He had no other weapons on him but I did find a set of keys and stuffed them into my pocket.
I listened intently at the base of the stairs but all was quiet from above. My pack was up there with all my shit in it along with Dave’s shotgun. But they were waiting for me to come for it, I could feel it. I did not want to leave my stuff but I had no choice, to go back upstairs was to die. I wasn’t quite ready for the whole angel of death thing myself for all my big talk.
The cowboy hat guy had a blue bandana folded up neatly in his shirt pocket. It seemed reasonably clean so I tied it around my head to keep the blood out of my eyes. I started down the dimly lit hallway in search of those illusive prisoners.
The hallway led to another great room in the unfinished basement. It was packed to the gills with goods of all kinds, like a Costco had exploded. Oil-burning lamps affixed to the cement walls lit up the room, illuminating a storehouse of goods that put mine to shame.
My hip was throbbing as I passed from food and toiletries into the guns and ammo section. The group had been armed to the teeth. If I hadn’t attacked them completely by surprise I would be dead now for sure.
Finally the crates and supplies came to an end and I emerged at the very rear of the large room.
A large steel door like the kind found on walk-in freezers was bolted to the wall and padlocked shut. The area in front of the door was clear aside from two lounge chairs and a little card table. On the table were two half-finished wine glasses and an open bottle, a box of Cheese-its and several magazines. I could see old issues of People, an US Weekly and a Vogue.
I knew these people were into some weird shit but I just couldn’t see the cowboy hat guy sitting at the table while he sipped chardonnay and paged through People Magazine.
Whoever had been guarding that door was gone now, upstairs chasing zombies I hoped.
A large heavy curtain hung along one wall. I felt a draft and noticed the curtain gently moving with the airflow. I chalked it up to something that happened in cavernous basements. Having never owned a house so large, I just assumed it came with the territory. Among the many lessons I would take from that night, probably the most important was never to assume anything.
A gun went off from somewhere behind me or upstairs and I knew my time was short. Pulling the ring of keys from my pocket, I approached the freezer door. Halfway through several keys that didn’t fit, I froze as two hard shapes pressed on the back of my skull from both sides.
The shapes felt eerily like the ends of gun barrels, this suspicion was confirmed when both guns were cocked simultaneously. There is something terrible about that sound, that rhythmic click-click-click. Something that tightens the sphincter and heightens the senses. I smelled perfume and body order but it wasn’t altogether unpleasant.
“Drop the keys,” said a sweet feminine voice behind my right ear.
I complied with the order as a hand eased my gun from the holster on my hip, I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from flinching at the pain.
“Looks like he’s bleeding, Rosie,” said an identical voice to my left.
I felt the buck knife I’d slipped into my belt disappear and hit the floor. Between the action upstairs and this debacle I was now completely unarmed.
“Raise your hands high above your head and turn around slowly,” the first voice said.
I did as I was told until I was fully facing my two captors.
Twins.
Two strikingly beautiful, brown-haired, blue-eyed twins. I judged them to be a year or two younger than me as I looked from one to the other.
Both were wearing jeans, hiking boots and matching sweaters. Both had long thick braids trailing down their backs.
I risked a bullet to the head, “Do either of you have any gum?” I discovered that night that among other things, I spout stupid one-liners when I get really stressed out. I also puke a lot but I digress.
They did not shoot me but the one on my right giggled like she was missing a few game pieces.
“I like this one, Rosie!” she said.
“Hush now, Daisy!” Rosie replied. “Daddy is going to want to talk to you mister. What are you doing down here? You don’t belong down here,” Rosie said in a slightly accusatory tone.
Thoughts were spinning through my head.
Was I dealing with two very stupid twin ladies?
Was I dealing with two very crazy twin ladies?
Could it be both?
Was there some Stockholm syndrome at play here?
I rolled the dice.
“Your daddy sent me down here, he wants company tonight,” I nodded back toward the freezer door.
Daisy squealed with delight at the notion of her ‘daddy’ wanting company from the freezer. Her gun wavering haphazardly up and down while Rosie just stared hard at me. She was going to be the tough sell.
“I’ve never seen you before. Are you one of Lance’s men? I don’t think so, I would remember. Why are you wearing his scarf?” she asked slowly. “My father wouldn’t want company from in there,” she nodded suspiciously toward the freezer as she took a step away from me and brought her gun up a little higher.
I was getting nervous, “Rosie! You do know me! I’m with Lance. Let me get the keys back and do what your father wants. You know how he gets when he’s angry!”
I was taking some serious gambles here, if I was even a little bit off, she seemed crazy enough to shoot me just to make her head stop spinning.
“How do you know my name?” she demanded, her voice increasing in volume.
“Rosie, why are you doing this?” I asked in reproachful tone.
In ordinary circumstances I might have added that she should be ashamed of herself but I didn’t want to push it.
She started shaking, tears poking out from the corners of her sparkling blue eyes. She really was very pretty.
Daisy was getting upset now too and fidgety. She had her gun in one hand and was holding it down by her side. She looked like she wanted to give her sister a hug but couldn’t decide if it was appropriate, taking a step toward her and then backing away.
I was trying to watch her from the corner of my eye without being too obvious while I stared pleadingly at Rosie’s face.
“Stop it! You’re making her cry! You’re making Rosie cry!”
Daisy then went from zero to sixty on the emotional speedometer into full meltdown mode.
Rosie had gotten herself under control but still wasn’t sure if she wanted to shoot me or let me continue my errand for her father.
Daisy wasn’t having any more of it as she took a step up to me and slapped me hard in the face.
I was on her before she could react, pulling her in and spinning her around in a choke hold as she screamed, dropping her gun.
Rosie was real anxious to pull the trigger now. I could see it in the outraged expression she had on her face.
But she couldn’t, I had her sister held firmly between me and Rosie’s gun.
For her part, Daisy had gone limp in my arms which did not help me whatsoever, I had to hold her around the waist and the base of the braid to keep her upright.
I backed up slowly past the freezer door along the wall toward the curtain.
Rosie looked like she was going to hyperventilate.
“Okay, Rosie,” I said gently. “It’s very important you calm down. Everything will be fine as long as you do what I say. First, I need you to count down slowly from ten and focus on breathing in and breathing out.”
She did as requested but still held the gun on me. Her arms were straining from holding the heavy weapon up so long. When I could see she was visibly calmed down I spoke again in my best authoritative voice.
“Now, Rosie, I need you to put your gun down on the ground very slowly and kick it over to me. If you don’t, I will break Daisy’s neck. I need you to believe me. Do you believe me, Rosie?” I emphasized this last point by dramatically readjusting my grip on Daisy’s braid.
I wasn’t going to
break Daisy’s neck.
For one thing I had no idea how to do that and for another, I could never have done such a thing but Rosie didn’t know that. Right now I was a monster who held her sister in a very rough embrace.
“Please don’t hurt her,” she whimpered.
“Trust me, Rosie, I don’t want to but I will if I need to.”
Rosie nodded and lowered her gun to the ground. She wiped snot from her nose as she kicked the gun over to me. She was pretty even with snot on her face.
“Will you let her go now,” she pleaded.
“Not quite yet,” I responded. “Do you know what key goes to that door?”
She said she did and grabbed the ring of keys I’d dropped.
“When you find it, I want you to unlock the padlock and open the door. If you do that then you and I will be done and I’ll let Daisy go.”
The lady in question was beginning to squirm in my arms, I really needed Rosie to pick up the pace. She located the key, stood to her feet and began unlocking the door. I heard the lock pop and she turned to me with it in her hands.
“Obviously you’re not one of Lance’s guys so you must be with the Swansons. You’re not one of them but your with them right?” she asked.
I shrugged, I had no idea who the Swansons were.
“I don’t know how the fuck you got in but I should have shot you right away,” she whined, “Daisy liked you so I didn’t.”
I moved closer to the freezer.
Listen,” she pleaded, “You don’t want to let these people out. They are bad people! They killed our mother and our baby sister. Whatever they promised you, my father will beat it.”
I was only half listening to her, just wanting to get in the freezer, get the people out and figure out how to get us all away without dying.
“You let them out, they’ll kill you too, I promise,” she said forlornly.
With a very awkward two-person bow I bent at the waist and retrieved Rosie’s gun and stuck it into my empty holster, it didn’t fit well but would do for the moment. I looked around for my gun but didn’t see it.
Mark another X in the lost weapon column.
“Okay, Rosie, I want you to grab that lantern off the table and open the door. You’re going in first.”
She complied but was getting very angry that I hadn’t let her sister go yet. Daisy was awake again and I whispered gently in her ear to stay calm so I wouldn’t have to hurt her. Rosie did as she was told with the light and opened the door.
The air that expelled out from the makeshift jail cell was stale with a hint of unwashed bodies but not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. They must have worked out some type of ventilation system.
It was pitch black beyond the little circle of light from Rosie’s lantern, I heard someone cough from the darkness and a child started crying. I was getting angry, dark thoughts playing across my face like a movie screen.
Rosie saw my face and her eyes got wide.
“We didn’t do nothing to them!” she pleaded, “They are the bad ones, you’ll see.”
“Just get in there,” I commanded roughly.
It was another deep room. At one time it may have been a wine cellar but now it was dank and smelled of fear and desperation. Large kennels ran down the length of both sides of the room.
Most of the kennels had people in them, two were empty and one of the very last cages held a zombie who had once been a teenaged girl. She was growling softly and crouched at the door of her cage.
“Unlock these doors now please,” I told her quietly.
As she did, I mustered up my most soothing voice and said, “Rosie is going to let you out. If you are able, please exit calmly, walk past me and wait in the next room. The faster you do this, the quicker we can all get out of here. There are still armed men upstairs. It is very important that you wait quietly for me in the next room.”
As Rosie opened the cages, people began filing slowly past me. Some helping others who couldn’t walk. A slight woman about my age stopped in front of me and glared into my eyes. Then she looked at Daisy, who had once again gone limp in my arms and spit on her before stomping past me.
I stood in the doorway. The prison room was now empty save for Rosie and the zombie girl still locked in the last cage. I wasn’t sure what to do with her and needed a moment to think as I backed out fully into the storage room with Daisy in tow.
My newly released friends had not stood quietly and waited for me as I’d requested. Instead some were rooting through the weapons crates while others were tearing into the food. I had to assume they were very hungry. I counted nineteen men, women and children as they exited past me, way more than could have been on that truck. Some had likely been there for weeks.
It probably wasn’t a bad thing they were arming themselves. Worst case scenario we could hold off a small army down here for a long time with all the weapons and food available. I was thinking through my escape plan when a small explosion went off behind me and something hammered me in the shoulder throwing me down on top of Daisy.
As I tried to roll off her my body stopped obeying my commands. I glanced down at Daisy, she was covered in blood. I couldn’t tell if it was hers or mine. The woman who had glared at me in the cell, flew past me and slammed the freezer door shut on a charging Rosie.
I had time to see Rosie’s hate filled eyes as she raced toward me waiving my missing gun before the door sealed her in. A tall young man, who’d been severely beaten recently, hurried over and put the padlock back in place as the woman held the door.
My consciousness was fading quickly. My body was in shock but that was quickly dissolving into a cold numbness that was spreading from my shoulder. The room was getting fuzzy, I’d ridden in this rodeo before, I was about to pass out.
A woman and man were talking about what to do next. I heard the word tunnel, then the woman’s face appeared before mine. I registered her as pretty in a farm girl kind of way. She slapped me but I didn’t really feel it. She was shouting questions at me, shaking me with both hands on my sweatshirt collar.
I didn’t answer her, though I tried. I just couldn’t make my lips form words. The end had found me at last. Oddly enough, I was peaceful as I faded off to my eternal rest.
Chapter 21
“Tessa Swanson”
Pain.
Mind blowing pain pulled me from the sweetest dream. I was in a dark cave lying on the ground. It was hard and cold but I was so hot.
Someone had speared me to the ground through my right shoulder. Another person was stabbing my hip with something jagged. The skin above my eye burned like I’d been branded, my body sore like I’d been beaten.
I screamed for them to stop but nothing came out. I thrashed wildly, trying to get free but my struggles only made it worse, igniting pain so complete I could only be still and try to endure it. I gagged and vomited, feeling hot liquid spill down my cheeks and neck. I started choking.
This was hell. I was in hell where bad people are tortured and die over and over again. Then arms, gentle but firm in the darkness grasped me around the neck and torso forcing me to sit up. They held me in place as I puked up bile.
A woman’s voice soothed me though I couldn’t understand her words. I sagged back on my angel or my demon and found calm in the softness of her embrace.
I vacillated back and forth forever on a sea of pain and nothingness. Each time I awoke I knew I was closer to dying. It was only a matter of time. I wanted nothing but for it to end yet still my body struggled against death. I heard shouting a few times and a woman crying and screaming, relentlessly banging on a door.
The darkness took me again and I felt nothing for a long time.
…
When I woke again I was in a well lit room. The pain was still there but dimmer. A dull headache percolated behind my eyes. My entire body felt like it was floating. My eyes were crusted shut but I forced them open, shutting them again quickly in the harsh glare of a large light above my face.
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I went to shield them but found my left hand shackled at the wrist to a metal bar. I could feel the cold pressure of an IV line on top of my hand. Someone had removed the spear but I could still feel it’s ghost pulsing below the surface of my shoulder. I eased my eyes open again until I could bear it.
I was in a dirty bed in someone’s bedroom. I could tell I was naked, covered only with a thin army blanket made of itchy wool. The sheet I was laying on was damp with sweat and covered in dried blood. I assumed I was the source for both. My right arm was numb and unmovable, bound in a sling. My feet were cold and poked out from under the blanket. I noticed my toenails needed trimming.
A tacky 1970’s picture of a doomed ancient schooner trying to ride out a dark ocean storm hung on the wall opposite the bed. It was crooked and there was a crack in the glass. There was a message in that picture. I was the ship about to be crushed by the waves of the powerful storm. I was reminded yet again, no matter what I do, things will get worse.
A thick handmade quilt covered the only window in the room.
I was wishing they had made opposite choices as to what covered me and what covered the window when an older man popped his head briefly inside the partially open door.
“Go tell Tessa he’s up,” I heard a voice say from outside the room.
The bag on the IV stand looked like it had been empty awhile. That explained my gnawing thirst and headache. I wasn’t looking forward to meeting Tessa.
…
“You should be dead.”
It was the first thing she said after staring at me in silence for a minute at the end of my bed.
I wasn’t sure if it was a judgment or an opinion of my medical condition, she had a strange look on her face.
Turns out Tessa and I had already met. She had been in the cellar. She had been the one to shut the door on Rosie. The older man who’d looked in on me stood behind her in the doorway. Next to him was a tall younger man also from the cellar.
He looked mostly healed from when I’d met him. He stepped around Tessa up to my bed chewing on his tongue and playing with a large knife like he wanted to use it on me.
Running with the Horde Page 9