Vengeance in the Badlands

by Brian J. Jarrett

  “We have packs back at the butcher shop,” Audrey said. “We had to leave them when we ran.”

  “A backpack ain’t much,” Johnny said.

  “There’s more,” Audrey added.

  “Go on,” Dave said.

  “We have weapons and ammunition back at the camp,” Audrey said.

  “Surely Calvin took that,” Dave said.

  Audrey shook her head. “No. Hatch never told them we had it. It’s still there. I checked.”

  “What do you have?” Johnny asked, his interest now piqued.

  “Mostly varmint rifles, some pistols,” Audrey replied. “Maybe a couple hundred rounds left between them. We’ll share, but only on the condition that you bring us along.”

  Dave pointed at Gia. “She’s a child.”

  “I’m sixteen,” Gia said, sitting up at attention. “And I’m plenty old enough to handle myself.”

  “Gia’s not a child anymore,” Audrey said. “But the children we did have might be alive. If there’s any chance of that, then I want to find them.”

  Dave glanced at Johnny who responded only with a shrug. Something told him this was a bad idea. Bringing along these two could jeopardize everything. They could ruin his chances at finally killing Calvin Summerville, once and for all. But there was strength in numbers, and God knew that these two women were motivated. And it was hard to begrudge her trying to find those kids.

  “You pull your weight,” Dave said. “You don’t get in the way. You cause trouble, and we cut you loose. Understood?”

  Both Audrey and Gia nodded.

  “And one last thing,” Dave said.

  “What’s that?” Audrey asked.

  “When we find Calvin, I get to kill him.”

  Chapter Seven

  They slept in shifts that night. Dave took the first turn, as did Audrey. Neither of the pairs trusted the other just yet; at least not enough to fall asleep and be caught off guard.

  Thankfully for Dave, Audrey didn’t try to make much conversation, and that was just fine. He didn’t want to be her friend. He didn’t need to get to know her because that would do nothing but complicate things. They had a working agreement with these women—a business relationship—and Dave planned to keep it that way.

  A few hours later—well into the early hours of the morning—as a blanket of pitchy blackness covered the land, an ominous shrieking cry echoed from the depths of the night. Dave recognized the sound. He and Johnny had heard it before; increasingly more so over the past couple of weeks. The shrill screaming bore similarities to the sounds of the carriers they’d become all too familiar with over the past few years.

  But this was somehow different.

  And somehow worse.

  It was a sound that Dave had never heard any living animal make. Something truly unique and truly frightening. As the hairs on his body stood at attention, he glanced over at Audrey. The nervous look on her face as the terrible howling gradually subsided told him all he needed to know.

  She was afraid too.

  Those flashes of the mysterious pale-skinned animals that he and Johnny had seen moving stealthily in the darkness unnerved him more than he cared to admit. He supposed it was possible that what they’d spotted slinking around in the dark could have been a new species of animal. Maybe it was another wicked twist of evolution, throwing the pitiful remains of humanity yet another curveball. Not surprising given its currently fucked up trajectory.

  But something down deep in his gut told him that it was much worse than that.

  Much, much worse.

  After a few hours of sitting in silence and watching out dirty windows, Dave woke Johnny so that he could take over. Audrey woke Gia, and they too swapped places.

  “All good out there?” Johnny asked, wiping the sleep from his eyes.

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Dave replied, “but nothing to note.” He decided not to mention the sounds in the darkness. Johnny already knew about them, and now it was just part of their environment.

  “That’s good enough then,” Johnny said.

  Dave took the couch, giving Audrey the bed. She didn’t thank him. He was surprised that he’d even expected her to. But the sofa proved comfortable enough—much better than the passenger seat of the Jeep, at least—and within a few minutes, he drifted away into a dreamless, overdue slumber.

  * * *

  Johnny woke Dave a few hours later. The first rays of the morning sun filtered in through the house’s dirty windows, driving away the fresh memories of that horrific sound reverberating throughout the sinister darkness. Both Dave and Johnny had noted over the past few weeks that whatever made that noise appeared to avoid the daylight.

  Or so Dave hoped. Just because they hadn’t seen or heard those strange white animals during the daylight hours didn’t mean they weren’t out there waiting for prey.

  The group gathered up what few items they’d been able to scrounge from the house, placing them into the Jeep’s trailer. At various points in the process, Audrey and Gia conversed with each other out of earshot, casting sideways glances at him. He supposed that they might be conspiring, but about what he couldn’t be sure. His gut, however, told him otherwise. Given what had happened to her people, it was no surprise that the women remained suspicious of damn near anybody…especially men.

  But this was the way of the world now.

  Johnny drove. He liked to drive. Dave didn’t argue; his newly-healed ankle hurt after long periods spent manipulating the accelerator. He could thank Calvin for that.

  The trip back to the town was thankfully uneventful. They passed the butcher shop where they’d met the girls the prior day. Dave gave it only a cursory glance. The body of the carrier Audrey had shot was gone; gobbled up by now.

  A few blocks away, Audrey directed Johnny to the building she and Gia had called home. Johnny parked the Jeep, and after ensuring no unfriendliness lay in wait, they entered the building.

  Calvin hadn’t left any of the foodstuffs or other valuable supplies Audrey’s people had collected behind, but the cache of weapons remained right where she’d promised. Johnny smiled as she showed him their inventory; if Johnny was happy, then Dave was happy. He was the expert, after all.

  As they loaded the guns and ammunition into the Jeep’s trailer, it occurred to Dave just how much of Audrey’s hand she’d been forced to reveal. Whatever leverage she’d had disappeared once the weapons became the property of the group.

  He supposed they were a team now, for better or worse.

  But he had a bad feeling as they drove away and headed toward the highway that things were headed straight toward worse.

  * * *

  They drove, Johnny still behind the wheel, slipping in and out of the stalled wrecks on the highway. The Jeep’s knobby tires trundled along the rotting roadway, indiscriminately crushing an endless stream of flourishing green weeds and fledgling saplings. They rode without conversation, as none of them appeared to be willing to perform the shouting needed to be heard above the engine’s throaty din.

  All the better for Dave. Conversation was just a distraction.

  They put in another hour on the road, the monotony broken only once. Halfway into the journey, a lone female carrier sprinted out from behind a stalled car, shrieking as it closed the distance between them. Using a pistol he’d taken from Glenn Summerville’s prison camp, Dave took it out with a single shot to the chest, as one might swat a fly from the potato salad at a picnic.

  What a strange world we live in now, Dave thought as he returned the pistol to his lap, scanning the roadway for any other waiting threats. What strange creatures we’ve all become.

  The Jeep chewed up the miles, Johnny weaving in and out of the stalled cars. Every major roadway was a slalom course now. Dark stains on the concrete served as grisly reminders of the killing power of the virus in its early days. The bulk of humanity vanished from the planet virtually overnight, with only nasty stains on the ground and their disintegrating cities to
mark their short time on the earth.

  Overhead, the sun burned hot, heating the air around them considerably as it studied them impassively from the sky. Squirrels skittered about, dashing off the roadway while dozens of bird flocks took to the sky as the four humans in the Jeep disturbed their space.

  Dave began to wonder if they were ever going to see anything of interest on this trip.

  That was until he spotted a wizard standing in the middle of the road.

  Chapter Eight

  He stood in the center of the road wearing dingy robes with a wizard’s staff in hand as if he’d walked directly off a Tolkien movie set. He faced the Jeep, unmoved and unmoving; his threadbare, pointy hat crumpled to one side.

  Johnny slowed the Jeep to a crawl. “What the hell is this nonsense?”

  “You think he’s armed?” Gia asked.

  “Why don’t you ask him?” Johnny quipped.

  “Fuck off.”

  “You kiss your mother with that mouth?”

  Gia frowned. “My mother’s dead.”

  “So’s mine. Join the club, sister.”

  Gia frowned but kept silent.

  “He doesn’t look like much,” Audrey said from the back seat. “We could take him.”

  “We’re not going to murder someone in cold blood,” Dave said.

  “I’m just saying if we need to take him, we can do it.”

  “Point taken,” Dave said.

  Johnny brought the Jeep to a smooth halt twenty feet away from the strange man. Up close, Dave could see that the man’s worn, dingy robes had been cinched around the waist by an unraveling rope-belt. A black, patchy beard covered the bottom half of the man’s face, a few inches in length.

  Johnny killed the engine. “Who are you supposed to be?” he asked, his hand on the butt of his pistol.

  Dave tensed, his hand closed tightly around his pistol’s grip.

  “Name’s Gandalf,” the man in the robe said. “What might your name be?”

  Johnny laughed, shaking his head. “Is this for real?”

  “Of course, that’s not my given name,” the man replied. “But with the world all but ended, I decided to rename myself.”

  “Looks like you did more than just rename yourself,” Johnny said.

  The man looked down at his gray robes. “You could say that.”

  “What’s your real name?” Dave asked.

  “What’s yours?”

  “Dave.”

  “My mother called me Richard, but I prefer Ricky.” Ricky glanced toward the back seat. “Who travels with you, Dave?”

  “This is Johnny,” Dave said. He motioned behind him. “Back there is Audrey and Gia.”

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Ricky said. “What brings you to my neck of these woods.”

  “Passing through,” Dave replied.

  “You’re armed,” Ricky said.

  “Who’s not these days?” Johnny replied.

  Ricky held up his hands. “I’m not.”

  “Do spells count?” Johnny asked.

  Ricky grinned slyly. “Very funny. No, I can’t cast spells. I’m a fan, not a nut job.” He paused. “Are you friendly?”

  “That depends on you,” Dave said.

  “If I wanted to kill you I’d have done it when I first heard you barreling down the highway.”

  “I thought you weren’t armed,” Johnny said.

  “I’m not,” Ricky replied.

  “So, you’re not alone?” Audrey asked.

  “I never said either way.”

  “We’re friendly enough,” Dave said. “All we want to do is pass and be on our way. We’ll happily leave you be.”

  Ricky’s eyes narrowed. Then he spoke slowly and carefully. “You...shall...not...pass.”

  Silence ensued. No one spoke for several tense seconds.

  Then laughter erupted from the back seat. Dave turned to see Gia smiling and chuckling. “Just like the movie, right?”

  Ricky’s eyes softened as the corners of his mouth turned up in a smile. “I thought it was gonna take you forever to get that joke.”

  * * *

  “I know it’s not much,” Ricky said as he handed out red and blue ceramic bowls filled with dry Ramen noodles. The group sat around a table in the dining room of an abandoned house Ricky had claimed as his own. Beside an open window, steam wafted from a pot of water heating atop a propane camp stove. “Not much left to scavenge these days.”

  “You see much carrier action around these parts?” Johnny asked.

  Ricky shook his head. “Here and there. I don’t come out much these days, just to scavenge what I can. I stockpile it. Reduces my exposure.”

  “Pretty bold standing out in the open like that,” Audrey said. “We could have been anybody. Dangerous, even.”

  Ricky shrugged. “I guess I don’t care so much anymore. Something’s gonna get me one of these days. Especially now after the end of everything. I’ll take a bullet over a carrier tearing me into bite-sized pieces any day. Quicker that way.”

  “That’s one way to look at things,” Gia said.

  “It’s my way, for better or worse. Besides, sometimes you meet cool people.”

  “Are you saying we’re cool?” Gia asked.

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” Ricky replied. “But you did get my joke. A fellow Tolkien fan is always welcome.” Ricky glanced at the pot of water. A roiling cloud of steam mushroomed up from the surface now, dissipating into the air. “Looks like the water’s ready.” He retrieved the pot and poured the boiling water over each block of dried noodles.

  “Flavor dust is already in the bowls,” Ricky said. “It’s chicken flavor, but mostly it just tastes like salt to me. I enjoy it all the same. I won’t begrudge my own tastes. Now if I could just get my hands on a Pepsi I’d be in heaven.”

  “Amen to that,” Gia added.

  “So, you folks are just passing through, eh?” Ricky asked. He took a seat at the table, taking off his pointy wizard hat. He hung it on the backrest of the chair before pouring hot water on his noodles. “Where are you guys headed?”

  “South,” Dave said. He swirled the fork in the noodles, taking a bite. He had to admit they tasted pretty damn good.

  “What’s there that you’re after?”

  “What makes you think we’re after something?” Johnny asked between bites.

  “Everybody’s after something,” Ricky said. “Nobody does anything for no reason.”

  “We’re looking for someone,” Dave said. “Maybe you’ve seen him?”

  “I doubt very much our host here has seen him,” Audrey said. “The fact that he’s still alive is proof of that.”

  “This man you search for, he’s dangerous?” Ricky asked.

  “You could say that,” Dave said. “He’s traveling with his cronies in an old army truck. They might have had some kids with them.”

  Ricky shook his head. “I’m afraid your friend is right, I’ve seen no such man. To be perfectly honest, not much happens here. In this world, that’s a good thing.”

  “How long have you been living in this house?” Audrey asked.

  “Since last fall. I stockpiled a bunch of scavenged supplies and settled in for the winter.”

  “Sounds boring,” Gia said.

  “Anything but,” Ricky said. “I’ve read The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings three times. In the old world that was something I wouldn’t have had time to do. Hell, I even read The Silmarillion, though I wish I could’ve gutted Christopher Tolkien for all his bullshit.”

  Gia furrowed her brow. “Huh?”

  “Christopher fought tooth and nail to keep the LOTR movies from being made, but for a few bucks, he had no problem hacking together The Silmarillion from his dad’s pencil-written notes. A whore by any other name would smell as foul.”

  “I read it back in high school,” Dave said. “Lord of the Rings, that is”

  “You enjoyed it?” Ricky asked.

  “Mostly. Could’ve do
ne without Tom Bombadil though.”

  “How can you say such a thing?”

  Dave shrugged. “It’s just a book,” he said, taking another bite of Ramen.

  “It’s anything than just a book,” Ricky said, his eyes narrowing.

  “Easy now, Hoss,” Johnny said. “Don’t go getting your panties in a bunch.”

  Ricky frowned.

  “I read it too, back in the service,” Johnny continued. “You’d be surprised how much downtime there is between engagements. Read The Hobbit too. I dug ‘em.” He slurped down more noodles, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

  “I’m surprised you’ve read them,” Ricky said. “Maybe I misjudged you.”

  “What, you think I can’t read or something?”

  “Not at all. I just thought you had poor taste.”

  “Dude had an imagination,” Johnny said.

  “That he did,” Ricky replied.

  They ate mostly in silence, finishing their noodles within a few minutes.

  “I trust dinner was acceptable?” Ricky asked.

  Everyone nodded.

  Ricky smiled and nodded. “Anyone care to join me for a smoke?”

  “Sure,” Johnny said. “You got any extra cigarettes? We’re all out. You know, end of the world and all.”

  “I only have my pipe,” Ricky said. He stood and retrieved a tobacco tin and a long pipe with a bulbous end from one of the cabinets. “Got this on eBay, two months before the virus hit,” he said after returning to the table. “I have some extra tobacco if anybody wants to share.”

  “I will,” Johnny said.

  “You’ve been gracious enough,” Audrey said, overriding him. “But thanks.”

  “Suit yourself.” Ricky packed the pipe with tobacco from the tin before touching a lighter’s flame to the bowl. He puffed several times, white smoke billowing from the corners of his mouth before dissipating into the room.

  “You ever stop to think about human nature?” Ricky said. “I mean really stop and consider it seriously?”