Top Gun’s breath caught in his chest. He wondered what that freak was going to do with such a head-splitter.
The Bronze held the weapon in one hand but did not come any closer, as if waiting to be summoned. The Leather with the crossbow stood unwavering at the passenger window.
“We will show you,” the Vulture continued, still holding the man’s face, “what it means to disappoint us.”
Upon some silent command, the Bronze approached.
Top Gun’s periphery picked up other figures moving in, already free of their vehicles. They closed in as quietly as wraiths, surrounding his truck. The Vulture released him just as more masked men opened Top Gun’s door. Hands pulled him out and forced him to the ground. They swarmed over him in an oily, multi-limbed carpet. He didn’t struggle, didn’t dare make a sound, for fear of tempting a fate worse than death.
The Leather pulled back, securing Top Gun’s limbs and head, stretching him out like a man caught in a disturbing web of hands and arms.
The Bronze loomed overhead. The tall figure not only held the executioner’s axe, but a length of material dangled from his other hand.
Top Gun whimpered.
The Bronze held a ball gag.
13
“So where we goin’?” Gus asked, fingers tight on the steering wheel, his eyes locked on the road.
“Well,” Collie answered, looking away from the side mirror. “Any place not here and preferably off-road. We want distance between us and the city. We need to find somewhere to hunker down for the night, hear their story, and go from there.”
“Go from there?” Gus asked dubiously.
“That’s right. See who they are. Where they’re from. Who knows? They could’ve been taken from some little cabin on a hill somewhere.”
“Didn’t you and Wallace scout this whole area?”
Collie smiled. “We couldn’t check off everywhere. Ontario’s a big place. Quebec’s bigger. Searching for people is an ongoing process. People move around. People hide. Crazy things happen in between.”
The road sped by as Gus processed the information. “So, we stop somewhere and…”
“And start asking questions.”
“All right. Where?”
They were on a straight strip consisting of only two lanes. Tangles of vegetation threatened the road on either side, stopping at the edges of crumbling pavement. Tall patches of forest passed by, smoothing out into great swaths of meadowland. A small bridge spanned a river and the truck bumped over it. A few houses popped up along the way, but they were too visible, too close to the highway. There was no real place to hide.
“Keep driving,” Collie said. “One thing about the boonies—there’s a shit-ton of back roads. All we need to do is find one.” She glanced into her mirror. “Looks good back there.”
Gus hoped it stayed that way.
They drove through the town of Matheson, which resembled most of the other quiet little towns that had been plowed over by chaos. Gus followed the gentle curve of Highway 11, turned south, and scanned the forests for a suitable place to hide. Plenty of dirt roads linked up with the main drag, leading off into the sometimes open wild before disappearing into distant woodlands or hill country.
“What about there?” he asked and braked, slowing down for a gravel road on the right. It cut through a wall of birch and fir and disappeared some thirty feet or more from the pavement.
“Looks fine to me.”
“We go? Cause if we go and that road ends in a dead-end, we’re potentially fucked for getting back out.”
“Guess we’ll find out.”
Gus flicked on his indicator to give Bruno and Cory the heads up. He turned off the highway, the tires lurching as they left the pavement.
The road wasn’t a good one; the surface of the moon was probably smoother. Several times he checked on the trailer, fully expecting to see the five survivors tumbling out the back of the thing. He slowed to a crawl, and that didn’t improve the ride. In a way, it was worse. The slow-motion rise over the rocky terrain and the inevitable crash into potholes became a stomach-turning repetition.
“I’m gonna puke,” Gus muttered as the truck took another sickening dip.
“Glad you said it first.”
“You too?”
“Oh, I’m clenching over here.”
Gus didn’t like the sound of that. In his side mirror, Cory and Bruno followed, bouncing along. Their windshield was dark from the overhead foliage, but the grill gleamed through the dust.
“Jesus Christ,” Gus muttered, unimpressed. “You see the dust clouds back there?”
“It’ll settle down,” Collie said, bracing herself. “It’s worse for the folks in the trailer.”
“Yeah. Suppose it is.”
A shallow stream crossed the road and Gus slowed to a rolling stop. The pickup still thumped through the waterway, despite his best intentions.
“Goddamn,” Gus managed. “Must’ve been a rough winter.”
A marker consisting of a few black tires with bald surfaces was stacked in a clump of wild grass. The road narrowed and curved left and right. The forest crowded the caravan on either side, reaching out and brushing the vehicles with long strokes. Branches were plied back and released with whipping force.
“This is gonna fuck up the paint on this thing,” Gus said.
The road grew even narrower, but the truck pushed through. The trailer bumped behind them, and he hoped the thing didn’t unhitch. He kept his speed at twenty kilometers an hour, but that did little to lessen the sensation of being shelled by artillery.
“This is going nowhere,” he said.
“All roads go somewhere,” Collie countered.
“Yeah, but this one is going nowhere. And we’re going to find ourselves at the very end of it very soon.”
They rocked and rolled over a few jagged teeth erupting from the ground. They cleared great shards of rock but felt none too good about it, for they knew they’d probably have to come back and brave them again. Deeper they went, twisting one way then the other, rising over small hills and descending into shadowy dips.
“This thing is going fucking nowhere,” Collie muttered, one hand clutching the overhead grip.
“Look,” Gus said.
Ahead, the forest opened up, just enough for them to notice. They eased around a bend and beheld a bungalow perched atop a low hill. Several opaque panels coated the structure’s roof, causing it to gleam in the daylight. A very wild looking garden of considerable size surrounded the home and lined the slope. Weeds invaded rows of untended crops. Apple and pear trees grew on the north end, much of their fruit piled in rotten heaps around the base of each trunk. A shed came into view, situated on the left, and a stack of what appeared to be red clay pots rested against the wall. An orange tractor was parked near a ramshackle corral, its gate left open.
“Well, well,” Gus said. “Some place after all. About time, too.”
“Looks like a little off-the-grid bomb shelter,” Collie added.
“Lot of those around.”
Gus stopped the rig and leaned forward, sizing up the house and surrounding garden. “Bet this was all owned by some long-haired hippy freaks, living off the land and all that. All about growing their own food. See the roof?”
“Yeah. Solar paneling. Very shiny.”
“All over. Even the shed.”
“Someone was thinking.”
“Probably more like fuck the power companies,” Gus said and reached for the door. “Wait here.”
“I’ll go,” she countered, her sunglasses already in place. Collie got out and gently closed the door. She walked for a few paces, stopped, and scanned the layout. Then, with one hand on her sidearm, she hiked toward the house. There was a dusty SUV up there, its white nose peeking around the corner. Gus spotted it when he leaned to the left. He scratched at a cheek, pulled on his whiskers, and thought about the folks in the trailer. Damn if he wouldn’t be shittin’ himself back there, wondering
what was going on. Especially after what they’d all been through. That didn’t sit well on his conscience.
He opened his door and got out.
Cory and Bruno watched him from their rig, stopped ten feet from the trailer. Gus walked toward the trailer doors and, after a moment’s hesitation, knocked.
“Hey,” he announced. “It’s me. One of the people who, ah, saved you.”
No response.
“So, anyway, I’m gonna open the door here. Give you some fresh air. That’s all.”
Without waiting for an answer, Gus opened the door. Daylight fell across the filthy black floor. He peered inside and stopped to take a breath. Despite his best intentions, he was unable to cope with the smell, which was still a plank to the head.
“Oh…” Gus bit down on his first impulse of Christ and titties and took a moment to reconnect with his thoughts. The five inside pressed themselves against the rear of the trailer, clearly wondering what his intentions were.
“Just keeping the door open, okay?” Gus took two steps back, then a third. “Just hold on a few minutes more. My… friend is checking out a place. To see if it’s safe for us.”
“Where are we?” Eva asked in that detached tone of voice.
“South of Matheson. On an old road.”
She didn’t ask anything else.
In the growing silence, Gus wasn’t rightly sure about what to say or do. He settled on the jugs and coolers taken from their dead truck, which were untouched. “You didn’t try any of that? I mean, the water’s just water, but there’s some homemade bread in there, along with preserves and butter. Everything’s home-grown. Even some salted meats in there which are pretty good, I must say.”
The guy with the wicked black eye looked at Eva.
“Who are you?” Eva finally asked.
“I’m Gus. Hi.”
Eva didn’t return the greeting. “Where are you from?”
“East Coast.”
“Just the four of you?”
Gus hesitated on that one, suddenly wary. “Yeah. Just the four of us.”
“That’s… risky.”
“Yeah? Why’s that?”
“There are crazies all over the place. Some more organized than others.”
“Yeah, we know. Where are you guys from?”
Eva didn’t answer right away.
“That’s fine,” Gus said. “I understand. Dangerous times and all. Don’t worry about us. We’re good people. We’re just worried about you folks.”
“Why would you be worried about us?” Eva asked pointedly.
“Because… you know. We don’t know who you are,” Gus answered honestly, a touch of sadness in his tone. “Hard to know who you can trust these days, right? Sometimes it takes a while.”
Eva didn’t answer, but the guy with the shiner nodded with understanding.
“How you doing there?” Gus directed at the girl.
She didn’t answer.
“What’s her name?” Gus asked the guy with the shiner.
“Don’t know. She… she was here before us.”
“How’d that happen anyway?”
“We were looking for someone,” the guy with the shiner answered. “The four of us. One of our people got lost and we went out to look for him. Camped out overnight and when we woke up… those men you shot? They were waiting for us.”
“In the kitchen,” the other woman whispered.
“And the living room,” said the other man.
“Yeah,” the guy with the shiner said. “After that, things got bloody.”
“What’s your name?”
“Davis.”
Gus nodded. “All right, so there were four of you. And you don’t know who the girl is?”
“We were gagged. Couldn’t talk anyway.”
Gus supposed so. He lowered himself until he caught the little’s girl’s attention. “You got a name there?”
She stared back.
“Nancy?” he tried to no avail. “Lisa? Monica? Lulu?”
Lulu, he thought in disdain. Fuck off, brain, if that’s the best you can do. He regarded the others. “So she was already here? In the trailer?”
Davis nodded. “Yeah. She wasn’t too happy about it. Stayed there in the middle, away from the rest of us.”
“What’s your name?” Eva asked the girl without much enthusiasm. She didn’t even get a look.
“That’s what she settles into,” Davis explained. “That look right there. Not on the verge of freaking out, like before. Just… watching.”
Shock, Gus realized, remembering Collie’s assessment. The adults had recovered faster, it seemed. Maybe it took children a little longer.
“All right,” Gus sighed. He stood, trying hard not to stare at the little one. The girl was filthy. Her long hair hung in tangled cords, partially hiding the right side of her face. She wore socks, but they were in tatters, her toes and black heels showing through. She wore baggy jeans and an oversized sweater that had once been white, but there were so many smudges in the material, Gus shuddered to think what she’d been rolling in.
“All right,” he repeated and took a step back, unable to take the smell any longer. “Oh my Lord, how the hell can you people not smell that? I mean… sorry. I’m sorry.”
Feeling the heat in his cheeks, Gus removed himself from the rear of the trailer. He stepped onto a gravelly shoulder, where the grass reached mid-thigh. “Just get out and move around if you want,” he said.
None of them wore shoes or boots, so he figured they wouldn’t run off. And if they did, they wouldn’t get far. There wasn’t anywhere to go. Thing was, none of them budged at the invitation.
Collie appeared then, coming out of the house on the hill. She waved them toward her.
“Okay, you guys,” Gus said. “We’re going up there. Hold on.”
He didn’t bother closing the trailer doors again, believing nothing short of burning the thing would remove the smell.
14
Two bodies occupied the main bedroom, their heads close together and facing each other, as if whispering secrets or performing some Inuit throat song. They lay together on a queen-sized mattress, with sheets decorated with prints of pink roses. Black matter stained the headboards in an explosive decal. Everything had dried, but Collie still made it a point to cover up the couple (married, she guessed, from the wedding bands) and to close the bedroom door behind. Both bodies had decomposed into tatters, the skin dried out into cheap leather. The husband had a shotgun in his lap, tucked under the chin and thumb on the trigger. The result was a charred crown of skull and skin, and a black spot of gore that was going to take more than one scrubbing to clean. Before he died, he arranged the arm of his dead wife around his shoulders.
Or so Collie described.
Gus didn’t bother looking. Didn’t want to think about the backstory of the couple.
Collie directed the five survivors into the living room, where there was a surprisingly comfortable wraparound sofa set and twin recliners. Whoever the dead people had been, they’d had cash, and had spent most of it on their furniture. Once the survivors had been given some time to relax and process the events of the day, Collie ordered Cory to grab a mop and scrub out the trailer. Water still flowed from the kitchen tap, amazingly enough, which she attributed to an underground well and a still-functioning pump.
Even the lights worked.
“Think it’s safe to use those?” Gus asked quietly. “If we’re here for the night?”
“Oh, we’re here for the night,” Collie said. “Best to stay out of sight and decide where we go from here. After we process these folks.”
Gus, Collie, and Bruno gathered in the kitchen, located only a few steps away from the living room. On the whole, Eva and the others seemed to be awakening to the idea that they weren’t prisoners anymore, and that they were, for the moment, in a much safer place. Gus leaned against a stainless-steel fridge. He glanced at Eva and company lounging on that luxurious sofa set, and that
picture granted him a few seconds’ worth of contentment.
Then he returned to Collie. “You mean question them.”
“You got it.”
Gus mentioned his conversation with Eva and the man with the shiner back at the trailer.
“They got lost, huh?” Collie repeated. “All right. Good. I’ll keep that in mind when I start in.”
“Where you gonna do all this?”
“There’s a den in there. Just before the bedrooms. I’ll take them in one at a time. Gotta say, this place is nice. Three bedrooms up here and an extra one down below, along with a big old rec room. Three bathrooms complete with TP.”
“TP,” Gus smiled.
“Thought you’d like that,” Collie said, then became all business. “Okay, I’ll get working here, but there’s something I want you to do…”
*
“All right,” Gus said to Cory. “How’s that look to you?”
Collie’s makeshift alarm system with the bottles and cans lay across the road, right at the treeline marking the perimeter. The string would be invisible at night, and certainly give them plenty of warning if someone attempted to creep up on them.
“Looks okay,” Cory said. “I’m just not sure we need them. We should hear anything coming up that road long before we see them.”
“I said the same thing to Collie. She wanted to have this just in case someone decided to get out and walk.”
Cory nodded at that.
“All right,” Gus said. “We’re done here. Let’s move those rigs behind the house. Get them out of sight. Then we can see how those interviews are going.”
Two hours later, daylight was gone.
Gus sat at the kitchen table with Cory, while Bruno conversed with the survivors in the living room. A sparse light provided by a single lamp on a coffee table lit the room. The curtains had been pulled across to hide that little glow of civilization. The quiet reminded Gus of his childhood, when winter storms knocked out the power and drove his family to the basement. There they would gather around a warm woodstove and talk about whatever, waiting out the night until power was either restored or it was time for bed.
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