He started glancing at the faces in the growing crowd. A few were pointing and yelling at him while others stood and watched in silence. One man that he considered to be a friend pumped his fists and urged him to take the shot. Standing next to that man was the oldest woman in the tribe. She met his stare for a second before lowering eyes and shaking her head. It was as if she knew that he wasn’t the one. He was still looking at her when his well left him and he lowered the gun.
Mark snickered and shifted his weight as he called Mike a pussy-faggot. Then the three men standing next to Mark joined in and also began to heckle him.
It was then that Jason did the oddest thing. With his hands still clapped behind his back, he lowered his chin and addressed Mike with the soft voice of a friend in need. “Please…you can do it.”
Mike stared at the ground as he thought about the pain Bill was enduring. He remembered the horrible cries of pain and pleas for help when Mark took his sweet time in cutting off Bill’s hand yesterday. He could picture that dull saw blade, bloodied and slowly grading against the bone in Bill’s other wrist. That was something he couldn’t let happen again. Something he wouldn’t let happen. Mike flexed his jaws and turned back around with the shotgun. As he raised the barrel once more, he saw the hope of an innocent child in Jason’s face. He wouldn’t let that unnerve him. He told himself that he was not going to fail. He would kill Jason. He took another breath and steadied his arms as best he could. He looked down the barrel at Jason’s head and took three steps closer to where the tip of the shotgun was less than a foot from its target. “I am the one,” he said with determination as he pulled the trigger.
Mike was anticipating the kick of the 12 gauge so much that he jerked his shoulder back even though the action of the hammer produced nothing more than a soft-click. For a second he couldn’t believe that the shotgun had misfired. He continued to stand there waiting for Jason to fall. As reality began to take hold, Mark tackled him and pinned him against the asphalt. “The fucking gun doesn’t work!” Mike screamed in panic as Jason slowly walked over with his head lowered and a tear trickling down his cheek
Mark handed the gun to Jason. Jason pumped out the shell, looked at it, then loaded it back in the gun and pumped it once. After a pause to wipe his bloodshot eyes, he lowered the barrel over Mike’s face and said, “You don’t think it works?” He swirled the barrel over Mike’s head and then said, “You’re right handed if I remember correctly.”
Tension grabbed Mike by the heart as his worst fear was about to unfold. In a panic of preparation, he filled his lungs with air and held it as he watched the barrel swing away from his face. He heard Jason say, “Hold his left hand out for me.” He clamped his eyes shut a terrified heartbeat before his entire body jerked from the blast.
Just as suddenly as the blast, the release of tension overwhelmed him. He almost started screaming for joy as the relief of still having his hand surged through him. It was a miracle. He had never known Jason to bluff. But this time - A spark of electricity touched the nerve endings deep in the muscles of his shoulder and he jerked. The thought of a miraculous miss left him as his arm suddenly began to feel warm. He swallowed and stared up at the clouds as a weightless sensation filled his stomach. A few shallow pants ensued that were followed sharply by a shaky deep breath that he wanted to hold for some reason. Then the air shook out of him as a warm wet feeling started to flow around his elbow on the asphalt.
That was when he realized there was something else trying to fight through the ringing in his ears. In a mild state of euphoria, he was drawn to listen and understand. He concentrated and first heard the laughter. Then he heard the ruckus. “Oh fuck man…where’d it go? That fucker’s history…”
He blew out a short, powerful puff like a woman about to give birth as his nerves tried to bring his stomach up. As the tears began to flow, he saw the man with the shotgun step back over him and stare down.
There didn’t seem to be any joy or pity in Jason’s face—only disappointment. His eyes lost their focus as he looked down and quietly stated, “I’m sorry old friend. You’re not the one.” After one last sigh, he walked off.
The rapid loss of blood started to pull Mike’s eyes back in his head, but he had to know before he lost consciousness. With the strain of a long, drawn out grunt, he pulled his head off the ground and rolled his cheek toward his left shoulder for confirmation.
~~~
Mike felt like the life had been drained out of him when he woke up bound to a wooden chair. At first he couldn’t feel anything except for a strange tingling sensation along the left side of his body. Before knowing any better, he tried to jerk free. That was all it took. A grating pain shot up his forearm, hit the rest of his body and launched him into blood-curdling scream. Every ounce of flesh tensed up as he violently slung his head from side to side. “Dear God!” he cried out as tears trickled down his cheeks.
As he quickly sucked in several short gasps, he turned and looked at his left arm. It wasn’t a nightmare. The only thing that remained was a stump wrapped in a dirty towel and duct tape. “No!” A few tense seconds later, he filled his lungs completely and opened his tear-filled eyes. That’s when he saw Bill ten feet directly in front of him with both arms bandaged. They had taken his friend’s other hand.
“You back among the living?”
Mike bit down to quench the pain as he looked over his shoulder. Jason was sitting in the leather wingback on the curb behind him. “What are you doing?” he gasped.
“Thought you might like a front row seat to watch us saw off crip’s right foot. You missed the other hand. Mark worked that saw so slow and meticulously…the screams. It was incredible.”
Mike sucked the snot dripping from his nose back in and screamed, “For the love of Christ! Just kill the poor bastard—no more torture!”
“You want me to go ahead and burn him, cleanse his soul?”
“Yes! Whatever you want to do—just put him out of his misery.”
“I’ll do that for you,” Jason said as if granting a favor for a good friend. Then he got up and walked around to where he stood between Bill and Mike. “You know what I want in return.”
Mike tried to wet his lips. But his mouth was so dry that each breath produced a harsh rasp.
Jason called out, “Mark! I need you again.”
The thought of more suffering brought Mike to a panic. “No! Don’t!”
“You’re not the one, but you can stop this just the same.”
Mark ran past Mike’s chair with the saw, followed quickly by the same guys that were there before. One had a bucket that Mike thought was water until he caught the smell trailing it. They stopped at Bill and waited for Jason to give the signal. Jason gave Mike a second to tell him what he wanted to hear. When it didn’t come he turned to the men and said, “Take his right foot.” Two of the men jumped back laughing as the third dowsed Bill with the bucket of urine and excrement. Like a brutal slap in the face, the splash brought Bill to a groggy, semi-conscious state of mind.
The moans of unbearable pain started immediately, although with less life than before. Bill’s face was a ghostly white from loss of blood. He could barely hold his head up for longer than a second. When he saw what remained of his arms, he still had the will to scream. Mike closed his eyes and turned away. But that couldn’t silence Bill’s cries. “Mike…Mike is that you? Please God make them stop.” There was a momentary pause before one loud scream for mercy. “Mike!”
Mike couldn’t ignore him. He looked back and saw Bill’s head hanging forward. He was out of it—driven drunk by the pain and loss of blood.
Bill managed to meet his eyes for a second and with a grotesque smile, stammered out, “Hey old friend…they got you too.”
“Yeah,” Mike answered, as he glanced at the bandages of his own arm. “They got me too.”
“Don’t know… what they want… told them everything… they asked me…”
Mike looked at Jason who freely admitted, “It’s tr
ue. Crip told us while we were cutting off his right hand.” He paused and turned back toward Bill and asked, “It was your right hand wasn’t it?”
Bill looked down at his right, then his left, and then looked back at Jason with a blank look on his face.
Jason nodded and continued, “It was his right. Anyway, he told us there were a bunch of you held up down in Madison. He told us how many were in your tribe. And then he gave some bullshit line about you guys having electricity and running water and all that crap.”
Mike cried, “If he told you…then why are you still doing that to him?”
“He told us, but I want to hear it from your lips. I know your loyalty. You don’t give it easily but when you do—you stand behind it.” Jason walked over and put his hand on Mike’s shoulder. “You betrayed me. Now I want you to betray them.”
Mike met his eyes with a look of disgust on his face.
“I’ll kill crip if you do. There won’t be any more torture for him. And I’ll let you live.”
Mike shut his eyes and shook his head as he sobbed, “I can’t!”
A moment later he heard Jason snap his fingers. Mike barely had a chance to tense up in preparation before Bill started screaming again. In the end he lasted less than two heart beats before he screamed out, “Stop! I’ll say it.” He forced himself to look at his friend, crying and only half conscious. Mark was kneeling at Bill’s feet with the blood covered blade of the saw caught in the middle of the first stroke of metal against bone.
Mike cried, “I’ll do it. Don’t torture him anymore.” He dropped his chin to his chest in defeat and whimpered. “Oh God, please forgive me Bill.” Then with his lips trembling and tears running down his face, he looked up at Jason’s smiling face and cried, “What do you want me to say?”
Chapter 39
Five vehicles, freshly tuned and loaded with supplies, pulled out of Madison two days after the unanimous decision to leave. Boston was the target destination for the first stage of the trip. Jim Sinclair had been there a few years before the End, and from what he remembered it was a good bet for finding a schooner worthy of crossing the ocean. The idea was to take the lesser-traveled highways and avoid the danger rumored to be in the large cities. The journey began by taking state road 421 north out of Madison. They’d jump on US50 in Versailles and ride it east into Ohio.
Kyle Thomson and Cathy Ferguson volunteered to take the point while Andy insisted in bringing up the rear in his Toyota four-wheel drive. They kept their speed slow and their ears to the wind, and for the two hours that it took the convoy to travel the thirty miles to Versailles, everything went smoothly. Kyle and Cathy were already dreaming about a fresh start in Scotland. They pushed aside any thoughts about the difficulty in crossing an ocean in favor of talking about what it would be like in their new home. As they left the vast fields of open country and started to pass the houses and gas stations along the outer stretches of the small town, Kyle said, “You know I never thought I’d see anything outside of the states.”
“Tell me about it,” Cathy chimed in as she pointed to the intersection two blocks ahead, and added, “Take a right—there.” Before Chuck offered her the peace and safety of Madison, she thought she would never think again about traditional matters such as marriage or raising a family. Yet as Kyle smiled and caressed her thigh, she found herself dreaming about starting a new life with him in a fresh place. She was about to say how excited she was to get the chance to see the beautiful cliffs and rolling hills of Scotland, when a rapid string of pops slapped against the windshield. She clutched Kyle’s hand and gasped.
Jamie Ross was trailing by thirty feet in the second vehicle with Lori Wilson and Mike Donaldson when Kyle’s truck suddenly veered off the road, accelerated, and slammed into a tree. Jamie locked up the brakes and started to gasp, “What the fu—” before the sound of metal pings spraying across their hood cut him off. Lori slammed against the dash as puffs of dust and chipped paint formed a flowing wave of gray over the hood like dust shaken from a rug. Then he saw a man run across to the right side of the street half a block ahead. A second later he saw a flash over the hood of a derelict car on the left side. Something smacked the windshield like a hammer and the rear view mirror suddenly disappeared into the back seat. Jamie flinched and yelled, “Duck!” as he pulled Lori down on the seat and covered her up.
The three vehicles trailing Jamie all locked up and skidded, one after another like a chain of dominos as Chuck screamed, “Everyone down!” In an instant he had the door open and the rifle from the rack behind the seat. Cindy hit the seat face-first as he jumped out behind the cover of the door. After an immediate short burst of distant gunfire, he popped his head up over the bed of the truck to make sure Robby and Teresa were keeping low. He saw the fear in their faces and said, “You two stay put and keep down. If you hear anyone coming—pull the supplies up around you and hide.” He dropped back down and peaked around the door at Jamie’s Impala fifty feet farther up. He heard the pings of bullets against metal and saw the car rock as the occupants shifted. Then he saw the windows blow out from another spray of bullets. “Jamie! Lori!”
“Still here!” Jamie screamed in response.
“Everyone!”
“Yeah! But Kyle and Cathy…”
A round pierced the front fender of Chuck’s truck and forced him back behind the door. Just as he ducked,a hand came out of nowhere and grabbed his shoulder. Chuck’s nerves lit up like the 4th of July as he spun around―ready to kill or die fighting. Thank God it’s Andy. He blew out a sigh of relief and motioned to the Impala. “They’re still alive…but I don’t know for how long…they’re taking a beating.”
Andy popped his head over the door for a second and watched the action. He dropped back down and said, “If you can keep them busy for a few minutes—I’ll work my way around and come up from behind. I think there are only two of them. Probably just scouts.”
“We don’t have much time if they are.”
Andy nodded and glanced again over the door.
“Did you check behind us? I don’t want to get boxed in.”
Andy glanced over his shoulder and grimaced, knowing full well that Chuck expected more out of him. “Sorry boss. I’ll check behind us first then work my way around.”
“Hold on…” Chuck dropped down to the asphalt and stretched out with his rifle under the door. He spotted the man in the crosshairs just in time to see the kick of his rifle. A bullet slapped the sheet metal a few inches above Chuck’s head. The man ducked back behind the car as Chuck squeezed the trigger and fired a blistering response. “Go! Now!” The shot peeled a streak of paint across the hood of the derelict car and chipped off a white cloud of dust on the brick house behind the man. Chuck glanced over his shoulder while the dust settled. Andy was gone.
Lori erupted into a blood-curdling scream as another spray of bullets shredded the Impala. A second later Jamie yelled again for help. Chuck jumped back up to his feet, aimed his rifle over the door of the truck and spotted the man behind the car just as he ducked back down. That was his chance. Chuck skirted around the door and took off running for the Impala under a surge of adrenaline. His heart was pounding so hard that he barely heard Teresa scream behind him, “Don’t leave us Chuck!”
He slammed against the Impala’s trunk and rear bumper with his shoulder. A second later Jamie screamed, “Chuck? Is that you?”
“Yeah! Stay put, but see if you can push the driver’s door open with your foot,” Chuck huffed, as he got back to his feet and crouched behind the trunk. He heard the door swing open and started to inch his way to the corner of the bumper.
As he was about to swing around behind the cover of the door, he heard little Mike say, “Chuck! You came for us. I knew you would.”
He glanced over the faded green paint of the trunk and saw him. Mike was up on his knees and looking at him through the blown out rear window. Chuck reached for the boy but suddenly flinched as blood splattered across his face. The air
left Chuck’s lungs as he slid back behind the trunk with his rifle clutched to his chest. His feet slid out to the side and he sat there staring into space while the boy’s blood dripped off his nose and chin. For a brief moment, nothing mattered anymore. It took the heart-wrenching sound of Lori’s wailing to snap him out of it. He wiped the blood off his face and flexed his grip on the rifle. As he slowly rose up, he saw little Mike sprawled out on the trunk with the back of his scalp peeled forward and hanging over the front of his head like the brim of a baseball hat.
Chuck screamed, “Goddamn it! No!” and ran around to the front door as another shot pierced the air next to him. Shaking and on the verge of crying, he aimed the rifle at the derelict car and waited for the man to show himself again. First he saw the barrel come over the fender. Then he started to see the man’s head as he felt the tickle of the forged steel trigger against the tip of his finger. But just as he was about to squeeze off the shot—the man’s face blew apart like a balloon popping in slow motion. A second later the man fell back and vanished behind the fender. Chuck scanned the area behind the derelict car with his scope and caught the barrel of the hunting rifle he gave Andy dipping back behind a tree.
He glanced inside the Impala and saw Jamie and Lori trying to squeeze themselves between the seat and dash to get closer to the floorboard. Another spray of bullets riddled the car. After the exchange, Chuck cautiously looked over the hood and saw smoke drifting in the air above an overgrown privet hedge. Since there wasn’t anything to aim at, he simply pointed the rifle and fired. As soon as he did, he reached in the car and pulled Jamie out by the waist of his shorts. “Get back to my truck!”
Jamie grabbed Chuck’s shoulder as he crouched next to him. “Chuck!”
Without taking his eyes off the privet hedge, Chuck yanked Jamie’s hand off his shoulder and demanded, “Now! Go!” before firing another shot into the overgrown shrub. Jamie obeyed and shot off toward the pickup.
As soon as Chuck pulled the rifle back off the hood, he made eye contact with Lori and before he could say a word she was out the door and squatting next to him. “As soon as I fire you take off running—got it?”
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