“Lovely, such a creature. I shall keep this vision in my head warm at night, don’t you know,” Russell said with a smirk.
“That’s about enough. We’re heading out. Nice to meet you,” I said.
“Nice, yes it was,” Russell said. He turned back to the bar. He whispered to one of his lieutenants and then walked back inside without a backward glance.
I didn’t need a roadmap to tell me how this was going to go. We had one card to play, and I intended to use it.
“Let’s go. We’ll see you to the fence. It’s up that road about a mile.” The man who spoke was a short, thin man with a scraggly beard and a trucker hat that had seen far better days before it landed on his head.
“Please, lead the way,” I said.
He clearly didn’t like walking in front of me but there wasn’t anything for it. I waited a second before following, giving me some room in between him and myself. Andrea fell in behind me, and two men brought up the rear. When they did that, Andrea shifted the rifle hanging in front of her to a little lower. We walked for a decent bit, passing several homes and large gardens. Children played in the sun, and there were several pockets of adults just spending time talking and watching over the children. The one thing that looked strange to me was there were no cars anywhere.
Andrea seemed to be getting more nervous the closer we got to the fence. I could hear her talking to herself and I think she was losing the argument she was having with her instincts. I didn’t think anything was going to happen within sight of the children, so I just walked on.
When we were away from the children and within sight of the northern border, I walked quickly ahead and stuck my gun in my guide’s back.
“Whut th’ hell?” he exclaimed.
Andrea had seen me move, so when our man in front yelled, she spun around and covered the two men who were behind us, surprising them as well. They were in the process of bringing their guns up but the barrel of Andrea’s rifle persuaded them otherwise.
“Guns and mags on the ground, now. Easy, there, partner,” I said as the man in the hat jerked his head around.
“Russell ain’t gonna like this,” he said.
“I’m sure. Let’s see what we have here. Two Glocks and a Smith and Wesson,” I said, gathering up the guns. I unloaded the three of them, and handed the nine-millimeter rounds to Andrea. The S&W was a .45, so I scored a win as well.
“Don’t know what your orders were, but I am sure they did not include us surviving the walk through that gate. So you all can head back and complain all you want. But if I see any of you three again, I’ll just shoot. You’ve been warned,” I said.
The men walked off sullenly, no doubt figuring out how they were going to explain this to their boss.
“Let’s get going,” I said. “We’ve got twenty minutes before they get back, and then another five for Russell to formulate a response, then ten for a car ride back here.”
“Why didn’t we just kill them?” Andrea asked as she jogged alongside.
“I didn’t see the need,” I said. “No doubt those men might have been told to eliminate us, or at least me, but once they were unarmed, there wasn’t any reason.”
“But weren’t you an assassin for the CIA?” Andrea asked.
“Technically, no. I was a field agent, but a lot of my work was gathering intelligence, turning people into informants, basically seeing what the situation on the ground was for the analysts,” I explained.
“But if you were ordered to kill?” Andrea persisted.
“Then that person would be eliminated. Sometimes I had to shoot back, and sometimes I had to kill to save others,” I said.
“So you did assassinate people,” Andrea said, smiling.
“You could call it that,” I said.
“Did you have an assassin’s code?” Andrea asked as we climbed up the earthen wall.
“A what?” I dropped down to avoid being sky-lined and looked over the side. The way was clear, so I slid down the steep embankment.
Andrea slid down after me. “A code, you know! Like, no women or kids. That sort of thing.”
“No, nothing like that. If I was ordered to eliminate someone, there was a reason for their execution.”
“Did you ever kill a child?” Andrea asked quietly.
“Yep.”
“What happened?” she asked, her eyes wide.
“I was in Iraq, providing intelligence to a couple of our forward posts. We were moving up the road when we suddenly stopped. There was a small girl standing in the road. She started to walk toward us when I shot her. The men in our truck were pretty mad at that when suddenly the girl blew up. The insurgents had strapped a bunch of explosives to her, hoping we’d put her in the truck,” I said.
“How did you know?” Andrea asked.
“She walked like she was heavier than she was supposed to be,” I said.
We kept moving, sticking to the road but looking to get off of it soon. The sun was setting, and I was hoping to find some sort of shelter for the night.
“What if you’d been wrong?” Andrea asked.
“Then the ledger sending me to hell would have been a little thicker,” I said.
An hour later around dusk, we spotted a small house, and after checking it out, I shook my head.
“Why not?” Andrea asked.
“Too easy if they’re coming after us,” I said. “There has been nowhere else.”
“What’s your suggestion, then?” Andrea asked. “I’m actually tired, now.”
“Up ahead, that looks like a decent place,” I said.
The road turned a broad corner, and there was a small filling station. It was an old building, probably built back in the sixties, but it looked sturdy enough. There were two pumps under a wide awning, and a small station that had a small store and a garage. I looked in the windows, but didn’t see anything. Andrea circled the building and shook her head.
“All right, let’s head in. No guns,” I said. I pulled my dagger and Andrea just shook her head.
“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that thing,” she said.
“You’re just jealous.” I liked my Italian dagger. It had intimidation written all over it. Plus, it was one hundred percent effective on zombies.
I went into the front door and saw that the place had already been looted. There was literally nothing on the shelves or in the fridges. Hell, even the magazines were gone.
I took a look in the garage but saw nothing there, either. That place had been stripped as well.
“Seems all clear…damnit, here we go again!” I backpedaled away from the zombie that came lumbering out of the small hallway that led to the back room and the bathrooms. He was tall, nearly as tall as I was, and that gave him long arms to reach out with. His hands and face were filthy with dried blood and gore, and I ducked under those hands, getting out of the way as he slammed into the magazine rack. He slipped on the rack and fell, but scrambled up faster than I had seen others move. Andrea was swinging her rifle up and I pushed it out of the way.
“Can’t make noise,” I said, watching the zombie.
He lunged again, and I drove my dagger up through his chin, driving the point clear through the top of his skull. His momentum brought his face close to mine and I reflexively held my breath and turned away as he fell.
“I hate this part,” I said. I took hold of my dagger’s hilt and pulled, and the blade slowly squelched out of the dead man’s head.
“Think there are any more?” Andrea asked.
“Have to go see,” I said.
Fortunately, there was only the one, and that one had gotten in because the back door was open. The rest of the place was clear.
“Okay. Help me move this guy,” I said, grabbing one of his ankles.
“What? Why?” Andrea asked.
“If anyone comes looking for us and sees a fresh kill, they’ll know we are around. All they’d have to do is wait,” I explained.
That made sense to
Andrea, so she helped me drag the guy out the back door and into the woods. We tossed some brush over him and left him there. Back at the gas station, I had another talk with Andrea about where we were going to sleep. I said we had to sleep on the roof, since this was another spot they would likely check.
“Ugh. Fine. At least it’s summer,” she said.
We got up on the roof and found somewhat comfortable lodging as the sun went down. Right at that time, we heard something moving down the road. We ducked down and carefully peeked out
A small caravan of three golf carts was moving down the road. We could see them stop at the house we had abandoned and several men got out, rifles at the ready. A few minutes later, they were at our gas station. We could hear them talking as they went through the building.
“Nothing here, either.”
“Where’d they git to?”
“Musta gone into the woods.”
“Russell ain’t happy.”
“Nope. He wanted the man dead and the girl fer breedin’.”
“He’s a little nuts.”
“Yeah, but he’s good with his gun and we have it pretty good. I ain’t complainin’.”
The rest of the conversation was lost to us as the men got into their carts and drove off.
I looked at Andrea and she just closed her eyes and shuddered. Neither of us had any illusions about what was meant by her being a breeder. For that matter, my fate was pretty much sealed. I guess anything I did to them could be justifiable self-defense.
“What do we do now?” Andrea asked.
I shrugged. “I’m going to sleep, so don’t bother me until morning. And try not to snore.”
“I don’t snore!”
“Well, then, stop stepping on bullfrogs in the wee hours of the morning. It’s loud and it annoys the frogs.”
“I. Do. Not. Snore,” Andrea said pointedly. She crawled away and curled up in a corner of the roof.
In the morning, the sun was peeking over the lip of the roof poking under my eyelids and got my attention. I stretched in the cool summer air. Tennessee was a great state to wake up in. The trees rustled a healthy good morning to you, and the birds sang happily as they went about their business. The crows cawed in a musical way.
Wait. That wasn’t right. I looked over the side of the roof and couldn’t believe my eyes. On the road were two of the golf carts, and the men that were riding them the other night were on the road with them. I should say they were all over the road. There was blood everywhere, all over the men, all over the road, all over the dozen zombies that were still feeding on the bits and pieces that they picked up here and there. Flies buzzed loudly as they competed with the ghouls for the choicest bits of meat.
I crawled over to Andrea and shook her gently awake. Her eyes popped open and looked at me in askance when I held up a finger to my lips. I looked over the side of the roof by her and saw that there were three zombies just starting to emerge from the woods. They made a beeline to the front of the station and I had no illusions about them joining the buffet line.
Andrea looked over and then back at me.
“What the hell?” she whispered quietly.
“Your snoring probably attracted them,” I said just as quietly. “Speaking of which…” I took out the foam earplugs I used every night Andrea had slept in the same vicinity.
Andrea was apoplectic. “You…you…how…” she sputtered.
“Don’t blame me. You called them, now you figure out how we get around them,” I said. I went back to my spot and laid back down, enjoying the warm sun.
“I ought to throw you over to them!” she hissed.
“We’re in the south. Remember to be a lady,” I said, hoping she didn’t shoot me.
Andrea chose to ignore me, thus sparing my life while she figured out what to do next. She went to the roof hatch and slipped inside, and I almost thought I heard a bolt latch on the door. But then I heard several things being thrown at the trees, so I figured she had come up with a plan and I needed to get ready to move.
“Now, Mac!” came the call.
I dropped down the ladder and went out the front of the gas station just as a few zombies were coming back from the woods. Andrea was sitting in a golf cart and I wasted no time joining her.
“Nice ride,” I said as I put my pack on the back seat. The second golf cart was tied to us and was being pulled behind. I looked at Andrea and she just shrugged.
“Figured we could run this one until it ran out of juice, then we’d have the second one to take us until it went. Waste not,” Andrea explained.
“Nicely done. I take back half of what I said about your snoring,” I said.
“Just half? I did score us some rides.”
“We’ll see how long they last. If they get us until midday, then I’ll take back all of it,” I said.
Andrea smiled smugly.
“Even though you do snore,” I finished.
I had a hard time holding on as she tried to dump me overboard.
Chapter 10 – 4 Weeks BTEOTW
Three weeks. Three weeks of absolutely nothing. Everything we learned was bad news on some level. Dr. Rodriguez was missing, with no sign of her anywhere. Ecuador had been a bust, her relatives hadn’t seen her in a while, and now they were worried, too. Conner had passed over and was now being used as test subject, with very little being reported as progress. Jester was even more elusive, going to ground and not coming out.
The DOC had not taken my words literally. He kept everyone in the field, but they were all looking for Jester tattoos. Other agencies had been informed of a need to find these people, but even that traffic was negative.
Since we hadn’t heard of anything for three weeks, I was starting to look like Chicken Little.
Then El Salvador popped up. There was a report of weird activity in the Bosque La Joya, demons walking around at night, attacking people and eating them. I was on a plane before the report was finished.
A long plane ride and a longer car ride found me in San Salvador, sitting in a local bar. I was the only gringo in the place, attracting sidelong glances over hunched shoulders as the local mucho malo hombres looked me over. I was in no danger here in the bar, where the bartender paid the local police to make sure no trouble happened here. But outside I would be fair game, unless my contact showed up. Then I had a feeling things would change considerably.
The smoke of a dozen cigarettes, cigars, and one pipe by yours truly drifted slowly toward the tired ceiling fan, which for its part, completed a revolution once every five minutes. A small boy drifted among the tables, looting the drunks and finishing their drinks. I gave him a look that promised a whole lot of misery if he tried anything here.
I took a small sip of my drink and then shifted my hand to be closer to my gun. The air in the room cooled considerably, and I knew it wasn’t the AC kicking in. Over by the door a man had walked in. He wasn’t much to look at, just a small El Salvadoran in a cream-colored suit. He was slightly taller than your usual local, but what took your attention were his eyes. They were deep set in his face, and so dark it looked like they were just pieces of coal set in his head. He stepped in and swiveled his head around, freezing each man in place as he gazed over them. When his eyes reached my corner, he stopped, fixed me with his death ray, and headed in my direction.
“Mac, my old friend! How good it is to see you!” The small man shook my hand warmly, taking a seat next to mine, allowing him a view of the bar and the door. At the acknowledgement that I was known to this man, the local toughs suddenly lost interest in me. To earn the displeasure of the man next to me was not only foolish, but downright suicidal.
“Good to see you too, Ricky,” I said. “How’s the boy? Still playing for that school up north?”
Enrique Flores, the man sitting next to me, beamed in paternal pride. “He is well, learning a lot, and driving his mother crazy.” He waved a hand and a drink appeared near his elbow as if by magic. The serving girl, who up to this point
was skilled at invisibility, suddenly appeared and asked if I wanted anything else. Her fright was almost tangible, and she backed away when I shook my head.
I couldn’t blame them for their dread. Ricky was a man to be feared. He grew up on the mean streets of San Salvador, and when he killed his first man at the age of twelve, the local narcos in Cali and Bogota took notice. They thought it would be fun to have a sicario that no one suspected of being a killer. By the time he was eighteen, Ricky had racked up a kill score of over fifty men. He was ruthless, fearless, and merciless. Then one day he just up and walked away. Rumor had it he did it for his wife, who wanted their son to have a respectable father. But the narcos didn’t want to let go so easily, and he wound up fighting his former employers. Things were getting bloody, and the DEA in Columbia asked me to help him out. I got him up north with his wife, and things quieted down. Ricky came back to El Salvador when a local drug jefe took a shot at his father in revenge for Ricky leaving. The bloodbath that followed set Ricky up for life as a man you walked slowly around.
I always found Ricky to be very charming, and I had no problem with his hit list. Every person he ever took out was a criminal of some kind, so good riddance, I say. Besides, I wasn’t exactly a Puritan myself.
These days Ricky worked for the government of El Salvador, but he never really told me what he did. I think he hunted drug dealers who got a little too big for the government’s comfort. Everybody in the region still had clear memories of what Pablo Escobar and his kind did to the country. A little dealing was allowed, but don’t cross the line or Ricky would look you up. His years as a hitman for the cartels put him in a unique position as he knew all the tricks.
Ricky finished his drink and looked at me closely. His black eyes stared into mine and he slowly shook his head.
“It has been a long time, Mac, but there is something in your eyes. You have seen some things since we last saw each other, I am guessing,” Ricky said accurately.
I downed my drink and another appeared, this one of better quality than the last. “Ricky, old friend, you have no idea.” I spent the next half hour telling him about what I had been doing and who I had been hunting. Ricky’s eyes narrowed at some of the tale, but he did not interrupt. At the end of it, he shook his head.
The Chronos Plague (Book 1): No Time Left Page 17