by J. F. Holmes
"Happy Halloween, honey!" she said, and gave me a great big bloody kiss.
"Stupid jerk," I said, and kissed her back.
Showdown at the Stillwater Trading Post
Billy “Bones” had a full belly and a plan. He finished gnawing on the roasted finger bones as they walked down the battered remains of the two lane country road. It ran next to the Hudson River, south of Glens Falls. In the years since the Apocalypse, the road had become full of small brush growing up through the cracks, and in one case, a bridge over a small stream had collapsed. Nothing Billy Bones and his reavers weren’t used to, though. They climbed down and back up, without slowing the steady pace, eating up the miles.
There were five of them, one less than yesterday. They had hit an isolated farmstead up by Greenwich, but lost a man in the process. Well, not lost, really. Gina had gone in first, since people were always more welcoming to a woman, and once they had opened the gate, Billy’s crew had smashed their way in, killing the farmer and raping his wife, before killing her, too. Bad thing though, in the rush, one of his own men, that moron Haynes, had tripped and broken his ankle. Not even a gunshot wound, but Billy had slit his man’s throat, and they roasted him slowly over an open fire.
Their next target lay ahead, a trading post in Stillwater. The farmer’s wife had told them about it before she died, describing in detail the amount of goods there. Who knows? If it was rich enough, maybe Billy and the guys would set up shop there themselves. Gotta stop wandering sometime, and looting was turning up slim pickings.
The first hint that something might be different was when they came to the end of the road and made a right. According to the map, a bridge spanned the Hudson into Stillwater. When they got there, though, there was a pretty damn effective stone barrier and gate combination across each end of the bridge. On an island in the middle was what looked like an honest to God bomb crater, centered on the remains of a house. The gate stood open, but two very heavily armed men sat inside, just in reach of a bar that would swing the heavy gate closed on a counter weight.
One of the men stood up and walked over, casually cradling a pump action shotgun with the barrel cut just short of the grip. “State your business,” said the man curtly, and Billy almost bristled at his tone.
Gina put her hand on his arm, though, and said, in her sweetest tone, “Just passing through, maybe doing some trading, sugar.”
Her southern drawl, which usually served to make a man lower his guard, did nothing to him, and the guard said, “If you have trade goods, let me see them.”
Billy scowled, but opened his pack to dump out some of the things they had looted from the farm the night before. Seeds, mostly, which were worth their weight in gold. The man grunted and nodded, and Billy noticed that his partner had never taken his eyes off them the whole time.
“Go ahead, Stillwater Trading Post, Hotel and Tavern is half a mile down on your left.” He also spoke into a radio that was clipped to his tactical vest, before sitting down in his chair, never stopping watching, even as Gina walked past him with her best strut.
“Those looked like some tough hombres, Billy,” said Louie Vitello. The Italian mumbled, because he had lost all his teeth to scurvy several years before. There was nothing wrong with his reflexes, though, and he was Billy’s fastest gunman. “Maybe we should skip this one.”
“Nah. You heard the farmer last night. Trading post is run by a woman and her gimp husband. How hard can it be? They probably put their best guys out front.” Truth was, Billy hadn’t like the cold look in the eyes of the guards. They reminded him of guys he had occasionally met in the army, Special Forces guys; the kind that would kill you as soon as look at you, and not lose a minute of sleep.
The trading post sat in the bottom floor of an old mill building, hard up against the river. A large sign hung out front, stating, “NO MORE THAN THREE PERSONS INSIDE AT ANY ONE TIME. DON’T LIKE IT, TOUGH SHIT.” Beneath were a list of prices drawn on a chalkboard, everything from ammo to a room for the night. Each was marked with a price in New Dollars, gold, or silver.
“Looks pretty rich, honey,” said Gina, and she proceeded to primp herself up, getting ready for her act inside. Gina was a great distraction, usually allowing Billy and the others that split second to get the drop on whomever they were robbing. He worried at a piece of human meat that was stuck in his teeth and spit it out, then told Jake and Dave to wait outside.
“Don’t do nothin till you get my signal, then come in guns blazin if you needs to. This could be a big score for us.”
The three of them, Billy, Gina and Louie, walked through the doorway. The first thing that shocked them was the electric lights shining from the ceiling. They hadn’t seen electricity for years, but Billy quickly figured out that they must have hydroelectric from the river.
Behind the counter stood a breathtakingly beautiful redhead woman wearing an eyepatch. She was about five four, and had a blazing blue eye that set off her pale skin. Billy stared. She was clean, something he wasn’t used to anymore, and my god, look at that rack! It bulked up the hoodie she was wearing. Billy made a mental note to keep her alive, for a while at least. She was just finishing up talking to another customer.
“Now, Joe, you got screwed. You should have tested these hand loads. You got about ten percent of the powder in here that you need to get a good muzzle velocity. We’re going to have to reload them, and you know what a pain in the ass that is. Now, seeing as you’re a good regular customer, I’ll take the whole box off you for, say,” and she typed some numbers in a laptop, “One ounce of gold.”
The man grimaced and said, “Jesus, Brit, you’re killing me.” But he accepted the gold she handed him, and the woman placed the box of 5.56 rounds down under the counter. Then she turned to Gina, and her eyes narrowed. Uh Oh, thought Billy. As he thought it, he noticed a short, dark skinned, Native American guy sitting on a stool at the other end of the counter. A wicked looking automatic shotgun lay across his knees as he seemed to read a book. He would have to go first.
“Can I help you?” said the woman, coldly.
Gina seemed taken aback. They were used to dealing with men in this tough world, and her chest and her ass had always been a good enough distraction. Next to the redhead’s clean good looks, though, she just looked kinda slutty. “Ah, why yes, we’d like to do some trading.”
“Sure, what have you got?”
Billy stepped forward and lifted the seed bag onto the counter. As he did so, his hand slid to the pistol hidden in his belt. “Seeds,” he grunted.
“You don’t look like farmers. Where did you get them?” she asked.
“Traded them with some folks up in Greenwich last night,” said Gina, trying to charm the woman, and Billy knew that was an immediate mistake. The more she laid it on, the harder the redhead looked.
“Did you all have anything to do with that column of smoke from up that way this morning?” Billy cursed inside his mind. He KNEW they shouldn’t have burned the place!
“TAKE …” Billy started to shout, but he was cut off by two loud CRACKS; the redhead’s pistol had come up with incredible speed from a drop holster on her leg, and next to him, Louie’s pistol fired into the counter as he sank bonelessly to the floor.
The shotgun boomed once, and Gina’s head disappeared in a splash of red gore, splattering Billy with blood, bone and brains. He managed to free his .25 automatic from his belt and fire one round at the redhead, center mass. She said OOOF! and staggered backwards. Billy was turning to fire at the Indian, who was shifting aim at him, when the barrel of a rifle smacked across his head. He saw stars and fell to the floor, and his gun was kicked away from him by the man who had been on his way out the door. Billy Bones stared upwards into the train tunnel muzzle of the twelve gauge shotgun.
“Ms. O'Neil,” crackled a radio “Are you OK? We have two down outside the front door.”
Billy was hauled roughly to his feet by the short but powerful Navajo, and pushed towards the door
, the shotgun barrel digging into his back. “Two down, one prisoner, everyone OK,” he heard her answer behind him, and the redhead followed them outside. She stood there, hoodie stripped off to reveal a bulky chest plate carrier. There was a small rip in the front where his bullet had hit.
Billy’s other two men lay exactly where they had stood, neat holes drilled through their heads, pools of blood slowly leaking in the dirt.
“Thanks for your help, Joe. I won’t forget, next time you come in to trade.” He nodded but kept his rifle aimed at Billy Bones.
A four wheeler pulled up and a man hopped out. Average height, but with a tough, worn look to his face, he limped over to the redhead and asked her if she was OK. When she answered yes, he came over to where Billy stood, still in shock and covered with Gina’s brains and blood.
“What’s your last four?” he asked, and out of reflex, Billy answered, “Three Nine Zero Three!” drilled into him during his time in the Army.
“Thought so. Deserter, too. Under the Federal Emergency Powers act, I sentence you to death for two counts of attempted murder and one count of Desertion. Red, get the rope.”
“Hey!” exclaimed Billy. “I want a lawyer! You can’t just hang me! What about my rights?”
“You pointed a gun at someone who could shoot back, so I guess you exercised your rights, just like they did. You lost. Hang him, Red.”
“Hey now, this ain’t right!” yelled Billy as he felt the rope loop around his neck and draw tight.
“They tried to trade us the same seeds we sold the McPhersons last week, too, Nick. I bet that smoke we saw this morning was probably their homestead.” The redhead stared at Billy as she spoke, fingering the small hole in her body armor.
“Now wait,” choked out Billy Bones. “It’s a hard world, and we was just trying to get by, same as everyone else.”
“Tough shit. It IS a hard world. Make your peace with God,” said the hard faced man, and the rope grew tight, choking off Billy’s screams. The last thing he saw was a tight smile on the redhead’s beautiful mouth, and a pained look on the hard faced man, almost as if he regretted what he was doing.
