Justice

by Gillian Zane

  Zach threw a tear gas canister through the door. From the plans Lex had drawn, this door opened to a long corridor that ascended upward into the main room. The corridor was surrounded by high walls and had a steep grade. The bikers would be able to fire down on us, it could be deadly.

  Gun shots erupted again, but I heard a few distinctive coughs and gags coming from inside the room. Zach followed up the tear gas with a flash bang. With our goggles and masks in place we were immune to it. We entered the building ready to shoot anything that moved.

  Everything slowed down as we crossed the threshold. The room was filled with smoke, a few bikers were in the corridor coughing, their eyes tearing up from the gas, but they still raised their weapons as we ascended into the building. I made sure to flank Alexis who insisted on going in with all of us. She and Duke were the only non-military or police allowed on the frontline. Duke would be coming in with Ito from the West side of the complex, so all I had to worry about was Lex.

  The place was dark and rancid. I fired at the first biker I saw, his hand was raised to fire. He fell and I rushed to his side and planted one in his forehead. Just in case.

  The next biker I found took one look at me, dropped his weapon and raised his hands into the air.

  “I give up!” he choked out. His face was aflame and snot poured out of his nose. I pushed him to his knees, keeping my gun trained on him as I pulled out zip ties and restrained him at the wrists and ankles. Poche had a large stock of the double restraint zip ties that the MPs liked to use. It made my job much easier.

  Once I had him on his side and fully restrained, I patted him down, taking all of his weapons and depositing them in my pockets. When I was satisfied he was harmless, I stood up, paranoid over how exposed I had been during this takedown. This could have been a trap.

  “You can’t leave me like this,” he called as I stepped over him.

  “Fuck you,” I called back.

  Four more dead bikers lay in my path as I pushed deeper into the dark room. I switched the torch on my rifle on; the room was dark and filled with smoke. The bikers had cut all the lights to give them the advantage.

  Something hit me hard from the side when I crested the landing into the main room. A biker had been hiding behind some shelving. He was a big fucker and I went down under him. He rose up, a knife in his hand, and attacked. I had to drop my M4. It clattered across the floor and the light went out suddenly, plunging us into darkness. I used my small size to my advantage, and hit him hard with my forearm. It connected with his nose and there was the nice sound of crunching cartilage.

  He grunted and fell to the side slightly, enough that I could bring my knee up to my chest, more space between our bodies was a good thing. I dragged my combat boot down his leg and then brought it up hard into his dick. He screamed like a fucking girl and I got out from under him. I drew and fired in one quick motion. I hit him in the leg. Enough to hurt, but not to take him down.

  I fired and hit him again in the shoulder, and this time he fell back. I scrambled to my feet and took him out with a shot to the head. I didn’t see my M4 anywhere, so I went on without it. I couldn’t waste time. I had plenty of clips for my nine, but I was now without a light.

  I saw another light in the distance and followed it. When I caught up to it, I saw it was Lex. She was standing over a biker and kicking the shit out of him.

  “Where the fuck is Junior? He hiding in the back like the fucking pussy he is?” she yelled.

  “Lex,” I said and I touched her arm. She spun on me, and her eyes were crazy in the light of her torch, her cheeks flushed from the adrenaline. “Down, girl,” I said quietly.

  “Fuck you, you cunt bitch,” the man at our feet spat and surged to his feet. He pulled a gun from his boot. Lex must not have patted him down. I fired and took him out before he could use his weapon. He didn’t have his hands up, or his face planted at my feet. Oops.

  “I need to find Junior,” she said to me.

  “We’ll find him, come on.” I pulled at Alexis and we went deeper into the shit. I smelled smoke. Something was burning and that wasn’t good. If they burned this place to the ground while we were in it, we’d all be fucked.

  EIGHTEEN | Do or Die

  It sounded like a war zone outside. Gun fire was a constant background noise. A lot of it was coming from the parking lot I needed to get these kids to cross. I was torn. We couldn’t stay here, but we couldn’t leave.

  If we left the safety of this room, we ran the risk of running into whoever was firing on the place, or one of the bikers who would view our leaving as treason.

  I made a split decision and pushed the door wide. Poking my head out, I saw nothing in the parking lot. It was time to go.

  “Let’s get out of here.” I held the door open and motioned for the older kids to go out first.

  “Across the lot to the big yellow house. Fast, now,” I said in a low voice, but loud enough so all the kids could hear.

  “Tina, come here.” She was the littlest, so I moved my pack in front of me and bent down so she could climb onto my back. “Hold on to my straps. I can’t hold on to you, I’ll need my hands free,” I said.

  It was a do or die situation. Time to get the hell out of here.

  NINETEEN | Being Civilized

  Alexis and I took out four more targets and I had two more in zip ties and on the floor in a matter of minutes. I left the bikers that surrendered on the filthy floor in the dark, not caring about their fate. They deserved what they got, even if they did give up, there was no question about it. We had the back and front entrances guarded, this was probably the safest place for them.

  “Area one is clear,” Blake’s voice came over the com.

  “What about two?” Alexis asked, referring to the former coffee shop and the leader’s room which was located at the west side of the big building.

  “We’re going in now,” Zach answered. Alexis took off running across the room, skidding to a stop when she neared a group of shelving set up for the sleeping berths.

  “The main area is right around this berth,” she said in a whisper to me as I approached. We both held our guns tight to our bodies and rounded the corner, on alert. Zach and Blake were already there with another trooper I didn’t recognize. Blake motioned for us to stay back, but Alexis wasn’t having any of it. She shook her head and pointed at the door to the room that was once an employee only area. It was surrounded by a high counter littered with alcohol bottles and beer cans.

  “He’s gotta be in there,” she whispered over the com. “I’m going in there to get the scumbag.”

  Blake looked pissed and he held his hand up for her to wait and get down. We used the counter as cover and crept closer to the room.

  “I’m going in first,” Blake whispered and I could see Lex’s shoulders tighten in frustration. I think she really wanted to go in there guns blazing, but Blake was trained for this and she wasn’t. No matter how much life experience Lex had clocked in her time in this post-Z world it wouldn’t come close to what Blake and Zach had racked in their time in the Sandpit.

  The room had three large glass panels covered with thick make-shift curtains along the front of the room. Blake moved to the side of the windows and motioned for Zach to take the other side. Lex and I held back, we would be needed soon.

  Blake raised his weapon and fired two shots into the glass window. The safety glass came tinkling down to the floor in a crunchy waterfall of tiny shards. We went low after Blake’s shot, taking cover as a barrage of shots fired from inside the room.

  There was someone in there hiding. Score.

  Zach stood and fired into the room again, not seeing a target, only firing for effect.

  “Come out now, you’re surrounded. We can stay here all day, can you?” Blake called.

  “Fuck you!” a gravelly voice shouted from inside the room.

  “Oh c’mon, is that you, Junior? Don’t you want to come out and play with me.” Alexis stood and I grabbed he
r leg to pull her down again. Crazy girl!

  “I knew you’d be back, ya slut. Should have taken you from the old man and fucked you properly. Then none of this shit would be going down,” he called, and I could hear the smile in his voice. The fucker was enjoying this.

  Blake wasn’t.

  Blake threw a flash bang into the room and everything exploded in light and sound. The men were quick. They didn’t even bother with the stairs, they jumped up the three feet through the broken glass and were in the room hollering at Junior before I had moved from my position.

  Lex and I followed. She rushed in while I covered our backs.

  Blake and Zach were screaming at a man, who was pushed into a corner. He was gripping a revolver in shaking hands. He pointed it at Zach and Blake but his eyes were blinking rapidly and tearing. He probably couldn’t see much.

  “Put the fucking gun down!” Blake screamed.

  “Shoot the motherfucker!” Lex screamed.

  The gun dropped to the man’s feet and Lex surged forward with her gun cocked and ready. I grabbed for her and she violently shrugged me off, but it aided in slowing her down.

  “Lex, stand down!” I yelled at her. She turned, her shoulders slumped, and she gave me an apologetic look.

  Zach was already on the man, pushing him to his stomach and holding his M4 to the man’s head.

  “Are you the leader, the one called Junior?” Zach asked, his voice even and restrained.

  “Fuck you,” the man said, his voice muffled from being pressed into the dirty carpet.

  “That’s him,” Lex said, walking closer to the man. “How’d ya like the present I left you when I escaped, Junior? Did your daddy turn? It’s something I’ve been wondering since Z started. Do all the dead turn, or do you have to be bitten? What happened, Junior? Was daddy a zombie when you found the mess I left you?”

  “My father was weak, an addict, I should have taken over a long time ago. I would have fucked you so hard you wouldn’t have been able to move, much less escape.”

  Zach kicked him in the ribs and he hissed out a muffled cry. He must want to die. Or he was that cocky. I found my finger moving to my trigger. I shouldn’t have stopped Lex.

  Lex motioned for Zach to step away. I was surprised when he stepped back to the wall. Alexis walked to Junior and stuck a foot under him. She turned him over with a hard kick of her booted foot. When he was on his back and looking up at her, she stepped forward and pressed down on his stomach with her foot, making him wince.

  “I knew you wanted more,” he smiled, his lips bloody from the takedown.

  “I did come back for more, but this time you’ll be the one on the bottom.” She kicked out, a hard slam into his ribs. Junior gasped and curled into a fetal position.

  “I can’t wait, cunt,” he managed to spit out.

  I looked up in time to see Zach raising his weapon. He cocked it, but Blake yelled something to stop him. Zach looked at his friend but continued to raise his gun.

  I wanted this worthless piece of shit eradicated from the planet too, but Poche wanted this one in particular left alive and technically he was on his back, at our feet. Shooting a man, unarmed and broken at our feet, wasn’t how you did things. Our world might be shit, this guy might be the worst of the worst, but, we had a plan and that plan was to handle this civilized, like. If they surrendered, if they were down, we were taking them prisoner.

  You didn’t shoot helpless men.

  Blake surged across the room and gripped Zach’s wrist. He was too slow, though. The gun fired and the bullet slammed into the floor only a few feet from Junior. In this tiny room, the explosion from the gun was deafening. My ears began to ring as the last of the sound faded away.

  The whole world had slowed down again. The flickering of one lantern in the corner was our only light besides the flashlights on the ends of some of our rifles. Blake held Zach back, his arms around him, saying something to him that I couldn’t make out because my ears were still ringing with the echoes of the shot. Zach’s eyes were wide and crazed and focused on the man on the floor. The gun still gripped in his hand.

  Junior was a nothing of a man. He lay there, on his back, bloody, but he still had a smile on his face. The motherfucker was enjoying this. This punk kid, dressed up like a biker, dirty and unkept, had caused quite a shitstorm.

  Lex pushed between the two men and placed her hands on Zach’s face to make him focus on her. Blake was still talking Zach down as Zach looked from Lex to Blake and back again. Lex managed to free the gun from Zach’s tight grip and then pulled him into a tight embrace.

  I looked at the man who lay on his back between us, the cause of all this drama. He didn’t look like much. How had someone like this done so much damage? In any other situation he would be your average guy. There was something wrong with him, though, something off. In the midst of this craziness he lay there, staring up at all of us as if he didn’t have a care in the world, as if we were entertainment. He looked back and forth between us like this was just another day for him.

  When he began to laugh, drawing the attention of the trio still fighting for control in the corner, I had had enough. I bent down, grabbed him by his shirt and punched him hard in the face. He slumped, unconscious in my grip. I let him fall to the floor, not caring about his head slamming into the hard linoleum. That solved that problem.

  TWENTY | AWOL Kiddies

  My com buzzed with static and I was surprised I could hear it since there was still a low ringing in my ears.

  “We have area three secured. The women are being evacuated,” a voice I didn’t recognize came over our communication.

  “Ito, check in area five?” Poche’s voice asked.

  “Area now secured, sir. We’re moving in on area four. Male civilians have not been evacuated,” Ito replied after a short pause.

  I walked out of the small room, leaving Blake, Zach and Alexis alone to calm down. I could relate to what Lex was going through. She had never told me what had happened here, but the fucker on the floor had made it pretty clear.

  There was no worse feeling.

  The feeling of being helpless. Someone stronger having control over you, controlling you in every way, even sexually, was soul-shattering. Especially if that person had no concern about your well-being.

  I had decided a long time ago that it would never happen to me, again. If you could think it, I had experienced it when I was neck deep in the foster care system. Nightmare after nightmare, until I had finally had enough and learned how to defend myself. It pained me that Lex had experienced this. But she was strong, she wouldn’t let it rip her apart. And it helped that she had killed one of her abusers and had the other one at her feet. I never had that satisfaction.

  “I need a status on area four,” Poche’s voice again in my ear.

  “Area four is deserted, sir, the children are gone,” Murphey answered. She must have broken off from the main area and joined up with Ito.

  “What do you mean, gone?” Poche asked.

  “Gone. No one is here. Back door is open.” I could hear the exasperation in Murphey’s voice.

  “Shit, we need to find them. Someone could have taken them, or they’re out there alone. I need trackers on them, stat,” Poche responded, his professional radio voice gone.

  “Murphey, I’ll meet you in the back lot, we’ll find them,” I spoke into the com.

  “Are y’all good in here?” I asked as the trio came out of the small room, Zach dragging Junior behind him.

  “Yeah, we’re gonna round up all the prisoners and secure them,” Blake said, placing his gun down on the counter and digging out a bigger torch from his pack.