by Joshua Gayou
Jake stood that way, motionless, for what seemed a very long time but what was probably only five seconds, and just stared into Jeff’s eyes, all the while those panicked gurgling sounds continued to trickle through the room. Finally, his head rotated down to Jeff’s midsection. Jake’s hand reached out and I saw his right elbow began to jerk and twitch as he undid the front of Jeff’s pants. A few seconds more, and he’d exposed the groin area; his elbow rotated and twitched further as he prodded at Jeff’s penis. His left arm remained rigid and motionless as iron; the skin of Jeff’s neck began to purple around the trauma being inflicted.
Jake looked back up to meet Jeff’s eyes and, without lessening the pressure in the slightest, said, “What would have been your excuse for this, I wonder? She happened upon you while you were urinating into a bush, I suspect. Only, this mark is so faint; no one would even notice it unless…unless they were close, would they?” Jake drew Jeff in, the smaller man’s feet tiptoeing, and then partially skidding across the rug. He stopped when their noses nearly touched. “Close like this, yes?”
Abruptly, Jake released his throat and lightly pushed him back, causing him to fall heavily into the chair. Jeff began coughing spasmodically while his shaking hands groped clumsily to cover his crotch. He began to sob uncontrollably as he coughed, which I think remains as one of the absolute worst things I’ve ever heard to this day.
“Amanda, would you please see him back to the trailer?” asked Jake in a calm, polite voice. “We’ll need to decide what comes next.”
It wasn’t very long after Jeff’s interrogation that we all stood together around the front porch of the house, with the exception of Jeff himself, who was confined to the trailer, and the children, who had all been sent to Oscar’s place to be together. Jake sat quietly on the top step of the porch, looking deflated as he brought everyone up to speed.
“It’s not good but it could have been a lot worse,” he said as he ran a hand back through his hair. “Having spoken to Maria, it looks like he only progressed as far as petting and it seems…Oscar? Are you holding up?”
Oscar stood opposite Jake in the patch of dirt before the steps, surrounded on either side by the rest of us. He held his left arm across his chest with his right elbow propped on top of it; a clenched, trembling fist obscured his mouth. His eyes flicked up from their focal point on the ground to glance at Jake and he jerked his head in an abrupt nod.
“Fair enough,” Jake continued. “As I was saying, it doesn’t seem as though he’s gone after any of the other kids, but that’s strictly from Maria’s point of view. I suppose it’s possible she just doesn’t know. There are two paths we can take at this point. We may choose to question the other children regarding their interaction with Jeff or, knowing what we know now, we can focus on dealing with this problem.”
Oscar coughed into his hand and said, “I already know enough but I’ll wait on the other parents if they feel like they need it. I know where he is. It’s enough right now.”
Faces turned to shift between Otis, Monica, and me. Shortly after that, Otis and Monica shared a glance, and then they looked in my direction as well, more or less lacking the will to add to any decision. I realized it was down to me, so I said what was in my heart.
“You have to cut out the cancer before you can start healing,” I murmured. Then louder, “Let’s…deal with Jeff right now.”
“Right,” Oscar said, “gimme a gun.”
“Whoa, whoa, hang on!” Edgar yelped. “We’re just going straight to murder, here? We don’t want to talk this over?”
“Murder, nothin’,” Oscar growled. “I’m puttin’ a dog to sleep. That ain’t murder.”
“Now just wait a goddamned minute,” George said, thumping his cane into a floor board. “Edgar’s right. This isn’t good. We can’t just-“
“Maria’s not your daughter, old man!” Oscar shouted. “You got no position, here!”
Some of the people in the circle gasped at the venom carried in Oscar’s voice; I believe he scared some of the other women but his reaction seemed reasonable to me, honestly.
“That’s a hell of a thing to say, Oscar,” George shot back. “We all live here together; every one of us has a stake in this. And your daughter means as much to me as my own children did, damn you.”
The fire behind Oscar’s eyes died down a little at that remark but he didn’t apologize or retract his statement. Instead, he addressed the rest of us, saying, “I’m not arguing over this. I shouldn’t have to. He needs to be handled. There at least needs to be justice.”
Edgar said, “From whom, Oscar? You? That’s just vengeance.” He held up his hands at the black look from Oscar and said, “Hey, I understand how you feel. If I’m honest with everyone, I could go either way on this. But we want to think really hard about what we’re considering here. This is big. It’s going to change what’s normal around here. Is everyone completely comfortable going down this road?”
“I’m good with it,” Alish said in a matter of fact tone. “A pig like that…I’ve seen such as him. What are our other options? Let him go? We would only be inflicting him on the next child he encounters.”
“Are we actually taking votes on a murder now?” George asked in dismay.
“Vote all you want,” Oscar said. “This all ends up the same way, irregardless.”
“No, Oscar,” Jake said. “The group may decide that execution is warranted and if it does, the group will decide the best way in which to carry that out. But we will decide as a group.”
“But if we go there, should Oscar be the one?” Fred asked, drawing a scandalized look from the other man. He looked in Oscar’s direction and said, “Sorry, man, but just hear me out. They used to do this with firing squads, you know? One man got a real bullet and everyone else got blanks so they wouldn’t know who’d actually killed the criminal. If folks’re worried about being vengeful, maybe we do something like that? Might make it easier to stomach.”
“I’ll do it,” I said, pulling attention back my way. “No one else has to be involved. I’ll drive him out a ways and shoot him in the back of the head. He won’t even feel it and we can be done with the whole thing.”
Barbara drew in a shaking breath and said, “Oh, no, Amanda…for God’s sake…”
“Don’t give me that, Barbara. You don’t know where I’ve been or what I’ve done.”
Tears spilled over her eyes as she whispered, “You don’t have to keep doing it, Honey.”
I felt a burning in my eyes as I heard Elizabeth’s small voice in my mind: I wish I could kill someone…
“Barbara,” I whispered, “shut up.”
George leaned forward towards Jake and said, “Jake…you can’t allow-“
“Can’t allow what, George?” Jake asked suddenly, standing up. “What will I tell these people? Huh? That I forbid this? That they must not? What good is that, if I force the decision on them?”
All of us had gone silent at this point. Jake was clearly agitated, eyes widened and searching.
“You people are going to have to decide what you’ll allow, now,” he said, looking out among us all. He stopped himself a moment, took a deep breath, and slowly pulled himself back into line. In a calm voice, he said, “Listen, all of you. Killing isn’t the dangerous thing anymore. Most of us have killed people by now, haven’t we?” He looked from face to face and, when no one responded, he emphasized, “Well, haven’t we?”
There were several nods; no one was willing to speak.
Jake nodded in return. “We have. This is normal now, in this world. It’s an easy thing to do…easy as breathing. And, one must admit, problems do get solved in the act.”
He descended the steps slowly and came to a stop in the dirt patch in the center of the circle we had formed but neglected to look at any of us as he continued.
“Certain of us have solved problems in this way. It’s without consequence, we say. The police won’t come and take you away anymore. There are no reperc
ussions anymore, certainly. Only, that’s not entirely true.”
He took a few more steps away from the cabin until he stood outside of our circle and turned around to face us. His eyes were exhausted but unblinking.
“Every time you kill someone, you pay a price. At first, you might kill someone that’s trying to kill you, which is fair. Nobody would fault you for that, would they? They’d have to be nuts. And after that, maybe you kill someone who’s beating a friend of yours and you can’t get them to stop. Again: reasonable, yes?”
He looked from face to face, sighed, and said, “Maybe later still you kill someone for their food. You feel bad about it but you were starving, of course. You were either going to get that food or die. And, when weighed against your own survival…or your family’s, you do what you must do, don’t you? And after that? Someone out there in the world, some stranger, has an item that you want. It’s…it’s not that far a stretch, really.”
None of us spoke, hanging instead on every word he said. Oscar, who now had his back to me because he was facing Jake, slumped visibly. A deep anger rose up in my heart as I listened; anger at the possibility that Jake might be right.
“We’ve all lost so much since the world died but honestly, not everything left behind has to be something that hurts. It doesn’t all have to be bad.” He pointed a finger at the ground. “This is where we rebuild; it’s the whole idea behind what we’re trying to do, here in the valley. Or at least, it’s what I had in mind that day when I called out to Gibs. I know I took a chance on him. I was rewarded for it, though.”
Jake pushed his hair out of his eyes impatiently and looked away from us towards the teardrop camper that held Jeff. His face smoothed over momentarily, just a brief flash, before his brow furrowed again. Still looking away, he said, “There’s a chance here. Everything is a chance…or a choice, I guess, is a better word. You all have a choice here. You get to decide what you want your world to be. There’s no one else coming in from the outside to tell us how to be anymore, so it’s all up to us now. Rebuild the world in our own image.”
He looked back towards us, eyes on fire. “Part of that choice is whether life will be cheap or precious. Do you want killing to be hard or do you want it to get easy? What kind of world do you want to make? What kind of world do you want Ben, Elizabeth, Rose, Maria, and-”
He coughed and looked away. Glancing down, he shook his head abruptly and continued, “What kind of world do you want them growing up in? Because here’s the problem, see; the real challenge.” He extended a finger to point at all of us and said, “If life is going to be precious, you all have to decide that it will be so. Everyone has to agree to uphold that ideal. Together.”
The vision of Jake standing out in front of us blurred momentarily; I reached up to wipe my eyes. Never in our time together had I felt closer to him than I did at that moment, never did I feel that I knew him better. I thought of Lizzy and knew that he was right…and was ashamed.
“The concept of a precious life is a fragile thing,” Jake said quietly; so quiet in fact that we had to strain to hear him. I felt as though he was talking to himself now instead of to us. “Everyone has to agree for that to work, but it takes only one person to decide that life will be cheap. One person to make that decision for everyone else and there’s nothing that can be done to stop it. Because once you cheapen one person’s life, you cheapen all life. When your friend sees you kill a man easily, without hesitation or remorse, your friend knows how easily that malice can be redirected. It becomes so, so easy for everyone to assume a reality of kill or be killed. Kill first…just in case.”
He was quiet a long time then, standing before us, unnaturally still, as we all struggled to return his gaze. Finally, when I felt as though someone must speak if only to break the silence, Jake relented and said, “One person makes the decision for all. Who among us will accept that responsibility?”
Jake turned away and, wearing only his flannel, jeans, and boots, walked alone out of the valley.
29 – Apocalyptic Road Pirates
Gibs
Unwilling to take my eyes off the road ahead of us, I asked, “What are they doing now?”
“Same thing, Gibs. Just hanging back there,” Greg said.
“Well, are they closer since the last time I asked?”
“Uh, it’s really hard to say for sure but…I think so?”
I grunted. “Close enough to shoot?”
The rear window rolled down and I heard the sound of rushing wind agitated by a large obstruction. Unable to help myself, I glanced over my shoulder and saw that the kid was hanging his head out the window to look back behind us. A few seconds later, he retreated back into the cab and rolled his window back up.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “It’s still hard to count individual vehicles; the bikers look like dots.”
I looked down and the instrument panel. I had the speed pinned at ninety but the fuel economy had plummeted to a depressing seven. I ground my teeth while wracking my brain for ideas. I could push the truck a little faster but that shield in back wasn’t doing us any favors. Besides, the Ford’s engine was built for towing power not winning drag races. I couldn’t tell what kinds of vehicles were pursuing us outside of being able to say “trucks, cars, and bikes” in a general sense, but I knew that it didn’t take a rare motorcycle to ride circles around us; any average crotch rocket would be able to blow our doors off.
I gnawed my lip and thought furiously, breathing deep to keep my shit together. Can’t outrun them and, if we try, we probably burn through all of our fuel long before we get home. Can’t stop and fight them, though; too damn many.
“Wang, get that map open. Show me where we are.”
He complied, filling the whole passenger side of the cab with fold-out paper that just seemed to keep coming. He pulled the right side up the window to keep the edge out of my area. “We should be coming up on Mesquite next in…uh, looks like twenty-five or thirty miles.”
I did some quick math in my head, determining that thirty miles would take about twenty minutes at our current rate.
“Can you tell how far it is from Mesquite to that mountain pass we hit in Arizona?”
Wang cursed and began winding the map back up, not even bothering to try to fold it neatly. I realized he’d have to pull out the Thomas Guide to get a map of Arizona; we only had detailed state maps of Nevada and Utah. Then, even when he did get the Thomas Guide out, it was only going to show him roads, not terrain.
“Relax,” I said, waving him off. “Doesn’t matter.”
Twenty minutes or so to Mesquite then call it maybe another twenty or so to that little mountain pass for shits and giggles. I glanced into my side mirror to look at the blot of people gaining on us; outliers to either side of their column travelled along the soft shoulder, kicking up one hell of a dust cloud.
I began to tally our assets: semi-armored vehicle, enough fire power to supply a small-time warlord, and enough diesel to swim in. It occurred to me suddenly that our pursuers would be running out of gas a lot sooner than we would. Even if we ran our tank down to empty, we could refuel without stopping. We just had to pop the cap and activate the built-in electrical pump. Of course, someone would have to be out there in the truck bed to do it…
I glanced around the cab at the others. “Gear on. Everyone. Helmets too; let’s go.”
They all responded instantly, shrugging into their new vests and strapping the black ballistic helmets down over their heads. I began to ease off the gas slowly as they did so.
“What’s the plan?” Davidson asked. “Why are we slowing down?”
“We need enough fuel to get home,” I said, “and we’re simply not outrunning these guys. We’ll have to slow down and beat them back when and if they get too close to us. They’re gonna run out of fuel before we do but the trick is I gotta have you guys out there to run the reserve line to the truck’s tank when we get low. And, I need to get you guys out there now, while th
ose assholes are still out of range.”
As I spoke, the other three all became very businesslike and started grabbing their rifles.
“Not you, Greg,” I said over my shoulder. “You think you can drive this rig?”
In the rearview mirror, I saw an irate pair of seventeen-year-old eyes flash back at me. Greg said, “Hey, fuck that, dude. I am not sitting up here while the rest of you guys get shot at.”
“Greg? Hey, GREG!” I shouted but it was too late. Before I could even respond, he’d slung his rifle, shoved open his door, and stepped out onto the side runner. As I sat there screaming at him, he reached up behind the cab to grab the armor plating that Fred had installed and swung himself up into the truck bed, graceful as a gymnast, slamming his door shut behind him.
“MotherFUCKING shit head!” I yelled out, slamming the dashboard with my fist. “Diso-fucking-bedient little brat!”
“You raise them up to be good little children but, at some point, they always find a way to piss you off in the end…” Wang said.
“Goddamn it, Wang…not helping.”
“Sorry.”
I took a few breaths to bring my blood pressure back down, and then grabbed one of the two team radios we’d brought along with us and handed it back to Davidson.
“Get out there with him and cover up behind that armor wall on the trailer. You guys each take a side. If any of those assholes on our tail comes up alongside of us, light them the fuck up; they’ll be trying to shoot our tires out. Keep at it until they drop back behind us. Don’t shoot at anyone directly behind us; I want them to think that’s a safe area back there. Now what’d I say?”
“Only shoot the assholes coming up on our side!” Davidson rattled off.
“Outstanding. And don’t be shy about rocking that 40 Mike-Mike. That worked out well for us in Colorado. If they’re on motorcycles, aim for the seat. If they’re in a car or a truck, try to put the grenade into or just under the grill; you could take out the radiator or a piece of the engine and disable the vehicle. A disabled vehicle is just as good as a kill.”