by Hetzer, Paul
The First Sergeant told McCully and Jeremy what they had found, and his assumption that the squad had vacated the building through the rear loading dock doors. As far as Shavers was concerned, the rescue mission was a wash. They weren’t going to find the missing squad now, not if they were on foot in the sprawling city. It was time to get back to Gypsy Hill and let the lost squad make the next move.
They took a circuitous route back to the armory; it was a safe route that led them through the remote roads cutting through the surrounding farmland and dense woods. In under an hour they were pulling through the gate and into the relative safety of the Thomas Howie Memorial National Guard Armory on Gypsy Hill.
An hour after First Sergeant Shavers pulled the lumbering Stryker into the compound, Sergeant Heinlich appeared leading the ragged remains of his squad through the gate. There they collapsed in exhaustion against the side of the building with the loss of Benton heavy on their hearts.
They failed to see either the two dark shapes shadowing them in the deepening dusk, or the mad, bloodshot eyes that followed their every movement behind the fence until darkness fell heavily across the compound. The two creatures faded back into the gloom of the trees and the night swallowed them whole.
Chapter Ten
The convoy of trucks and cars snaked down Route 81 past cars and semis long abandoned and left to the eternal elements. Lamar slowed his SUV down as he approached the group of refugees. The group of eight, four women, two men, and two small children, were paused in the southbound lanes watching the cavalcade of vehicles approach with hopeful expressions spreading across their faces. They had been pushing shopping carts full of supplies, two of them with the children seated in the baskets. They were dressed in an assortment of heavy winter clothes against the cold, biting wind which had been blowing out of the north all day. They stood gaunt and tired as the vehicles pulled to a stop around them, whatever trials and tribulations they had endured on the road weighing very visibly on all their shoulders.
Lamar glared at their expectant white faces as he approached and felt nothing except contempt mixed with hatred. It had been beat into his head since his first coherent thoughts as a child born into poverty in the ‘hood that these motherfucking crackers were the cause of all his people’s problems. They had repressed the black race since first tearing them away from their native tribes in Africa and subjecting them to the horrors of the Atlantic passage only to have the survivors be sold into the hardships of slavery in a country far from their homeland. That repression at the hands of the whites had never ceased. The latest atrocity had kept them bottled up and in deprivation in the ghettos of every city of the nation. Now that the crackers’ world had collapsed, it was the black man’s turn. The only restitution now to be extracted from their pale ugly hides would be their blood running in the gutters.
We gon be havin’ sum fun with dem white-ass bitches first! he said to himself as they crept up on the group and shut down their engines. He stuck his piece in the back of his pants and looked at Roshawna, who now sat in the passenger seat.
“We gonna smoke all dere asses ‘cept dem women.”
She smiled knowingly at him and pulled the charging handle on her AK. There was no need to tell anyone else in the crew what to do. This wasn’t the first group of these honkey-ass motherfuckers they had encountered. On the first occasion they had spent some considerable time making the snow-white assholes suffer, and they had died slow and painfully. As much as his crew had enjoyed the sport in giving back some of the pain that each of them had had to deal with all their lives, the men were simply too dangerous to hold onto. This time they would take the bitches for stress relief and quickly kill the rest.
He stepped out of the Escalade and walked casually up to the group, his hands empty and visible and a smile creasing his dark face. Roshawna stepped out next but stayed hidden behind the door. The rest of his crew approached on either side of their vehicles, their weapons out of sight, although within easy reach.
The two white men stared at the approaching man with suspicion, their hands on the sidearms strapped to their belts. Lamar felt his anger build when he saw the distrust in their faces.
Dese racist motha-fuckers be thinkin they still kings of dis world. Look how dey lookin’ at me like I’s a piece of shit.
He sneered at the thought, not quite breaking the deceitful smile that was plastered across his face. The anger filling his heart finally detonated in a blast of emotion. He continued to grin deceptively as he approached, his left hand out as if seeking a hand to shake while his right reached behind him and gripped his piece.
The closer man, a tall, skinny, sharp-faced man with a short brown beard reached his hand out tentatively to shake that of the big black gangster’s, while he asked where they were all from. Lamar grabbed the man’s hand hard and yanked him forward while he drew his pistol and shoved it into the startled man’s chest. The muffled blast when Lamar pulled the trigger stunned the man, then his eyes grew wide with the pain and realization of what had just occurred, and the life drained out of his face. He dropped hard to the ground. The other man, a younger, heavily-built dude that appeared Mexican to Lamar, tried to pull his handgun when his head exploded in a spray of blood and brains as Roshawna sent a volley of bullets into his face.
Two of the women who were pushing the carts with the small children in the kid’s seats raced off between two abandoned semis, shoving the full buggies before them. One of the newjacks brutally shot down one of the mothers and her cart fell from her lifeless fingers, racing ahead a few yards before rolling to a stop, the child all the while screaming wildly for its mother. Several of his crew mob-tackled the two remaining women to the ground amid their piercing screams for help. The little cracker-baby’s cries grated on Lamar’s nerves and he single-mindedly walked up to the child where it sat crying in the abandoned cart and put a bullet through her brain. He was amazed at how the little blonde head literally came apart when the bullet tore through it.
One less cracker in the world to grow up an cause us trouble.
The other mother, a brunette with long, disheveled hair, was still running down the road with two of his crew in chase. Within moments they tackled her hard to the ground and then dragged the sobbing woman and the cart back to Lamar. Roshawna pulled the toddler out of the cart and smiled coldly at him. He was whimpering in her beefy hands while she cooed softly at him and then without a hint of emotion, she lifted the dark-haired boy over her head and slammed him face-first onto the pavement. The little boy was still moving and making a mewling noise through its busted and bloody face. Roshawna raised her thick-booted foot and stamped down on his head, crushing his skull and causing the child’s brains to shoot out from under her heel. The boy’s mother let out a long, anguished cry and her legs collapsed beneath her. Roshawna stepped over to her and kicked her hard in the ribs with the same bloody boot that had moments ago stomped the life out of her child.
Lamar looked around. They had captured three of the women without too much of a problem. He walked up to the young black boy with a bushy afro who had shot the fourth woman and slammed him across the face with his pistol, busting open his cheek in a bloody, ragged tear. The boy collapsed to the ground with tears bursting forth into his eyes.
“I tol all you not to fade any dem white bitches we sees. Now next time you know betta.” He told Crazy-8 to get the white women onto the back of the pickup truck. The three sobbing women were laid out on the ground, tied up with a variety of cords and rope, and dragged back to the convoy of vehicles. The mother of the little girl was bawling hysterically and struggling vainly to break free of her restraints. She shot a look of daggers at Roshawna as she was dragged away and told the fat gang member that she was going to kill her. Roshawna reached down and backhanded her with one of her meaty hands hard enough to snap the woman’s head back sharply.
“Nuff a’dat shit!” Lamar barked at Roshawna. She stared at him vacantly and then helped Crazy-8 get the women up i
nto the bed of the pickup.
They took the guns and ammo they found on the two men and another rifle from one of the carts, plus the group’s food and water. They left the cooling dead bodies lying on the cold asphalt and got back into their vehicles. They started south again down the highway, grinding the bodies beneath their heavy tires when they remorselessly drove over the corpses while pulling away as if they were no more than discarded garbage.
In Lamar’s mind, indeed, that was all they were.
Steven and the girls had finally found a gas station/convenience store on an exit off of westbound Interstate 64 to camp that first night after encountering Angela and her father. They had avoided one small band of Loonies that were moving down the opposite side of the highway. The group of survivors had run deep into the woods to hide until the threat had passed. They had lost almost two hours waiting, as the creatures didn’t seem to be in any hurry to go where ever they were headed.
The little girl had completely avoided Kera the entire time. Instead, she had held tightly onto Dontela’s long-fingered hand as they slowly covered mile after mile. Jane was walking on her own, seeming to take a strong interest in the little curly-haired girl. Her pace had quickened and she ended up walking next to the girl and Dontela. By late afternoon Jane was holding onto the girl’s free hand and walking with a look of peace on her still healing face. Angela took the attention in stride and had taken the quiet woman’s hand without a word of protest.
When they approached the small store they could see that it had had its front door pried open sometime in the past, a sign that maybe other survivors had been there first. There wasn’t much left of viable food in the store. However, there were toilets that they could use with water gathered from a small creek that ran behind the building. A cold rain had started falling from the heavy gray sky an hour before they had stumbled across the place, soaking them all in its chilly embrace. They decided immediately that it would be their refuge for the night and would be more than adequate to keep them dry and relatively warm. Plus they could block the door and achieve a bit of security from any Loonies that were in the area. Tomorrow they had the mountains of the Blue Ridge to cross and with a front pushing through it would probably be a cold, damp walk. They all hoped that the rain would die out overnight, yet the cold north wind that was pushing down out of the mountains promised a miserable day either way.
They built a small fire under the canopy of the gas pumps, using what damp wood they could find in the dark, dense forest of trees that pressed in tightly behind the gas station. They started it with some engine starter fluid from a spray can they found in the store. Steam rose from their damp clothes as they crowded around the fire and ate a hot meal that helped chase some of the chill from their bones.
Later, as Dontela sat on one of the car tires that they had laid around the fire to use as benches, with Angela cuddled up close to her trying to absorb her warmth, Jane stiffly approached them and sat on an adjacent tire, facing the little dark-haired girl instead of the heat of the fire. The woman tentatively reached out and brushed the girl’s damp hair back from her forehead and smiled at her. Angela turned her head and looked inquisitively at Dontela.
“She lost her daughter not too long ago,” Dontela told her quietly.
The girl nodded and looked back into the other woman’s lonely, pained eyes and smiled up at her.
A smile played at the corners of Jane’s mouth for the first time since Dontela had seen the woman at the rapist’s camp.
Jane reached out again and this time gently palmed Angela’s cheek. “I’ve missed you Diana,” she said in a hoarse voice.
Angela glanced back at Dontela, who just warned her to not say anything with a shake of her head. Angela looked up at the woman’s pained face and tried to smile again through brimming tears. “I miss my mommy too.” She choked on a sob and threw her arms around the battered woman’s neck and hugged her tight. They clung to each other in mutual sorrow, tears spilling down their cheeks.
Steven, Kera, and Katherine appeared around the side of the building, arms laden with branches and twigs for the fire, and stopped short when they spotted the woman and little girl sobbing in each other’s arms while Dontela looked on uncomfortably next to them.
Dontela put her finger to her lips and motioned them forward. They walked under the shelter, dripping water from the icy rain, and quietly laid their loads next to the crackling fire, moving in close to warm their wet, chilled bodies.
Finally, Jane pulled back from the little girl and stared at the expectant faces that had been watching them. She smiled a strong smile, “Everything is okay now; my baby is back with me.” Then she became aware of Steven and her dark eyes focused on him, a look of fear sweeping over her face.
“You!” she hissed. “You stay away from my baby!” She grabbed Angela and pulled her tightly to her damaged bosom, causing the little girl to cry out in fear. “Don’t worry, Diana. He won’t hurt you ever again.” She never took her baleful eyes off of Steven.
Angela struggled to get out of her grip and finally slipped away from the confused woman.
“I’m not Diana. My name is Angela.” she said to the woman after moving out of reach.
Jane stared at Angela with her mouth agape. “Diana, get back over here, now!”
The little girl shook her head and took Dontela’s hand. “I told you my name is Angela and you’re not my mommy.”
The woman’s confusion deepened and she looked sharply at Dontela. “Who…? Where…?” she stuttered, trying to assemble the pieces of conflicting information that swirled through her mind. She stared hard at the curly-haired girl and then gasped in disbelief. It wasn’t Diana. Diana was older and her hair not as dark, nor curly. Then it all came back to her like a punch in the gut. She moaned, tears welling in her eyes.
“They killed Diana, didn’t they?” she asked of no one in particular. “They killed my baby.”
Kera sat next to her and hugged her tight.
“I thought it was a nightmare,” the woman whispered. “Who are you people?”
Her eyes cleared of the unfocused and muddy look that they had been masked with since she had first been rescued.
“You’re with friends,” Kera said. “You’re safe now.”
The woman peered over at Steven again with his two day growth of beard and brown hair cut short. He didn’t really look like those men; the ones who had done the unspeakable to her and her baby.
“Where are they?” she asked in a whisper. “Where are the animals that hurt my little girl?”
“We made sure they would never hurt anyone again,” Kera reassured her.
They found out that the woman’s name was Melody and that she and her daughter, along with her husband Tony, had been travelling westbound on Interstate 64, escaping the horrors of Richmond when their truck had run out of gas. They were on foot approaching Charlottesville when they had been found by the men from the camp. At first, they acted friendly enough and offered to get them to the other side of the city and help them scavenge some food. The family eagerly agreed to go along with them, however Melody soon became concerned with the way one of the big, burly men was staring lewdly at Diana, who was only twelve years old but with a body that was developing way ahead of her years. She had whispered this worry to Tony as they sat cramped in the front seat of the pickup while one of the men drove and the other sat behind them in the back seat.
Tony had asked the man to not look at his daughter like that and an argument ensued. The truck had been stopped and the passengers ordered out. Melody had felt relief to be getting out of that truck and wanted nothing more than to get away from the two men, as every instinct in her body was on fire with a feeling of mistrust. They had thought that they were going to be let out and the men would simply drive away and it would be done with. However, the man in the back got out and began angrily yelling at Tony and without any indication of what he was going to do, he pulled a handgun and shot her husband in the chest.
When Tony fell, the man had shot him once more in the head. The driver, who had been standing a few feet away from her, had wheeled on his heel and punched her hard in the face. She had woken up in the camp with her daughter tied up next to her. The gruesome horrors that started after that went on for days. No one in the group asked and she didn’t tell exactly what those horrors were.
Melody appeared to grow stronger, both physically and mentally, as she related her story to them and seemed to be coming to terms with the grief over the loss of her family and the pain of her ravaged body. She would never be the same person she was before, nevertheless, they all realized that she would now survive the horrible trials that she had experienced.
They slept that night in the cold interior of the store, wrapped up in blankets and sleeping bags while a heavy late fall snow fell silently outside, purifying the landscape in a blanket of white.
The next morning they woke to a vista of fluffy-white snow several inches thick on the ground with temperatures steady in the teens. Snow continued to fall in spits and starts with heavier bands at times blotting out the nearby landscape. It was rare, although not unheard of, to have a spell of January-like weather in late October in the Blue Ridge, and the thought that went through all of their minds was how impeccable the timing was. After a cold breakfast they hit the road again, scavenging several of the homes along the way that were now becoming fewer and far between. They needed to find some additional supplies, especially appropriate footwear for Melody. Their foraging produced a long wooden toboggan in the garage of one upscale home set on the mountainside. They used this to put Angela and a large portion of their supplies on to make it easier while negotiating the snow and ice-covered highway. A cruel, cold wind blew stiffly down off the mountaintops with a freezing bite that hampered their progress, sometimes blowing the snow about so heavily that it was like walking in an impenetrable cloud filled with stinging ice crystals. Despite their layers of winter clothing, they were all soon chilled to the bone and experiencing a cold numbness in their fingers and toes as their bodies fought to keep warm.
