by L. L. Akers
Rake pushed his rifle behind him to hang from a homemade sling, and stepped up onto the edge of the wagon. He grabbed two bales of hay and jumped down, tossing them at the same time onto the ground, and looked back, coming face to face with the barrel of Emma’s gun.
He startled backwards, standing directly beside Cowboy, and threw up his hands. Cowboy kept his gun on Emma.
Emma jumped down, her gun inches from Rake’s face. She jerked her chin at him, ignoring the rifle pointed at herself and spoke directly to Rake. “Tell your friend to drop his gun or I swear I’ll put a bullet smack in the middle of your ugly mug. My finger is on the trigger. We’ll see which bullet lands first.”
The color drained from Rake’s face and his eyes widened. “Drop it or she’s gonna shoot,” he whined to his buddy.
Cowboy laughed, not able to comprehend the seriousness of the situation through his drunken haze. He squinted hard at Emma. “Well, shit! Lookee that,” he said, and let his own rifle drop on its sling. He put his hands up, still laughing, as though it were all a game and they’d lost—fair and square.
Emma rolled her eyes at the idiot. Too stupid to breathe…
Their friend, Pudgy, was still standing fifty feet away, not able to see what they were doing behind the wagon. “What’d y’all find in there?” he yelled.
Emma alternated her gun from Rake’s face to Cowboy’s face. “Turn around slowly,” she said in a steely voice, “and walk out there. This is not a game. I will pull this trigger.”
The men both turned around, their hands still up. Neither was laughing now, except her…almost. Her act nearly slipped when she had to swallow back a hysterical laugh as she watched Rake’s pants darken down his left leg.
Wrinkling her nose, she stepped up and with one hand, lifted the gun from around him and threw it behind her on the ground. She did the same with Cowboy, noticing he was beginning to shake.
“You’re going to walk out there slowly, with me behind you. I’ll have the gun to the back of one of your heads. You won’t know which one—so go slow. I don’t want to trip with my finger on the trigger, now do I?”
The men flinched.
Emma continued. “Tell your friend to drop his gun. Tell him it was a trap. We’re doing the robbing today, and we have two more guns in the other side of the woods trained on him. If he shoots Elmer… you all die,” she lied.
They all three stepped out from around the wagon, the two men in front holding their hands up, with Emma directly behind them, holding up her gun.
Elmer smiled and relaxed his shoulders. “Surprise,” he gleefully said to his own captor.
“What the hell?” Pudgy screamed. “You dipshits let a woman get the drop on ya? You idiots!”
Cowboy sighed, all signs of his buzz completely gone. “Just drop your gun. It’s a trap—better than our trap. They got more guys in the woods and they all got you in their sights.”
Pudgy whipped his head around, looking for proof.
A branch snapped in the woods, the sound cracking through the air.
He jumped, jerking the gun up and poking Elmer hard.
Elmer jumped and whipped around—as fast as an old man can whip around... “Put that damn gun down, son. You accidentally throw a bullet and you’re gonna catch one, too!”
Pudgy knelt down, placing his gun on the ground while watching the woods where the sound of the twig snapping had come from. He slowly backed away from the gun, his eyes wide with fright, and his hands up. He spoke to the woods. “There! You can have it. Can we go now?”
No one likes an enemy they can’t see.
“What you got to tie them up with, girl?” Elmer asked, as he hurried to grab his shotty and Pudgy’s gun. Now he had a shotgun in one hand and a rifle in the other. He tossed one off to the side.
“I can cut some twine off the hay bales,” she answered.
“Not strong enough,” Elmer said gruffly.
Emma thought for a second. “I’ve got a bundle of paracord in my bag,” I think.
“Go git it,” Elmer grumbled, giving the men a gritty stare.
Emma nudged Rake and Cowboy with her gun, pushing them to the middle of the road. “Sit down right there, back to back,” she told them.
“Check their pockets first, girl. They might have a knife. Then make ‘em sit three feet apart,” Elmer instructed. “Just in case.”
Emma looked at Rake’s wet pants, soaked in piss.
She cringed.
Taking a deep breath, she pressed her gun into his back. He stiffened. Standing behind him, she reached into his pocket. From the first pocket, she pulled out a lighter, a handkerchief and a pile of change. She threw it on the ground and reached into the second pocket. He had a knife. She shoved it into her own pocket and then did the same search with Cowboy, not producing much of anything other than a pack of Marlboro lights and a jumbo pack of gum.
“Gimme those smokes,” Elmer said.
Emma screwed up her face in disgust. “You smoke?”
“Not anymore. Been quit twenty years. But I do chew ‘bacca. I’ll take those for just in case.”
Emma scrunched up her nose and threw the cigarettes at Elmer’s feet. She reared back and threw the gum hard into the trees, in the direction of their ‘watcher.’ She yelled in that direction, “Here, y’all share this. Don’t be killing each other over one pack a gum, either!”
The men stared toward the dense woods with wide eyes as the gum fell, making a huge racket in the dry brush as it hit limbs falling down into the shadows.
At her direction, they clumsily sat down on the road.
“Bring your man over here, too, Elmer.”
Elmer gave Pudgy a shove with his shotty, herding him over to his friends. “Criss-cross applesauce,” he loudly muttered and pointed to the ground.
Reluctantly, the man sat down with his drinking buddies, still keeping his eyes on the forest.
Elmer stood over the men, his gun pointed at them. He looked at Emma and raised his eyebrows. “Go git that rope.”
Emma slowly walked backward, keeping her eyes on them as long as she could, and then jumped into the wagon to get her bag. She jumped back out, carrying it with her and dug into it, pulling out a sandwich baggie full of large plastic zip ties. “Look. Always wondered what use I’d find for these,” she said, and held up the bag for Elmer to see.
He nodded his approval.
One by one, she locked the men’s hands behind their backs with zip ties, and then tied all three zip ties together with a long piece of paracord from her bag, putting them back to back and then tying that around a tree off the side of the road, like a leash.
When she got to Pudgy, he just couldn’t help himself. “Your hands are soft, princess. How about you and me spend some time in that wagon before you go? A little roll in the hay? That old man can’t have much lead left in his pencil.” He laughed. “I get loose from this, and I’m going to have a go at it anyway…but, I promise you’ll like it.”
Emma leaned over and spit at the side of his face. “I’d rather be dead.”
“That can happen, too,” Pudgy promised, shaking his head in anger.
Emma stepped in front of him and raised her gun, pressing it tight against his forehead. Flashbacks of her childhood played like a movie in her head. Terrible things at the hands of a drunken man would never happen to her again. She wasn’t a little girl anymore. Her finger moved into the trigger guard and itched to pull.
Elmer intervened, slowly pushing the gun away from Pudgy. “He’s drunk. Pay him no mind, girl.”
Emma stood still, battling the ghosts in her mind. Finally, she pushed them aside, and asked, “Where’s the keys to the cars?” They still needed to move the roadblock so they could get through.
No one spoke up.
Emma put her boot between Rake’s legs, hovering over his balls. He stared at the boot and then up at her. “I don’t know! Ask them,” he yelled.
She stepped down hard and every man there flin
ched in pain. “I’m asking you…where’s the keys?”
Rake screamed like a girl and tried to roll over onto his side. His friends shoved at him, and pulled him back upright, keeping him in a sitting position while he tried to suck in air. Emma hovered her boot over him again. It didn’t take any more than that for the coward to sing. “Over there. Behind that big square rock,” he gasped.
He pointed toward the rock with his head.
Elmer left Emma watching the men while he went looking. He found both sets of keys and sat down in the Cavalier first, hoping it had enough gas to start so he could move it.
It did.
Surprisingly, it actually had half a tank. More than enough for him and Emma to make a fast get-away. He’d be home with Edith all the sooner. He considered telling Emma… but quickly changed his mind. He couldn’t leave his tractor behind. He’d need it come planting-time now more than ever. It could mean the difference between life and death for him and Edith.
But if these hooligans had gas, why were they just sitting around robbing people? Surely, there’s somewhere they could go with better pickings than this old deserted road, he thought.
Carefully, he maneuvered the car out of his way and hurried back to Emma. “Let’s go, Emma.” He glared at the men. “She’s going to hold that gun on you while we get down the road. If any of y’all move, she’s going to shoot you. If you stand up, she’s going to shoot you. Don’t even think about getting up at all until you can no longer see or hear us… or she’ll shoot you. Is that clear enough? You’ve been warned.”
Pudgy grimaced when she tightened his zip tie. “You can’t just leave us here. We’ll die. What if someone else comes along and shoots us or something?”
Elmer rolled his eyes. It wasn’t like they were tying up their feet. These men had some gear somewhere, he was sure of that, and he was leaving them this way so they could move around. As soon as they were gone, he felt sure they’d find a knife or something in their gear and get free. It might take them awhile having to move together as a team, but that was even better. He and Emma would be long gone by then.
And they’d be on foot, because he was taking the car keys with him.
Emma shrugged. “Our watchers in the woods will keep an eye out for you until we’re way down the road. After that, they’ll follow us and it’s not my problem. Bad things happen to bad people and you are bad people. Would you rather we shoot you? That’s what you threatened to do to Elmer, isn’t it?”
She stepped up on the wagon, keeping her gun trained on the men. Elmer made his way to the tractor and they slowly pulled away, Emma keeping her gun steady, barely blinking an eye.
They were less than fifty feet away when Pudgy tried to stand, jerking his buddies up with him.
A shot rang out, followed by horrifying, blood-chilling screams.
22
Tullymore & Grayson’s Group
Ruby carried the motley crew out of Tullymore and onto the bypass toward town. Jake and Grayson were in the front. Tina, Tarra, Tucker and two guys from the ‘hood were in the back. Tucker had chosen Mickey and Frank because their firearms had been visible in low-hanging holsters as they had sat at the tables eating with their wives. It was an easy choice.
The neighbors had all contributed money—as though they really thought the group could come back with a full truck of groceries—and had called out things they needed.
Tucker had ignored them all, Sarah’s baby the only thing on his list.
All had high hopes to find something useful, but they each kept them to themselves.
Tucker could only think about formula for Sammi. He had to help her. He felt that nothing else good could happen if he failed the first person that needed him. Especially if that person was a child. His group would never trust or believe in him again if he couldn’t help her. He’d like to think that even if he wasn’t their designated leader, he’d still risk everything to save a child—any child. But he was their leader, and things had just gotten real…real fast.
Of course, first on the ladies’ minds was fuel. Neither spoke it aloud but they both hoped to see that by some miracle, FEMA finally had their act together to move faster in disasters, and had arrived with tankers of gas and truck loads of food and water. They’d discussed the possibility that the outage was regional, and hopefully not the entire United States. Maybe just the East coast. They both held that hope close to their hearts.
Grayson wanted more bullets, beans and Band-Aids. He hoped for anything he could get to add to their group supplies, but he especially wanted coffee. He hadn’t yet broken the news to the group that one of the things they no longer had—thanks to Olivia—was the magic beans that made their brains function and their mornings brighter. If they found that out, the shit really would hit the fan at the farm.
He, for one, could not deal with Olivia without coffee. Not for him… but for her. Jake had told him Tina and Tarra thought they were seeing claws-out from Olivia, but if they thought they saw them now, they were in for a real eye-opener if she didn’t get her morning cup of java.
Coffee first…then any type of food he could add to their pantry would make him happy. The burden was already on him to provide food for the whole family, but now, it was even scarier with the addition of three more people, and a donkey.
Deep down, Grayson knew help wasn’t coming anytime soon. This was the real deal. The shit had hit the fan, and much more would fly before it was all said and done. He needed to get more food while the gettin’ was good.
Mickey and Frank both were meat guys. After seeing the limited amount the neighborhood was able to salvage by drying or canning, visions of fresh steaks and chicken danced in their head.
They had no idea just how delusional they were…
Jake had only one thing on his mind: Gabby. He hoped to find some special something to bring back to his wife. Chocolate, or berry-flavored chap-stick, even candy… anything at all to show her how happy he was that she was home safely, and show her he could provide for her too.
He couldn’t help but feel a bit like a hanger-on. He wasn’t blood to Grayson; he was just married into the family. He hadn’t really heeded Grayson’s warning of an event on an apocalyptic level, and now that it had actually happened, he wished he had taken it all more seriously. He had checked all the right boxes and went along the best he could. He’d packed him and Gabby bug-out bags, he’d agreed to help Gabby prep a little bit of food at the house; he’d gone through the gun training, and helped with the garden occasionally.
But in the grand scheme of things, Jake knew what he’d done was like a fart in the wind in comparison to what Grayson had done. He’d only barely gone through the motions to keep peace with his brother-in-law and his wife, never really believing they’d need any of it. At times, he’d even thought it was a waste of his time and money; money he could’ve spent on Gabby, or on something for Ruby, even.
It was Grayson that had made sure he and Gabby—and everyone else in their family—would have food and water in their bellies a month from now. It was Grayson that had bought the farmhouse out in the country, instead of a fancy home in an upscale subdivision like Jake had done, for the specific possibility of the fan blowing the shumar around at some later date. He did it to make sure the house he chose was far away from the madness of town, and had its own water supply. Instead of spending his weekends Netflixing and chilling—like Jake usually tried to do—he’d used his every free weekend to work on the garden, making sure they had a renewable food source.
Add all that to his freakish inability to proficiently use a gun like a real man, on top of his other issues that Gabby didn’t even know about, and he was feeling like somewhat of a failure to his beautiful wife.
Jake shook off his poor-me thoughts and watched the scenery roll by. They were almost into town, now.
Grayson was still deep in thought beside him, one hand tightly gripping his gun and the other rubbing his jaw. Jake admired his ability to keep going despite w
hat must have been the terrible pain of a toothache; he looked awful.
They had barely spoken since they’d left Tullymore. The crowd in the back had their eyes peeled for trouble and probably couldn’t hear each other over the wind anyway. The whole group rode in near silence. The first fifteen minutes of the trip was uneventful, like driving through a ghost-town—except they still hadn’t been in town yet, just passing houses on the two-lane blacktop road toward the city. They hadn’t seen a soul.
Until they did.
Suddenly, Jake slammed his foot on the gas, hoping he wouldn’t lose any of his five passengers in the back of the truck. “Tucker! Nine o’clock,” he screamed out his window, warning them of the motorcycle he’d just passed.
The motorcycle came out of a side-road like a gunshot, in hot pursuit.
Grayson let go of the death-grip he had on his gun long enough to grab the dash in a moment of panic. In the back, Tucker wobbled on his feet, swaying as he pointed his rifle at the motorcycle gaining on them.
The crotch-rocket motorcycle was tearing up the road behind them, eating up the distance between them in seconds. There was no denying it was after them, and it carried two people.
“What the hell?” Grayson said, looking over his shoulder as the riders zoomed up. He turned back and checked his gun.
Jake kept his eyes on the road. “Are they armed?” he yelled over the roar of the engine.
“I can’t tell yet. If they are, it’s with handguns.”
As the bike got closer, closing the gap, Jake could see flashes of it in his mirror. Two passengers, both in black helmets with tinted face-shields and wind-breaker jackets. Similar thin-ish frames. Definitely not a Harley. Definitely not bikers. Could it be just a couple kids on a rice-burner playing around?
“Tell them don’t shoot unless they have to,” Jake yelled. He didn’t want the death of two adrenaline-chasing teenage boys on his hands.
Grayson stuck his head out the window to relay the message, only to pull it in quick when Jake jerked the wheel to turn down a side gravel road. The bike turned too, giving chase, kicking up rocks and sliding around in the gravel at top speed.
