Luke took the opportunity to practice his crossbow. All that gaming appeared to have come in handy. He was a natural, and with practice shooting at the Kung Fu dummies in the academy’s long practice hall, he became absolutely lethal. He painted targets on them and was able to hit the bull’s-eye on every shot after just two days.
He even had time to craft his own arrows, and apart from the painted finish and slightly more refined materials of the originals, I could barely tell the difference between his and the manufactured ones. To say the least, I was in awe of his many skills and wondered what other talents he might have hidden behind that slightly goofy exterior.
We even learned some new information. While foraging, two days before finding us, Sonny’s group had met three survivors as they passed through Worcester. The three teenagers had also come up from Rhode Island, but from the city of Warwick. They were led by a headstrong girl who told them the Chinese were using children as slave labor to clear the city of its dead.
She had speculated that Warwick was their foothold in the state due to its sea access. It was useful information, and only confirmed our worst fears. Sonny had offered to let the group stay, but they were determined to head to Canada.
Our four new mouths taxed the food supplies at the academy though. On our third morning, Sonny asked if Luke and I would like to go out on an expedition to get more supplies. There were grocery stores a few blocks from the academy, and a couple carts of canned food would feed us all for a while longer. We agreed to go that night under the cover of darkness. The helicopter fly overs had died down, and the Chinese seemed to have delayed a ground search.
“Remember not to cross Foster Street though. It’s the turf of that gang I told you about, the Red Tigers,” Sonny said, as Luke and I prepared to slip out through the side door of the academy.
We were armed and not overly concerned about the warning. Sonny handed me an assault rifle which had been taken from the Chinese soldiers who captured us. The rifle was heavy, and designed in what I thought was a funny way, with the magazine and action located behind the grip and trigger. It was a style Luke called ‘bull-pup,’ and he said it was the new, big thing in assault weapons. It was supposed to offer better control or something. Luke rejected the rifle Sonny offered him and held up his crossbow.
“Quieter,” he said simply at Sonny’s raised eyebrow and showed him the handful of crossbow arrows he had in the large pocket of his parka. Old fashioned it may have been, but it looked plenty deadly in the cold light of the open doorway.
Sonny gave me a quick run through on how to operate the weapon. He showed me the selector switch, which was currently set on ‘3;’ the other settings were ‘1’ and ‘2.’ He told me on setting 1, the gun shot one bullet at a time; on 2, it shot a three round burst; and on a 3, it was probably fully automatic, meaning I’d burn through my ammo with one squeeze of the trigger and the gun would be a bitch to control.
I assumed because he sounded so confident he knew what he was talking about. He turned out to be almost right. Remembering the three round bursts that had downed Luke and me with the rubber bullets, I switched the selector over to ‘2’ before we left the alley.
“It’s freaking cold out here tonight, dude,” Luke said, carefully stepping around a sheet of ice on the sidewalk. We were dressed in our normal clothing, although I had added a stocking cap under my parka’s hood because it was another clear and very cold night.
“Yeah,” I replied, watching my breath puff forth. Suddenly, I slipped and only caught myself at the last moment. The black ice on the concrete was almost invisible. “I hope these stores aren’t too looted out. I’d hate to think we’re wasting our time.”
“Sonny seems like a good guy,” Luke said. “I don’t think he’d send us out if he didn’t think there was a good chance of us getting something.”
“He could be hoping,” I replied. “By now, you should realize how stupid that is.”
“Man, everyone’s gotta have hope. It’s what keeps us going.”
“Well, every time I find myself hopeful, everything turns to shit. I have given up on it.”
“You’re still trying to get to the safe haven,” Luke pointed out, with a smile. “That tells me that you still have some hope.”
“Well, I guess,” I replied. “But I have my doubts we will ever get there. Between wild dogs, psycho traitor kids, and Chinese soldiers, the chances aren’t that great. Do I want to get to the safe haven or whatever they call it in their message? Yes, of course I do. Do I expect that I will? Well, look what happened to Sarah. It could happen to any of us at any time.”
Luke was quiet for a moment, digesting what I had said. “Have you ever heard of Pandora?”
“The internet radio thing?”
“No, the legend,” Luke said. “A long time ago, there was this dumbass giant, Epimetheus, who wanted a wife, so the gods made him the perfect woman. Her name was Pandora. Now, this dumbass giant had been given a magical box, like a golden chest or something, to guard, and the king of the gods told him that it must never, ever be opened. After getting Pandora as his wife, the first thing Epimetheus did was show her the box and tell her it must never be opened.
“Well, telling someone not to do something only makes them want to do it, and all she could think about was what treasures might be in that box. So, one night while Epimetheus was fast asleep, Pandora crept down to the treasure room and decided to take the tiniest peek at what was inside the box. As can be expected, it didn’t turn out so well – when the gods decree that something shall not be opened, you damn well wanna keep it closed.”
“Okay, you have my interest,” I said. “What was in the box?”
“Pandora opened the box, just a crack so she could take a peek, but the box was flung open by the force of what was held inside of it ... all kinds of monsters, plagues, pestilence, and disease came flooding out of it. All of the evils of the world followed by old age and death, two things the world had never known to that point.
“Imagine that ... living in a world where there was no sickness, no growing old, no death, and to suddenly have eternal, blessed life snatched from you! Anyway, all the evils of the world escaped the box, leaving only one thing behind. Looking into the now emptied box, Pandora spied Hope, lying at the bottom. Because, before then, without the adversity of the things that had been trapped in the box, there was no need for Hope. There is only need for Hope when things are at their darkest.”
“I’m impressed, you actually managed to turn your story into a metaphor appropriate for our situation,” I said.
“Well, of course, was that not my intention?” he said in a deep, theatrical voice.
“That seems like some heavy duty mythology there. Did your parents read you a lot of books about myths of gods and heroes when you were little?”
“Naw, it was the background story for Goddess of Vengeance 2,” he replied with a sly smile. “But it seemed appropriate. Great game. Of course, in the game the ‘Hope’ inside of the box is Nemesis, the Goddess of Vengeance, and you spend the rest of the game playing her and conquering those evils to put them back in the box.”
“I should have spent more time playing video games. They seem to have served you well.”
“It’s not like all I ever did was play games,” he said, somewhat defensively.
“Sorry, I was being serious; the games seem to have taught you a lot about coping with situations like this.”
“I guess,” he shrugged. “Most of it doesn’t transfer that well to real life. Real life is way harder. Anyway, it’s a pity that part of my life appears to be over.”
“Yeah, a pity for all of us ... there’s a Honey Farms store on this block. Want to try there first?” I asked, pointing at the convenience store sign. “It’s not actually a grocery store, but I guess we won’t have to worry about paying higher prices.”
“Sounds good to me, Chief,” Luke said, adjusting his course.
Honey Farms was about halfway down
the block, past a line of silent cars. The frozen snow and ice on the windows of the cars kept us from seeing inside of them, so we watched them warily as we trooped on past.
A similar line of cars was parked on the far side of the street. I wondered, much like I had back in Fort Carter, if any of these cars might have frozen corpses in them, still sitting where they succumbed to the Flu. I thought about knocking the snow off some windows and looking in, but decided against it. No reason to disturb the dead, if they’re there, I thought. Besides, I had creeped myself out enough.
Honey Farms had the glass of the door busted out, so it was not difficult for us to get inside. There were no shopping carts, but we found a rack of cloth grocery bags and each grabbed two.
It looked like a bunch of kids had ransacked the place. The chips and candy aisles had been demolished, but the canned soups and vegetables had hardly been touched.
Luke watched while I loaded my bags first. I packed cans of chicken noodle soup and peas. I had almost filled the two bags when I spotted cans of creamed corn on a higher shelf. I took out some of the peas to make room and replaced them with the corn. I’ve always had a thing for creamed corn. I realize it is a funny quirk to have, but I love the stuff.
While Luke was loading his bag, I wandered up toward the front door to keep a look out. That big, full moon was out again and, being so clear, the night was fairly bright.
I hadn’t been standing there long when movement caught my eye. I ducked down a little and watched as a girl pulled herself out from under a car across the street and scampered into a nearby alley. I couldn’t get a great view of her because even though it was a bright night, it was still dark, but she looked to be about the same age as Luke and I. She was wearing a yellow rain slicker, not good for stealth at all.
“Should we go after her?” I asked.
“Go after who?” Luke responded, looking up from his half-full grocery bag.
“There’s a girl across the street. She just went down that alley,” I said.
“A girl? Did it look like she needed help?”
“Really, man? We are in the deserted remains of a city, and she seemed to be all alone and hiding under a car in the freezing cold,” I said. “What do you think?”
“If she needs it, I’m all for helping her, man,” he said, leaving the half-packed bag and walking up to the door where I stood.
“Okay, we’ll go ask if she wants help. Maybe bring her some of that hope you’ve been talking about,” I said, setting my own grocery bags down. “We can grab the bags on our way back.”
We exited the store and ran across the street to the mouth of the alleyway, the buildings crowded close together above it, limiting the moonlight and making it much dimmer within.
“You sure she went in here?” Luke whispered.
“Yeah. Let’s go ...”
Luke took the lead, cautiously entering the alley with me close behind him. We hadn’t gotten very far when we heard a girl’s scream and a cry for help from behind a dumpster about halfway down the alley. “I guess she does need help,” Luke said, cocking his crossbow and taking off. I unslung the automatic weapon Sonny had given me and followed.
We rushed down the alley, doing all we could to avoid slipping on the thin sheen of frost that seemed to cover everything. As we approached the dumpster, we slowed and heard the sounds of a struggle and loud laughter coming from behind it. We were obviously a little noisy because, at the sound of our approach, first one, then another, figure stepped out to block the way in front of us.
They were youths, both Asian, wearing black leather jackets emblazoned with red tigers in the act of springing. Gangbangers. The guy on the right held a baseball bat with several long nails through it; it had been transformed into a nasty spiked club. The other one was holding a knife. Seeing our weapons, the Asian man with the knife dropped it and reached inside his jacket.
“You kids better get lost!” snapped the guy with the bat, who appeared to be the older of the two. “This is Red Tiger turf.”
The one reaching into his jacket started to pull his hand out and both Luke and I saw the handle of a pistol in his grip. Before he could clear the front of his jacket and finish his draw down, Luke squeezed the trigger of his crossbow and the arrow buried itself in the sternum of its target. The pistol clattered to the frozen pavement as the guy fell to his knees, his face shocked, and pitched forwards.
“Holy shit!” the stunned man with the bat said, taking a step back as Luke calmly loaded another bolt into the flight groove of his crossbow and cocked it. The gangbanger held up his hands in surrender. “You shot him! Jack! He shot Sammo!”
“Drop the bat,” said Luke calmly.
We heard a curse and a loud smack and the sound of struggling behind the dumpster came to an abrupt halt. A short, wiry guy stepped partially into view. Like the others, he was Asian. Chinese-American, for sure, given that he looked to be in his twenties and was not dead of the flu.
He held his hands up, but I could tell by the look on his face he wasn’t surrendering, simply sizing us up. He had a small machine gun on a strap over his shoulder, the kind you see commandos use in old war movies. He looked like he’d seen plenty of hard life before the Flu and a ragged scar ran up the right side of his face. He was intimidating, to say the least. After glancing down at the guy on the ground, he looked up at us, anger in his eyes.
“Which one of you fuckers shot Sammo?”
Apparently, he had sized us up and found us lacking threat. His right hand curled around the handle of his weapon.
“I asked a question,” he yelled.
“It was him, Jack,” said the other gangbanger, his hands still up, at least until he saw which way things were going to go. I tensed as Jack raised his gun toward Luke.
I had never actually shot a person deliberately before, and I was not intending to start right then, but things sort of got away from me. I meant to put a three round burst into the pavement by his feet, to scare him off, but, well, the selector was set to 2. You see, Sonny had been wrong about the settings – 3 was actually the setting that gave a three round burst, while 2 was full machine gun rock-n-roll.
Many people don’t realize that a weapon firing on full automatic is not nearly like it is in the movies. In reality, it is very hard to control a weapon on full auto. Specifically, the combined recoil of all of the shots going off tends to cause the barrel to rise. Which is exactly what happened.
The first few rounds hit the pavement between Jack’s legs, just as I had planned. But as the shots kept coming, the barrel kept rising and I just sort of walked the remaining rounds of my magazine up his right leg. They struck him from just below the knee up to his right hip and into his abdomen before I was able to release the trigger. He hit the ground hard, dropping his weapon as he went. I was stunned and stood with my mouth open in shock. Jack’s right leg and side were a bloody, smoking mess.
My ears were still ringing from the roar of the rapid fire barrage as the man with the bat dropped it and turned, running away like a mad man. He jumped the high fence behind him as if his life depended on it.
“Holy fuck, dude!” Luke shouted. “Overkill much?”
I was standing looking at the rifle in my hands in horror. This was by no means what I had wanted and I was beginning to feel sick to my stomach. Jack was now screaming in agony, holding his leg to try and stem the bleeding. The shock, and looking again at the two young Chinese-Americans lying dead and wounded in the alley, was too much for me, and I turned and started throwing up the beans and franks I had eaten for dinner.
Luke ducked around the dumpster, kicked Jack’s gun away and stepped over him to kneel and check on the girl in the yellow slicker who I assumed was behind there. I took a few moments to compose myself and then I joined him.
She was slumped against the side of the dumpster, unconscious, her slicker was open and the dirty sweatshirt underneath had been pulled up, exposing her belly and bra. As I arrived, Luke was just pulling
her shirt back down.
“You can see what that bastard was going to do,” Luke said, obviously seeing how distraught I was at the damage I had inflicted on the gangbanger, such a wound was almost certainly a death sentence. “You did the world a favor by blowing his ass away.”
“I know,” I said, nodding my head and looking back at the gravely wounded gang member. He had stopped screaming and had passed out ... or on. I wasn’t going to check. “I still don’t have to like it though.”
Luke didn’t seem fazed by the fact that he had just killed someone, and I admired his sense of purpose. He un-cocked his crossbow and slung it over his shoulder before leaning over the girl. “I’ll carry her. You grab the groceries we have already bagged up,” he said, pulling her over his shoulder and standing up. “Let’s get the hell out of here before bat-boy comes back with reinforcements.”
“What about him?” I asked, nodding at Jack.
“There is nothing we can do about him now. In fact, I think he’s dead, man.”
I looked more closely and saw the gangbanger’s chest was still. He had clearly stopped breathing. I nodded and we started walking.
“You got her okay?” I asked, as we reached the end the alley where we had come in.
“Yeah, she’s actually not that heavy,” he said, flashing me a smile. “Just awkward.”
The trip back to the academy was done with as much haste as we could muster, with constant glances over our shoulders to make sure we were not being followed. We kept to the shadowed side of the street and tried to stay out of the moonlight as much as possible. We stopped so Luke could rest several times. Each time, he refused my offers to carry her. I think he knew I was in a state of shock and I certainly didn’t feel 100 percent myself. We saw no signs of pursuit on our trip back.
“I think we need to consider moving our departure time up,” Luke said, as we stood by the back door of the academy, waiting for somebody inside to answer our knock.
The After Days Trilogy [Books 1-3] Page 11