by Jack Hunt
“Come on, man, we need to defend ourselves.”
“I didn’t say I was going to keep them. Now toss them over.”
One of them blew out his cheeks as he pulled out a piece, bent over, and slid it across. The others followed suit. Elijah moved forward. He kicked the weapons behind us.
“Now we are all going to take a seat while I figure out a few things here.”
They slowly sat down.
“Like what?”
“Like, what the fuck are you eating?” Elijah replied.
“These are MREs.”
“You have more?”
“Yeah in the truck.”
“What about a comms unit?”
“We have radios.”
You could feel the tension in the air between us. I wanted to zip-tie them but we had nothing to tie them off with.
“You have zip ties?”
One them looked at another. “No.”
“Why did you look at him?”
“I didn’t.”
“Don’t fucking lie to me. I have had the worst fucking day and night and I have had it up to here with Uncle Sam’s yes men. Now why did you look at him?”
Before he could answer the man looked at him. “I have them.” Without saying anything to him he reached into his pocket and tossed them over. I began having Elijah zip-tie them while Thomas and I kept our weapons on them.
“Why are you doing this?”
“For our safety.”
“And ours? Are you going to leave us like this?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
The mood changed in the room from tense to relaxed. Once they were all zip-tied I cast a glance out the window to make sure there were no others.
“What is a SWAT guy from Salt Lake City doing here?”
“Does it matter?” I replied.
“My brother-in-law was with the Salt Lake City Police.”
“What was his name?”
“Gabriel Westfield.”
“Don’t know him.”
I had to wonder if they were trying to befriend us in the hopes that we would release them. I didn’t plan on keeping them bound for long. I just needed a little time to think through our next step. Logically it made sense to take the jeep and just get the hell out. Keep on driving but I couldn’t leave the others behind, not without knowing for sure if they were alive or dead.
Elijah went and got some more MREs and we spent the following ten minutes eating. It was god-awful food even when hot but these were cold. You were meant to put them in boiling water and heat them for a while but we had no water or heat. Now there were lots of ways you could heat them up if you didn’t have boiling water. You could heat them on the top of a car engine, use a clothes iron, or even place them on rocks in a fire. Maybe later we could do that. Right now we had no time. I scooped the remainder of the goop into my mouth and swallowed. Mine tasted like expired Chef Boyardee.
“What are your names?” they asked.
I shook my head. “Not happening, buddy.”
“Just trying to be friendly.”
Elijah chuckled. “Yeah, until you have a gun in your hand.”
“And you’re any better?”
Elijah narrowed his eyes and stopped eating.
“Look, maybe you can fill us in. Why the animosity?”
“Why the animosity? Well let’s see, shall we.”
I brought them up to speed on where we had come from and what had happened.
“So maybe now you can see why we’re not taking any chances.”
“I can assure you we are not into that. Hell, if we had known that we wouldn’t have traveled up this way.”
“What are your names?” I asked them. One of them scoffed.
“Oh you can ask us but we can’t ask you,” Marvin said.
One of them shook his head as if to tell the other to drop it.
“Dixon, which you obviously know. Big Al, Tex, Marvin, and Baldy.”
I tossed the empty packed to one side. “Well fellas, maybe you are the good guys. Perhaps you aren’t assholes like the others. But as it stands we don’t know that, so here’s what we are going to do. We’ll leave two assault rifles upstairs. You are going to have cut yourselves out of the ties. But we are taking the jeep.”
“Come on, man. Listen, we can help.”
I scoffed. “Yeah, famous last words before you put a bullet in our heads.”
“No, we are serious. Look, the only reason we are here is because our platoon lost it. Yeah, back in Denver it was a bloodbath. There was no fucking way we were going to survive. They had pretty much thrown us to the lions by sending us in there. We weren’t the only ones who ran. But I can tell you, we love our country and…”
“Save the bullshit for someone who cares,” Elijah said. “We are taking the jeep and that’s it.”
“If there are as many as you say there are, you don’t stand a chance. I mean, look at you. Both of you have chips on your shoulders the size of a mountain and that guy there is close to dropping his weapon.”
I glanced over at Thomas. He was right. Thomas had lost a lot of blood. He didn’t look good. The wound probably had an infection by now. Outside I heard moaning. About six Z’s shuffled past, one stopped and slapped the front window with its chewed-off stub and left a smear of blood.
“You can’t leave us here like this.”
I cast a glance at Elijah who was looking out the window. I gestured for him to come over.
“Keep an eye on them,” I said to Thomas. He nodded. We walked out back.
I ran a hand over my chin. “What do you want to do?”
He scoffed. “You are asking me what I think? That’s fresh, Benny.”
“Look, cut the crap, Elijah, whatever happened in the past stays there. Right now we have to work together on this.”
Without any hesitation he replied, “I say we fucking kill them.”
“Are you insane?”
“You let them out, we are dead the first moment we turn our backs. Whether they are good guys or not, do you really think all of them are on the same page about us?” he scoffed.
“And if we don’t. You think we can take on all those military guys by ourselves?”
“It doesn’t matter, even with them we are still at a disadvantage. At least without them we aren’t going to get shot in the back.”
I shook my head. “But what if…”
Elijah let out a laugh. “See that’s your problem, Ben, you’re an idealist. You keep trying to see the good in people. We are animals. There is no good in people.”
I stared back at him unable to believe that’s how he saw everyone. “Dax, Johnny, Baja, and the others? What about them? Are they animals?”
He dropped his chin. “Look, I wish they were here but they’re not. For all we know they are dead.”
“And if not?” I asked.
“Then…” he trailed off. “Fuck this. I’m done risking my ass.”
“Do you think they would have left you behind?”
“Who cares.”
“Obviously not you. Why the hell did you come if you weren’t going to have their backs?”
He looked around the room and repositioned his grip on his assault rifle. “The only reason I came was because I thought we were going to be taken to a safe zone. That there was a cure. And…”
“Because you no longer have a family. Isn’t that right?”
“Ah, screw you, man.”
He was just about to walk away when we heard Thomas cry out. A gun went off. We burst into the room to find two of them on top of Thomas. Another one tried to attack Elijah as he came out but he knocked him to the floor with the butt of his gun.
“Where’s Dixon?”
“He’s gone for the jeep.”
I burst outside the store and gave chase.
ONE GOOD DEED
The conversation with Elijah would prove costly. The young man was racing down the main street dodging Z’s with his hands tied behin
d his back. Why had he not gone for the jeep? Wouldn’t he want to communicate with the others?
A detonation of pure adrenaline catapulted me into action. I swung my assault rifle around and aimed for his feet. One shot was all it took, just to the left of his foot to make him slow down.
“I won’t miss the next time.”
Taking that shot was essential to prevent him from getting away but insane at the same time as it was now attracting every Z within a half a mile radius. As much as I was sure Dixon didn’t want to die, he had to keep moving as there was no way he could just stop in the middle of the road. Z’s were coming out of the woodwork like rats from the sewer.
“You are going to have to kill me,” he yelled as slowed his pace down to a jog so he could navigate around a group of Z’s. He kept going, wheeling around a corner into an alleyway. By the time I made it into the alley he was no longer running. It wasn’t that he wouldn’t have, if the alley had been clear, but it was filled with the dead lurching forward, dragging their feet and snarling. Dixon looked up and down the buildings probably hoping to find some way of escape. As he turned to face me I pulled my knife.
“Please don’t kill me.”
I caught up with him and without saying anything I cut his ties. We turned to run back but we were already hedged in. What I did next was done out of necessity. I tossed him a handgun. I didn’t need to say anything. He knew that I could have killed him there and then but I didn’t. I had spared him not because I had a change of heart but when you stare down a herd of Z’s stumbling your way, you kind of get over any personal differences real fast.
Hot shells flew in the air as we unloaded bullet after bullet. Back to back we moved out of that alley shooting at every single fucked-up face that got near us. One stumbled over and brought Dixon down. I turned and kicked it in the head just as it was about to take a bite out of his neck. My foot went through it like a hot knife in butter.
“Thanks.”
There was no time to pat each other on the back, I ran out of ammo. I slipped off that assault rifle and started wielding it like an axe. Now the strangest things come to you when your body is being pumped with adrenaline. Cheesecake — that was what was going through my mind. A plate of cherry cheesecake. My wife’s. I had no idea why it dropped into my head. Maybe it all was all the blood and guts being tossed around, or the brain’s way of dealing with the insanity of the moment but there it was. A plate of fucking cheesecake. I could smell it, my mouth watered.
It was always what I reached for as comfort food. My wife was dab handy at cooking and she knew how to shift my mind after coming home from work. And oh, how I had to switch off from the horrors I saw. Some nights I would sit there in front of the TV. I wasn’t paying attention to the shows. My mind was out in the field. Seeing babies dead. Bullet holes in young kids and victims tortured. That shit didn’t shift easy. Every cop dealt with it differently. Some turned to beer, others worked out every day of the week, and some it was sex. Everyone handled it differently. Mine was food.
I sure as hell was not going to die in some backwoods town without getting the chance to try it again. My wife might have been dead, but that didn’t mean I had to die.
Overtaken by a need to survive, I swung that assault rifle with everything I had in me. Most may have been scared. I wasn’t scared as much as I was pissed off. Annoyed. Z’s were like flies buzzing around my head in the hot summer afternoon. It was a constant annoyance that didn’t let up.
It didn’t help that Dixon was shrieking like a bitch. He was still on the ground while I was lopping the heads off Z’s with the butt end of my gun.
“Man up, soldier, or we are gonna die,” I said. I’m not sure what I said motivated him or made his fear any less, but he stumbled to his feet and began fighting again by my side.
By the time we made it out of that alley, we looked like the guys out of Ghostbusters covered in more goop than a shower could get rid of.
“Maybe next time you decide to go for a run, you’ll think about doing it in a town with no Z’s.”
We rushed back to the café in silence. Back inside Elijah had managed to control the situation by threatening to shoot anyone who even attempted to try being a hero. I had to give it to him. The guy would have done it. That was the thing about Elijah. He rarely said something unless he meant it.
As we stumbled into the room and Dixon joined the others, I thought back to when I tried reaching out to Elijah. Elijah’s father was the furthest thing from a gang member. Sure, he wasn’t the most honest cop but then there weren’t many. Most dabbled on both sides of the law. Whether that was stealing drugs from busts and reselling them on the street or pocketing money, everyone had their hand in something that wouldn’t have made taxpayers happy.
As I watched Elijah control the room with his gun my mind flashed back to the day I met him in a café just like this.
I had been waiting for half an hour when he showed up. In front of me was a cup of coffee and a slice of cherry pie. Elijah slumped down in the seat across from me.
“So why am I here?”
I answered him while I stirred sugar into my coffee.
“Your father –”
He scoffed. “I knew he sent you.”
“He’s worried about you, Elijah.”
“No, he’s worried about his reputation.”
Elijah put a cigarette into his mouth and lit it.
“You know you’re not meant to smoke in here.”
“What? You gonna bust me?”
Elijah looked around at a waitress who didn’t even attempt to hide her disgust. No one approached and tried to get him to put it out. People recognized the gang colors.
“What? What you looking at?”
The Dark Kings were feared in the city as were other gangs.
“How long do you think you can keep this up before you get yourself killed?”
“We all die, Ben.”
“You want to die before your time?”
“It doesn’t matter. At least this way I die with respect.”
“Respect. Please, listen to yourself.”
He tapped ash into a tray. “Yeah, you used to think it mattered too.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Right. You grew a conscience.”
“No. Your father got me out of it.”
He tapped his cigarette again. This time though ash fell onto the table. He didn’t give a shit.
“My father is an idiot.”
“Is that how you want your kids to think of you?”
“They won’t.”
“No? You think this is good for them? To see you out there killing people. Do you want to leave your family without a father?”
Elijah leaned across the table.
“What I do is my fucking business. Not yours or his.”
“Big talk for someone who’s scared.”
He laughed a little. “What the fuck are you on about?”
I took another bite of my pie. “I’ve heard the other gangs are looking to take the Dark Kings out.”
“Like that’s news? Come on, man, you must have something better than that.”
“It’s your funeral.”
I flashed back to the present. Elijah was saying the same words to one of the military guys. “It’s your funeral.” He pressed a gun against the guy’s head.
“Elijah.” I shook my head. He stepped away and took a seat at the breakfast bar.
“Why the hell did you do that?” I asked the guy they referred to as Big Al.
“Seems like you’re gonna leave us here to die.”
“We aren’t leaving anyone to die.”
“Yeah, right,” Tex said.
“He did save my life,” Dixon weighed in. He then turned to me. “Tell us more about this group, where are they?”
I looked at him. He no longer had his zip ties on. Against my better judgment I tossed him a knife. “Cut them loose.”
“What the hell are you doing
?” Elijah slid up beside me. His gun waved back and forth.
“If he wanted me dead, he could have shot me back in the alley.”
I pulled him to one side.
“Right now we have few options. If you think we are going to just slide on into that camp and bring the others out, you are mistaken.”
“I wasn’t thinking of sliding anywhere except out of here.”
I shook my head. “You want to leave. Go. No one is holding you here but I am going in and getting Dax and the others out.”
Elijah stared at me. I could see the same look in his eye that he had the day I met him in the café back in Salt Lake City many moons ago. My mind drifted back to that day again.
I sat across from him after having finished my cherry pie. I took a long swig on my coffee.
“You put too much faith in my father.”
“You’re wrong, Elijah. No matter what you think about your father, he is trying to do this for you.”
“Screw him.”
“You think your brother would have wanted this? I know you killed those men.”
“I haven’t a clue what you’re on about.”
“Don’t be coy with me. The men who killed your brother. They were found on the outskirts of the city.”
He looked out the window as if pushing the memory from his mind or trying to avoid the guilt that came from it all.
“Listen, unless you have something useful for me, we are done here.”
That was it. Our meetings together always ended with him wanting to avoid the conversation about getting out of the gang life. All he wanted was the inside scoop. The intel on what other gangs were up to. Anything that might save his ass. The amount of times I returned to Elijah’s father and told him that he wouldn’t listen was countless. But I kept at it. Hoping that one day I would break him down enough, make him see reason. I scoffed at the thought that it wasn’t me who finally pulled him out of it. It was a group from Castle Rock. If ever there was a reason to go in and help them, it was because of the plain fact that whatever they had said to Elijah, whatever they had done that had made him think about walking away from it all, it had worked.
Of course he would say it was because of the apocalypse or that they were heading for a safe zone. But that was bullshit. He had seen something in Dax, Johnny, and the others. Something that made him think he could be something else. Something more. Something better.