by Aldin, Pete
Elliot tests the Glock on the zombie, then puts the pistol away.
Because the man is naked, it's easy to see that the Maggot Riders removed both nipples along with his ears and the tip of his nose. His genitals are attached however, perhaps because the Riders were bored by then—another glance along the fence shows Elliot that others weren't so lucky—or perhaps because their surviving members are keeping that for later.
Elliot gives his surrounds another long and measured look before stepping up to face the Druid on the fence. He asks him, "What kind of day you having?"
Glazed eyes focus on Elliot then there are muffled words beneath the gag, two syllables Elliot doesn't need to think too hard to decipher.
"Maggot Riders attacked you, huh?"
The man on the fence frowns. No noise this time, no nodding, no head shaking, just the frown.
Elliot has a good view into the side of the garage from here, a good view of the dark van identical to the one back at the Oussefs' health retreat, the one that carried Lewis's sister away. The knot in his gut twists tighter. Is she still here? Have the Maggot Riders carried her away some place he'll never find her? Was she ever here in the first place? There isn't a building on the site big enough to sleep more than ten people, and if forty-plus Druids have been collecting sex slaves for weeks ...
Mentally, he slaps himself.
Forget the maybe's.
Focus on intel.
Focus on this asshole.
The man's eyes have narrowed beneath his lowered brows. Perhaps he's trying to keep Elliot in focus; perhaps there's hope in them that Elliot will release him. Perhaps he's just angry as hell.
"How many of 'em left in there?" Elliot tries, hoping the Druid knows the old adage about the enemy of my enemy. "If they're still in there, I can hurt 'em. But I need facts, right? So if they're there, gimme a sign. Maybe a wink."
For a moment, the squinting eyes cause Elliot to wonder if the brain attached is still cognizant. And then slowly, a wink. He is about to speak when the biker gives him another wink. And then another.
Elliot scratches his stubble. "There's three of them?"
The forehead rubs against chain link as the biker tries to nod. He winces while his eyes squeeze shut. Blood still seeps from nose and nipples. But the man could live like this for days until either dehydration or cold or a new set of deaders eventually claims him. He could live for many painful days.
"Give you a choice, fella," Elliot says. He doesn't know why he's offering it to a man like this, a man who kidnaps women and teenagers and beheads people he has no use for. Maybe to prove he isn't as far gone as them. "You can stay here and die slowly, giving you time to make your peace with whatever God exists. Or I can end it now, quietly and cleanly—knife in the brain stem, instant death."
And then, as he's talking, a third and better idea presents itself, a possible win-win.
"Or I can cut you down and you can serve as a decoy. You can draw them out and you might live long enough to see me cap a couple before the third one gets you. You might even see me get all three."
With the knife in his right hand and the Steyr in the other, he mimes weighing up a decision, brows raised in question.
The man makes a low noise against his gag. His eyes flick down toward it and back.
Elliot sighs. "Okay. But I'm hoping you're smart enough to stay quiet. You do want me hurting them, right, not you?"
Another scraping of forehead as the man nods.
Elliot ducks through the hole in the fence. He has the knife at the back of the gag and pauses. The tattoo on back of the guy's neck. A gang tattoo, gang colors. Another surprise. Another twist. Once again, this is not a Druid.
"You're a Rider?"
The man grunts.
"Jesus."
He swings the Steyr around onto his back, uses his free hand to hold the Maggot Rider's head still and slices through the gag, ready to stab up into the base of the skull if he makes a noise. But the only sound is the grunt of him pushing the gag out with his tongue followed by the savoring of a deep, shuddering breath.
Elliot checks over his shoulder and murmurs, "So you attacked here and lost?"
Some clicking as the man tries to get dry tongue and gums to cooperate and then a voice rasps, "War's not over yet."
"Why'd you attack?"
The Rider's voice is thin and wispy as a ghost's. "Hate the bastards."
"Also you wanted their weapons and their slaves, right?"
Some hissed cussing. Elliot can't tell it's directed at him or the Rider's enemies.
"Not the slaves," the Rider says. "We're not sick dogs like them. And we don't hurt kids."
Elliot blinks at that, but it makes sense now he thinks about it. All biker clubs have some code of honor. And for many that means children are a protected species.
"Whadda ya know?" Elliot mutters. "We have something in common."
The man grates a word that sounds like, "Decoy."
"You'll be my decoy?" Elliot asks.
A grunt of confirmation, then his unlikely ally says, "Just ... make sure ya fuck 'em up good."
Thinking of a sixteen-year-old girl and her thirteen-year-old brother being shoved into different vehicles while their parents are brutally murdered, Elliot puts the blade to the man's bonds and says, "Goddamn right I will."
19:39
"Pants," the Rider says when he's finally off the fence. "Not fightin' without pants."
Elliot hates the delay, but if it keeps the guy onside...
"There." He points to a mound of what he'd thought were rags until now. The clothes of the strung-up bodies have been chucked on the ground near each of them.
The biker grunts and staggers to the closest pile, falling over when he tries to stoop. Elliot crouches, rifle up and sweeping the yard. He and the Rider are in deep shadow cast by nearby gum trees, but there are a bunch of windows with a clean line of sight to his position. He shuffles a few feet to his left, taking cover behind a pile of motorcycle tires. He checks his watch, checks it again when the biker finally crawls over to him—more than a minute has passed while the man struggled to get his pants back on and to move across. But at least Elliot no longer has to look at his junk.
There has been no noise and no movement from any of the buildings.
"Three of them?" Elliot asks again in confirmation.
The Rider nods. He smells like hell. Looks like it too, but his eyes are clear now, focused. His jaw set. He wants blood, and as long as it isn't Elliot's, then that's just fine with Elliot.
"Which building?"
The Rider thinks about it while his fingers run circles around the edges of his wounds. "That one." He points to the single prefab between the tin shed and garage. "Pretty sure that's the door I heard shuttin'."
Elliot glares. "Pretty sure?"
"What d'ya want, a written guarantee? My life on the line here, numbnuts."
"Mine too."
"Yeah, but you got weapons." He straightens as his eyes lock on an over/under shotgun lying on the far side of the yard.
"Forget that," Elliot says. "Not ready to trust you with that."
"Decoy or not, I need somethin'."
"All right." Elliot shifts two feet sideways and angles the Steyr toward him, then pulls his knife and jams it in the soft earth by his own boot. "You take this when I leave. I'm going round back of that building. When you can't see me anymore, you count to thirty, then you call them outside. Got it?"
The Rider's gaze travels from the knife to Elliot's assortment of firearms and back and he looks about to argue when voices start up in one of the buildings. A door opens. Both men hunker down. The Rider grabs at the knife and to Elliot's relief, he shoves the blade down the back of his pants.
A Druid steps out of the prefab the Rider indicated. No, Elliot realizes: the man staggers. He comes to a stop a few feet out into the yard, both arms busy with the box he carries. An ammo belt filled with shotgun shells hangs over the edge so it's not hard to
imagine what else is in the box. Along with the box, the man has a premix bourbon-and-cola can in one hand. He turns in a woozy circle to shout back through the door, so wasted that the movement almost sends him sprawling.
Elliot's rifle is up, the safety off. He shifts the selector to burst fire and aims along the side of the prefab at the door.
Another head and shoulders poke from the aluminum-sided box and an arm points toward the garage. The second Druid snaps, "The van, dickface."
Elliot has a little pressure on the trigger now, waiting for the third man to appear. The Rider said there were three.
Wait for the third. Wait ...
And then he is watching in disbelief as the Maggot Rider launches himself from behind their tire stack, strutting across the open ground toward the Druids and spewing a stream of abuse.
"What the—?"
The Druids' faces track toward the Rider, jaws hanging open.
"Let's go, girls!" the Rider shouts. His empty hands are held out to his sides, but the knife handle bobs around at his back unseen by his enemies. "Let's dance! Man to man! Hand to hand!"
Elliot curses him and takes aim at the Druid in the doorway who leans out and raises a bulky automatic at the Rider. He doesn't get to fire it. 5.56 rounds ping off the cladding in front of him and he recoils, grunting in shock and losing the handgun. In one movement, he ducks and throws himself through the doorway as Elliot's second burst goes into the door and wall above his head. Elliot's sure he hit him with the first volley, but now he has a possible two targets inside that room with unknown kinds and amounts of weapons.
He swings his rifle briefly the way of the Druid with the box, but the Maggot Rider is running at him now, knife in hand. The Druid drops his box and bends over it, fumbling. He still has his can of booze. Elliot can see he's not going to make it and leaves the Rider to it. Moving in a fast-walk toward the corner of the tin shed, he keeps his rifle aimed at the prefab door. The Rider slams into the Druid at the box and they go sprawling. The impact must have broken something in the Druid's left arm: the man sits up and stares at it, squealing. Then the Rider gets on top of him and starts up with the knife. Elliot hugs the side of the shed as he closes on the prefab. He expects someone in there—the man he's hit or the third as yet unseen Druid—to start shooting at the Rider, or at him. The only sound that comes out of the doorway is the man he hit yelling.
"Ben! Benno! Help, mate! Benno, where the fuck are ya?"
At the end of the shed now, Elliot drops to a knee and sweeps the yard, eying the windows of the buildings across from him down the barrel and suppressor. Evidently "Benno" wasn't in the room with his two mates here, drinking planning a road trip.
"Benno!"
Elliot can hear the panic in the man's voice now, the pain and he knows he hit him. When no one starts shooting at him from any of the other buildings—buildings where she could be, buildings he's not going to fire indiscriminately into—he fires a burst high through the aluminum walls above the Druid who's shouting, hoping to pin him in place.
The shouting stops. Something topples, knocked over by the scrambling man.
His Rider ally is finished his work now, rocking back on his heels and wiping his hands and blade on his pants. He flashes a grin at Elliot then stands and walks to the prefab.
"Total dipshit," Elliot breathes. But this is what he wanted. He wanted a decoy.
He sweeps the yard again, but again there's no sign of this Benno. The Rider risks a peek into the room, sticking his head in and pulling it back quick. Then he laughs at what he saw, brandishes the knife and disappears inside. Elliot follows cautiously, keeping low under the window as he passes it. From the doorway, he sees that the Rider won't need his assistance. He moves into the garage with his rifle on the van, reaches it without incident, pulls the rear doors open. No one. He whirls and sweeps across the other buildings again but Benno's situation remains a mystery.
"Maybe he already left," the Rider tells him from the doorway of the prefab. "What is it ya want, anyway?"
"Looking for someone," Elliot tells him.
"You'll want these then." The Rider flings a key ring his way. It's huge, bigger than the one Elliot took from the Monaro driver, with maybe thirty keys on it. It lands with a thud. "And thanks for this." The bloodied knife lands beside it. "Might need a wash, though."
The Rider starts walking then, headed toward the gate.
Elliot's rifle tracks him. "Hey!"
The Rider keeps going. Doesn't even turn his head. Swaggers right past the discarded over/under shotgun and a revolver without a glance. "We're square, mate."
"Didn't say you could leave."
"Didn't say I couldn't."
Elliot puts a round into the dirt a few feet in front of him. He does stop then and turns slowly. The stump of the Rider's nose looks like sausage meat. He is covered in blood, both his and theirs. And through it all, he grins a crooked grin full of decaying teeth and says, "We're finished here. So far, you've done right by me, so when we cross paths in future, I'll do right by you. But if you're the kinda man who shoots a bloke in cold blood, then do it. I'm done talkin'." And he continues on his way, dragging the gate open further and swaggering out onto the access road.
Elliot picks up the keys with his left hand and clamps them against the Steyr's foregrip as he crosses the yard. He's at the first of the other prefabs when a bike starts up out on the highway.
19:49
All the buildings on this side are pocked with bullet holes. The first one is empty besides the bunks and some sets of drawers. The second is the same. The third holds a Druid along with three dead slaves. They all bled out from bullet wounds hours ago.
When he opens the door to the fourth, the first thing that hits him is the stench—it's like a convention of undead have gathered and rotted here. But the spike of adrenaline this brings quickly dissipates as his gaze sweeps the room and confirms no pusbags. What is there is a bucket-toilet beneath the window, empty but stained with weeks of use. Also a dead Druid sprawled in front of it with his throat opened and what looks like a dozen puncture wounds to his abdomen. There's an empty sheath on his belt where his knife once dwelled.
Benno? Elliot wonders.
Understandably there's a helluva lot of blood around him; whatever was in his intestines and bowel at the time of his stabbing also seems to have leaked out, accounting for more of the smell. The room is so cramped, it'll be hard for Elliot to avoid stepping in this when he moves inside.
He breathes through his mouth and concentrates on the four double bunks, the only other features in the room. Each bed sports a tether: a set of handcuffs clamped around the frame and connected to five feet of chain with another set of cuffs at the other end for the prisoner's wrist. Six of these tethers swing free from their beds. Only two are actually clamped onto people. Living people.
Alyssa Oussef isn't one of them and Elliot's heart drops into his guts—
Goddamnit.
Evening light streams in through the tinted window, and through a score of bullet holes. Somehow these other two got lucky. Today, anyway.
The woman would be as tall as Elliot if she was standing, possibly taller. She has broad shoulders, a masculine jaw, big hands. He can well imagine her overpowering this Druid, stabbing him with his own knife, releasing weeks of pent up hatred.
The teenage boy is a little older than Lewis, fourteen or fifteen, slight of frame, chewing on his bottom lip and rocking on the edge of his mattress.
"Here to help," he tells them and slings his rifle. He indicates the dead biker. "Not a member, and definitely not a fan."
Slowly the woman nods, relaxing a notch.
Elliot glances at the biker's empty sheath. He tells her, "First I'm gonna need you to chuck the knife in the corner over here. So there's no misunderstandings." He pulls the key ring and jingles it.
"Sure," she says in a flat voice. She turns toward her bunkmate. "Throw away the knife, Jimmy."
Elliot blinks a
t that. His attention shifts toward the teenager. The young man's face contorts in resistance for a second, two, three, then he reaches behind him for the knife and tosses it onto the furthest top bunk from him. Elliot notices for the first time that Jimmy's hands are streaked with red.
"Thank you," Elliot says and navigates the least slippery path across to the woman.
He frees her first and she stays in place, rubbing her wrist. Her eyes flick toward his rifle, his handguns, and back.
"They're all dead?" she asks.
"All but one and he's no danger."
She sniffs. "Good."
He moves to the teenager who shrinks back from him. Elliot decides the cuff around his wrist can wait till later, unlocking the one around the bed post. Jimmy explodes from the bed and Elliot rears back, dropping the keys as his hand drops to his SIG. But the boy is only interested in that open door, slipping and skating his way to it. The loose handcuff smacks against the jamb in his wake.
"Jimmy!" the woman yells. But she doesn't move from her bed.
Elliot finds his way to the door with more caution than the teenager. Jimmy has reached the front gate. He has one of the bikers' rifles in his arms. A moment later, he's out the gate and gone, a shadow among shadows.
"Will he come back?" Elliot asks. The question feels foolish. But he has to know.
Behind him the woman answers, "I don't know. I don't really know him."
"What's your gut tell you?"
A pause then she says, "No."
"Come outside," Elliot tells her and steps onto the dirt. "The air's better."
19:52
"Claire," she says as they stare down at the Druid by the cardboard box. Ammunition and handguns have spilled out onto the ground. His bourbon-and-cola has tipped into the dirt and mingled with his blood.
"Elliot," he replies.