by Hetzer, Paul
Could have been anything he thought to himself, maybe a squirrel or mouse.
Nevertheless, he wasn’t quite convinced of that. He peered back over at the old, glass-fronted hotel and again considered trying to break in, then thought better of it. If it had closed long before the world had ended, there wouldn’t be anything left useful inside anyway. He holstered the pistol then swung the sling of the AR around off his pack so that the firearm sat ready against his chest, for he still had an uneasy feeling of being watched gnawing at the back of his neck. He glanced back up the cliff one last time and, not seeing anything, set off down the highway where it dropped over the ridge toward the valley below.
The German Shepherd dog stayed frozen in the deeper shadows of the woods where it had scampered back to hide after knocking loose the rock at the cliff’s edge. The roadway was no longer in sight, yet still it heard the boy’s feet echoing off of the cliff walls of the cut through the mountain. Relaxing slightly, it bounded off at a gallop down the pine studded slope, paralleling the boy. Soon it was far out ahead of him and stopped to rest near the berm of the road, waiting for him to appear from up around the bend.
Jeremy saw the animal crouched down low in the high dead grass of the near side of the highway ahead of him. He froze in his tracks, one hand slipping to the pistol grip of the AR while the other released the catch that held the sling to the front post. The creature was in the shadow of the mountain peak behind him and all he could make out was its dark shape in the knee-high brown grass. He took a tentative step forward and then another, angling to pass the animal on the opposite berm. If it came at him he would shoot it. When he was opposite it, the animal stood up. At first Jeremy thought he was staring at a wolf, then it sat down on its haunches, its tongue lolled out, and he could have sworn it was smiling at him.
It was a dog.
“Hi buddy!” he called out, releasing one hand from the AR and raising it in greeting.
The German Shepherd stood again and its tail wagged briefly, however it didn’t move from its spot.
Jeremy didn’t sense any danger from the dog, and from its body language it appeared to be friendly. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the piece of beef jerky and held it out in front of him.
“Hey boy, do you want this? Come on, puppy!” he called in a calm, non-threatening voice.
The dog eyed the morsel in his hands, wagged its tail some more, and let out a friendly bark while its back legs danced side-to-side indecisively.
Jeremy took a step towards it, keeping his eyes locked with the dog’s. Oh, please don’t run away! he thought to himself. “You want to be my friend?” he said out loud, still holding out the jerky and advancing another step. The dog yipped and sat back again on its haunches, its tail now intermittently wagging.
“Good boy!” he called out, using the most non-intimidating smile he could muster as a ten year old. He had now closed half the distance to the dog. He took a few more steps and the dog bounded up and retreated a few feet and sat down on its haunches again. Jeremy stopped and decided to try a new approach. He knelt down and, still holding the jerky out for the dog, called him again.
“Come on, boy. You want some of this?” He wiggled the strip of jerky in his hand. The dog responded with a friendly bark then with its head held low scooched cautiously forward toward the boy. It reached out with its muzzle and grabbed the jerky from his hand, rapidly scooting back out of reach while wolfing down the strip of dried meat. It turned back around and barked twice, its tail wagging a mile a minute. It still wouldn’t let Jeremy approach.
“Okay, pooch,” Jeremy shrugged. “I guess when you’re ready to be petted you’ll let me know.” He reattached the sling to the front of the AR and headed down the road at a walk. The dog dropped in behind and to his right just out of reach and followed him. Jeremy smiled and for the first time since the world had fallen apart, felt a smidgen of happiness. He had a friend now.
It was afternoon by the time Steven and Kera climbed up the steep, rocky slope of the mountain, switch-backing up the densely forested grade. Both of them were covered in a thin sheen of sweat when they reached the summit, even though the mountain air was cool. A gentle breeze ruffled their hair as they stood winded and exhausted on the boulder strewn crest. Behind them in the valley snaked the shimmering expanse of the river while before them another small valley ran northeast by southwest, sandwiched between the mountain they had crested and another parallel to it. The railroad line snaked up the valley following the base of the mountain below them. The trestle over the river was out of sight far up the valley behind the curve of the ridge. The highway should lie in the expansive valley right on the other side of the far slope.
Maybe it would be safer to follow the tracks until we reach the western side of Charlottesville, Steven thought to himself. Then something caught his eye. A thin plume of wood smoke rose from the thick canopy of brightly colored leaves far down in the valley beneath them.
“Do you think it’s people like us?” Kera asked in a hopeful voice when she saw what drew his attention.
“Has to be. If Loonies are building fires, we’re in deep shit.”
“Do you think it might be Jeremy?”
Steven shrugged. “Maybe. However I also don’t want to get my hopes up.”
He slid his backpack off his shoulders and rummaged around in a pocket, pulling out the compact binocular set. He scanned the area where the barely visible streamer of white smoke was emanating from.
“I can’t see anything. The leaves are still too thick.” He stuck the binoculars back in the pack and shouldered it again. “You ready?”
Kera nodded.
“Let’s try not to make too much noise on the way down. We don’t want any surprises,” he said, and set off down the steep slope thick with timber.
It took about forty-five minutes to traverse the precipitous and rocky incline of the forested mountain, carefully picking their way down toward the plume of misty-white smoke. Soon it was lost to sight when they dropped down below the tree line of the wide valley. They cautiously emerged into the clearing of the railroad right of way and paused at the foot of the raised grade, scanning up and down the track with their eyes, trying to detect any movement or anything out of place. Kera asked in a whisper if the Loonies they had evaded at the trestle might come down the tracks. Steven didn’t have an answer. When they were sure it was clear they scrambled up the grade and across the tracks, running into the woods on the other side. Once within the shadows of the trees, they quietly made their way across the soft forest floor, stopping every few steps to listen and observe. They had learned that such cautionary actions increased one’s chances of survival.
It was during one of these pauses that the scream tore through the forest, echoing off the distant cliffs and causing Kera to inadvertently jump when she heard it. It was a woman’s scream, full of pain and anguish. It wasn’t repeated. The scream was followed by a gruff male voice whose anger resonated through the woods, although the words themselves were muted and unintelligible.
Steven motioned Kera to kneel down and then leaned in close to her. “I don’t think that’s Jeremy,” he whispered to her, his lips inches from her ear. “Follow me slowly and quietly. We need to get close without being seen.”
Kera nodded in understanding and gripped her shotgun tightly to her chest.
Steven made sure her firearm was loaded and ready and did the same with his rifle, then crept forward, crouching low and using the trees and boulders for concealment. They could smell the wood smoke now and every so often caught a murmur of men’s voices in conversation. Through an opening about fifty yards up ahead in a small clearing, they spied a squatter’s camp consisting of two large tents, a central campfire with a metal grate propped up on rocks over the flames, and benches around it made of old logs. Two large men in a mix-match of camouflage clothing sat around the fire talking and drinking from enameled cups. They both had long, straggly hair and thick, dark beards. St
even spotted at least two rifles leaning against the logs next to the men and one wore a western style holster with a wheel gun in it. Tied to a tree behind them were two young women, filthy and naked. Their wrists were bound tightly together and their arms stretched painfully above their heads by a rope looped over an overhead branch binding one woman’s arms to the other and forcing them to stand on the tips of their toes. A length of barbed wire wrapped around the tree and their necks, trussing them tightly to the trunk. They stared outward with dull, glazed eyes.
Another woman was stretched out over a log on her stomach near the fire. Wooden stakes had been driven into the ground shoulder width apart and her outstretched arms were bound tightly to these while her ankles were tied to a long tree limb that had been placed between them, keeping her legs spread apart. She faced away from them and her short, dark hair was a tangle of dirt and blood, hiding her face. They could see that she had been repeatedly raped; blood coated her thighs where it had recently dried and welts could be plainly seen on her buttocks and back.
Around the edge of the camp was strung fishing line with soda cans hanging in pairs spaced every few yards as a makeshift perimeter alarm.
Steven pulled Kera back behind one of the many large boulders that littered the valley floor.
“This is bad. We need to get the hell out of here!” he whispered in her ear.
“Are you serious? We can’t leave those girls there. That’s not right!” she hissed back, anger flashing in her blue eyes like lightening.
“Look, I’m sorry. They’re not our problem. We don’t need to be getting into a gun battle with those guys. I can’t take the chance that you end up in there like that.” It tore at his heart to leave the women to such an awful fate, and he knew it would be one more thing that haunted his nights, yet he didn’t want to chance either himself or Kera—or both of them— being killed or wounded. He had already lost too much already.
“Me, Amanda, and Frank weren’t your problems either. If you and Holly hadn’t intervened we would have been dead or turned into Loonies. I won’t leave those girls here!”
Steven could see in her eyes that her decision was final. He had learned over the past months that she had a definite stubborn streak buried within that pliant, beautiful body. Unfortunately, no matter how much they wanted to rescue those women, it was a bad idea. The odds weren’t enough in their favor. You didn’t survive nowadays by playing hero for strangers.
“Kera, we gotta go. Getting ourselves killed isn’t going to help those women, or Jeremy.” He started backing up away from the camp, however Kera just knelt there staring at him with eyes like daggers. His shoulders slumped, a sigh escaped his lips, and he crawled back close to her.
“What if that was me out there, or Jeremy? Wouldn’t you want someone to rescue us if they had the chance?” she asked in a forceful whisper.
“Yes, there may be a chance we can rescue them without getting one or both of us killed. However I’m not going to play those odds with your life!” he replied. He knew he was losing the argument by the way she glared back at him.
“If we just leave them to those animals, then there is no chance!” she hissed back, almost loud enough for her voice to carry to the camp. She grabbed hold of his hand tightly to emphasize her words, “Please, Steven, don’t leave them there. There aren’t enough of us left in this world!”
He looked her steadily in the eyes and was proud of her and ashamed of himself. He knew he was being selfish, though in this crazy new world, selfish meant survival. He’d learned that lesson with the loss of his wife and the disappearance of his only child. If it had solely been him, he would probably attempt it. However, he had Kera to care for now and it was his responsibility to make sure she survived at the cost of all else. It would be the same with Jeremy whenever they reunited with him. He knew turning his back on those women would cost him a large chunk of what remained of his soul, but damn it, they were called hard choices for a reason!
He laid his carbine against the boulder and took her in his arms. “I’m sorry, Kera, but no, it’s not worth the risk.”
She shrugged out of his grip, her face reddening with fury. “I’m not leaving them here!” she hissed again.
They heard a groan and a girl’s voice carried clearly to them form the camp asking for water. They peeked around the edge of the boulder and saw one of the men stand up and walk over to the bound girl on the log. He bent down and grabbed a handful of her hair, bending her head back painfully and said something to her in a low, husky voice. He stood up and unzipped his trousers, pulled free his penis, then proceeded to urinate over the back of her head. His companion laughed. The man stuffed his penis back in his pants and gave the woman a swift kick to the head as he walked away, and they heard him warn her to ‘shut her pie hole if she didn’t want worse’.
“We are not leaving them!” Kera whispered with finality, her eyes blazing with fire.
Steven tried shaking his head ‘no’ again, however before he could stop her, Kera sprang to her feet and started running toward the camp, bringing the semi-auto shotgun to her shoulder after she cleared the boulder.
“Fuck!” Steven cursed, propelling himself after her, sweeping up his carbine and thumbing off the safety while he ran to catch up.
They ran quietly and rapidly over the damp fall leaves that littered the ground in an array of bright autumn colors. Kera sprinted ahead of Steven, fury driving her at a maddening pace, a growl like that of a Loony’s growing in her throat. The man walking back from the prone woman was still fighting the zipper on his trousers when he spotted the small-framed dark-haired young girl burst through their parameter wire. His mind didn’t even have time to register the shotgun in her grip before there was a booming flash and a load of number one buckshot tore off half of his skull. He was dead before the sound of the blast reached his ears a fraction of a second later. The other man turned toward the boom of the shotgun after watching his companion’s head explode in a red mist of blood, bone, and tissue. He abruptly dropped backwards off the log while drawing the revolver from its quick draw holster, trying to put the pistol’s sight on the enraged girl while she swiveled the shotgun toward him. His first shot went wide as he fell backwards, and Kera heard a ‘buzz’ when the bullet zipped by her ear by an inch. Steven, who had almost caught up with her, opened up immediately with the Colt M4 as soon as he had a clear shot past her. His first rounds tore into the ground and the log around the man. Finally, he walked his rounds up over the camouflaged panted legs of the burly, bearded man and heard him scream in pain from the bullets that ripped through his shins and buttocks. The man’s second shot went high and the pistol dropped from his fingers.
Lying on his back and bleeding profusely from around the legs, the man reached desperately for the dropped revolver while the two strangers rushed up to him with their firearms aimed at his head.
“Don’t do it!” Steven screamed at him, stomping on the man’s arm as the man tried to grab for the gun. The bearded man sneered, reached around with his other arm, and grabbed at Steven with his large hand. Fingers as thick as sausages wrapped around Steven’s calf and flipped him backwards with an ease and strength that surprised him. He landed hard on his backpack, knocking the wind out of his lungs and sending the AR flying from his grip.
The man tried to pull himself up but Kera was there, jamming the barrel of the shotgun nearly through the man’s eye-socket and forcing him back down onto the ground.
“Give me one fucking reason!” she snarled at him.
He glared up at her and saw the steely glint of fury in her eyes and realized that she meant it. He visibly relaxed and the pain and shock of his wounds began to overtake the adrenaline. Even with the pain and blood loss, he grinned up at Kera with yellowed, dirty teeth. “You would-a been a fun one.” He then spat at her, his foul breath wafting up to her where she stood, causing her to wrinkle her nose in disgust.
“Shut the fuck up,” she replied coldly while Steven rolle
d onto his knees and got hastily to his feet. He picked up his carbine and covered the injured man with his barrel.
“I’ll take care of him,” he said. “Go help the girls.”
Kera sneered savagely down at the man and spat on him contemptuously. She spun angrily away and walked over to the woman at the log. The man smeared the spittle onto his tongue and smiled. “Ambrosia.”
Steven kicked the heavily built man hard in one of the wounds on his leg, causing a grimace of pain to erase his sick smile. He knelt down next to the man and laid his AR on the ground behind him out of reach, then picked up the man’s Ruger wheel-gun and checked its load. It still held four rounds. He stuffed it in his belt and drew his own semi-automatic, rolling the man over roughly with his other hand. The man must have outweighed him by fifty pounds, most of it muscle. Blood still seeped from the wounds in his buttocks and legs. By the looks of it, the bone in his right shin had been shattered by a round, although by the amount of blood it didn’t look like an artery had taken a hit.
