ELE Series | Book 5 | Escape

by Jones, K. J.

  “Find out,” said Peter from the other side of the room.

  They could have beat him to death. A group kicking Abbeny in a boot party would be the norm in the Before if men like them caught such a thing happening to a child. But they needed their energy reserve for tomorrow.

  Matt used the steak knife. He cut Abbeny’s throat, ear to ear, catching the arteries as well as the trachea. Abbeny’s scream cut short as the serrated edge cut his larynx. He choked as he bled out, and they watched.

  It was kinder than what the women would have done if the boys didn’t need comforting. They’d have gone for his genitals followed by torturing him to death. Phebe and Emily, no doubt they’d have done him that way. But the boys needed the hugs and nurturing right now.

  “Nuh,” said Chris. “Too quick. Too merciful, Gleason.” He paced, the angry bull rising. “Fuck this.”

  Chris’s wide shoulders knocked the two smaller men out of his way, throwing Pez and Brandon off-kilter. He charged in and grabbed the bleeding-out, choking-up-blood Abbeny by the clothes. Then dropped him, grabbed a sheet from the bed and ripped it. He wrapped the cloth around the bleeding neck, then dragged him by the stocking feet.

  Matt stood and got out of his way. “What are you doing?”

  The other two in the doorway dashed out of the way as Chris dragged the dying man by the feet across the floor, followed by down the stairs. Abbeny’s head banged on each riser. If he wasn’t already dead, he would be by the skull fractures.

  They all followed.

  Across the first floor towards the back door, Chris dragged him. The wound started to leave a blood smear as the neck seeped through the sheet bandage. Everyone came out of the living room to watch. Through the smelly kitchen and out the back door, Chris dragged the body to the tree stump where the wood ax stood. He dumped the feet and yanked the torso up. The guys stepped aside to let the boys see, no clue if this was psychology good or bad for them to witness. Phebe stood with her hand on Tyler’s shoulder as they watched.

  Chris could not get the head and neck to stay on the stump. “Some help here please?”

  “I’ll do it,” said Tyler.

  “Whoa,” said Pez. “Is that good for him?”

  “Who the hell knows,” responded Emily.

  Tyler went to the opposite side of the stump from Chris. He stared down at the body with hatred.

  “Grab his nasty hair once I get him back up on this here stump. Just need to hold his head in place.”

  “Do not miss,” Matt said. “He’ll lose his hand.”

  “I ain’t gonna miss. Been chopping wood since I was knee-high to a grasshopper, son.”

  “Maybe we can find something to hold him there.”

  Tyler held the head by the hair with the neck on the stump, and Chris rose the ax. The boy winced in fear of his hands as the ax came down. Several of them then cringed at the terrible sound the ax blade made as it chopped flesh and bone. It took three blows before the head severed from the neck.

  Tyler picked it up. “How you doing now?” He sounded like Pez. “Ain’t so tough now.”

  “There’s probably something seriously wrong with this picture,” said Pez.

  “What?” asked Peter. “That he sounds like he’s a Joisey boy?”

  “Huh? He’s talking to a head.”

  Jayce’s face showed self-righteous approval as if the fires of a wrathful god burned inside him.

  Chris’s next project was to find a stake. He searched around and found a strip of wood. Broke this to get the right width, and he broke it again to make a sharp end.

  “Gimme that head, boy.”

  Tyler passed it over, then wiped his hands on his jeans with disgust. Pez reacted to the terrible sounds of shoving the head on the stake caused, showing it was his first head-stake experience, unlike the others.

  They all followed Chris to the front yard. He shoved the stake into the ground and it fell over. “Shit.” He tried to dig a little hole. “Ground too frozen.” He looked around. “Got another idea. Hold the head.” Peter caught it by the stake as Chris passed him.

  “Ew. This is seriously something I never wanted to do.”

  “You’ve seen tons of them, Irishman,” Phebe said.

  “Not like this. It’s like a project thing.”

  “Get your big boy pants on.”

  “Wow. Um, it’s a severed head. Could I have an ounce of humanity and civility to me?”

  Phebe looked at him, the innocents long gone from her eyes.

  “Guess not,” Peter said. “Okay. Cool head. Wicked. Better, babe?” He stepped closer to Pez, who stared at the head as if it was a live dragon. “What do you think?”

  “When you look into the abyss, the abyss looks into you.”

  “Wow. I totally did not expect that.”

  “Me either,” said Matt. “Random, Marine.”

  “What?” Pez sounded defensive. “I read.”

  “Sometimes you so remind me of Raven,” said Matt.

  “I miss him,” said Peter. “He would like this. Didn’t he start this? Who started this beheading thing?”

  The old group pointed at Phebe.

  “Ah, yes, wifey. My darling Beheader.”

  “The first was an accident,” Phebe said.

  Emily laughed.

  “I feel really medieval,” said Peter. “My wife’s King Henry the Eighth.”

  “Not that I know a great deal of history,” said Pez. “But I am pretty sure he did not cut off the heads himself. Not even of his wives.”

  “It’s good to be king,” responded Peter.

  Chris returned with things in his arms. “Bring the head over here.” He knelt at the porch railing, stringing twine around the banister. “I reckon I can tie it to this here railing.”

  “Hmm.” Peter handed the head over by the stake as if it was a giant candy apple on a stick. “There’s always duct tape. Good for everything.”

  “Found some. It all dirty and shit.”

  “Everything was.” Peter looked at the house. “Is.”

  He did not want to go inside after this, knowing this was more than hoarding. Child porn was probably somewhere in the place. Peter shuddered. Looking off to the sky, he wondered how long until sunrise so they could leave.

  Chris stood, proud of himself. “That gonna hold for a while.”

  The head stuck up above the porch railing, tied at the stake. Blood dripped on the floor below. It looked like a Halloween decoration, except it was a real head.

  “Need a sign.”

  “A sign?” Peter asked.

  “Ain’t meaning much without a sign.”

  Chris sat with a piece of a cardboard box. He filled a glass with blood. With his finger, he wrote in large block letters. Once done, he showed it to Peter. Just enough starlight to see it since the letters were huge: Child rapists die!

  “Straight. To the point.”

  “Gonna nail it right here.”

  “Go for it, big man.”

  Peter limped down the steps and joined Phebe. “What do you think?”

  Chris hammered a nail.

  “To the point,” she said.

  “Should’ve been done in the Before instead of sacrificing our children.”

  Uncle Tim would love this. Indeed, on the other side of the family, Uncle Sean, his mother’s brother, one of her seven brothers, would be all for this too. Sean had done time, and he had said they killed the child molesters whenever they could get a hold of them. Jailhouse justice, it was called, for when the system failed. Free-range kids had stopped because of sick men like Abbeny. The molesters allowed freedom, and the children were confined.

  Peter looked at Tyler, wondering if he’d recover alright. The kid looked at the head triumphantly. Knowing Tyler, he probably felt worse about not being able to defend himself than anything else. His small size had been his disadvantage. He had to have been caught off guard since he was a mean fighter. If nothing else, Tyler would bite off a nose.

/>   Everyone patted Jayce on the back for a job well done in defending Tyler. Their Zoner mores of loyalty and taking each other’s backs outweighing any other morals.

  “Sully.” Jayce approached him. “I need to learn how to kill better. Could you help me with this, please?”

  Angela had stunted his training, seeming to hope her children could still be the privileged kids of the Before and future American presidents. She was gone now.

  Peter’s brows rose, mostly because Jayce asked in such a polite way. “Sure. As soon as possible, which will probably be Boston. Okay?”

  Jayce nodded, then followed everyone else inside.

  “I so don’t want to go in there,” Peter said to Phebe. The couple remained outside.

  She looked at the sky. “Still hours before sun up.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What if his neighbors see this and get pissed and want retaliation?”

  “Seen anybody out at night?” she asked. “Or at all?”

  “Don’t hear any activity.”

  “We will be gone by the time any of them come out here. Too bad we can’t burn down the house now.”

  They stared at the severed head tethered to the railing and the blood-dripped sign beneath it. Definitely, this sent a message.

  “We’re so medieval.” Phebe laughed.

  “Aren’t we?”

  “Didn’t take us that long to get medieval.”

  “Maybe we always were but society repressed it.”

  “Could be. That’s an interesting hypothesis.”

  “Thank you, professor.”

  They linked arms and strolled into the house, giving one last glance at the dead man’s head before they entered his smelly, hoarder home.

  Chapter Two

  1.

  Since it was conscription time, things progressed faster than in the Before. In the first phase, called the red phase, of basic combat training, or BCT, they learned the acronyms, and how to speak in acronym. And about the Army heritage, command structures, and their leadership. They underwent an Army Physical Fitness Test or APFT. The APFT determined their physical aptitude. They did APFT fast, and the result was Fat Gamer Guy had to go on a diet and the Zoners needed more caloric intake. They had lessons teaching them basic tactical and survival skills, how to shoot, rappel, and march. They learned the basics of Army life and military customs – including something called the Army Values. Loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage. Not a lot of emphasis on this in the fast-forward approach to new conscripted Army basic training, probably because draftees didn’t survive long.

  The red phase merged with the second or white phase. They had already started marksmanship and combat training; initially failed to work together on a tactical foot march but rappelling the Warrior Tower was amazing fun. Mullen was reprimanded for screaming Woohoo as he repelled down. They were soon to do what the sergeants called the Confidence Obstacle Course. Apparently, this course created confidence. Most of the Zoners needed a touch of humbleness, not more confidence.

  The non-Zoners hurt from the acceleration of basic training.

  “They gotta know they’re cannon fodder by now,” said Jerome.

  “Never underestimate the stupidity of others,” said Mullen. “Phebe used to say that. Or Sully did. One of ‘em.” He looked sad whenever mentioning his group.

  “Hey,” said Kanesha as she rubbed his arm. “A better place, remember?”

  “Yeah.” He nodded, trying to lift his face from downcast depression.

  “So when do we bug outta here?” asked Mackey. He was already bored in his platoon’s red phase, and being one of a handful of Zoners, most of whom were on the helicopter with him, already outshining the non-Zoners.

  “You don’t want to do the Tower?” asked Dre.

  “Not feeling it.”

  “Could be helpful skills.”

  Vi said, “I’d like to learn as much as they can give us.”

  “But civvies need us,” Eric said.

  “Listen to you, boy,” said Vi. “‘Civvies.’ You all Army’d up, ain’t ya?”

  “You should talk, Viola.”

  “Me? I’m doing just fine.”

  The siblings had grown to speak more. Basic training did well for them.

  Their platoon had Basic Rifle Marksmanship or BRM, and rifle qualification, zeroing a rifle, engaging targets at various distances and from different positions, and prioritizing multiple targets simultaneously. Vi wiped the floor with this training. The instructors were impressed and surprised.

  Mackey said, “There ain’t nothing they teaching nobody about fighting zoms.”

  “But there’s other useful things,” said Dre. “Things that can help us out.”

  “I ain’t gonna fight their battles against the infected. No way, no how. Bottom line.” Mackey got up and walked away.

  “Nobody said we would,” said Vi to the group.

  “He’s just being an ass,” said Jerome. “I wish they would accelerate training more. Let’s get on with things we need to learn.”

  “I’m right there with you, brother,” Vi responded. “But they got us doing shit that ain’t got no purpose for urban and suburban warfare. Where’s these woods we gonna be fighting in?”

  “Long term, these things may be of help. Gotta think about what happens after all this is done.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Everything breaking down. People gonna be on their own. Like the email from the Reyes family. Got hoodlums taking over places without law and order controlling things.”

  Kanesha said, “Too bad there’s not a How to Farm course taught to us. Basic animal slaughtering the right way. How to make hides to wear. We gonna need that shit. How the fuck are candles made, y’all?”

  Dre snorted a chuckle. “How to make gunpowder from scratch.”

  “I know how,” said Eric. “At least theoretically.”

  Dre put his arm over Eric’s shoulders. The size difference, not only in height but width as well, enormous. “You a good little guy to have around, Eric the Red Wong.”

  2.

  On the road again. The first snowflakes fell just as they entered the most dangerous area: Shippensburg. The city to their left, towards the west, appeared similar to a British city after a Nazi blitz bombing. Fires had raged, now extinguished and leaving charred structures standing at bizarre angles. Building walls had fallen and steel frames blackened. The group could smell burnt ash.

  In contrast, the highway billboards sat unscathed. They advertised products and services, some national while others local and no longer existed.

  “Let's pick up the pace,” said Pez. “We need to get beyond this city to find shelter.”

  The frigid wind picked up, swirling the snow. They heard a ding, ding, ding coming from the city of something metal hitting something else metal – a lonely, eerie sound.

  Their boots slipped on snow-covered ice. Running noses ran and the snot froze. Snowflakes caught on eyelashes. Gloved hands tucked under their arms and scarves covered their noses and mouths. They still shivered.

  * * *

  “What the hell is this?” Chris asked.

  Tons of people ahead on the road, walking through the corridors between abandoned vehicles on the highway. All going in the same direction with packs on their backs, bags hanging from their shoulders, or rolling suitcases behind them.

  “What do we do?” asked Matt. “They seem healthy.”

  Pez jumped up on a car and aimed his scope in the direction the masses walked. “I see buses down there.”

  “What do we do?” Matt repeated.

  “I guess,” said Peter, “We get in the line.”

  “Okay.”

  So they did.

  After a while, they reached the people’s target. School buses, city buses, and commercial buses received evacuees. They had made it to Carlisle.

  ZBDU-wearing National Guard everywhere. Some guarded. Others stood at t
he entrances of buses, waving people through and counting off how many got on. The people getting onboard looked shell shock, dirty, and hungry. Little kids were abnormally quiet as they clung to adults. Traumatized, the whole of the civilians were.

  The group got in line to a commercial bus.

  “Excuse me,” said Emily to a lady. “Where is the bus going?”

  “To the airport in Philly.”

  “Ah. Okay, thank you.” Emily looked at the group and mouthed, “Philadelphia.”

  Phebe responded, “There’s a large international airport there.”

  “Are we gonna buy tickets or what?” Pez asked. “What’s gonna happen?”

  “Got no idea,” said Peter. “This would be our first official evac.”

  “I hope they don’t ask for IDs.” Matt craned his head to look around. “I don’t see any ID check.”

  “Why does that matter?” Pez asked. “You don’t got your wallet?”

  “No, Marine, that’s not it. We have a sneaking suspicion we are officially dead and that’s probably for the better for most of us.”

  “Oh. Shit. Never thought of that.” Pez stepped closer to drop his volume. “But … how we gonna do shit with being dead?”

  Shrugs.

  “If we can get to Boston,” said Peter. “I got relatives galore who can help us out.”

  “But how do we get there?”

  “The Force is weak with me right now. I don’t know, Pez.”

  Pez nodded about a dozen times, transparently uncomfortable with the foreseen situation. “We’ll handle it. Like we always do.”

  “That’s right.”

  They had even less paperwork than they had before. No marriage certificates or guardianship documents. Phebe and Emily had no form of identification at all. Since they were escaped prisoners, presumed dead, lack of any paperwork probably stood as something good. Nonetheless, the two women gave each other nervous glances.

  “Looks like they’re not even recording names,” said Matt. “Just waving people on board as fast as they can.”

  “Good for us.” Chris looked down at the groups’ boots and pants. “Um. We got a lot of military boots and BDUs showing.”

  “Why can’t we just be Pennsylvania rednecks?” Matt asked. “We could just be a bunch of dudes wearing our hunting gear. I hope.”