by Unknown
He shook his head again, back and forth, with a lot more vigor this time. I could tell he was getting concerned. “So, you ready to play the game?” I asked.
He shook his head over and over. “Come on, it’s a simple game, even you can play it…... Now I’m going to remove the rag from your mouth. No yelling, no screaming, just be silent and wait for the question. If you do talk or make any noise, you get cut. Let’s get started.” I removed the rag and waited, but surprisingly, he stayed quiet.
“Are you guy’s part of Ripper’s crew?”
“Yes.”
“Good start. Were you with the group when they stopped at this truck stop the first day of the infection?”
He hesitated, looking at me, apparently not sure what the right answer was. I just stared at him, waiting. After a full minute of staring at each other, I moved the knife closer to his elbow.
“Yes. I was here the first day.” He blurted out, flinching as the knife stopped.
“Good. Now if you delay on any more answers, you get cut.” I rested the knife on his forearm. “So you saw Ripper stab the owner of the truck stop?” I saw Rob moving closer.
He looked from me to Rob and back. I held my hand out to Rob telling him to stop. I moved the knife quickly across his forearm causing blood to run freely. He screamed and started to cry, so I took the rag and shoved it in his mouth to quiet him down. “I explained what would happen. I’d suggest you don’t test it again. Maybe next time, I’ll let my friend here deal the next cut.”
Rob moved back a few steps but continued to stare at the young biker. The biker continued to cry, so I said, “My question is still unanswered.”
He nodded. I reached up and removed the rag. “Yes.” He said.
“What’s your name?”
“Kyle. Kyle Simpson.”
“You got a nickname, Kyle?”
“Dookie.”
“Nice, I bet there’s a story behind that one. Dookie. Nice.” I laughed. I walked over to Rob and told him to go and try to wake up Jerry. “So Dookie, how many of you are loyal to Ripper?”
He saw Rob slap Jerry across the face to wake him up. Jerry opened his eyes, looking around and landed on Kyle. I ran the knife across Kyle’s elbow, digging deep with the blade to the point of touching the bone. This caused a jolt from him and a scream, which made me stick the rag back in the mouth. “Failed again. Next time, it gets worse.”
I walked away and met Rob halfway between the two bikers, letting them eyeball each other for a few minutes. “This bothering you?” I asked Rob in a whisper.
He shook his head and said, “No. They’re getting what they deserve. They killed my father. If you told me to, I would kill them right now.”
“Hold that thought for a while. Let’s get what we can from them.” I moved towards Jerry and stood right in front of him looking him in the eye.
“So, Jerry, my old friend. Didn't you tell your friends about the game we played the other day, huh? Ashamed of it, maybe a little embarrassed?” He just looked at me with hatred, but that changed the minute I pulled out my knife, then his look turned to concern. I used my knife to cut his pants to expose his bandage on his leg. “Looks like you at least got the cuts cleaned and some meds on them. The bleeding looks like it stopped.” I cut the bandage away exposing his skin and the medicated cuts.
“How’s Al doing? Did he live?” I placed the tip of my knife at the beginning of the first cut from yesterday. I ran the knife deeper, this time, retracing the original cut, reopening it. Blood began to run from the fresh cut as Jerry tried to pull his leg away, but it was bound to the pole. He screamed into the rag as I slowly continued to use the knife to reopen the other cuts.
“You really shouldn’t have gone back to the gang, my friend. It was a mistake and one you will regret this time.” The hatred in his eyes was back and I stood there wondering if I was making a mistake by letting him live.
After a few more minutes of looking at Jerry, I walked back over to Dookie and smiled at him. “How many are in the gang?”
He tried to say a number, but the rag prevented a clear answer. I removed the rag and he said, “Ten. Why’d you cut Jerry, you didn’t even ask him a question.”
I took the knife and cut his forearm a little bit more. “Like I said, answer the questions. I don’t recall telling you it was ok to ask me questions. But, to answer your question, I don’t like Jerry and so that’s why I did what I did. You see, guys like Jerry and you are bad people and with the way things are today, we need people that are willing to work with each other instead of against each other. So, there are only ten in the gang?” I asked.
“We had more, but they were killed along the way. A few of them here. We’re down to ten, I swear.” He looked at me and then at Jerry.
“So, there are only eight bikers left in the compound right now. That’s better than I thought or could have hoped for.” I said to Rob, which he acknowledged with a nod. “When are you supposed to be back at the compound?”
“Tomorrow morning.” Again he looked at Jerry.
“Rob, keep an eye on these guys, I need to talk with the others.” I walked to the door that led into the hallway and left the garage. I found the group in the main office, talking about how we might deal with the bikers. “We have eight bikers to deal with and they will know there is a problem by tomorrow morning,” I said as I walked in.
“We were just talking about how we might deal with them,” Shannon said. “We really on have two options. Attack them or wait to be attacked and then fight them off.”
“You sure the people here and the kids could handle being attacked? What happens if we lose, what happens to them?” I asked.
“Bad things will happen to them,” Amy said.
“I didn’t say that is what we agreed to do. I was just stating the fact that there are really on two options.” Shannon wasn’t happy about this, which was understandable. I could tell from the tone of her response and the look on her face that this decision was a difficult one for her.
“So we attack them, go on the offensive,” Butch said. “Better to die trying than to not try at all.” He put up his hand to me to high five, which I ignored. “Really, you’re going to leave me hanging.”
“What do we do with the two bikers in the garage?” Amy asked.
“We can’t keep them. We don’t have the food to spare and if they get loose, they could be a problem, take supplies or worse, kill people.” Shannon replied looking around the room at everyone.
“How about we take them with us when we leave and drop them off on the way, between here and there like we did last time. They can work it out from there.” Butch suggested. “This time, we need to make sure if they get loose and live, they leave for good and never come back to this area or back to cause us more trouble. We need to scare them enough to not want to deal with us again.
“I like Butch’s plan,” I said.
“I agree.” Amy and Shannon said in unison.
“Who's going to leave and deal with the gang and who’s going to stay here to keep things in check?” Shannon asked changing the subject.
“We should keep it to a small group so we can be stealthy as we scope out the place. If it looks like there are too many to deal with, we could always come back and get more people or come up with a new plan. I’ve got a few ideas” I replied.
The reality was that I was thinking of going by myself and dealing with the bikers. For some reason, I was really pissed off about what they were doing and felt that it was my goal to finish this with them.
After explaining the few idea’s I had to the group and trying to sway them to let me do this by myself, which they were all against, we finally agreed on the group that would go and the plan. We all thought that we should leave early the next morning, before dawn which would get us to the compound early in the morning, before the gang was fully awake and moving around. We all left the office and Shannon said she needed to check on everyone, making sure they were ok and t
hat we didn’t have any new threats outside.
I joined her on the walk through the building, checking on the people standing guard at the various positions around the building. We were making our way to the garage let Rob know of the plan when she said, “You sure about this whole thing? It’s dangerous, with the bikers, the infected, lots of things we don’t even know about. Maybe they will just leave us alone.”
“You’re concerned for me?” I asked with a smile on my face, trying to be mister cool, thinking I might have a chance with this beautiful woman. Even though I had only known Shannon for a day, I could tell that she was someone I wanted to get to know better. She was beautiful, smart, and brave.
“No.” She said to me, giving me a smile back. “I’m concerned about my brother going with you, that he might not come back from this...I don’t even know what to call it. Amy told me about some of the things you have done and they sound pretty reckless.”
Oh…...yeah I thought; her brother. Stupid me, I thought I might have had a shot there for a minute.
“We’ll be fine. He’ll be fine. He’s a great shot, a good tracker from what you guys have said. He knows his guns and how to use them. We’ll make it back, we have to.”
“And what about you? You just going to charge head first into that place and try to take care of it all by yourself. That’s what it sounds like you like to do.”
“I won’t do that again. I won’t put my friends or your brother at risk.” I said as we approached the garage. I stopped Shannon and said, “You need to know that I had to do somethings to the prisoners that you might not like. They needed to be done to get the information we need to get the advantage over Ripper.”
She looked at me. Her eyes were sad looking, but she looked me direct in the eye. “I understand that you feel the need to do what you believe needs to be done. I understand that those things may involve tactics that I don’t agree with. I just hope that when this is over, you can look back at what you have done and live with it.”
“I won’t ever be ok with it. I won’t ever be able to forget it. I will remember everything I’ve done before I close my eyes at night when I open my eyes in the morning, and every minute of every day I am alive. I don’t take any of this lightly, but there are things that need to be done in order to make sure that we survive. We’re the good guys, if we fail to survive, humanity will die.” I said.
Shannon looked at me while I said this and then when I was done, she reached out and pulled me close to her. We hugged for a long time. She just held me while I held her. Then finally she said into my ear, “You’re a good guy, Matt. You mean well and you’re trying to do the right thing. I just hope you’re successful and that the people around you are safe. But if you continue to go off and do things all by yourself, your luck will run out and you and the people around you may die.” She let me go, but then pulled me back to her and kissed me. A long and deep kiss. One I knew she meant. “That would be bad and something I don’t want to happen.” She said after pulling away from the kiss.
After the kiss, I was in a daze. She had caught me off guard and that’s the first time in my life where a woman had done that to me. I was excited, all of a sudden happy and wished she would lean back in and kiss me again. Instead, she released me and moved to the door leading into the garage.
I followed her into the room where Rob was watching both Jerry and Kyle. Rob was sweating and out of breath. Shannon walked over to Rob and started to whisper our plan to him. I looked at both of the prisoners and could tell they had been beaten up by Rob and although their faces didn’t have any sign of a beating, they were both breathing with difficulty. My guess was that Rob had used brute force on their bodies to get some additional answers or to get revenge for his father’s death.
After Shannon got Rob up to speed on the plan, with a little arguing about him not going with us, Shannon left the garage. I stayed back to ask more questions about the compound hoping to get more info that would help us move through it easily and undetected. By the time I was done, both Kyle and Jerry looked like they had run through a rose bush; knicks and cuts all over their arms and legs. It was gruesome work, but it had to be done to get the info we needed and to make sure they both knew not to mess with us again.
I headed back to our sleeping area in the main hall of the truck stop. I collected my rifle, my spears and a small backpack with supplies and the two-way radios we had taken off of Jerry yesterday and today. After getting everything I thought I would need, I helped the remaining team with their pack up and getting the vehicle ready to make the trip. We then spent the time to relax a little; to go over the plan with the new info I had gathered and just hanging out talking about the good old days, the things we were already missing.
Even though this was only 5 days ago, it seemed like a lifetime ago. What I wouldn’t do for a McDonalds, a Five Guys or a Smash Burger joint that was open and serving right now. Hell, even a Taco Bell would be good. Here I was standing in a truck stop with a bunch of people I didn’t really know, a shitload of infected wandering around outside and two guys tied up to poles a few doors away, cut, bleeding and pleading for the lives through greasy rags stuck in their mouths. Yet I was thinking of a burger. Crazy times.
Later that night, when everyone was asleep, I spent some time in the café area looking out the front windows, watching the night sky, the stars. In the last 5 days, human activity had slowed to almost nothing and the night sky and stars were brilliant as a result. It was quite with no cars driving by, no sound from phones, radios or other people bustling around me. The stars reminded me of the nights in the woods with my father. There wasn’t any light from the city or noise from machines in the woods, leaving someone with the feeling that they were the only ones alive in the world and an amazing few of our universe.
I was deep in thought about my dad, the times we spent watching the stars when a slight touch on my shoulder startled me. I jumped a bit and turned focusing on Shannon standing there with her arm reaching for me.
She smiled at me and said, “Sorry for scaring you.” She said. “What are you doing? What are you thinking about?”
I was relieved that it was her and immediately awake thinking of what might happen between us. “Looking at the stars, the sky,” I said. “Looking for any infected. Thinking of my dad.”
“Want company?” She asked. “I can’t sleep, thinking of the danger you guys are going to be in tomorrow.”
I nodded and she moved next to me, our shoulders and arms touching, both looking out into the night. After a few minutes, we held hands and just stood there a little while longer not saying anything to each other.
She finally leaned over and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Thanks for being here to help us deal with this problem. Knowing you guys are going to help really is nice and even though I know you can be a bit reckless, it still gives me some peace of mind knowing you will be there.” She let go of my hand and moved away. “I’ll talk to you in the morning.”
I stood there for a while longer before moving back to my sleeping bag. I walked into the room and laid down on the sleeping bags that were my bed. Butch rolled over and looked at me while I got settled.
“You like her, right?” he asked in a hushed voice trying to not wake Amy.
“She’s nice, interesting to talk to, strong.
“Yeah and hot.” He smiled at me. “She likes you.”
“How do you know?”
“The way she looks at you when she doesn’t think others are watching,” Amy said from the corner of the sleeping area.
Both Butch and I looked at her when she spoke. I should have known she was awake. “Like I said, she’s nice.”
“They’re hot for each other,” Butch replied as he turned over and faced away from me. “Nothing wrong with it, natural, just saying.”
Amy giggled and rolled over to leave me alone to think about what we were going to do tomorrow and about Shannon.
Chapter 28- Day 6
Earl
y the next morning, I woke up and found both Amy and Butch up and gone already. I got up and grabbed my stuff. After a short trip to the men’s room, I walked into the garage, finding Butch, Amy, and Brian standing together in the corner talking while Rob stood guard over the captive bikers.
I walked over to Rob and asked him to get Jerry. “Make sure he is tied up good, but able to walk so we don’t have to carry him,” I asked Brian and Butch to do the same with Kyle. After a few minutes, Rob returned with Jerry and stood next to Brian and Kyle.
“How are you doing, Jerry?” I asked with a sneer. “Here’s the deal. We’re going for a ride today, kind of like the other day. Only this time, your friends won’t be coming to get you. Chances are, no one will.”
We all moved out of the garage in a big line with Shannon leading and Rob and Brian pushing the bikers along. We headed to the truck stop to the front where our truck was parked finding one of the truck stop people who told us that the truck was all gassed up and ready to go. We headed to the back of the truck where we placed the bikers in the bed with Brian and Amy watching over them.
After loading our supplies, discussing the plan one more time with the Shannon and saying goodbye to her, we climbed in and headed out of town, moving south toward our destination.
“With Luck, we’ll get this done and be at my parents by tomorrow for dinner,” Butch said as he looked out the window. Famous last words…..
We moved south and the dawn gave way to summer sun and heat. All along the way, we didn’t see any of the infected on the road or any living, except for all the dead bodies. It seemed that Ripper and team had done a pretty good job of cleaning up around the area, both infected and living. We were pretty sure the biker gang was responsible for all the dead bodies that were decomposing on the side of the road.
