by SD Tanner
Raising his hand to calm them, Gears said steadily, “There’s no point armin’ our shooters with weapons we know are gonna fail. We need to make sure they got both types of weapons. If we’re lucky, Mac ain’t got it right, but if he has, then our people need to be able to defend themselves.”
Before the argument could continue, they heard Mom shouting angrily on the second floor of the house. Leaping from his chair, he ran up the stairs with Ip close on his heels, followed by Gears and Pax. Mom continued to shout, and as he burst into the room, she was standing with her back to the cots, and Max had her gun pointed at the largest woman he’d ever seen. Standing slightly taller than Gears, the well-built woman was beautiful and well-proportioned, but stunningly oversized. Grabbing Mom and Max by their arms, he shoved them out of the room. As they left, Ip pushed past them and ran towards Ruler, only to sigh, put her sword back in its sheath and leave the room.
Puzzled by her reaction, he called in disbelief, “Hey! Where are you going?”
Gears replaced her in the doorway and his face creased in disgust. “He ain’t really here.” Pushing his way past him and standing in front of Ruler, he asked, “Whatcha playin’ at now?”
Ruler flicked his long dark locks flirtatiously. “Nice way to greet your nemesis. Gray delivered your message and he told me the babies were at the Ranch.” Giving Gears a cheeky look, he said, “You’ve been playing tricks on me, War.”
“What tricks? The babies are here.”
Walking towards the cots, Ruler looked down at the infants disdainfully. “They’re not the golden star, so you know they’re not what I’m looking for.”
“It’s not my fault ya dunno what you’re doin’, but I do wanna talk to ya.”
Walking away from the cots and standing with his back to the window, Ruler put his hands on his wide hips. “Where’s the golden star?”
“I dunno what you’re talkin’ about, but I do wanna end this bullshit.”
“The gates to hell are open, so you’ve already lost. I keep telling you that, but you never listen, War. You’re so damned old and stubborn, you don’t know when to quit.” Leaning into Gears, he added sternly, “Or when to leave.”
Sneering at Ruler, Gears asked, “If you’ve won, then why do I have six bases with hundreds of thousands of people? That don’t sound like a loss to me.”
While Ruler played with a tendril of his long dark hair, he said coquettishly, “I could destroy your bases in seconds and you know it.” Letting go of his hair, he began to scratch his crotch impatiently and muttered, “Why the hell is this thing always so damned itchy?”
Shaking his head, Gears remarked dourly, “You’ve got the clap, ya idiot. You picked a fuckin’ gigantic woman with the clap. I can’t believe how goddamn stupid you are.”
Still scratching vigorously, Ruler said smugly, “So what? That doesn’t change anything. You’re still screwed.”
They needed to annoy Ruler enough to make him agree to a battle and he said contemptuously, “We’re not screwed. We’re immortal and we’ll get to you later. It’s only a matter of time, and we’ve got all the time there is.”
Gears turned to him and said, “That’s true, brother. Shitferbrains here thinks he has a win, but it looks more like a whimper to me.”
Standing in the doorway, Pax chuckled. “And the clap. don’t forget he has the clap.”
Ip appeared in the doorway with Pax, and leaning into him, she began to laugh. She rarely laughed, but he supposed Ruler’s latest incarnation was pretty funny. He and Gears looked at one another, and then back at Ruler. He was well over six foot five and scratching at his crotch like a dog with fleas. What started as a shared chuckle turned into a roar of laugher and even the babies were squealing gleefully.
Ruler’s beautiful eyes widened, and frowning with fury, he roared, “Stop laughing! None of this funny! I am the Devil and nobody laughs at me!”
Still chuckling, Gears wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “You’re a sneaky sonofabitch, but you don’t bother us none.”
Pax grinned with genuine delight. “Nah, you’re actually kinda funny and you’re always funny lookin’. And this time, you’ve got the clap.”
The way to wound Ruler was through his over-sized ego and he said, “It’s true. You never get it right. You were short, then you were flappy, and now you’ve got tits bigger than my head, plus you’re diseased.” Smirking at Ruler, he asked in amused disbelief, “You’re supposed to be immortal evil, but you look like a dumbass. Where the hell do you find these bodies? Do you deliberately pick the worst? Are you trying to be funny? ‘Cos if you are, bravo!” To emphasize his point, he clapped his hands with mock applause, and Gears, Pax and Ip began to clap with him.
Putting his hands on his substantial hips, Ruler stood with his legs apart and glared at them angrily. “You think I’m a joke?” He hissed. “I’ll show you I’m not something to trifle with.”
Gears rolled his eyes. “What are you gonna do? Torture people? Destroy the land? Open the gates to hell? You’ve already done it all.” With a dismissive wave of his hand, he added, “I’m bored with you now. You’re predictable and I can deal with you when I’m good and ready.” As he turned to leave, he said sternly, “You don’t call the shots. I do.”
A look of pure rage spread across Ruler’s exquisite features and he growled in a low and threatening voice, “Don’t turn your back on me, War.”
Still walking out the door, Gears said contemptuously, “Give me a reason to turn around, asshole.”
“You want slug it out, War?” Ruler roared. “Meet me on the battlefield and we’ll see who’s calling the shots now!”
Gears turned around. “Fine. We’ll meet you here in a week.” Pulling his scarred mouth into a deep sneer, he added contemptuously, “And bring your girls with ya.”
“You’ll lose,” Ruler declared haughtily.
Walking up to Ruler and staring him in the eye, Gears said bluntly, “I can’t lose, dumbass, I’m immortal.”
In a wink of an eye, Ruler vanished and they were left standing in the room looking at an empty space.
Turning to his brothers, Gears said with a stern look, “That went well.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN: Longing for life (Benny)
He’d been out with Pop all day checking the Ranch and surrounding areas. All of their chickens died the night before, but the coop looked undisturbed and they showed no signs of injury. They couldn’t work out what killed them. Pop said he walked in that morning and found them all dead in their nests. Although he’d been reluctant to eat them, Pop told him a meal was a meal and Mom was planning to cook them for supper. Walking in through the front door of the house, he was surprised to see who was there. Gears, Pax, TL, Ip, Mackenzie, Max, BD, Jacob, Hatch, Mom, and half a dozen combat shooters, were sitting around the lounge and large wooden kitchen table eating something that smelt delicious.
“Yo, Benny!” Pax called to him with a wave of his hand. “Where ya been?”
Dropping his pack, and placing his gun against the wall, he replied, “With Pop checking out the Ranch.” Looking at the stew Pax was eating, he asked, “Is that the chickens from the coop? ‘Cos we dunno what killed them.”
“It’s a hot meal,” TL replied. “And I’m hungry.”
He made his way to the kitchen and found a large pot of stew bubbling on the stove. Using a ladle to dig into the thick stew, he scooped a generous portion into a bowl, and grabbed some chunks of freshly baked bread sitting on the counter. Walking back to the kitchen table, he began dipping his bread into the stew, and stuffing the still dripping soggy mess into his mouth.
With his mouth full, he asked, “So, what did I miss?”
Through a mouthful of stew, Gears asked, “What makes you think you missed anythin’?”
“You aren’t here for no reason. Mac sent me over to keep an eye on the Ranch while he worked with Ted getting the convoy ready.” Looking over at Mackenzie, he asked, “Why’d you come back?”
Mackenzie flicked his thumb in Jacob’s direction. “We needed to bring Jacob here.”
“And we wanted to talk to the Horsemen,” Jacob added.
He looked at Gears, Pax and TL quizzically, and sounding slightly annoyed, he asked, “Is that a thing now? You guys are the Horsemen? What does that mean?”
“Yeah, it’s a thing,” Gears replied, as he dipped chunk of bread into his bowl of stew. “And it means we get to call the shots.”
Snorting, he muttered unhappily, “It doesn’t look like you do.”
Pax punched his arm playfully. “That’s jus’ ‘cos the game ain’t ended yet.”
He’d heard about the problems at the bases. There always seemed to be one thing or another going wrong, but recently events had taken a particularly bad turn. Lack of supplies and the need to grow food was something he could understand, but hauntings, ghosts and ghouls weren’t anything he knew how to deal with. From the time he joined their first base everything had made sense. They needed more bases, more people, more supplies, and a way to defend themselves from the hunters, but since then everything had gotten progressively weirder. They infected people with the designer virus which had unpredictable results, and then almost all of the Infected were killed by Ruler anyway. Mackenzie was the oddest of the Infected and he could see the future. Max and Mackenzie had got together, and rumor had it their baby was born three months early, but came out normal-sized. Plus he’d heard another baby was dead and buried on the main island for months, and then came to life when Gears and his brothers dug it up. There was another rumor that Gears, his brothers and Ip were immortal. Everyone knew Ip had already been reborn once, and he and many others thought that rumor could be true. Where he’d once been proud to be one of their inner circle, now he felt everything was strange, and he longed for the days when their greatest problem was the love triangle between him, Lucie and Mackenzie. He didn’t like how his life was turning out and he wished he could go back in time. Feeling miserable, he thought, if I’m going to wish for things, I might as well wish the virus never happened at all.
Conversation continued around him and Gears said, “We need to load the Ranch with supplies. If we’re gonna bring troops here for the battle, then we might as well ship the food and equipment now.”
Pax nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah and we should leave some supply drops along the route. If we know we’re gonna lose the vehicles, then we should line the route with what we’re gonna need.”
Catching Pax’s enthusiasm, Hatch added, “If we start ferryin’ stuff now, maybe we can move a lot of it before Ruler catches on to what we’re doin’.”
Gears nodded. “But we’ll need to monitor the situation. As soon as the equipment starts to fail too widely, we need to ground the birds.”
“We should get a message to Wolfie and Mike,” TL added. “They should ship their supplies by air as well.”
Nodding again, Pax said, “Yeah, but we’ve got the bulk of the supplies.”
“What about the ammo and heavy weapons?” Mackenzie asked. “If we can’t use them, why bother to transport them?”
Grunting, Gears said firmly, “We should transport ‘em anyway. What if what you saw doesn’t quite play out that way?” Quickly glancing at Mackenzie, he added, “No offense, Mac, but things don’t always go the way you see ‘em, and I don’t wanna leave us short.”
Mackenzie nodded. “No offense taken and I hope I’m wrong, ‘cos otherwise this looks hopeless.”
“Exactly!” Glaring at everyone at the table, he said, “This is a suicide mission. If what you believe is true, then the four of you can’t die, but the rest of us are fucked. If you don’t wanna do this anymore, then you should just leave, ‘cos what you’re planning to do is gonna get the rest of us killed.” Feeling his anger burst inside him, he banged his hand on the table in frustration. “Everyone will just follow you idiots, and then we’ll all be dead and you won’t be!”
Giving him a surprised look, Gears said, “I didn’t know you felt that way, Benny, but it ain’t like we’ve got a choice. Have you heard about the dead and the demons wandering around and the damage they’re doin’? Do you know what happened to Izzie and the pigs on the island?”
“And the chickens today,” Pop added. “The land and everythin’ on it is dyin’, son. Somethin’ has to change.”
“Yeah it does, but what these guys wanna do will get us all killed. We can’t win against millions of hunters under the control of super hunters. It’s gonna be a massacre.”
Pax sighed. “If you feel that way Benny then don’t come. You can stay back at the bases.”
He hadn’t meant he wouldn’t fight, but he didn’t see how they could win. They’d come a long way under the leadership of Gears, but he wondered with all the strange events happening, whether he was the man to lead them now.
Still feeling frustrated, he slammed his spoon on the table. “I’m sick of this shit! Nothing’s normal anymore. You guys have changed. There’s weird crap going on everywhere. Lucie is all messed up.” Pointing at Mackenzie, he spat, “And I dunno what the hell happened to you. You’re just fuckin’ weird now.”
He didn’t want to talk to any of them, and picking up his bread, bowl of stew and spoon, he stalked into the kitchen and through the door to the garage. Flicking on the light, he walked over to a battered looking chair and sat down intending to finish his meal in peace. Nothing he ever said or did seemed to make any difference to anything, and he just wanted the world to stop changing and give him time to catch up. Angrily spooning the rest of his meal into his mouth, he wondered again what could have killed the chickens, and whether whatever killed them might poison him too. While he sat, chewing morosely on his food, there was a soft movement at his side, and Lucie quietly appear from a dim corner of the garage.
Almost forgetting she couldn’t understand him, he asked impatiently, “What do you want, Lucie?”
Lucie didn’t speak, but crouched down opposite him with an enquiring look on her face. While he continued to finish his meal, he studied her and could still see the young woman she’d once been. Now bald, lean and with bright blue eyes, she was wearing an army green t-shirt, and skinny jeans that hung loosely on her tiny frame. Unlike most of the hunters he’d seen, she was clean and her nails were freshly manicured. Aside from being hairless and tanned, she didn’t look a lot different.
Before she was infected on the ship, he’d been infatuated with her, and he’d fought with Mackenzie to win her affection. Seeming unable to choose between them, she’d slept with both of them, and played them off against one another for months. The situation became so tense Mackenzie chose to be infected, and that brought Lucie’s game to an abrupt halt. He was so angry with himself for letting Lucie come between them, he couldn’t bear to talk to her and they’d drifted apart. Shortly after that, Max left with Mackenzie and he suddenly found himself all alone. It had been a bad and lonely time for him while he missed both his squad and his girlfriend. Even though Lucie had played them both for fools, he still remembered the long nights he’d spent with her talking about their future. It was the happiest time in his life.
Sighing at their situation, he said unhappily, “It’s all gone to hell, Luce. What am I gonna do now? I don’t wanna join this stupid battle, and I think Gears and the guys are outta their fuckin’ minds. They’re gonna get everyone killed.” Putting his bowl on the floor, he sat with his hands dangling between his knees. “I just want everything the way it was. Life was kinda boring before the virus, and then I had a great time working with TL, but…I don’t wanna live like this. I want what I had before.”
Reaching for him, Lucie took his hand and held it to her face, moaning softly. He cupped her cheek. “Can you understand me?”
“Yes,” Ip replied, as she strode across the garage.
Crouching down next to Lucie, she looked at them both thoughtfully. He and Ip had worked together many times, and when it came to the hunters, she was a ruthless killer. B
eing infected with the designer virus, just one touch from her would end Lucie’s existence, and she was careful not to make any physical contact with her.
Surprised at her concern for Lucie, he asked, “I thought all the hunters were sort of…brain damaged.”
“Her mind has shared with mine, now she is different from her kind.”
“Can she talk?”
“She talks to me, but her tongue is not free.”
Lucie continued to hold his hand to her cheek and he felt a slight wetness on his palm. Pulling his hand away from her face, he saw she was crying, and all his old feelings for her came flooding back.
Sounding dismayed, he asked, “Why’s she crying?”
“She wants what was and not what is.”
Tears were continuing to slowly leak down Lucie’s face and his heart lurched unhappily. “Are you gonna kill her?”
“I cannot kill what is already dead, but I can send her soul to its next bed.”
He didn’t want Ip to kill Lucie, or whatever it was she did to hunters, and eager to make his point, he grabbed Ip’s arm. “Don’t hurt her.”
Looking down at his hand on her arm, Ip frowned. “I cannot hurt what feels no pain. What would be mine or theirs to gain?”
Abruptly pulling her arm away from his hand, she studied them both for a moment, and then walked out of the garage. Watching her leave, he whispered urgently, “Lucie.”
Lucie looked at him quizzically. “We should go. If you stay, Ip will kill you and I don’t wanna lose you too.”
Seeming to understand, Lucie moaned softly and taking his hand again, she looked up at him with what he thought were pleading eyes. Nodding to show he understood, he said, “We can escape this craziness and go live in the hills somewhere until all this stops. Pax taught us all how to survive and I know how to hunt, but if we don’t go now, Ip’ll kill you and I’ll die in their stupid suicidal battle. If we leave now, at least we can live our lives however we want.”
