The Abandon Series | Book 1 | These Times of Abandon

by Schow, Ryan

  Back in Melbourne, they’d collected every last gun brought to the fight from the now-dead members of the Hayseed Rebellion. The guns were stacked on the back seat of the Suburban.

  “They won’t be enough to hold these guys back, which is why we need the gasoline,” Hudson said. “But we’ll all be armed. Especially you, Kenley. You pick the rifle you feel best with since you’re going to be shooting the jerry cans.

  “So again,” Kenley pressed, “what will you be doing during all of this?”

  “I told you I’m going to get this thing started, which means I need to open the only functional garage door, from the inside.”

  “My garage?” Leighton asked. “The ladder-truck garage?”

  He shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “I’ll be heading through the door that Kenley’s guarding.”

  “How are you going to get out?” Kenley asked.

  “Don’t worry about me. I have it all planned.”

  “So once you open the garage bay—” Leighton started to ask.

  “Trust me,” he laughed, “when I get this party started, you won’t be wondering what I’m doing, how I did it, or if I’m still alive. Just remember, if anyone gets out, they get shot dead. Got it?”

  “Got it,” both women said together.

  “This plan requires success from all of us.”

  “We said we got it,” Leighton said.

  Trying to stress the point without overkill, even though he was just about there, Hudson said, “We could die here if we do this wrong.”

  “You’re already dead, you just haven’t hit the ground yet,” Leighton said. “I guess it’s the same with me.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Kenley said.

  “Good,” he said, revving himself up inside, “let’s go start some fires.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Leighton McDaniel

  Leighton carried her two three-gallon gas cans around the front of the station, sat them down, then went back for her pick of guns. Hudson was sliding his own pair of three-gallon gas cans under the back end of the Suburban. Both cans were right next to each other, and both had two long rags doused in gasoline intertwined for a single-source igniting point.

  Standing over him, she said, “The second you light that, if you don’t book it hard, you’re going to be a crispy critter.”

  No kidding, he said when he slid out from under the SUV. She was surprised by how well he’d accommodated her hearing issue. He seemed…domesticated, but in a good way.

  He got up and walked around the back of the Chevy, pulled two five-gallon jugs out of the Suburban, then lugged them out of what looked like the immediate “danger zone.”

  Returning to the SUV, flicking the lighter in his face so she could see his lips, he said, Good thing for me, I’m in decent shape. Bad thing was, I was a boxer, not a sprinter.

  “Good luck,” she whispered, staying on his six.

  Looking up, a bright, three-quarter moon, had broken through the clouds. Turning to her, he said, Don’t let them see you.

  “At least it’s not raining,” she said before grabbing the shotgun and the Glock 19 she took off one of the dirtbags back in Melbourne.

  She had the Glock 43 holstered at her side, half the mag filled with 9 mm rounds she’d scrounged up back in Melbourne. She felt better knowing she wouldn’t need to be surgical. Not with the 19 or the 43. The shotgun would hopefully do the trick right off the bat, but the 19 and the 43 were just-in-case weapons. As in, just in case a couple of those rats made it through the fire and came after her.

  When she circled around the side of the station, Leighton glanced down the small alley in between the empty bays and the main house. In the field behind the fire station, the fires of a few burning houses were dwindling down, the flickering light bathing the landscape in a dull orange hue.

  Kenley reached the top of the stairs, then set the two jerry cans down in front of the door. When she was finished, she scaled the deck’s railing, then hopped onto the ladder-truck garage’s roof. Now that Kenley was in position, she was waiting on Hudson.

  Seconds later, Hudson appeared, empty-handed. Without a word, he bounded up the stairs, sidestepped the jerry cans, then opened the door and slipped inside.

  Leighton took a deep breath, then checked her weapons and waited.

  Minutes passed like hours, then one of the guys lifted the garage door in front of her. He stepped out to take a leak, doing so on the side of the garage. Breathless, petrified, she tried to sneak into the shadows, but there were no shadows to be found. If she moved at all, he’d see her. She did all she could do right then, which was freeze. As he was heading back inside, he stopped, turned to her, and paused. She was a skinny girl standing in the middle of the driveway next to two gas cans with a shotgun at her side. She did the only thing she knew to do. She waved at him. He waved back, then went back inside and shut the garage door.

  “What the heck was that?” she asked, barely able to breathe.

  She suddenly became very scared. She had been seen. And Hudson…what was he doing? If the late-night urinater came back out, if he alerted others inside, she was dead.

  They were all dead.

  Wasting no time, she humped the gas over to the alleyway then went back for the shotgun.

  From the side of the ladder truck garage, standing in the deep shadows for cover, she watched the front of the building, every minute an eternity as she waited for Hudson.

  When the explosions didn’t happen as she expected and no one came out of the ladder-truck garage, she snuck up the stairs and looked at Kenley. The ginger was set up on the roof with the rifle aimed at the jerry can and a “what gives?” look.

  Leighton shrugged her shoulders like she didn’t know. Kenley motioned for her to go back downstairs, but she was too anxious. And now she was being stupid. She couldn’t hear, so even Bigfoot could sneak up on her and she would never be the wiser.

  Having returned to her designated spot, she thought, If Hudson screws this up, Kenley and I will have to do it ourselves. It was a noble thought. But could they pull off a three-man job with only two women and a lot of gas?

  Probably not.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Hudson Croft

  The second he opened the station door, Hudson smelled them. Body odor mixed with the stink of cigarette smoke, a bit of blood, and bad breath. He wanted to hold his nose, but he didn’t. Instead, he let his eyes adjust to the low light of a few candles and a single oil lamp.

  “Idiots,” he thought to himself.

  Weaving in and around the slumbering bodies, careful where he stepped, he tried not to wake anyone up. Eyes creaked open anyway, guys pulled their legs in, a few sat up to let him walk by.

  It was not lost on him that each of these bodies was a boy, a man, a human. Each of these bodies was a son, a father, someone’s former pride and joy. Soon they’d be bones in piles of ash. Before that, after him, these guys would stand up screaming, the fire consuming them and everything around them, the flames eating the air, devouring clothes, hair, skin. They’d boil to death before they died, and when they died, it would be horribly painful, and they would die screaming.

  His heart ached at the thought of what he was about to do until he remembered who these people were, how they destroyed so many lives, how they raped, pillaged, and killed. These aren’t people, he told himself. These are demons wrapped in human skin pretending to be alive. Everyone knew good, decent human beings didn’t riot, loot, and destroy the way these creatures were looting, rioting, and destroying. Good people did not froth at the mouth with hatred and a need to unleash upon the world ugliness, filth, and paralyzing fear.

  So Hudson walked through the slumbering masses, and then he made his way downstairs to the gigantic five-bay garage that housed a single, sad firetruck and the rest of the sleeping deviants.

  From wall to wall, these napping terrorists were stretched out on the ground beneath stolen blankets and other people’
s pillows. In their sleep, they would be dreaming of sheep, but from that same undeserved slumber, they would soon realize their actions had consequences, and the consequences of spreading terror were trial by fire, a trial where they were all guilty and their last words were nothing more than a deafening, collective scream.

  “What are you doing?” someone whispered. He spotted a man nearby. He was sitting in a chair next to a couple of candles. The candlelight showed his face, his body, and a book on his lap.

  “I’m looking for a place to sleep,” Hudson whispered.

  The reader waved Hudson over, then motioned for him to move closer, almost like he didn’t want to wake anyone up. But with the chorus of snoring, it was amazing anyone could sleep. Up close, he saw acne on this man’s skin, and how his incisor was chipped, the edges around it graying, or just dancing in shadow.

  “Why are you not asleep?” he asked.

  “Because I don’t have a place to lay down,” Hudson answered.

  Truthfully, he needed to get to the one roll-up door the HR hadn’t secured from the inside. And this guy with rotten-meat breath and a case of over-animated curiosity was keeping him from it. Hudson glanced down and in the man’s hands was a paperback book. It was closed over his thumb to hold his place. Squinting in the low light, Hudson read the title: Proven Tactics for Activists.

  “There’s a place you can lay down over there,” the guy said, pointing away from the large roll-up door Hudson was trying to get to.

  “Before I go, I have a question,” Hudson whispered. He leaned his head farther forward, prompting the man to do the same.

  When this twisted, sad excuse for a terrorist leaned his way, Hudson drove the blade up into his throat, cupped his mouth, then waited for death to come for him, to whisk him away from the world of maggots and fake revolutionaries.

  “God is going to hate you right down to your polluted soul,” he whispered into the man’s ear. “Time to atone for your many sins.”

  The weight of the man shifted forward, the body farting out the soul. He eased the blade out of the wound, and when the tip slid out, blood leaked like a faucet all over the book, which was largely symbolic of the mission these social rejects were on.

  Looking around, making sure no one saw what he had just done, Hudson stood in the middle of these creatures, holding back visions of his demise. But no one stirred and the snoring didn’t stop. Around him, only a few guys moved and that was just to change sleeping positions.

  He gently let go of the man’s face, took the bloodstained book from him, then quietly laid both him and the book down as Hudson continued toward his destination.

  Moving through the chorus of snoring, he reached the roll-up door. Slowly shaking his head like he couldn’t believe what he was about to do, he took one last breath, knowing he was about to wake up a lot of bad people.

  When he grabbed hold of the door, he prayed he could move fast enough, especially since at least twelve guys were sleeping only a few feet away.

  Letting out his air, he grabbed the bottom of the door and stood up. The door’s metal wheels rolled up the metal slide, sounding like a bullhorn in the night. The instant uproar of men waking up worried him, but the Suburban’s door on the other side of the roll-up was right in front of him. When he had opened the garage enough to get the SUV’s door open, he wasted no time jumping in the Suburban. A second later, he lit the gas-soaked rag wrapping the gooseneck on a three-gallon can of gasoline and launched it into the opening he had created.

  He pulled on the Suburban’s door fractions of a second later. He hadn’t even gotten it all the way closed when the gas bomb went off. The explosion slammed the door shut so hard it cracked the window. It also blew through the nearby men and doused the waking masses with flaming fuel.

  He locked the Suburban’s door, watched the fiery, unfolding horror for only a moment. He was sitting inside of a bomb of his own. He needed to get out before it was too late.

  He heard banging on the other roll-up doors, but once these idiots had taken out the fire station, they’d sealed the doors shut thinking they’d be keeping people like Hudson out. A few moments later, as the fire calmed, he saw the powdered clouds of a fire extinguisher at work.

  Someone started pushing the opened roll-up door up even farther. If the gate lifted up higher than the Suburban’s roof, they could all crawl out. This happened. But the minute Hudson saw the first man’s face, he shot him point blank and watched him fall back into the fiery pit from which he was trying to escape.

  More of the Hayseed demons filled the opening. He shot two more of them, then bent down and lit the gas-soaked rags of the twin gas cans under the SUV. The second the flame caught, he turned and sprinted as far away from the car bomb as he could.

  He didn’t get far.

  The explosion hit him in the back like a donkey kick.

  Pitched forward, instantly dizzy, he skidded to his knees, rocked forward, and grated his chin along the pavement for a good six inches before the second explosion hit.

  Even though he couldn’t breathe, he rolled over in case he was on fire and didn’t know it. That hurt his skin like nothing before. Which meant he had been on fire. But how bad was he burned? Was he still burning?

  In the distance, he heard gunfire and knew the women were going. He had to get up and cover their six, if only he could manage a breath…

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Kenley Riley

  The explosions were deafening. Kenley’s stomach turned, and her sphincter pulled into a tight knot. Swallowing hard, she set her rifle’s sights on the jerry cans in front of the door. The second the station door opened, she squeezed the trigger, heard the plink of the bullet hitting the can, then immediately flattened out on the roof.

  The explosion rolled over her like the heat of an oven. She looked up in time to see what she had done.

  Sitting up, working the bolt action, she trained her sights on the fiery opening.

  All she saw were men burning, screaming, flailing. Twisted up in the unfolding nightmare, she found she couldn’t distinguish the difference between these burning humans and the monsters who had killed her father. She started to cry but held the gun on the targets nevertheless. Wiping her eyes, she saw a couple of men inside pushing past the burning bodies. She pulled the trigger, dropping the first would-be escapee in the doorway. She worked the bolt action, remembering the spike of pain she felt when she first learned how they had killed her father.

  Setting her jaw, she saw more men, halfway on fire, struggling to get out, screaming bloody murder. She fired another round, and then another, building up a wall of burning bodies at the opened door.

  The next explosion shook the building beneath her. If Leighton was able to get the next gas can into the next bay, the entire roof might collapse beneath her, or at least get too hot for her to remain on it.

  Smoke was now pouring out of the firehouse. Another man tried to get out, but the flames were too high. They consumed him. She saw another man behind the wall of fire, panicked, unable to get out but contemplating an attempt because there was no choice left. She squeezed the trigger and gave him a third eye, putting to rest that line of thinking.

  The next explosion rocked the garage underneath her, the front half of it caving in. She slid off the edge, dropped to the hard ground below, rolled hard to keep from breaking an ankle, a leg, or her back. She picked up her fallen rifle, reloaded the mag, then limped up front to where she knew Leighton could use an extra gun.

  When she got around the front of the ladder garage, she saw something she thought she’d never see—a horror like no other.

  Seven men were running after Leighton who was in turn running from them. Not only were they gaining on her, but half of them were also on fire. To her left, more burned and angry men were climbing through the flaming rubble the explosions had created.

  She shot and killed two of the men chasing Leighton, but one of them dove on the blond, tackling her to the ground. The ins
tant Leighton landed, she spun around and saw the other four men bearing down upon her. She shot the guy who tackled her and fired on the other three with her personal Glock. One of them got on her fast, though, escaping her wrath.

  Right then, Kenley knew there was nothing she could do to save the girl, so she turned and ran, the scream building in the back of her throat.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Leighton McDaniel

  She saw Kenley’s jerry cans explode and knew it was time. Moving quickly, she rushed her first gas can to the garage doors, then got out her lighter and waited. A second later, she saw a ripple run through one of the two aluminum doors.

  She slid the can in front of the door, waited a beat, then swallowed hard as the door began to open. She lit the cloth—the fuse—then shoved it under the opening and ran.

  The explosion rocked the building.

  She grabbed the next gas can, slid it to the closed door, then pulled out the lighter. The door was already rolling up. She lit the fuse, kicked it forward as well, then dove out of the way, the explosion terrifying her.

  Rattled from the blast, she grabbed the shotgun, climbed to her feet, and moved into the driveway where burning men were trying to escape the garage. A dozen of them were on fire, easy. Horrified, she held her breath. Several ran through the flames, catching fire, heading directly toward her, but looking blinded by the inferno.

  She moved forward, started shooting. There were more of them than she imagined, however. Those in the back—those not exposed to the burning fuel—were simply biding their time.

  She shot four immediate threats, ran out of ammo, dropped the shotgun. She switched to the Glock 19, began shooting those deeper in the building, ensuring they couldn’t get out of the fire.