I slid the sling over my head and right shoulder, checked to see that the SBR was still loaded, took another glance all the way around my current location, regretting spraying the windows with paint, which cut my visibility to almost nothing, and slowly got out. The cool air of the day sent a shiver up my spine and I spun thinking that someone was coming at me from behind. There was no one there and I shut the door softly and moved up onto the porch.
The front door was still open, but the screen door was shut as I had left it over a week ago. As I moved closer my mind was already inside clearing the major rooms before moving on to the smaller ones. I decided to do the clearing the way I had pictured it in my mind and opened the screen door. I whistled one good strong time and waited. If there was anyone inside they would come to investigate and make my job a whole hell of a lot easier.
No one showed up to investigate. I looked back at the SUV before entering, still wondering if I was making the right choice by leaving her alone again? My gut didn’t tell me I shouldn’t, but it was slightly knotted and I was cautious of that feeling. It was at that moment that I wished I had gotten out of my procrastination mode and had enclosed the porch when I had the chance, at least that way I could have had another obstacle in front of me for anyone to have to cross, as well as a closer place for Kember to be than out in an obvious vehicle. If anyone had been watching the area for the past week, my SUV would stand out like a sore thumb and definitely bring the curious looking. I rattled the keys in my pocket.
I was assaulted by the foul odor of decomp before I could even get in the door. I knew where it was coming from and as much as I wanted the closure, there was a part of me that knew the truth and suggested I take that on faith.
What can you do for her anyway? My mind asked. It was a very valid statement and I decided to go to the bedroom, grab some more clothes for both of us and get the hell out of dodge for good. That was my plan.
I cleared the living room, the dining room, which was connected to the previous room and the kitchen. From there I could enter Kember’s room and retrieve the things I needed quickly and quietly. The only hiccup was the long hallway that ran to the opposite end of the house where my step-daughter and son’s rooms were located. That was an easy place for someone to hide and attack me as I swung one way, although I burst forward and spun that way first, cleared the hallway and made it to the bedroom with no problems.
Nothing appeared to be out of place. Nothing seemed to have been molested in any way. There were no signs of someone digging through our things, which made it safe to say that no one had been in the house since I left over a week ago. Just that was enough to make me feel better, even a bit relaxed in the midst of all that was still going on. I wasn’t about to set my SBR down and take my time looking through Kember’s dresser or my own. I knew where her stuff, as well as my own was and went straight for them. Time wasn’t something I had on my side and the more time I spent inside, the more could take place outside and I wouldn’t know it until I was running back to the SUV.
Something somewhere in the house fell to the floor and I instantly stopped. My instincts kicked in and I buried the weapon into my shoulder and moved through my daughter’s room toward the kitchen. At the door I peered around to see what I thought was a shadow disappearing down the hallway. I wasn’t seeing things… someone was in the house with me. Maybe they knew I was busy doing something, which pulled them from the safety of their hiding place, or maybe they had thought I’d left and ventured out to see me leave, only to see the SUV still in the driveway.
“I don’t know who’s in here, but you have one chance to come out with your hands up,” I said in a demanding tone. My adrenaline was pumping, as I wasn’t sure what I was about to get myself into. I could have easily have grabbed what I’d gathered so far and left. If they wanted the rest of our things, then they could have them. Why was I suddenly picking a fight?
“I’m not playing around here!” I said and moved a few feet further into the doorway. “I am armed, well-armed, and will shoot you if you try anything… come out, now!”
Another noise followed and I suddenly had a severe case of déjà vu. I could feel my palms get sweaty, feel the already mounting stress increase. I was waiting for a young girl to shoot out of nowhere and attack me, biting my other hand in the process. And as the Young Woman and myself had put together a few days back, a bite by one of those things – left untreated – would turn you into one of those things.
“Last chance!” I shouted.
Footsteps echoed from the hallway followed by a voice. “Don’t shoot, we are coming out.”
We? My mind asked as I braced myself for what was about to happen. Was I ready to shoot if I needed too, or would I pussy out as I had so many times before? I felt my finger slip on to the trigger. The safety had been flipped off as I got out of the SUV, so there was no need to fiddle for it now.
I held my breath as I watched the form appear like an apparition of someone long dead – a ghost, transparently white with sorrowful eyes and floating a few inches off the ground, returning from some time in my past to haunt me. What materialized was far more shocking.
The sun was high in the afternoon sky. Bubbling clouds floated silently by in a bright blue sky. I remember watching it creep across the kitchen floor, inching its way as a tide would do, majestic forces of the moon acting upon its advance like a humongous magnet. I stared at it for several long unforgettable moments, lost in its timeless motion and unable to turn away. It beckoned me… called my name in some eerie inaudible voice only I could hear.
A dirty Blonde came into view followed by two Men who themselves were dirty and wild eyed, as if they had seen the exact apparition I was expecting, but hadn’t emerged. They were armed with an old model revolver and a hunting shotgun with a long barrel. At first sight, I was more concerned about being hit by the barrel of the shotgun rather than being shot with it. It was longer than I had ever seen.
I could see both of the Blondes hands, although that didn’t mean she wasn’t armed. She could easily have a piece down the back of her pants, readily available to the Man behind her in the event he couldn’t swing the shotgun fast enough to shoot me, he could always surrender the weapon and when I approached, he could grab it and dispatch me like the dead.
“What are you doing in my house?” I asked them.
There was a slight pause, like they had either not understood my question or they were trying their best to come up with the perfect lie to throw me off their true intentions. I tightened my grip on the SBR until my hands began to hurt, luckily for my left hand the rail on the weapon wasn’t the typical quad-rail you find on most AR styled platforms. It was a seamless rail with mounting options on top of the barrel and two inches underneath, extending back from the muzzle break to allow the forward grip. It was a narrow piece of plastic in the shape of a handle that attached to the weapon and allowed the shooters hand to better grip the weapon, allowing for greater control in full auto, as well as not putting the hand in an unrealistic angle. It also kept the shooters fingers away from the direct path of the muzzle if you had to jerk the weapon up quickly.
“We were looking for a safe place to stay… maybe find some supplies,” The Skinny Blonde said. “I see you have a vehicle out there. Is it full of gas, because we could really use a ride if it is?”
The situation closely resembled that of the gas station a little over a week ago when all of this first started. I knew where things were headed, knew what they would say next. They would ask for a ride and when that didn’t work they would turn to threats and possible violence to get what they wanted. The only difference between then and now was I was better prepared and well-armed to keep them from taking anything from me. Oh, and I didn’t have an unknown infection that would come on at the most inopportune time. “Let’s cut through the bullshit and get straight to the point, shall we?” I stated.
“All we want is a ride out of this shithole and you can do whatever you want after t
hat,” The closest Man to the Blonde said. He was as dirty as she was and I quickly noticed the soot on his hands, which you only get if you’re climbing down chimneys or setting fires and making sure that they will continue to burn long after you have left. And this guy was not Santa, the Blonde was not Mrs. Clause and the third Man certainly didn’t have a shiny red nose like Rudolph.
“I should just shoot all three of you right now and save myself the time of having to listen to your politeness, which will quickly spiral out of control when you don’t get what you want. Next will be the threats, because I am outnumbered, and then finally…
“Finally what?” The Man asked intently.
“Then the violence starts,” I said.
Their eyes widened when I replied. I was truly offended that they thought I was that stupid. “Yeah, I’ve been through this once before already… but this time I’m all the wiser and better armed.” I could feel my instincts telling me to just shoot them and get it over with. It was my morals that hindered my trigger finger from cutting them down. “I passed a few houses on fire a few minutes ago. People I used to know, before all this shit happened, used to live there. What’s that black sooty looking stuff on your hands?”
None of them answered. They could see and feel that I wasn’t stupid, nor would I be easily fooled by any of their babblings about looking for safety or supplies. These people were only out for themselves and what they could get. With no laws to follow anymore and no consequences to be imposed upon them in such actions, they were at will to do whatever they liked to whomever they liked… except me.
“I know what that stuff is. You know what that stuff is, so just tell me what you gained out of it. I’m curious, I really am.”
The Blonde was the first to cave and allow her true intentions to be seen. “He’s not going to go for it, Lloyd,” Her voice boomed in an angered tone, as if she were disappointed that I wasn’t so naïve.
“That’s because he isn’t stupid… he’s well prepared,” Lloyd said, smacking the Blonde in the back of her head.
I switched the weapon from semi to full-auto, and even though I had never shot it in this mode, I was sure that with the adrenaline pumping through my veins I would be more than capable of controlling its recoil and keeping the muzzle exactly where it need to be in order to neutralize the threats before me.
The loud clicking noise propagated throughout the kitchen like a bomb going off. Everyone heard it, unable to deny what would follow.
The Blonde looked in the direction of the front door, no doubt she was trying to figure out in her head if she could make it to the door and escape if any shooting started. I followed her eyes and for the first time realized the large mistake I had made, once again.
Write me down, again, for the father of the year award. I had left Kember unattended and all alone in the SUV, although it wasn’t still running, while I came in to recover a few things we would need. I hadn’t foreseen this small hiccup in any of the scenarios I had envisioned in my head. My planning had left a major factor out of the equation and now my problems were worse. If they managed to get away, Kember would be no good for them and although they didn’t look like the type that could harm a child, there were other ways in which they could seek revenge upon me through her.
However, if they stayed there pure numbers could easily be enough to overpower me, in the event that I made a mistake or miscalculation. The only option I had that would ensure Kember and I made it out of the town once more, was to dispatch those in front of me whether my morals were for or against it.
“I guess survival just depends on who’s faster on the trigger, huh?” I said, unsure if those were the correct words to utter to complete strangers at this time. I wasn’t looking for a fight – would avoid one at all cost, yet I wouldn’t run from it either. I couldn’t.
The tension was so thick in the kitchen that if you swung a knife, the air would split and fall to the floor with a loud crash.
“Wait!” Lloyd said. “It doesn’t have to go down like this.” He lowered his shotgun. “I don’t know what happened to you in the past, with those guys you referred to earlier, but we aren’t looking for that kind of trouble. We just wanted a safe place to stay. That’s it!”
“Then why did you set those fires if you just wanted a safe place to stay?” I asked and not waiting for an answer, continued. “Did those poor folks not give you what you want, so you killed them and set their houses on fire to cover your tracks?”
Finally the Man in the rear spoke up. “A few of those crazies came in while we were setting up our make-shift camp. There were more of them then there were of us, so we decided to leave and in haste I knocked over a lantern and the whole place went up in a matter of seconds.”
“A lantern? In the middle of the day?” I questioned.
“If you board up the windows, or the ones you can anyway, and spray paint the remaining windows with black paint, it gets pretty dark inside, even in the middle of the day,” he said.
“If they can’t see you and don’t know you are nearby, they won’t come looking for you,” Lloyd added.
“They are attracted to the fire. I don’t know why, it’s kind of like watching a moth slam into a lightbulb over and over again until it dies. It makes no sense to anyone but the moth why they do it; even though they will die from it… they still slam into it,” Second Man said.
Their explanation of covering the windows with paint and boarding the others up was a tactic I knew all too well. I, myself, had done it in the SUV and it worked, which meant that they were either extremely good liars, or were telling the truth. “Then why stick around and endanger yourselves to set a second house fire if they were so close?”
“It was a diversion to pull them away from us as we fled, and it only took a few seconds to light. Curtains go up quickly when subjected to fire and help spread things out of control for you,” Lloyd stated.
At this point I didn’t know what to think, let alone believe. All of what they had told me fit together nicely and with them lowering their weapons, it showed me that maybe they really didn’t want any violence. Maybe all they were really looking for was a safe place to rest and recover. No matter what I decided, I couldn’t let them know that I was caught between a rock and a hard place. That could easily lead me down a road I didn’t want to go and label me weak and unpredictable. I could not let them see the doubt on my face, which I was feeling; as they could be lying… it was plausible. They would remain suspects to me until I could verify they were innocent.
“And how can I be certain you won’t stab me in the back, if I let you stay or shoot me in my sleep and then burn this place down as well?”
Lloyd looked at me with a genuine stare. “Unfortunately, there is nothing we can say to make you feel any better. After all, we are strangers to one another and with the way things have been the past week, trust is not a common commodity anymore. All we have is our word.” He moved away from the others and I trained the red dot sight on his chest as he approached. In the middle of the kitchen, with the shotgun pointed safely away from me, he lowered it to the floor and backed away, holding both hands in the air. “Put your weapons down guys.”
“Have you lost your fucking mind?” the Blonde asked.
The others were a bit hesitant to say the least to give up their only means of defense against me, but with a rattled glare from Lloyd, they did just that.
“I hope you feel better now. You just got all four of us killed.” The Blonde said as she removed the hidden weapon and dropped it to the floor.
I felt invigorated to have sensed that and kept my guard up. My senses were become sharp and I listened to them more often. Maybe I had a good chance of surviving after all. Four of us? My brain stated.
“Now you have all of the power.” Lloyd said. “Our lives are in your hands.”
“What do you mean the four of us?” I asked, feeling my stomach tighten, as if something bad was about to happen.
“Can we be frie
nds now?” Lloyd ignored the question, as he had started speaking the moment I had, so our words crossed each other in mid-flight. Suddenly his demeanor changed, replaced now by fear and he opened his mouth. “No, Devin…”
Chapter Seven.
I spun briskly thinking that one of those things had somehow been in the house with us the whole time and was just now making its presence known. I only made it a quarter of the way around when a hundred lightning bolts cascaded into my body all at once. My body locked up, I couldn’t stand and saw the floor rushing up to meet me. The collision was not only brutal, but extremely painful as well. I thought every bone in my body cracked as I hit the hardwood floor. How I didn’t fire off a few rounds accidentally is beyond me. I was in a lot of trouble now… more trouble than I had been in so far. My luck had run out.
The tables were now turned and I wasn’t the guy controlling the room anymore. I was now the submissive about to be eaten by the raging pack. My eyes, the only thing I could move, caught the narrow slit of sunlight still on its endless trek across the kitchen floor. I focused on it with all of my might, hoping that it would counter the effects of the pain I was about to endure at the hands of those that wanted me dead. Tears welled in my eyes, not for me though, but for my Daughter who would never see the age of two. When they were finished with me, she would be next.
I felt my body began to move, although I wasn’t trying to move. I heard voices all around me, yet their words were muffled and I couldn’t understand them. What frightened me the most though, was I could feel the SBR being pried from my hands. The weapon I had grown accustomed too was now going to be the instrument of my death and probably countless others in the near future.
I tried to speak. Nothing came out. Aftershocks of the lightning bolts still fired through my entire body; however, I was no longer in pain. Whatever had been done to me, the method of takedown was killing the pain from washing over me and sending me into unconsciousness. Kember, on the other hand, would not be as fortunate as I had been. They would most likely torture her as long as possible because I had not screamed out when they killed me. That fact alone would infuriate them and send them far over the edge of humanity. The things they would do to her were unspeakable and I dared not even think about them. I closed my eyes tightly and prayed for a swift death.
Day One (Book 1): Alive Page 13