by Eric Vall
Eric Vall
Chapter 1
I stepped out of the truck and looked at the large makeshift gate that loomed in front of me. The corpses that hung from the bits of rusted metal were badly decomposed, and the remnants of their State Trooper uniforms draped the bodies in tatters.
Paige was only a couple steps behind, and the brunette carefully scanned the area through her thick rimmed black glasses with a faint smirk on her thin lips. She wore a forest green tank top, a pair of tight jeans held up with a black belt, and brown hiking boots. Her messy brunette bun was held in place by a pencil, and her dark brown eyes darted around the environment.
It had been a few days since any of us had left the campus. After the biker attack we decided to rest a while, recover from our wounds, and get back into our routines.
Unsurprisingly, the traps had been empty the last couple of days, but between what we already had and the fish we managed to snag, we were good on food. With the pump set up on campus it wasn’t hard to meet our water needs, and the shower made it easier than ever to keep clean.
After three days of rest, though, we all started to get a little restless. Anna took Bailey and Tara into the woods on a small hunting trip, Rolly went into town to clean up from the battle, and I took Paige with me on a small trip back to the bikers’ home base.
“Fuck,” Paige muttered,“these bikers were real bad dudes, weren’t they.”
“They were assholes with guns,” I said. “Don’t give them any more credit than they deserve.”
The gate was unmanned, and the two of us were able to waltz right in to what, only a few days ago, had been the bikers home base. We scouted the town from a safe spot with some binoculars first, but we didn’t see anyone moving around inside.
“So what are we looking for exactly?” Paige asked as she followed me down the road into town.
“Last time I was here it looked like these guys might have had some female prisoners,” I said. “I needed to be sure that if that was true those prisoners got free.”
“I can’t imagine being these guys’ prisoner,” Paige muttered. “I think I would rather die and be hung from one of those spikes out front than ever have to live under the rule of a group like these bikers.”
“At least the dying part would be over quickly,” I said.
“Exactly,” Paige agreed.
I suppressed a shudder as I thought about one of my girls getting taken by these assholed. There were only a couple outcomes to that situation, and neither of them would have been good. My stomach churned as I looked over at the bookish brunette beside me. I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if that had happened. I shook off my feeling of unease and reminded myself that the bikers were now gone.
My girlfriends, Rolly, and I had killed them.
The fuckers deserved to die.
As we entered the outskirts of the town proper everything was quiet. It reminded me of when I first arrived at the college town back when I emerged from the woods to find the girls.
“This is kinda eerie,” Paige said.
“It’s not much different than our trips to Lanceton,” I said.
“Yeah, but those were eerie, too,” she whispered. “Towns aren’t supposed to be this quiet.”
“It wasn’t quiet last time I was here,” I said. “I prefer the silence to the sounds these degenerates used to make.”
“That’s fair,” Paige chuckled.
It wasn’t long before we came to the heart of the small town. The parking lot adjacent to the gas station and conjoined mechanic was still scorched from when I had lit it on fire.
“Wow, is that your doing?” Paige asked as she nodded at a nearby building.
It was the convenience store that had housed most of their gear. It was a blackened tangle of glass, concrete and steel. Most of the roof had fallen in, and an entire side of the building was missing.
“Yeah, I might have had something to do with that,” I said with a smile. “I thought it might get rid of most of their guns, but apparently they had a secondary storage location.”
“Still, you left quite a mark on this place,” she said as she raised an eyebrow. “No wonder they wanted to hunt you down.”
“Come on, the place I wanted to check out is just ahead,” I said as I jogged past the gas station.
As we walked I noticed a few bikes were still scattered about the place, but none of them looked like they could go anywhere. Most of them were missing a tire or some parts from the engine. The seats were also burned and melted to the point they would not be comfortable for a long ride.
There were a series of four small houses out behind the apartment building that I had burned on my first visit here. I didn’t imagine they would keep their playthings far away, and these seemed like a good place to check first.
“Alright, we’re going to breach these like I taught you back in Lanceton,” I whispered as we approached the first house. “There could be innocents in here so hold your fire until you know for sure what you’re shooting at.” There had been no movement in the streets when we scouted, but that didn’t mean there couldn’t be someone holed up inside.
“Got it,” Paige said with a nod.
We stacked up, and I threw open the door. Then the two of us stormed into the building with our guns raised.
“Clear left,” I shouted after I did a sweet of my angle.
“Clear right,” Paige replied.
I let my rifle rest and looked around the room. Mattresses were scattered all over the floor and each of them was stained badly with patches of brown and red. The stench of the room told us all we needed to know about what happened here. There were ropes, handcuffs, and chairs scattered throughout the room, but no one was here.
“This is awful,” Paige said. “This looks like the type of place you’d see in a snuff film.”
“You’re not far off, but at least it’s empty.” I took a knee and picked up a pair of cheap stainless steel handcuffs. The cuffs were bent, and I tried to latch it but found the inner mechanism was broken. A smile spread across my face as I let them clatter to the floor. “It seems whoever was here broke free.”
“Well, thank God for that,” Paige said.
“We should check the other houses, and the place the gang boss was staying at, though,” I said.
We went back outside and then over to the second house. We breached the building, and found it in a very similar state as the first one. Lots of dirty beds, handcuffs, and chains. Like the first building this one also showed signs that whoever had been captured here had broken their bonds and gotten free. This was a much better outcome than I expected to discover here.
The rest of the small houses told a similar story. Each and every one of them was empty. The only thing that bothered me was the idea that I had not been able to help these people sooner.
“Well this is going way better than I thought it would be when we first arrived,” Paige said. “I was expecting to find weeping women in cages or something.”
“I was too,” I said.
“Where do you think the women they had here went once they got free?” the brunette asked.
“If I had to guess, they probably went to Burlington where they would find the most people,” I replied.
“But if what you think about the National Guard camp there being dangerous is right, that might be out of the frying pan and into the fire for them,” she said dejectedly.
I had the same thought earlier, but there was no sense in dwelling on hypotheticals. All the victims here were free and gone, and that gave them at least a fighting chance which was a big improvement over their lot a week ago.
We walked over to the State Trooper HQ next. It was where the bikers had gathered when their leader needed to address t
hem so I assumed it was where the leader himself had stayed.
“If there’re any guys left they’d probably be in here,” I said as I approached the door.
“I’ll stay sharp,” Paige assured me.
I nodded and stacked up so we could breach. Paige got into position behind me and gave my shoulder a squeeze. I yanked the door open and rushed into a long hallway of smooth polished stone. The sound of the door thudding closed echoed down the corridor.
“Clear,” I said.
“Clear,” Paige echoed.
The hallway ended in what appeared to be a large room, and there were several doors on both sides.
“What do we check first?” Paige asked.
“Let’s move clockwise,” I said as I headed for the first door on the left.
It was a heavy wood door, and there were no windows to let me peek inside the room before we entered. Paige got behind me again, and we repeated our entry tactic on the new door.
We breached and found ourselves in what had once been a small square office space. There were desks pushed up against the wall, and a couple windows let in natural light. There were several trashed computers on the floor, and a couple broken monitors still sat on the desks. Empty beer bottles had piled up among the debris, and there were bits of brown glass scattered across the floor.
It seemed that the only purpose of this room had been to break various, now obsolete, pieces of technology, and bottles. Though, it was as empty as the hallway had been, and there was nothing that indicated recent activity.
We headed back out and made our way to the next door. It was solid like the first, but a large bank of windows on the right side of the door let us see inside. It looked to be a briefing room complete with long tables, and many uncomfortable blue plastic chairs. The room looked more like a high school cafeteria right after lunchtime now. Dozens of plastic wrappers littered the ground, and the tables were piled high with paper bowls full of half eaten meals.
“Wow, they really trashed this place,” Paige muttered.
“Yeah, this is pretty bad,” I agreed. “It’s about what I expected though. Come on, we don’t need to go in there.”
We moved to the end of the hall and into what was a large open space. It was full of desks, useless computers, and various papers. Though those were hidden under piles of empty beer bottles and more plastic colored wrappers. At the back of the room a staircase led to a second story, and a small corner had been walled in to create what looked like an office. Large blinds covered the office windows making it impossible for us to see inside without getting closer.
I leaned down and picked up one of the wrappers. The red plastic had the Ramen brand logo emblazoned across it.
“What the hell,” Paige said. “Did these guys live off of Ramen or something?”
“Looks like they might have,” I said as I tossed the trash back on the floor. Then I nodded towards a shadowed corner of the room where it looked like there was a pallet of unopened Ramen packets.
“Wow,” Paige chuckled. “And I thought we ate badly before you came along.”
“I guess these guys found this stuff somewhere along the road and realized it was one of the few things that would keep for a long period of time,” I said
“Yeah, but what were they going to do when they ran out of instant packets of noodles?” Paige asked.
“There’s a good chance they didn’t think that far ahead,” I said as we made our way through the seat of desks and beer cans towards the small office. At this point I was fairly sure the building was empty, but there was no point in taking chances when peeking in the small office would barely take any time.
We reached the room, and I popped the door to reveal a small makeshift bedroom. The floor had been covered in mattresses, and the whole place stank of unwashed bodies. Unlike the mattresses in the houses these ones were not covered in the same type or number of stains. There were also no ropes or handcuffs in this room. Instead it seemed like just a dirty communal sleeping quarters.
“This is weird,” Paige commented.
“It’s not much different from our setup,” I said.
“Only our sleeping pit is not in some smelly closet room,” Paige said.
“They just made do with what they had, I guess,” I said as I shrugged. “Come on, there’s clearly nothing important in there.” I closed the door and headed for the stairways.
“Do you think there’s anything worth taking from this place?” Paige asked as she followed.
“I don’t know really,” I said. “I guess if we wanted we could bring back some Ramen.”
“That’s probably not the worst idea,” Paige said. “It would at least allow us some more variety with the meals. We don’t have to eat the nasty flavor packets, but some noodles would be nice.”
“We’ll grab some on the way out,” I said. “We don’t need all of it though. Especially since we need to leave room for the shit the dead guys on the bridge still have.”
I kept my gun at the ready as I ascended the old solid wood staircase. Despite my best efforts the stairs still let out a slight creak or groan with each new step I took. The first thing I noticed as I approached the top of the stairs was just how much darker it was upstairs. As I stepped off into a small square room I saw that it was because every window had been covered by spray paint or heavy curtains to keep out the light.
This room at the top of the stairs was filled with a dozen olive green cots, a large assortment of blankets, and a few scattered guns.
“I guess we found where more of them slept,” Paige said.
“Maybe these were the boss’s favorite guys or something,” I said.
We made our way through the shadowed room to a door at the far end. The heavy door was slightly open, but no sound came from within it. So far the upstairs seemed to be as abandoned as the rest of the place.
Paige and I breached the room only to find it just as devoid of life as everywhere else.
I lowered my gun and looked around. Compared to everywhere else we had been, this room was opulent. It was pretty much impossible to tell what this room was used for before, because now it was clearly the boss gangsters sleeping quarters. A king sized bed had been brought up and sat in a corner. It was covered in black satin sheets and a matching comforter sat on the floor beside it.
It looked like there might have been prisoners in here at one point as well. Along the wall opposite the bed there were several large eye hooks screwed into the wall. Each one of them held a length of chain that ended in more handcuffs. These ones were not as cheap as the ones we found in the houses outside. Each of the four hooks had a mattress under it, but they weren’t made up like the bed. Instead each of them had a cheap thin blanket close by, but they were crusty and full of holes.
“Seeing this shit makes me want to kill the bikers all over again,” Paige scoffed.
“There’s a reason I blew stuff up on my first trip here,” I said.
“I can’t blame you,” Paige said as she lowered her gun. She walked over to a nightstand setup next to the bed and pulled open the drawer.
“Anything good in there?” I asked.
“Not unless you need a bunch of condoms, lube, and porno magazines,” she said.
“I think I’ll pass,” I said. “It looks like anyone who might have been in here got out after the bikers left too.”
“That’s good,” Paige said.
“Yeah, I really hope they made it safely to wherever they were going,” I said.
“Well, this place is pretty empty, are we going to spend some time checking for valuables?” Paige asked.
“We’ll grab some ramen, but we don’t need anything else,”I said. “This place is right off the road and some other survivors might need some of this stuff more than we do.”
“That’s fair,” Paige said. “It’s kinda weird that we are so well set up that we can actually leave stuff behind.”
“There’s no need to be greedy,” I said. “Plus, the f
ew things that we actually need right now we already have plans about how to get.”
“Right, like the water tank,” Paige said.
“Exactly,” I replied with a nod.
“Well, can we get outta here then?” my brunette companion asked.
“Yeah, we’ve spent more than enough time here,” I said.
The two of us made our way back downstairs, and checked the last rooms on the other side of the hallway. One of them had been the State Troopers armory but it was cleared out. The other was a small break room, and it was treated as poorly as the briefing room. After that we grabbed several dozen packages of Ramen and headed back outside into the sunlight.
“Do you think we’re safe now that the bikers are gone?” Paige asked as we started back towards the truck.
“For now, yeah,” I said. “I don’t know what our future holds, but I doubt we’ll manage to avoid trouble forever.”
“I guess that makes sense,” Paige said. She sighed and looked back at the biker town. “Every time we go out into the world and find another place like this or Lanceton it becomes clear just how much we have to thank you for.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, if you hadn’t come along, me and the rest of the girls would probably be in one of those houses or chained to the wall in the leaders room,” she said. “You saved us from some truly terrible stuff. There’s a chance some of us might not even be alive right now if you hadn’t shown up when you did.”
I stopped and turned towards my beautiful lover. Then I put a hand on her shoulder and gave her a warm smile. “Hey, you don’t have to worry about shit like that anymore. Even if something happened to me you guys have the tools and the skills needed to take care of yourselves now.”
“Yeah, but that’s still all thanks to you,” she said as she smiled at me.
“Don’t give yourself so little credit,” I said. “I might have given you guys a push, but you have done amazing things all on your own.”
“I guess we did help defeat an entire gang of pissed off bikers,” she said with a smile.
“Yeah, and I couldn’t have done that alone,” I said. “Without you guys I would have been overwhelmed, and the campus would have fallen.”
