Blood Bought: Book Four in The Locker Nine Series

by Franklin Horton

  Muncie took one last look around and hurried out of the camper. He wove his way through the maze of campers and vehicles, finding Johnson waiting for him where the parking lot joined the road. The kid had a machete, an entrenching shovel, and a gallon jug of water.

  “‘Bout time you showed up,” Johnson said.

  "Don't ever get your hand cut off, Johnson," Muncie said. "It hurts like hell and slows you down. Thought I was going to have to get you to button my pants closed for me."

  “I’ll pass,” Johnson said.

  “Figured.”

  Muncie made a show of cradling his injured limb, thinking it was to his advantage to appear weak and impaired. It might encourage Johnson to come at him with the machete. That would give him his best chance of fighting back. If the kid decided to pump him full of rounds from a dozen feet away he was in trouble. He didn’t have a play for that, other than to draw the .380 and shoot back.

  "Well, we better hit it. We've wasted enough time," Johnson said.

  Muncie grimaced and raised his arm. It hurt like hell but he was definitely going to make a show of it.

  Johnson stuck out a hand and ushered Muncie ahead of him. "You lead the way. You know what we’re looking for."

  Muncie took off, walking briskly to dispel some of the nervous energy. Just having the kid behind him made his skin crawl. He’d never been in a situation like this before.

  "Damn, Muncie, slow down. This ain’t a race.”

  The fact that Johnson was struggling with the pace brought a smile to Muncie's face. Muncie could use that to his advantage. Although sore from all the recent walking and weakened from blood loss, he’d also been a heck of a lot more active than Johnson. If he got the kid huffing and puffing on an incline somewhere maybe that would give him an advantage. If he was struggling for air he wouldn’t be thinking as clearly and his reflexes would be off.

  Muncie slowed to let Johnson approach. Johnson was hesitant to come alongside the older man and it was noticeable.

  "You lead. You're in charge. I'm just the manual labor," Johnson said.

  "That doesn’t mean you have to follow me around like a dog. You're making me nervous back there."

  "Sorry," Johnson mumbled, catching up with Muncie and falling in alongside him.

  They walked in silence, the only sound that of their footfalls on pavement and the birds in the forest. Johnson seemed too nervous to talk. Muncie had no interest in making small talk with the man he suspected was sent to kill him.

  When they were around a half mile from camp, Johnson stopped and looked around. “I’d say this is a good distance from camp. You see any place around here that looks like a good possibility?"

  Remembering to play Johnson’s level of conditioning against him, Muncie pointed a good distance up a steep, near vertical incline. Muncie could barely contain a smile.

  "Jesus, you think I'm a billy goat?" Johnson said. "I thought the congressman wanted them close to the road?"

  " I thought I was in charge of finding a location. You get a much better vantage point up there. You can see a good distance both up and down the road. That's the spot."

  Muncie left no room for argument. He stole a look at Johnson, who was red-faced and sweating in the oppressive Appalachian humidity. They’d been walking on a mostly flat road so far and the kid looked like he was suffering a bit. It was perfect. Without another word, Muncie headed for the shoulder of the road and set an aggressive pace straight up the side of the hill.

  "Hold up," Johnson called after him. "I can't keep up with you."

  "That’s okay. You don’t have to keep up. You can see where we’re going so you won't get lost. I'll meet you up there. If I’m taking a nap, just wake me up."

  Muncie threw the kid a smug smile and saw concern on his face. Muncie understood this turn of events complicated the kid’s plan, whatever that might be. That was okay. If he was going to get killed, he didn't want to make it easy on his killer. To hell with him. Let him suffer.

  Everyone who’s done any hiking knows that climbing a steep bank is a whole body experience. It wasn't just legs that were required, but often both hands. While the feet were pumping, hands were grabbing saplings and thick clumps of grass to pull you along. Except in Muncie's case, he only had the one hand to work with and it complicated matters.

  The harder his heart beat, the more his hand throbbed. Muncie tried to use that to his advantage, letting it fuel his rage at the entire injustice being committed upon him. Adrenaline and hate buoyed him along, his legs churning as he powered up the hillside. The location he’d pointed out was probably only forty yards from the road but it seemed much longer due to the effort required to get there.

  The important thing for Muncie was that he got there first. The location he’d pointed out was a natural ledge about the size of a small car. It wasn’t a lot of room but it should be enough. He had time to steady himself and get his breathing under control while he watched Johnson struggle. He found tremendous satisfaction in Johnson’s pain, watching him take two steps then pause to rest.

  By the time Johnson reached the ledge, Muncie’s breathing had returned to normal. Aside from the sweat stains ringing his neck, you’d never know he’d just climbed a hillside. Johnson, on the other hand, collapsed to the ground like he’d been hit with a tranquilizer dart. He dropped the gear he was carrying and tried to get his breathing under control, eyes closed, mouth open.

  His left hand settling on the Microtech Scarab clipped to his pocket, Muncie did not intend to give him the opportunity to recover. As part of his law enforcement training Muncie had watched hundreds of videos of knife attacks. He knew it was not about stabbing someone in the perfect location and then stepping back to watch as they clutched the wound, collapsed to the ground, and expired gracefully. Knife attacks were violent and ugly. They were explosive. They were also about punching as many holes in your opponent as you could to maximize blood loss.

  Muncie slid the black switch on top of the scarab and a wicked drop point blade shot from the handle, locking solidly into place. Muncie threw himself across Johnson's sweaty body, straddling the man and hammering the blade into his chest. Johnson’s eyes sprang open and he screamed. He tried to shake Muncie off him while trying to lock onto his knife hand. Muncie dropped forward, crushing his right forearm against Johnson's windpipe, both holding him in place and choking him.

  He shifted his grip on the knife and shoved it upward over and over again, lacerating liver, kidney, and lung. Each powerful plunge of the knife sank it all the way to the handle. Blood soaked the two men, running, splashing. When Muncie’s arm began to spasm from the exertion and his fingers cramped, he looked up into Johnson’s face. Blood ran from the man's mouth and his eyes were fixed on an unseen object in the distance. If he was not dead, he was banging on the door.

  Muncie rolled off onto the ground and sucked in a deep lungful of air. Sweat stung his eyes. Oddly enough, he noticed this was the first time since his injury that it was not hurting.

  24

  Muncie checked Johnson’s body for anything that might be of use. He took the water jug, the man’s sidearm, and nearly everything else in his pockets. He distributed them across his own body, storing everything he could in pockets, since carrying things was difficult right now. He took Johnson’s belt and looped it through the handle of the gallon water jug, fashioning a strap for carrying it around his neck. If his single hand was occupied with carrying an object, he couldn’t use it for climbing or shooting.

  He returned to the road, his descent an awkward combination of sliding and down-climbing. Once on the paved surface of the road, he looked back up at the spot where he’d killed Johnson. No one would ever be able to tell anything had happened up there. It was unlikely anyone would ever find the body. This was his own little mystery.

  It put a smile on his face to know this would confuse the men back at the camp. They would want to know if both men came to an agreement and went AWOL together. They would wonder
if both men fought to the death, their bodies lost forever in the dense hardwood jungle. The last thing they would want to imagine would be that Muncie escaped. He hoped the congressman would worry that he might still be alive. He hoped he would look into the woods and wonder if he was being watched. He hoped he would imagine eyes on his back.

  Muncie wasn’t going to exact his own revenge. Despite how badly he wanted to take the congressman’s life with his own two hands he had to accept that he couldn’t fight. His abilities were so impaired that he would only get himself killed. While he may be in a bit of a predicament he didn’t have a death wish. He saw a way forward. He had a plan.

  Anxious to put miles between the congressman’s camp and himself, he walked fast. He was headed toward town, very familiar with the route at this point, having walked it more times than he cared to. When he neared town, he did his best to keep a low profile. He watched and listened for people. He made a beeline straight for Debbie’s house, for the place where he’d lost his fingers, because it was the only place in town that felt vaguely familiar.

  When he reached her backyard, he looked around carefully. He even wandered inside to check the house, which was still as disgusting as it had been on his previous visit. When he was certain no one was around, he went back outside, sat on the steps, and spent a moment clearing his lungs of the foul stench.

  He recalled the houses in this town having large, plastic garbage cans on wheels with the town’s name painted on them. The one belonging to this house was sitting by the chain link gate he’d come through when he entered the yard. He went and flipped open the lid. Empty. He looked around at the garbage strewn yard, recalled the piles of trash in the house, and shook his head. Did these people not know what a garbage can was for?

  He tugged the can toward the house and found a place where it would be less visible from the road. There was a little niche between two overgrown hedges and the can fit perfectly in there. He opened the lid and began shedding gear. Everything went inside. He emptied his pockets, stored his gun, and lost the gear he’d taken from Johnson. He even took off his shirt, wanting to make sure he wouldn’t be recognizable as one of the men involved in the shootout at the roadblock in town.

  Deciding that his cargo pants still made him look too tactical, he hesitantly decided to take those off too. He stored them in the can and shut the lid. He was only wearing underwear, boots, and a bandage. Not a bad touch, he thought. Certainly made an impression. It gave him an air of desperation .

  He sat down on the back steps to work on his bandage. A flicker of movement in the bushes caught his eye. A big yellow cat was sitting in the shade gnawing on something that looked like a pale starfish. A wave of nausea hit Muncie as he realized it was his two missing fingers, still connected by a mangled tab of flesh. Muncie grabbed a decorative white stone from the flowerbed and heaved it at the cat. He missed but the cat fled, taking its filet of finger with it.

  For his story to work, Muncie couldn’t be wearing a bandage. He held his breath, went inside the house, and located a pair of sewing scissors. He used them to cut down the side of his bandage. Once he was done, he carefully folded open the layers and tossed them away. The wound was still oozing, moist with blood and fluids. There was an ugly bruise that wrapped his hand like a glove. He considered removing the stitches but worried there could be severe consequences to reopening the wound. He would have to work around that.

  He took the bloodstained bandages and wiped them on his face and body. He then took a handful of dirt and streaked it over his sweaty flesh. When he was done he looked like someone who’d had a very rough day. He stood and exited the yard, hoping no one found his gear in his absence.

  Following the Creeper Trail into the heart of town, Muncie ran into a pair of bored sentries standing guard over an old railroad trestle. They raised rifles in his direction but quickly determined that Muncie didn’t look like much of a threat. He was a staggering mess, stained with dirt and blood. He clearly didn’t have any weapons. His minimal state of dress would have made it hard to hide any. He cradled his hand. The gesture was not entirely drama. The wound had started to hurt again from all the activity of the day.

  “I need to see whoever is in charge,” Muncie groaned. “I have information.”

  One of the sentries escorted Muncie to a big tent in the middle of the town park. The area was crammed with hundreds of hikers. Brightly-colored tents were jammed in wherever people could fit them. Dozens of low fires burned, filling the area with the smell of wood smoke. Clotheslines stretched between oak trees contained flowing walls of dingy, drying clothing. The people here looked hungry and desperate. He sensed an undercurrent of suspicion and distrust at the appearance of an outsider. It was exactly what he wanted.

  The tent was blue and walled, the kind you might see set up for a wedding or other event. It was empty when he was led inside but soon filled with people. A man came in with a rifle and the crowd parted. The deference they granted this man told Muncie he was the de facto leader.

  “I’m Miller,” the man said. He gestured for Muncie to take a seat at a folding table.

  Muncie did as he was told and another man came forward and reached for his hand. Muncie flinched and withdrew the hand, guarding it.

  “It’s okay. I’m a nurse,” the man said. He took Muncie’s damaged hand and began carefully examining it.

  “What’s your name?” Miller asked.

  “Muncie.”

  “What the hell happened to you? You look like shit.”

  “I was camping at Grayson Highlands, doing a little trout fishing. Got stuck there when this thing happened, whatever it is.”

  “And this wound?”

  Muncie looked down at the table, watched the nurse gently turning his hand over and examining the wound.

  “We’re not going to hurt you,” Miller said. “We take care of our own here and we’re not monsters. These are good people.”

  Muncie took a look around, taking in the faces watching him. “Things at the campground were getting a little sketchy. People were starting to fight and steal from each other so I decided I was going to head out on my own. We were all running out of supplies and it was only a matter of time before someone did something crazy.”

  “Everyone here is running out of supplies too,” Miller said. “We were okay for a while but there are a lot of mouths to feed.”

  “I loaded all my crap into a pack and hit the road. I was a few miles outside of town when I came up on this roadblock. The folks were nice at first but they were armed and they asked for all my stuff. I didn’t want to give it up because it was all I had. They took it though, and they did this.” He held up the bloody hand for everyone to see.

  “Why did they do that?” Miller asked, nodding toward the injury.

  “I had a gun,” Muncie said. “I tried to go for it but they stopped me. They didn’t like that. They said they were going to teach me a lesson by cutting off my fingers, making it hard for me to hold a gun ever again.”

  Miller shook his head.

  “How did it get sewn up?” the nurse asked.

  “They did that,” Muncie said. “It hurt bad. No numbing of any kind. They said killing me would be merciful and they weren’t in the mood for mercy. They wanted to leave me alive to suffer.”

  He was getting into his story, though he needed to remember not to overplay it. He wanted to be believable but also instill fear in these people. He wanted them to feel a need to act. He wanted them to look at his hand and know that it could be them next.

  Miller shook his head. “That’s messed up.”

  Muncie nodded. “They kept me tied up for a day, then took everything, including my clothes, and turned me out with nothing.”

  “Where was this?” asked another man, also armed. He was heavily tattooed and perhaps a veteran judging by some of the tattoos.

  “A couple of miles up the road. They were camped at a church. I heard them say they were headed this way tomorrow to hit the g
rocery stores. You guys better run. There’s a lot of them and they have guns. They’re bad people and you don’t want to cross paths with them.”

  “Get him cleaned up,” Miller said. “Clean his wound. Give him a ration of soup if there’s any left.”

  “You guys set for supplies?” Muncie asked at the mention of food.

  “We were at one point,” Miller said. “They’re mostly gone now.”

  “These guys have a lot,” Muncie said, fighting to keep the smile off his face as he threw out perhaps the most enticing lure of all. “They have a lot of food and gear. Trucks and campers full. They got cases of MREs. Army stuff.”

  This bit of information incited a considerable bit of chatter. The group would have a lot to talk about. Certainly they could erect a barricade and drive back any attempts to invade their town but the fact they had food changed things. It might turn them from potential attacker into potential target.

  25

  Robert was in the shed alongside the house doing some battery maintenance on the house’s solar equipment when Teresa stepped onto the porch and called for him.

  “What is it?” he asked, stepping out of the shed so he could see his wife.

  "That Donnie guy is on the radio. He needs to talk to you."

  Robert was carrying a radio on his belt but it didn’t cover much more than the farm. Despite the claims that these handheld family band radios would transmit for miles, they sure wouldn’t do it in the hills around Robert’s house. They couldn’t go through mountains. "I'll be right there."

  Robert shut the door to the shed and jogged for the house. He went in through the kitchen and back to his radio room. He wasn’t an expert on amateur radio but he was learning. He’d been studying them for years. The main selling point for him was that radios were the only way to communicate over distance that he could actually control. Every other method put him at the mercy of some third party.