The bandit cried out in pain as he squirmed on the ground. He grabbed Sarah's leg with his other hand and put her ankle in his mouth, biting down hard. Sarah howled and let go of his arm instinctively. He tried to get back up to his feet, but she was too quick, jumping at him and knocking him onto his back. She managed to get her knees up over his shoulders and next to his head and she squeezed her thighs together, pulling his head up and away from his body. He tried to grab her midsection and tear her off, but she leaned all her weight forward over his head and drove her thumb into one of his eyes. He screamed and clenched his eyes shut as she used all her weight to press her thumb down into it.
His legs wiggled wildly as her thumb punctured his eyeball with a gooey pop. He screamed. He bucked so violently that she flew off and did a somersault over top of him, landing on the hard bridge. He squirmed on the ground, holding a hand to his eye as he continued to scream.
Sarah crawled back to him and grabbed him around the neck from behind. She wrapped her legs around his midsection and flipped him over onto his stomach as he struggled to get her off. He was hard to hold onto with his lack of clothing, lack of hair, and his sweatiness, but she held onto the headlock tightly with her arm, wedging her wrist in the crook of her neck and trying to squeeze the life out of him. He wasn't able to buck her off and he started to become weak, but he still lasted a lot longer than she expected. When he became really tired, Sarah let go of the grip and wrapped her fingers under his forehead from above and lifted his head. Then she slammed it down onto the asphalt. His head clunked on the road like a coconut and dizzied him. She lifted it again and slammed it back down, making him even more disoriented and weak. She did it a couple more times, then she wrapped her arm around his neck again and flipped both of them over onto their backs. His weight was very heavy on her, but she used the position to her advantage and choked all the last bits of life out of him. Eventually his arms fell limply by his sides and she held him even longer for good measure.
She rolled his body off of her and got to her feet, gasping for air. Her face felt swollen, but she was still standing and he wasn't. She looked around at Macklin and all the others staring on in amazement at what they had just witnessed. But no one else stepped up to her, and no one spoke for a long time.
"Check his pulse," Macklin said at last.
One of the bandits went up to the one laid out on the ground and pressed his fingers to his neck. He waited for a few moments then looked over at the boss and shook his head.
Dead silence came over the crowd as they all looked at Sarah with a new sense of fear.
"Like I said, I'm going to lead you," she told them.
Macklin looked at the corpse on the ground. "Get him out of here." He waited for a couple of bandits to carry him away, then he turned to Sarah. "I've never seen anything like that in my life."
"It's just Tuesday to me," she said.
"Things have never been the same around here since Jericho died," he said. "He led all of us. Each group reported to him, and after you... killed him... all of us bandits scattered and kept to ourselves. I think some of them kept in touch with each other over in Durham, but out here... it's just us, lady. This grand army you're hoping to get... it ain't here."
The sun shined in Sarah's eyes and highlighted the fire in them. All of them could see it now unquestionably. "That's about to change," she said.
5
Axel
It was mid-afternoon by the time Macklin brought Sarah and Carly to Axel's camp. It was located on a major section of Interstate 540 near Highway 401, and it was a little bigger than Macklin's camp. They had a good view of the landscape around them and it looked like they had their ducks in a row for the most part. This impressed Sarah, but she saw the rough edges and knew there was more to do.
Axel came out of his tent to greet Macklin, and he was a greasy, ugly scoundrel. He had sparse jet-black hair coming down just past his shoulders with a few bald spots in places, giving it a very uneven look. The teeth he had left were crooked and as yellow as a school bus, and his face was covered in scars. Long, cracked fingernails extended from the ends of his fingers, and they were all black with years of uncleaned grime underneath. Sarah looked at him and got a chill in her body when she saw his soulless eyes gaze upon her, and she felt slimy as they worked their way over her body. He gave her memories of Jericho, and she knew right away that he was just as despicable.
All of the men in the camp gathered around, surprised by the arrival of two women. At first they thought Macklin had brought them two slaves as a gift, so when he announced that they were not to be touched, the crowd cried out and jeered, but they followed his orders; despite the rough-and-tumble nature of the bandits, they still respected command.
Axel brought Macklin into his tent and the two of them talked privately while Sarah and Carly waited outside with the others leering at them. Carly became very nervous, feeling more and more uneasy as their interactions with the bandits went on. But Sarah was calm and confident, if not a little uncomfortable. Dried blood crusted around her nose and bruised upper lip from her brawl with the bandit at Macklin's camp, and the area just below her left eye was purple and swollen. But she didn't care; it was a small price to pay for an in with the bandits.
When Macklin and Axel exited the tent, Axel looked at Sarah with a mixture of awe and distrust, as well as a general undertone of hatred. But he stayed calm as the two of them approached.
"So you want to lead us?" Axel said. "Heard you had a pretty nasty tumble with one of Macklin's boys. See, his price of admission is a good fight. Mine is a good fuck." A crooked smile swam across his face, and it was enough to make Carly feel sick to her stomach.
"If you still want your dick attached to your body, I wouldn't try it," Sarah told him.
Axel laughed. "Ooo, a feisty one!" He looked at Macklin. "You weren't kidding!"
"So do we have a deal?" Sarah asked.
His face suddenly turned sour. "Yeah, we have a deal," he said grudgingly. "The only thing I hate more than a woman giving me lip are those damn gray fuckers. We've been seeing more and more of 'em, and if it weren't for being up on this highway, things'd be a lot tougher for us."
"I want to look over your men," she said. "Make sure they're trained properly."
"Ain't nothin' you can throw at them they can't handle."
"We'll see," she said, and again his face went sour.
Axel told the other bandits under his command what the deal was just like Macklin had done with his own, and then he let Sarah and Carly have free rein of his camp while he and Macklin talked again in his tent.
Sarah began orating to the group about what she expected from them, and like she suspected, they didn't take her seriously. When she felt she had been disrespected enough, she made an example out of one of them, not beating him to death like the last one, but giving him a few loose teeth as a souvenir. After that they were all more agreeable to her as she laid out her orders.
She told them to produce their weaponry and show her what they had. Their stores were impressive for a ragtag group, and she certainly thought they would have the firepower for their part in the assault. But now she needed to see them use it. She organized shooting drills with small groups of them at a time. Their marksmanship was sloppy and she gave them some instruction. They all felt a little uncomfortable for a woman to be bossing them around, a concept that was completely alien to them, but they eased into it more as time went by. Carly even got in on the action, at first acting as more of an aide to Sarah but eventually getting directly involved and critiquing their performances.
Carly had been frightened all day from the moment they decided to head out for Macklin's camp, but watching Sarah deal with the bandits and seeing her unshakable confidence in the midst of hardened and vile men who would just as soon rape them to death rubbed off on her and she began to taste the ego-inflating rush of power.
As Sarah worked through the group on general tactics and positioning, she no
ticed one of the bandits staring at her the entire time when she talked to the group and casting furtive glances when she was instructing someone else. The bandit was young and wore a dirty blue bandanna wrapped around his head under his brown hair, and a pair of glasses sat on his nose with one of the lenses cracked. Sarah looked back at him occasionally and wondered why he was so interested in her. He only looked like he was a teenager, maybe sixteen or seventeen at the oldest. Normally she never saw someone so young with the bandits, and he gave off a vibe that didn't seem as violent or insane as the others; she couldn't put her finger on it, but she sensed a pureness in him that was alien in these men.
He hemmed and hawed for half an hour, and when Sarah finally just stared at him, he worked up the courage to come over. "I know you," he said, nervously folding his hands together.
Sarah's eyebrows raised. "Do you?"
He looked down at her missing arm. "I don't remember that, though."
"Where do you know me from?" she pressed.
"Don't you remember me?" he asked. "I'm Tommy."
The name rang a bell, but it wasn't coming to her.
"From Zed's camp," he added.
And then it hit her. She could smell the acrid scent of burning flesh and hear the screams echoing in the warehouse as Kenny and the rest of Noah's ilk razed Zed's camp. She remembered taking cover in the office and finding two scared kids hiding under the desk. She remembered seeing his fresh face at the time, looking no more than fifteen years old, and now she weighed that distant memory against the grizzled and dirty face in front of her. The difference was heartbreaking and she was at a complete loss as to how this happened.
Sarah looked around at the other bandits who were still going over various drills with Carly, then she pulled Tommy into an empty tent next to them. She pulled up a couple of filthy plastic chairs and they sat down and talked.
"What happened to you?" Sarah asked. She looked him up and down, from his worn boots that were two sizes too big for him, to his shabby black pants, his skinny and naked torso, up to his weary face. He looked like he had done everything to match the appearance of the other bandits, but somehow it didn't quite seem genuine on him.
He looked down at his boots with eyes that told her the whole story. He was ashamed. "I uh, decided to join the bandits," he said. "That's it, really."
"But why?" she asked.
"That's the way it is," he said. "Kill or be killed, right? I came across them one day and what else could I do?"
"What happened to your sister?" Sarah asked. "Wasn't her name Sandra?"
He looked at his boots again. "I don't... I don't want to talk about it."
Sarah was at a loss for words. She knew something very bad had happened to him and his sister, but he wasn't forthcoming. Silence hung in the air for a long time before Tommy spoke up again.
"So did you end up doing what you needed to at Noah's Ark?"
She was confused as to what he meant at first. She searched her memory, then their entire history together came back to her. She remembered Tommy and Sandra causing the distraction from the hotel across the field, and that's when she and Barry were supposed to plant the explosives in Noah's office. The rest of the events played again in her head, including how the plan had failed and about everything else that went wrong. But she nodded her head. "Yeah, it all worked out in the end," she said. And it certainly had at the time. But now she was almost all alone, sitting in this grimy tent and staring at an innocent boy who'd had his life shattered.
The silence was palpable once again as a frown adorned Tommy's face. Depression touched them both in that moment, Sarah wanting to catch up, but neither of them really having anything to say.
"So... how'd you lose your arm?"
"A sniper shot me," she said.
His eyes lit up. "Seriously?"
She nodded.
"That's messed up. Where did it happen?"
"At the military base where the zombies came from," she said. "We were doing some recon, but we got ambushed. The fella I was with got captured and I got shot."
"That's why you're going there, isn't it?" he asked. "To get him back?"
"That's one of the reasons."
He looked down at his boots again, thinking, then he slowly dragged his eyes back up to her. "Well, I'll protect you," he said.
She raised an eyebrow. "You don't even know what we're going up against yet."
"No," he said, "I mean from the bandits."
"I can handle myself," she replied.
"You don't know them like I do," he said. "Don't ever trust them. You think that they're going to work for you, but they'll stab you in the back the first chance they get. They do things to women... really, really bad things." He started to tear up.
Sarah couldn't bear the sight of him like this anymore. When they finished talking in the tent, Sarah came out and wrapped things up with Carly and the other bandits. She went back to Axel and told him that she was satisfied looking over his men for the day and that she and Carly would be leaving, but she wanted Tommy to go with them.
"And why would I let him do that?" Axel said with a greasy scowl.
"Because I need someone young and fast to go on a few supply runs for me," she replied.
"Hell, if you want someone fast, take Donovan over there. He can outrun the wind."
"No, I want Tommy."
"And what makes you think you can just get what you please?" he said.
"That's the price of doing business with me," Sarah replied.
His eyes turned deadly serious. "Just remember that all these one-way streets you're asking for don't stay one-way forever. Soon enough there'll be a price to pay." His gaze crawled all over Carly as a faint snarl touched his lips.
"And one more thing," Sarah told him. "I want to do some reconnaissance of the base with you and Macklin."
"When?" Axel asked.
"Tonight," she said. "After dark."
He nodded slowly. "All right. But if we're going there, I think there's one more person whose acquaintance you'd like to make."
"Who?"
"His name's Bill, he runs another camp south of here."
"Why do I need to make his acquaintance?"
"Because he used to have business with this man in black you keep talking about."
6
Old Memories
The night was warm and peaceful. The sky was cloudless and the moon and stars shone brightly, lighting up their path. Sarah, Carly and Tommy traveled with Macklin, Axel and Bill. It was an uneasy alliance—and there became no doubt in Sarah's mind as they went that Tommy was not truly one of the bandits—but it was necessary, at least for a time. They traveled southeast from Axel's camp, following small roads and sometimes trails through the woods, and everything was quiet, no zombies or soldiers in sight.
Bill was bigger and taller than the other two bandit leaders, and he had a look about him that suggested he wasn't as crazy or short-fused as them, though he looked similarly disheveled. He strode with a measure of confidence but also quietness, and Sarah found him hard to read, especially in the darkness. Axel had sent a messenger to Bill's camp to tell him of their trip, and Sarah wasn't sure what he had been told.
"So how do you know him?" she asked Bill.
He turned his head. "Know who?"
"The Shadow Man," she said.
"The what?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.
"The man in charge," she elucidated. "The one in black with the skull on his face."
Bill smirked. "Shadow Man..." he said. "That's a stupid name. His real name's Jack Glass. I used to do contract work for him, mostly in materials of the unmentionable sort."
"What kind of materials?" she asked.
"Unmentionable."
"So who was he?" Sarah asked, trying a new line of questioning.
"Military guy. Not one of the top, top people, but he had some pull."
"What happened to him? I saw part of his face before. His skin looked... burned."
"Don't know," Bill said. "Haven't seen him in years. But I wouldn't mind having a word or two with that son of a bitch."
"Why? What happened between you two?"
Bill kept his gaze on the path ahead of them the entire time, his face never betraying a sense of cool collectedness that he maintained. "Let's just say I'm the one who got burned."
He didn't seem to want to be any more forthcoming, and Sarah left him alone. They continued traveling along the last stretch of small road before they reached the woods leading up to the ridge at the edge of the base. They had made sure to get off the roads early as they got close, not wanting to be spotted or have another run-in with an outpost or patrol.
The night was almost completely free of a breeze and the trees stood motionlessly all around them. No noises could be heard and they knew that the base would be on a skeleton crew at this hour. They kept their eyes peeled for any undead lurking between the oaks, but so far the forest was empty.
All of them were armed, many with knives, knowing that this would be a stealth mission. Axel brought a machete along with him, the blade chewed and rusted. Old, dried blood crusted the length of it, including the handle, and it seemed like he got a lot of use out of it.
Tommy and Carly were both very quiet on the trip, sticking close to Sarah the whole time. They were afraid of what they were heading to do and of their company, and even Sarah herself couldn't say that she felt calm. But for her the rising sense of fear she felt was almost solely due to coming upon the horrible place that she had been trying to put out of her mind for the past two months. But if she ever wanted to see Wayne again or stop the evil march of this "Jack Glass's" abominable plan, she would have to face her fears.
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