No Room In Hell (Book 2): 400 Miles To Graceland

by William Schlichter

  The sher-chunk of scissors cutting fills her ears. Then the tug at her shirt and more snips shred her top. Cold air covers her now exposed skin. He unclasps the single hook of her bra. “I never understood why you girls with no discernible breasts bothered to invest in bras. Why spend forty dollars on something serving you no purpose?” He cuts the shoulder straps. He rolls his thumb and forefinger over the lacey cup. “You don’t even have a padded one to enhance your appeal to men who seek curvier women.”

  The cold steel slides against the curve of her rump as he dissects her jeans.

  He leaves her exposed. “I miss having my camera to document my work. You, my child, are a blank canvas. And I’m going to paint my masterpiece.” His hand touches the small of her back. Pinching his fingers together, he tugs at the tiny blonde hairs there. “First, I must cleanse you of imperfections. We’ll start with your hair. They so obstruct the female form.” He draws a scalpel blade over her skin leaving behind nothing but smooth shorn flesh.

  “You take such pride in your toes and yet you fail to groom the proper areas a woman should take pride in.” He draws the blade again. “Even if you only share yourself with your man you must keep yourself free of such blemishes.”

  Emily jerks against her bonds for the first time only because the razor edge of the scalpel sinks into the cleavage of her buttocks.

  Never, not even his first victim whom he took with unsteady hands, did he draw blood. The bright crimson mushroom bursts forth, speeding across her curves and down her legs to soak the bed.

  The blood will ruin his masterpiece. As he slaps a cloth over the gash, it sprays his side in a fountain of warm. It dribbles down his side—warm. So warm. So wet.

  Warm moist drops roll down Levin’s side. The deeper cut across his chest leaks. Excited with passion, his blood pumps fast enough to open the wound. His dream has fired more than his fantasy of killing the teen librarian.

  He has no way to hide what he detects rolling down his side. He’s done nothing wrong. What he did he dreamt of in his head. None of these people know of his secret pleasures. He was just resting and the wound opened. Maybe he stretched too far when hoeing the garden. Nothing to give away his plans to assume control of this camp and continue with his work.

  Levin lifts the blanket. Blood from the knife wound soaks through the bandage. His thumping heart rattles his chest. More bright red blood flushes through the bandage. He didn’t move fast enough to break open the wound. Danziger’s attack was slashing to enhance pain instead of stabbing for damage. Still, this deep gorge wound might have reached something vital. Bright red means a fresh blood flow. He slides toward the edge of the mattress, but the biting pain forces him to freeze.

  “Nurse.” No one has wired the beds with call buttons.

  “Nurse.” He raises his voice. Blood flows from under the bandage.

  “Nurse!”

  Kayla closes the door. “You don’t have to yell.”

  “Are you the only nurse?” Levin asks.

  “No. There are two doctors, five EMTs, and two more nurses. But with limited medical emergencies one of the other nurses works the fence line as a guard. She shoots better than most here. Did you call me in here to ask about the staff?”

  “No.” He flips off the sheet.

  Even in all her medical training she jumps at the growing puddle of blood. Pulling on latex gloves, she yells out the door for Dr. Sterling. She folds a clean towel, placing it over the wound and pressing down. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing. It’s just bleeding. I was near asleep. Other than some morning supervised therapy I’ve stayed in bed.”

  Dr. Sterling enters. “What is it?”

  “One of his wounds has broken open. I’m keeping pressure.”

  “What were you doing, Levin?” the doctor asks.

  “It just opened. I was just laying her. Rolled over to sleep.”

  “You may have twisted wrong and damaged what was already mended. You may have been up and around too soon.”

  Kayla peels back the blood-soaked bandages.”

  Dr. Sterling orders, “Get the suture kit. I’ll try and restitch this.”

  AMIE TAPS EMILY’S shoulder, motioning for her to follow from Ethan’s bedroom into the hall. Kayla warms the metal bell and chest piece in her palms before performing a cursory examination of the slumbering mass.

  “You can go back to the community center, get some food, there’s no need for you to wait here,” Amie whispers.

  “I have to know if he’s okay.” Emily leans against the door frame, never taking her eyes from the sleeping mass in the bed.

  “Emily, I can’t tell you what to do, but I’ll make sure he’s fine.”

  Emily glares at the crutches and the woman demanding to take her spot. “You don’t understand.” I love him.

  Amie knows many of the people in Acheron worship Ethan. He saved so many of them from death. Protected them from the biters. He has even risked himself to find some of their family. He’s earned reverence. He’s earned a peaceful rest.

  Ethan earned her respect when she drove him from Fort Wood and he killed Kade Bowlin. The base commander Colonel Travis trusted Ethan with his only daughter, Hannah. If the Colonel entrusted her safety to this man, he must—

  “You’ve never been outside the fence. I’ve never lived outside the fence. The time I was—”

  “I just led a team out,” Amie corrects her.

  “The gathering mission didn’t go so well for you.” Emily points at Amie’s bandaged foot.

  “You love him,” Amie realizes.

  “I would just die if something happened to him. And not in some ‘stupid teenage girl die’ way. Without him, this place will collapse. He keeps it together. Protects us.”

  “For a man to take that kind of beating…I don’t want to meet what would kill him,” Amie says.

  Kayla steps from Ethan’s bedroom flipping her stethoscope around her neck. “He seems fine. Did he wake up at all in the night?”

  “No. He never moved,” Emily reports.

  “He just needs to sleep and rest. The first sign of any blood in his stool and we move him to the medical ward. Until then, let him rest. We should change his sheets this afternoon.”

  “We’ll do it,” Amie volunteers.

  “You don’t need to put weight on your foot. Dr. Baker will be here after lunch.”

  “Why didn’t he come this morning? He doesn’t have a ward full of patients,” Emily asks.

  “He has three. Amie, you should be at the hospital with the other two.”

  “Three?”

  “Clay fell off the truck. Banged up pretty bad. The doctor is checking over all the team on your mission, so far only minor bruises and hearing issues. Scavenging teams need to dawn ear protection before a firefight.”

  “Then they won’t hear the biters,” Amie protests.

  “Catch 22, but if you lose your hearing you’ll only be able to smell them if you are upwind of their approach,” Kayla says.

  “How long were you outside?” Emily inquires.

  “Long enough. My boyfriend-slash-fuck boy—when he wasn’t being a verbally abusive asshole—surprised me with a getaway weekend to Vegas. I think he had aspirations of being married by Elvis.”

  “Sounds romantic,” Amie’s tone lacks approval.

  “His idea of romance was supersizing my French fries. Women should find reasons to date men besides their ability to perform like a stallion.”

  “I’ve dated one or two of those,” Amie admits.

  Emily refocuses the conversation since he has no similar experience to contribute. “How did you get from Vegas to here?”

  “I’m from here. We never made it to the airport. The morning it started, we were on our way and never even made it into the city. I tried to help people hurt in accidents on the highway.”

  “They locked down Fort Wood after accepting much of the City of Rolla and other communities inside. Then nothing,” Amie adds.
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  “Radio stayed on. Nothing too local. Stations that broadcast those pre-recorded music programs made it sound as if civilization was fine, but local news—nothing. Not even the Emergency Broadcast System. Ambulance, Fire, and Rescue never showed to assist at the accidents. The boyfriend. He threw me over his shoulder and carried me from the scene. I’d have been bit if he hadn’t. Maybe the only decent act he performed. Some of the hurt people died and didn’t reanimate. Then as if at a snap of fingers, others stood up.”

  Amie seems at a loss to imagine the terror of seeing a mangled body from a car accident get up. She nearly pissed herself the first time rotten corpses approached the base fence, but she knew they were out there. Kayla had no advanced notice as to what was happening.

  “After I got done hating him for preventing me from helping, we found an emergency rescue station set up in the basement of a church. It was about half full of people from the highway. The locals wanted to seal the doors to anyone not from the town, but by the time they determined it was the best course of action there were too many outsiders inside to enforce.”

  Amie hobbles to the chair in the hall. Her foot throbs from being suspended in the air.

  “Panic overtook these people quickly. First, they let too many inside.”

  “The same thing happened at Fort Wood.” It just took longer. Amie leans her crutches against the wall.

  “People naturally want to help each other,” Emily says.

  “Not anymore. The survivors now are those who are willing to forgo their humanity and do whatever to sustain living,” Kayla says.

  “We still help people,” Emily says. “Ethan still saves people.”

  “Does he?” Kayla glances at both women. “You’ve both seen him kill.”

  “To protect—”

  “To protect his own agenda,” Kayla cuts Emily off. “About two months after judgment day, I was with a new group. Since I was a nurse, the other six kept me relatively safe. We encounter Ethan loading supplies into a truck. Now the leader of our group was the ‘take what he wanted’ type. Me having medical skills, he restrained himself. He wanted Ethan’s truck, gear, and the shiny gun on his hip.”

  Emily understands the attraction the silver magnum has for people. People watch the hand cannon over what Ethan does with his fingers. She hopes none of his speed reduces once he heals.

  “I’ve never seen a man move so fast. It wasn’t like a quick draw in a Western, but more like the speedy superhero guy. Ethan didn’t ask, or question, or give warning. He just…man. The guy told Ethan to drop his gear and step away. Ethan threw back his coat and two thunderclaps boomed.”

  “He did the same with the four men after the assault on me,” Emily says.

  Kade Bowlin needed to die. The first man Amie witnessed Ethan kill embodied evil. Nothing in either story changes my mind about a man who kills to defend himself or his surrogate family.

  “Ethan then made us an offer we couldn’t refuse. He had us discard our guns. We had him outnumbered and none of us wanted to test his speed, especially since he had a second gun to draw.”

  “He brought you back here.”

  “He had electricity and part of the premotor fence complete around this farmhouse. The five of us decided to stay and follow his rules. They are all still alive here and working.”

  “Six. You said your group had six and you, so with the leader dead you were six.”

  “On the way back, one in the group—which I had no attachment to outside of being safe—questioned Ethan and his ability to lead. One member of our group had been a carpenter. So, Ethan protected him and me, but this other guy, was some city council insurance salesman. He got a little too big for his britches and Ethan just shot him.”

  “In cold blood?”

  “It wasn’t direct self-defense,” Kayla says.

  “As I’ve seen it, if the death of a few sustains the rest of us then that expands the definition of self-defense,” Amie says.

  “Ethan’s important. You’ve just never seen him as I have. He dishes out punishment like some medieval king,” Kayla flips her right wrist over to glance at her watch. “We might as well all three change the sheets.

  Amie draws the quilt off Ethan’s slumbering frame. She sniffs the moist sheet underneath. It smells of sweat, not urine.

  Kayla unhooks the fitted sheet, shoving it up against Ethan’s abdomen, careful not to disturb him as he sleeps.

  Emily clamps her hand over her mouth to muffle the anguished cry of shock. So much of Ethan’s skin is purple or darkening purple whelps. She finds it difficult to locate a spot to place her palms in order to avoid discomfort when she rolls him enough to allow Kayla to yank out the sheet.

  Between the three of them they finally get the bed stripped of all linens.

  Amie takes a pillowcase and lays it over his exposed crotch.

  “You embarrassed?” Emily teases.

  “You’re fifteen and don’t need to see a grown man nude,” she whispers.

  “I’ve seen it before. We came in together. I think that social convention went out the window with the necessity to check everyone entering the compound for bites.”

  “Shhhh!” Kayla hisses.

  “Despite segregation of male and female soldiers on base, isn’t modesty lost on the battlefield?” Emily adds.

  Amie bats the dirty bed clothes toward the hallway door with a crutch. Even if her grandmother said she blossomed into womanhood at age fifteen she would have peed herself to encounter a naked man then.

  Emily’s experience with boys was limited before the world fell apart and as far as Amie knows it has not changed since Ethan saved her from a brutal attack, he’s older—not too old—and experienced. He interacts with Emily and all the women in the camp like a father figure. Three things instantly send many teen girls into a flaming infatuation. Not to mention, he’s ruggedly handsome for a white boy.

  “Most girls don’t want to see it,” Amie says.

  Kayla nods in agreement as she tucks in a clean sheet over the corner.

  “But men kill each other to peek at what women have between their legs,” Emily says.

  “Men are wired that way. Women instinctively look for a man that will be a good protector. His broad shoulders should draw your attention more than anything. He will give you strong healthy children.” Kayla checks the IV. Irritated with their lack of assistance, she asks, “What did you want to do before you enlisted?”

  “A psychologist, but my family made too much money for me to go to college without a lot of loans. Just because people make a dollar more than the cutoff line for income doesn’t mean they afford more shit. I had a couple of semesters in before I enlisted. I put in for medic since several of my classes were along those lines. I didn’t get much in the way of training before the biters happened.”

  “You were on the military base for nine months. Why didn’t you get your training?”

  “Training priority became shooting and a lot more guard duty.” Amie shifts on her crutches.

  Kayla moves like a linebacker, pushing her shoulder against him to roll Ethan enough to slide the clean sheet under him. She hates changing the linen so frequently but the farm house is not as sterile as the hospital room.

  He barks a small grunt.

  Emily slaps Kayla’s arm. “Don’t hurt him.”

  “I’m not. Why don’t you help?” Kayla snaps.

  Emily reaches under him, grasping the sheet. “He feels weird.”

  “What do you mean?” Kayla doubts the girl is anything but scared. She doesn’t want to miss anything meaningful to a diagnosis.

  “His skin feels different.”

  Amie speculates on how Emily knows. She just didn’t figure on him being the kind of man to take advantage of such a helpless young girl. As the respect she had for him wanes, she has to ask, “How do you know what his skin feels like?”

  Emily’s pale skin flushes red.

  “Have you slept with him?” Kayla asks.
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br />   “No,” immediately pops out of her mouth.

  “Do you want to?” Amie asks, teasing.

  Emily turns beet red before lowering her head to hide her embarrassment. “He says I’m too young.”

  Amie respect returns. “How does he feel different?”

  “He feels so dry. You know, like he needs to moisturize his skin.”

  “He’s dehydrated. He needs more fluids,” Kayla says.

  IT’S NOT MUCH of a holding cell. Danziger scans the elementary classroom. Levin is somewhere in this compound, and if the rest of their internal security is this lax he’s freely moving around. “I’m telling you I must meet your leader.”

  “He’s unavailable,” Hal says.

  “I know, I brought him back to you. I need to talk to whoever’s in charge when he travels outside your compound.”

  “You spoke to Wanikiya. They’re dealing with things and…stuff. You just got to wait.”

  Those were the military trucks. These people rescued Levin. Danziger knows he’ll appear a stark raving mad lunatic. And I cut up Levin. From cop eyes, I’ll appear to be the villain. I hurt him. Not enough. The cuts were deep but not deep enough. I wanted him to suffer. Suffer how I’ve suffered when he took my little girl. I get the chance again—I’ll put a bullet in his brain.

  Swift.

  Quick.

  Clean.

  Over.

  If I find him, I’ll just take a gun from one of the guards. They all carry one. They’ll shoot me, but Levin will be gone, Danziger reflects. Must qualify to carry, they said. Means everyone in this camp has been trained to shoot and hit a target. If I take a gun by force, I may not get the chance to shoot Levin. Better to explain to Ethan. Saving his life should give me some credibility. If he wakes. No human should survive such a beating. Inside, he should have every organ turned to mush. He may not be pissing blood but he should be. He should be dead but he seems to be some god damn real life Captain America. They have hospital equipment here, but it could take weeks for him to wake. Danziger shakes his head. Weeks is too long for him to be coherent. Levin will have killed a blonde teen by then. I saw one when they brought me into the building. And I bet there are a few more quartered here. I won’t let another girl die. It won’t take Levin long before he must quench his hunger.