Ranger Martin (Book 3): Ranger Martin and the Search for Paradise

by Flacco, Jack

  “I like your sarcasm, Red!” Josh said, not knowing what else he should call her. “That still doesn’t tell me what your name is.”

  “You haven’t a clue who you’re dealing with, do you?” Matty said, uncrossing her legs, edging closer to Josh on the other side of the cage.

  “Apparently not. Enlighten me.”

  “You think these walls will keep you safe from the eaters. You think your men will keep you safe from us. Because we’re in these cages, you think we’re not a threat.” Matty said then allowed a sly smile to flow from one corner of her mouth to the other before it disappeared. “The very fact we’re here seals your stupidity. This time tomorrow, all that you see here will be gone. And you will be dead.”

  No one was laughing anymore, including Josh.

  “But, you still have time. Take us outside, beyond the eaters to where you found us. I promise you, nothing will happen if you do. You can go on doing whatever it is you do.”

  Josh stared at her intently.

  “If you don’t do what I ask, and you keep us here against our will, then I guarantee one thing. You will die. You. Your families. And this place? There will be nothing left of it.”

  The tension in the room was so tight that Josh pulled a toothpick from his shirt pocket and flicked it into the corner of his mouth. He studied her from the top of her head to the soles of her feet. He didn’t deviate from absorbing everything she said.

  His cronies standing behind him also didn’t say a thing. They waited for his lead. What would he do? What was he thinking? Would he kill her or let her go?

  Randy finally had gathered his thoughts long enough to have heard the last part of Matty’s speech. With Jon scrunched into his shoulder, he had enough strength to wrap his arm around Matty’s brother.

  “Well.” Josh said. “I wouldn’t have thought a girl like you would have balls like me. I admire you for that. But it doesn’t help your case.”

  She returned to sitting cross-legged against the back of the cage.

  He rose to his feet and stood over Matty’s temporary home. “You have a problem. I have sentries pacing along all the walls and they tell me it’s clear out there. There’s no army. There’s no group to suddenly spring and attack us. In fact, the only thing out there is the undead. Now, unless you have some secret spy organization tracking your whereabouts, which I doubt, you don’t have a chance. Am I talking out of the other side of my mouth?”

  Matty’s gaze hadn’t left him. She let a smile slip from her lips.

  “You think the rat brains surrounding this place is an accident? We feed them and they keep us safe by roaming the outside walls. They’re cheap soldiers. The best kind, too. If anyone has the audacity—sorry, let me correct myself—the stupidity to approach the walls, no one has a chance against them. We’ve thought of everything. So, go ahead and tell us how terrible it will be for us if we keep you here. Quite frankly, I don’t care.”

  By that time, Randy had regained full consciousness and unraveled his arm around Jon. He crawled toward the edge of the cage, and set his eyes on the apparent leader of the group with the big mouth. He didn’t have an idea what he’d say, but the words flowed nonetheless. “You don’t know, do you?”

  “Ah, you have a tongue as well.” Josh shifted to crouch in front of Randy and Jon’s cage.

  “It’s over.” Randy said. “You’ve lost.”

  Josh laughed, as did the others. He didn’t have the patience he had with Matty, and ran a nightstick against the front of Randy’s cage as a way to shake things up.

  “This is all an illusion. The control you think you have over us? It looks real and it seems real, I’ll give you that. It’s not. You’ve lost control the very moment you took us as your prisoners. These dog cages you placed us in? They mean nothing. Ultimately, you can’t possess our minds. That’s what’s going to bother you the most.”

  “You think it bothers me?”

  “Yes. Our minds are our most prized possessions. You don’t possess our minds, and it bothers you.” Randy licked his lips to relish the next words. “You still don’t know our names.”

  Josh smashed the side of Randy and Jon’s cage with his nightstick. He shot to his feet, broke through the crowd behind him and threw one of the tables to the floor. As he marched to the door opposite the cage in the warehouse, one of his directs asked what they ought to do with the kids. He stopped then faced the door. In a matter of seconds, the words flowed from his lips. “Feed them.”

  * * *

  The garage door rolled upward. From the inside, the moon’s rays created silhouettes of Ranger and the others. Lenny reached for the light switch and flicked it on. In the middle of the garage where a car should have been, a skid of boxes rested unassuming. A tarp covered the boxes. Once Russell pulled the tarp from the top of the skid, everyone gasped.

  As suspected, Ranger saw open crates of guns, knives and bombs. There must have been half a dozen boxes sitting on that garage floor. He couldn’t keep from inspecting the merchandise. Lenny and Russell wore smiles on their faces. If they had known anything about Ranger, they would have known he didn’t take a mini armory lightly. After seeing how he had treated them before he discovered they were the good guys, they thought the guns would have come in handy. The problem was they didn’t know for what he would use the weapons.

  Eight-year-old Abigail approached the crates. She thought of her mother Olivia and of how she had protected her throughout the change. She wanted to pay back the favor by making her mother proud. She grabbed a hunting knife, raising it with both hands. She checked the blade. It gleamed under the amber light of the garage. She nodded and placed it in its holster. Next, she swung the assembly around her shoulder. It was hers.

  Silver asked a more practical question, “How are we going to move this stuff?”

  “We’ve got that covered.” Lenny said. He quickly led them to the neighboring garage and swung the door open. Inside, a military Humvee sat quietly waiting for another driver to take possession of it. “We thought one day this stuff would come in handy.”

  “I don’t understand.” Silver said, “How did you find the time to hide all this?”

  “We didn’t. We met a former military chief in Paradise who told us of this place. He said if we ever got the chance to escape, we should go back and make things right.”

  Ranger scanned the neighborhood and couldn’t fathom how any of this equipment got here, but if the military had anything to do with it, he knew someone would come back for the stuff. Luckily, they were there first.

  The five of them stared at the vehicle for a long time before Ranger heard a grunt from the side of the house adjacent to the garage. Silver heard it, too, and flipped his gun from its holster, moving Abigail behind him. Lenny and Russell had something else in mind. They ran to the mini armory, grabbed a couple of rifles and loaded them with the cache of ammo next to the crates of weapons.

  As Ranger slipped his knife from its sheath and swung around the corner to the walkway leading to the house, the grunts became louder until he spotted the origin of the sound. A dog had tangled its leash around the bushes and couldn’t move. The sad sigh from the canine drew Ranger near. He slashed the leash to a happy mutt that hopped and skipped thanking Ranger with a few licks to the face.

  When Abigail saw the dog, she ran to hug it, pet it and make it her own. The moment didn’t last long. From within the neighboring bushes, an eater burst from the hedge and ran toward Abigail. Ranger didn’t have a problem with it. He had his knife at the ready and went for the creature’s skull. Within seconds, another appeared from the hedge and lunged at Ranger. The dog quickly paid back Ranger’s kindness for releasing it and spun around to lock its jaws on the beast’s neck. The dog shook the undead, pressing Ranger to get out from under it. The dog then twisted its body around to lie on top of the eater, before a third eater slipped from the hedge. The third one clawed at the dog and bore its teeth at the canine.

  The dog yelped in its dem
ise.

  Once free, eaters Two and Three charged Ranger who swung his knife at the beasts. He took care of them, plunging his knife in Two’s temple while Three had its throat slashed from one side of its head to the other.

  Ranger shook off the mess, but didn’t realize the noise he had created alerted two other chewers to appear from the hedge.

  “Damn it.” He said, before he heard Lenny behind him cocking the rifle and aiming it at the beast. “No. Don’t shoot!”

  The blast tore apart the first chewer’s face and it dropped at Ranger’s feet, the second shot penetrated the chest of the second, but did little to deter it from further attacking Ranger.

  The sound of the shot woke up anything that may have been roaming the neighborhood. What was to be a quick kill here and there turned awful as eaters appeared from behind homes across the street, from the bushes in neighboring yards, and houses whose doors had opened at the mess Lenny had caused. Had Lenny held off longer before firing his gun, they would have surely escaped without a fuss. But now, Ranger and the others had to think of not only getting rid of the crowd that swelled by the minute in the streets, but also of attempting to get their weapons from the crates into the Humvee and out of the area.

  They had a long night ahead of them.

  * * *

  Matty crawled to the side of her cage and faced Randy. “Are you okay?”

  “How did we get here?” Randy asked.

  “You punched one of the guys who were taking us to their truck. They punched you back.”

  “Is that why I can’t remember why I’m here?”

  “I would say that’s a good reason.”

  Randy rubbed the back of his head then shook away the confusion. He turned to Jon who sat next to him and patted him from shoulder to waist checking to see if he was still whole.

  “I’m okay, Randy.” Jon batted his hands dismissing the teen’s concerns.

  Once Randy sensed Jon was fine, he fell backward on the cage where Matty was facing him. His fingers interlocked with the netting and his cheek leaned against the frame. He noticed how Matty sat in the center of her confines watching him. He wasn’t sure why she did that. Was it because she didn’t want to draw closer to him, or had she found that position comfortable? He wished she would touch his fingers or shift her face closer to his.

  “Ranger was right.” Matty said.

  “What about?” Randy fixed his gaze on her.

  “They took us from the clearing where they had found us and loaded us into a boat next to the shore a few miles out. They transported us across the water to the dock where they unloaded us into the cages. He was right. The only way into this place is through the docks.”

  Jon snapped to his knees and brought up an awful point. “What did he mean when he said they fed the eaters outside the wall?”

  “You don’t have to be a genius to figure that out.” Matty said.

  Jon went back into the corner of his cage wondering if they were to be the next meal. The sight of the kids would certainly keep the horde interested in maintaining a stronghold along the perimeter of the fortress.

  With his fingers still curled around his cage’s holes, Randy asked, “What happened to Abigail?”

  “Back at the clearing, those men appeared and she disappeared. I’m pretty sure she slipped back into the bushes where she would be safe.”

  Randy looked at Matty with longing eyes through the cage’s grid hoping for a connection. He said, “Once Ranger finds her and hears her story, he’ll be back for us. I’m sure of it.”

  Matty kneeled in front of Randy and placed her fingers on his. They stood face to face. “No doubt.”

  As relief washed over Randy and his face turned soft, somehow, her touch brought warmth to his insides, and her gaze melted his heart. That was when the door to the warehouse opened. One of the three men in soldiers’ uniforms who had captured the kids came strolling inside, locking the door behind him. He carried a platter filled with food containing cooked rice and three cups of water. After he placed the platter in front of the cages, he stared at Matty. Randy hadn’t detached himself from the cage where she had her fingers intertwined with his, so when the soldier looked at her with lust in his eyes, Randy slipped his fingers away from her and slowly crawled to the door of his cage. In the meantime, Matty had seen those eyes on men before. She hated them. They were eyes that looked at her as an object.

  The soldier bent to his knees and studied his young captive. He noticed her beautiful crimson hair, the creamy skin and those gorgeous emerald eyes. Her lips were full and he allowed his eyes to drift on her body. He gulped then took a deep breath. After a smile, he searched for his keys.

  He said, “Just one peek.”

  Randy shook the cage, “Leave her alone!”

  Chapter 22

  High into the sky, the moon beamed its white rays into the neighborhood. Ranger and the others stood in a circle in the middle of the driveway shooting one undead after another. The more they fired their guns, the more zombies leaped from between the houses into line of fire of the zombie killers. Next to them, the garage was open with the Humvee waiting for them to take possession. Lenny and Russell struggled with their weapons, aiming them but firing at nothing. They didn’t have an aim, and they fidgeted with their guns hoping that shaking them would produce better results—like actually hitting some of the beasts that were screaming toward them. In all instances, either Silver or Abigail had to step in to help them along the way.

  It didn’t stop Ranger, though. He had a good rhythm, blasting anything that moved and anything that wouldn’t take a hint to stay dead he’d plunge his knife in its skull. After a while, green had splattered on Abigail and she left the group to charge one of the chewers with both hands on her knife. Near the lawn that separated the driveway that led to the cache of weapons and ammo, she jumped it, wrapping her legs around its waist. She quickly plunged the knife in its head and it dropped backward on the grass. Rather than leave it as is, since it was dead already, Abigail wailed on the dead body splattering its blood all over the driveway and all over her.

  Lenny saw what the little girl had done and couldn’t take it anymore. From outside the circle, as one of the zombies approached him, he bent to his knees and threw up. His weakness left the group without cover. Russell took over, but couldn’t stop the beast. He attempted to pound it with his gun, but it was too late. The undead had grabbed his shoulders and had drawn him into its jaws. Russell didn’t have a chance.

  When Ranger and Silver had rid their side of the offending beasts, they swung their attention to Russell who lay in a pool of blood at their feet with three of the undead feeding on him. Lenny had risen from his stoop then saw the mess that should have been his friend. Just as he was about to run toward the three to take his vengeance on them with his gun fully cocked, Ranger grabbed the heavyset fellow and pulled him away. “He’s gone.”

  Abigail rose from the body, knife in hand and covered in green blood. She panted and saw the last of the zombies feeding on Russell. Her face turned sinister and she allowed herself the comfort of thinking that once she was through with all of them, she would take on the rest of the undead who attempted to stake a claim on any of her friends. Under Ranger, Silver and Lenny’s watchful eyes, she charged one of the three, pulling it away and slicing its throat. The zombie’s head hung from a few strands of sinew when she charged a second with both hands on her knife. She stuck the second in the eye and as the third rose to its feet, she quickly rammed it in the stomach with her head. While it screeched and seized her by the waist, she thrusted her knife under its chin and pierced the rotting corpse in the brain. It fell, as she stood there with the darkness still intact in her eyes. Each breath that penetrated her lungs filled her with hate for the undead. She swung around, scanning the area for others, knife dripping with blood on the driveway.

  A hand plopped on her shoulder. She turned around not knowing who it was.

  “Hold on there. It’s me.” R
anger said. “It’s me.”

  Abigail dropped the knife and stood there senseless.

  “Are you okay?”

  It took her a moment before she answered, but eventually she nodded.

  “Good.” Ranger patted her shoulder. “Good.”

  While Silver sprinted to the neighboring garage filled with crates of weapons and ammo, Lenny stood frozen, staring at Russell’s body. He couldn’t think. He didn’t have anything to say. He just stared. A moment later, the thoughts began to flow and he remembered how Russell led him from Paradise to safety, and how he brought him to find food in the woods. He wasn’t sure how long he would have lasted alone hadn’t Russell helped him along the way. He knew it wouldn’t have been long.

  As Silver attempted to haul one of the crates on his own, he realized he would have broken his back if he didn’t call for help. He called Lenny. Smart kid that Silver. He wanted to keep Lenny occupied so he wouldn’t think about what happened to his friend.

  Slinking toward Silver, Lenny hadn’t blinked. His best friend’s death had hit him in the chest. He turned and walked back to Russell’s body. As everyone else looked on, he couldn’t take his gaze away from his friend. It could have very well been him lying in a pool of blood. But it wasn’t. He somehow felt he needed to respect the body in some way. He search among the bodies and grabbed one of them from the shirt. Silver saw this and approached him, but Ranger put his hand out motioning to leave the man do what he needed to do. Pulling the shirt off the dead body, Lenny fanned it in the air to remove any stains or dead tissue from the clothing. He then spread it over Russell’s body and covered his face. He needed closure and Ranger didn’t want to prevent that from happening by allowing Silver to interrupt the ritual.

  Once Lenny rose from paying his last respects to Russell, he immediately strolled to Silver and grabbed the other end of one of the crates, heaving it to the back of the Humvee still parked in the neighboring garage, pristine and perfect as could be.