by Unknown
“What the fuck….you bastards, you killed him. You’re going to pay for this.” He screamed. I grabbed a dirty rag from the bed of the truck and shoved it into his mouth.
“Let’s hope he just doesn’t turn on you,” I replied. I moved to the driver's side of the truck and turned to look at Butch.
“Get Amy in the truck and follow me.” I climbed into their truck turning the key that was in the ignition and started it up. As I was pulling away, I saw Butch get Amy into our truck and then start to follow me. We needed to find somewhere to ditch their truck and the two guys, somewhere that would be hard to find by any of their friends should they come looking.
I drove for a few more miles turning off the road with the truck headed east. I stopped and waited till Butch pulled up so we could speak from our windows. “Hang out here. I’m going to move their truck further into the forest and backtrack to you guys unless you know of a better place to ditch it.”
“Nope, this as good as any although there is an old stone quarry about a mile northeast, but this should work just as good,” Butch said from his truck.
“You think we should head to the quarry?” I asked.
“No, just letting you know.” He said.
“What?” I said.
“What?” He replied.
“You’re killing me, dude.”
“This is a good place to ditch the truck. I was just messing with you. Amy and I can try to hide the truck prints. Get going.” He laughed as he got out of the truck.
Idiot, I thought as I drove the truck deeper into the woods trying to not make much of a trail. In my rearview mirror, I saw Butch get Amy out of the truck and handed her a branch with leaves on it to use to cover up the truck tracks.
After about five minutes, I couldn’t see our truck anymore and figured this was a good place to dump the two guys in the back and their truck. I stopped a little roughly to give them a bounce in the bed of the truck and then turned off the truck. I took the keys just in case they got free quickly. We needed to have as much time as we could make for ourselves in order to get as far away as possible. Looking around the cab I noticed a two-way radio and some ammo on the dashboard. I grabbed both and turned the radio on.
“Ain't got no clue where they went.” Came a voice. “We’ve been up SH 8 to CR 10 and haven’t seen them. Over.”
“Backtrack and check the houses you passed on the way. Over.” Came another voice and then, “Telly, come in. Over”
“Yea boss.” A new voice answered the call.
“Where are you at? Over”
“Just turning up SH 8 south off of RR 4, as instructed dude.”
“Are you done talking, cause I can’t fucking tell when you don’t say over. Over.
“You seriously want me to say over, over?”
“I’m going to kick your ass when you get back you cock sucker. Over” The guys with the most to say replied. “Jerry, Al, come in. Over”
“I got a nice ass; you don’t want to kick it. Over” Telly said.
“Get off the radio, Telly…...Jerry, Al, come in. Over”
I climbed out of the truck cab and moved to the back of the truck by the tailgate. Jerry, the tall guy, was looking at me. The short guy was still out, but his eyes were rolling around under his eyelids so I figured he was still alive.
That was a good thing since all along we hadn’t killed a live person yet and we honestly were trying our best to not kill any living people.
“Anyone knows where Jerry and Al are. Over.” The guy on the radio asked. There wasn’t any answer. “Telly. Didn’t you follow them down that back road off the highway? Over” The two-way was silent with as Telly didn’t answer. “Telly, answer me or so help me….”
“You need to say over.” Telly laughed into the radio. “Last I saw them, they went north. I can head up SH 8 and then follow the road they took.”
I turned the volume down and said to Jerry. “Here’s the deal, we’ll call it a game if you will. You answer my questions and I’ll leave you here alive, both of you, alive. You don’t answer my questions and I leave you here wounded or worse.” I pulled my knife out and climbed onto the bed of the truck so I was right next to them.
Removing the rag from Jerry’s mouth, I asked, “Who’s the leader of your group?”
“We all call him Ripper,” Jerry said. “It doesn’t matter what his name is anyway, because when he is done with you, you’ll be lucky if you can speak his name after he cuts out your tongue and feeds it to you.”
I took my knife to cut his pants up the side past his knee and pulled the fabric away exposing his ankle, his calf, and his knee. I took the knife and placed it on his ankle. “Have you ever been cut against the bone, against your ankle? It hurts because the bone is so close to the skin.” I moved my knife across his ankle, cutting a small slit on his ankle bone.
Jerry let out a scream at first but then gritted his teeth before saying anything else. I think he understood that I was serious about the rules of the game.
“You can answer my questions and I’ll leave you here alive. If you don’t answer my question, I’ll leave you here wounded or worse. You decided to answer more than the question I asked, so you got cut. If you continue to fail to answer my questions, as asked, then I will have to continue to cut you. All I wanted was his name. Pay attention to what I am asking you.”
I moved the knife up his ankle to his calf, the blade pressing into his flesh but not making a cut, just yet. “Next question, what were you going to do to us once you caught us? What was the plan?”
“We weren’t going to do anything at first, till you ran.” I moved the knife back down his calf, this time cutting the flesh just a little. He let out another scream but again bit his tongue, stopping short of saying more.
“Again, you answer my questions and I leave you here alive. You don’t answer my question and I leave you hear wounded or worse. Again, you failed to answer my question. Want to try it again?”
“Don’t cut me again, please.” Jerry pleaded.
“Answer the question and you don’t get cut. What were you going to do to us?” The blood from the cut on his calf was starting to pool on the bed of the truck. I pressed the knife edge against his Achilles' tendon. “The next one cripples you. You know I’m capable of doing it.”
His eye got wide as I pressed the knife against the tendon a little harder. “Ripper would have made the guys fight the zombies he keeps penned up in the tennis court area. He would have used the women for his own needs and pleasure….you would have had to fight to till you died and then Ripper would have used you as a zombie to fight the next set of guys we caught.….when he was done with the women, he would have given them to us....” Jerry said quickly with a scared look in his eyes. I could tell he was telling me the truth.
These guys were trouble. They were going to be trouble for this area for some time and there was a great chance we would run into them again.
I shoved the rag back into his mouth and grabbed the radio. I turned it back up and pressed the speak button. “Hey, asshole. I have Jerry and Al. Good luck finding them. They told me what you guys are doing, they really didn’t have a choice. When we meet again, I’ll kill you for what you are doing.” I let go of the button without saying over, just because I know it would piss him off.
“Who the fuck is that?” Ripper said into the radio. “Who the fuck are you?”
“When you least expect it. I’ll be there to take you down.”
“Yeah, you son of a bitch, come one get some. I ready whenever you are, punk.” He replied.
“You forgot to say over, dumbass.” I turned the radio off and put it in my pocket. I reached over and felt for a pulse on the short guy, Al. He had a faint pulse, but at least he wasn’t dead. “Your buddy is still alive but barely. Better pray that God will forgive you for what you’ve done and that he will let Al live because if not he’ll die and turn and we all know what happens then.” I hopped off the truck bed.
Jerry was trying to say something, but his plea for mercy was stifled with the rag in his mouth.
“I know….Don’t leave me...please...please...please...blah, blah, blah.” I said over my shoulder as I walked away from the truck.
It might seem like a very cold thing to do, but I figured they had done the same thing to their victims and turnabout is fair play in my book.
Chapter 22
I walked back through the woods to the truck taking another path so my new tracks weren’t next to the truck tracks. I found Butch and Amy sitting on the tailgate while Cindy and Jamie were sitting in the cab. You couldn’t really tell that I had pulled the other truck off the dirt road, they’d done an excellent job of cleaning up after me.
I announced myself as I got close so they wouldn’t accidently shoot me or be too alarmed as I appeared from the woods and met them at the end of the truck. I showed them the radio and let them know about the conversation I had with Jerry and Ripper. After discussing the potential problems we might run into we all agreed that we needed to get out of the area and find a safe place to spend the night. And we needed to do it quickly.
This little excursion had taken a large chunk of the day and we were now far behind where we wanted to be, way behind our original plan.
We grabbed some branches and tied them to the back of the truck to help hide our tracks as we made our way out of the woods and back to the main highway.
We finally hit the crossroads of CR10 and SH 8 after an hour of driving and heading southwest would get us to Johnson’s Corner which was a small town with a truck stop, a small motel, a western wear shop and a bar called the Buckhorn Saloon. There were a few houses spread around town and a small trailer park just south of town.
Although the town was small tucked into a valley, it wasn’t that isolated, it normally had a lot of traffic in the spring and summer. There were tons of semi-trucks that took this route to get to Parkersburg from Porters City which was the home to a large hunting and fishing manufacturing company. There were a few coal mines and logging sites spread throughout the hills which added to the truck traffic.
The town was a popular stop for tourists that were visiting Porters Lake as well as boating enthusiasts and the rich elite that owned most of the lake front property around the lake. With summer at its peak, it was likely that lots of people were in town when this virus started four days ago. They would have been stocking up on food to cook at a barbecue, booze to party with and gas for their boats. There was a good chance there would still be a lot of infected in the area of the town when we got there.
As we got closer to town, we found the typical allotment of abandoned cars that we had grown accustomed to seeing on the side of the road. It was amazing how quickly we were beginning to accept the new normal. Not seeing the cars would have been alarming to us.
There were quite a few semis pulled to the side of the road in this area due to the normal truck traffic through town. Of course, we also saw our fair share of the dead infected bodies decomposing in the sun. We were happy that we only saw a few infected wondering around.
The bodies on the ground were definitely infected and had been killed with a bullet to their head Whoever had done this was a great shot and had done a fantastic job of only taking out the infected since we didn’t see any sign of living people.
“Stop the truck.” I told Butch through the back window, “Let’s talk about our next move before we are too far into town.” This display of infected dead lying around was making the hair on my arms stand on end. Something seemed wrong with this place.
‘It’s just a bunch of dead infected rotting in the sun, nothing wrong with that.” Amy said as she stood up in the bed of the truck and looked around.
“And there’s some infected heading our way, we need to move or deal with them,” Butch replied from inside the cab. Cindy and Jamie just sat there not providing any feedback on our current predicament.
I got out one of my spears ready so I could use it if I needed to and see me grab a spear; Amy pulled one out of her stash and watched from the other side of the truck for anything that got too close.
“The only thing moving around here are the dead, the infected dead. Why is that, where are the people that got stuck in the buildings or killed?” I said as I pushed my spear into the eye socket of a dead trucker who had gotten too close to the side of the truck. His moans were loud which attracted more of his kind from further away. “Let’s move forward slowly, but stay alerted. Not too fast Butch.”
Butch moved forward slowly using the truck to knock over the infected in front of us. Some of them were run over, but others just fell to the ground and would soon be back up and in pursuit. Those that managed to get to the truck were killed with our spears.
We finally reached the middle of town, having killed fifteen infected and then we heard a woman’s voice talking to us. It was coming from further south, down the road. “Stop the truck or die.”
It sounded like she was using a bull horn or talking over a loudspeaker. Butch put on the brakes and pulled behind a large semi sitting on the side of the road to provide us with some cover.
“You have two choices.” She continued. “One. You move through town without stopping and don’t cause any problems. If you do that, you will have no problems from us……. Two. You get a bullet in the head for not moving along. We’ll give you ten seconds to decide.”
We all looked at each other as the woman’s voice counted down from ten over the loud speaker. “We aren’t here to hurt anyone. We’re only looking for a place to stay for the night.” I yelled.
“That’s not one of the options I gave. We’re peaceful people but have seen enough bad things that we don’t want strangers camping out in our town.” The woman’s voice replied.
“We have supplies we could trade with you or use it for payment for a place to stay the night,” I said.
“We don’t mean you any harm,” Amy yelled hoping a female’s voice might ease the tension.
After a few seconds, she said, “One of you can come forward, to the truck stop and we can talk about the supplies as payment. If we see any others come forward, they will die.” The woman replied back.
“I’ll go,” I said to the team standing up and looking towards the corner shop. “I’m coming over. My name is Matt and I’m leaving all of my weapons with my friends except for a knife.”
An infected was making its way to us from behind the truck when it just fell to the ground. A massive exit wound exploded from the back of its head and a fine black mist exited the back of its skull a millisecond later. The sound of the rifle shot came a second later, but we couldn’t tell where it had come from.
I moved from behind the semi and made my way to the parking lot of Johnson’s Corner truck stop and pulled to a stop at the main entrance. Standing inside the doorway was a woman with a pump action shotgun which she used to indicate that I should move inside.
“I can’t leave my friends out here by themselves,” I said through the doorway. “You have in your sights, let them bring the truck around and get inside where it’s safe. You can have our guns and other weapons if that makes you feel safer.”
Another infected was heading my way as I stood out in the open with only my knife. Before it got too close to the truck stop, its head exploded just like the other and it fell to the ground. I could tell that the shot had come from the top of the building.
“And why should we do that?” The woman asked. She was very confident and stood her ground.
“Because you’re human and with this problem happening all over the world, all over the US, we humans need to stick together. In numbers we can survive, alone we will perish.”
I saw another woman come out of the shadows and speak to the one in charge, whispering in her ear. She shook her head then said something back before pointing to the left, telling the other woman to leave.
“Ok, but you will need to leave your weapons at the door and will not be left alone by yours
elves till we have done our business and you move on.” She said. “Go get your friends.”
I ran back to the truck and let Butch know to drive up really slow to the truck stop and to park in front of the main doors. As Butch drove to the main door, I filled in Amy on what I had seen and that the sniper was on the roof of the truck stop.
We pulled up and I got out. “Stay put and don’t do anything but sit here,” I said to Amy and Butch. “At least till we know its ok.”
“Are we safe?” Cindy asked looking at me and Amy. Jamie was just looking out the front window, gently stroking Cindy’s hair. I knew that Jamie had a serious case of shock from the events of the last 24 hours so we needed to be strong for Cindy and we needed to get Jamie back to focusing on what was happening right now.
“Sit tight and make sure Butch and Jamie are safe little one. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” I replied to her as I reached through the window and touched her shoulder, squeezing it just a little.
I climbed out of the truck and headed towards the door. As I approached, the doors were opened by a couple of large cowboy types and they quickly disarmed me before allowing me to move into the building. The inside of the truck stop store was clean and quiet. “Move to the back and follow the lights.” The woman said to me.
I looked down the walkway and couldn’t tell what was down there. “No. I’d rather talk here where I can watch my team and they can watch me.” I stood my ground and looked directly at the women. “As I said my name is Matt and my friends and I are headed south to find a safe place to wait for this infection out. We’re only passing through and aren’t looking for any trouble, but we do need to find a safe place for the night.”
She regarded me with a small smile forming on her face. “We’ve kept a safe place here by not letting our guard down, so forgive us for not dropping everything and welcoming you in like a Trojan horse. We’ve heard your story before; you’re not the first to come looking for shelter.”
“We’re not a threat to you or what you have going here. We’re only moving through and need a place to spend the night. Just like I said. If that’s a problem, just say so and we’ll move on, but it would better if we could stay here tonight. Safety in numbers.” I stood there for a few seconds as she regarded me and after what seemed like a very long time, I turned to leave since I took the silence as a no. I held my hand out to the guy that was holding my weapons. He looked at the woman in charge and waited for the OK to hand them back and let me leave.