Directly across from where he was crouched down he could see the metal door to the Del Taco bathroom, propped open casually by a cinder block with a loop of chain and a dangling key. Adam remembered when gas station owners used a similar method to keep spare keys from walking off. There was a gleaming silver Mercedes parked just in front that partially obscured his view of the child rape in progress. The driver's side door had been left open and the keys in the ignition caused steady, almost rhythmic dinging to waft pleasantly through the air. Adam focused his mind on it for a moment, allowing himself to become centered for the battle that lay just ahead. It was almost enjoyable in a way, that pulsing ding, once you surrendered to it, like a digital facsimile of the high ringing of a church bell heard from far away. In fact it reminded him a little of Christmas music, if he was being honest.
RING Christmas Bells. RING Christmas Bells.
It kept the same pace, with the ding hitting right out in front of each verse.
RING Christmas Bells. RING Christmas Bells.
He was a handful of days away from the time of year when Christmas music would normally have begun to slowly take over the world around him, like a bad, seasonal cold, although living in Los Angeles with perennially sweltering temperatures, and no clear markers between seasons, meant he probably wouldn't know when the birth of the Lord and savior came and went—and neither would his hungry, undead companions.
There will never be Christmas music playing on the radio again, he thought, feeling oddly sentimental about it all of a sudden, despite not caring much for it before. No more cheery holiday renditions from Bing Crosby or Johnny Mathis or Frank Sinatra or Nat King fucking Cole. There also won't be any more bitching about all the other stupid things that only seem to matter this time of year, like Black Friday, or how the holiday ads keep starting earlier and earlier every year, or whatever new outrage supposedly signals the next battlefront on the War on Christmas.
The shrill scream of the young girl being attacked caused him to flinch, bringing him back to the moment, He couldn't see all of her from where he was, not with four grown men pawing at her from all sides, but he could make out the rustling of her clothes on the fast food bathroom tile floor as her assailants violently worked to wrestle her out of them. That told him that things had just kicked off, so to speak, not to mention the ferocious way she was still struggling.
There's still time to save her, he reasoned, as he inched forward to get a better look. So long as I don't blow this.
He was almost to the right front wheel of the Mercedes, his body cloaked behind the sleek luxury vehicle, his head poking just slightly over the top of the hood to catch a better view of his targets.
Always maintain line of sight when feasible, he reminded himself. Especially when dealing with the living. It was a rule he'd come to live by in the past month, one that had saved his life more than once while he was out on the prowl looking for biters to release. Generally speaking he preferred to avoid living humans altogether, since he hadn't met one since the world ended that hadn't tried to kill him in one way or another. He spent his days scavenging through the neighborhood searching for supplies—not survivors—and doing his part to put to rest as many of the afflicted as he could. He didn't know why he'd been spared when everyone else he loved and cared for around him had been swept away in the first forty-eight hours, but he found purpose in the aftermath, helping those who fell to the disease to find peace. While others might be afraid or repulsed by them, their rotting skin, their bulging eyes, their incessant, unrelenting hunger to consume human flesh, Adam instead just felt sorry for them.
They were all once people, he thought, as a fresh wave of sadness enveloped him. They had people who loved them. They were mothers and fathers, daughters and sons, friends from school and work. They were important and special to someone. Except maybe these scumbag kiddie rapists, that is.
“What's-a matter, sweetheart?” A high-pitched nasal voice asked with a sick laugh that caused the skin on Adam's arms to turn to gooseflesh. “Don’t-cha like us?” A round of low howls sounding like cavemen grunting erupted from his companions.
Adam felt the hatred swell up in his heart as he got his first good look at the dirtballs holding down the crying girl. There were two older men who looked like they were in their mid-thirties and had been living on food stamps since long before the zombie apocalypse hit. One was white, a crooked-mouthed punk in a faded old blue hooded sweatshirt and stained jeans with greasy black hair, beady brown rat eyes, and a pencil thin mustache that was no thicker than a high school kid hitting puberty. Rounding it all out was his weak chin covered in a wisp of brown hair that looked like a smear of dirt or excrement. His eyes darted back and forth with perverted excitement while his thin, chapped lips peeled back to reveal the delighted jack-o-lantern smile of his crooked, brown teeth. Something about him reminded Adam of the hapless pirate henchman in those old Johnny Depp movies.
The other guy was black, a thick guy in a bright red, puffy wind breaker jacket with ropy muscles showing just beneath his thin, bloodstained t-shirt. He had on baggy jeans and dirty, red ADIDAS sneakers. There was a red bandana hanging out of his jeans pocket, and his arms were covered in cheap, jailhouse tattoos. He had ashy skin, short, dreaded hair that stood up in places like knots, and several yellow-gold chain necklaces hanging around his neck. His face was a mask of determination, his eyes wide and alert with anticipation as he licked his lips like he was preparing for a holiday feast. In his right hand he held a switchblade to the girl's throat, but it had done little to restrain her, and there was a series of small cut marks visible in the white skin of her throat, bleeding from where she'd continued to thrash around wildly after being told to hold still.
Good for you, Adam thought. Rule number one. Never stop fighting, no matter what.
Adam's parents ran a furniture store across the street from the time he was a small child up until the end of September, when a mob of the undead had poured into the streets in search of fresh meat and engulfed them in their Chrysler Buick on Olympic Boulevard, bringing them to a terrifying standstill as hellish visions of people being ripped apart and eaten broke out all around them like some kind of awful B-movie horror film. He knew the area well from the years he'd spent helping his father at the store, which was more like a home to him at the end of the day than his parent's house over the hill in Encino. He'd even insisted on going to Fairfax High, and had spent countless afternoons doing his homework at either Canters or Damiano's across the street. Only one kid ever challenged him about his city-boy status. Jimmy Stewell, a doughy-looking bully who spent more time in the locker room than in class, thought he would impress his friends by picking on Adam the first week of school. Jimmy told him that he needed to get his skinny Jewish ass back to the Valley where he belonged. Adam knuckle punched him in the throat without saying a word. Jimmy fell to his knees, clutching his throat and gasping, as hot, angry tears streamed down his pale face. After that no one messed with Adam, not even the gangbangers. The area the store was in served as a corridor between West Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, via the 10 freeway. It had fallen into more or less a slum over the last decade despite attempts from overzealous landlords to lure in new tenants with the designation BHA or Beverly Hills Adjacent.
While the first set of men looked like they'd come from the neighborhood, or just west towards Venice and the hood, the second group looked more like they'd just stepped out of the pages of a men's fashion magazine ad or one of the billboards on the side of the Beverly Center. They couldn't have been much past their early twenties. They looked so out of place kneeling on the dirty tile floor of the fast food bathroom in their expensive designer clothing that it was almost comical, that is until you realized what they were doing there in the first place. The fresh gleam of the entitled shone off them, giving away their background as privileged children. It was on their perfumed and lotioned skin, their manicured hands, and their cleanly styled hair. Both were white and looked like their
ancestors had come over on the Mayflower. The first one had slicked back fire red hair cropped short to his head on the sides, bright green eyes, high cheek bones with a smattering of light brown freckles across the bridge of his nose, and a well-groomed goatee that ringed his small, cherry red lips. The other had a mop of dishwater blond curls, piercing blue eyes, and a big, crooked nose.
“Come on now, Marcus,” he begged, identifying himself at once by his high-pitched nasal tone. “Hold her still, buddy. If I wanted to fuck a corpse I wouldn't need your damn help.”
“I'm trying, man,” the older black guy cackled, a sadistic mirth contorting his face into something vaguely demonic. “Shit. She went ahead and cut herself anyway. This bitch is crazy. Don't blame me because she on some Linda Blair shit right now. She tweeking like a BG puffing on his first hit of Sherm stick.”
“I don't give a fuck if her head spins around and green pea fucking soup comes flying out her nose,” the one with the slicked back hair laughed coldly. “I haven't bust a nut in almost six weeks. If I have to cut her clothes off her and hold her down with the blade to her throat while she bucks and bleeds out, I will. One way or another, this stupid little bitch is getting fucked!”
Adam felt the pit of his stomach churn once more as a fresh chorus of cruel laughter broke out among the savages who'd snatched the poor girl. Adam couldn't tell for sure, but she looked like she couldn't have been more than nine or ten years old, tops. They'd already blackened her eye and busted her lip, but that didn't seem to deter her will to fight, even against the worst odds imaginable—against four grown men.
Fucking kiddie fiddlers don't deserve a quick death, Adam thought, as he slowly inched forward into position. Too bad that's all I have the time and stomach for. Otherwise I'd string them up by their ankles from the nearest traffic pole, cut their dicks off, and leave them to bleed to death while biters ate chunks off of them like a Vegas buffet.
“You a sick muthafuckah, Ronald McDonald,” Marcus hissed.
“He does look like him a bit,” the rat-eyed one chuckled. “Like a super fancy version of him, anyway!”
“Who the fuck asked your sorry ass, Ricky? You'll be lucky if we let you go last.”
“Hey, man! I was just agreeing with you, Marcus. You know I don't mind no sloppy seconds!”
“Shit. More like sloppy fourths, crackah,” Marcus shot back.
It had gotten late in the day and the golden rays of Southern California sunshine, the kind that seemed to bend around the entire world as the late afternoon drifted into the dark of an early fall evening, were already losing their burning luster. Adam didn't like to be out after dark unless he absolutely had no other choice. There were just too many things that could go wrong, too many people for his taste—living and dead—who preferred to do their dirty business under the cover of shadows.
He'd been hunting a small pack of the afflicted who had made their way past his spot on La Cienega, down where the discount shoe warehouse used to take up the last few blocks just before the freeway onramp, across from the Kaiser Permanente hospital on Cadillac. He'd managed to put to rest six of the turned, and was heading back up with a canned ham he'd scavenged from the stockroom of a hair extension store, as well as a bottle of Manischewitz he’d found digging through the rubble of the old abandoned florist next door, when he heard her screams. He'd assumed she was just another victim of the biters, another one that would have to be put to rest. The sound of her cries made it clear that it was already too late to save her. At least, that's what he told himself. That's why he took his time crossing the street. It was better to go slow. He'd found he made fewer mistakes that way and in the new world, the one he had inherited at the tail end of September, a single mistake was all it took to end your life, or alter it forever.
When he saw the men holding her down his first instinct was to rush in screaming and stabbing, but he fought back the urge. The truth was he'd get himself killed if he did that. It was just the kind of rash, impetuous move that had earned him a dishonorable discharge from the Army, in a situation not entirely unlike the one he was in now. Then it had been his lieutenant forcing himself on an underage cadet. What Adam hadn't known was that the two had been secretly dating and that the whole thing had been part of a kinky sex dare. So when he saw his boss consensually raping her in the storage room, he'd hauled off and broken his nose in two places without hesitation. The cadet had screamed and cried and attacked him for saving her.
Later they both claimed under oath that he'd simply been helping her get more food for the kitchen when Adam burst into the room in a jealous rage and accused him of trying to steal her away. They claimed that he'd been obsessed with her, stalking her, and that he'd concocted a paranoid fantasy of another man stealing her away. They planted pictures of her in his footlocker, photos that had been pilfered from hers. He'd been on his way to becoming a Ranger back then, but ended up heading back home to Los Angeles to work for his parents.
But this was no consensual sex happening before his eyes. This was clearly a child. The men accosting her had managed to get her shirt off and he could see that her small breasts weren't even beginning to blossom, the bright pink nipples resting flat on her chest.
“Get her pants off already, Scott,” Ronald barked. “I'm ready to fuck.”
“What the fuck does it look like I'm doing?” the one with the high-pitched nasal voice shot back.
“No. Not like that,” Marcus argued. “You gotta take off the shoes first.”
“Sounds like you've done this before,” Scott said in a nasty tone of voice. “You wanna show us how they do it up in Chino? Is that it?”
Marcus's eyes flashed with pure evil, a hint of a smile curling at the corners of his mouth.
“That's right, white boy,” he sang. “I've been to prison. Whatchoo know bout doin' time? I've killed before too, guys twice your size and a helluvalot more smarter.”
The smile vanished. Marcus looked like he was seconds away from slitting Richie Rich's throat. Adam realized that for the first time the “rich kid” was truly scared. Marcus seemed to be feeding off of that fear, like one of those wispy smoke creatures from the Harry Potter movies.
“So shut your mouth, Richie Rich, and get this bitch's pants off before I knock out all your teeth and skull fuck you in the...”
A loud howl of pain shot out of Marcus, interrupting him in the middle of his menacing rant.
“Ahhh! Sonofabitch! She bit me! The little cunt bit me!”
Adam couldn't see it from where he was crouched, but he heard the sound of a fist hitting skin several times quickly, like a snake striking. He saw the girl’s legs go limp as she stopped fighting. The GQ model-looking one, Scott, began pulling off her sneakers. Adam knew he needed a plan quick, that if he just ran in swinging he'd be as good as dead, but he also knew he was flat out of time. He plotted the kill out in his head just as he had been taught.
If I come up behind the first one, quickly grab him by the hair and stab my knife into the side of his jugular at the same time, I should be able to maintain the element of surprise. Fucker should go off like a fountain. It's going to be messy and unexpected, but while they are reeling in shock I'll have to stay focused and go for my next target. If I'm not careful and quick there's a better than average chance I'll be taken down and tortured and killed. Or worse! Who knows what these sick freaks are capable of?
The girl let out a low moan of pain.
I might even accidentally stab the girl I'm trying to help in the process, which would make risking my life for her a moot fucking point. So how do I do this? I'll only have time to go for one additional target before the others react. Marcus. The black guy. It's got to be him. He's the biggest and scariest for sure. He's the real threat of that group.
Adam moved forward slowly as he continued formulating his plan.
If I nail him the rest will be easier to overpower. Hell, one or both of them might try to flee, but I've got to do what I can to prevent that.
“I'm first! We agreed that I get to go first with the next one.”
“Fuck that! I'm not going after you.”
“Bullshit! I held down the husband while you took turns on that big titted bitch. That was the agreement. I go fucking first!”
The girl’s pants were now off. Adam could see the cotton of her panties twisted into the crotch as the jeans were tossed aside. The preppie looking Ronald McDonald was crawling between her legs. Adam saw him reaching towards his waist, heard the soft jingle of a loose belt and the muffled cry from the girl being held down. He saw Ronald's smooth, dimpled ass cheeks as his pants slid off. He heard the monsters laughing, the sound of their nervous excitement driving him wild with righteous fury. They were a pack of wild hyenas tearing apart a small prey they'd managed to separate from its mother.
Do it now! Adam heard the voice screaming inside his head. Do it before it is too late for her to ever feel normal again!
With the agility of purpose, he sprang up and rushed towards the open door, taking a side step around the front bumper of the Mercedes. He was careful not to make more noise than he had to, and it paid off handsomely for him. Luck was on his side. The men were so distracted by the prospect of finally being able to violate their helpless victim that they never saw him coming. Ronald was leaning over the girl now, her small legs forced apart by his weight as he struggled to penetrate her. Adam grabbed a handful of that fire red hair with his left hand, and sank his hunting knife to the hilt in the top of the man's skull with a loud THUNK! The would-be rapist instantly began thrashing around and spouting gibberish, blood pouring out of his mouth as his eyes rolled back into his head.
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