Fifty Falling Stars

by Wesley Higginbotham

  Chapter 15

  Jessica Blake lay face down on her father’s bed on the first floor of their blue, wood sided house just a couple blocks down the street from the Methodist Church in Mount Carmel, Illinois. Tight cords cut into her hands as they bound them to the headboard, leaving the rest of her vulnerable to whatever whims pleased the gang members at the time. She no longer cried as the hairy Hispanic gang leader violated her. She barely even made a noise anymore.

  She had screamed and cried the first few dozen times they had raped her or stuck her with various other objects. One man seemed to enjoy burning her with cigarettes. After three days of torture, she had broken and become numb. Her body had decided it couldn’t take any more. The nerves that registered the pain threw up their arms in disgust and quit functioning. How many had had her, had abused her? Fifty? A hundred? She’d lost count. She couldn’t tell if it was the hunger, the thirst, or the constant rapes and torture that did it; but somewhere along the way her mind gave up as well. Her thoughts became fuzzy, fickle things that floated away on the breeze like dandelion seeds blown on the breeze.

  She turned her head to her left and saw the broken form of her father lying naked and bleeding beside the dresser in the corner. She tried to blink the haziness out of her dry eyes but failed. She wondered how many gallons of tears she had shed that first day when the rapes began. She had been given no water since being tied to the bed. Her lips dried and cracked. Blood had clotted in the empty sockets where her front teeth had been before the big black guy had knocked them out. In retrospect, trying to bite his manhood as he shoved it into her mouth had not been the best idea; but it had been an act of defiance, her only way of fighting back. She took pride in that act, even though it left her mouth a ruin.

  They were probably going to let her die of thirst while they used her. Maybe her father was already dead. Maybe he was the lucky one now. She thought she could hear his breathing between the grunts of the man using her. She prayed that the sound wasn’t her father’s labored breathing. She prayed that he was dead. She prayed that she would die.

  Her father had been the Deputy Sherriff of Wabash County. When the gang arrived and took over the town, they had killed the Sherriff and most of the town’s police officers. Anyone who put up a fight had been slaughtered. They killed many of the men in the town, butchered them for everyone to see, and cooked them, openly feasting on the body parts and laughing about how good they tasted. Once they found out that her dad was the new law in town, the gang leader had decided to make an example. To make sure that everyone else stayed in line, they had tied her father down in the town square and sodomized him. Sometime later that evening, the gang leader learned that the new sheriff had a daughter hiding at home. They broke into the house, found her hiding in one of the closets, and brought her father in to see his little angel get her due.

  Jessica held no hope that help would come. The rest of the survivors had been corralled into the high school’s gymnasium and imprisoned there. They had gotten the message. They knew there was no more law and order and that her and her father’s fate would visit any that dared to resist.

  She tried to think. How long had it been since the sickly-looking white guy with the glasses had raped her father and the others made her watch? How long had it been since the wiry little man had finished and stuck her father a few times in the short ribs with that hunting knife? How long would it take a man to die from that? She had no idea. She just hoped that he was dead. That was the only respite left for them now. Merciful death.

  She always thought of herself as a good girl. She always followed the rules and held a 3.8 grade point average. She had maintained her virginity until these animals had arrived two days ago. She was supposed to be graduating high school in a couple of months. She had already been accepted to college. This was not how her life was supposed to go. Her life was supposed to be great. She had it all planned out. One last tear began to well in her eye as she lamented those shattered dreams.

  The man riding her grabbed a fistful of hair and yanked her head back. This was nothing new, but the pressure and smooth-sliding object on her neck was. The shock took away most of the pain as she felt her life flowing from the slash in her neck. She said a silent prayer of thanks as she lost consciousness.

  Vicio removed himself from the dead bitch and wiped his knife on the bed sheet. He had hoped for more from her, but letting the others have a go at her broke her quickly. She had been fun when they first began, fighting and kicking. A regular little firecracker before she broke. Since then, all fight had left her and all pleasure for him. He killed her out of boredom as much as anything else. As he pulled up his pants, he heard a whispered sob from the corner. The Sherriff still lived. Vicio walked over to the man. The boys had done a number on his face. One eye swelled shut and the rest of the face looked like a wad of grape jelly. Vicio smiled as he stepped into the first kick to the man’s stomach. It took six more kicks until the man lost consciousness.

  Vicio passed by the kitchen on his way out of the house. One of his lieutenants, Connor, was finishing off a beer that he had found in the sheriff’s fridge. “Connor, go tell Cook that we have two more for dinner tonight.” Vicio said. He smiled as he exited the house. He stopped on the front porch and looked out over his new conquest.

  He thought back over the last few weeks. This was the third town that they had captured. It would be a good place for them to hang out and rest for a few days. The gang needed a break after the busy couple of weeks since escaping Wabash. He chuckled to himself as he thought about how he had gone from inmate to commander of a small army in a day. By the time he had everything under control, he had left Wabash with just over seven hundred hardened criminals.

  After all of the killing and feasting at the prison, the survivors had scavenged everything of any value or use left at the prison. They departed into freedom with four trucks, two prison buses, and an assortment of some thirty firearms. Vicio knew it wasn’t enough, but it was a start. He led his new army north to Sullivan. It had been easy to roll into town and take whatever they wanted. The group had walked to within a mile of the road that led into Sullivan. The dumbasses in Sullivan hadn’t even blocked off the road. Vicio led the attack in one of the pickup trucks, flanked by the prison buses filled with some of the toughest bastards he commanded. The convoy drove into the center of town and drew the attention of the two hundred or so men defending the little town. When the chaos began, the rest of his men charged in surrounding the town. The fighting didn’t last long with the defenders caught from behind as they exchanged fire with the buses. Vicio had the town in under an hour.

  The town held minimal supplies of food, except for the remaining inhabitants. The capture had only cost Vicio twenty men but yielded him some supplies. They took some fifty more firearms from the town’s defenders and residents. Then he found one of the most important finds he could have imagined, a busted fuel tanker truck. Of course, it was empty; but one of his men had been a mechanic before getting sent away for killing his brother-in-law in a drunken rage. The mechanic had been able to get it running and jury-rigged an electric water pump and a generator to the truck. The pump allowed them to extract the gasoline remaining in the underground storage tanks of the town’s two gas stations. He commanded his men to search through the town and collect any gas they could find left in cars or anywhere else it may have been stored. They collected all motorcycles and ATV’s that could be found. Large vehicles would use up too much gas. The smaller ATV’s and bikes would allow them to stretch what little gasoline they had found. The mechanic had also found a welding machine in one of the town’s garages. Vicio had him weld on sheet metal they had found onto the buses, three of the pickup trucks, and the tanker truck to form makeshift armored vehicles. When the gang left town three days later, they had an armored tanker truck with a little less than a thousand gallons of gasoline and five improvised armored personnel carriers.

  The gang then headed south to Vincennes. The
town had been better fortified than Sullivan, with cars pushed together to form a barricade into the city. The barricade proved no match for his new rams, the armored prison buses. They punched through and invaded the town without much resistance. The residents of Vincennes hadn’t fared as well as those of smaller Sullivan. Vicio knew that Vincennes had held a little over fifteen thousand people before the troubles and expected a bigger fight. When they captured the town, they found a fire had gutted half of it. Weeks without food shipments had weakened the remaining residents. After the initial attack, many of the defending residents had fled or given up. In all, Vicio left Vincennes a week later with a few hundred more gallons of fuel; enough bikes, ATV’s, trucks, and trailers to transport his new army; and over a hundred more weapons. The most shocking aspect of the whole operation had been that he had gained recruits. Sure, the initial fighting had taken seventy-four of his men, but forty of the captured men had begged to become part of his gang. After making each one of them kill one of their neighbors, Vicio had allowed them to join. It dawned on him that hunger and uncertainty did strange things to people. His new recruits had been decent folk before all of this. Now they were scared, desperate, and broken; willing to do almost anything for a little certainty and leadership. Deep in his mind, he began to have visions of becoming a warlord. He would provide that leadership, that certainty that people would get fed and protected. He could do whatever the hell he felt like. Nothing of law and order remained to stop him.

  Vicio had taken a different tack in taking Mount Carmel. Instead of brute force breaking the town’s defenses, he had sent small teams of men into the town at night. The guards had been lax. After all, this place probably hadn’t seen many refugees or large groups of people. His men had infiltrated the pathetic barriers and taken out the guards. When Don, his former cellmate, had flashed out the all clear with a flashlight, the buses had rammed through the barricades and the gang swarmed into the town in the depth of night, making as much noise as possible. Vicio wanted the town in a panic. He wanted the fear to paralyze the survivors and break the will of any resistors. With the exception of a few heroes like the bitch-ass sheriff, the plan had worked perfectly. Some men came out of their homes, guns blazing, and were dealt with. Many others gave up in the confusion, fearing they were outnumbered. This time Vicio’s army would net a gain in numbers. Those he lost would be replaced with new recruits from Mount Carmel.

  Vicio smiled as he stepped off of the porch and climbed on to his new Harley Davidson motorcycle. It was time to begin recruiting. The gang had captured about twenty-five hundred residents. He had anyone over sixty or under ten killed for food. He had the survivors locked in the gym, where they had sat for three days without any food or water. He hoped some of them would be ready to break and the recruiting could begin. Vicio didn’t know how many converts he could expect. It didn’t matter as long as it replaced the thirty-four men he had lost. The treatment of the deputy sheriff and his whore daughter had been spread through the gym population. Vicio had ordered that the cooking fires and BBQ grills be placed in front of the gym so that those starving inside could smell their friends and neighbors cooking. He wondered which was worse for those trapped inside, the smell of their loved ones being cooked or that they were starving and would eat that flesh if they could get to it? The thought made Vicio smile as he pulled up in front of the gym and smelled the cook fires.

  Don walked up to the gym as Vicio arrived. “Hey, boss.” Don said as Vicio dismounted from the bike.

  “How is everything with the supplies?” Vicio asked.

  “We got ten mo bikes, six ATV’s, and about seventy mo guns. Got guys still goin through houses tho. We’re runnin low on meat again. Cracker’s spoil mo quicker than I’da thought. Maybe we should…” Don trailed off as Vicio put up a hand and looked over to where one of the gym guards seemed to be sleeping.

  “Is that lazy bastard sleeping?” Vicio asked in a quiet, even tone. He gestured to the man. The prisoners had tried to escape a couple of times. Each time, the guards had shot and killed a few of them, more food for the gang. Vicio knew the majority would be getting weaker and broken by now, but he also knew they would be getting desperate. Some of them might weigh getting shot trying to escape as good odds compared to slow starvation. If they caught this asshole sleeping, that might give them enough hope to try and escape again.

  Vicio walked over to the sleeping man and kicked his foot. “Wake up, sweetheart.”

  The man came to and stood up. “What up, Mr. V?” The man asked.

  “Walk with me.” Vicio said. He turned and walked over to Don. The rest of the guards noticed the activity and watched. As the men approached Don, Vicio said to the guard, “Give Don your gun.” The man reached for the pistol tucked into his pants but hesitated. “Now.” Vicio said, giving the man a broad smile. The man gave Don his weapon.

  Vicio turned to the other watching guards. “What did I tell you son of bitches to do?”

  The guards looked at each other for a second until one of them spoke up. “You said guard the people inside and shoot them if they try to get out.”

  “That’s right. Can you guard something while you’re asleep?” Vicio asked.

  The guard who had been caught sleeping realized the danger. “Look, Mr. V., you didn’t say we couldn’t catch a nap. I just got a little slow after banging one of the women prisoners. I didn’t mean to….”

  “I don’t give a fuck what you thought!” Vicio said. He looked back to the guards. “Can you guard the prisoners while you are asleep?” He asked them again.

  This time all of the guards replied with a strong, “No.”

  “What am I to do with this piece of shit?” Vicio asked the guards. None of them spoke. Vicio pulled his knife out of his belt.

  The guard in trouble didn’t see the knife as his fear turned into anger. “Listen, mother fucker, you said we was to….”

  Vicio turned around and jammed the knife into the man’s groin. He jerked the blade up as he pulled it out. The guard screamed as he bent forward grabbing his nuts. He lifted his hand and blood spurted down his leg, his femoral artery in ruins. The guard collapsed to his knees babbling as the blood spurted onto the asphalt parking lot. The rest of the guards watched as the man bled out in front of them. Vicio turned back to the remaining guards. “When this piece of shit bleeds out, cook him up with the rest.” He looked at each man in turn and asked the group. “Any of you other fuckers going to fall asleep when I tell you to guard something?” To a man, the all shook their heads. “I didn’t fucking hear you!” They all responded with a mixture of “No, sir!”, “No, Mr. V.!”, or “No, Vicio!” That’s better. Vicio thought. Although they were all a bunch of scumbag degenerates, he still had to give them some sort of disciple.

  Vicio put his knife away and walked over to the grill next to the gym door. He lifted the lid of a pan next to it and saw a whole forearm, hand and all, cooked. He picked up the arm and took a bite, enjoying the taste so like pork. “Andy,” he said to the man who had cooked the arm, “you are a goddamned good cook.” Andy looked at him and smiled. They are afraid of me. Vicio thought. Even better, they think I am crazy.

  Vicio turned to Don. “Have any of the prisoners broken yet?”

  “No. We ain’t had none yet.” Don said.

  “Well, let’s go in and see if we can change that.” Vicio said. He took another bite from the arm and walked into the gym door. He knew that he just had to get one to break. Break one in front of the others and more would follow.

  After days of being locked in the dark gymnasium with no food, no water, and no working facilities; the inhabitants smelled disgusting. The gym reeked of stale piss, body odor, and shit. Several people looked sick. Many others had developed a cough. A few of them had died. While the weather wasn’t yet hot, it was warm enough to make living under a metal roof with thousands of your new best friends unbearable. As Vicio stepped over the body of one dead woman, he took a bite of the arm and smiled t
o himself. This place was wretched.

  He looked around at huddled masses of people scattered around the floor. “Don, I’m thirsty. Hand me that bottle of water you have.” Don complied. Vicio took a long drink, letting some spill down his chin, and handed it back to Don. A man, no older than twenty-five, reached up and grabbed Vicio’s leg.

  “Please…Please, sir. Can I have some water?” The young man asked.

  “And why should I give you water?” Vicio asked the man and took another bite from the arm. He could see the young man’s mouth trying to water at the sight and smell of food.

  “Sir, I just want so….”

  “Just give it up, Chad.” A young woman sitting a few feet away from him said. “This bastard is just going to leave us here to die.”

  “No he’s not!” The man said. “You wouldn’t do that to us, would you, sir?”

  “Water and food are precious. I can’t just give them away to people who aren’t part of my army.” Vicio said. He smiled down at the man as if what he had just said was the saddest truth in the world. Before the young man could respond, Vicio asked him another question. “How long have you been without food, boy?”

  The young man looked confused for a minute and answered. “The town ran out of food about a week before you showed up. My cousin,” he gestured to the girl who had spoken earlier, “and I had a little bit of our own. We ran out of that a few days back.”

  Vicio pulled out his knife and cut the pinky finger from the arm he had been eating. He leaned down to where the young man sat and said, “Just this one time, I’m going to break one of the rules.” He tossed the finger at the boy, who devoured it. The other residents, still strong enough to care, took notice of the young man eating. If these people have been without food for a week, this should be much easier than Vicio had planned.