by James Hunt
A hand clapped Kate’s shoulder, and she turned to find the woman. “Let’s go.”
The group stopped at the back door, and Kate hurried past them. A gunshot pulled everyone back to the floor, but Kate opened the door. Snow and trees came into view, and then the quick dart of a body.
Kate kicked the door the rest of the way open and brought the thug in her crosshairs. She fired, the first bullet missing wide, and then steadied her aim. The second sent a geyser of blood out of the man’s back and a spray of crimson across the white snow.
Kate held her position, waiting for another inmate to appear, but none came. The coast was clear. She turned back toward the group, finally getting a sense of their size. Twenty faces looked to her for guidance, a mix of men, women, and children.
“Everyone run up the ridge and wait there.”
“What if they start shooting us?” a woman asked, terror laced in her voice.
“The trees will provide good cover,” Kate answered. “Now go!” She barked the order, and the group trickled out into the snow, most of them ill prepared for the cold, but freezing was better than dying.
Kate swiveled to her left and right, rifle aimed, making sure the coast remained clear as the last few refugees scurried up the hill. Sporadic gunfire echoed from the building’s front side, and when the woman Kate had saved brought up the rear, she lowered her weapon.
“Thank you,” she said, the rifle still clutched in her chest, her eyes watering.
Kate nodded, and the woman joined the retreat with her son. Once she couldn’t see them anymore, Kate turned back into the building, finger over the trigger, her eyes scanning the front of the building for anymore hostiles.
A puddle of blood formed around one of the dead men, and Kate skirted the gore and found two more bodies on the street, littering the snow, their limbs sprawled out at awkward angles, the rifles they’d carried still clutched in their dead hands.
Kate found the second floor of the building where Rodney had left the window open. The front door opened on the first floor, causing her to cast her eyes downward, and Rodney jogged into the street, away from her and toward the east end.
“Two got away from me,” Rodney said, jogging away. “I’m going to finish this.”
“Rodney, wait!”
Kate sprinted after him, following him into the building where the road dead-ended. Some souvenirs and trinkets lay piled on tables and shelves, but most of the store’s merchandise was broken and scattered on the floor. Kate crunched glass beneath her boots, and Rodney fired from somewhere out the back.
Rodney was already aimed, firing at two figures darting up the mountain, feet churning up snow in a hasty retreat. Kate sidled up beside him and took a breath, taking her time to line up her shot. The crosshairs fell against the man’s back. She followed his path for a minute, then squeezed the trigger.
The man ducked, and the bullet disappeared into the snow, and before Kate could readjust, the man vanished behind a cluster of trees.
Rodney followed the second man, his finger gently placed on the trigger. “I’ve got him.” He kept his right eye glued to the scope, his body still as the frozen tundra outside. He exhaled a slow breath and then squeezed the trigger.
A splash of red burst from the convict’s back, and he sprawled forward into the snow. The ring of the gunshot clung to the air as the man lay still, his body firmly planted in the soft, frozen powder.
Rodney raised his rifle to search for the inmate that Kate had missed, but quickly lowered it. “He’s gone.” He spun around, angry. “Shit.”
“We should go,” Kate said.
Rodney nodded. “Yeah, we need to get out of here before he tells the rest of his buddies what happened.”
5
Frozen, stiff, and exhausted, Dennis shuffled into town. The entire trip back, there were only two thoughts that circled his mind. Bed, and laying that woman still chained up in his room.
A mechanical hum echoed from the large diesel generators that Dennis had sent his people to find, and he was glad to find them already hooked up to his house and the sleeping quarters of his men. Billy and Martin appeared from the big hunk of machinery, passing a whiskey bottle between them. They were brothers, and the best trackers that Dennis had ever seen. And while they fell short of finding the bastards who’d killed their men at the hospital, the supplies they sniffed out were even better. Though he knew most of the work was done by the younger sibling, Billy.
Dennis clapped excitedly. “About damn time. I hope you hooked that thing up to the Jacuzzi around back.” He snatched the bottle away, took a few swills of liquor, then handed it to Mulls. “How many houses are hooked up?”
“Three,” Martin said. “And we’re getting ready to haul another one in before nightfall. We have enough fuel to last us a few months, so long as we don’t go overboard with running it day and night.”
“Hell no. Those fuckers are never going off!” Dennis spun around, arms spread wide, a yellow smile on his face. “We’re the pioneers of the new world, boys! There’s an ocean of fuel out there just ready to be taken!” He clapped his hands vigorously. “Let’s get to it!”
The men behind Mulls remained quiet, as he dangled the bottle of booze from his fingertips. “Jimmy still hasn’t come back. It’s been almost two days now.”
Dennis spun around, his good mood disappeared. “What do you want me to do? If the dumbass got lost, then there is nothing we can do about it.” He headed for his house, that little bug in his head starting to stir, but Mulls followed, and so did the others, causing him to stop. He felt an uneasy shift in the pecking order, and he didn’t like it. “Something you want to share with me, Mulls?”
“We’ve been collecting supplies nonstop for the past three days,” Mulls answered. “We’ve got food, we’ve got water, we’ve got enough guns for an army.” He separated himself from the group. “Everybody wants to enjoy what we’ve got for a little while.”
Dennis looked past Mulls, toward the convicts, who lowered their heads, staring at their boots. He stepped past Mulls, confronting the men who’d been whining behind his back. “Is that true? Everyone just wants to have a little fun?” The men retreated, taking steps back every time Dennis stepped forward. “Well, I don’t want you all to be left out! How about this—everyone can take turns screwing the woman I’ve got at my place.” He leaned forward, bouncing his eyebrows, and raised his left hand, which exposed the golden band. “I’ll even let you wear the wedding ring, huh?”
“Dennis, we’ve done everything you’ve asked,” Mulls answered. “We just want a break.”
Dennis spun around, then swiveled his attention between Mulls and the inmates who followed him. “Is that all?” He feigned an expression of empathy. “Well, if that’s all anybody wants—Oh.” He pressed a finger to his lips. “Oh, but there is something else, isn’t there?” He nodded to himself, the group parting for him to pass. “What was it again? It was on the tip of my tongue—Ah!” He smiled, lifting his finger up. “The cops.” He eyed each of the convicts in turn. “You remember? The little highway patrol center that holds the one group of people that can stop us? But hey, if you guys want to take it easy for a while, lay back and relax, I’m sure that station can wait.”
“Dennis, that’s not what we’re—”
“No!” Dennis barked, and the men cowered as he snarled his lips and exposed his teeth. “You want this place to last two months or the rest of our lives?” He hammered his fist angrily. “We take out that station, and we don’t have anyone to oppose us until the spring. Do you know what happens if those pigs find us? We go back in a cell.” He shook his head, wiping the spit that dribbled from his lower lip. “I’m not going back in a cell. Are you?” He shoved the nearest man hard then turned to another. “Are you?”
There was a series of headshakes, and a few muffled nos escaped tight lips.
“Are you?” Dennis roared.
“No!”
He smiled at the echoed
war cry and nodded, turning back toward Mulls slowly, deliberately. And to the big bear’s credit, he never looked away. “We take out the station, and then we can start to relax.”
“With what men?” Mulls asked, matching Dennis’s anger. “We’re spread too thin. Jimmy was supposed to fix that problem, but he’s god knows where now.”
“We send out more scouts,” Dennis said.
“And lose even more men?” Mulls shook his head and lowered his voice. “Let’s go back to the other towns, drag the people we want back here, and then torch the places. We need to centralize.”
Dennis leaned close enough for a kiss, and he got a nasty whiff of Mulls’s rotten stench. “No.” The defiance rolled off his tongue slowly. “I’m not giving up what we’ve taken.”
“All right, Dennis.” Mulls nodded, unsmiling. “All right.” He shook his head and then chuckled. “Christ, you think you would—”
But Mulls stopped, looking past Dennis down Main Street. Dennis frowned and then turned, his expression morphing into a smile.
Covered in snow and ice and looking half dead, Jimmy strutted into town at the helm of a large cluster of snow-covered orange jumpsuits.
“Son of a bitch.” Dennis laughed, performing a slow clap as he walked to meet Jimmy and wrapped him in a bear hug. “You squirrely son of a bitch! Look at you!” He clapped Jimmy on the shoulders, and bits of ice broke away from his clothes. “We thought the storm got you.”
Jimmy chattered his teeth together, and a goofy grin crinkled the left side of his face. “I-I-I t-t-thought-t-t w-e-e, co-co—” He shut his eyes, trying to concentrate. “Could make it through.” He huffed in fatigue and wobbled on both legs.
“Let’s get you warmed up.” Dennis stepped around Jimmy and opened his arms in welcome to the fresh meat for his grinder. “We’ve got heat, women, and booze, gentlemen. Just head on down to the Convict Motel.” Dennis laughed, and the frozen masses shuffled past.
Once they were gone and inside, only Mulls and Dennis remained on the street. The pair of men stared each other down, but it was Mulls who shook his head and backed down first. And when the big man had walked away, Dennis slowly recounted the number of men that Jimmy had just added to his arsenal. Fifty. Fifty to his already robust forty.
Once fed, bathed, and satisfied with a woman, they’d do whatever he told them to do. Because just as Mulls understood, Dennis was the hand that fed them. Those pigs wouldn’t know what hit them.
“Dennis!”
He stopped and turned to find another breathless man wandering into his town. It took a minute for him to recognize him, but the tuft of red hair gave Ken away. That little fire crotch was supposed to be in the valley town.
Ken skidded on his heels to a stop, hunched over with his hands on his knees, gasping for breath. He finally straightened himself out, wiping away a stringy collection of spit and snot. “The town’s gone.”
The muscles along Dennis’s face tightened in anger, his tone flat but stern. “What?”
Ken rubbed his palms on his thighs again. “Christ, I barely made it out of there alive.”
Dennis twitched, and the bug burrowed. The madness crept over him, and he turned away from Ken, stumbling aimlessly around Main Street. Rage gained momentum as the realization sunk in.
His town was gone? One of his towns?
Dennis froze, but that bug inside his head tunneled through his reason and control. “How many?”
“What?” Ken asked.
Dennis turned, his eyes focused on that red-haired bastard in the middle of his street. “How. Many. Were there?”
Ken took one step backward. “I-I don’t know. I didn’t really get a good look, but if I had to guess, um...” He swallowed and trembled. “A few?”
Surprise flashed over Dennis’s face, but only a moment before anger retook control. “A few?” Snow crunched beneath Dennis’s boot as he stepped forward slowly. “We had eight men stationed in the valley.” Quick as a snakebite, Dennis lunged and curled both hands around Ken’s throat, pulling him intimately close. “A few fucking people took back a town that had eight armed inmates?”
Ken struggled for breath. “We didn’t see them coming.”
The bug in Dennis’s mind burrowed faster and faster, eating up his brain as his hand tightened around Ken’s throat. The man whacked at Dennis’s arm, fighting for his life, and then just as quickly as Dennis grabbed him, he let go.
Ken collapsed to his knees, hands on his throat, coughing and gasping for air.
Dennis turned away from Ken, hiding the pistol that he removed from his holster. “Three people killed eight of my men.”
“They only killed seven,” Ken said.
Dennis spun around and fired, spraying Ken’s brain over the snow. He holstered the pistol. “No. Eight.” The bug in his brain calmed, and he watched blood crawl from Ken’s body like crimson fingers along the ground.
Dennis wasn’t sure how long he stood there, but when he turned around, Mulls was behind him. “They lost the town. He ran.” He strutted over to Mulls, whose eyes were still locked on Ken’s body. It wasn’t until Dennis clapped him on the back that Mulls finally looked away. “Cowards die, Mulls.” He laughed and then headed back inside. “Get the boys ready. We’ve got work to do!”
6
Kate sat outside Luke’s room, the door closed as the doctor made good on his promise to remove the bullet from his chest. The inside of the cabin was dead quiet save for the occasional whisper. Kate had wanted to be inside during the surgery, but the doctor didn’t want any distractions. The procedure was hard enough without all the necessary equipment, and he didn’t need her breathing down his neck. It took every ounce of Kate’s willpower not to choke him.
She and Mark had resigned themselves to the kitchen, each of them tapping a foot or hand nervously. Luke’s condition had worsened by the time they’d returned, and even if the doctor was able to get the bullet out, there was no guarantee that the infection wouldn’t have spread or that the antibiotics that Rodney had would kill it.
Kate turned left, eyeing the twenty-plus people in the living room, sipping water and nibbling on crackers and soup. She didn’t know what they were going to do with them. There wasn’t enough room in the cabin for an entire town to survive.
Rodney stepped from his room on the opposite side, weaving around the huddled bodies on the floor, and joined her and Mark in the kitchen. He crossed his arms and gestured toward the door. “Anything?”
“Not yet,” Kate answered, her voice hoarse from staying quiet.
Rodney checked the pocket watch he carried. “It’s been almost an hour.”
“I know.” Kate eyed the wooden slats on the door. She had stared at that door for so long that she had every groove of the wood memorized.
“Listen, we need to talk,” Rodney said, looking at both Kate and Mark. “Outside.”
“Yeah.” Kate was the last to leave the kitchen, and though she didn’t want anything to steal her attention away from Luke’s surgery, a part of her thought the distraction might help speed things along.
The contrast from the warmth of the cabin and the cold outside shocked Kate’s senses when she stepped outside. She flipped her collar up to guard herself against the stiff wind and joined Mark and Rodney in the snow.
“I think we all know we don’t have the room for these people,” Rodney said. “As much as I’d like for them to stay, logistically, it’s just not possible.”
“Can’t we take them back to the town?” Mark asked. “I mean, all of the bad guys are dead, right?”
“One got away,” Kate answered, her eyes lost in the sheer whiteness that blanketed the forest.
“I think having them return to the town is the best option,” Rodney answered. “I just don’t know how we’re going to convince them. They don’t have food, or water, and they know we have both here. There’s nothing stopping them from overpowering us.”
“How many people did you say attacked the hospital
?” Kate asked, looking to Rodney.
“It was hard to tell, but it looked like at least a dozen.”
“Then let’s assume they have three times that,” Kate replied, pointing toward the cabin. “We get these people on our side, and we’ve got a chance at fighting back.”
“We don’t need to fight back, Kate,” Rodney said. “Those people aren’t our problem.”
“You saw what those animals were doing,” Kate said, her tone laced with accusation. “God knows who else they’re doing it to.”
“You want to throw us in the middle of some kind of war?” Rodney asked. “People will die, Kate. Hiding might not be the most noble thing to do, but it’s the smartest. We’ve risked too much already.”
“It’ll only be a matter of time before they find this place.”
The three of them turned back toward the cabin door. Stacy, the woman whom Kate freed from rape, clutched a blanket around her shoulders.
Shivering, she stepped forward, nearing the circle but not joining. “They talked about spreading through this part of the state like some type of conquerors. They’re a disease. And if they find this place they’ll kill it.”
“And what would you have us do?” Rodney asked.
“Fight them.”
Rodney laughed, shaking his head. “And who will do the fighting? The people in that town didn’t bother fighting back, and the ones that did are dead.” He looked to Kate and Mark. “You think taking in those people will give us an army? It doesn’t.”
Stacy stepped closer. “Those men talked a lot. I don’t know how much of it was truth, but I can tell you what I know. We can use it to bring them down.”
“All right,” Mark said, raising his hands to calm the growing eagerness. “Let’s just take this one step at a time.” He gestured Stacy into the circle. “What do you know?”
Stacy’s blanket was lifted by a strong gust of wind, and she pulled it tighter around her body. “They’re taking over towns. There are six of them up here that are strung pretty close together. I don’t know if they have all of them under their thumb, but from the number of men I saw sweep through our town, I’d bet they do.” She winced and touched the lump on her lip.
