After the Roads- Sidney’s Way

by Brian Parker

  “I didn’t want to,” Russ whimpered, holding his ribs as he scooted backward toward the door. He had blood oozing from a cut on his forehead and his broken nose. “We tried to—”

  Sally leapt over Tim’s unconscious form and zapped Russ in his outstretched hands. He screamed, his body flinging backward as his spine went rigid. The back of his head impacted against the hard wooden floors, knocking him out as well.

  She walked back across the room, tasing Tim in the face when she walked by. “We need to get out of here,” she stated, setting the Taser down to finish unwrapping Katie’s hands.

  “Where are we gonna go?” the younger girl asked.

  “Anywhere but here. They have Mom too.”

  Katie nodded. “I heard her screams earlier. I think she’s upstairs.”

  Sally helped her sister to her feet and then picked up her clothes, handing them to her. “Hallway,” she said, pointing at the door.

  When they got into the hallway, she turned and closed the bedroom door. There was a deadbolt on the outside of the door, which she twisted home. “That won’t hold them long. We need to get Mom and go.”

  Katie wiggled into her blue jeans and nodded enthusiastically. “Weapons. We need weapons.”

  They wasted precious seconds looking in the foyer for anything of use. Again, they came up empty. The kitchen lay off to the side and Sally went over to the counter. An empty knife block rested under a disgusting microwave. She searched the counter, shoving used plates and dirty cups out of the way until she noticed the sink. There! Two knives sat on the edge of the sink, apparently ready to be used—again.

  She snatched them both up and went into the foyer. “Any luck?” she asked.

  “No. I don’t know where they put those guns.”

  Sally handed her a knife. “No time. Here, cut the tape on my wrists. I can’t do it.”

  Katie sawed on the tape for a moment before cursing from the bedroom startled her, causing the knife to tumble to the floor. She cried out in fear and frustration.

  “Katie, look at me,” Sally said calmly. “We’re in charge here. We have the power. Focus on what you’re doing.”

  The younger Campbell nodded and bent to retrieve the knife. The bedroom door handle shook violently for a moment and then one of the men began to pound on it, yelling obscenities.

  “Go upstairs and get Mom,” Sally directed. “I’ll stay here and deal with them if they get out.”

  Katie nodded and scampered up the stairs.

  “I’m gonna cut you into little pieces, girlie,” Tim roared, trying the handle again. “All your people are dead. You can’t get away from me.”

  There was a sharp snap as the handle broke from his efforts on the other side. The cheap metal knob fell onto the foyer floor. “There you are,” Tim said, his eye appearing in the vacant space where the handle had been. “I’m gonna enjoy— Hey!”

  She jabbed the end of the knife through the opening, hoping to stab him through the eye. No such luck.

  “You’re not gonna do a damned thing to me or my family ever again, asshole,” she hissed, this time the hard edge in her voice came naturally.

  “Oh, don’t worry. You haven’t seen the last of me, you little cu—”

  “Sally! I need help,” Katie called from the top of the stairs. “I found Mom, but she’s pretty beat up. I was able to get her to the stairs. I can’t get her down without dropping her.”

  Sally eyed the door for a moment, thrust the blade through the hole once again to warn Tim off, and then rushed up the stairs.

  Her mother was bruised and bloodied. The shirt she’d worn that morning had most of the buttons missing and her chest was exposed, revealing fingernail scrapes, bite marks, and what looked like cigarette burns.

  “Oh, God. Momma!”

  The older woman stared vacantly ahead, and Sally wasn’t sure if she even knew where she was. Katie leaned toward her to add as much space between their mother and her mouth. “They tore her up pretty bad,” she said. “There’s blood all over…down there. I think…” Her voice trailed off.

  Sally nodded hard, then ducked under her mother’s arm. Between the two girls, they got her down the stairs. They set her down on the bench so they could begin putting her shoes on.

  “Jeff!” her mother shouted hysterically. “I didn’t want to, Jeff. They made me!”

  The sudden shouts of confession from her mother almost made Sally drop her knife. “Stop it, Mom. You didn’t ask for that to happen.”

  “Oh yes she did,” Tim’s voice lilted through the hole. “In fact, she begged for more. Even when I used that baseball bat of yours, I couldn’t fill her up enough to satisfy her desires. She’s a hellcat, that one right there. That’s why I took her first. Don’t worry, sweetheart. You’re next.”

  Sally blanched. The fact that her baseball bat had been used to assault her mother made the act even more heinous.

  “No! Jeff, I promise you,” her mother shouted.

  “Mom! Dad’s dead,” Sally grunted, shoving her mother’s boot into place. “He’s been dead for months. I need you to—”

  “No!” her mother shrieked. “He’s not dead, you lying harlot. He’s waiting for me. Waiting for me outside!”

  She pushed Sidney roughly, causing her to fall hard onto her butt. Tim’s laughter rang in her ears as her mother limped to the door. “I wouldn’t do that, baby,” he half-sang through the hole.

  If Katherine Campbell heard him—or if she had the mental capacity to understand him—she didn’t acknowledge the elder Cullen brother. She threw open the front door and was immediately set upon by several of the infected that had been on the porch. She screamed in agony as they tore at her flesh.

  “She’s gone,” Sally howled and snatched Katie’s wrist. She pulled her away from their mother toward the back of the house.

  “I told her not to do that!” Tim yelled gleefully after them.

  The girls fled to the interior of the home, searching for a way out. The screams of the infected chasing after them added to their panic.

  “Back door!” Katie breathed heavily, pointing at a barred door that led outside from the living room.

  They rushed to it. There was no time to worry whether there were infected on the other side of the door. There were definitely infected inside the house. They had to take their chances outside. She twisted the handle and flung the door wide, tensing in case she was assaulted by teeth and ragged fingernails.

  They never came. She opened her eyes. The way was clear.

  “Go! Go!” Sally shouted to Katie, shoving her in front of her and causing her to stumble down the three or four wooden steps to the ground.

  She turned around, grasping the door handle and pulled it closed. The screams of the infected reverberated through the house and a hand shot into the space between the door and the frame, stopping the door from closing all the way.

  Sally pulled hard on the door, but the creature pulled against her, practically pulling her off her feet as she clung to the handle. “Damn you!” she cursed at the infected, stabbing ineffectively against its hands and arms through the open space in the doorway.

  The infected screamed back at her. It wanted to kill her, to turn her. Sally wasn’t ready to give up her life so easily. She thrust the kitchen knife toward its face, the blade bouncing off teeth and into the soft flesh at the back of the crazed beast’s throat.

  It gagged, letting go of the door to slap uselessly at the knife handle protruding from its mouth. Sally used the split second to her advantage, yanking the door closed.

  “Sally! Did you get—Are you?”

  “I’m fine!” she yelled. “I lost my knife though.”

  “I still have mine,” Katie assured her. “This way!”

  Sally stumbled down the stairs. It was either dusk or dawn; she wasn’t sure which. There was enough light to see that a barbed wire fence lined either side of the path they found themselves on. The fences ran all the way from the house to the ba
rn, giving the Cullens a safe route between the two.

  They raced to the barn and went through the doorway. The interior held an assortment of the standard farm tools, but it also acted as a garage. There was a Jeep and two old pickup trucks inside. The girls searched both quickly, coming up with zero sets of keys.

  “That door isn’t going to keep Tim and Russ locked up forever,” Sally said in frustration. “And I doubt that even all of those infected will be any trouble for them. They must have planned for something like that to happen, that’s why they allowed them to be outside their front door.”

  Sally set her jaw, kicking the discarded straw on the floor in anger. “We have to leave on foot,” she decided.

  Katie stared, wide-eyed at her for a moment and then accepted the decision. “There are some farm tools over by the other door that we can use as weapons.”

  Sally hugged her little sister as they grabbed an axe and a shovel, both with dried blood along their edges. They’d been used for self-defense before.

  They opened the door to the outside cautiously, peering through the crack to see if they would be able to make it without a horde of infected spotting them immediately. The shifting of several bodies startled Sally and she slammed the door shut.

  After a moment, there was no pounding on the side of the barn to indicate that they’d been seen, so Sally eased the door open again. Once more, bodies shifted in front of her, but they didn’t advance.

  Allowing her eyes to adjust to the deepening gloom of the night outside, she saw that there were several infected trapped inside a cattle trailer. They banged against the sides, but their broken, twisted fingers couldn’t grasp the metal crossbeams.

  The realization of what she saw dawned on her. “Son of a bitch,” she murmured, waving Katie out the door.

  “What is it?”

  “These are the same infected that were at the farm. See how their fingers are all broken, and…” She stepped close to examine one of them. “Yeah, they don’t have any teeth. Probably don’t have tongues either. That’s why they aren’t screaming and alerting the others.”

  There were several loud gunshots from inside the house and Sally accidently allowed a squeal of shock to escape her lips. Two more gunshots rang out and then the back door of the house banged open.

  “I’ll find you little bitches!” Tim shouted into the night. “When I do, you’ll regret everything about tonight. You hear me! I’m going to make you wish you’d stayed with us the first time around.”

  He bellowed in frustration and fired a pistol into the air four times. “I’m coming for you!”

  Sally and Katie slipped into the overgrown cornfield behind the barn. They had no idea which way they were headed. They only knew that they needed to put as much distance between them and that lunatic at the farmhouse as they could.

  23

  * * *

  NEAR TYRONE, OKLAHOMA

  OCTOBER 29TH

  “There’s thermal activity inside and out of the farmhouse,” Caitlyn said into her helmet microphone. She leaned back away from the TWS display and gripped the .50 cal’s joystick. With a few deft movements, perfected over hundreds of hours as a gunner, she guided the target reticle pattern on the mob of infected around the front door.

  “What are the ones outside doing?” Lieutenant Murphy asked. His voice sounded tinny and distant through the helmet speakers.

  “Just milling about as far as I can tell. Something inside has them all agitated.”

  “Probably the girls’ screams.”

  “Ugh,” she groaned, not wanting to think about what they could potentially be walking into at the house. The old man said the two men had been deranged perverts before the outbreak. There was no telling how far they’d gone without the threat of law enforcement officers discovering what they were doing.

  “Okay, I’m gonna start clearing the infected, just like we discussed.”

  Caitlyn didn’t answer. There was some kind of ruckus going on in the room to the left of the first floor hallway. Her thermal imaging was good, but not good enough to tell her what was really going on inside the home. However, the infected outside were lit up like Christmas trees.

  “Hold on. Something’s happening inside,” Caitlyn cautioned. “Two large heat signatures—those could be the Cullens—seem to be embracing, or… No. They’re fighting.”

  “Fighting? Anyone else in the room with them?”

  “I can’t tell through the mass of infected out front,” she replied. She continued to observe for a moment and then said, “Two smaller forms have emerged into the hallway. The two larger ones are still inside the room.”

  “Son of a bitch,” the lieutenant breathed. “Those girls may end up doing the job for us.”

  “Yeah… One of the larger forms is at the door. Looks like he’s banging on the door from the inside.”

  “That’s my cue then,” he said. Above her, Caitlyn could hear the muffled sound of the suppressed M-2010 sniper rifle firing and then the soft chink of the brass cartridge falling onto the Stryker’s roof when Jake cycled a new round.

  One of the shapes went up the stairs and then reappeared with another. Caitlyn had no way of knowing whether the heat signatures she saw were from friendlies or hostiles. Another shape ran up the stairs and all three of them came down toward the first floor.

  “I’m willing to be that those are the girls. Looks like they have Mrs. Campbell,” Caitlyn surmised.

  “Good. I’m knocking out the infected slow and steady up here,” Murphy grunted. “Hold on!”

  “I see it,” she answered. Some moron had opened the front door. The remaining infected grabbed the person in the doorway and bright sprays of blood that quickly faded spurted skyward. “Son of a bitch.”

  “They’re in the house,” the lieutenant stated. “I repeat: the infected are in the house.”

  “Well, that’s that, then.” She leaned back. If the infected were inside, then the girls were as good as gone. She tapped the joystick back and forth, then zoomed in with the camera. There was nothing to see… “Hold up. There’s—”

  Gunfire rang out clearly in the early night. “Somebody is shooting inside the house.”

  “I can see the flashes through the windows,” he replied.

  “I’ll find you little bitches!” someone yelled from the back of the house, followed by several shots. Caitlyn didn’t know where the person was shooting, but any bullet headed downrange was bad in her opinion.

  “I’m going in,” Murphy announced. “I can’t stand by while those lunatics are shooting at a couple of innocent women.”

  “Jake! I mean, sir, what are you—” The lieutenant’s CVC helmet dropped inside the crew compartment, followed by the M-2010.

  He grabbed his M-4 and helmet, then looked at Caitlyn. “I need you to cover me. Got it?”

  “Yeah, I got it.” Then he was gone.

  “I’m going too,” Eric said over the helmet speakers.

  “Eric! No, what are you doing?” she muttered, unable to determine if the big dummy had heard her. She saw his head appear in the lower left corner of the gun camera as he trotted after the lieutenant. “Son of a bitch.”

  In her monitor, Caitlyn could see flashes of light from the house. Jake and Eric fired back. They were in a firefight with the people inside.

  She had no way of knowing who was shooting, but she knew that those girls they were sent here to rescue wouldn’t be firing on them. She took that logic as an authorization to go weapons hot.

  Zooming the reticle pattern in on a window in the front of the house, she waited until there was another flash of gunfire, then she feathered the trigger, sending twenty or thirty rounds screaming from the .50 mounted on top of the Stryker into the defender. The bullets tore through the old clapboard siding and she saw the heat signature stagger backward, then fall down. She watched for a moment longer to see if she’d put an end to that threat. The person she’d shot did not get back up.

  With that thr
eat neutralized, Caitlyn scanned back and forth along the house, but there were no more muzzle flashes. If there was more than one person shooting from the house, they were probably holding their fire because of the machine gun. She pulled the camera back for a wider angle and saw one of her teammates stand up, waving an arm. By the size of him, she thought it might be Eric.

  Then a flash of light came from one of the upper windows. Without hesitation, she slewed the machine gun upward and peppered the house, noticing that the heat signature was no longer at the window.

  “Goddamn. Fucker’s good,” she muttered aloud to herself. She scanned the entire area again with the same result: no one was there. She wondered if she’d got him. Confident that she’d neutralized the threat on the second floor, she zoomed the camera out once more and noticed a large blob of orange, red, and white. One of her friends knelt over the other one. The one on the ground had several dark patches of blue, meaning he’d been shot and the fluid was rapidly cooling in the night air.

  “Oh, goddamn it!” she yelled, pulling herself up through the gunners hatch to the roof of the Stryker. She skittered and skid along the surface until she made her way to the ground.

  Caitlyn ran at a full sprint. If Eric was hurt, she’d never forgive herself for agreeing that he should come on this stupid rescue mission. She didn’t care that the lieutenant had told her to cover the house until he signaled the all clear. The only thing that mattered to her was getting to Eric. They’d talked about their future. Planned to have children one day after this was all over. If he…

  “Eric!” she shouted as she ran toward the downed man, careless of noise discipline. “Eric, I’m coming for—”

  Jake returned fire at the house, unsure of where the initial round had come from. It had impacted in the gravel only a few inches to his right. He juked to the left and fired another burst in the general direction of the house.