Five Roads To Texas: A Phalanx Press Collaboration

by Lundy, W. J.

  24

  Hobb’s Valley, Colorado

  March 27th

  Sarah followed Jack for thirty minutes without incident as they wound their way up the canyon, toward his dad’s cabin. She’d never driven there at night, so she was glad to have Jack as her guide. Without the familiar landmarks, she would never find her way there.

  Ahead, Jack’s brake lights flashed, then came on solid. It seemed odd to be slowing down on a straight stretch of road, but then Sarah saw the trucks blocking their path. Just as she saw them, the headlights in both vehicles came on, the high beams blindingly brilliant in the night. The one on the right had an LED light bar on the roof, and it was especially bright.

  She watched as two men emerged into the light from behind the trucks. One had a gun trained on Jack. The other pointed at Sarah and gestured for her to pull forward. She complied, pulling within a few feet of the Mercedes.

  “Turn off the engine and get out, now!” the man shouted.

  She slipped the transmission into park and switched the ignition off. She also slid her pistol out of its holster and put it in the narrow storage bay in the door.

  “Hands where I can see them!” he shouted as she opened the door and stepped out.

  She kept her hands up, even with her face, and used her hip to bump the door closed.

  “Now, put your hands on the hood and spread your legs.”

  She did as she was told. The man came over and frisked her, feeling under her arms, running his hands down each arm to the wrist, cupping each breast and digging his fingers through the periphery of her bra. She felt her face turn red, and he must have felt her tense up.

  “Don’t worry, I’m just looking for weapons,” he said. “You’d be surprised how many women hide things in their bras.”

  Sarah remained mute as he continued his search. He ran a finger all around her waistband and paused when he found the empty holster.

  “Where’s the gun?” he asked.

  “I left it in the car. Figured you’d consider it a threat.”

  “Smart girl.”

  She bristled at the way he said “girl” but said nothing. He continued his search, feeling up and down each leg. He even checked inside each calf-length boot.

  “Come on,” the man said, satisfied that she was unarmed. He led her over to the area next to the Mercedes.

  “She’s clean,” he said to the man who still had his rifle trained on Jack.

  “Good. On your knees, miss, and clasp your hands behind your back please,” the other man said. She knelt down and reached behind her back, interlocking her fingers. She liked “miss” better than “girl.”

  Focus. These creeps are a threat.

  “Cover me,” the other man said. He lowered his rifle and approached the Mercedes. “Engine off, and step out, please! Keep your hands where I can see them.”

  Jack stepped out and complied when asked to put his hands on the hood. Sarah kept an eye on the man guarding her and covering the other guy. Her fingers slipped into the tactical belt she wore.

  She watched while the other man searched Jack in a fashion similar to what she’d just endured. Jack hadn’t left his pistol in the car, so when the man found it, he tossed to the side, toward Sarah and her guard. Jack turned his head and started to protest as the gun clattered on the gravel. The man put the barrel of his rifle under Jack’s chin.

  “Eyes front, fuckhead,” he said. Jack turned his head forward. Once he was done searching him, the man pulled Jack’s wallet from his coat pocket and told him to get on his knees. He flipped the wallet open.

  “Mr. Gilroy Johnson,” he said as he looked at the driver’s license. “Osage Street, Denver, Colorado. You’re a long way from home, Gilroy. Where are you going?”

  “None of your business,” Jack replied.

  The man looked past Sarah, just over her head at her guard.

  “You believe this, Jimmy? On the very night when the world is going to shit, this urban ass wipe says it’s none of my business where he’s going in my valley!”

  “Hard to believe,” Jimmy replied.

  The man leaned over Jack. “It is my business, fuckhead, because I don’t want any of you flatlanders bringing that fucking zombie, mad cow bullshit into the valley I call home. That puts me and mine at risk, and that makes it very much my fucking business, Gilroy. So I’ll ask you again, where you going?”

  “My father’s cabin.”

  “Was that so fucking hard, Gilroy? Was it so goddamned fucking hard to answer a simple question?”

  Jack bristled for a minute, and the man poked him in the temple with the barrel of his rifle.

  “Huh? Gilroy?”

  “No,” Jack said. Sarah could tell he was pissed. “It wasn’t so goddamned fucking hard to answer your simple question.”

  “Oooooh, Jimmy. Gilroy here has an attitude. Did you hear the bass he had in his voice just now?”

  “I sure did,” Jimmy said. “He sounded like he’d like to take a shot at you.”

  “That true, Gilroy? You want to take a poke at me?”

  “I would just like to go to my cabin. That’s all,” Jack answered.

  “Uh huh,” the man said. He turned his attention to Sarah. “What’s your story, miss? You and Gilroy here an item? You his missus?”

  “I’m his wife, yes.” Sarah no longer liked the way he said “miss.” She preferred Jimmy’s “girl.” It was condescending, but not menacing.

  “You always travel in separate cars? Kinda odd, ain’t it?” he asked.

  Jack started to say something, but the man put the rifle barrel up to Jack’s lips.

  “Shh, Gilroy, the missus and I are talkin’. Don’t be rude.”

  “We came from different places,” Sarah said. “We met on the way up here.”

  “All right, that seems honest. Here, Gilroy, here’s your wallet.”

  The man held the wallet out to Jack. He reached for it, and the bloody bandage on his arm stuck out from the sleeve of his jacket. Sarah could hear Jimmy gasp.

  “Leland, he’s been bit!” Jimmy screamed and pointed at Jack’s arm.

  Leland turned his head to look at Jack. Sarah watched as he dropped the wallet and started to bring the rifle barrel around, and she knew that she had to act. Now.

  She removed the two-inch plastic knife from the back of the belt and thrust it up into Jimmy’s groin. He screamed a high-pitched wail that echoed in the air. She pulled the blade back and thrust it again. This time she lost her grip on it as Jimmy’s blood spilled through the holes in his jeans and covered her hand.

  Leland turned his gaze back to Sarah and Jimmy, his eyes going wide as he saw her stabbing his partner in the balls. He raised the rifle, stepping back from Jack as he did so. He started firing, the rounds exploding from the barrel of the gun as fast as he could pull the trigger.

  Jack sprang from his kneeling position and put a shoulder into Leland’s stomach, knocking the wind from him and sending him to the dirt.

  Sarah felt her right arm burning but dove past Jimmy to retrieve Jack’s pistol. She grabbed it and rolled over just as Leland sat up.

  She set her sights on Leland and pulled the trigger, the shot going wide and breaking one of the headlights on the truck behind him. He looked over at her, rage seething behind his eyes, just as Jack kicked him in the side of the head. Leland slumped over.

  “Sarah, let’s go!” Jack yelled.

  She ran over to him and handed him the pistol, and then headed for the Axiom.

  “You fucking bitch!” Jimmy screamed.

  Sarah looked back at him and saw him raise his rifle. A gunshot blasted into the air. She expected to feel a bullet tear through her. Instead, she reached the Axiom’s driver’s side door.

  She turned and looked back. Jimmy lay slumped back, bleeding from his groin and his shoulder. Jack still had his pistol pointed at Jimmy. With no response from the man, he holstered the gun and climbed into the Mercedes.

  She heard Gilroy’s SUV
roar to life as she turned the key and got the Axiom started.

  Jack rolled forward in the Mercedes until the pushbar touched the front of the truck on the right. He hit the gas, the tires spinning for a moment and sending a spray of gravel back at Sarah. Then, the older vehicle began to move, its tires losing their traction and sliding off of the road. As the back end dropped over the edge, the front end rose in the air, then the whole vehicle rolled sideways, tumbling down the embankment. The lights alternated illuminating the upper reaches of the trees, and the pine-needle-covered forest floor as it somersaulted, finally coming to rest against the trunk of a large tree.

  Jack hit the gas once he was past the roadblock, then slowed down, waiting to be sure Sarah got through with the camper. As she moved forward, she saw Leland stir, and start to sit up. She retrieved her pistol from the door and pressed the button to roll down the window. Leland was on his knees, trying to get his rifle up.

  Sarah fired a passing shot at Leland as she drove by him and saw him dive toward the other truck. She fired a few more shots in his direction, hearing a couple of pings as the rounds hit the hood and grill.

  Then she was past them. The two SUVs went around a curve, and Jimmy and Leland disappeared.

  Sarah breathed a sigh of relief, and then the pain in her arm returned. She touched it, and she could see fluid on her fingers that looked black in the dim light of the dashboard. Blood. She’d been shot. It scared her, and she fought the urge to cry. Instead, she got angry about the damage to her wardrobe.

  I love this jacket! I can’t believe that asshole put a hole in it!

  25

  Hobb’s Valley, Colorado

  March 27th

  Sarah kept a nervous eye on her side mirrors, watching for a hint that the men from the roadblock were following them, but she didn’t see so much as the glint of headlights for the remainder of the trip.

  Ahead, Jack put on his right turn signal and slowed down, easing the Mercedes off of the main road and onto the much narrower trail that led to his father’s cabin. She followed Jack around several switchbacks that the Axiom and the trailer barely made it around. In a few places, snow still covered the road, and even though the Axiom had four-wheel-drive capability, she was glad Jack blazed the trail with the bigger SUV. After ten minutes, they rounded the final curve and entered the wide-open area in front of the cabin.

  Jack wheeled the Mercedes past the cabin from right to left, then stopped and backed it up so the rear end of the SUV was even with the porch. Sarah drove past him and then backed up so the rear end of the trailer was even with the front of the Mercedes.

  Jack was pulling her door open before she even had the engine turned off. He grabbed her and pulled her into a fierce hug, and when she yelped, he stepped back, looking at her in the dim glow of the car’s overhead light.

  “Oh, shit! Sarah, are you hurt?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, yes, but I don’t know how bad. I don’t think it’s serious because I can still use my arm.” She moved her right arm around to illustrate the point.

  “Was it the guy who searched you? I wanted so badly just to shoot those guys right when I saw them, but I had no idea how many there were or where they were, and I didn’t want to risk you getting hurt.”

  “No, it wasn’t him,” she replied, deciding to leave out the degree to which the man felt her up. “The other guy, the one who searched you, when he started shooting—”

  “Shit, you got shot? Let me see it!”

  “Jack, stop, settle down. I’m okay, and remember, you said you might have gotten infected? It’s probably best if you aren’t poking around in any open wounds just yet.”

  He looked crestfallen for a moment but knew she was right.

  She unzipped her jacket and wiggled out of it then grabbed a flashlight from the center console and held it out to him. “Here, come hold this and let’s have a look.”

  He grabbed the light and clicked it on while Sarah pulled up her blood-soaked sleeve. The bullet had ripped a gash across the outside of her arm. The wound was crusted over with dried blood but didn’t look like it had hit any arteries or nerves.

  “See,” she said. “It’s not that bad. Once we get everything unloaded, we can wash it out and patch it up.”

  “You mean you can. You’re right; I shouldn’t get near that wound until we know for sure whether or not I’m infected.”

  “How are you feeling? I mean, the symptoms they described in the news segments seem pretty specific. Have you been scratching at your scalp, losing focus, any of that?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. But that’s part of it, isn’t it? You’re not aware that you’re doing it. Gil was scratching his head like crazy when he stopped by before the meeting today, and looking back on it, I don’t think he knew he was doing it. And later, when I went to his office, and he attacked me…well, he’d scratched it so hard there were large chunks of his scalp missing.”

  “Jesus. He scalped himself?”

  “Pretty much. It was gruesome, Sarah. This sounds like a cliché from a horror movie, but don’t let me get like that. He was a monster at the end. He couldn’t speak, had torn himself to pieces, and wanted nothing more than to take me down with him. If I start heading that way, please, end it before I hurt someone.”

  His words hung heavy in the air as both of them contemplated the worst-case scenario and what it meant to them.

  “Why did he call you Gilroy?”

  Jack looked surprised for a second, then connected the dots to the man at the roadblock.

  “He found Gil’s wallet in my jacket pocket and assumed that I was Gil. I have no idea why he didn’t notice that I had another wallet in the back pocket of my pants. I hope I don’t look enough like him to fool people!”

  “I never knew his name was Gilroy.”

  He chuckled. “Neither did I, actually.”

  “Why do you have Gil’s wallet?”

  “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you after we get everything unloaded, okay?”

  “Okay,” she agreed and dangled a keychain in front of him. “I remembered the keys. Wouldn’t that have sucked, getting all the way up here, me getting shot, and then when we finally arrive we didn’t have the keys?”

  “That would have been the worst,” Jack replied. He walked over to the cabin and unscrewed the bolt from the barn-style door that covered the entrance. After a bear broke in a few years ago, Jack’s father installed the heavy four-inch-thick slider to keep any future ursine visitors at bay. Similar covers were in place over the windows. He finally pulled the bolt free and slid the door to the side, the wheels rumbling in the track and exposing the regular door, which he unlocked using the key that Sarah gave him.

  Inside, he flicked on the switch, illuminating the interior in a pale yellow light. Putting his hand on his pistol, Jack walked through the cabin, checking the bedrooms and bathroom for any unwanted visitors. Finding none, he went back out to help Sarah unload the Axiom and the trailer.

  She passed him, carrying a box full of food, as he left the cabin.

  “I split the food between the Axiom and the trailer,” she told him. “I say we leave some of the boxes in the back of the Axiom, in case we need to leave in a hurry. There’s some perishables in the back seat you can grab.”

  “Got it.”

  Jack opened the back door on the Isuzu and found the insulated bag with the perishables inside. He grabbed it, and a duffel with clothes and toiletries in it, and headed into the house. They ferried things in for a few minutes, setting the food in the kitchen area, and duffels in the second bedroom. When he went out for one last load, he found Sarah with her hands in the air. Three men stood facing the cabin with rifles aimed at her.

  “Hey Gilroy, fancy meeting you here, you son of a bitch!”

  Jack turned to see where the voice came from but felt something smash into his head. His vision went fuzzy, the color draining from everything. He saw the ground rushing up at him but was powerless to stop himsel
f from falling. He hit the ground face-first, splitting his lip and biting his tongue. The coppery taste of blood filled his mouth, and he heard Sarah scream, “Stop it!”

  A man’s voice said, “We’ll get to you in a minute, bitch! You stabbed Jimmy through the nutsack! What kind of person does that? All we wanted to do was ensure that no one came into our valley with that zombie disease, or whatever the fuck it is, and you had to go and neuter a man!”

  Jack’s vision began to come back. He turned his head toward Sarah.

  “You were going to shoot my husband!” she shouted. “We were just defending ourselves!”

  The man closest to her turned his rifle around and drove the butt into her forehead. Her head snapped back and her legs went limp. She collapsed in a heap to the gravel drive.

  Jack tried to get up to go to her, but the man who’d hit him in the head kicked him in the stomach. Jack coughed violently as the kick forced the air from his lungs. A spray of blood and spittle flew through the air, getting on the man and the one closest to them.

  “You want to stay down, Gilroy,” he said as he wiped the blood from his face. “You try and get up, I’ll put you down for good, you understand?”

  Jack tried to tell the man to go fuck himself, but all that came out was a gurgling wheeze. Great, Leland is back, he thought.

  “Good dog,” Leland said, and laughed.

  The man who hit Sarah with his rifle poked her with the barrel.

  “Fuck, man, she went down hard,” he said, and nodded toward the cabin. “Hey Nick, let’s take her inside and show her what a man’s nutsack is for!”

  Another man, who Jack assumed was Nick, giggled but said, “Jesus, Tim, you know rape is still illegal, right?”

  “So is stabbing a man’s jewels, but that didn’t stop her, did it?”

  “I suppose that’s true. And it’s not like ol’ Jimmy can take care of her, can he?”

  Jack writhed on the ground, furious, but still unable to talk. Roadblock kept looking from the others and down to Jack, not taking his eyes off of him for more than a few seconds. Over by the trailer, two of the three men lifted Sarah by her arms and dragged her toward the cabin.