Back outside, Danny and Jon swiftly explained what they found, then Lenny and Bryce gave them the good news that they could squeeze the carts around the back.
“If we grab the hammocks and cots, we definitely have to stop at the next safe place,” Shaidi told everyone.
“I think we should take them,” Jon voted.
Danny agreed, and one by one the others followed suit. Walking to the back of a cart, Danny opened the tool box hanging there and selected a socket wrench he thought would work on the bolts holding the cots to the floor and the hammocks to the frame work. Just in case, he grabbed a few similar sizes so that he wouldn’t have to walk back out if he was wrong.
With Bryce joining him this time, Danny returned to the bus, while the others started the process of walking the horses and carts around the back of the bus.
“Think I should grab his boots and check his pockets?” Bryce asked about the driver as Danny set to work. He had selected the right socket wrench the first time.
“Can you do so safely? It looked like there was a lot of blood all over that harness and stuff.”
“Maybe not his pockets, but I think I might be able to snag his boots.”
“If you think you can, then go for it.”
In the end, Bryce managed to get the boots, which were clear of blood, and took the man’s socks while he was at it. The hammocks came down without a hitch, consisting of nothing more than fabric cocoons held by chains on either end; they didn’t even have spacers on either end to stop the hammocks from curling up around their occupants. Once they were down, Bryce took them and the boots out to the carts while Danny set to work on the cots.
The sound of sliding pebbles caused Danny to pause.
“Bryce? Jon? That you guys?” he spoke hesitantly. His earlier thoughts of being watched came back, so he pulled out his pistol and laid it on the floor beside him, within easy reach, and then locked his eyes on the door as he continued to loosen the bolts. Even if there wasn’t a stranger out there, pebbles shifting on their own was a cause for concern when the building the bus had smashed into could collapse at any moment. Danny worked even faster, bruising his fingertips by turning the bolts with them as soon as they were loose enough, his other hand moving onto the next bolt with the socket wrench. When Bryce came back, Danny told him what he had heard. Bryce began using his own fingers to help out, and the two of them hastily freed the cots. Folding them up, they each then carried out a pair and made their way to the other side of the bus where the carts were waiting.
“We better get moving ASAP if we don’t want to get hit by that storm,” Larson warned them as the cots found places amongst the rest of their haul.
Danny could feel that the wind had picked up and knew what he meant. He climbed up onto the board seat with Larson; Bryce plopped down on the other side. Jon and Lenny were already sitting in the lead cart with Shaidi. With everyone onboard, the horses were encouraged to move at a brisk trot. It was faster, louder, and more dangerous, but they decided to risk it with the thunderheads rolling in. Zombies generally got confused during storms, so they weren’t too worried about leading a bunch of them to their next hideout. By sticking to the middle of the road, it was unlikely they would get surprised by something popping out without one of them spotting it before it reached the carts and horses. Other humans were the only real concern, but then they always were, no matter what the circumstances.
They reached their next safe spot ahead of the storm, but only just, as the black clouds became visible from ground level. The sun was still out-racing them, but not by much; it would soon be overtaken, leaving everything in darkness.
“Let’s get them inside!” Lenny called out over the increasing wind, moving from the seat to Potato’s head.
Danny slipped from his seat as well and grasped the halter of Soot, a drab grey horse who was old and almost deaf. Shaidi had already dropped back to take hold of Spark, the young, energetic buck who stuck by Soot’s side like a grandson helping his grandpa. With Jon by Thumper, it was left to Bryce and Larson to go in first, to make sure their space had stayed safe in their absence. Danny watched as they headed a short way down a wide alley to a large shipment door. An easily removed bolt held it closed in place of a lock, and its presence suggested that there was nothing inside. Throwing the door up, Bryce and Larson moved boldly inside, pistols and flashlights clearing the way. The space they were searching didn’t have any places to hide, and so they cleared it without delay and waved the others forward.
Danny stood impatiently beside Soot, watching as the other cart was led in. As the sunlight was swallowed, day became night. The wind was roaring now. Soot leaned his old head into it, his barely functioning ears flat against his skull. Beside him, Spark struggled in his harness, wanting to follow the other horses immediately; only Soot’s stubborn obedience to the people around them stopped him. Then the sky split open and Danny found himself waterlogged before Jon appeared in the doorway to wave them in. Walking the eager horses into shelter, Danny was not looking forward to their wet stink reeking up the place.
Their safe spot was the back of a furniture store, where display models had at one time been put together and where the boxes of disassembled items were stored. Some time ago, on a previous scavenge, they had moved all the large boxes from the back room to the display floor, leaving a wide, open space. Only a few shelving units remained, pushed up against one wall, and half a dozen couches they had pressed up against the other.
“Let’s dry off what we can,” Lenny spoke loudly over the hammering rain, his words punctuated by distant thunder. The lightning hadn’t reached them yet, but it was on its way.
An assembly line of sorts was created to go through the contents of the second cart and dry off what they could using a stack of towels from the first cart. Only Shaidi neglected to join the line as she dealt with the horses, first freeing Thumper and Potato from the lead cart, and then brushing and to some extent patting dry Spark and Soot as they were released. Danny didn’t get to dry himself off until after the second cart had been checked. He had used his damp hands to go through the soggy items, causing the flashlight attached to his wrist to throw erratic light patterns whenever he moved. Anything that needed to be kept dry was bundled up, but with that much rain falling that heavily, it was wise to go through it all and dry off the bottom of the cart to protect the wood.
The horses were free to walk around the space, but they grouped together against the far wall, beside the door that led into the store’s front, where they no doubt believed they were the farthest away from the storm.
Once everything was finally laid out to air dry, the flashlights were replaced with lanterns. Danny and Shaidi dried off as best they could with the now damp towels, and then laid their guns down and started stripping them. They wouldn’t be able to tell if the powder in their bullets had gotten wet and gone bad, but there was no point in letting any dampness sit in the pistols or rifles. Danny hoped the bullets were fine. Although the Black Box had the necessary equipment to make more, they didn’t produce a lot, and it wouldn’t do them any good if the bullets were needed before getting home.
With their tasks completed, and the storm roaring overhead with sharp cracks of lightning, there wasn’t much to do in the back of the furniture store. Bryce and Larson were playing cards, Jon had placed some pots outside to gather rainwater and was waiting by the door for them to fill, Lenny was lying on a couch, reading a book, while Shaidi plucked some horse-friendly food from their supplies and fed it to the huddling beasts. Danny drifted around for a bit, then helped Jon lift the door and snatch the pots. The water would be used for cooking, drinking, and mopping up horse urine if it got too bad. Once that was done, Larson and Bryce invited them over to play Hearts. Danny wasn’t particularly fond of the game, but that was probably because he wasn’t very good at it, unlike Bryce. Still, he sat down and joined them to pass the time.
Eventually, Danny found himself on a couch, sprawled out as much as he
could be, his eyes closed and his mind drifting. He kept thinking of the bus and wondering what had happened it to. More importantly, he wondered where the people from the bus had gone.
***
The pressure in Danny’s bladder and the hunger gnawing at his stomach woke him up. There was a moment of blindness before his eyes picked up the light from a single lantern, burning low near Shaidi and Lenny’s couches. Everyone else was asleep. Danny had slept through dinner—no one had bothered to wake him—but near the light he spied a container that held his share. His bladder had to come first, however.
Easing up off the couch, Danny tiptoed his way over to the door that led into the front of the furniture store. It was quieter than the delivery door, and even though the room already smelled of horse shit, Danny preferred it to foul a room where he wasn’t sleeping and eating. As he registered the calmness of the horses, still huddled together by the door, he listened for the storm. The crash of thunder had moved on, and if it was still raining, it was no longer hard enough to be heard from inside. Tomorrow they could get moving with the sun, spending some time to cover the carts with tarps and themselves in rain ponchos if needed.
Danny had to feel around for the door handle; the small light was not bright enough. When he did find it and pulled the door open, there was nothing but an inky darkness beyond. With some form of clouds still overhead, there was no light to come in through the front windows, nothing to illuminate the space. A small shudder ran its way up Danny’s spine. The front had been barricaded when they first decided to make this a safe spot, but barricades weren’t invincible. The others would have checked out the space when they came to relieve themselves, but Danny still found his small hairs standing on end. Stepping part way through the door so that it blocked him from the others should they wake, he unzipped his pants. Normally, he’d relieve himself farther in, but whatever was making him jittery kept him close to the door. When he finished, Danny decided he needed to check out the space in order to make himself feel better. He reached for the flashlight on his wrist and clicked it on, revealing what he had feared and foolishly brushed off.
A man was standing just out of arm’s reach, so close that Danny could see the startled expression cross his face, just as, no doubt, one was crossing his own. The man was no one he knew, and as that thought fired through Danny’s brain, he yelled at the top of his lungs. As he tried to back through the door, the mysterious man rushed at him, grabbing his shirt and pulling him toward the store’s front, past his puddled urine. Shadows moved all around, not all of them cast by the erratic flashlight on Danny’s wrist. At the same moment he learned that the man was not alone, the man drove his knee into Danny’s stomach, knocking the wind out of him and cutting off his shout of alarm.
It was impossible to know what was happening in the back room as Danny fell to the floor, grappling with the interloper and throwing punches. Horse hooves clattered on the cement floor, people began yelling and screaming, their voices overlapping. There were no gunshots, but was that a good thing or bad? Danny could barely hear himself grunt when his assailant landed a blow against his ribs. He reached for his knife, but someone, not the intruder he was fighting with but someone else, kicked it out of his hand. The pain was sharp, like having a door slam on it, followed by a more crushing force, pinning down his entire arm. Danny heard the roll up door rise; was it his friends escaping, or more attackers getting in? Flailing and struggling against the weight of two men now, Danny tried to get a better look at his assailants, hoping to spy a weak spot. Before he could make out any detail however, a cloth bag was pulled over his head, blocking out what little light there was. Something, probably a fist, struck the side of Danny’s head, stunning him.
Is this how I die? Fighting in the dark? Danny thought during the haze. His mind sharpened before his body was ready. Not only was he struggling against the men, but he was struggling against uncooperative limbs. Whoever had attacked him was taking advantage of Danny’s current ineffectualness. He felt hands flip him over onto his stomach, and then his arms were wrenched behind his back and roped together. His legs finally started to obey him, but from his belly he couldn’t get much kicking force. They were soon tied up as well and Danny felt that he was trussed up like a hog. Shaking his head, he attempted to throw the bag off of it. Light was seeping through the fabric now, as more lanterns and flashlights were lit somewhere. One of his attackers, seeing his attempt to free his head from the bag, bent down and tightly secured some sort of blindfold over where Danny’s eyes were, completely blocking out the light.
Things were calming down now. The attackers were panting nearby, talking in whispers that were muffled by Danny’s own harsh breathing within the bag.
“Put him with the others,” were the first words spoken loud enough for him to make out.
Others? Danny had hoped his friends had escaped, but it appeared not all of them had. Unless these people had kidnapped someone else before him? It was a possibility. Danny wished he could do something, anything, as he was hoisted off the floor, his bound limbs crying out in pain. Had he managed to get the bag off, he might have been able to bite someone, but as things stood, the tightness of the blindfold kept it snug over his face. He was deposited on the floor with a thump, his captors not exactly dropping him, but they weren’t being gentle with him either. Danny listened to the sound of a door closing behind him and guessed he was in the employee bathroom based on the smell. It would stink worse in the back room with the horse waste, and there were no other doors in the place, so he was definitely in the bathroom.
“Who else is here?” Danny whispered.
“That you, Danny?” Bryce’s voice came from the other side of the room.
“Yeah.”
A soft, muffled groan filled the space between them.
“I’m pretty sure that’s Lenny,” Bryce answered for the groan. “I think I saw him being gagged.”
“What about the others?”
“I think they escaped. Jon and Shaidi for sure got outside on horses, but I lost track of Larson. Since they’re not in here, I’m betting they got away.”
“That’s good. Larson wouldn’t leave us behind, and Jon is good at planning. He’ll figure something out.”
“I hope so. What do you think they want with us?”
“Our stuff. What does anyone want these days?”
“Yeah, but why grab us? Lenny kept trying to negotiate with them, and they seemed upset that some of us got out.”
Lenny made an indecipherable response.
Danny could think of two reasons off the top of his head, neither of which was good: enslavement and cannibalism. As he lay in the dark, he wondered if he’d see his family again, either those back at the container yard, or the ones who had passed on before him.
***
Danny didn’t think he had slept on the bathroom floor; his limbs were far too uncomfortable for it, but his mind had certainly wandered. He had no sense of time, and his arms and legs had gone from being painful, to a strange sort of tingling numbness. A few times he had heard Bryce or Lenny shuffling about, but they had ceased speaking to one another. There wasn’t anything more to say for the moment. Beside him, Lenny breathed slowly and heavily, able to use only his nose due to the gag in his mouth. Danny worried about him suffocating. At times, he found himself startled into a more wakeful state, particularly whenever there was sound near the door. Every now and again, one of their captors would walk past, or a few snatches of conversation would drift over, none of it intelligible enough to make out.
When the door finally opened, Danny’s heart rate jumped from a resting pulse to that of a racehorse within the span of a few beats, all his senses becoming hyper alert.
“Could you take his gag off?” Bryce asked from the far side of the bathroom. “Please? He’s clearly having some difficulty breathing.”
Danny heard a grunt in response from whoever entered. More than one set of boots came into the bathroom, and Danny was painfully ho
isted up again. He clenched his teeth as hard as he could to keep from crying out, the tingling numbness replaced by shooting stabs. As he was brought out of the bathroom, it didn’t sound like the others were coming with him.
After being lowered to the floor again, Danny’s binds were cut. His limbs flopped outward, bringing a whole new pain from the sudden release of stiffness and the return of proper blood flow. He was so startled by it, he didn’t have time to react before hands were wrapped around his limbs again, and he was placed upright in a chair, probably a dining room chair from the display floor based on the feel. Danny felt his ankles get bound to the legs, while his upper arms were strapped to the back. His lower arms were left oddly free, giving him a chance to rub his sore wrists after his captors were done manhandling him. His fingers traced the grooves left in his skin from the rope and where his flashlight used to be. The sound of footfalls retreated, but Danny got the sense he wasn’t alone. He kept his mouth shut, waiting for whoever it was to speak first. In the silence, Danny wondered if he’d be able to remove his own blindfold and suspected he might, but wanted to wait before trying.
A scrape of chair legs on linoleum tiles before him confirmed Danny’s thoughts. It also let him know that he was on the display floor somewhere, as it was tiled whereas the backroom was not. Hands untied Danny’s blindfold, then pulled the bag off of his head without ever touching him. The sudden light was harsh, making Danny squint as he struggled to adapt as quickly as possible. By the time he could see, the person who had removed his blindfold was sitting down across from him. He was a large man, very tall with broad shoulders, his short blond hair and beard covering unmoving features that included a pair of dull grey eyes. The man’s eyes reminded Danny of the storm as it had been rolling in. The light that had blinded him was a lamp sitting on a shelf beside his captor, but there was also a soft grey light from elsewhere. It was morning, and the storm had left behind a blanket of clouds, which now dulled the sunlight coming through the furniture store’s windows. Danny and the unknown man stared at one another, waiting for the other to react first.
Survival Instinct (Book 4): Defensive Instinct Page 15