by Dana Fraser
The guard who had escorted him from the cell shoved a plate into his hands.
“Here, Gladiator.”
Banker Lee looked down upon the thickest, juiciest steak he had ever seen.
Perched atop his kill, he began to eat.
Chapter Four
Making it to her car, Hannah slowly rolled away from the SHWG compound. As soon as she was beyond the range of the outdoor cameras, she gunned the Honda’s engine, bringing it up to the speed limit. She didn’t push over that limit despite every muscle in her right leg screaming for permission to smash the accelerator pedal so hard metal touched metal.
With the threat of “downstairs” dogging her decisions, she didn’t dare risk giving police a reason to stop her. They could be in on it, too, whatever “it” was.
Digging in her console, she pulled out her phone and switched it on. The battery still had a charge despite sitting in her car for almost three days. She checked for voicemail even though there was no little red bubble above the phone icon that would indicate a recent call or message. She repeated the process for her email account.
Something from Thomas, her stepfather, popped up.
Stomach stretching up into her throat, she selected the message’s link.
Fetching message…
One eye on the empty road ahead of her, she kept the other on the phone and watched the wheel spin.
No connection.
Try again?
She slammed her palm against the wheel, the Honda jerking left.
“Don’t wreck, dummy,” she admonished quietly.
Dropping the phone into the cupholder, she tried to formulate a plan. Ellis was close to a hundred fifty miles away, the military academy located on a lake just south of Bonnie, Illinois. She couldn’t call and check on him, couldn’t make sure the staff was still showing up for work. She had to go there directly.
A glance at her dashboard revealed a remaining fuel range of two hundred fifty miles. That was enough to get to Bonnie then onto Evansville if she could take the direct route. Even if she couldn’t, she had tricks to squeeze out an extra fifty miles or so, more if she could find a vehicle to draft behind.
Looking at the road ahead of her, empty but for car after car pulled off to the side, all of them seemingly abandoned, she realized there would be no vehicles to draft behind.
The Honda screeched to a stop in the middle of the lane. Her hands gripped the wheel, squeezing and wringing at the hard plastic as she fought to push down the panic surging inside her.
Just what the hell had happened while she was working in a fugue state for the last few days?
Fists bounced against the driver side window. She jerked her body toward the center, head swiveling to stare out the window. A male was staring at her, eyes black, beard and mustache black and long, the eyebrows as untamed as the gaze was zealous. Pressing his palms against the glass, he licked the space between then reached for her door handle.
For one second, her heart stopped beating, but the locks had engaged automatically the moment she put the car in drive and pressed down on the accelerator.
Rearing back, the man’s hand reached for his belt buckle. He started to unfasten it. She watched, mortified, her brain stuck processing two separate thoughts.
He intended to try to break the glass, the buckle had a heavy metal edge. But that wasn’t the truly frightening part, even if it should have been. It was the belt’s design that froze her in fear. Rectangular in shape, the frame surrounded what looked like a flag, its colors green, red, white and black.
She didn’t know what country that was, but she had been around her stepfather long enough, with all the countries he had traveled to as a soldier and then as a businessman, to know those were the Pan-Arab colors used in Middle Eastern flags.
Sliding the belt off, he drew his arm back.
Hannah gunned the engine, rubber peeling off the tires as she sped away into the dark and toward her apartment building on the outskirts of St. Louis.
Traffic lights were out, just like every other light. She slowed at the intersections, but didn’t stop — not after Mr. Crazy back there.
She felt a little crazy herself, the same words spilling from her over and over again.
“Where are all the cars?”
Her little Honda was the only car moving. Everything else was stationary, the world around her so surreal that she wondered whether she was still on the oversized chair in the ladies’ room, Acid Emily’s sobbing disturbing her sleep enough to send her subconscious mind into a nightmare that kept spiraling increasingly out of control.
“Just get to the apartment,” she said, the sound of her voice offering a small measure of comfort.
She would grab her supplies, see if the landline was still working and, most importantly, grab her handgun.
A barking laugh escaped Hannah as she thought about the weapon. Up until three months ago, it had been okay to leave the pistol in a lockbox inside the car. Then Stephen Billows, the recently transferred Chief Security Officer, had issued a memo prohibiting storing weapons in any vehicle on company property. That meant anyone wanting to carry in their car had to use the public parking lot a few miles away and catch the shuttle back and forth.
Was the ban merely a coincidence?
The question popped like a bubble inside her head as she slowed to turn onto her street. Maybe two football fields away, she saw light — too much of it and its colors a dance of orange, yellow and the deepest of crimsons.
A building was on fire.
No, several buildings were on fire. People were dancing around the street in front of them, some waving flags.
Flags of green, red, white and black.
Avoiding the turn, she drove on a few blocks, hoping to circle around to the opposite end of the street. If the crowd dancing outside the burning building was far enough away from her apartment complex, she could run in and get the gun. Once she had the gun in hand, she might be able to grab more supplies for the road.
A figure all in black ran into the middle of the road, a bottle held high with a burning rag plugging its top.
Seriously, a Molotov cocktail?
Instinct taking command, Hannah slapped the transmission into reverse and floored the gas pedal right as the person tossed the bottle. The glass hit the front of the hood, shattering. For one heart stopping moment, flame licked at the paint, its strength fueled by the accelerant in the bottle and the rush of wind as the Honda sped backwards, then Hanna jerked the wheel a hard right, slammed the car back into drive and sped forward, the fire extinguished as she flew through a thirty-five mile an hour zone at seventy.
There was no going back to the apartment, no grabbing her gun. She needed to get out of the city and get to Ellis as soon as possible. Whatever was going on in St. Louis, it had to be going on all over the country.
Leaving her neighborhood, she followed an access road along the expressway.
Three hours later, the Honda stalling for the fifth time since the flames had erupted on top of the hood, Hannah coasted off to the side of the interstate. The Honda made it just far enough that it was concealed among the kind of tall bushes that the area cops liked to hide behind to catch speeders.
Rubbing at tired eyes, she angled her body to fit between the driver and passenger seats so she could reach the rear cargo area. Wrapping her hands around the toolbox, she dragged it up to the front seat. It would be dawn soon. She could work on the car then.
God willing, she would fix it.
Rolling out of her car and onto rough gravel, Hannah waited for the blood to return to her legs. She was thirty miles from the school, but it felt like hundreds of miles remained. It had taken two and a half days to cover the first hundred. After making a temporary fix the first night to a fire damaged hose, she had been forced to leave the freeway when gunfire salted the asphalt around her as she approached an overpass.
The smaller roads weren’t any safer. Farmer
s shot from their front porches, other people had put up roadblocks. She kept backtracking, going round in circles until she could find another road that would take her a little bit closer to Ellis.
And between all the backtracking, she had to stop and work on the car, exposing herself to danger each time.
Hauling herself into a standing position, she rounded the car, opened the passenger door and squatted after pushing her pants down in one fluid motion.
Fluids…
She snickered, if only to keep from breaking down into tears. Part of keeping the Honda running was feeding it more water, even pond water. She had felt the breeze of a bullet on the last fill-up.
“Just make it to Ellis,” she said, patting the car door as she stood and zipped up, the dressy silk pants and sensible leather flats she wore at the lab replaced by the jeans and tennis shoes she kept in the Honda as part of her GOOD gear.
Another snicker flicked past her lips. How was she supposed to “Get Out of Dodge” when the entire country was fucked?
“Get over it, Carter.”
Sliding into the driver seat once again, she pressed the start button, a short prayer looping through her head until the engine finally turned over. Shifting into drive, she eyed the fuel gauge obsessively. Avoiding the never-ending traps had slaughtered her remaining fuel range. If she didn’t have to take any detours, she would make it to the school. After that, she would be lucky to get another fifty miles. Whatever route she and Ellis traveled from there, they would come up at least forty miles short of home unless they could find more fuel.
On the southeast side of Bonnie, Illinois, Chuck Yardley sat in the driver seat of his big rig smoking a Virginia Slim, its filter torn off and flakes of tobacco littering his lap. They weren’t just Virginia Slims. They were Virginia Slims Menthol Super Slim 100s, exactly the kind of cigarettes some slutty seat cover would suck on at a bar, her garish red lipstick staining the end of the filter.
“Yep,” he opined, his voice carrying throughout the truck’s cabin. “Only sluts smoke Super Slims.”
He took another drag, his ears perking up at the sound of a vehicle off in the distance. Tossing the cigarette onto the ground, he checked his jeans for any blood smears that were wet enough to arouse suspicion in the passing vehicle. The t-shirt he had on was a stained black, the blood soaking the fabric indistinguishable from heavy sweat.
Hitting the ground, he looked down the road to see a sparkly blue toy car about a quarter mile away. Pressing one palm against the side of the truck as he leaned forward, he dug his fist into the flabby flesh of his chest.
The car kept coming, its speed not altering. He dipped his body a little lower, straining his muscles like he had to take an elephant sized dump. His face screwed up and he clutched a little harder at his chest.
The sparkle car slowed a fraction. He turned his head and forced his hungry gaze into something pained as he tried to make eye contact with the driver.
A woman, alone, pale blond hair, petite.
Oh, she would do quite nicely.
Indecision flashed across her face. Yardley winced, stumbled.
The car slowed a little more. He bit at the inside of his lip to kill the traitorous, leering grin tugging at the corners of his mouth.
Looking up again, he saw the car had slowed to a crawl. The woman’s gaze darted, bouncing off him, toward the cab and the way the front of the rig blocked half the roadway.
Of course it blocked half the roadway, he smirked on the inside. If it didn’t, Miss Lovely would see the car in the ditch just the other side of his rig. Then she wouldn’t stop.
Nope, nope, nope. She wouldn’t stop if she saw that and he very much wanted to meet the pretty blond, to have her entertain him.
The driver’s gaze returned to Yardley. Her eyes went wide, her mouth dropped open.
And then the bitch gunned it. The car careened in his direction, her delicate hands wrestling to regain control of the steering wheel.
“Fine,” he growled, reaching into the cab and pulling out his rifle as she sped by. “More than one way to get you to stop.”
He pulled the trigger. Her back windshield shattered into a million pieces. The car jerked a hard left, then straightened. The engine revved louder, as if she were trying to get more speed from the machine. Yardley pulled the trigger again, the taillight vaporized by the blast.
By the time he pulled the trigger a third time, the little blue Honda was out of range.
His mouth twisted into a pout. He didn’t think the driver would get far. The Honda sounded like something was wrong with it. He could give chase. But he didn’t have the diesel to waste.
Besides, he still had fresh meat in the back of the cabin.
Grinning, he climbed into the truck and pulled the door shut. Sliding into the spacious sleeping cabin area, he studied the woman on his bed. His smiled deepened. He hadn’t touched her face, not yet. But parts of her body had become a little…
His mind searched for the right word, the one that would best describe flesh swollen from multiple hard hits, the muscle and fat beneath the skin pulverized.
Lumpy?
Unbuckling his belt, he shook his head. “Lumpy” wasn’t quite right. The texture was different than that, squishy in parts, unyielding in others. Dropping his pants, he pushed the query to the back of his head and stared at the woman. She was gagged, bloody, her eyes thickly glazed with terror.
She was exactly how he liked ‘em.
Crawling onto the mattress, he fisted a handful of tangled hair and smiled.
“Hello darling. Did you miss me?”
Chapter Five
All but touching their noses together, two long white buses blocked the twisting country road. Rounding a corner, Tonya Anders hit the brakes and threw her arm out to brace her mother. Samson, still wearing his football helmet, collided with the back of the driver’s seat.
Tonya put the car in reverse, staring at the buses and trying to measure whether there was enough room to go around them on the dirt side. The vehicles were like the ones that churches and prisons piled people into, bodies overlapping like sardines.
There were bodies in these buses, even more packed together than those headed to church or prison. Alive and staring at the Anders, every last face was as white as the metal caging them.
“We need to get out of here,” Samson said.
“Too late,” their mother whispered, her gaze on the passenger side mirror.
Tonya checked the rear view mirror. Eight men wearing the dark blue uniforms of the Lindy Falls police department formed a loose line behind the Anders’ car. Two of them held shotguns, the rest had assault rifles of some kind.
“I’m sorry,” Genevieve said, her tight grip on the rifle slipping away, her hands folding into her lap as she dropped her head.
Tonya watched a fat tear slide down her mother’s cheek, saw its mate on the opposite side drop and splash on Genevieve’s hand.
“Just be ready to run,” Tonya whispered. “If we’re gonna die, it won’t be on our knees.”
The shotgun cop on the driver side approached, his body angled to make him a smaller target, the butt of the weapon jammed tight against his shoulder.
“Driver, get out of the car!” he screamed
Moving as slow as she possibly could, Tonya eased the door open then raised her hands, put one foot out then the other. As soon as she was upright, he screamed at her again.
“Get down on the ground!”
Her chin dropped. Dark eyes glared at the cop.
“Down on the ground!” he screeched, voice going hoarse as he lightly butted the barrel of his shotgun against the center of her forehead.
Still glaring, she sank to her knees then got on her belly.
“Backseat passenger, get out of the car!”
Tonya turned her head, not wanting to see her brother forced into the same position in which she found herself. Asphalt digging at her cheek and throu
gh the thin material of her t-shirt, she stared at the people on the bus. Most of the faces had turned away, just as she had refused to look at Samson. She scanned the watchers, her bowels slowly dissolving at the gazes hungry for violence. One man’s grin stretched from ear to ear.
Not everyone looking seemed to enjoy the spectacle. In the last two rows and one toward the front, the faces looking out were pained. One man even appeared to be crying. He pressed a palm against the window and she felt a moment’s solidarity even if she would likely be dead by the end of the day by virtue of her dark skin.
Genevieve was brought out last, the presence of the rifle in the front seat causing one of the cops to jerk her through the window.
Another officer popped the trunk open, a smirk growing on his clean shaven face as he inspected the contents. “Well, look what we got here! Rice, beans, sugar, flour, canned tuna…”
He tapped Genevieve’s head with the toe of his boot. “You buy all this on food stamps?”
Not waiting for an answer, he pulled one of the five-pound bags of rice from the trunk and waved it around. “Looks like we just got a tax refund, boys!”
The cop tossed the bag into the trunk then placed the tip of his assault rifle against Genevieve’s forehead. “Hoarding is a criminal offense. We’re confiscating all this.”
“Yes, sir,” Genevieve answered, voice flat and tired.
“Car, too.”
She parroted herself with another “Yes, sir.”
“Now stand up so I can see what else you criminals got on you,” he purred. “All of you, get up.”
Keeping her eyes on the passengers in the bus, Tonya stood. The cop standing next to her reached first for the necklace around her throat. It wasn’t really a necklace. It was a small compass on looped fishing wire, its backside containing a small compartment with a fishing hook.
Seeing nothing but cheap plastic, the cop laughed and let the compass fall back into her shirt.