Half Life: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Next Book 6)

by Scott Nicholson

  He made sure his 30-30’s safety was off and then entered the restaurant. He experienced an eerie moment of déjà vu at what had once been a normal activity. Franklin was never much on corporate food but a burger was a burger when you were on the road. In the old days, he would’ve been met with the stink of warm grease and the last harried exhalation of the smoker who’d been forced to toss his butt by the goddamned PC police who just didn’t care about an individual’s freedom to contaminate the air. People would be talking and rattling wax wrappers and slurping fountain sodas, and maybe the radio was playing whatever the staff liked—probably modern country in this neck of the woods, Carrie Underwood or Shania Twain. For as much of a loner as Franklin was, he would’ve given all his yard gold for the company of a crowd of strangers.

  “Psst!” he hissed in a hoarse whisper. “Rachel! Squeak! Where are you?”

  Receiving no answer, he crept toward the counter, half expecting them to jump out and yell “Boo.”

  Something fluttered to his right and he swung his rifle barrel toward the movement. A corpse shifted and settled as something dark and soft fell to the floor.

  All those preservatives in the food didn’t do their job.

  Franklin relaxed a little. K.C. was right. He was way too uptight. The problem with constantly expecting the worst was that you were wrong most of the time.

  But he was pretty sure some really bad levels of worst waited in the future.

  He called again, and after a few quiet seconds, he headed toward the restrooms. The females might’ve gone in search of that long-lost luxury known as toilet paper, and even though the toilets wouldn’t flush, there were no future customers to disgust by leaving a mess.

  He knocked on the door to the women’s restroom. Getting no response, he nudged the door open and called. Still nothing.

  Franklin repeated the exploration at the men’s restroom, and then headed for the kitchen. A desiccated corpse wearing an apron sprawled face-first on the grill. Another was huddled at the drive-through window, a company baseball cap sitting atop a yellowing skull. No sign of Rachel and Squeak.

  Maybe they’d walked straight through and exited on the other side of the building. Franklin decided to scavenge in the pantry and walk-in coolers and gather some food for later. Despite his fatalism, it never hurt to plan your last meal.

  Rows of wire shelves held deflated sacks that rodents had savaged, and the Number 10 cans of sauces and vegetables were swollen and rusty. A rank odor permeated the tiled walls, faded rot that originated from a hundred different sources. Franklin poked around but the remnants looked spoiled. He finally found sealed plastic jars of pickles and Cole slaw and stuffed them in the pockets of his cargo pants.

  He continued through the kitchen to the back door, which was wide open. A bread delivery van was parked beside a Dumpster in a screened loading area, and a couple of large propane tanks had been disconnected from their copper lines. There was no trash on the pavement. Franklin had a weird feeling. Something about this area looked too fresh, too inhabited.

  A metallic clatter came from behind the van. Franklin spun, looking for the source of the noise.

  A man stepped from the back of the van, one arm around Squeak, his gloved hand covering her mouth. He was burly and bearded, wearing an oiled duster, his dark, tangled hair falling down across his eyes. But Franklin didn’t take a full inventory—most of his attention was on the gaping twin barrels of the sawed-off shotgun in the man’s right hand.

  “You know the drill, pardner,” the man said in a gruff voice.

  Franklin didn’t drop his rifle right away. Doing so had turned out okay back at Ziminski’s camp, but he’d already pushed his luck. In this desperate world, you didn’t rely on the kindness of strangers. And this beady-eyed son-of-a-bitch didn’t look like he had a kind bone in his body.

  “Where’s the woman?” Franklin asked.

  “You best let me do the talking here.”

  Squeak’s eyes were wide in fright, her neck locked in the man’s elbow. Franklin’s rifle stock was near his hip, meaning he couldn’t count on any kind of decent shot. The lever action meant he had only one shot, too. He regretted his choice not to stick with a military weapon.

  The man in the duster knew he had the advantage. Even if Franklin miraculously survived a shotgun blast from fifteen yards, the man had a second shell ready to unleash. Plus, who knew how many others were with the man? They must’ve captured Rachel, although they could’ve killed her silently with a knife or choke chain.

  Franklin lowered his weapon but didn’t drop it. “I’ve got others with me. You shoot, and they’ll come running with some major firepower.”

  “I know. I heard the diesel engine. A running vehicle is worth quite a lot these days.”

  “It’s not for sale.”

  “I didn’t make an offer.” The man twisted his head slightly to the side, keeping one eye fixed on Franklin as he spat.

  “Where’s the woman?”

  “The Zap, you mean?”

  Franklin wondered how long he could hold out. He imagined the man’s pals were already circling K.C. and Private Cone. Then he saw a charter bus at the rear of the parking lot, vinyl tarps and gear spread around it, with clothes hung from a line strung between two trees. This place was their home.

  “Is she in there?” Franklin asked, nodding toward the bus.

  “A talking Zap’s a pretty nice prize. I bet I can trade her to the army for a case of ammo and some MREs.”

  “We are the army,” Franklin said, his mouth going dry. The longer he waited, the weaker his hand. He’d have to play his cards soon or the man would call his bluff.

  “Then the army’s sure hit the skids.” The man gave a squeeze with his elbow. Squeak, who’d been tense but silent in his grasp, suddenly began wheezing and gasping, kicking her little legs as her windpipe closed. The man continued talking calmly during his effortless sadism.

  “Okay,” Franklin said. “You can have the Humvee. Just give us back the girl and the woman.”

  “I’ll need your weapons, too.”

  “You know we can’t do that. It’s not that I don’t trust you, but we’d be dead meat out here.”

  “It’s not so bad. We’ve cleaned out most of the creepy critters in the woods, and I ain’t seen a Zap in months. Not until your foxy little freak showed up.”

  Franklin pictured himself in action: whipping the rifle barrel to waist height, curling his finger around the trigger, and plugging the man between the eyes. It was a nice little fantasy. But the odds were slim of him pulling off even one of those moves. And a shot from the hip was one in a thousand, like drawing a full house in five-card stud. Squeak deserved a better chance than that.

  Franklin held up his left palm and knelt to lay the rifle on the damp pavement. “All right, deal. You get everything and we walk away.”

  There could be no such deal. The man and his gang—whether it was one other person or a dozen—couldn’t just allow a bunch of strangers to roam loose in their territory, even if they were unarmed. This was a ploy for time. He’d push some chips to the center of the table and see if the stranger cared to call or up the ante.

  The man smiled in triumph, easing his vice-like grip on Squeak’s neck. “Nice. Now let’s go tell your friends about our little deal.”

  The man motioned with the shotgun for Franklin to walk through the loading area and back inside the restaurant. That was when Franklin saw DeVontay crouching at the front bumper of the bus.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  DeVontay was checking out the interior of an empty BMW—he was prowling more out of perverse curiosity of how the wealthy lived than with any hope of finding something useful, and was surprised to see Motörhead and Metallica CDs—when he realized the glove box had already been emptied. Someone had beaten him to it.

  That’s when he saw Rachel struggling in the grasp of two people, a canvas sack over her head, her arms twisted viciously behind her back. She managed to ki
ck one of them—a woman adorned with dreadlocks and a gaudy amount of jewelry—and then the second one drove a fist into the sack where her temple would be. Rachel collapsed to her knees and the man delivered another blow to the back of her head and she flopped to the pavement and lay still.

  It happened so fast, sixty yards away at the rear of the restaurant, that DeVontay could only watch in horror. Luckily, the BMW’s windows were tinted so he was likely invisible to Rachel’s attackers. He slid out of the passenger seat and grabbed his M16, and then remembered Squeak had been with her.

  Did they kill the girl? The thought so enraged DeVontay that he nearly charged to save Rachel, even though both her attackers were armed. But what if she were still alive? All he’d be doing was risking all of their necks.

  He climbed back into the BMW so he could watch from concealment. He reasoned that Squeak was still alive, since he hadn’t heard gunfire. And they hadn’t killed Rachel, either. As they dragged her across the parking lot, DeVontay saw her wriggle in resistance a few times but she was obviously too stunned to fight.

  The Humvee was on the far side of the restaurant near the road, so he had no way to signal the others. He wasn’t even sure they were still with the vehicle. He could’ve kicked himself for not staying with Rachel and Squeak, but Rachel had insisted on some “girl time.”

  When they dragged Rachel inside the bus, DeVontay slipped out of the BMW and used it as a shield so that he could work his way to the edge of the parking lot. The property sloped downward into briars and scrub vegetation, bottoming out in a rock-covered drainage ditch. The ditch led around the property and into the higher elevation of forest above the bus and restaurant. DeVontay scrabbled down the bank, thorns ripping at his clothes and skin, and then up the drainage ditch, careful not to kick any loose rocks.

  When he reached the forest, he was able to move fast without risking any noise. From this perspective, he could see K.C. and Cone by the Humvee, evidently talking while they waited for everyone to return. So that left Franklin unaccounted for as well. DeVontay considered trying to contact the others and organizing a rescue mission, but he couldn’t see an easy way to cover the ground without exposing himself. Besides, he wasn’t sure he had the time.

  If someone was looking out the side of the bus from the driver’s compartment, DeVontay would be spotted. But he figured that was his best angle of approach—since the bus had obviously been sitting there for years, the driver’s seat was likely unused. The bus windows were also tinted, so he was flying blind. He had no idea whether he’d have two opponents or ten. He hugged the pines and birch trees as best he could, but the last stretch was maybe thirty feet of high grass. He could only hope they were all busy doing…whatever it was they wanted to do to Rachel.

  The thought swept him forward and before he realized he’d even made a decision, he stood at the front of the bus, pressing close to the chassis so he couldn’t be seen from inside. That’s when he saw Franklin facing the bearded man holding Squeak.

  When Franklin set down his rifle, DeVontay knew the other man was armed. Franklin wouldn’t surrender unless the situation was hopeless. DeVontay thought Franklin looked his way for a moment, but the man motioned Franklin inside the restaurant before DeVontay could signal him. Then the man in the oily raincoat followed, dragging Squeak with one arm.

  So now it was up to DeVontay. He touched his mutant metal eye and sighed.

  I’ll just pretend I’m a superhero. The Black-Assed, One-Eyed Assassin.

  People were talking inside the bus, but their words were only murmurs. The bus swayed a little as weight shifted on the shock absorbers. DeVontay dropped to the ground and looked under the bus, keeping near the front tire. A pair of leather boots stepped down to the pavement.

  The boots stomped across the parking lot toward the rear of the restaurant. It was the man who had punched Rachel. He wore a pistol in a hip holster, a denim jacket with the sleeves ripped off, and a black ski cap. He moved with a sinister, simian gait and had a bolt-action rifle slung across his back. When he disappeared inside the restaurant, DeVontay waited a few seconds, expecting to hear gunfire at any moment.

  It didn’t matter how many people were inside the bus. He was prepared to kill them all. The magazine of his M16 had at least a dozen rounds remaining. That would probably do.

  DeVontay crept around the front of the bus and listened for a moment at the open door. He heard a woman’s voice somewhere to the rear of the vehicle. So that meant at least two inside.

  He eased up the steps. A steel barrier separated the stairs from the front seat, and an angled handrail ran across its face. DeVontay didn’t see any way to sneak up on the occupants. So he popped up and leveled his M16 over the barrier.

  The woman in dreadlocks sat beside Rachel, who lay on a series of bench seats arranged as a bed. The canvas sack was gone from Rachel’s head and a folded-up kerchief was tied tightly across her parted mouth. White plastic zip ties bound her hands and feet. Her abductors had obviously done this before.

  It was only a split-second, but DeVontay had an impression of the interior’s layout. It had been converted to a living quarters, and the rear compartment was closed off with blankets hung from the ceiling. If anyone else was back there, DeVontay couldn’t see them.

  “Nobody move!” he yelled, wondering if that ever worked, because if anybody yelled that at him, he would either take off running or start shooting.

  Rachel opened her eyes and struggled to sit up, grunting and groaning around her cloth gag. The woman in dreadlocks stood, clearly startled, a big revolver in her frail fingers. The woman was no more than twenty, someone who should’ve been drinking vodka punch at a sorority party instead of collecting prisoners.

  DeVontay didn’t want to shoot, knowing the noise would endanger Franklin and Squeak and draw the others. But he couldn’t let the woman fire first, even as shaky as her hand was.

  “Get out of here!” the woman wailed.

  Rachel tensed and swiveled her hips, then kicked out with both legs. Her feet drove into the woman’s stomach and she let out a whoof. But still she maintained her grip on the pistol.

  Fuck it. DeVontay squeezed the trigger and stitched a few holes in the woman’s neck and face. She reflexively fired in return but already she was falling. She bounced off the back of a padded seat and flopped face down on the floor.

  DeVontay raced up the aisle past her, ignoring Rachel’s grunts. He yanked aside the blankets at the rear of the bus, revealing a rumpled and stained bed, a mess of plastic containers and tin cans, and a card table covered with cash, jewelry, and what looked to be seven or eight different kinds of narcotics—pills, grass, and baggies of white powder. The crew must’ve been doing some serious shopping.

  There was a glass mirror on the table, a couple of syringes and a razor blade laying on its scratched surface. DeVontay grabbed the blade and hurried back to Rachel, removing her gag and slicing the restraints. As soon as her mouth was free, she worked her jaws and said, “Where’s Squeak?”

  “They’ve got her and Franklin.” As she rubbed her wrists, DeVontay whispered, “How’s your head?”

  “Got any aspirin?”

  He was about to mention the painkillers in the back, but they only had seconds at the most. “I think they’re in the restaurant. Did you see any others besides the three of them?”

  She shook her head and winced, eyes glittering dim orange in her pain.

  “One down, two to go, then.” He gave the dead woman’s revolver to Rachel. “You should wait here and recover.”

  Rachel shook her head again, more vigorously this time. “Squeak? Franklin? No way.”

  “They heard us, so they’ll be alert.” DeVontay helped her up and led her down the steps. His face was hot from anger. “They might shoot at us once we step outside.”

  “Which way do we run?”

  “To the right? So we can hide behind that van?”

  Rachel squinted at him. He thought it was because her
head was aching. Maybe she’d suffered a concussion. “You sure you’re up for this?”

  “It’s not that. It’s…” She pointed at his metal eye.

  DeVontay cupped his hand over it. The warmth radiated against his palm. He stuck his head out the door and looked at his reflection in the side mirror.

  The metal eye glowed bright silver.

  What the hell does that mean?

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “I told you not to fuck with me,” said the bearded man with the shotgun.

  “It wasn’t my call,” Franklin said. He held Squeak in his arms, sitting on the floor amid the corpses and the trash and the food that had long since moldered away.

  The man snarled at Squeak. “If Fiona’s dead, I’m cutting that little bitch’s eyes out and feeding them to the buzzards.”

  Franklin hugged Squeak even more tightly and whispered to her, “I won’t let them hurt you.”

  The bearded man yelled at his brutish partner. “Perry, go shut and lock the back door. We can’t cover all the entrances.”

  Perry glowered but crouch-walked to the kitchen and seconds later the metal door was creaking shut. The bearded man rose up and looked through the front window. Franklin didn’t dare move, but he knew the Humvee was parked just outside. K.C. and the private wouldn’t shoot until they knew the rest of the group was safe.

  “I don’t see your buddies, but I see my Humvee,” the man said. “Looks like a sweet ride.”

  Perry returned, using the butt of his rifle as a cane as he crept low across the floor. He climbed into the vinyl bench seat of a dining booth and eased his head up to take a look out of a side window. “Nothing this way, Trip.”

  Perry rolled onto his back and dug into his pocket. Franklin thought he was going to draw out a knife or pistol, but instead he pulled out a blackened glass pipe. He struck a kitchen match and applied it to the bowl, and a greasy, acrid smoke filled the dining room. He inhaled with a loud snort.