Chapter 9
Dan Markowski wasn’t the kind of guy anyone would mistake for a leader. He’d grown up as the runt of his litter, with four older brothers who beat him into submission. And that was before his high school football coach back in Kansas City had gotten ahold of him. Not to mention the series of cookie-cutter drill sergeants, or the rejected remains of the Armadilldo Unit he was currently taking orders from.
Dishonorably discharged. It sounded like something a cat might hack up. He hadn’t stolen the explosives on base, and he hadn’t been the one who’d set them off. Hell, he didn’t even known what was going on until long after the deed had been done and they were all on a flight back to the states.
They got off light. Dan knew that. The only reason they weren’t serving time was because the Army was too embarrassed to admit they had accepted them in the first place.
Dan’s old man had beaten him half to death when he returned. He told the police officer in the ER that it was for his own good. The man had spent half of Dan’s childhood in prison, and he suddenly thought he was going to make up for lost time by cramming twenty years’ worth of discipline into one punch.
After he was released from the hospital, Dan hunted down Fred Freeman, the Armadilldos ringleader. Fred was older than the other rejects, but more than that, he was a sociopath. It made him a magnet for brainless heathens. A particularly witty drill sergeant had stuck Fred with the nickname, poking fun at his Texan roots, and Fred had graciously passed it on to his minions. By the time Dan found Fred down in Austin, the other two rejects had already fallen in line.
Ted Bowman seemed harmless enough, as long there were no women around. He was the kind of guy who talked endlessly about pussy. It was like he thought if he stopped thinking about it for more than five minutes, his dick might shrivel up and fall off. Dan could only tolerate him in small doses, but at least the guy knew how to leave him alone. Probably because he didn’t have tits.
The second tagalong had an even more annoying habit. Jerry Matrunik was a big talker too, but instead of pussy, he liked to tell everyone how to do everything. He was a know-it-all who didn’t know jack shit. And he didn’t know how to quit either. Once he got under someone’s skin, he burrowed in to stay awhile. The only person who could effectively shut him up was Fred.
Dan didn’t talk much. Drawing attention increased the chance of getting his face smashed in. His crooked nose could attest to that.
He was good at following orders, even if his discharge papers said otherwise. So when Fred had suggested they head up to Arkansas and set up a bunker in the Ozarks, he’d gone along with it. He didn’t mention that he knew his way around the forest. Jerry would have had too much fun telling him all about trails that didn’t exist and beasts he’d never seen.
The Ozarks had been the only bright spot in Dan’s existence. During one of his father’s prison retreats, his mother had lost her shit. When she was committed, the five sons were split up and shipped off.
Dan had stayed with a foster family who loved to camp. They spent every summer roaming the trails of the Ouachita National Forest, and when they were out of new trails to explore, they made their own. Some of the places were so remote, Dan wondered if they were maybe the first humans to ever stand there. It made him feel special, like he had something new and exciting that hadn’t been abused as it passed down through four sets of hands on its way to him.
The bunker plan didn’t last long. The others weren’t after a peaceful existence. They wanted danger and adventure. Dan knew he should have just stayed behind and let them go on to raise hell without him. But he was young, and Fred was persuasive.
When the tornadoes and earthquakes hit, the Armadilldos were like cats in heat. The chaos and panic made seeing four men running down the street with assault rifles seem normal. They got away with stealing whatever they wanted. Then they got away with murder.
Dan knew he should have stayed in the mountains. Fred’s first kill had been over a truck. The driver had seen his gun, and he put his hands in the air as he got out. Fred could have let him go. The truck was theirs. Instead, he put five rounds in the guy’s chest.
Now here they were, sitting around a campfire with blood on their hands, a hundred miles from paradise. As sharp as Fred could be, he hadn’t thought to steal them any camping equipment. Dan didn’t mind sleeping on the ground, but if they were going to be murdering people for stuff, something as simple as a comfortable bed would have been nice.
“Hey. Heeeeey,” Ted whispered to them as he slipped out of the woods and back into the light of the campfire. His eyes were too wide and his crooked teeth poked out in a lopsided under bite, making him look like an inbred bulldog.
“There’s a couple a kids screwing on the other side of the lake,” he laughed. “We should go give them a good scare. Maybe take a piece for ourselves.”
Great, Dan thought. They had graduated from blowing shit up, to theft, murder, and now rape. Wouldn’t his daddy be proud. Maybe they could share a cell.
Jerry sat on the tailgate of the truck, whittling on a piece of wood with a stolen knife, pretending like he knew what he was doing. “They got a car? We’re gonna need some more gas soon. I could give you some pointers on the best way to siphon gas,” he said, scratching at the tangled wisp of hair he tried to pass off as a goatee.
Ted shrugged. “Didn’t see a car. Just some big ol’ titties.”
Fred finished taking a leak on the other side of the truck and zipped up his fly as he joined them. His shaved head looked lumpy in the campfire, like his brain was trying to grow right through the skull, and his eyebrows threw long, horn-like shadows up the sides of his forehead. He looked like he should be swindling people out of their souls along the side of the road somewhere in Georgia.
“They had to get there somehow. They might have something else worth taking too.” Fred picked up his rifle and headed off toward the lake. Ted and Jerry grabbed their guns and followed him.
Dan had a fleeting thought. Maybe Fred had left the keys in the truck. Maybe he could take off and disappear into the forest, find that secret spot his foster family had shown him, and build a little hut. It wasn’t likely, but he peeked inside the cab after he grabbed his gun.
He could have made his way back to the main road. He could have flagged down another car. But he didn’t. He slipped in behind the Armadilldos and faded into the woods.
The kids Ted had seen weren’t around the lake when they made it to the other side, but they did see an old RV parked in the campground further up the hill.
Fred waved them on with a finger. When they reached the camper, he slid up beside it and peeked through the window.
“It’s a full house, boys,” he whispered. “And easy pickings. They’re all asleep.”
Ted and Jerry readied their guns. Fred pointed them around to the doors of the cab, and then motioned for Dan to open the side door for him as he clicked on the tactical light on his rifle. Dan took a deep breath and swallowed his morals, yet again.
“Get the fuck up, and get the fuck out!” Fred yelled as he stormed inside the camper.
He pointed his gun down at a kid sleeping on the floor with a dog. The boy blinked up at him like he was ready to piss himself. His pointy foil hat was cocked to one side, and it fell off as Fred grabbed him up by the arm and flung him out of the camper. The dog began yapping, and Fred kicked it out after him.
A herd of women and children spilled out next, including a young girl that Dan quickly pegged as Ted’s latest jerk-off inspiration. A scraggly guy with a ponytail tried to cocoon himself around the girl, making sure Fred’s sights never lined up on her.
Ted and Jerry led a pair of men who had been sleeping in the cab around the side of the camper, lining them up with everyone else in front of the shelter.
The younger of the two looked like he was in his forties. He was tall and hunched like an ogre, with a simple-minded look about him. His eyes were puffy with sleep and worry, and his jow
ls hung down like his cheeks had been deflated.
The oldest of the bunch was a fat black man in a pointy foil hat, much like the one the boy with the dog was wearing. There was a cat in a backpack strapped to the old guy’s chest, and he held a radio that blared static.
Fred shoved the tip of his gun into the man’s shoulder, and the cat hissed at him. “Drop the radio!”
“It’s a beacon,” he said, flaring his nostrils. “They’re a comin’ fer me.”
Fred cracked the butt of his gun across the man’s face, and the radio fell to the ground. One of the women, a redhead who had a strong resemblance to Ted’s target, gasped and folded her hands together. She closed her eyes and began to silently pray.
“Well, aren’t you a tender thing.” Ted was already circling his prize.
Mr. Ponytail was still trying to shield the girl, but Ted pushed him back with the barrel of his gun. He moved in closer and reached a hand out to grope the girl like he was testing fruit at the grocery store.
Dan rocked on his feet, trying to ignore the bile in the back of his throat. He wasn’t sure why it had taken him so long to figure out that the Armadilldos were the enemy, but now that they had driven the point home, he wanted out.
“Do they have something you wanna steal?” Dan asked, keeping his gaze level on Fred. “If not, we should probably save the ammo and keep from drawing attention.”
Fred saw through the act. Dan could tell from the smirk that pulled up one side of his mouth. “There’s no one out there listening tonight. They’re all busy digging crazy fuckers like this one out of their shit homes.”
“Jackpot!” Jerry shouted from the RV. “They’ve even got .22 ammo in here. Can you believe it?”
Fred’s grin spread to the other side of his face. “Guess we don’t need to worry about ammo now either.”
The old man saw it coming. He held his hands up and took a step back. “Wait. I’m chosen. They’ll be here any minute now. I’ve come too far. Ya cain’t just—”
But Fred could, and he did. He fired three shots into the old man’s face.
Jerry rushed out of the camper to see what he was missing, while one of the young boys began to hyperventilate.
“God dammit, Freeman!” Dan threw his gun down and raked a hand over his face. “Did you really have to do that? This isn’t what I signed up for. You wanna blow shit up? You wanna steal shit? Fine. But you’re crossing a line here.”
Jerry came up on Dan like bulldozer, pressing his back into the trunk of a tree as he brought his rifle up across Dan’s throat. “Who the fuck asked you, Markowski?”
One of the women started sobbing. “My son needs his inhaler. Please.”
The little dog barked its head off and ran circles around the kid. Then it jumped up and began humping his leg.
Fred’s face paused somewhere between amused and annoyed. “What the fuck is this?”
Ted went back to groping the girl. She whimpered as he began tugging at the button on her shorts. That’s when Mr. Ponytail lost it. He reached in his pocket and came out with a pair of needle nose pliers, plunging them into the side of Ted’s neck. Ted still had his rifle in his other hand. He lifted it at the girl, but she pushed it up and away. A string of shots echoed out above them.
Dan was still pinned up against the tree, but Jerry’s attention had shifted. His mouth hung open in a mindless daze, and Dan was stunned that he didn’t have some expert advice to offer Ted on proper rape techniques or pointers on firing a rifle one-handed.
Dan felt the rifle begin to pull away from his throat, like Jerry’s senses were finally coming back to him. The second he found his breath, he unsheathed the tactical knife on his belt. Then he grabbed Jerry by the mangy hairs of his chinny chin chin and jerked his head back around to look him in the eye.
“How’s this for a pointer, fuck-head?” Dan sank the blade through the side of Jerry’s rib cage, giving it a good thrust up into his chest cavity.
Jerry opened his mouth to scream, but the only thing that came out was a grating hiss and string of phlegm.
Ted was still flailing around like a gazelle being taken down by a pair of lions, and Fred looked like he was ready to come unglued. He waved his rifle around in a wide circle, taking everyone in as he screeched, “I’ll kill every last one of you!”
The simple-minded ogre turned out not to be so simple-minded after all. He waited for Fred to rotate away from him and withdrew a .45 from his pocket. When Fred spun back his way again, he found the barrel pressed to the side of his head.
“My family’s been through worse than you, boy,” the man said, clicking off the safety.
Fred tried to keep his cool. He grinned nervously and let out a soft snort. “You sure you got what it takes to pull that trigger, old man?”
The man considered Fred’s words for a second. “I’d sure hate to add another murder under my name in God’s book, but I reckon he might consider this one a favor.”
Fred began to take aim at the boy in the foil hat, and everything boiled down to one agonizing second that seemed to stretch on into forever. The praying redhead screamed and threw herself over the boy. The teenage girl tucked her face into Mr. Ponytail’s neck. The kid having an asthma attack keeled over. Then Fred’s face exploded. His body stayed upright for a few seconds, and Dan wondered if he was going to just keep on coming, like the Terminator or Michael Myers.
When he finally dropped into an undignified heap on the ground, Dan started breathing again. Ted and Jerry had both gone still in puddles of their own blood. Now the attention was all on him, and as the ogre with the .45 turned in his direction, he got the itch to make a run for it.
“Do I need ta shoot ya too, son?” the man asked.
“I sure hope not,” Dan said, holding his hands up.
The ground began to shake beneath them, and everyone stumbled and crawled their way back into the camper. Everyone except Dan and the man with the gun.
“You got somewhere safe ta be?” he asked Dan.
“I got somewhere safe I’d like to be.” He thought of the little hidden lake near Black Fork Mountain.
The man pocketed the .45. “Then I guess you best git behind the wheel an’ lead the way. Cain’t stay here. Another storm’s a brewin’.”
He bent down to grab the scanner the old black man had dropped, and then bowed his head and put a hand to his heart to pay his respects. The cat in the backpack over his chest meowed. The man made a sour face, but he slid the bag loose and hefted it over his shoulder.
The wind had picked up. It rushed through the trees and rippled along the lake. A round of thunder rolled through the sky, sprouting goose bumps along Dan’s arms and neck.
The keys to the truck Fred had stolen were probably still in his pocket. He could dig them out and drive away on his own. He could go build his hut in the forest and live out his days in peace. Alone. It didn’t sound so bad.
Still. The memories he had weren’t just of nature trails and remote mountains. There had been people with him. There had been a family that cared about each other. Sure, his foster family hadn’t been crazy, backwoods rednecks. But he was hardly in a position to be picky right now.
Dan stepped over Fred’s dead body and hopped inside the driver’s seat of the RV. They had about a hundred miles to go.
Chapter 10
Sissy’s mouth looked like a kaleidoscope. She leaned against the RV and puked every color of the rainbow, and a few colors Junior was pretty sure he’d never seen before. They’d been camped out in the Ouachita Mountains for nearly a week now, without television or new comic books or jerky, so everything fascinated him.
“You shouldn’t eat so much if ya cain’t keep it down,” he said, taking a careful step away from Sissy. Dinner hadn’t smelled appealing to begin with, and it smelled even worse coming back up.
Normally, Junior would just eat jerky if he didn’t like what they were having for dinner, but he’d eaten his last stick two days ago. Even Ernie was depr
essed. He’d refused to play for a whole day, until Junior took an interest in Old Man Johnson’s orphaned cat.
Parker had taken to carrying Spock around in the backpack. With his foil hat, he looked like a miniature, white version of Old Man Johnson. Junior had started calling him Old Man Parker. He didn’t make too much fun though, because Parker was his only friend. Well, besides Ernie. They’d even started their own club, since they were the only two with fancy hats.
Junior wondered if the Martians would be able to find Old Man Johnson’s body. He liked to think that they would have special powers to make him right again. That maybe he was already aboard the mother ship, throwing back amoeba cocktails and tipping his shiny hat at little old Martian ladies.
He and Parker took turns swiping the scanner so they could take it out by the lake and listen for signals from the Martians. Junior figured if Old Man Johnson was going to send them a message, that’s how he’d do it.
Sissy had caught them out by the lake a few times, but only because she had been out there with Ricky. She’d threatened to eat all his jerky if he ratted her out, but now that the jerky was gone, he found his motivation faltering.
Lilly circled around to the side of the camper where Junior was watching Sissy puke up dinner. Her nose crinkled up, and she regarded Sissy with the same suspicion she always did after she’d disappeared with Ricky for a while and came back stinking like him.
“You smell like the ass-end of a skunk. What the hell have ya been doin’?”
Junior snorted. “Ricky. That’s what she’s been doin’.”
Sissy made to slap Junior in the back of the head, but Lilly cut her off. “Are you screwin’ that boy?” she snapped, just as Lester stepped out of the camper.
Sissy’s mouth dropped open, and before she could close it, a stream of vomit spewed out, right smack on Lilly’s apron.
“Oh, child.” Lilly closed her eyes and put her hands over her face. “Please, tell me I raised ya up better than this. I need ta be prayin’ harder.”
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