CANNIBAL KINGDOM

by John L. Campbell

  He’d introduced himself as Billy.

  He’d informed her that her new name was Cunt.

  “…so I said, ‘That don’t prove nothing,’ and he said, ‘You’re fired,’ so of course I said, ‘Fuck you, Mr. Hermes,’ and he said, ‘Get out,’ and I said, ‘Make me,’ and he said ‘I’ll call the police,’ so I left cause I don’t need trouble with them again and they got it in for me anyway.”

  Billy pounded the horn with a fleshy hand. “Stupid grocery store. That job sucked anyway.” He looked at her and grinned. “They’re lucky the world died when it did. I was gonna go back and put their active-shooter training to the test, go all Columbine on them, starting with Mr. Hermes.”

  Spittle flew from his lips as he spoke, and then his eyes grew glassy and distant. Patricia thought he was probably imagining the carnage he would visit on a store full of grocery employees and shoppers. She shuddered. Then his eyes cleared and he corrected the truck as it started to drift across the center line.

  “But the world died.” He laughed. “Caught me off guard. The end of the world, I mean. I was out looking for work, but of course no one’s hiring ‘cause the economy is for shit ‘cause of that cock-knocker in the White House.” His lips sagged into a pout. “Didn’t have my guns with me cause the police took them away after I…that thing happened…and said I couldn’t have guns no more but of course I got a lot stashed here and there, even at the house and they’re hidden so good no one found them.” The pout turned into a smile. “Lucky I found these.” He patted the butt of one of the automatics shoved in his waistband, barely visible beneath the roll of his belly. Patricia wished it would go off and blow a hole through his crotch.

  “Nope, no work to be found, but don’t need it now.” He looked at her from the corner of his eye and gave her a sly grin. “Got a new mission now.”

  Patricia looked away and closed her eyes, the chain cold and tight against her slender throat. She wanted to cry but fought back the tears. Kylie’s image tried to surface but she forced it away. Thinking of her daughter now would cause her to lose it, and she didn’t think Billy would take to a crying woman very well. Or he might enjoy it, and that was a sobering thought.

  “I’m lucky I found you out there,” he said cheerfully, but then frowned and shook his head. “Nah, you’re lucky I found you. Otherwise you’d of gotten eaten by those things. Lucky, right?” When Patricia didn’t answer immediately Billy raised his voice. “Right, Cunt?” He reached over and gripped her arm at the break, squeezing.

  Patricia screamed and cried that yes, she was lucky Billy found her.

  He smiled and nodded. “Almost home. Got a place up in the woods outside of town. Real private. Can’t hear a damn thing from up there.”

  Patricia’s stomach twisted and she closed her eyes again. “What are you going to do?” she asked, her voice as steady as she could make it, but the words still coming out as a whisper.

  “Repopulate the earth, of course,” he said, then brayed laughter, spittle hitting the windshield. “Isn’t that what they do in all those end-of-the-world stories?” He laughed again, more like a bark, then gripped her left thigh and gave it a painful squeeze. “Course you’re too old and dried up to do any breeding. So we’ll just practice.”

  Patricia opened her eyes and looked out the side window, watching woods and pavement blur past. If the chain wasn’t holding her in place she would open the door and throw herself out, hoping for a broken neck and a quick end.

  He chuckled. “Nah, I hate kids. Besides, if it was about making babies I would have grabbed that young one you was with. Wasn’t she a hot little piece of candy?” Billy wiped the back of his hand across his lips, his eyes taking on that glassy, faraway look for a moment. “Yummy candy,” he whispered.

  Billy shook his head, grinning and loud once more. “But she looked like trouble, more than I could handle, blasting away with that pistol and all. You looked easier. You’re my first. Better to start slow, don’t you think? No more rules, so practice, practice!”

  Patricia didn’t want him to hurt her again, so she nodded and gave him a soft, “Yes.”

  His grin broadened, showing off crooked teeth stained by chewing tobacco, and gaps where others had been but were no longer. There were more gaps than teeth. His voice grew serious. “You’re the first woman I took, but you’re also my first woman. You understand me?”

  Patricia nodded, staring straight ahead at the road.

  “Hey Cunt,” he said quietly, and Patricia looked over to see that he had produced a big Buck knife from somewhere. He thumbed open the large blade with a click. “If you laugh at me ‘cause I never been with a woman, I’ll start cutting tender pieces off you.”

  Patricia whispered that she wouldn’t laugh.

  She’d always thought of herself as tough, and believed that if she was ever placed in a life-or-death situation she would be courageous and act. But something as seemingly simple as a broken arm had changed all that. Every move of the bone was excruciating, and Patricia learned that in real life, blinding pain trumped heroism. It was an unpleasant shock to find that she was no longer the woman she might have been, or thought she would be. She had heard that many middle-aged men who survived heart attacks, experiencing recovery weakness and hit by the realization of their own mortality, were struck a near-mortal blow to their masculinity and sense of self. Patricia thought she understood some of what they went through, now.

  Billy tucked the knife away and brightened. “Almost there. Need to fill up first, though.” A mile later they passed a green sign that read LIMESTONE, and shortly after that Billy pulled the jacked-up Ford into an empty Exxon station.

  When he heaved his bulk out of the driver’s seat he took both handguns with him; the Secret Service agent’s Sig-Saur and the dead trooper’s Glock 37. “You want anything from inside? A snack or a pop?”

  She shook her head.

  Billy shrugged. “You be good now while I’m gone.” Then he told her specifically which tender piece he would slice off first if she was not. He slammed the door and lumbered toward the front of the little gas mart.

  Now the tears did flow, and Patricia blinked at them. Her chest hitched with sobs as she thought about the family she would never see again.

  The sun was a ball of agony, threatening to make Kylie’s head explode. She was certain that would happen long before it crept above the windshield. With one hand on the wheel of the speeding police cruiser, she fumbled along the visor.

  Please…oh, please…

  Her hand closed on a pair of mirrored, aviator sunglasses, and she put them on with a sigh. That and keeping the visor lowered helped, but only a little. And there was nothing little about the pain in her head, centered on the egg-sized knot at the back of her skull and radiating outward. Her hair back there was stiff with dried blood, and the one time she’d dared to touch the knot she had screamed and almost passed out.

  Kylie was nauseated and wanted to close her eyes, just for a moment. But that was Death trying to seduce her and she fought against it, biting the inside of her cheek hard enough to draw blood. It kept her eyelids from drooping. A concussion for sure. In the rearview mirror was a character from a Hollywood slasher movie; hair tangled, lines of dried blood curling down her face and neck, chin scraped raw and eyes dazed and slightly drooping.

  Biting her cheek didn’t do much to ward off the double vision that made the road ahead swim in and out of focus. And it did nothing to push back the growing despair and pointlessness rising in her with each passing mile.

  She suddenly realized that this pursuit was nothing more than rage-fueled action without logic or focus, as if her quarry would conveniently keep driving along this road at a leisurely pace so she could catch up to him. Stupid. The man who took her mother could be anywhere by now, could have turned off on any one of a dozen side roads or a hundred dirt driveways. Now she wasn’t certain the truck had even gone in this direction.

  The pain made it hard to think, a
nd that was what she needed to do more than anything. Kylie hit the brakes and stopped the Charger in the middle of the road, not bothering to pull over. The reflection of flashing emergency lights on the hood reminded her that the rooftop light bar was still on (and that light made her squint, too) so she hunted across the dashboard panel until she found the proper, labeled switch and shut them off.

  Kylie sat and stared at the empty road for a while, listening to the rumbling engine and the drumbeat in her head. She noticed that the dead trooper’s front tooth was still embedded in the steering wheel, and she flicked it away in disgust.

  Think.

  Who was he? Where did he go? How long has it been?

  Her mom was hurt, and a violent stranger had taken her, someone who would… Kylie fought back a sob and wiped fiercely at the tears welling up in her eyes. That feeling of hopelessness was pressing down hard.

  No. This isn’t over. Think.

  Her eyes drifted across the patrol car’s dashboard, silent radio, passenger seat pouch of clipboards and pens, settling on the computer terminal and keyboard mounted at an angle between the front seats. The screen was black except for a blinking yellow cursor. She noticed that the glass was smudged with fingerprints. Touch screen.

  Think. Think. Yes, maybe…

  She tapped the screen and a menu appeared. One of the options was Dashcam, and she tapped that. More choices appeared. She tapped playback, and that brought up options such as date and time parameters, as well as the symbols for VCR controls common to TV remotes. She frowned. The dashboard clock said that it was ten o’clock, but what time had it been when she and her mother came upon the crash? Much earlier. The date was fuzzy in her head, too. Instead of typing in a range, she simply hit the rewind symbol, and a moment later the playback filled the screen, with the control symbols still visible at the bottom. The image was a windshield viewpoint of the stopped patrol car, the same view she could see when she looked up. Kylie tapped rewind again, and a 2x symbol appeared, the playback moving faster, passing back through when she’d stopped the car, and then when she’d been driving, the empty road unwinding before her as the car seemed to run backward. It made her a little woozy, but she forced herself to watch. Another tap to 3x really got it moving, and she saw the morning sun quickly dropping and fading back into the pre-dawn.

  There!

  A scramble of movement and light, people walking backward fast. Kylie hit the stop button and pressed the play arrow, revealing a close view of the trooper car sitting still, crunched against the side of the minivan, where a dead woman hung from a driver’s window. The night sky was only just starting to pale, and the scene was lit by the police car’s single headlight and flashing emergency bar. She saw a flashlight beam swinging about, and then was momentarily startled to see herself enter the frame, followed a moment later by her mom as they inspected the minivan. Then they both moved off camera.

  Weren’t these things supposed to have sound? She remembered audio when she’d watched police chases on YouTube, but this one was silent. Maybe the crash had damaged the microphone.

  A few minutes later, steadily brightening headlights approached from the right and Kylie clenched her teeth, the pain in her head replaced by a simmering fury. Here he comes. The jacked-up pickup truck appeared, lights blazing, and stopped at an angle close to the wreck. The silhouette of a big man stepped down to the road, but the glare of the truck’s spotlights was too great for her to make out any detail. She could see that he was carrying a tire iron, though. He moved off camera too, but not for long.

  Fast, white muzzle flashes came from the left. Then Kylie made a sound that was half sob, half scream as the big man reappeared, dragging her mother who was struggling against him. The man slapped her in the head three times, making Kylie shriek at the video and grip the sides of the monitor. The man shoved her mother into the cab of the truck and climbed in behind her. The screen went white as the truck backed up and turned, its spotlights shining right into the camera.

  This isn’t going to work. It’s too bright.

  Then the image returned to normal as the truck maneuvered around the wreck, showing its tail end to the patrol car.

  There!

  Kylie jabbed the pause button, freezing the playback on the rear of the abductor’s truck. The lone headlight of the police car illuminated a bumper with two stickers; one for the NRA and the other reading God Bless America. It also gave her a clear shot of an orange New York State license plate. She grabbed a pen and pad from the passenger seat pouch and scribbled it down.

  She tapped the stop symbol and the dashcam video was replaced by the menu screen. The monitor swam out of focus and she closed her eyes briefly, placing her palms on the seat for balance. When she opened them she looked down the list of options;

  VIN SEARCH

  ADDRESS/GPS

  DL SEARCH

  TAG SEARCH

  She tapped the last option, then typed in the digits and state of the plate she’d written down. The computer showed a series of moving bars, indicating that it was thinking. It occurred to Kylie that although there might not be a dispatcher at the other end of the silent radio, a database didn’t depend upon an operator.

  If it was still working.

  She waited for a NO SERVICE message of some type to appear.

  Instead, the image changed to a screen displaying the information linked to that plate; vehicle type and VIN number, pending criminal wants (none), registered address (a place in Limestone, New York) and registered owner.

  William Peebles.

  A message in white letters asked, DL LINK? She touched it, and a window appeared in the upper right corner with a digital image of Mr. William Peebles’ driver’s license. Six-foot-four, three hundred ten pounds. A blinking message next to the license read, FELONY CONVICTIONS, and beneath this was a list of weapons charges and sex offenses.

  Kylie looked at the round face of a man in his mid-twenties, trying to grow a beard and smirking with stained teeth. He stared back at the camera with small, piggish eyes.

  “Got you, fucker,” Kylie growled.

  On the tag registration screen another message asked, ADDRESS/GPS LINK? She tapped it, and after a moment the screen changed to a GPS format similar to the apps on phones. The position of her trooper car was a blue arrow, and the route she would need to take was highlighted in purple. Information at the bottom displayed distance and projected time of arrival.

  Bank Vault. Feather Mountain, Pennsylvania. Like her mother, memories of a security briefing suddenly came back to her. Kylie looked at the map as a whole and her eyes widened. She wasn’t just close to Limestone, but to the military facility where they were supposed to find refuge.

  We’re almost there!

  First a quick stop at the home of Mr. William Peebles.

  If that’s where he is, and not in a million other possible places.

  She shook her head (bad idea, that hurt) and looked out the windshield. She wouldn’t allow herself to think he was anywhere other than the address showing on the GPS. She couldn’t. Then she dropped the transmission into gear, squealing the tires as she accelerated. Kylie didn’t know what she would do about William Peebles when she caught up to him.

  But she knew he’d be sorry she had found him.

  -33-

  DARK HORSE

  Upstate New York – October 29

  It started with the sweats, then moved into nausea and shaking that made his entire body tremble. Before long, Marcus Handelman, AKA Captain America to the kids at Devon’s prep school, grew delirious. The maintenance truck they were driving began to weave across both lanes as the Secret Service agent fought to keep his focus, muttering nonsense and talking to people who weren’t there. Devon shouted at him, demanding he stop, and thankfully Marcus pulled over.

  They were still in New York (Devon had never really appreciated how big the state was) and the truck they’d taken from the Harrison School was alone on the road. Over the past few hours, that ha
dn’t always been the case. Always angling southwest and keeping to secondary roads, they had come out of the high forests and into rolling country, then shot through Utica. There were lots of infected there, and some that had run at and bounced off the truck. There were fires and traffic accidents too, some fleeing cars and trucks, and people walking along the side of the road that Marcus ignored. They’d passed through Cortland, Ithaca, Horseheads and Corning, drawing closer and closer to the Pennsylvania border. Around them now were rolling hills and harvested fields, a distant cluster of red and white farm buildings and little else. According to Devon’s paper road map they were nine inches away from their destination of Custer City, Pennsylvania. Ninety to a hundred miles.

  After stopping, Devon had convinced his bodyguard to switch to the passenger seat where he could recline a little and be more comfortable. Marcus agreed, saying, “Only…for a…few minutes…get going.” His speech was slurred. Now he slept there, face beaded with perspiration, occasionally muttering things Devon couldn’t make out, but sometimes screaming like he was in combat. “Cover! RPG left, two hundred meters! Willie’s hit!” The outbursts never lasted long, but they always startled the young man. Devon assumed he was reliving some kind of overseas action during his time with Special Operations Group, but he decided he would never bring it up with Marcus about them, assuming he lived. It felt private, and if Marcus wanted Devon to know the details of his life before the Secret Service, he would tell him. Probably he would not, or wasn’t allowed to.

  The fifteen-year-old sat behind the wheel, looking at the agent, wondering if he was going to have to kill Marcus Handelman. He gripped the Sig-Saur he’d taken from the agent’s shoulder holster – Marcus hadn’t noticed – and now the pistol rested in his lap, the muzzle pointed at the sleeping man.