Ian ducked back as one of them tried the locked door of the van, and all he could hope was that they didn’t take their bat to the glass. He leaned forward again when the one who had tried the door rested against the side of the van to continue watching the beat-down, nearly blocking Ian’s view out the window.
Ian looked deeper into the yards. They were confident the woman was here, so maybe she was just hiding. He looked out the passenger side window at the yard with the boat and wondered if she had managed to crawl inside of it. Then he brushed the notion off, as she would have had to snap the tarp down from the inside, and there was no way that could be done quickly or quietly.
He started to pull away to look at another yard when two white orbs glinted in the street light. He looked under the boat and saw a girl—not a woman by any standards—of maybe thirteen or fourteen years staring at him and looking afraid that he would jump out and say, "Hey, there she is.”
Man, there sure seems to be a lot of kids surviving this nightmare. Two-to-one over adults, I would suspect.
Ian held a hand up and cautioned her to be calm. He was okay with the gangs beating up each other, or even them ganging up on a young man if it looked like he could hold his own… but a small girl?
What could they possibly want with one so young? As revolting as the thought was, it suddenly became clear what these pukes wanted. He leaned back against the wall of the cube van, wondering if he should step in. And if he did, how? He knew that he had to do something. Ian was an old-fashioned guy, who believed chivalry was different than chauvinism; he couldn’t leave that little girl to their whims.
“Hah ha! Lookie what I found. Jegs, come help me dig her out of there,” Ian heard one of them say, and suddenly the girl was screaming loud enough to bring in the infected.
“Shut her up, man!” Zombie Killer said, which was followed by a loud slap and then only the sound of her whimpers as they went after her hiding spot under the boat.
Jasper sat staring at Ian, who just shook his head. “Okay, but you get any of them with a gun.” Ian slid toward the back hatch of the cube van and moved the steel rods that he had shoved into the tracks. He slowly opened the door just as he heard the distant screams of the infected responding to the girl’s screaming. They weren’t spotted yet, but it was only a matter of time. He closed the hatch silently then motioned Jasper to the driver’s side as he went the other way.
Ian waited for a bit as a thug dragged the girl out from under the boat that Ian was completely falling in love with. Too bad he had no time for fishing or he would try to find a way to take it with him.
“Hey, where did that dog come from?” he heard one of the guys say.
Sounds of bodies shifting came to Ian’s his ears, and he moved. He didn’t waste time with intimidation techniques or holding one of their own in front of them until they decided to let everyone go. Times were not like that any longer, and people didn’t play fair these days, so he did things in the most expedient way he could think of. Besides, infected were on their way.
The guy pulling hard on the struggling girl’s arm looked up at the group when he heard about a dog, and Ian plunged the Ka-Bar up into the guy’s head from underneath his right ear and quickly pulled it out again before his fall could wrench the blade from his grasp. He fell quietly, and Ian realized he still had the element of surprise with everyone focused on Jasper. The girl looked at him with horrified eyes, and he quickly put his fingers to his lips to keep her quiet.
She hung her head as if suddenly resigned to her fate. Ian didn’t know if that was a good sign or a bad sign, but he took it. He crossed in front of the girl, trusting his back to her. He felt reasonably sure she couldn’t… or at least wouldn’t hurt him. Ian himself had forgotten that this was a new world, and even though he was coming to her rescue, she didn’t know it.
He held his Ka-Bar in his left hand as he fired on the one with the SKS, causing a bright bloom of red to jump to life on his chest. The 1911 was loud, and the calm night air made it seem louder than loud.
One of the teens started screaming as a hundred pounds of fur and teeth latched on to the back of his neck, forcing him to the ground, where the dog shook him back-and-forth as if he was a tug towel. Then they were all running, with the self-proclaimed Zombie Killer being the first to head for the hills, leaving Jasper and Ian looking at the kid lying curled up into a ball on the ground.
That was when he felt cold steel slide into his lower back and he screamed.
Chapter Ten
Phoenix Arizona, May 3rd
Ian spun around to see the girl holding a long spike positioned as if she was going to strike again, and he swatted it from her hands.
Ian was pissed, and he could see infected coming toward them from the end of the block, so he grabbed the girl’s upper arm and threw her into the back of the van. He looked up to see the kid who had been beaten now swinging a bat for his head, but Jasper knocked off his swing, and Ian threw him into the back of the cube van too then crawled in behind them. Once Jasper was inside, he shut the door.
“Watch them,” he said to Jasper and moved into the driver’s seat, holding his wound and beginning to worry about how much blood was coming from between his fingers. She had managed to slide it up under his vest to score a pretty good one. He rolled up a towel and shoved it between his seat and back, hoping he could keep enough pressure on it to stop him from bleeding out. The truck started as he knew it would. He turned right in the T intersection only to slam on his brakes.
At least forty infected were surging toward them.
He slammed it into reverse and almost spun out in his haste to go the other direction. If the engine had a little more gusto, he would have lit up the tires, but as it was, he flinched every time another body slammed into the side of the van.
There were more infected going out the other way but not near the numbers going to the right, and they were more spread out. There was nothing he could do but blast through them. They all seemed to converge to the center as he hit, and he marveled that this group of five or six wasn’t nearly as bad as the four hundred pounder he had hit earlier in the day.
He saw one of the gang thugs was getting swarmed as he drove by, and though the kid reached out for help, it was already too late, and Ian didn’t have to go through the moral dilemma of leaving a living asshole to the infected.
He looked left, and it looked like the stadium all over again with the mass of bodies covering the entire width of the street. He turned right and began to swerve around the groups that were trying to come together. The kid’s screams must have carried, as he was hard-pressed to find an opening to really accelerate for another two blocks. When he did, he poured it on pretty good and started alternating his turns again to create distance.
After several blocks, he saw signs for an airport, and he made his way toward it. He had to find a way to get the bleeding in his back stopped or he was going to pass out. He came to a tall chain link fence alongside the road that was adorned with rows of razor wire on top. A little way down there was a chained gate. He was half tempted to break through it, but caution won out. No one was on their tail right now, and this was the only vehicle that he had, so he waited.
Soon they came to an auxiliary parking lot for the airport that was completely devoid of life or cars, and he pulled in and shut off the engine.
He crawled into the back and started to search for a first aid kit but opted for the small one in the bottom of his pack. He saw the kids out of the corner of his eye, flinching with every move he made while Jasper sat stoically at the back door.
He sat down and tried to look at his wound, but it was out of his range of view. He used a pad to clean away what he could and then used a fresh one to see if it was still bleeding. It was, and he glared at the girl, who looked sheepishly at him while the guy just kept his eyes down.
“Why did you fucking stab me?” Ian said, exasperated. The girl’s reply wasn’t what he expected.
“W
hat are you going to do to us?”
“What? Do to you?” Ian asked, and then shook his head in amazement; this was the second time he had been asked this by someone he had helped, and he was getting tired of it. “Ahhh, help you maybe… maybe keep you from getting killed, or worse, by a bunch of thugs possibly. At least that is what I was trying to do until you fucking stabbed me."
"Well, I didn’t know. I thought that…”
“Thought what? Some guy with a dog was just prowling around, waiting for a gang fight to occur so he could kidnap you? Jesus Christ, kid. Get over yourself.”
“I didn’t know… okay?”
Ian pulled off his helmet and gloves. The Gortex between the fingers had filled with his own blood. He stripped off the rest of his gear, pulled up his shirt, and tried to see how far the spike, which he now recognized as being designed for pole barn framing and a good six inches long, had gone in. He doubted it went in more than an inch, but it hurt like hell. He remembered he had another tee shirt in his pack, so he took his off and hung it up on a hunk of steel flat stock strapped to the wall and started to dig around in his pack.
“I’m sorry, mister… I was scared and didn’t know,” the girl said, on the verge of tears.
Ian paused and looked at her thoughtfully. In her place, he might have done the same thing. “It’s all right, I’ll live.” He thought about how he could make this go a little smoother. “The name’s Ian. Look, let’s get you back to the safe house and get you a shower and fed before we make any decisions, okay? Are there more in your group?”
“Yeah, well, there was, but he sold us out to the Zombie Killer about twenty minutes ago,” the boy called Ty said.
Ian was about to ask them for more information when headlights flashed across the windshield.
“Shit, it looks like the Zombie Killer followed us,” Ian said as he stretched to look out the window. Much to his surprise and alarm, it wasn’t the Zombie Killer. In fact, he wished it was. All he saw were bright lights from a Jeep or Humvee, with two people in strange-looking military uniforms. It didn’t take but a couple of seconds for him to see they were pointing automatic weapons at the front of his cube van.
“Fuck, stay here and try to stay quiet… I’ll be right back,” Ian said before crawling over the driver seat and stepping outside without weapons or even a shirt.
“Hey, what’s going on?” Ty heard Ian say to the men outside, only to be responded to with a deep guttural laugh that sounded like a sadistic Santa Claus. Ty stretched his neck up to see a tall Asian man in a greenish uniform laughing and pointing a gun at the man who had helped them. The giant stepped out from the light’s glare and set his rifle down then Ty began to relax. He saw a patch on the arm that looked like a red star on a white background, surrounded with a thin blue line. He took off his shirt and hung it over the rifle barrel so he was standing there, facing Ian in a white wife beater tee shirt. The man was ripped, looking like he had spent the last twenty years in the gym.
“Ho, ho, ho… you tough guy, Yankee Joe?” the man said in heavily accented English.
“What did he say?” Ty heard at his side.
“Shhh, he just asked Ian if he was a tough guy, now stay quiet and listen.”
“No, man, I was just wondering what you wanted, is all,” Ian replied.
“You, Yankee Joe, I want you. Come now,” the man said and put his fists up like a boxer.
“No man, we don’t need to fight. You want me out of here, I’ll leave… it’s that easy.”
“Okay… you go, after I break arm and leg. Okay, Yankee Joe?”
“Dude, you sound like you’re from a bad World War Two movie.”
“Dude? Dude man? I know dude man, Yankee Joe. We fight now, dude man,” the big Asian man said as Ty tried to see if there was more than just one guy backing him up.
The man advanced and swung a heavy right hook, which Ian easily ducked before stepping out of range, holding up his hands.
“Seriously, I don’t want any trouble,” Ty heard Ian protest.
The Asian man didn’t speak enough English to understand, or he didn’t care, because he slammed an upper cut into Ian’s abdomen, so hard it lifted him off the ground. Ty heard the air rush from Ian’s lungs as he fell to his knees, coughing and moaning.
“No trouble, dude man.” The Asian man grunted and advanced again, kicking Ian in his head to send him rolling backward. “Yankee Joe, stand up and fight, Yankee Joe, dude man.” He lifted his massive foot to slam it down on Ian, who managed to roll away just in time.
Ian was trying to stand, but the huge man kneed him in the face then elbowed him in the back of the head. He followed up with a spinning mule kick in the solar plexus that sent Ian rolling several feet away from the cube van to lay curled in a fetal position.
Ty saw him lying on the pavement, still breathing but barely. The wound on his back started to bleed profusely.
The other man not involved in the fight shouted something in whatever language they spoke and pointed toward the bleeding wound. The big man turned back to Ian, a look of concern now on his face. He grabbed a pair of gloves out of his back pocket and put them on as he slowly walked toward the downed man. All the mocking had stopped and everything about him said that this was now for real.
“Oh man, he thinks Ian’s infected,” Ty whispered to the girl.
“So what?”
“Macy, the guy has a safe house with food and showers.” Ty moved to the back of the van warily due to the dog.
Jasper was also anxious to get out to investigate the noises he was hearing. They were new to being a team, but Jasper was already familiar with most of Ian’s sounds, and what he was hearing now was not right.
Ty popped the door just enough, and they both slid out. Jasper sprinted around the van and attacked the first man he saw, which happened to be the rifle man who was circling the fight in a wide arc, believing that the only threat had just gotten his ass kicked.
Ty barely rounded the corner of the cube van before he saw the dog latch on to the trigger arm of the smaller guard and use the full mass of his body to slam him into a faceplant before yanking him across the pavement. The man dropped the rifle, but the dog kept on moving and shifting his attack and curling the man into a protective ball.
Ty headed toward the big man, who was moving in on Ian and looking as if he was going to stomp the life out of him. He thought Ian could be infected, and that ended the game. Now, it was all business… serious business, and Ian would soon be dead, unable to ever rise again even as an infected, as he would be squashed like a bug.
Ty ran toward the giant Asian man, holding a thin piece of iron about four feet long that he scavenged from the back of the van as his only weapon. He didn’t know why he screamed as he raised it above his head to attack the man; it was probably from the movies or TV shows. Either way, he did and he realized right away it was the wrong thing to do.
The man responded to the scream quicker than Ty thought a big man like that could move. He blocked his swing and grabbed his arm. Then with a punch to the kid’s mid-section, he tossed Ty into the air like a kicked cat, to land in a heap.
Ty looked up at the man, knowing that his element of surprise was gone, betrayed by his own actions. The giant was now looking at him, the smile returned to his face.
“Homeboy, heh, heh, heh. You help Yankee Joe, Homeboy?” the man said as if it were some kind of surprise. Ty had to admit that he and Ian didn’t look as if they were cut from the same cloth.
The sounds of Jasper’s struggle caught the man’s attention, and as he undid the flap over his pistol, Ty forced himself up and advanced again with the short piece of iron rod.
The Asian stopped Ty’s swing as if he were a petulant eight-year-old trying to attack his construction worker father. He twisted the steel out of his grip and tossed it to the side before drawing his gun to shoot the dog. He paused when he saw his partner getting the upper hand on the beast and was reaching for his own sidearm. The gi
ant re-holstered and looked toward Ian and Ty again.
The sound of a single gunshot tore through the night. Ty and Ian looked on in shock. The dog was silent, except for a whimper.
The big man didn’t bother to look back at his partner. Instead, he smiled then chuckled. “No more doggy.”
Just then, the man’s face changed from amused to surprised, then pained, as a forty-five-caliber bullet ripped out of his chest, causing his body to jerk forward. With confusion forcing its way past the shock and pain, he looked at Ian, who still lay on the ground.
Ian just shrugged.
Ty ran toward the big man and grabbed the unstrapped pistol in his holster and yanked it free. The giant man fell to his knees as Ty lined up his shot.
“Don’t!” Ian said, and Ty stopped with the pistol pointed toward the man’s head.
“He’s dead already. He just doesn’t believe it yet,” Ty said, but he lowered his aim, seeing that the man was no longer a threat.
The screams of infected could be heard rushing toward the sound of the gun shots. Ty looked at the girl, who stood, holding the gun that Ian had left in the van. Ty smiled, and she wiped her eyes then her nose with her free hand before wiping her hand on her jeans.
Ty rushed to Ian and helped him get to his feet, with the added assistance from the dog. Then he helped him to the box van, saying, “We gotta go.” Then he approached the girl and helped her climb through the vehicle’s back door. “You were awesome, Macy. That one guy was going to shoot the dog, and the big dude was going to kill us.”
“That was the biggest Chinese guy I have ever seen,” Macy said, still in shock by her own actions.
“North Korean,” Ian grunted after he had crawled back into the driver’s seat and started the van. “Close the door back there and shove some steel in those slots to hold it down.” Ian swerved around the military rig with lights off, hoping that the bright lights from the still running Humvee would draw the infecteds’ attention.
For Which We Stand: Ian's road (A Five Roads To Texas Novel Book 3) Page 12