“Guys, we can’t keep her here. We prepped enough for three to last five years. We have nothing beyond that, and now there’s her,” he said.
Albert and Rob were looking at Tony with concern.
It was Albert that spoke up first.
“Can’t we at least give her a couple weeks?”
“A couple weeks? NO! A couple days, yes.”
Both Albert and Rob were frustrated, but they agreed to two days and then she was out.
“Don’t bother!” Tori said as she stepped out from around the corner, where she was eavesdropping on the men.
“I don’t want to stay here anyway. I have a family to locate and, apparently, bury,” she said.
All three men were frustrated that she had overheard what was said, but Albert and Rob were frustrated the most at what Tony had said. They knew Tori from before the Flip and weren’t about to let her take off unprepped.
“Tori, wait a minute,” Albert said. “Take this. It ain’t much, but it’s something.”
Albert handed her a shiny 1911.
“Thank you, Albert.”
She took the pistol and tucked it into the front of her pants, inside the waistline.
She wiped her eyes and licked her lips. She could taste soot and grit from the fire. It was all still very fresh in her mind.
“Thank you, for everything. I would have died in that fire if you boys hadn’t been there to help.”
“We just wish we could have been there a little earlier to save the rest of you,” Rob said.
“Who was it?” Tori asked.
The guys just looked at her as if not knowing what her question was.
“Who was the group that killed my husband and daughters?”
“They don’t have a name, Tori. They just take what they want, and the only reason we were able to help was because they didn’t know how many of us there actually were. Had they known, we probably would be dead, too,” Tony said.
Tori turned to walk away.
“Tori,” Rob said to get her attention.
Tori turned back around.
“Yeah?”
“Look for Kyle.”
“Kyle?”
“Yeah, he’s one of the punks that was involved. He’s a squealer, too. He’ll tell you what you want to know if you know where to properly apply the pressure.”
“Thanks again,” Tori said as she turned to walk away.
When Tori stepped outside, she was instantly met with despair over the loss of her husband and children. She had some unresolved issues, and the only way to get any closure was to find the bodies of her family and give them a proper burial.
Tori began her trek down the street. It was midday and she was warily walking in the direction of the remnants of her home. The closer she came to it, the more her anxiety rose. She walked down the sidewalks, watching every building and studying every window to make sure she wasn’t being watched. Every once in a while, she would see a shutter move. Each time, it would give her goose bumps. It wasn’t long before she was hearing voices coming from the rural areas of town.
Groups of men , she thought to herself.
She paused and listened.
Tori heard three separate men. The voices were close. Just a few feet away and around the corner of a building.
Tori crept slowly towards the edge of the building and reached into her waistband, pulling out her 1911.
Tori had a tight grip on the pistol, not unlike the way she had gripped one during the Jihadist Wars. With her shoulder now tight against the wall, she prepared to ambush the men. She took a deep breath to calm her nerves, then stepped out into their line of sight.
“Don’t move, boys,” she said to the men as they stood, clearly surprised.
Tori had one pistol in her possession. There were three men standing at the side of the building. She would point at one man for a couple seconds then turn her aim toward another. She kept it so random that they were afraid to make a move.
“I’m looking for a guy named Kyle; you know him?”
“No, ma’am, we don’t know no Kyle,” one of the men said.
Tori pointed the gun back at the man that answered.
“You can speak for all three of you?”
They all answered similarly.
“We don’t know Kyle.”
“Don’t you move, or I’ll blow your head off,” Tori warned them as she walked away from them with her pistol aiming high.
When the men were enough of a distance away, she put her pistol back into her waistband and looked forward, but not without looking back over her shoulder on multiple occasions.
Tori could smell the cinders of burnt wood. She was just a block away from her home when she began crying again. She stopped walking and collected herself. She stood up straight, pulled her shoulders back, and walked onto the block her house used to be on.
Approaching her house, she could barely recognize what she was seeing. There was no upstairs or downstairs, just a ground level of nothing but steel pipes and porcelain and other debris that wouldn’t burn.
She walked over to where the staircase used to be and to the spot where the upstairs bedroom would have been located directly above. The brass bedframe was lying in a pile of debris. There was no mattress, but there was a box spring over to the side.
Tori turned it over, hoping to find them.
Nothing.
Tori walked to the spot where the bedroom closet would have been above her and saw lots of black, unrecognizable debris. She kneeled down and started moving the black debris around. Caked under this debris were the burnt bodies of Richard and Charity. He was lying in a fetal position with Charity’s body curled up within his own. They were posed as if Richard was trying to shield his daughter from death.
Tori began to cry.
As a mother, living with children after the Flip was a difficult thing. Losing loved ones in any type of scenario was a difficult thing. What Tori was experiencing was more than most women could endure. She had lost her entire family in a murderous act of barbarism perpetrated by a group of people she did not know.
She stood up and wiped her nose and eyes with the back of her forearm. She still did not know where Amelia was. She spent the next two hours scouring through the debris and fruitlessly searching for the body of her oldest daughter.
When she realized she was not going to find her, she stood up and caught her breath. She looked around the area and saw a child-sized red wagon. She had an idea to use it to haul the bodies of Richard and Charity to a burial location.
After fetching the wagon, the task of moving the two bodies of her loved ones had to happen. She was not looking forward to disturbing their remains, but she knew it had to be done if she was to receive full closure.
She gently brushed the debris off their bodies and pried them off the floor. The fire had melded them to the floor and some other unknown debris.
Tori was having a difficult time and would randomly break into hysteria. Each time she attempted to move them, there would be sounds caused by the separation of their bodies from the materials they were melded to.
After the difficult task of cleaning them off was complete, she lifted them into the wagon.
Tori found that they were surprisingly light, but felt it only made sense because their original body composition was nothing like what she was moving.
She pulled them to the backyard, where she found a nice spot. She walked into an old woodshed and found a shovel. She spent the next few hours digging the graves of Richard and Charity Cunningham.
December 3
Tori spent the night lying on the ground between the two graves. Her thoughts were of vengeance and also despair.
How can I carry on from here? Where do I go? Where can I find Kyle? And would it be wise to pursue him? she asked herself all night long.
“I’m not going to be a victim,” she said out loud to herself.
Not knowing the hour of the night or when the sun would begin its asc
ent over the horizon, she stood up. Tori broke into the back door of a neighbor’s house and spent the rest of the night on a couch.
When the sun had peeked across the roof of a neighboring house, the sunlight hit her face. She rose up quickly, as if on a mission, and rummaged through everything, looking for weapons. The kitchen drawers had already been emptied, but she found a folding Swiss Army knife in one of the bedrooms. Tori placed it into her pocket and went into the next house.
She completed this process, systematically breaking into the back doors of the houses within the neighborhood, with her pistol drawn. When Tori had busted into the fourth house, there was a man with a gun, and he was pointing it straight at her.
“There’s nothing for you here, little lady,” the man said.
Tori had her pistol out, too.
“Is this what they call a Mexican standoff?” Tori asked.
“I think so,” the man replied. “Why are you in my home?”
“I’m in search of weapons. I’m also looking for a man named Kyle from this area. You know him?”
“I know of him.”
“Where can I find him?”
“He’s a block down the road. How do you know him?”
“I don’t,” Tori said as she looked the stranger up and down. “He has information I need on the murder of my husband and daughters.”
“Murder?”
“My home was attacked, and my husband and daughters were burned alive a couple days ago. I aim to repay, tenfold.”
The stranger lowered his pistol and said, “My name’s Jamison.”
“Tori,” she said.
“I’m not going to stop you, but I would ask that you leave me some food, water, and my firearms,” the man said.
Tori let her pistol hand hang next to her side. She left her finger on the trigger.
“What else can you tell me about this Kyle?”
“He lived in this neighborhood before the Flip and was a troubled kid then. Now that he’s a man, all he does is loot. He’s not right in the head. He suffers from full-blown stupidity.”
“Address?”
“He’s down on the eight hundred block somewhere. Guy roams, hard telling.”
“Thank you, Jermaine.”
“It’s Jamison.”
“Thank you, Jamison.”
Tori left the man’s residence and embarked on a path towards the eight hundred block of Fifth Street.
Tori was already examining herself and learning how difficult things would be from here on out. She knew that the only way she could survive was to be strong. She was now free from any ties that would bind her to a home life and the things that made people both weak and strong. Tori reasoned that having a family gave her a reason to be strong, but without dismissing their deaths, she was coming to understand a different kind of strength she had to adopt now that they were gone. That same love that made her strong also made her weak. A new boldness that didn’t exist before was beginning to raise its head.
Tori was approaching the eight hundred block, and so far, her plan was as simple as walking in and getting involved with the group for the sole purpose of infiltrating its ranks to kill each of them.
Two men stepped down out of a store and faced her directly.
“What do we have here, Chuck?”
“I don’t know, Kyle. Looks like a purdy girl without a home.”
The comment, although sarcastic, had nothing to do with her loss of home and family. They did not recognize her and had failed to see her face when she was rescued by Tony, Albert, and Rob. The comment had a certain effect on her, though. Something clicked in her mind when she heard that comment, “girl without a home,” as though they knew what they had done.
Without missing a beat, Tori strolled up next to them and kicked the man named Chuck in the groin.
Kyle punched Tori in the face and she spun around from the force of the impact. When she twisted back to face them, she had her 1911 out and pointed at Chuck.
He was still bent over, writhing in pain.
She pulled the trigger and shot him in the top of the head.
Kyle instantaneously threw his hands in the air. “I’m sorry for punching you,” he said.
“Get in there,” she said as she whipped the gun in the direction of the store and back on him.
“What do you want?” he asked as he moved backwards, up the steps and into the store.
“Just information. Two days ago, my home was burned down and my family was burned alive. I want to know everything! The names of the people involved, where they’re staying, who’s in charge, everything.”
“Chris Thompson is in charge. I can take you to him. I know about the fire. I saw the whole thing,” he squealed.
“You’re gonna give me addresses, Kyle, or I’m gonna kill you.”
“I don’t know the addresses, only how to get to them.”
“Then tell me how to get there.”
“Okay, walk in that direction towards Fifth Street, then turn right at Straight Street. He’s in the green house. It’s like the second or third house on the right. I can take you and show you. It’s easier that way.”
“No, Kyle, it’s easier this way.”
Tori pulled the trigger and killed Kyle where he was standing.
“Boom! Head shot,” she said.
Tori slowly exited the store, stopping at the threshold of the doorway and peeking out, looking left and right. She stepped out, walked towards Fifth Street, took a right turn at Straight Street, and looked for a green house on the right side of the street.
Tori remembered a day when this street would be full of parked cars. When the Flip came, most people evacuated amidst the rioting. Many others did what the president had told them to do: Report to your nearest human handling center.
Tori and Richard saw the eventualities; that was why Tori was involved in the Southern Illinois Home Guard meetings with Nathan Roeh and others.
For the most part, there was widespread panic at the announcement of martial law. General lawlessness ensued, and group survival became a necessity. Unfortunately, the pack mentality took root in most groups, and everybody followed after the strong. That sometimes meant committing acts of evil against those perceived as being weak.
Tori was now a few feet from the green house that was described to her. She paused and looked around. She didn’t see anybody conspicuous. She took another deep breath to calm her nerves and walked up to the house. It was unlocked, so she took the liberty of inviting herself in.
There was a man sitting on the couch and another standing in a hallway, leaning on the wall.
The man that was sitting immediately stood up, and the man leaning against the wall stood up straight.
“Wow! Are you the girl Tommy was supposed to send me as a Christmas present?”
“I am,” she said as she played coy.
“Where’s Tommy?” he asked.
“I was hoping you could tell me,” she said as she started walking around the front room, looking at photographs hanging on the walls. “Are these pictures of your family?” she asked.
“No. They’re just some pictures of some random family that used to live here.”
“Are you Chris?” she asked.
“I am. Now come here.”
Tori’s back was to Chris as she was looking at photos on the wall. When she turned around, she had her pistol drawn and pointed right at Chris’s face.
“Whoa, take it easy, chick,” Chris said.
The other stranger had his hands up too, but he was slowly moving backwards down the hall.
Tori looked deep into Chris’s eyes and said, “Tell your dog to stop moving. He’s making me nervous.”
“Jesse, sit still, man. She has a gun pointed at my face.”
“Where’s this Tommy fellow?” she asked.
“He’s next door. What’s this all about?”
Tori took notice of just about everything that was in the room when she entered it. It was apparent
that these men were bad people. There were ropes, knives, guns, gasoline, and a multitude of other items that were, no doubt, stolen from others.
Tori slowly took two steps back and kept her pistol pointed at Chris. “Don’t you even think about moving, or you’ll be a dead man.”
She found herself next to a rope and she slowly lowered her posture to grab it with her free hand. When she came up, she tossed it to Jesse without taking her eyes off Chris.
“Sit down,” she commanded Chris.
Chris sat down, and Tori switched her position to maintain a visual on both men.
“Tie him up,” she commanded Jesse.
“What’s all this about?” he said again, only louder.
“I’ll explain everything in a minute, but for now, do what you’re told if you want to survive this.”
Jesse tied Chris up, as she had commanded; then Tori pointed her pistol at Jesse.
“On your knees,” she commanded.
“No way am I gonna get on my knees,” he said.
About that time a man came walking in the front door. Tori had failed to secure it, and now the severity of the situation had escalated.
“Tommy!” Jesse said.
Tori sidestepped into the corner and pointed her pistol at Tommy.
Tommy was quick enough to knock the pistol out of her hand when she swung it in his direction.
Jesse ran up and punched her in the face, knocking her to the ground.
“Now, you’re going to tell us what this is all about,” Jesse said.
Tori came up with her Swiss Army knife and stuck Jesse in the neck with it. He grabbed the knife while Tori was reaching for the pistol now a few feet from her, lying on the floor.
Tommy grabbed her leg as she was reaching for it, but he was too late. She swung the pistol around and shot Tommy in the chest and then turned the pistol towards Jesse, who was bleeding profusely from the neck.
“December first, just two nights ago, my home was burned down and you were involved. I want to know who else was involved?” Tori asked.
Chris began shouting from his position on the couch. “Chick, we burned your house down because you didn’t give us what we wanted.”
“You killed my husband and two daughters in that fire, you maggot.”
Whiskey Black Book Set: The Complete Tyrant Series (Box Set 1) Page 7