"Rise and shine," Sarah rasped in a drawl. As the men looked up at her standing in the shadows, she shined a flashlight in their faces. They instinctively tried to throw their hands up and shield their eyes, then they resorted to snapping them shut and turning their heads.
"Who are you?" one of them said in a groggy voice.
Silence.
"What do you want with us?" he demanded.
More silence. And then footsteps. The man opened his eyes and tried to see what was coming, but the light was still aimed right at him and he could only see something black moving toward him—moving with purpose.
Something swung through the blinding light and then pain ripped across his face and his jaw ached. His head hung limply to the side and tears were squeezed out of his eyes and rolled down his face. He tried to move his mouth, but the pain was too incredible.
The man beside him trembled. "What's going on?" he asked, voice full of fear. "Where...w-where are we?"
"That building in the woods..." Sarah said slowly. "The door on it has a keypad. What's the code?"
"Hey, you're just those two broads who hit us on the road, ain't you?" the first man said, finally working past the pain in his jaw enough to speak. "Don't tell them shit," he said, turning his head to the other man next to him. "They're a couple of lightweights."
Carly stepped through the blinding light again and hit him in the other cheek with the pipe.
He was silent after that and tended to himself for a while, spitting up blood and running his tongue along his teeth, making sure they were all there.
"The code," Sarah directed at the other one.
"L-Look lady, I don't know any code! I'm just a... I'm just a driver!"
"He was the driver," Sarah replied calmly. "You were the passenger."
The man was completely beside himself with fear. "Oh shit," he said. "I mean, I'm just in the truck! I don't know anything!"
"Hey, look at me," the driver said, raising his head again. He stared into the flashlight and defiantly held his eyes open, as if he was staring right past it into Sarah's eyes, though he couldn't see them. "I told you cunts earlier: the colonel will kill you. I don't know what kind of rinky-dink operation you have going here, but if you're trying to put the squeeze on us, you've got another thing coming, honey."
"The colonel," she said, emphasizing the word, "doesn't know we're here. He doesn't know you're here. After we knocked you out, we set your truck on fire with two bodies left to burn in the trailer. All the colonel will find after the blaze is a robbery with two charred skeletons in the back, wearing whatever parts of your uniforms that didn't burn off. They'll think you're dead. And if you don't cooperate, you will be."
The defiant man looked down at his naked body and realized she was telling the truth. He gritted his teeth.
Sarah leaned forward on the oil drum in front of her and rested her arm against the edge of it, still keeping the flashlight in their eyes. "This is how it's going to work," she said. "I want the code for that building. You give it to me, and nobody has to get hurt. If you don't, we'll get it out of you and we'll do it slowly... for as long as it takes. If you still don't give it up, we'll kill you. Slowly."
"If we tell you, y-you'll let us go?" the second soldier stammered.
"That's right."
"Don't listen to her," the other man said. He now took on a resigned look, and unlike the other man, it seemed like the fear had all but left him. "They're going to kill us no matter what. It doesn't matter."
Sarah stared at him for a moment, considering what to do with this one.
"I know who you are, lady," he continued. "I remember hearing the boss talking about you. You were that one with Wayne trying to get into the base a couple months back. Didn't even put it together at first, but the arm should've been a dead giveaway."
Sarah found herself startle at his mention of Wayne. "Is he alive?" she asked.
The man laughed. "You're not very good at this, are you? You can play tough all you want, but at the end of the day I know you're nothing but a scared little girl."
"Tell me or I'll—"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," he said, "you'll give me the pipe. Don't bother. Wayne's alive. That one's free. But I don't know what kind of shape he's in, and I don't know shit about any other shit you wanna know." He turned his head to the side and stared at the wall in defiance.
Sarah traded Carly the flashlight for the pipe and then she stepped forward. The light illuminated her body and the two men could get a good look at her for the first time. She held the pipe by her side and measured the weight of it in her hand as she stared down at the first man. "How do Wayne and Glass know each other?"
The man smirked and ran his tongue along his busted lip. "Don't you know?" he said. "They were in the Marine Corps together. Them and a guy named Bill. Thick as thieves, the three of 'em. Served a long time together. Course, that was before their little incident."
"What incident?"
"Hey, fuck you, lady! I'm not playing this ring-around-the-rosie bullshit. You want to kill us? Just get it over with."
"I won't have to if you tell me what I want to know."
"Yeah, bullshit. No way you're gonna let us walk out of here so we can report back to the boss about you."
"If you tell me what I want to know, the worst thing that's going to happen to you is you're going to spend the next day or so tied up in here while we do our business. After that, you're not going to have a boss to report back to."
The man laughed, but he didn't say anything else.
Sarah raised the pipe and struck him on the top of his right shoulder. He cried out in pain and inadvertently bit down on his tongue as he ground his teeth together. "What's the code?"
The other man tied up next to him began to shake even more. She knew there was little hope of getting the code out of the one she was beating, but it was proving to be a tremendously effective tool to scare the other one into giving up the code.
She hit him in the ribs and heard a crack as the hard metal struck against his bare skin. She continued the beating for a while, letting up every now and then to give him an opportunity to catch his breath and talk, but he never did, growing more defiant if anything. Finally, Sarah turned her attention to the other soldier. His eyes were wider than a doe's, and as soon as she brandished the pipe at him he cowered down in fear and squeezed his eyes shut. He opened his mouth and started to say something, but the other soldier interrupted.
"You tell her anything and I'll chew your eyes out myself," he told his partner. "And that won't even be a fraction of what the boss will do to us if we talk."
The scared soldier froze in a panic, but then he seemed to calm down a little. He turned his eyes down to the grungy floor and kept his lips sealed.
Sarah shrugged and whipped the pipe across his face. His nose broke and blood started oozing out of it and down his mouth. But he kept quiet. She walked around behind him and slammed the pipe against his elbow. He screamed out in pain and his breathing became very rapid, but when he calmed down, still, he said nothing.
"It looks like this is going to be a long night," Sarah said. "And I've got no other place to be."
She raised the pipe again, but the frightened soldier cried out.
"Please! No more!"
Sarah lowered her arm. "The code."
He looked up at her and held her gaze for a moment, then his lips peeled back in a horrific grimace before he pointed his face back down to the ground.
Sarah dropped the pipe on the floor and turned, walking past the cone of light that Carly was pointing at them and disappearing into the darkness. The soldiers heard her pick up something and could only wonder what it was as she slowly returned to them, one terrifying footstep at a time.
When she stepped back into the light, she was holding a jerrycan with the cap unscrewed. She stood still for a moment, allowing them to look at her and see what she was holding. When the moment passed with no one saying a word, she walked over to t
he timid soldier and held the can above his head, tipping it to the side.
He cried out in terror as stale gasoline poured onto his head and body and splashed the man next to him. At first he hoped it was water, but then the fumes entered his nose and his eyes widened suddenly.
Sarah put the can down and reached into her pocket, producing a lighter. She flicked the spark wheel and a little flame popped out from the top. She held the lighter up in the air and they all watched it like it was Jesus come back to Earth. She brought it closer and closer to the man, inch by inch.
He began to blubber. "Not like this!" he cried. "Oh Jesus, please! I'll tell you anything you want to know!"
But before he continued, the other soldier drove his shoulder into him. "Don't you dare!"
The timid soldier looked from the flame over to his partner and back. His face was so twisted with emotion that it looked like it was trying to tear itself in half. But finally, he relented, staring at the floor. His body shook badly, but he steeled himself against what was going to come.
Sarah considered him for a minute, then she let her thumb off the spark wheel and the flame disappeared. She put the lighter back into her pocket and picked up the pipe and jerrycan from the floor. "That's enough for tonight," she said and turned.
Carly flicked the flashlight off and they both walked into the shadows, leaving the two soldiers tied up and soaked, basking in the moonlight coming in through a window above them.
"Hey!" the defiant soldier shouted. "I gotta take a piss! Don't leave us tied up here like a couple of animals! Hey!"
But they didn't come back. A door slammed in the distance and left the two soldiers in the dark, naked and cold, and reeking of gasoline.
13
RETURN TO THE BRIDGE
By the time morning broke, the temperature was already quite warm and the birds were chirping madly. There was a good vibe in the air and Sarah felt every stroke of time go by as she got closer and closer to actualizing her goal. After interrogating the two soldiers through the night and hearing one of them confirm that Wayne was still alive, she hardly got any sleep at all. She didn't know why but she felt an incredibly warm sensation in the pit of her solar plexus when she thought of him. Maybe it was the anticipation of her guilt being dissolved by rescuing him, or maybe it was something else, but the feeling was so strong she could taste it.
Sarah arrived at Macklin's camp—now Halcomb's camp—just as the sun broke over the trees in the distance. She elected to leave Carly back at the house to take care of Tommy, thinking it was better not to subject her anymore to the bandits, and also because Tommy was still in rough shape. Sarah wasn't looking forward to going to Durham and reliving painful memories that she had there, but she would get it over with quickly.
Bill was already waiting for her when she arrived, and he and Halcomb stopped their conversation and looked over as a bandit who had been on guard duty brought her to them.
"You look awfully wired this morning," Bill commented, scratching the stubble on his face.
"I just want to get this done," Sarah said. "Are you ready to go?"
He nodded.
"Sure you don't want to take any men with you?" Halcomb asked.
"Not necessary," Sarah replied.
She pulled out a map and laid it out on a table made of milk crates. She produced a pen and started marking up the map as Bill and Halcomb watched.
"Tomorrow night, we attack," she said. She jabbed her finger at the location of the base on the map then circled it with the pen. "Once Bill and I gather the bandits from Durham, we're going to have two hundred or two-fifty, and we're going to position them here, here, and here." She marked each spot on the map around the base as she talked. "This is the ridge where the snipers are going to go. It's the only spot that's high enough to look into the base. We'll get into position and coordinate over walkie-talkies. Then we'll set off a distraction outside the front gate right here."
"What kind of distraction?" Halcomb asked.
"I'll take care of that. Just be ready for it. I want you and your men to join up with everyone from Axel's camp and go here. You'll be entering on the north side through the wall. Got that?"
"Yeah, I got it."
Sarah gave Halcomb the map and instructed him to take it to Axel's camp and tell them everything she had just told him. He agreed, and then she and Bill headed off for Durham.
It was a long journey, and they packed some food and water in addition to the rifles and handguns they had on them. As the morning went on, the sun got hotter and hotter, and it looked like the day was going to be stifling. They made small talk here and there, and after a while when Bill seemed more relaxed and his defenses had gone down, Sarah asked him about what the soldier she interrogated told her.
"So I heard you were with the Marines back in the day," she said.
He looked at her suspiciously. "Oh yeah? Where'd you hear that?"
"We all have our grapevines."
He nodded slowly and didn't say anything for a while. Silence hung in the air aside from a few birds chirping in the distance and the gentle rattling of their gear. Finally, he said, "Twenty years I was a Marine."
"Until the outbreak?"
"No, I took off a little before that."
"And that's when you started working with Glass?"
He didn't say anything.
"Or was that before?" Sarah continued.
"I knew Jack a long time," he said. "We served together."
"And Wayne too," she added. "You were all squadmates, weren't you?"
He continued walking as he measured his thoughts. "Something like that."
"So what happened?" she asked. "What did Glass have to do with the zombie virus? How did he go from serving his country to... to this?"
"You'll have to ask him when you see him."
"Cut the bullshit," Sarah said, angry. "There's something you're not telling me. Just come out with it. What the hell is the point of hiding anything now? Look at this place!" She motioned her arm around and pointed out all the abandoned and ruined buildings surrounding them as they cut through the edge of Raleigh.
Bill didn't say anything for a while, and there was a look in his eyes that seemed to betray his enigmatic, tough guy persona. But as always, he was hard to read, and Sarah couldn't quite pin it down.
"Why are you even a bandit?" she asked. "You don't seem quite like the others."
"If you knew half the things I've done, you wouldn't be saying that," he replied. "I didn't really come by this line of work, if you can call it that, by choice. It was something I just sort of fell into after the zombies came around. Means of survival, I guess. And there's nothing much to tell with the rest of it. Me, Wayne and Jack were in MARSOC together. That's special forces, by the way. We each worked our way up the ranks for a number of years into our careers, sort of separating as we went, but we kept in touch. A few years before the apocalypse, we sort of had a falling out, and we all got burned. Everyone except Wayne, of course. He came out smelling like roses, but you can't hold it against him. He just did what he thought was right. Course, that sure ain't the way Jack saw it. And me? I was just caught in the crossfire. But that's all ancient history, and really none of your business.
"I just want to get Wayne back safe and sound," he added. "After all he's done for me, I at least owe him that much." The faintest hint of a smile touched his lips and he kept walking, minding his surroundings for any surprises lurking around the various corners of the city.
"That's quite the story," Sarah said. "I'll have to ask Wayne the rest when we get him back."
Bill seemed a little miffed by this, but then that wry smile stretched across his face in full force.
Sarah stopped. She stared at what stood before them and a wretched feeling gripped her.
Bill stopped and looked at her. "What's the problem?"
She was at a loss for words at first, entranced by the memories that wreaked havoc across her brain and thrashed at her heart. There
it was. The thing that still haunted her dreams from time to time.
The bridge.
They had entered Durham from the southeast side and didn't see a single trace of the bandits or their wall surrounding most of the city. They swept their way across the entirety of it, running into a few normal zombies here or there, but otherwise passing without any trouble.
Now they had finally reached the bridge stretching across the river from inside Durham and the wall to the outside. Sarah knew from the almost half a year she spent in this city that the biggest congregation of bandits was on this bridge. The bridge that she and David tried to cross disguised as the scrounger she'd mugged. The one where she had been captured. The one where unspeakable things were done to her...
A shiver went up her spine and her whole body trembled. She shook it off and said, "I'm fine, it's nothing," then she continued and walked past Bill as he stood there for a moment and stared at her. He followed her and the two of them walked up the rest of the street to the foot of the bridge.
"Hold it!" someone yelled.
Halfway up the ramp, a bandit patrolled, toting an AK-47. He turned his body square to them and aimed the gun at their faces.
"Bill, is that you?" he asked. He held his hand up over his eyes to block out the early afternoon sun.
"Yeah, it's me," Bill called out.
"You old bastard!" the bandit said. "What brings you all the way over here?" He turned his gaze on Sarah. "Is that a chick? You bringing us a present?" And he grinned a wide, toothless smile.
Sarah and Bill started up the bridge and met the bandit halfway to the top.
The bandit looked at Sarah. "She's gimpy, Bill. She's only got one arm!"
A burning fire of hatred rested in Sarah's gut as she stared at the depraved cretin with cold eyes. But there was also a measure of fear in her that was stronger than usual.
"She's with me," Bill corrected. "We're here on business."
"Business?" the bandit asked. "What kind of business?"
Bill looked past him up toward the top of the bridge. "Who's the man in charge here now?"
The bandit let out a weak chuckle that sounded more like it came out of a weasel than a human. "I guess you heard what happened to Jericho, huh?" His eyes were glued to Sarah as he spoke, like there was something strange about her he couldn't quite place. "Oh shit," he said, "it's you! You're her!" He pointed his gun at her, confusion and excitement working all his muscles into a frenzy.
Zombie Apocalypse Series (Book 5): Scourge of Evil Page 11
