by A. J. Powers
Sitting on the edge of the tub, Clay unlaced his boots. Each one seemed to hold a cup or more of water that spilled onto the peeling linoleum floor as he yanked them off his feet. After pulling off his socks and hanging them from a towel rack, Clay unzipped his pack and untied the plastic bag inside. Anything that had to stay dry needed to be tied up in a plastic bag. While Clay’s backpack was water resistant, years of abuse combined with the relentless rain meant that the contents inside were equally as soaked as the outside of the bag. He reached into the plastic bag and retrieved a pair of socks that had been rolled into a ball—it was one of a half-dozen pairs. Besides food and water, there was no greater preparation for Clay than to ensure he kept his feet dry. He always had at least three extra pairs of socks on him whenever he left Northfield; he had heard far too many horror stories about “jungle rot,” a term often used by soldiers in Vietnam.
With dry, albeit wrinkly feet, Clay got settled into the tub. Since he had acquired the necessary skill to fall asleep almost anywhere, he anticipated his slumber to come quickly. It did not. His mind was far too focused on the slaughter he heard earlier—the desperate and departing cries of an innocent soul. Thinking about it made him shudder.
“When’s this going to end?” he said quietly to himself as he leaned his head back and let out a soft sigh. The years of traveling, gunfights, hunger, and loss had taken a devastating toll on Clay, particularly with his spirit. He recalled the words Shelton had assuredly told him a few years back, “So long as there is hope, there’s a will to carry on.” It was not that Clay disagreed with the sentiment; the problem was that Clay’s hope was fading. His family, for now, kept him motivated enough to keep pressing on when he didn’t have anything left, but as Clay found himself away from home—and his family—more and more, the despair in his heart grew darker. He wanted to cry uncle, but who would hear him? It seemed as if God had pushed the mute button a long time ago and complaining to his family would only add to their ever-growing angst. There was no other choice but to suffer in silence and just find a way to endure.
The night dragged on; Clay didn’t sleep a wink. When the fading glow on his watch hands indicated it was approaching 4:45, Clay determined there was little point in trying to sleep. He decided to rest another thirty minutes then head out, but around five o’clock he heard footsteps downstairs followed by crude banter.
Oh, crap!
Clay got out of the tub as fast as he was able to without making much noise. He quickly slipped his boots on, but didn’t bother tying them; he just gave the laces a few tugs and tucked them into the boot. He pushed the door closed, stopping just short of the latch, and backed away as far as he could.
Footsteps climbed the stairs; voices became clearer. Clay took slow, deep breaths to prevent his heart from pounding its way out of his chest. The only thing separating him from the ruffians on the other side was a rotting piece of wood feebly hanging from a few hinges. It would likely only be a matter of time before one of them popped into the bathroom, forcing Clay to fire the first shot in what would become his final fight.
His knuckles turned white as he ferociously squeezed the AK’s pistol grip. He curled his finger around the trigger and waited to fire.
“What?” a man’s voice yelled just outside the door.
Clay’s finger pressed on the trigger, but did not complete the transaction. He waited. Suddenly, the footsteps on the other side of the bathroom door moved down the stairs and more voices began chattering. He heard laughing and mocking screams followed by more laughing. Clay’s eyes widened as a horrible pit dug into his stomach. These weren’t bandits or scavengers searching a random house…
Screamers.
Being paralyzed with fear made figuring out his next move difficult. And after a few minutes, Clay concluded that there wasn’t one. The psychos were roaming around the house, gabbing away with each other like they were drinking at the pub. Clay was trapped. The bathroom had a small window looking out to the back yard, but it was small—too small for an adult to climb through. There was nowhere to go.
Clay listened in horror as the group recounted their inhuman activities from the night. One man touted about a family of four he found sleeping off the highway. He spared no detail of the gruesome ordeal, and it took a lot of effort for Clay to keep his meager dinner from making an unexpected appearance all over the floor. They all talked about their “hunts” for the night, chatting casually as if talking about just another day at the office.
Clay found that all his fear and anxiety had transformed into rage. He fantasized about brutally and viciously murdering every last soul in the house—dispatching each one mercilessly, making them cry for their mothers as their last breaths departed from their lips. He considered the satisfaction of watching their blood pool around their lifeless bodies—seeing them as the center of carnage instead of the creators of it. But killing them wouldn’t bring back those they had slaughtered throughout the night. And attacking them certainly would not end well for Clay, either.
He started to tremble again, not because of the Screamers so much as his own thoughts. Though he had never even considered such atrocities before, he was frightened with how easily they entered his head. Clay eventually shook off the troubling thoughts. Anyone who spends enough time in this world will think that way from time to time, he convinced himself, though he still found himself disturbed by the brief episode of psychosis.
Nearly an hour passed before the last of the voices hushed—Clay assumed the men had gone to sleep. He was now faced with a decision: sneak out while they slept or wait for nightfall and make an escape after they leave. If he waited until they left, then Clay would be outside, once again, while the Screamers looked for their next victim; that didn’t sound too appealing. But then again, attempting to sneak through a house that creaked and groaned under the weight of a mouse while a group of sadists slept next to bloodied machetes and baseball bats didn’t seem like a smart idea either.
Time to go, Clay finally decided. He questioned his ability to stay cooped up in that bathroom for the rest of the day without losing his mind. Leaving right away felt like the better of the two choices. He press checked his rifle, ensuring it was chambered before stepping into the viper’s pit. Slowly pulling the door back, Clay tiptoed out into the hall.
He couldn’t see much—it was still fairly dark outside, though he could see evidence that the sun was about to crest the horizon through a window in one of the bedrooms. He stayed motionless for a moment while he listened carefully for the slightest sounds. Nothing. It was completely silent save a few snores coming from around the house. Clay was terrified to walk through a dark house with sleeping Screamers scattered about. It was like being asked to walk through a minefield with a blindfold.
Clay managed to get down three steps before the groaning lumber became an issue. He wasn’t sure if his heightened senses made the sound seem more profound than it was or if the stress Clay put on the stair actually caused a sound akin to that of a Redwood falling over. Either way, he didn’t want to push his luck.
Clay tried to shake the banister and was pleased to find it quite sturdy, which gave him an idea. He grabbed on to the bannister with both hands and carefully hiked his leg up and then as delicately as a mother laying her newborn down into the bassinet, Clay eased his weight onto the railing, making sure it could support him. With just a slight whimper from the aging wood, Clay began to ease his grip and gravity took over from there. As if he was repelling down a cliff face, Clay controlled the speed of his descent with his hands. Slow and steady. It probably took him more than five minutes to reach the bottom, but the effort was without sound.
Clay eased himself off the railing and onto the hardwood floor again. The snoring and breathing from the living room to his left was unsettling. The front door was inches in front of him, but having gone through the back door the night before, Clay had no idea what state the front door was in. Was it locked? Was it nailed shut? If he opened it would it
just fall off the hinges? The unknown potential to wake the slumbering sociopaths was too great. And, as best as he could recall, the back door in the kitchen was not particularly noisy—it was his exit.
After inching his way into the carpeted dining room to his right, Clay headed for the kitchen. The kitchen had a nice grouted tile that seemed to be as quiet to walk on as the day it was installed. But then, as he was just a few feet away from the door, Clay’s foot found a glass bottle on the floor. The loud clanking sound as the bottled skidded across the tile made every muscle in Clay’s body tense so tightly that his back began to spasm. As he tried to work out the painful twinge, Clay heard a grumble come from the living room.
“I will hang and gut the next person who wakes me up!” a voice shouted with a sinister wrath from the next room over.
Relief washed over Clay when it became apparent that the threat was verbal only and no one was coming to investigate the source of the sound. He stayed put for a few minutes to allow the Screamers to fall back to sleep and to let his nerves settle. He was so close, yet he just could not seem to get out of this house of horrors! The dull, muted sunlight crept in through the kitchen window, providing a dim light throughout the house. He could barely make him out, but Clay noticed that one of the men was sleeping in the dining room; sprawled out on the floor no more than three feet away from the path Clay had walked just minutes before. The close call was nauseating.
It had been long enough since Clay had bumped into the bottle. Time to leave this hellhole, Clay thought as he reached for the doorknob. The tightness in his chest started to ease as he swung the door open and walked outside. He moved his gun to the left and right, looking for threats.
Nothing.
He quickly made his way back to the road, and as soon as he felt he had put enough distance between himself and the house, Clay tore into a full-on sprint. With his adrenaline spiked high into the stratosphere and dawn finally arriving, Clay felt as if he could keep the pace for miles. Fortunately, seconds later, he found himself hunched over, puffing for oxygen in front of 2409. His watch showed that it was a hair past six, which meant rush hour was over for the Screamers.
Clay made his way inside Smith’s house and was discouraged with the mess he saw in front of him. Though there was no activity inside—and he triple checked just to be sure—the cluttered mess of a thoroughly searched house was not what he wanted to see, especially after what he just went through.
His first objective was to find the envelope. After that he would do a brief scavenge of the house, but he was not feeling optimistic that his efforts would yield much. The search would have to be quick, though; Clay didn’t want to stay in the area a minute longer than necessary. He now understood why nobody had ever taken on this job before. It was well beyond going behind enemy lines; it was diving headfirst into the belly of the beast. Had Clay known what he was walking into beforehand, he wouldn’t have taken the job, either.
At the back of the house, Clay found the master bedroom. Except for its first floor location, it was almost identical to the master bedroom in the other house: small and no bathroom. Clay walked in and located the safe off to his left next to the bed. Smith told him the envelope was in a hidden compartment beneath the floor of the safe. It didn’t take long for Clay to discover the false floor and unveil a stack of papers beneath. He pulled everything out and skimmed through the various papers. He found the only envelope—a large manila envelope with a metal prong on the back—and stuffed it into his backpack. Just to be thorough, Clay glanced at the other documents in case anything stood out. It was mostly tax forms or legal papers with FFL and LLC on them—he assumed those weren’t what Smith was after.
After doing a quick search of the room, Clay checked the rest of the first floor without finding anything. The first bedroom he checked had been converted into an office. He snatched a few pens and a couple of legal pads that he found in one of the desk drawers, but nothing else. The next bedroom was mostly empty, just clothes—or what appeared to be clothes—and broken furniture lying around the room in a thousand pieces. Nothing worth grabbing. But, as Clay walked into the bedroom at the end of the hall, he was struck by an overwhelming grief. With his eyes locked onto the pair of toddler beds on either end of the back wall, it clicked that the furniture in the other bedroom at one point in time had been a crib.
Clay rested his hands on his head and sighed. He was no stranger to loss. The eerie sight of the children’s beds reminded him of that crippling pain he had experienced more than a few times. It was indescribable. But now that Clay had a son—his own flesh and blood—he couldn’t comprehend what he would do if something were to happen to him. He knew that if someone ever tried to harm his son, though, that the visions of torment he had in his head earlier would pale in comparison. Somehow, Smith found a way to make it through to the other side, but Clay doubted his ability to do the same.
Between the emotional thrashing triggered by the twin beds and his adrenaline finally wearing off, Clay’s fatigue hit back hard. But there was no time to rest. He needed to get back to the campsite so Smith could make the new firing pin, and Clay could finally head home.
Clay had to grasp to the railing to support his weight as he walked down the stairs. He had no idea how he was going to find the energy he needed to make it through the rest of the day. He was starting his journey with the gas tank already on “E.”
As Clay approached the front door, he saw the handle twist. His eyes widened and, like a floodgate opening, his adrenaline levels were immediately replenished. The door swung open, and a man started to walk through. The shaven head…the horrific tattoos…the Kevlar vest.
Not again!
By the time the man noticed Clay standing in the living room, Clay had his rifle raised. Both stopped dead in their tracks as they quickly sized up their opponent. The man was armed, but his pistol was nestled inside a holster hanging from his belt.
“Don’t move,” Clay said with a hushed voice and a piercing stare.
The Screamer remained still for only a moment longer before his hand flinched toward his sidearm.
The silent morning was disrupted by the explosive power of Clay’s rifle being fired rapidly. The full metal jacket bullets did what they were designed to do and tore through the man’s light body armor. He stumbled back out onto the porch and dropped to the ground.
Clay wasn’t sure how many times he pulled the trigger, but one shot was more than enough to draw some very-much unwanted attention. Operating on instincts, Clay grabbed the man’s pistol, stuck it in his waistband, and bolted out of the house, making a run for it. As expected, shrieks quickly filled the air.
As Clay ran down an alley, he spotted movement in the corner of his eye. The man coming toward him fit the profile of a Screamer, so Clay fired several shots in his direction as he continued to run. He hadn’t hit anything except for maybe the house the man was standing next to, but Clay was confident the suppressive fire bought him precious seconds.
Playing cat and mouse with his pursuers, Clay evaded the Screamers long enough to seek shelter in a rusted-out aluminum tool shed. He peeked through one of the many holes in the side of the shed and kept an eye on the search party. Surprisingly, they gave up quite quickly. As a few of Clay’s hunters walked back to a nearby house, somebody shouted from down the block, “It was Slater!”
“Slater?” one of the nearby men said. “I’m not going to lose my sleep chasing down the guy responsible for killing him,” he scoffed. “If anything, they just saved me the trouble of doing it myself,” he said callously before turning to walk back with the others.
It was unfathomable to hear how little these men valued another human life. Admittedly, killing was becoming easier for Clay to do, but at least to this point, it did not come without a dose of guilt, regardless if the kill was justified. But the Screamers? They were as indifferent to the slaying of one of their own as a duck is to rain.
After waiting another hour, Clay was finally
able to escape the neighborhood and return to the forest from which he came. He found comfort when the claustrophobia of the trees overcame him.
It was dark by the time he reached the FEMA camp gates. He had contemplated crashing in the same RV he had stayed in a few nights before, but pressed on. Clay suspected he had triggered more than a few of Smith’s motion sensors, making his presence known to the Marine. He imagined Smith watched him stumble his way across the field through the infrared lens of the camera. He just hoped Smith wouldn’t mistake him for a zombie and open fire before he had a chance to deliver the package.
Clay hobbled up to the locked gate and looked toward one of the cameras mounted to the building. A few seconds later Clay heard a buzzing sound followed by a loud click—the magnetic lock had disengaged. Clay pushed the gate open then snapped it shut. The lock promptly reengaged.
The door at the base of the building swung open before Clay had even reached it. His feet, along with every other part of his body, ached relentlessly.
“Sometime this week would be nice, Cowboy,” Smith said impatiently.
Clay had a few choice phrases he wanted to respond with, but couldn’t find the energy or nerve to reply.
“Did you find it?” Smith asked as he held the door open for Clay.
“I think so,” Clay weakly said as he limped inside.
As they took the elevator down to the basement, Clay retrieved the envelope and handed it to Smith. As soon as the doors opened, Smith took a hard right from the elevators and proceeded down the hall. Clay had trouble keeping up. About halfway down, Smith walked into a room. By the time Clay got there, he saw what remained of the envelope and scattered papers lying across the bed. Smith sat on the edge of the bed, his back to the door, holding a Micro SD card in one hand and a tablet in the other. He stared at the tiny flash card for several seconds, trying to convince himself that it was damaged; that he shouldn’t waste his time trying to get it to work.