“You’re kidding me,” I scowl through gritted teeth.
“You don’t like them,” she teases, bouncing just a little to provoke me.
“You think that will distract them so you can get close?”
“They’re distracting you aren’t they?” she remarks smugly, stepping past me and peeking around the edge of the garage.
“Point taken, so what’s your plan?”
“I’ll go around and approach from the road. You stay here and watch. I’ll signal you how many. When you’re clear, slip up to the back of the place,” she explains. “You know me. I shoot first and apologize later. When you hear the first shot I’ll expect you to bust in with the street howitzer and do the rest.”
I think this over and consider that we may be biting off more than we can chew. Maybe we should just go. I realize the next stop for this crew is down the street at Jessica’s place, but Izzy might be right. You can’t save them all.
“Maybe this isn’t a good idea,” I stutter. “We should go.”
“You can’t get a girl all dressed up for a party and then tell her no,” she grins, looking a bit crazy. “This was your idea, besides my bra’s already off.”
With that, she pushes off into the underbrush to circle to the road. Her blood thirsty behavior is worrisome, but she did say she was para-military. What’s that mean anyway? Clearly there is some sort of training here. I wait, pensive, for her to appear out front. After ten minutes she strolls into the driveway and calls out innocently. The slick looking guy we observed earlier steps out the side door holding a large handgun. It dangles at his waist, but it gives me a chill as he wasn’t armed before.
A conversation I can’t hear takes place and it’s obvious her plan is a good one. His body language relaxes and from here it doesn’t look like he’s making much eye contact. Two more guys step out, making me wonder how many. I don’t have to wait long as she taps her foot three times, then pauses and repeats. So it’s just the three then.
Izzy greets the others with the same flirty smile. The slick looking guy, who I assume is in charge, turns and chats with the other two guys momentarily. They aren’t as well dressed, but do look showered and in clean clothes. They retreat into the house and Slick Guy continues what I assume is a verbal bum rush on my girl. If he can’t get her to join him with words, no doubt he plans to take her by force.
He gets close to her and I worry about him discovering her gun. She drapes an arm over his shoulder, but crooks her index finger at me and beckons me from my hiding spot. While she flirts, I slip out from behind the garage up to the rear of the house. I peek around the corner a mere five yards from her. With her hand still over his shoulder she points at the side door. I can hear them now and while his proximity to her makes me mad with jealousy, given she is basically a wet tee shirt contestant, it’s soothing to know he’s about to be very dead. How blood thirsty am I now?
“You have to come with us,” he exhorts her in a European accent that feels like Italian. “We have plenty of food and supplies. We have a nice selection of cigarettes. Do you smoke?”
“Only in bed,” she remarks, a comment forcing me to struggle to stifle a laugh.
“You’re quite a nice surprise. Why don’t you come on in?”
“By the looks of those Italian loafers you’re not a country boy,” she observes. “This can’t be your house. Where are the people that live here? I wouldn’t want to trespass?”
“No idea,” he lies. “Haven’t seen them?”
“I have,” she boasts, twitching her nose. “I think they committed suicide in the garage.”
Slick Guy just stands there looking confused. She smiles, waiting for him to speak with her hands on her hips. After nearly a minute he seems to compose himself, but oddly he does not sense that she’s messing with him. Great tits seem to have rendered him defenseless.
“You don’t say,” he stammers. “You were in the garage?”
“Yup,” she purrs, putting a hand on his hip and leaning in close.
She whispers something to him and he lowers his head to listen. Izzy must have pulled her gun because when it goes off the back of his shirt explodes, a crimson stain forming around a blast hole. She must have pressed the gun to his chest before she fired. He struggles, trying to get his gun arm up, but Izzy puts the barrel of the gun on his forehead and pushes. In an absurd visual he teeters, then falls on his back. By the time he hits the ground he’s too weak to lift his arm. Being shot in the chest can do that to a guy. Feeling the time is right, I step around the corner, only ten feet from the door. When the first guy comes rushing out I raise the gun to my shoulder and let fly. He is blown off his feet, hit in the side by a slug round.
Izzy fires a half dozen shots into the screen door before anyone else shows themselves. After a brief pause a third man falls forward, ripping through the now tattered screen. He hits the gravel hard, face first. I’m looking to Izzy for direction when more gunshots ring out. A fourth man has fired through a side window, missing Izzy, but exploding a side window on the station wagon. She hits the ground, scurrying around the other side of the vehicle on all fours. Crouching, I move under the window, stepping on shards of broken glass under it.
Two more shots hit the station-wagon, puckering the fender. Putting the gun over my head I point the shotgun in the window and fire blindly. One more shot from inside the house breaks another widow in the station-wagon. When there isn’t a follow up shot I rise up, putting the barrel straight in the window. There is an older man holding a handgun staring back at me. He freezes, clearly distressed from the last cannon shot I tossed in. I can see now that the shot missed him, striking the refrigerator behind him. Before he can fire, I put a round in the middle of his chest sending him flying into the fridge. He slides down, leaving a red smear on the textured white metal.
“Clear, but there might be more inside,” I shout.
“No, that’s it,” she huffs, coming around to my side of the car. “He said four.”
“Your taped your foot three times.”
“Yeah, he said fourth guy was a cripple. I didn’t think he would be armed.”
Cold sweat rolls down my arms and I tremble just a bit. I fired on cut outs of bad guys in the Army, but never on a living person prior to today. I was after all a purchasing clerk. A dark pall falls over my mood, but is lifted when Izzy wraps her arms around me from the side and kisses my cheek.
“Nice shooting Army,” she whispers. Let’s see what sort of goodies they got then drive the car back. At least the girls will have transportation for now.”
“I don’t think so,” I sigh, pointing at the back fender, under which gas is trickling out. “Gas tank’s ruptured.”
“Just my luck,” she pouts. “That’s sucks, we can’t take much back without the car.”
“Better put your bra back on,” I remark, but receive an annoyed glance.
“Suggested no man ever,” she points out after a pause.
On that point I have to agree with her. For the record she did not.
…
It’s nearly seven when we return. A very sad conversation takes place between Izzy and the ladies of the house. They sit around the kitchen table in misery until well after eight. A round of tea signals the end of the mourning period for now. We decide to stay the night rather than hike back to the car in near darkness. I am concerned the car won’t be there, but she points out we’d be in it by now if I wasn’t trying to save the world. She right on this, giving me the strength to promise we are done doing good deeds. Sorry humanity you’re on your own. We sleep off and on, the sound of the widows muffled tears echoing through the halls into the wee hours.
Izzy’s phone alarm goes off at 7 AM and she pushes me out of the bed with two cold feet in the back. She’s set on an early start this day. I’m ready as well, the thought of spending the day with two brand new widows sounds unbearable. Jessica and Donna beg us to stay, but are very understanding when we abandon them. We did buy th
em time when we eliminated the roving gang down the street, but their long term prognosis is poor. They are as defenseless as the kids staring at their smart phones in Pensacola.
In a parting shot, Izzy tells them to invite any marauders in and then poison their tea or coffee. Donna suggests this is the plot of a movie titled Arsenic and Old Lace with Cary Grant, but Izzy claims she hasn’t seen it. Being she’s supposedly from the future I am not surprised. It does leave the widows in good spirits as we exit stage right.
It’s hot and sweat pours all the way back to the highway. When we get to the fence, Izzy puts out her arm to stop me. Pointing silently in the direction of the car I understand her meaning. A group of maybe a dozen people mill about our vehicle and the two it’s bunched in with. They are a random group, some in tattered business attire while others wear shorts and tee shirts. The passenger side car door is open, as well as the trunk. We confer in whispers about the pros and cons of moving them away at gun point. I’d prefer to wait, but as always Izzy is impatient to keep moving.
Leaving our backpacks behind for now, we hop the fence and start to the car. They see us right off and wave, beckoning us forward. There are four women and six or seven men. It’s hard to tell as at least one person is sitting in the passenger side of our car. We pull up ten yards short of them and Izzy leans the shotgun over her shoulder so they see it clearly.
“I’m gonna need you to step away from my car,” she barks, nodding her head at them.
“Which one?” a guy in a wrinkled and soiled suit jacket asks, glancing at the two newer cars pinned to the driver’s side of ours.
“Doesn’t matter,” she demands, just back up twenty yards and stay out my way. “Not looking to hurt anyone.”
“They syphoned all the gas out of them last night,” a thirty-something gal in yoga pants and a sweatshirt calls out. “Then a bunch of illiterate Duck Dynasty rejects punched holes in the gas tanks.”
We share an unhappy stare, and then Izzy starts toward them. I follow, but get the scent of gas almost immediately. Stepping up on the pavement ten yards from our car I see the concrete is damp under all three. I put out a hand and take Izzy’s elbow, stopping her.
“There’s gas all over the road,” I whisper in her ear.
“We need to check the car,” she complains, jerking her arm away. “Our car might not have been molested.”
“The trunks up,” I whisper. “Fair odds they did ours as well.”
“Where did you guys come from?” a well-dressed older woman calls out. “Is there anywhere to get some water and a meal around here?”
“Just walking down the highway like you,” I shout. “We haven’t seen anything.”
“Let’s follow them,” someone suggests. “They don’t look like they’re starving.”
Scanning the group, they all share shallow cheeks and ashen faces. Hunger and dehydration has taken a toll on every one of them. I’m struggling with my promise not to help anyone when Izzy elbows me and nods her head down the road. Three vehicles are headed our way. Pulling out the spy glasses I can make out two trucks and a tiny convertible, possibly an MG. I let her look and then she starts backing up. The people around the car see the convoy, putting hands to their foreheads to peer into the morning sun. Their attention off us for the moment, we walk away, staying on the road.
“What now?” I groan, having had a feeling leaving the car was a bad idea.
“Wait and see what the convoy does.”
We stop on the side of an SUV and wait. The group blocks the road waving and shouting. When the caravan gets to them it slows. Izzy watches with the binoculars while I wait. After a few minutes she hands them to me, wrinkling her nose. Two men from the convoy have stepped out waving rifles. Another guy is patting down the members of the group looking for anything they can use. A fourth man is pulling on the arm of the girl wearing the yoga pants, dragging her into one of the trucks. She’s fair skinned with shoulder length reddish hair. She’s forcefully declining the invitation, but they clearly want to take her along. It’s like a scene from a John Norman book.
“I really am surprised how fast this went from bad to worse,” Izzy mumbles. “It’s like these people were waiting for a chance to go medieval on each other.”
“When I was a kid my parents took me to Lion Country Safari,” I remark, still watching through the binoculars. “You stay in your car and drive through the preserve. Along the way you get to see lions, tigers, antelopes, giraffes and elephants. They all walk right past the car window.”
“Is there a point to this gripping childhood tale?”
“The day I was there, a lion ate a gazelle on the hood of our car,” I share. “He wasn’t waiting for a chance to go medieval.”
“No, I suppose not. He was just doing what came naturally.”
“Mankind is apparently much closer to medieval than I previously believed,” I sigh.
Two of the men who were sitting on our car go to the aide of Yoga Pants as she’s dragged away. One receives the butt of a rifle in the face, but the second tackles the assailant, freeing the girl for now. I can’t tell who’s who as there is general mayhem for a moment, then the truck starts moving. Several gunshots are fired, causing the innocent walkers to scatter and hide behind the Mercury.
“Hell breaking loose?”
“Yup,” I reply, dropping the glasses and shrugging.
The truck begins moving in our direction, followed by the convertible. We duck behind the green SUV, crouched by the front tire. There is a sudden whoosh of air as a fireball erupts down the road over our car and the two next to it. Shrill screams burst forth as I peer down the side of the SUV. I see the first truck pass and head past us to the East. Two men can be seen waving and cheering the fire.
“They lit the gas?” Izzy whispers.
“Seems so.”
“Glad you stopped me from going over there,” she elbows me.
“I have a good idea every once in a while.”
We watch as the rest of the convoy passes by our position. As the last truck moves away I can see Yoga Pants being held by two men in the bed of the last truck. She’s kicking and yelling in vain, but to no avail. This is going from bad to worse very quickly. I wonder what comes after worse.
A brief discussion over whether to hike back to the car and see what we can salvage takes place. A quick check in the binoculars reveals at least one person still moving and two others badly burnt trying to crawl away from the fire.
“Back to Donna’s?” we utter simultaneously.
Finding ourselves in agreement, we head to the fence to gather our backpacks. There isn’t any chit-chat, both clearly thinking about our situation. The car is gone so what do we do now?
The ladies are ecstatic we have returned and fain sadness about our plight. In honor of our presence they whip up a batch of pancakes. I’m half expecting bacon or sausage, but then recall it would have to be freshly made. If you’re not living on a dairy farm you’re not getting any cream in your morning coffee Izzy had remarked. The thought of cities full of starving people nearly ruins my appetite. Luckily for me the pancakes are amazing, leaving me temporarily happy. After dinner we take a bottle of Ed’s scotch out to the porch and sit on the steps. Donna brings us two very small glasses; the type you would drink your morning orange juice from. Izzy and I toast and try to decide on our next move.
“We could stay here awhile,” I suggest, still worried about going home and dealing with Lance.
“You know we can’t,” she fires back then wrinkles her nose. “Plus it’s a single bed.”
“Funny,” I mutter, not minding the closeness myself. “Then you’re thinking the same thing I am.”
“Plug the tank in the Chevy and get back to the highway.”
I nod agreement and we drink. I was actually thinking about the bed, but decide to keep it to myself. She finishes first and I refill two fingers in each glass.
“And if Donna and Jessica want to come with us?” I toss
out.
“They won’t.”
“Why’s that?”
“First off they feel safer here. They aren’t looking to escape; they just want things to get better on their own.”
“And the second reason?”
“I’m not telling them we have another car,” she reveals, tipping up her glass and scowling as she swallows. I’m damn sure they don’t want to hike into the unknown.”
“A lie of omission then?”
“I’m done trying to save the world,” she vows, holding out her glass for a refill. “I thought you were too.”
I toss back my drink and ponder my situation. She’s almost certainly right on this. Given what I have seen the past week there is no good place to settle down and wait for things to get better. That being the case, then making a run for home seems prudent. Not stopping to babysit anyone else would appear to be a necessary evil if we want to make that happen. I nod, putting my finger in her empty glass, and then gathering up mine in the same fashion. With the glasses dangling off two fingers, I take her hand and pull her to her feet.
“First thing tomorrow we plug the tank and bail,” I whisper so as not to be overheard.
She plucks up the bottle and follows me inside, one arm draped across my waist. In the bedroom hallway I see that Catholic values have lost out to hope and need. Jessica has vacated the second large bedroom, giving it to us. Leaving the bottle and glasses on the kitchen table we head for bed. I spend an hour hovering just shy of true sleep trying to think of a way to plug a gas tank.
DAY SEVEN
The three bodies litter the driveway just as we abandoned them. The smell is horrible, but not as bad as inside the garage. When I have to siphon gas out of the cars in the garage, the odor from Bill and Ed is overwhelming. Without dwelling on the matter, one word; flies.
The bullet hole turns out to be small and only half way down the tank. We jack the rusty black car up on the passenger side so the gas flows to the other end of the tank and I thread a machine bolt into the hole. I wrap it with white lock tape first to keep it water tight and when we drop the car off the jack nothing leaks. The location of the keys is a mystery. After shuffling through the corpses’ pockets, Izzy has a thought and flips down the sun visor and the keys fall on the seat. A Hollywood stereotype of the first degree. Sometimes truth imitates art.
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