by Schow, Ryan
“I found a gun and ammo stash inside,” he told her. “They had a veritable armory. If we can get all the gear up to the house, as well as whatever supplies you want to take, maybe we can leave everything with Gator to sort out.”
“Do you think he’ll be okay with Trixie?” Faith asked.
“He likes slutty broken women, so I’m certain he’s going to be thrilled.”
Chapter Nineteen
Diesel Daley
Diesel sat on the back porch drinking Jack Daniels and thinking about the guys Rhett had sent him. There were a few heavy hitters, like he had promised, and there was some cannon fodder, too, just as promised.
At that point in time, he didn’t know what he wanted to do with the guys other than get them settled in and get them prepped for the EMP. He didn’t tell them what was what, only that they should be ready to turn their efforts from chaos and destruction to foraging.
“The new world is around the corner, and it’s exciting,” he’d said when the guys had arrived, “but the buzz will wear off quickly when you realize this is not a world of pansies and brainless human drones.”
“So what is it about?” one of the guys asked.
“This is about survival, and most of you won’t survive. If you’re not pulling your weight, I’m going to send you packing. And if you don’t go willingly, I’ll make sure you leave this life altogether. I need you to understand that. Is anyone unclear?”
No one said anything, meaning they got it.
“Those of you who know me, or know of me, understand the fate of the nation is at stake here. It’ll be time to act like it.”
Then the EMP went off. And then Lewis, or Booger as he was better known, came barreling up the driveway like his ass was on fire. Standing up on the porch, leaning on the railing, Diesel watched Booger park the motorcycle he’d let Clay take to Walker’s execution—his motorcycle. He then watched the man hurry up the pathway to the porch.
Not having the drink in his hand made him think about the pain in his body. The burns hurt like nothing he’d ever felt before, but the itching and the tightness were even more aggravating. Drinking had been the best thing for him, that and smoking when he could, when there was anything at all to smoke. Now his head began to hurt, reminding him to keep drinking.
The exertion of standing so quickly pulled some of that newly healed skin apart, causing fresh lines of pain to form. Did the skin split? Was he now bleeding? Letting out a long sigh, all he wanted was for his mother to put more ointment on him. There wasn’t much left, however, so when she suggested they use it sparingly, he reluctantly agreed.
“What are you doing here, Lewis?” he asked, using his given name.
“We’ve got a problem.”
He looked up at the iron sky, studied the horizon to see if this storm system would ever let up. Bringing him his motorcycle was one thing, but bringing problems, too? He decided not to use Lewis’s given name anymore.
“What’s the issue, Booger?” he asked, his patience so thin you could see through it.
“The sheriff in Nicholasville killed a few of the guys, then Colt McDaniel—”
“What?” he asked, more skin tearing. “When?”
“A few days ago. Maybe the day before last. I can’t…the days…they sort of seem to blend anymore.”
Shaking his head, he said, “Do you know why they call you Booger?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell me why,” he said.
“It’s because this one time, on my mustache—”
“Wrong,” he barked out. “They call you Booger because you’re an idiot. You come up here and tell me maybe it was a day or two ago, but maybe it was three. With something so profound as a sheriff killing three of our guys, you’re suddenly a little hazy on your timeframe?”
“There’s more.”
He let out a pained sigh, then wondered why he ever took on guys like this, or why he bothered putting this entire outfit together in the first place.
First Walker, now this…
“Is there any reason that putz, Keaton, didn’t come here and see me himself?”
“Colt McDaniel blew half his skull off. Bulls-eyed the crap out of Remy, too. Got him right in the chest, right here,” he said, touching his breastbone. “He was firing some kind of a hand cannon.”
“Desert Eagle?” he asked, outrage in his heart.
“No man, like a sniper rifle or something. Maybe a thousand yards off, maybe a bit less. But big, like you can feel the punch of sound, well…if you’re still alive after the shot.”
“He spared you?”
“Yeah,” Booger said. “Not sure why, though.”
“So you could come and tell me,” Diesel said. “Guys like this, like Walker, they’re cockroaches, man. Like, from the time of dinosaurs.”
“So, like, you mean they can’t be killed?”
“Is Walker dead?” he roared, splitting open a number of seams in his new skin.
“Yes,” Booger said, backing down.
“Go to the barn and gather up the men. It’s time to ratchet things up in a big way.”
When everyone was together, Diesel took stock of the leaders and the followers, and then he looked at guys like Lewis who had rightfully earned the nickname, Booger.
“The reason we have no power is that we’ve been hit with an EMP. That’s an electromagnetic pulse for those of you who are mentally deficient. Most of you know this was coming, some of you might not have known.” When he saw some empty stares, he rolled his eyes and said, “An EMP means we have no lights, no power, no heat, and no power grid. Imagine being taken back two-hundred years and dropped there. It’s like that.”
More empty stares. He gave it a minute, and then the eyes began to clear with understanding. Finally, the cheap seats got both light and sound.
“We’re heading into Lexington to hit the nearest Target. Now that’s a place that’s going to be obvious to most, so when we get in there, I don’t want any of you pussyfooting around with people. You have your weapons ready to go. The second you see someone who isn’t you, you start braining them. Anyone not know what that means?”
A guy raised his hand, causing Diesel to shrink even further inside.
“Yes?” Diesel asked.
“We basically club them over the head with…whatever…until their skull splits? That’s what you mean, right?”
“Exactly,” he said, relaxing.
“Anyone off-limits?” Booger asked.
He thought about the women and children, and then he thought about his mother, and the elderly. “Everyone is fair game.”
“Even kids?” Booger asked, shocked.
“Everyone means everyone, Boogersnot. Women, children, the freaking geriatrics. EVERYONE!”
A hand shot up and he thought about shooting the guy attached to it.
“Speak!”
“What about good looking girls? Aren’t we gonna need them?”
“Are you going to feed them?” Diesel asked.
“No,” everyone seemed to say at once.
Diesel felt himself smile.
“But a man has needs, right?” someone asked.
“We all have needs,” a skinny looking kid answered. This little ingrate had that look like he couldn’t get laid in a brothel if he had a mile-high stack of twenties.
“I get first go at whoever you bring home,” Diesel said. “You can decide who gets seconds, thirds, and so on. And if rationing food becomes an issue, we either kill her, or we kill her and eat her. Before you ask, what we decide will be determined by our circumstances. Can you all make that decision?”
The guys looked around, realized who their benefactor was, then smiled, and slowly started to nod, as if the suggestion wasn’t completely insane.
Maybe these guys were going to be alright after all.
“Yeah, alright,” one of them said. But then he said, “It ain’t right, the kids thing, Diesel. I can do a lot of things, but I ain’t beating a kid to
death.”
Rolling his eyes again, he stood up, ignoring the micro-tearing continuing to wreck the progress his skin had been making. “If you’re worried about it, don’t be. Their heads are smaller, softer. Besides, it’s the humanitarian thing to do. Unless you can keep your conscience clean letting them starve to death. Are you into torture?”
“For the right reason—” the kid started to say.
“But not on a child,” he said. “Children are off-limits?”
“I ain’t doing kids.”
“What about when we take the kid’s mother? What if we kill her right then? What if we beat both parents to death in front of the child? Do you really want them alive and scared like that?”
“I guess not,” he said.
“So if we don’t kill them,” Diesel reasoned, “if we let them live, maybe some pervert gets a hold of them. Think about it. The kid now has the horrors in his head of what we’ve done to his parents, and now he’s starving. Then what? Some dude wants to use him as their own personal juice wallet? What about if he’s being passed around like candy? Isn’t that abuse, which is also a form of torture?”
“I suppose.”
“This is why you aren’t in charge, whatever the hell your name is. And this is probably why you won’t survive this thing.”
He looked at Booger and zeroed in on the man. He’d expected better from him. Especially being under Keaton’s charge. Keaton was hard, mean, downright cruel if he wanted to be. To have raised up such a softie meant the structure under him was weak, and therefore, no great loss. If Booger didn’t grow some hair on his balls and quick, Diesel would write him off, too.
“Living in this world will require all of you to make some hard choices and some sacrifices. The girl you guys might want to bring home and have your way with…if we run low on food, we’re going to eat her. After you guys turn her into your own personal sex factory, do you really want to strip her down to the bone and eat her? Can you really do that? Think about it.”
“We’re not really eating people, are we?” Booger asked.
“Yes, Boogersnot, if it comes to that, Boogersnot, we’re going to make her into a week’s worth of food. Walker wouldn’t have minded that, and Keaton wouldn’t have minded that. Do you mind that? Well, Lewis, do you?”
“No, sir!” he said, finally showing some backbone.
“We take on two girls max, they get no food, and we kill them when they become a burden. If you don’t want to resort to cannibalism, then what you get in terms of food and supplies today must impress me. And if you don’t impress me, if you keep acting like Lewis the bitch over here, then you get gone or you get dead. It’s as simple as that.”
He said this, then he looked right at Booger—the idiot who was supposed to guard the guy who may very well have his precious metals and/or his gun.
“You said we’re going to hit the Target, but what are we hitting next?” one of the alphas asked. His name was Rod and he was a former Marine.
“Rod, after the Target, you and I will split the guys up. I’ll hit the Walmart Supercenter on 27, and you take your team up Tates Creek Rd and Man O War Blvd and hit the Walgreen’s Pharmacy. I’ve got a list of what we need in terms of meds and sanitary supplies. But then we’ll hit the Kroger hard. We’re going to strip that place to the bones, wipe it clean.”
“And then?” Booger asked.
“I’M NOT TALKING TO YOU!” he screamed, splitting the burned side of his mouth wide open six or seven layers deep. He tasted blood right away.
“Then what?” Rod asked. He was an alpha and twice the man Lewis would ever be.
“Then we do it again and again until this place is overflowing with food, supplies, and maybe a few loose women.”
Chapter Twenty
Gator
Gator couldn’t stop thinking about Trixie, the sassy strawberry-blond he seemed to gel with just fine until she started talking about her stupid boyfriend. He suspected she was hitched to some scumbag’s crank the minute he saw the bruising. That’s what made her perfect for him. Abused women loved him, and he loved them. They weren’t the regular breed, the kind of women who demanded things from him, like attention, things, or stuff. A girl like Trixie wouldn’t ask for a five-dollar coffee, she’d walk a few miles up the street in the rain wearing flip-flops and get her own fifty-cent cup of Joe and not complain, bloody feet and all. Girls like that, women like that, they thought he was an angel. An absolute dreamboat.
There was something about Trixie, though. She wasn’t a broken woman. She was, but she wasn’t. He didn’t understand it. Maybe he was taken aback by how easy it was to talk to her while she wore her shame plain as day. A woman like that, if she was truly broken, like all-the-way-cracked-in-two, she’d carry herself like a beaten dog—head low, eyes unable to make contact, speak only when spoken to and with as few words as possible.
That wasn’t Trixie.
When he finished installing the second bank of solar panels he’d removed from the faraday sleeves, he got on his four-wheeler, navigated down the rocky, nearly unmanageable hillside, then hit Sugar Creek Pike and headed to Colt’s house. When he got there, Faith answered the door with a shotgun, confirmed it was him, and visibly relaxed. “If you’re looking for Colt, he’s down the hill and across the street.”
“What’s he doing there?” he asked. That’s where Trixie lived, where her abusive boyfriend lived.
“He thinks something’s going on, like there’s something more to this EMP.”
“Something’s definitely going on,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
Gator smiled at her, tried not to look right into her eyes. Faith McDaniel was easily one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen, but her being his buddy’s wife forced Gator to think of her as a sister, even though at times, that felt impossible. If not for his penchant for questionable women, he’d never come around the house, because he wouldn’t be able to soften his desire for her. In fact, he suspected it may very well deepen.
“Think about it, Faith,” he said. “The EMP going off isn’t the most concerning thing these days. I mean, there are the ramifications, sure, but those are still a week or two off. Right now, it’s who set it off that worries me the most.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, suddenly concerned.
“America was attacked, but by whom? Is this the first hit? The only hit? Or is this the start of an insurgency we won’t see coming because there is no internet, no cell phones, no television, or radio we can rely on for warning?”
“The first thing we need to do is set up communications, then, right?”
“I’ve been thinking of that,” he said. “But if you start thinking about these things, if you really delve into the world of ‘what if,’ then suddenly you’ve found a rabbit hole without a bottom.”
“What if we were attacked?” she asked.
“We were.”
“I mean, what then?”
“We have to shelter in place, gather our food, weapons, and ammo, and protect what’s ours with an eye toward long-term survival. What we see now, all of this, it’s a dream compared to what this world will look like in six months, a year, five years.”
She suddenly got it, her face going a few shades lighter. “When you think that far out, it starts to get really scary.”
“That’s my point.”
“Well, as I said, we had…an incident,” she said.
“What do you mean, you had an incident?”
She gave a nod back to where he’d come from. He turned and saw a house down the hill, across the street.
“What about it?”
“I told you,” she said. “Colt’s down there. You should go see him, he’ll fill you in on everything.”
“Okay,” he said, dragging out the word.
On the way down there, he looked over at the man-cave/barn and saw Trixie standing outside the door. The strawberry-blond was smoking a cigarette. She looked like she had a bull moose t
rample her face, then roll her in dirt, and then hose her off.
He changed direction, heading back to her.
“Hi, Trixie,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
She didn’t say anything, she just looked down and studied the lit end of her cigarette.
“How do you know the McDaniel family?” he asked.
Her face was beaten, her weary eyes filled with unshed tears. She stood up straight, wiped her cheeks. Again, he waited for her to answer, and again, she said nothing, which was more than concerning. Whatever happened had to do with her.
“Did you lose your voice?” he asked.
“Lost my will to speak,” she replied, her voice rough, gravely like she’d been choked. Looking her over, trying to assess the damage beneath all her tattoos, he saw bruising, swelling, and marks put upon her in what he suspected was a fit of rage.
“You staying here now?” he asked.
“As long as I can,” she said, glancing up at Faith, who had gone inside, “but eventually I’ll be imposing. After that, who knows where I’ll be staying.”
“Okay, well, I’m going to head down the hill, talk to Colt. You okay otherwise?”
She looked at him like he’d just said her breath smelled sour, or that her eyelashes were falling off.
“What about any of this strikes you as okay?” With her smoking hand, she circled the air in front of her face and said, “Look at me, man. Look at my freaking hands.”
She held out her cigarette hand and it was shaking so badly, it looked like someone trying to come off the smack, or someone in the throes of death.
“What happened to you?”
“Go ask your friend.”
He nodded, knowing he wouldn’t be getting any answers from her. “Well, I’m sad for you,” he said. “Sad for whatever happened here.”
“She took a drag of her cigarette, looked at him through the smoky haze, then said, “I don’t need your pity.”
“That wasn’t pity, but if it was, it would be on the house, completely free of charge.”