“The facility has been cleared, so far from what we can tell. These men and two women were not regular Ridder fighters. First their weapons were not very well taken care of, and none of them have a military bearing. We have three prisoners, if you want to interrogate them. I have sent out Kot, Nunzio, Hunter, and Doc to check the forest for any other enemies. For right now we are clear, I have the vehicles working their way down here. They are busy clearing obstacles out of the way.”
“Outstanding work Heaven, please lead the way to the prisoners.”
Heaven took me down the sidewalk and around the bathroom buildings to a wet grassy area. The two men and one woman were zip-tied and secured to their own picnic tables. Heaven took me down the line and we stopped at each table. I didn’t speak to the prisoners as they stared up at me. I was a very intimidating man when I wanted to be, and right now I really wanted to be. I squared my shoulders and mean mugged each person. Someone had stripped them down to just their underwear. I imagined it was to assure they were disarmed, but I think it was more a tactic to scare and intimidate them. None of their bodies screamed professional soldier to me. The two men were unshaven, with doughy dad bodies. That pissed me off, as I figured they had plenty of food, while so many people starved to death out there. The woman was once a looker, she was skinny with big fake boobs, her hair was a big rats nest at the moment, but I could tell she had once taken good care of it. Her nails were painted, and her underwear was not just the basic cotton a female soldier would wear. She was decked out in silk and lace probably from Victoria’s secret. I moved over toward her and looked down into her dirty face and smeared makeup. Someone had thrown her to the ground as they frisked her and disrobed her. Right then I knew it had to have been Kot. This screamed something she would do. The woman looked up at me and spit. It was a pathetic attempt as it travelled a couple of inches and landed on the table in front of her. I shook my head and rolled my eyes.
“Take a good luck fucker, you ain’t getting any of me,” she spat out.
I removed my Kabar from its sheath on my tactical vest and slammed it down into the wooden table in front of her, burying the blade an inch. I then reached back quickly, grabbed the back of her hair and shoved her head forward. I pulled back just enough as her cheek collided with the pommel of my Kabar. I yanked her head back and took in my handy work. I hadn’t broken the cheek bone, but she wasn’t going to be pretty for long. The look in her eyes glazed over as the small concussion I gave her started to ease. I reached down, and in a show of strength, ripped my blade free of the wood, leaving a long crack in the wood. I put my Kabar back and walked away from the lady. I wanted to take her down a notch and for the other two men to see that I did not care for them one bit.
I moved to the man in the middle and looked down at him. His eyes showed with just the fear I was looking for. I placed my hands on the table and bent down so he could see the look in my eyes. I was using a tactic that Dan had used with the Librarian back in Idaho. God, that felt like a life time ago. I didn’t speak, I just stared into his soul, letting him see the anger in my eyes. Sweat beaded up on his forehead as I continued to stare at him.
“Who are you? What do you want? We have stuff man, good stuff,” he babbled.
The man behind us on the other table yelled out, “Shut up Max! Tell him anything and I will kill you myself fucker, along with your wife and little girl.”
I stood to my full height and turned to the other man. He had the “scum in charge” look about him. He was used to being in power and threatening others to do his bidding. I strode over and without stopping, I backhanded the man across his naked chest rocking his body backwards. The zip-ties held him in place, but bit down deeply into his wrists causing the skin to rip and peal upward. Blood poured from the wound and onto the table in front of him. He looked down in shock at his wrists and then up at me. A strange smile spread across his face. He had to be on some heavy drugs not to feel that kind of damage.
He spat a glob of blood onto the table and managed a red stained smile up at me. “You hit like a pussy,” he laughed.
A small delicate brown hand snaked around his throat and yanked his head back. The hand slid over the man’s face and grabbed a fistful of hair. A large wicked knife appeared just at the edge of the man’s eyesight.
“My name is Dahteste,” the blade slit a small line through the man’s hairline. “I am gonna scalp you, if you do not answer this man’s questions and show him the proper respect. If your hair means nothing to you, then I will move to your shriveled cock. I know it will be hard to talk with it shoved into your mouth, but I am sure you will find a way,” she moved his head forward, allowing the blood from the cut to pour down his face.
“Okay, okay, I will talk! Just get this thing away from me,” he cried out.
I gave Tess a smile and a wink. She let go of the man’s hair and came around showing the bloody twelve-inch classic Bowie blade. The knife looked like a small sword in her hands, but that didn’t take away the danger the woman exuded.
“Let’s start with something simple. What is your name?” I asked.
“Tom Delaney.”
“I don’t give a shit about your last name Tom. Not like I am a cop and need to do a search on you, stupid fuck. Are you ready for harder questions, where did you get all the cool guns and weapons?”
“A group of military guys found our camp and said they would give us what we wanted if we manned this part of the pass and stopped anyone from coming through,” he had to keep blinking his eyes from the blood still dripping down his face.
I looked to Heaven and then the man’s face. He took the cue and removed a bandage from his personal kit, tore it open and pressed it against the man’s wound. The bleeding slowed and then stopped quickly. Tess had not cut him deep, but head wounds bleed badly.
“Where is your camp?”
He hesitated as he thought about lying to me. I made sure he saw the look on my face as I turned to Tess. “He ain’t going to give us what we want, go ahead and have fun. I am sure one of the others will answer me,” I started to walk away when the man cried out begging me to come back. I took an extra two steps before stopping. I dropped my head and let out a theatrical sigh, all show and flash. I hunched my shoulders, turned back toward Tom, and rolled my eyes at him.
I stared at him for a minute waiting for him to speak. Tess had her big knife in hand and he could not take his eyes off of it. “Tom, if you don’t start talking I am going to let her use that big fucking knife on you.”
Tom flinched and tentatively took his eyes off Tess and her Bowie knife. He swallowed the lump gathering in his throat and met my bored upset face. “We have a campground just up the highway at Bailey Cove Campground.”
I pulled out my tablet and took a look at the highly detailed map. The next exit was for the Shasta Caverns. I followed the highway and then road down to the camp and made some internal notes on the campground.
“Okay Tom, you get to a live a little longer. Now for level two of our game show, where the questions are more detailed and the torture for a wrong answer is much, much, worse,” I had no idea why I was being so flippant with the man. Adrenaline and anger I guess does that to me. “How many people are in the camp? How many guards? What are they armed with? And finally, how many children?”
I paid attention to his eyes like Dan had done with his interrogation of the Librarian. You see the eyes tell you everything, they are truly windows to the soul. He kept looking up to the right and behind me, if his hands had not been secured, I swear he would’ve been wringing them as he came up with a lie.
“We started with a hundred and twenty when all this went down. We are now down to about,” he looked to the right again. “forty. We might have about four guards on duty, they only have some basic hunting guns. We had all the good stuff here. We have only two families with about a total of five kids.”
I waited a beat, giving him time to change his story. I gave him a smile and he read it all wr
ong, by giving me one back. I drew my pistol, a Colt 1911, and fired a single round into his folded hands, in one smooth motion. He screamed loudly, trying to pull his hands to his body to protect them. All he ended up doing was pulling more skin free of his bound wrists. Those drugs were not working as well anymore it would seem. I holstered my 1911 and made my way around the table to Tom. I wrapped one of my big paws under his chin and around his neck, forcing his head back. I let him see the anger spreading across my face, he continued to scream. I reached out and took Tess’s Bowie from her. I placed the blade against his ruined hand, ready to remove his fingers.
“Stop screaming, or I will dice you into pieces before giving you to my little friend,” I growled in his ear. That shut him up really quick. I kept my mouth near his ear, because I wanted him to hear my next words really good. “You lied to me, I warned you what would happen. This,” I squeezed his hand with the bullet wound, bringing more whimpering from him. “is just a small dose of pain compared to what I can dish out buddy. Now how about you tell me the truth this time?”
It took him a minute to find his voice. “If I tell you what you want to know, the boss will kill me,” he cried.
“The difference is he will kill you, I will send you through realms of pain you cannot imagine. I have been trained on how to keep someone alive enough to feel every spasm of pain and punishment I am planning on meting out to you.”
He stared at his hands and gulped hard again. “Last count was a hundred and fifty, not including the men and women you killed here. There are sixty more armed guards, they are armed similar as us. I don’t know how many children, I never cared to count them. Most are children of the guards,” he dropped his head down as he spoke, tears dripping from his eyes and onto his wounded hands.
I had not one ounce of pity for him. I moved away from him and toward the other man secured to a table. Tom was sobbing as I moved away from him. I hunched over the table and looked down at the next prisoner. He was slightly smaller than Tom, and cleaner. I gave him the look and waited.
“There is no reason to hurt me like you did to Tom. I am happy to tell you everything.”
“Shut the fuck up, you piece of wasted skin. Be a man!” screamed the woman through her bruised face and pain, on the table behind us.
I rose my pointer finger at Max, asking him to wait a minute. I stood up and moved toward the woman. I was so tired of her. She liked to be loud and boisterous and just couldn’t understand the real world of shit she was in. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do to her, but she had seriously pissed me off. She continued to yell and spit as I came up to her.
“What the fuck are you gonna do? Beat me up some more? Bring it on you giant fucking bear. My old man can hit harder than you pussy!” she screamed.
I stopped in my tracks and stared down at the little pit viper. She was swearing and cussing as much as she could. I just stood there, letting a smile dawn onto my face. She slowed down her screaming and yelling as she tried to figure out why I was smiling.
“What the fuck are you smiling at? My beauty?” she laughed manically.
A hand entwined in the woman’s hair as she cranked her head back. A smiling Athena stared down at the woman. “You need to learn some manners girl,” Athena held her free hand to me. I reached down and pulled my Kabar free again, spun it in my hand and presented the handle to her. She took it and begin to saw through the woman’s long hair. As she cut free fistfuls of the hair, she would throw it on the table in front of her. The woman just laughed more and more.
“Hair grows back bitch, do your worse.”
Athena raised an eyebrow at me in an unasked question. I nodded my head slightly and winked, giving her permission to do whatever she needed to do. “Hey crazy bitch, at least tell me your name?” I asked her.
She gave me a smug smile with her lips sealed. Max yelled over his shoulder. “Her name is Stephanie, Stephanie Lunsford. She used to be a teacher and then became psychotic, she is one of the worst in the lot.”
“Thank you, Max. I’ll be with you in a minute,” I called over my shoulder.
Athena cut the bra off of Stephanie and drew the blade down between her large breasts. “How about I take one of these implants out for you? No charge hun.”
“If you’re gonna kill me, just do it bitch, but you don’t have the stones to torture me,” Stephanie spat out.
“You’re wrong there, sweetie,” Athena plunged the tip of the Kabar into the skin at the base of the outer left breast where it met the chest.
I turned, not wanting to watch what Athena was going to do. I quickly stepped over to Max and sat down next to him on the bench, not wanting to see the effects of Athena’s impromptu surgery. I ignored the screams and yells from Stephanie and gave all my attention to Max.
“Okay, talk,” I sighed through the damage this little interrogation was leaving on my soul.
“Tom was not lying about the camp. What he did lie was about, was the families. They are being kept as hostages and slaves to make the men do their bidding. They do sick shit to people man. If a man won’t do as they say, his wife is raped and usually their kids too. If that doesn’t cower them, they then feed a family member to their captured zombies. That usually does it, the place is a fucking cesspool of drugs, alcohol, and abuse. Hell, they even built a small arena where they have zombie fights. They throw in either a volunteer or some new person in with one baseball bat and then send in zombies in ones and twos,” tears fell from Max’s eyes.
I felt bad for him. I put my hand on his back. “I take it your family is down there?”
“A sister,” he started to sob quietly hitching his shoulders. “They raped her last week cause I refused to send a young teen into the zombie fights. The fucking “Boss” as they call him, raped her and beat her up pretty badly. He then sent me up here for guard duty, so I couldn’t do anything about it.”
I had both hands lying flat on the table as he finished his story. I was pulsing with pain and anger. There was no way I was going to walk away from this. There had to be something I could do. I concentrated on my breathing and tried to push back my emotions. A small plan came to me.
“Tell me all you know about this Boss.”
“First thing, his real name is Morley Greening, a biker-like meth head ass hole. He is a huge steroid fueled gorilla, shit loads of tattoos, long flowing gray hair and a beard as long as yours. Oh, and Stephanie there is one of his women,” Max informed me.
I turned my head expecting a quivering mess of blood, tissue, and a saline pouch of water, Instead I found that Athena had not actually torn Stephanie’s breast implants out. She had cut the breasts up, but they were thin cuts, taunting ones. Stephanie was a broken sobbing woman. We had her. I gave Athena a wink and she gave me a curtsy and blew a kiss at me. I caught the kiss and put it to my cheek before I could understand what I was doing. Man, this woman had me in her crosshairs and I had no defenses for her. She totally ignored the fact I was gay, and in a relationship. I would have to deal with that eventually, right now was not the time.
I went to pull my knife and found the sheath empty. It then hit me I gave it to Athena. I reached down grabbed onto the flex cuffs where they were attached to the table and flexed my forearms and biceps. The ties broke from the table, I was about to pull Max’s hands apart to rip the ties when Heaven stepped up and offered his blade. I nodded my head thanks and took the blade. I used it to free Max’s hand and handed the blade back to Heaven. Max rubbed his wrists as I retrieved one of my numerous black sharpies from my vest. I collected the things. They worked great for a great number of things. I gave Max the sharpie.
“Okay bud, this nice man’s name is Heaven. He is gonna stand here and watch you draw out a full diagram of the camp and a list of things I might need to know to rescue everyone inside. Let me warn you though, Heaven can shoot a flea’s balls off at a thousand yards. So, if you decide to do anything stupid or run, he is gonna shoot your balls off. Got it?”
Max no
dded his head quickly. I patted him on the back and winked at Heaven as I went to check on Stephanie. Her eyes were puffy, cheeks bright red, and snot running from her nose. Athena had done a great job scaring the shit of the woman, turning her docile. Athena cleaned my Kabar off on Stephanie’s torn flimsy bra and handed it back to me. I put the Kabar away and stared down at Stephanie and her numerous cuts.
“Stephanie. I gotta say you have looked better. You feel like talking to me now, or?” I spoke tenderly like a friend.
Stephanie raised her head and tried to focus her puffy eyes on me. “Please keep her away from me,” her words came out from her puffy face as a totally broken spirit.
“She will not hurt you again as long as you help me. I give you my word.”
Stephanie nodded her head to me as if agreeing. “What do you want to know?”
“Tell me about your boyfriend Morley,” I took out the flip notebook from my vest as well as a pen. Just another thing that had rubbed off on me from my brother Dan.
“Morley is malicious man, he somehow broke out of Pelican Bay right before all this zombie shit. He had been riding all over Northern California and Southern Oregon, adding to his gang and stealing supplies. He finally settled here and built the campground into his own little chiefdom. He has a cabin over by the caverns and an escape hatch through the floor by his bed. He doesn’t know I know about it. He also has a cache of weapons and supplies down there and a way out to a hidden motorcycle further back. I can show you how to get there if you want,” she was completely broken.
I looked around and found Cupcake lounging on the grass eyes closed. I walked over and tapped him with the toe of my boots in the ribs. “If you are not a sexy woman with huge breasts, you can go fuck yourself,” he liked to bring out his thick Polish accent when he was playing with someone.
“I am tall, hairy, and have a big chest. Does that work?”
Cupcake opened up one eye and studied me. “What the hell do you want Sasquatch?”
Zombie Theorem: Dark Times Book Five Page 21
