“Screw you! I’ll kill every one of you stupid bastards. I’m gonna watch you all burn. You have no idea who the hell you just messed with!” Billy, at the cell door, dropped to his knees only a foot from Chris. “My God.”
Chris, unable to respond, opened one eye and looked at Billy. She reached out her arm and placed her fingers through the mesh wire. The two touched hands as Billy wept.
“Billy,” she finally whispered, “it’s not that bad. I just need some time.”
Billy and Chris looked at each other through the mesh wire. Billy, near the cell door, continued to touch her fingers as he prayed—something he hadn’t done in a very long time.
Soon after, Jackie walked into the hallway and to the cell door. He stood over Chris as he looked down at his two captives. “Why did you all have to make things so difficult? I could have used you, Billy. I told you I liked you, so why not work for me? I saw firsthand what you did to my guards. Hell, you disarmed both of them, and they had guns. Come on, fellah. It’s so much better than the alternative.”
“We know what happened to the people in the city, you sick prick,” Billy spat out.
“I don’t give a rat’s ass what you think you know. I have my orders from the M.M. People need food, and workers are needed for other things.”
“So the M.M. is taking slaves and eating them too?” Billy asked.
“Slaves. I hate that word. It’s so demeaning. I like to think of them as laborers. And no, the food is a necessity that’s not limited just to this compound.”
“You’re done! I’m personally gonna kill you myself,” Billy responded.
“Yes, I am done. I’m done being polite! Either you work for me, or I’ll call my soldiers in here and let them have their way with this pretty thing here on the floor. And just to make it interesting, I’ll have them do it right in front of you. We have uses for women here too. Persuasion is a mother, isn’t it?” Jackie stated in a cold tone.
With no warning Chris reached up and stabbed Jackie straight between the legs with a knife she had pulled off one of the soldiers who had dragged her in there. She had concealed the knife perfectly in her hand, close to her body.
Screaming in pain like no man ever had screamed, Jackie grabbed his crotch as blood poured from between his fingers. Chris pulled the knife out of Jackie’s body and stabbed him repeatedly. The blood rushed out of his wounds as he fell to the floor next to her.
Jackie was dead; Chris had hit an artery. She dropped the knife as the strength left her body, and her arm fell to her side.
“Chris, Chris, listen to me!” Billy whispered. “You need to get me out of here before the other soldiers come back,” he whispered.
Chris heard Billy but had difficulty processing what he was saying. In a last effort, she reached out and pulled herself up to her feet, using the mesh wiring for support. She turned the knob on the deadbolt, releasing the lock on the cell door, before sliding back to the floor, unconscious.
Billy opened the cell door, exited, and grabbed Jackie’s pistol. He picked Chris up then carried her as he walked down the hall, away from Jackie. After opening the only door he saw, he carried Chris to a stairwell. As they entered, the sign in front of them read, MAINTENANCE PERSONNEL ONLY.
“Chris, I’m gonna take care of you.” Billy looked her directly in the eyes while he spoke. He carried Chris down the stairs toward an exit sign. One way or another, he was going to get her out of this place.
The price he and Rick had paid for a night in that hotel had been far too great. The only good thing that came out of their time there was that Rick was able to get medical supplies and antibiotics before he escaped from the building. Neither Billy nor Rick ever forgave themselves for putting Chris in that situation, and the physical and emotional scars the two men carried reminded them that they’d let down the one person they’d cared for so much.
The hotel was a crime against humanity, and Rick wanted that monstrosity burned to the ground and nothing was going to stop him from destroying it. The problem was that he thought Billy was still in the building, and he had no idea the M.M. had their hands on Chris. Rick, still inside, moved through the building knowing the guards were aware he was on the loose.
In the main lobby, he ran right into at least thirty of those jumpsuit-wearing fools. He wished there were a way he could take them all out single-handedly, but he knew that wasn’t possible. So when he saw the soldiers, he did what any other person would have done in that scenario—he ran like hell. He was being chased, and they were right on his ass, so he ran as fast as he could toward the nearest door, which led to the east stairwell.
Rick moved up to the tenth floor, where he ducked into the hallway and kicked the stairwell door closed behind him. The soldiers had cut off his escape, as they were right behind him on the stairs as well as in the elevator, indicated by the flashing light on its control panel. With no time to spare, Rick ran past the elevator to a service door near the end of the hallway. Fortunately it was unlocked.
As soon as he was inside, with the service door locked, he heard the soldiers shooting at the metal door from the other side. He was trapped, with no foreseeable way out; there were no other doors in the small room, and he was out of ammo. Rick put the empty shotgun through the handle in an attempt to keep the door secure for as long as possible. It was only a temporary fix, and he needed to plan something fast.
Rick desperately searched the small linen room he was in for anything that could help. He took a pillowcase and filled it with select items from the shelves; common household chemicals could be deadly if mixed properly. Nevertheless, even with all those chemicals, he was stuck in this room, and the people on the other side wanted him dead.
“Think,” he told himself aloud.
Examining his options he noticed the ceiling was at least fifteen feet above him, whereas in the hallway it was only nine feet from the floor.
He knew exactly what that meant. Above the ceiling in the hall, there had to be at least six feet of open space.
Rick climbed up a metal shelf with his pillowcase full of chemicals. At the top he removed a ceiling panel then slowly and quietly crawled above the hallway’s ceiling and the soldiers below him.
He heard them arguing about how to get the door open. He lost his grip on a metal support beam, and for a moment, he thought they had caught him. Fortunately they hadn’t heard him, and he remained undetected.
Using the steel support beams, Rick made his way to the end of the hall, just past where the last soldier stood below. He removed the ceiling panel and peered down at his enemies. When he had been in special operations in the army, he had studied chemicals and their different reactions when mixed correctly. It had been a long time, but he’d always had a good memory.
Rick knew that thermite is produced when aluminum is oxidized by iron, and when they’re mixed together and heated slightly, the combination will heat up to more than 2,500 degrees in a very short time. The reaction is dangerous, but Rick knew it was almost unstoppable once the chemicals were mixed because thermite can’t be smothered once heated because it provides its own oxygen. It can’t even be put out with water; it’ll still burn when wet or immersed. It also generates hydrogen gas into the air, making the fire even more impossible to stop, and that was exactly what Rick wanted.
In his little cubbyhole above the soldiers, he took out an empty container from his pillowcase and mixed the ingredients. Once he had mixed all four chemicals, he saw the reaction begin. A second later he poured the mixture on the floor below, just behind the soldiers, and dropped a match.
Instantaneously a wall of flames consumed the hallway. The screams from the soldiers were horrific as the flames spread, engulfing them. With a devious grin, Rick kept moving above the ceiling until he was clear of the flames. Then he dropped back down and went straight for the stairwell.
Rick couldn’t have been happier; those bastards had gotten exactly what they deserved.
On the main floor, he w
as able to get his hands on another soldier who had his guard down, but this time Rick needed him alive. He was…well, let’s just say he was persuasive in getting the information he needed. From that single guard, Rick found out that Billy and Chris had already escaped, and in the last ten minutes, the entire tenth floor of the building was burning out of control.
Rick laughed when the soldier told him that the sprinkler system upstairs was only causing the fire to burn hotter and that, with Jackie dead, no one had any idea how to shut off the water in the building. After receiving the information, Rick kept his promise to kill him quickly, stabbing him in the throat with his pocketknife.
The fire spread more quickly than Rick had anticipated. He stood in the lobby for three or four minutes, watching as M.M. soldiers ran out of the building. A few were looting what they could, but after Jackie had died, they didn’t even try to stop Rick. It was all free game from then on, so Rick using a pistol, he had retrieved from the soldier he killed with the knife, just shot one soldier after another as they raced past them. He continued to shoot them until he ran out of ammo. It reminded Rick of video games when he was a boy. He found a twisted kind of humor in it, so he killed every one of them with a smile on his face.
With the information he had received from the soldier, Rick retrieved the weapons that had been taken from him and Billy as well as some medical supplies. He took so much that he could barely carry everything, so the parking garage was his next stop.
When Rick stepped through the threshold into the garage, he froze in place. He’d been careless, because a pistol was pushing against the back of his skull. As soon as the man spoke, he knew who it was: Sergeant First Class Neafus.
“I can shoot a flea off a dog’s back at two hundred meters, and this is pointed right at your noggin. But fortunately for you, it’s not your day to die.”
He lowered the pistol and stood staring at Rick for a few seconds. Rick turned around, nodded, and helped Neafus load all the supplies into his Camaro. They didn’t need words; they had struck a deal—a deal they both needed. After two quick trips upstairs for supplies, the red Camaro was loaded.
Once they were inside the car, Neafus looked at Rick and said, “Let’s hit it!”
When Neafus hit the gas, the rear tires spun in place, throwing up a wall of smoke behind them. The eight-valve, 440-cubic-inch, four-hundred-horsepower engine threw them both back in their seats.
“Holy crap,” Rick exclaimed.
The Camaro moved like no muscle car Rick had ever been in, not even the War Machine. It didn’t look like much from the outside, but Neafus was right—it indeed was a bitching-ass Camaro.
Like a rocket they hit the top of the ramp, which put all four tires off the ground. As a result they were airborne for nearly two seconds. They blasted out of the garage through a wall of flames that had engulfed the entire building. Hitting the ground hard, Neafus maintained control of his car, and in the rearview mirror, they saw the building crumble to the ground as they speed away.
The ride reminded Rick how much he missed having a fast car of his own.
The Camaro pulled into the horse stables, where they unloaded all the supplies from the car. Rick prayed that Billy had somehow made it back.
Rick asked Neafus if he wanted to stick around for a while, but he declined. After splitting the supplies with his newfound friend, Neafus drove off, and that was the last time Rick ever saw him and his bitching-ass Camaro. Neafus had saved Rick’s life that day, and it was the only time Rick would ever say anything good about an M.M. soldier.
TWENTY FOUR
After narrowly escaping the hotel Billy took the lead, followed by Rick then Chris, the trio rode through the remnants of Jamesville. As they took in the burned buildings and devastation, they saw there was nothing left even slightly resembling a town.
Exposed to so much death, none of them paid much attention to the burned skeletons still lying where they had taken their final steps before falling to the ground. Silently they passed through what once had been the center of town but now was nothing more than an unkempt graveyard. Keeping close to one another as they rode through the night, they continued through neighborhood after neighborhood. Only a few houses still stood, most of which were black from the intense heat of fires long since burned out.
They continued until they reached the outskirts of town. One after another they followed, as Billy had instructed them to do. The horses trotted down the path, carrying their passengers, until they approached a bridge where Billy pulled back on the reins, stopping his gray stallion.
It was a single-lane bridge deep in the forest. The area was rural, with only a few farms that once had produced dairy products for consumers across the nation. The fields were overgrown, with nearly all the livestock long dead.
The bridge was long and narrow, with rusty support beams still holding the tall, arched wooden roof. Through the twisting turns of the country road, Rick and Chris didn’t even notice the bridge until they were upon it.
After the three dismounted, they slowly crossed on foot, leading their horses, as they were unsure of the stability of the aging wooden bridge and didn’t want to step through a rotting board they had failed to see in the dark, as the river was nearly a hundred feet below.
“You know, this actually has been really nice, Rick.”
“What’s that?” Rick asked Chris.
“We haven’t had any real issues or people to deal with lately, and I’m happy about that.”
Rick silently looked at Chris and smiled.
After the three had crossed the bridge, they continued to walk for a short time before they decided to ride again. Just past the bridge, they came upon a sign that read, RURAL ROUTE 3.
Billy brought his horse to a stop. He told them the house where he had lived was only a few minutes up the road, and he had a good feeling it would still be there and in good shape.
The three traveled through the forest with its incredible array of moonlight breaking through the tree line every few feet. Chris soon found herself staring at the shadows as the horses slowly made their way down the old country road. The more she stared, the more they seemed to have a life of their own. Chris watched as each shadow danced with the wind while the leaves blew across the ground and the bases of the trees that lined the road. She wasn’t superstitious, but she couldn’t help wonder whether the shadows were, in some odd way, trying to speak to her, to…pull her in.
After shaking the thought out of her mind, she didn’t speak a single word about it to Rick or Billy.
Soon they came upon a small single-story house that sat in the middle of a two-acre field. There was no trash, no garbage, and no disarray. It was the first house they’d seen in a very long time that didn’t appear to have been damaged by drifters. This was Billy’s house, and if they didn’t know any better, they would have thought it was occupied.
When they approached the house, they immediately noticed a sign outside the front door, a small wooden plaque that read, BILLY GRAHAM. Rick and Chris looked at each other and laughed.
“Saved anyone’s soul lately, Billy Graham?” Chris said, barely able to contain herself.
“I’ve sent a few to their maker recently, so unless you two fools want to be next…” Both Rick and Chris continued to laugh to the point of almost tearing up. “You know what? To hell with both of you.”
“Now that’s just what we’d expect a preacher to say,” Chris said with no hesitation.
Billy dismounted his horse and walked toward the house. He’d heard these kinds of jokes all his life, but he couldn’t help smile when he looked back at his two friends. Billy wasn’t a preacher of any kind, and truthfully the jokes didn’t bother him in the least, because he was, to an extent, a man of faith and admired anyone who stood up for what they believed.
Rick and Chris, outside tended to their horses and after hour had passed Billy finally returned seemingly empty-handed.
“Well?” Rick asked.
�
�I found it.”
“Well, what is it?” Chris inquired.
Billy pulled a square piece of cloth out of his backpack. Sitting himself down on the covered porch next to Chris, he told Rick not to say a word. Rick and Chris sat in anticipation as Billy unfolded the cloth to reveal a small book bound in worn tan leather.
“It’s a book,” Chris said.
“Yes, it’s a book, a special book. It’s my stamp collection.”
“What the hell did you just say, Billy?” Rick asked
“I told you…it’s a stamp collection.”
“A stamp collection? You brought us all the way out here for a stamp collection?” Rick asked, confused.
“Yeah, well…the world has gone to shit, and it’s not like we had anything else going on,” Billy said.
“I’ll give you that, but it’s still a stamp collection,” Rick said, trying not to crack up.
Chris then looked at Rick, and again they both laughed. Billy again told them to go to hell. He stood up and went to his horse, where he carefully placed the book in his saddlebag.
Walking in the faded red front door Rick and Chris noticed immediately that the inside of Billy’s house was nearly empty. A sofa, two empty bookshelves and an aged metal trunk was all the furnishing in the home. They walked across the squeaky wood floor into the adjacent living room trying to maintain their composure.
That night in Billy’s house, they laughed drinking liquor and play card games. They hadn’t had such an enjoyable night in a very long time.
TWENTY FIVE
After Robbie found his beloved Jamie lifeless, he was never the same. He took her body near the shore of the lake where only a day prior he had asked for her hand in marriage. He dug a deep hole and placed Jamie’s body in it, with her feet facing the water so she could forever look out over the lake. Robbie then filled in her final resting place with dirt, placed rocks over it, and spent the rest of the day sitting next to her grave and a small wooden cross.
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