Whatever fear had been bubbling in Jack’s core turned quickly to white-hot wrath when he heard what these monsters were saying about his wife and daughter. He now had no compunction at all about using the ax on them … but he was able to think rationally through the almost blinding wrath, and he realized that it would be very advantageous if he could keep one of them alive, for now.
The men stopped talking and started sneaking over toward the office. They walked right past Jack, passing so close that he could smell the foul reek coming from them; it seemed that these were not men for whom cleanliness was particularly important. Soon enough, their forms were illuminated by the light thrown out of the office, and that little bit of light was all Jack needed.
One man was carrying a shotgun, and the other had a pistol in his hand. Jack came rushing quickly but silently up behind them, and then with a swift, hard jab of his as he smacked the pistol out of one man’s hand, but even as the man was yelping out in pain and surprise, Jack had turned and swung it in a mighty, vicious blow at the other man’s head. The blade hit the side of his skull with a dull, wet thwack, accompanied by the sickening crunch of bone splintering. The man was dead before his body even hit the floor, but the weapon was now stuck in his head and yanked out of Jack’s hands.
The pistol had gone flying, but the other man had reacted quickly and now had a knife in his good hand. With a wordless snarl of aggression, he lunged at Jack, who dodged the blow and grabbed the man’s wrist. They fell to the ground, struggling furiously, wrestling for control of the knife.
“Kate!” Jack yelled out as he fought. “Kate, help me!”
The man was bigger and stronger than Jack, and he started punching Jack in the face with his injured hand. The adrenalin of the fight was canceling out whatever pain was throbbing in his hand, which had been broken by the ax. The blows were powerful and heavy, and Jack could do nothing to ward them off. Both his hands were on the man’s wrist, trying to control the knife. Flashes of light blazed briefly behind his eyes with each thumping punch than landed on his face or skull. He could soon taste blood in his mouth and felt its warmth washing over his face. He tried to kick and knee the man as they struggled, but his blows seemed to do nothing to his opponent, who fought him with even greater fury.
“I’m gon’ kill you, motherfucker, I’m gon’ beat your fuckin’ skull to a pulp!” the man snarled as he continued to rain down punches on Jack with his maimed hand.
At that point, Kate came running out of the office with the tomahawk in one hand and the pistol in her other. She saw what was happening and screamed.
“Hit him with the tomahawk!” Jack gasped as he fought for his life. “Hit the bastard!”
Kate knew she couldn’t risk taking a shot at the fighting men in case she hit her husband, so she charged in with the tomahawk. She slammed the blade into the man’s back, and he yelped with pain. He punched Jack again, though, so Kate hit him again, this time on the side of his face. She wasn’t strong enough to do any lethal damage, but it was enough to shatter the man’s cheekbone and open up a deep gash in his face. Finally, his attacks against Jack began to falter, and Jack was able to wriggle free of his grasp and yank the knife out of the man’s hands.
Kate raised the tomahawk to strike another blow, this one aimed at the back of the man’s skull.
“No!” Jack yelled, panting and gasping. “Don’t kill him, we’ve got him now, we’ve got him.” He kicked the man off him, then jumped on top of him and pressed the knife against his throat. “You gonna stop fighting now, asshole?” Jack growled. “You’d best do that, or my wife is gonna bury that ax in your skull.”
The man’s adrenaline was wearing off now, and he was beginning to feel the pain of his injuries. “Okay, okay,” he growled, “I surrender, okay. I surrender, dammit.”
“Wise choice,” Jack muttered. “A very wise choice on your part. Kate, get something out of that office, tape or something, that we can tie this jerk up with. He’s our ticket out of here … yeah, this idiot is our ticket out of this place.”
32
Kate found a few rolls of packing tape in the office, and they used them to tape the man to one of the office chairs, wrapping it around his arms and torso to lash him to the back of the chair and his lower legs to the chair legs. When they were done, there was no way the man would be going anywhere, no matter how big or strong he was.
Jack, whose face was bruised and bloody from the man’s punches, with one eye badly swollen and his nose bleeding, stared coldly at the prisoner. The man looked—and smelled—like a backwoods hillbilly. His long, blond hair was greasy and stinky, and what few teeth he had in his mouth were rotten and crooked. He had some poorly done tattoos on his pale, hairy arms, and his bulbous nose looked as if it had been broken a few times. Blood was oozing from the deep gash on his face that Kate had given him, but the fires of defiance and aggression continued to burn in the man’s pale-blue eyes.
“I’m gonna ask you a few questions,” Jack said coolly. “And I suggest you answer them truthfully.”
“And if I don’t? What you gon’ do then, city boy?” the man growled, smirking.
Jack shrugged. “Take you up to the attic where your buddies won’t find you and leave you there. You’ll die of thirst over the next few days, or maybe the cold will get you first. Either way, it won’t be pleasant. If you tell me the truth, though, I’ll give you a fighting chance to survive.”
The man said nothing; he simply scowled at Jack.
Jack took this as a sign to continue. “Who’s this Mark guy?” he asked. “And what are you people doing here in this town? I heard you talking to your dead buddy out there about the townsfolk you’ve killed or driven off.”
“Mark’s our leader,” the man admitted. “Mark McAllister. Remember that name because you’re gon’ be beggin’ Mark for your life before you die. We took this town when the power went out because … well, because we wanted to, an’ we could. With no damn cops or nothin’ around, why shouldn’t we? We got plenty of guns, way more than you realize, so why shouldn’t we take what we want, huh? First rule of nature, baby—only the strong survive. An’ when that thing happened that made all the electronic stuff die, Mark knew that this was our time … our time to rule. He been waitin’ for things to back like they were in the ol’ pioneer days. An’ now … now he got what he been waitin’ for. What we all been waitin’ for.”
Jack sighed and shook his head. “It didn’t take very long for people like you to come out of the woodwork, did it? I can’t say I’m surprised, though. But why did you attack us? Why me? Why my family? You’ve taken the town, all we wanted to do was pass through, yet you and your friends and this Mark guy, you tried to kill us.”
Jack thought he already knew the answer to this question, but he wanted to hear it from his enemy’s lips. The man’s eyes drifted over to Kate, and the filthy look he gave her, as well as the salacious smile his lips curled into, told Jack everything he needed to know about his enemies’ intentions without the man having to say a word.
“Mark likes teenage girls, and the rest a’ us guys, we need women,” the man simply said with a shrug, still leering his vile smile at Kate. “Simple as that, really. Nothin’ personal. We just got needs is all.” The look he gave her made her skin crawl, and it took every ounce of restraint she had not to slam the tomahawk into his skull. Jack, too, had to exercise enormous control, seeing the man look at his wife like that, but he knew that they had to keep the man alive and not injure him further if they were to escape the town with their lives.
“You’re disgusting,” Kate spat. “Disgusting and sick.”
“It’s how nature made us,” the man countered. “All critters need to breed; it’s just instinct is all.”
“You may be nothing more than an animal,” Jack growled, clenching his fists and fighting back the desire to slug the man in his face, “but we’re not like you and your scumbag friends. We still believe in basic human decency, the rule of law, and a
code of morals and ethics. But I guess that’s something a person like you just wouldn’t understand, is it?”
“Fuck you,” the man snarled.
Jack chuckled humorlessly and shook his head. “You’re very predictable, aren’t you? I was expecting a response like that, and you certainly didn’t disappoint me. Anyway, let’s try another question. How many people are there in this gang of yours?”
The man smiled mockingly. “Gee, wouldn’t you like to know? You think I’m stupid, asshole? I ain’t tellin’ you that.”
“I think we should chop his fingers off one by one until he talks,” Kate snarled, gripping the tomahawk tightly and glaring at the man. She hadn’t forgotten how he had looked at her and what he had said about her daughter.
“Believe me, I wouldn’t mind doing that. I wouldn’t mind it at all,” Jack muttered, “but we’re not going to stoop to their level.” He turned and locked a fierce stare into the man’s eyes. “I’m not going to torture you, no matter how despicable a person you are. Nobody deserves that. You can answer my questions, or you can refuse, but one way or another, you’re going to help us get out of here alive … because if you don’t, you’re going to die.”
The man’s face remained expressionless. Eventually, though, he smiled. “Whatever you say, man,” he said cryptically.
“All right,” Jack continued, “well, I know that there are a few of you around. And obviously, you all split up to look for us. If your friend Mark had known we were in here, he would have sent all of you in to get us.”
The man’s smile remained unwavering. He said nothing, and his silence confirmed to Jack that what he had just said was correct.
“So, you’re all spread out right now, looking for us. I’m guessing that means that the blizzard’s died down a little outside if you people are walking around outdoors.”
“Maybe it has, maybe it hasn’t,” the man grunted.
“We’ll find out soon enough,” Jack said. “All right, next question. Where are your snowmobiles? I know you’ve got some.”
The man chuckled and shook his head. “Now, why the fuck would I tell y’all that?”
“Maybe because you’d rather live than spend the next three or four days here dying of thirst. My father is a plumber in this town, you see. He worked in this town hall a lot, and he told me where all the little secret spaces between the walls are. You’re a big guy, but I bet we could cram you into one of those spaces,” Jack said, smiling savagely. “Your buddies would never find you. They wouldn’t hear your screams…”
“You wouldn’t do that.”
“I’ll do whatever it takes to ensure the survival of my family,” Jack said, and from the hard look in his eyes, the man could tell he meant every word he’d said.
“So what do you want,” the man muttered, sounding as if he was beginning to cave beneath the pressure. “You wanna kill Mark? You wanna kick us outta this town?”
“I just want to get my family out of here,” Jack said. Of course, he did want to kick these marauders out and punish them for everything they had done here, but he knew that he would have a higher chance of getting the man to cooperate if he kept his demands within reason.
“You ain’t gon’ try kill any more a’ us?” the man asked.
“No. We just want to get out and get as far away from this place as possible. You can have the town; we just want to leave.”
“An’ what do you want me to do?” the man grunted. “Take you to our snowmobiles an’ just fuckin’ hand ‘em over to ya?”
“We’ll take one, that’s all we need,” Jack said. “You help us do that, and I’ll let you walk away from this.”
“Mark won’t,” the man muttered. “If he found out I helped y’all, he’d rip my nuts off with a pair a’ rusty pliers. An’ I ain’t even jokin’, man. He already done that to a fella named Phil who tried to screw him over. Tore the motherfucker’s balls right off. I ain’t never seen a man scream like that … I’d rather die a’ thirst in here than end up on Mark’s bad side.”
Jack thought about that for a few moments. As disgusting and loathsome as this man was, Jack knew he would have to help him if he wanted to get himself and his family out of this situation alive. He also knew, of course, that he couldn’t trust this man as far as he could throw him … but he figured he could think up something that would end up being beneficial for both of them.
“Kate,” he eventually said, “go wake up Nick and Susan, and get everything packed and ready to go; we need to leave as soon as possible.”
“Right now?” she asked.
Jack nodded. “Yeah, right now.” Then he turned to the man. “And as for you, you’re going to help us get out of here, and I’m going to help you make sure that Mark doesn’t find out you did it.”
“How the hell you gon’ do that?” the man asked.
“I’ve got a plan,” Jack muttered. “Yeah, I’ve got a plan…”
33
“Are you sure this is gonna work, Dad?” Susan asked anxiously. “I’m scared.”
“And there’s no way we can trust that disgusting slimeball,” Kate said. “I don’t like this, Jack, I don’t like this at all.”
“We don’t have any other way to get out of here,” Jack said grimly. “And as despicable a specimen as he is, he knows he’ll die if he betrays us or tries to lead us into a trap. He knows I’ll kill him for the sake of protecting my family. And he knows if he does exactly what I told him to, Mark won’t know he helped us. I think that’s what he most afraid of, this Mark character punishing him. But he understands that if he does everything I told him to do, Mark won’t find out. He doesn’t want to help us, of course, but he knows his skin is on the line, and he’s a coward. The guy will do whatever it takes to save his own hide. And since, in this situation, that means helping us, I’m pretty sure he’ll do what I said and won’t try anything stupid.”
“All right,” Kate said, not sounding entirely convinced. “Well, I guess we’d better get going then, while it’s still dark out.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “I would have liked a few more hours of sleep, but that isn’t gonna happen. We have to go now.”
They woke up Susan and Nick. Susan was groggy for a while when she woke up but mostly rested. Nick, however, was in a zombie-like state. The infection in his wounded ear, combined with everything he had suffered through over the last day and night, meant that he was in a terrible state. He was caught in the grip of a potent fever, alternatively shivering violently and then breaking out into flushes of heat and gushing sweat, and muttering deliriously, staring all around him with a vacant look in his eyes. Susan wanted to cry when she saw him, and Jack simply shook his head grimly. He wasn’t sure the young man would make it through another night. He had to try, though. Jack had to try to get him to Arthur. If there was just one spark of hope left, that was enough to fight for.
When they were ready to go, they took the prisoner up to the town hall's bell tower. It was a place that could be seen from all over town, as it was one of the highest points in town. That was crucial to Jack’s plan—and the gamble he was taking, that the prisoner would not lead them into a trap or betray them.
Jack and Kate lifted the big man’s bound hands above his head while Susan kept a gun aimed squarely at his belly. Jack tied him to the chain which held the huge brass bell up, then used the fireman’s ax to smash out some of the slatted wood panels that enclosed the bell tower, exposing the bell—and the prisoner tied to it—to the outside world. It was still dark outside, but the wind had stopped blowing and the snow was no longer falling.
Once Jack had finished smashing out the wood paneling, he set down the gas lamp in front of the prisoner, so the man was illuminated and could be seen from anywhere in town.
“Remember,” Jack growled to the prisoner, who had duct tape over his mouth as a makeshift gag, “I can see you from anywhere in town, and if you’ve lied to us about where your snowmobile is, or you manage to get yourself free and you s
tart hollering to your buddies, I’m gonna put a bullet in your stomach. I’m a real good shot, and I promise you I can hit you exactly where I want to. I’ll make sure that bullet goes where I want it to go. Not in your head or chest, but your guts, so you die slowly and painfully. You understand? You can make all the noise you want when you hear us start that snowmobile, but if you try to screw us before we get to it, you have my word that you’ll die an agonizing death.”
The man mumbled a muffled agreement and nodded. Jack had taken the snowmobile keys out of the man’s pocket, and everyone was now ready to go. They scanned the town, able to see most of the snow-thick streets from this high vantage point and did not see any sign that Mark or any of his marauders were on the prowl. They had to sleep sometime, after all, and now, in the darkest hours before dawn, it appeared that Mark and his brutes had finally slunk off to whatever shadowy places they had slept in.
“Let’s go,” Jack said.
They went to one of the lowest balconies and jumped off it into the thick drifts of snow. Nick barely made the jump, plunging face-first into a massive pile of snow. Had the snow not been there to cushion the impact of his fall, he would surely have broken his neck. Jack and Susan helped the ill young man out of the snow to his feet, and Susan helped him by allowing him to lean on her as they walked. Despite her slim, petite appearance, she was a lot stronger than she appeared and had plenty of solid core strength from her dancing. And even though Nick outweighed her by at least fifty or sixty pounds, she was able to effectively support his weight as he lurched and staggered like an inebriated drunk.
The cold outside was fierce and intense, but since they were all wearing dry clothes, they were able to bear it with far less suffering than before, when they’d had to fight through the terrible cold with icy, wet clothes sapping their strength.
EMP Survival In A Powerless World | Book 22 | The Coldest Night Page 17
