“Maybe not something that large-scaled. There are only four of us, remember.” Vanessa said. “But we will need to go back there. You said you should re-raid that gun store? That probably isn’t a bad idea.”
Charlie walked over to one of the giant gun cabinets lining the walls of the van. Almost straight after Rory and Charlie had first moved in to Jack and Penny’s house, the four of them had made certain modifications to the van. After completely gutting the inside of the van except for its 6 seats, they welded four large gun cabinets to the bottom of the floor. Enough to hold forty guns between the four cabinets, they themselves would have held all the guns in possession of Jack, Penny, Charlie and Rory. But they had welded an additional 6 small safes to the undersides of each seats, holding each persons primary firearm and some extra ammunition as well. Two of them were completely empty, just there ‘in case.’ Charlie had also requested his own personal cabinet to house his beloved sword. All in all, this was the perfect vehicle to survive a zombie apocalypse in. As Charlie went to unlock one of the gun cabinets, Vanessa shot her hand out to grab his arm.
“You can’t be serious.” She said. “Do you really think that we can just go barging in there? We are going to have to really plan this.”
Rory leaned over to where Jack was sitting.
“I like this one.” He whispered jokingly. This was quite the wrong thing to say, it turned out. Jack simply glared at him, and moved to another seat.
***
Jack sat alone in his seat, some two hours later. The survivors, bar Jack, had spent the last two hours snoozing, recovering from the ordeal in the warehouse. Jack, for his part, had sat in the drivers seat, longingly gazing at the passenger’s seat where Penny would sit. He had not felt the need to sleep, ever since he had woken up in one of the hellish houses. Nor had he even felt the injuries he had sustained from the initial crash. He was starting to feel them now, in the peace and calm of the armoured van. His right wrist was very painful, with shooting pains running up and down it. In addition, a cut on his head was now throbbing painfully. He ran his hand through his hair, bringing out clumps of dirt that had gathered when he was thrown from the van. He stood up. As he did so, he noticed that his left ankle was very swollen. He limped towards the medical kit, under Penny’s chair. After bandaging up his ankle and wrist, and putting a plaster on his head, he sat back down in his seat, and went back to gazing at Penny’s chair, wondering what she was going through at that very moment.
***
Hell on Earth. That was the only term Penny could possibly use to describe the horrific place in which she was now destined to spend the rest of her life.
Soon after the guards of James had taken Jack, Charlie, Rory and Vanessa, James himself had taken Penny to one of the rooms inside the house. He had sat her down on the bed and then left the room. Not a word was spoken between them. He didn’t even untie her.
Now, nearly 3 hours later, she sat on the bed, hungry, tired, and more than anything, alone. She heard footsteps approaching and she stood up, anticipating the worst. Penny heard the unmistakable jingling of keys in the lock as whoever was outside tried to unlock the door. The door swung open to reveal James. Penny gulped and said in the strongest voice that her mind would allow,
“What the fuck do you want?”
James actually looked offended at that remark.
“Manners.” He said, with the air of a pompous child, used to getting his way.
“Fuck. You.” Penny retorted, but she instantly regretted it. Her instincts told her that this man was not one you would want to fuck with. She was right to trust that instinct.
“My, my. I seem to have stumbled upon a pretty fucking rude group of people. Oh well, maybe this will teach you to talk to me with a bit of respect.” James said.
With that, he reached into his jacket pocket, and pulled out a long straight razor. Penny gulped.
“What are you planning on doing with that?” She said, eying the razor apprehensively.
“Take a wild guess.” He said with a demonic grin.
He advanced on her, grabbing her arm. She tried to struggle, but he easily overpowered her. He held out her arm, so that her palm was facing downwards, and pushed the straight razor lightly into her skin, running it down the length of her arm. A long cut split the skin. It wasn’t life threatening, but it would scar. If that wasn’t horrific enough, James brought Penny’s arm close to his face, and pressed her arm to his lips. He licked the length of her arm, tasting the blood as it trickled through the wound. James ignored Penny’s screams for help as he finished drinking her blood and quickly started to clean her wound and bandage it up. Even through the mask of pain on Penny’s face, James could see her confusion.
“Well, I wouldn’t want you to bleed out on me, would I?” He said. “You can look forward to one of those a week, unless you piss me off, in which case you can look forward to deeper cuts, and not all of them on your arm.”
“But, why?” Penny managed to choke out.
James leaned in close to Penny; close enough so that she could smell his foul breath.
“Why? Because I FUCKING CAN. I own you now, and I can do whatever I like to you. I will ruin you. I will destroy you. And in doing that, I will ruin your precious little husband, and your precious little friends. Imagine the mental pain he must be going through right now, not knowing if his beautiful little wife is all right. That is how I do it. This is how I break people. I take one little person from a group, someone who I think will provide me with the most entertainment, and I torment them with the loss of their group. In some cases, I will kill the group, like darling little Vanessa. But in your case, I decided it would be much more fun to think about the wonderful Jack dealing with the loss of his wife. I saw the way he looked at you back in the warehouse. It was a look of complete and utter devotion. But I also saw loss. He knows he is never going to see you again. And know you know it too. You are mine. You will never escape, and even if you do, you will NEVER be the same.”
With that, he turned around and left.
***
Back in the van, the rest of its inhabitants were slowly waking up. Once they were all awake and feeling substantially better, Jack stood before them.
“Right.” He said. “We really need to get off this highway, and plan for whatever happens next. I saw a detour to some pretty secluded looking roads a couple of miles back. I doubt we will see a single car, let alone a zombie.”
He limped over to the drivers seat and tried to sit down. Charlie, however, blocked his way.
“I don’t think that is a great idea. When was the last time you slept? Except for being thrown from a van and being knocked unconscious. You seriously need some sleep. Let me drive.”
Jack looked at him, long and hard. Without a word, he got up and moved to another seat, leaving the drivers seat free.
After getting to a secluded enough area, Charlie parked the van and got up.
“OK Vanessa. Tell us all you know about that man.”
Vanessa stood up, and began her speech.
“His name is James. The guy is a complete egotistical asshole. I was part of the first group that he ever captured, and that was about 4 months ago. I was travelling with some of my friends that I had known for a very long time. My family was… not there. We were just walking down the highway, we weren’t anywhere near as lucky as you were, having a car and all - ”
“Lucky?” Jack interrupted. “You think we were lucky?”
“Jack. Let her finish.” Rory said.
“Anyway.” Vanessa said, throwing a sheepish glance towards Jack.
“That is when they found us. James and 7 of his buddies. His buddies weren’t henchmen or guards, they were friends. But that all changed when they found us. I suspect that he had always been something of a loose cannon, and now he had found the perfect victim. He could do anything he wanted with us. It wasn’t like any of us were going to call the police. So they grabbed us, they forced us back to that horribl
e place. Then his friends… tortured us. They did awful things to us. They finally tied us all up. That is when James, as you see him now, was born. Seeing us all there, broken and bleeding, he loved that. From that moment, he was a changed man. You saw the way he callously murdered that guard in the warehouse. He held no affection for anyone but himself. After the guards had tied us up, James had entered the warehouse. He surveyed all of us, before his eyes came to a rest on me. He asked one of the guards to untie me. He said that I was in for the worst punishment of all. I assumed he meant death, but I was in for something even worse than that. Then he lined my friends up and he… shot them to death. I begged him to let them go, but he only laughed. His guards tied me to a chair, and made me watch as they…”
Vanessa broke down in tears at this moment. Charlie reached out to console her, but she brushed his hand away, and composed herself.
“They raped them.”
Chapter 6: Let The Battle Begin
There was a stunned silence. Charlie and Rory had masks of absolute horror on their faces, and Jack’s previously angry and tough demeanour had fallen away to reveal a face etched with sadness and sorrow.
“They raped them?” He asked.
“Yes.” Vanessa sobbed. “After they shot them, they did awful, unspeakable fucking things to them. I passed out after a couple of minutes, and when I woke up, the scene that confronted me was etched into my mind forever.”
“I am so sorry to hear that Vanessa.” Jack said, and it certainly sounded as if he meant it. “But this is exactly the fuel we need to get back in there and kill that son of a bitch. So I say we calculate a careful plan and get back-”
“No.” Vanessa interjected. “This is exactly what he loves. War, strategic planning, all of that stuff is what he would be expecting. We need to surprise him.”
“So, let me just get this one thing straight.” Jack said. “We are supposed to run straight into James’s domain, with absolutely NO plan whatsoever, and take Penny back. Not only that, but our aim is to kill him as well?”
“Well, we aren’t going to run in there.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Jack said.
“It means that I know him best, so this is how we are going to do it.” Vanessa responded.
“You may know him better, but I am in charge here, and what I say goes. You got that? And as much as I hate to leave Penny in that hell hole, I say we are going to have to plan an attack on this asshole.”
“How long?” Rory asked Jack.
Jack sighed.
“About three, maybe even four weeks.”
***
So they stayed in the van and plotted. And Jack hadn’t been kidding about the time period either. Exactly 29 days after Vanessa had proposed waltzing straight into the place where Penny was being kept, Jack, Charlie, Rory and Vanessa were getting ready to leave for the battle they may not have been coming back from.
Charlie was having his doubts. Even though they had been planning for almost three weeks now, he couldn’t shake the feeling that they were leaving for their deaths. Crazy. That is the word he would have used to describe this plan. Suicidal, Stupid, Deadly and Dangerous also worked quite well though. There wasn’t a hope in hell of getting Penny alive. James was a genuine psychopath. What were they? A group of 3 civilians, and a former small town cop that hadn’t been a cop for almost 6 months now. However, after that thought, Charlie couldn’t help noticing the things that could help them in this scenario. He had guards; they had the van that could withstand ANYTHING. He had one machine gun for each of his guards; they had enough to replenish a small army. And the single most important thing, in Charlie’s opinion: James held no respect for his men. He didn’t know them. With Charlie’s group, the opposite was true. They loved each other, and respected each other. They knew each other. With the exception of Vanessa of course, they still didn’t know her that well. But she knew James, and she had already provided invaluable information on him. Besides that, she had helped them escape, and even though she had been reluctant to help plan an escape, she ended up proving herself quite useful, so she was here to stay.
“OK.” Jack said. “If we are going to go in there all guns blazing, then we are going in all guns blazing. Grab your gun, your melee weapon and a machine gun with you.”
As the survivors grabbed their weapons, Charlie sat down. He wasn’t sure if he was ready for such a fight. What if one of them died? It just wasn’t worth the risk. But then he thought of Penny. How they had met. The laughter and the fun they had shared throughout the hellish last 6 months. It wasn’t right to leave her there. No matter what the cost, they would at least attempt to get Penny back. After all, she would have done the same thing is it was any of them stuck in that dickhead’s prison.
Charlie stood up and grabbed his weapons. His beloved sword, his pistol, and instead of a machine gun, two shiny tomahawks, their blades glinting in the sunlight streaming through the vans open window.
***
As Penny sat tied up on the bed, she thought about the life she was now destined to live here. She would die here, no doubt about that at all. It would most likely be a couple of weeks before she finally gave up. She looked over at her arm. As much as she hated to admit it, the psychotic nutcase had actually done a fairly good job at fixing up her arm. Although, while it was clean and bandaged, it still throbbed painfully every couple of seconds. She heard footsteps approaching. That was one consolation at least. She could always hear when someone was walking towards her room, due to the old creaking floorboards squeaking and groaning with every step that was taken. As the footsteps approached, Penny started to struggle against the bonds that held her. As her injured arm hit the rope tying her down, she gave a yelp of pain and stopped her struggling. The door swung open to reveal one of The Marksmen’s guards, holding a tray with what looked like mouldy bread and water with a curious green tinge. It looked like it had some type of algae in it.
The guard advanced on her. “Calm down.” He said. “I am going to untie you for the meal. Then you are tied back up again. You struggle, I will kill you. Got it?”
Penny muttered a begrudged response.
The guard set the tray down and cut Penny’s bond with a dagger. She stood up in front of the guard.
“Bad move, asshole.” She said.
She punched him in the nose. Hard. He fell back in surprise. Penny used this time to run at him and steal the dagger that was in his hand. She cut straight through his carotid artery, spilling buckets of blood all over her.
He fell to the floor with a thud.
The guard was dead.
The battle was on.
***
Charlie, Rory, Jack and Vanessa sat in the van. The first part of their plan was to wait until it was dark out. The reason for that was self-explanatory. After nearly four hours, it was finally time to leave for the battle. They had decided to walk, so as to reduce the risk of James hearing them before they arrived. They walked through the darkened streets, no one saying a word.
After about 10 minutes of walking throughout the streets, the group started spotting the zombies.
Due to the fact that loud noises such as gunshots would alert the surrounding zombies to the survivors’ whereabouts, Charlie was the only one who was executing the shambling, undead creatures, his blade swooshing through the moonless night. Things were actually going extremely well, until a horde came at them.
***
It wasn’t a large horde, nowhere near the same size they had faced at the house. This horde comprised of maybe fifteen or so zombies. They moaned as they came towards the survivors. Charlie looked like a samurai warrior, the way his blade sliced through the zombies skulls. However, in the chaos, one of the zombies managed to slip away and grab Vanessa’s arm. She clapped her hand over her mouth in order not to scream. She lashed out at the zombie, kicking it. Her boots sunk into its rotting stomach, opening up the creature’s belly, and let out volumes of blood and intestines. Just as the
zombie was about to bite into Vanessa’s skin, Charlie brought down his sword and sliced off its arm. In the next swing, he took the zombies head.
Charlie worked quickly and efficiently. As no less than three zombies came stumbling towards him, he thrust his sword into their heads, killing all three instantly. With one final swipe of his sword that caused an advancing zombie to literally fall apart, he was done. He looked down the dark road. He could see the darkened outline of three houses and a warehouse.
They were there.
Charlie turned around and looked towards his comrades. Charlie himself felt very cautiously optimistic. Rory looked like he was determined, ready to fight. He had finally come to terms with the killing of the guards, and was even prepared to kill another guard if that would get Penny back. Vanessa looked scared, apprehensive of going back to the psychotic son of a bitch that had imprisoned her previously. Charlie looked towards Jack. He saw a look of fury and determination in his friend’s eyes. Jack would stop at absolutely nothing to get his wife back. As well as the fury, Charlie also saw a glint of excitement in his eyes. He knew that Jack was confident they would return with James’s blood on their hands, and with his wife at his side.
Life As We Know It Page 6
