. After ensuring it was clear, he motioned for the others to follow.

  “Bingo,” he said, pointing at a half-dozen jugs of water sitting on a rusting shelf. “Gallon-sized, at that.”

  But Johnny and Audrey didn’t reply. They held back, revulsion on their faces.

  “What?” Dave said, turning quickly to find out what they were staring at.

  That’s when he saw it.

  A sizable sack-like mass hung suspended from the ceiling by a ropey substance resembling slimy, spindly silk. The mass had a
n oblong shape, four or five feet tall and maybe the same in circumference. It looked like the world’s most gigantic butterfly cocoon, swinging gently in the breeze wafting into the warehouse.

  Dave froze, caught between terror, revulsion, and curiosity. He took a step back toward his companions.

  “What in the fucking hell is that?” Johnny asked.

  “I don’t know,” Dave said. He took a tentative step toward the thing.

  “Don’t do that!” Audrey said, as loudly as her whisper would allow. “We don’t know what that thing is.”

  Ignoring her, Dave took another step forward. He stared intently at the mass. “Johnny, hand me your flashlight.”

  “You come and get it, my friend.”

  Dave took the light from Johnny, flipping on the beam as he made his way back to the unknown object.

  “Be careful,” Audrey warned.

  A few more steps brought Dave to within a couple of feet from the hanging mass. He shined the light on the translucent surface of the thing, the beam penetrating to the layers beneath.

  “There’s something inside it,” Dave called back to the others.

  He leaned in, holding his breath as he struggled to make out what he was seeing. It began to take shape the longer he stared at it. It was a creature of some kind. Dave realized he was looking at the thing’s head.

  Then it blinked an eye.

  Dave recoiled, leaping back on his heels and dropping the flashlight onto the concrete floor.

  “What happened?” Audrey asked.

  “It moved!” Dave cried. His heart pounded madly in his chest.

  “It’s alive?” Johnny asked.

  Dave nodded. “Yeah.” He picked up the flashlight and shined it around. A few yards away, the beam fell upon another translucent mass suspended from the ceiling.

  Then another.

  And another.

  And another.

  Hundreds of them, swinging gently in the breeze.

  “Cocoons,” Dave said. “Something’s growing inside these things.” Holding his breath, he shined the flashlight back onto the closest cocoon. He could now see that it housed a humanoid figure, curled up in the fetal position. But these figures, although humanoid in form, were anything but human. Their pale skin was almost as translucent as the cocoons in which they gestated. Under the flashlight’s beam, Dave saw the creature’s beating heart through its skin. It had no hair on its head or body. Its eyes were open, the pupils cold and black. Sharpened claws grew from the fingertips of its massive hands.