Haven From Hell (Book 3): A Young Man's Game

by Won, Mark

  I asked Curly, “Unless you want to join your buddy in the afterlife, you’ll answer me. How many are you?” I had Bob pointed directly at his face, but I could see that he was about to try a lie.

  I interrupted him before he could speak, “Stop. I can tell you’re about to lie. Don’t.”

  Larry said, “Look, We’re part of a much larger group. If you let us go then-,” I shot him in the mouth, also. With my height disadvantage that caused the bullet to pass through his brain.

  “Last chance, Curly. How many are you?”

  Finally getting my point, he admitted, “There’s four more of us searching the town. They’ll be here any second.”

  I still wanted to know, “How big is you’re whole group?” I cocked Zippy.

  “There’s over fifty of us.”

  I needed to know if they were all fighters so I asked, “Is every one of your group a fighter, or are there any kids or non-combatants?”

  “We keep some whores, but we’re all fighters,” he said, proudly. I was willing to bet that the so called ‘whores’ were of the imprisoned and unpaid variety.

  With a visible sigh of relief, “Good. I was worried for a second there. Now, where are they?”

  Curly could see no reason to hold back the information, at least not with a gun shoved in his face. “We’ve made a camp northeast of here, in Rimwolf, but our base is further north, in Wonder” I recognized the names of the towns from my map.

  I put down Bob and poured Curly another drink. I motioned for him to drink it.

  He said, “You want me to drink that?”

  “If you’re drunk then I won’t need to shoot you. I guess it’s your choice.” He drank so I set him up with a dozen more. That got the job done.

  Dan was glancing over his shoulder, “Why didn’t you shoot him?” Gina cast a glance of new found respect his way.

  “Because every shot stands an increased chance of attracting this dumb drunk’s buddies. As it is, maybe they’ll just think a pair of zombies got put down.”

  Gina asked, “So, what’s the plan? Do we make a run for it, or what?”

  “Well, For starters I think I need to search these guys. I really like the bayonets and I’m sure one of them will suit Ginger.” Ginger had never had a bayonet before and I was sure that she’d be pleased with the new fashion statement she’d soon be sporting.

  “Who’s Ginger?” Gina wanted to know. As a rule I don’t usually introduce all my weapon friends to the human people I meet. That sort of thing tends to make them nervous. The humans, I mean, not the weapons.

  Dan interjected, “I see a bunch of guys coming up the street. I think there’s four of them.”

  I had already reloaded and pulled back my cloak. There was no way I wasn’t going to have an old timey shootout in a bar if I had any say in the matter. That didn’t mean I wanted to put anyone else at risk, though.

  So I said, “Gina, get Andrea and go out the back door. Dan, go with her. I’ll see what I can learn from these guys. Tracer! Hide!”

  Gina was only too happy to comply. It’s not that she was a coward or anything, it’s just that she had her sister to look out for. To my way of thinking Gina was just keeping her priorities right. I was just as glad to see Dan follow along. It was better for him to be in a position to help them, in case of trouble.

  They had just enough time to get back into the bar’s office when the four newcomers advanced through the tavern doors. I wonder what they thought when they saw me standing there over the fallen figures of their friends. I had my favorite red cloak on with a revolver at each hip and a sword at each side. In the unlikely event that they were thinking, they must have wondered how I killed three men with only two shots (Curly was looking dead to the world). Each of them had a rifle in hand, each rifle with a bayonet, and a semi-automatic pistol at his side. Everything looked like it came from an old World War Two movie.

  They paused for a moment, uncertain. I took the opportunity to do a little pontificating (I was really in a mood after all that talk of The Great Gold Dragon Earl Tudor MacArthur). “You gentlemen are currently enjoying the evening moments of your temporal existence. Any final words before moving on?”

  Most of them didn’t seem to understand, but one of them, presumably their leader, spoke up, “Why did you kill them?” He gestured to the three bodies at my feet.

  “For the same reason that I’m going to kill all of you; they went for their guns. Even so, I let Curly live,” I motioned to their inebriated companion.

  “Why did you let him live?” Their leader asked.

  “It does me no good to have the power of life and death over mortals if I only ever use it to kill. I must also allow life to some or I risk diminishing myself, leaving myself with only the power of death.”

  He angrily replied, “Murdering a couple of drunks isn’t the same a fighting all of us. You actually believe you can get all of us before we kill you?”

  “Yes.”

  Their leader laughed, with the rest of them joining in. Strangely, it was not the laugh of arrogance, anger, or even malevolence, but rather fear. I wondered what they knew that I didn’t. Usually whenever I’m outnumbered I receive nothing but contempt (and I’m outnumbered a lot, not counting all my non-human friends). I was a bit shocked that this whole process was taking so long, but I could read in their eyes that they weren’t stalling. I laughed along with them. That shut them right up. My laughs often have that effect.

  “We have you trapped, kid. Put down your guns and we can talk.”

  I chose to not dignify such nonsense with a response.

  Encouraged by my silence, the men spread out. Again, their leader tried what lies might accomplish, “Just let us know where your people are and we’ll let you go, I promise.”

  Again, I met his folly with a stony silence.

  From behind me I heard, “I can take him out any time, Rudy, just give the word.”

  “Hold on,” Rudy said, “maybe he doesn’t have any people. But he does have stones. How would you like to join us? Obviously you know how to handle yourself.” I could read the honesty behind his eyes. So this is how the bandits got to working together. An armed show of bravado. Interesting.

  His men were not so inclined to count me among their number. One of them objected, “But he killed Tony and Pete!”

  Rudy informed the man of his opinion of Moe and Larry, “Tony and Pete were drunken *$%^&*,” (rectums), “or this kid could never have killed them. Isn’t that right, kid?”

  I replied, “Their gluttony did not serve them well, but it was their lack of prudence which caused me to end their days. Of justice they knew nothing, but I cannot fault their courage. They both refused when offered life for answers.”

  Rudy wanted to know, “What answers?”

  “We desired the sum of your numbers and the locus of your fastness, the better to maraud you. Curly was most forthcoming.”

  That had them a little nervous again, I could tell. Especially my use of the word ‘we’. I had no idea lying to villains could be so much fun.

  Rudy tried again, “How many have you sent?”

  “I am the least of seven brothers, and the seventh son of a seventh son.” That part was actually true. After I chopped up my zombie parents I had my work cut out for me with my zombified brothers and sisters. Half of them were ogres. “More than was needed were sent, yet I was left to herald your ending.”

  Rudy’s disposition shifted in the twinkling of an eye. He suddenly felt a time pressure to get back and warn his murder buddies. He was nearly done playing, “The only reason you’re still alive is because I was curious. We have you surrounded, you insane freak!”

  “I’m surrounded by the craven, the execrable, and the damned.”

  Finally, I’d pushed them too far, and it took some doing, let me tell you. For a bunch of hardened killers you’d think they’d be a little more of the shoot first type, but I guess not. Maybe that’s part of the reason they had such a large gro
up. More willing to negotiate.

  Anyhow, the guy behind me began to level his rifle while I was still talking, so I spun to the left and, using Bob, knocked aside a bayonet raised against me, shooting it’s rifle bearing holder in the knee. Continuing the spin, I moved around and Zippy put my next bullet into the skull of the one who had been at my back (the coward). By then the remaining two nearly had their rifles raised, but it was far too late. Bob blasted their leader while Zippy finished off the last of them. They hadn’t got a single shot off, which was nice as that saves on ammunition.

  Dan came charging back into the room with his pistol drawn and looking wild eyed and ready to go out in a blaze of glory. I almost shot him.

  Instead I said, “What the heck, man? You were supposed to stay with Gina! Where is Gina?”

  Looking slightly abashed, he told me, “She snuck out the back with Andrea. There probably over half way home by now.”

  “Well, at least that’s good news. Just a second,” I kicked the guy that Bob had shot in the knee in the head, silencing his agony. “That’s better. Since you’re here, you want to help me kill a bunch of bandits?”

  Dan raised his pistol to execute the man lying on the floor. I was glad to see him aiming for the head. Sometimes the inexperienced forget.

  I put a hand on his gun hand, “Not them, Dan, the group that sent them. Word on the street is that there’s about fifty of them, maybe a few more. If we get started now maybe we can be back in time for breakfast. What do you say?”

  Dan answered, “If were going to go after them shouldn’t we get everybody else to help out?”

  That made a lot of sense, but I didn’t like the idea. Getting everyone involved sounded like an excellent way to get a lot of my friends killed, and I just couldn’t have that. So I told Dan, “That’s a good point! What I want you to do is go back to everyone else and report what’s up. Meanwhile, I’m going to Rimwolf to scout out the enemy. I plan on being back at the farmhouse by tomorrow, sunup, okay?”

  Dan agreed that it was as good a plan as any and made haste for the back door, no doubt hoping to catch up with Gina. ‘Love makes fools of us all’. Well, not me, but everybody else, apparently.

  Chapter 19

  Rimwolf used to be a village of no significance. Presuming that the houses had all been cleared of zombies there were more than enough roofs to cover the heads of fifty bandits. I couldn’t believe that they would be so stupid as to split up that much, though. Probably they were in just five or six houses. Seven tops. Only one way to find out for sure though.

  Not that I like being a peeping tom. I don’t. It’s just that if one wishes to kill some people, and those people happen to be inside, than it’s just prudent to take a little peek first. So that’s what I did. Tracer looked on disapprovingly. Sometimes that guy can be so judgmental for someone who’s so amoral.

  It was pretty obvious which houses were being used to encamp the group. I had to figure they were the ones with all the cars, trucks, minivans, panel vans, sports cars, and motorcycles parked out front. With all the cars parked on the yard like that, and with all the garbage and litter strewn across several lawns, Uncle would have called it a ‘grease monkey convention’. I found that all the vehicles provided adequate cover for my approach.

  By the time I arrived at my peeping spot all was quiet. Even bad men have to sleep sometime, I suppose. Peeking in the various windows revealed little useful intelligence because the killers had bothered to board up the windows. Based on the uniformity of the job and the number of extra nail holes I had to guess that boarding up windows and doors was their usual modus operandi and that they even took their security supplies with them. Too bad; that meant some of them might be smart.

  Unable to see much through the windows, I moved to the town’s cars. No sense leaving the enemy with too much mobility. Also, as I may have already mentioned, I like fire. I picked up a conveniently discarded gallon jug, one of several, and began puncturing all the gas tanks in the neighborhood (which is the same as saying the whole village).

  Sneaking back and forth, I dowsed all the houses front and back, making sure to leave a few full jugs right by the doors. Then I began piercing the gas tanks of the bad guy’s cars. They could have smelled the gasoline or heard me working outside (I tried to be as quiet as possible) but they didn’t. One of the reasons for my initial recon was to determine whether or not they had anyone on guard. Without so much as a tripwire I had to assume a certain amount of overconfidence on their part. The hardest part was not getting soaked with flammable liquid while I worked, I hate it when that happens.

  The whole process took me a couple of hours, and by that time I was afraid that some of the gasoline which I had spread around the houses had evaporated. That’s what happens when I get ahead of myself. I lit a taper anyway and threw it. Whoosh. All the cars began to go up in flames and I could hear the shouts of the people inside the houses.

  Then Tracer and I took cover and waited. You see, wise people would dive out the side windows, while clever people would exit by the back doors. A smart leader of expendable troops could probably be expected to use his soldiers as a distraction, while he made his way out by a different way. Only bonafide idiots would come running out the front doors to see what the matter was. I wondered which it would be.

  Rather disappointingly, a lot of them began pouring out the front, I suppose with some foolish hope of saving their rides. I noticed right away that almost none of them had rifles equipped with bayonets, which I also found a bit disappointing. I supposed that the men sent on procurement runs were given all the best stuff while anybody staying behind got short shrift.

  I was working with a gibbous moon and all my targets were lit up nicely by the fire, while I, on the other hand, was secreted behind a big tree. I had made a point of turning my cloak inside out before entering Rimwolf because of its black liner. When my targets presented themselves so accommodatingly, I began using my sling to bring down the ones that stayed in the back first. The trick was to avoid head shots (which seems counter-intuitive when using a sling, I know), so as to make as many unwitting allies as possible. I would have rather used a bow but I didn’t have mine with me at the time.

  They figured out that they were under attack pretty quickly. I mean, it was kind of obvious, after all. No need for them to rush outside in the first place to understand that much, if you ask me. Somebody began shouting for all of them to get back, away from the fire. Upon hearing what I presumed to be their valiant leader’s command, they turned about and ran back inside, trying to escape an opponent which they could not see (me). Which was maybe not the smartest move, either. The cars were burning nicely and the houses were not, at first, but it was only a matter of moments before that situation changed. Once the wick on a gallon of gas ignited things began to heat up dramatically for my intended targets.

  The houses were mostly wood with vinyl and aluminum siding. No brick or stone to speak of, not even a facade. The flames began jumping all around the houses and leaping from one to the next with little bits of spinning fire getting carried away by the wind (wind and fire are two of my four favorite elements).

  Realizing the untenable nature of their predicament, the goons went running out of the houses in question, by every available exodus point. They were like rats abandoning a sinking ship. Or, more accurately, like birds flying from a burning barn. Or, even more accurately, like human garbage trying to not get burned up. Anyhow, I started shooting them then.

  It was a lot safer than I thought it would be. They were all split up and being attacked from they knew not where. One of their friends would drop and suddenly there would be a fresh zombie getting up and looking for a quick bite. Once or twice some of them would return fire, but more often than not the end result of that action was friendly fire casualties.

  With them scattering in all directions and all over town, I had a relatively easy time picking them off. Tracer had no trouble pointing them out to me through the rising
smoke and darkness. I even tried wounding a few to see if their ‘buddies’ would double back for them. Not so much. Since I had the rest of the night before me, I began a more subtle stalking game. My quarry were on foot, I’d seen to that, so I had to figure that they would either flee flat out, or try and take cover somewhere nearby. As stupid as that sounds, that meant hiding in a nearby house, one not yet engulfed in flames, because that worked so well the first time. Then I got lucky.

  I saw a number of the bandits trying to flee straight out of town along what passed for the main road. Bob managed to plant a bullet in one of their backs, and that one Changed into a ghoul. Before one of its former buddies could pin it with a bayonet I began using covering fire to help the poor lonely ghoul make some more friends for itself. Then Tracer and I ran away as fast as we could, chortling the whole way.

  I looked about and saw that the fire had gotten somewhat out of control. The whole town seemed consumed by a blaze fit to roast the devil’s tail and we were in the middle of it. There was no point in doing a house to house search for the enemy, as they were bound to either come outside and play, or fry (I was good either way).

  With my eyes tearing from the smoke I made my way back the way I had come, figuring that it was just as likely for me to encounter the enemy in that direction as any. Moving toward me, through the smoke, stumbled two figures. Tracer had noticed them before I had, but the smoke had gotten so bad that I couldn’t read his signs clearly anymore. Both were holding rifles pointed in my general direction and one of them had a bayonet. Zippy put a bullet in each of them almost before I knew they were there.

  I had to change direction again unless I wanted to start killing zombies. I tried cutting between two burning buildings only to be driven back by the flames. Fortunately, the zombies had already moved on (fire is a good way to encourage zombies to leave an area, as long as they don’t see a potential victim).