“Not with us,” I say regretfully. “We have plenty back at the house, though.”
“House?”
“The people who own this farm have a really nice house with all kinds of good food. I’m sure they’d feed you when they find out what Trey’s been doing.”
“So they don’t know?”
“Nobody does. I guess he’s good at hiding what kind of person he really is. They just think he’s an angry douche, not violent or sadistic.”
“How far is this house?”
“Too far for you guys to make it without any winter gear.”
Her eyes widen a bit. “Winter gear?”
I feel my stomach drop. “How long have you been down here?”
“It was like seventy degrees out when Alyssa and I climbed a fence looking for a place to stay and he found us. He said he had a safe place with an older woman that would take care of us. We believed him, and he brought us down here. Before we knew what was happening, he had a gun and was telling us to strip down to our underwear. It’s really winter?”
“Not for too long,” I say. “But the snow is definitely here to stay now. And you guys probably don’t have boots, hats, gloves, or winter coats. If you stay here, we can come back for you with one of our vehicles and bring you back to the house. You’ll be safe from danger while we deal with Trey.”
“But what if he comes back?” Her eyes widen again and her hands begin to shake. “He’ll kill us for sure. He took our weapons from us. I don’t know where he put them. You can’t leave us here alone; Alyssa can’t even stand!”
A quick glance over my shoulder reveals that she’s right. Alyssa is slumped onto her side now that she’s free of her collar and chains, and she’s curled into a tiny ball. Her eyes are closed and she’s shivering, probably because this room is freezing cold and she doesn’t have anything to wear besides her underwear.
“He probably still has your clothes and stuff hidden away in here somewhere. I’m sorry, but we have to stop him before he hurts someone else. We have young girls at the house waiting for the others in our group to return. If Trey gets there before they do, there’s no telling what he might do. But we’ll come back for you, I promise.”
She sighs. “I guess we have no choice other than to stay here. Just hurry, and don’t forget us. We can’t stay down here much longer.”
Reese grabs Alyssa and helps her to her feet. She sways unsteadily, and he doesn’t even bother trying to help her walk. He just scoops her up and carries her out the door to one of the bunk beds in the living quarters, tucking her in under the blankets so she has a chance to warm up. Molly doesn’t need to be carried, but I help her by giving her my shoulder to lean against. Reese and I watch while she climbs up onto the top bunk and makes a cocoon of blankets around herself.
“Is there any food left in here?” I ask.
Reese heads for the nearest cupboard and winces. “Nothing healthy, which they need after being trapped in here for so long. There’s a bag of probably long stale chips and some Twinkies.”
“Of course,” I say quietly. “It’ll have to do for now. Mary can feed them a good dinner when we get them back to the house. For now, we can’t afford to spend any more time here, as awful as that sounds. We have to catch up with Trey before he hurts anyone else. There’s a chance he’s going back to the house.”
“I’m sure he will,” Reese says, bringing food over to Molly and Alyssa. “He needs supplies and a vehicle if he has any hope of actually getting out of here alive, and both of those things are waiting for him at the house. Along with a couple of girls he might be able to charm into tagging along.” He looks at Molly and Alyssa, who are passing the bag of chips back and forth between bunks, eating so fast they’re going to make themselves sick for sure. “We’ll be back as soon as we can. Don’t leave until then. Exposure will kill you as fast as a zombie.”
Molly nods. “We’ll stay put.”
Reese finally turns to me. “Let’s get back to the house. Hopefully Ryder or Aaron are back already. They can keep an eye on Trey until we can expose him as the monster he is.”
I nod. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Reese and I make decent time back to the house considering we’re fighting snow, wind, and the dark along the way. My flashlight begins to flicker and die, making it harder to see where we’re going with the dim light. But we finally make it back to the house, and I can already tell that Ryder isn’t back yet, because he’s not waiting just inside the door for me and his brother to show up.
“Looks like we’re probably the first ones back,” I say quietly.
“No,” Reese says, shining his light at our feet, revealing footprints buried deep in the snow. “Trey beat us back here. He’s probably already inside with Daisy.”
“What are we going to do?”
He pulls me back towards the fence, away from the front door and kitchen windows. “We don’t have a lot of options. We either sit here and wait for the others to come back and risk Trey hurting the girls while they’re alone with him, or we rush in their and take him down, risking the girls or us getting hurt in the process.”
“Which plan do you like better?” I ask.
“Neither,” he admits, shaking his head. “But I think it’d be best to just sit back for a minute and watch what happens. We’d have heard any gunshots, and I don’t hear any screaming or crying. He might be trying to sweet talk his way out of this still. If we rush in their blindly, we might set him off and make him panic. And nothing’s more dangerous than a cornered animal.”
“I know. But I’m not sure how long I can just sit here knowing he’s inside with Daisy, Hannah, and Mary.”
“They’re not alone though. Aaron should be inside with them, unless he went back out alone to do some more searching. I wish we knew for sure if he was there or not. If he is, it’d be three against one, and we could get the drop on him easily. You know Aaron would trust our judgment and go along with us even if he didn’t understand why we were holding Trey at gunpoint.”
“Right, but if he’s not in there, we just put the girls in danger.” I chew my lip, wondering what our best course of action is. I wish Ryder was here with us. He always knows what to do in situations like this. Reese is trying his best but I’m no help to him or the situation. Even Anders would be good to have with us right now; he might be able to talk Trey down with what little psychiatry training he’s had.
The front door opens, and Trey marches out, illuminated by the porch light Evan agreed to run while we’re all out searching. There’s a large duffel bag in his hands and the keys to our jeep in the other. Reese bristles next to me, and we leave the safety of the fence, heading straight for the house. Reese has murder in his eyes, but we stop short when Daisy rushes out of the house behind him. “Trey, wait!”
He stops and faces her. “Daisy, I know they’re your friends and you’re used to being with them, but they don’t appreciate you like I would. I’m leaving this place, and I want you to come with me. We could find a place together and make a life for ourselves. I could take care of you.” His voice is false and sickeningly sweet, and I can’t listen to it anymore or I’m going to be seeing red and I’ll be tempted to do something stupid.
Reese and I move fast, bounding into the driveway, cutting him off from our jeep. But we’re not fast enough. By the time we’re in place, Daisy has already moved between us and Trey, putting her back to us in the worst possible place she can be. Our weapons come up, but we don’t have a clear shot with Daisy in the way and with no idea what’s going on. She hears us coming up the driveway and turns, staring at us. She takes a step back towards Trey.
His eyes narrow, but I can see the panic behind the anger. He’s searching for a way out of this as easily as possible.
“Daisy, come with us.” My voice is soft but urgent and clearly a demand.
“What? Why? What’s going on?”
“Daisy, please. Just come with us.” I hold my h
and out to her while Reese keeps his weapon up, but she just stares at it, her eyes wide and confused.
“Daisy!” Reese shouts, startling her. “Get away from him!”
I see the second Trey makes his decision. He drops the duffel bag at his feet and wraps an arm around her waist, pulling her hard against his chest. His other hand produces a gun from the pocket of his coat and he presses it hard against the side of her head. Her entire body tenses and I think she finally realizes that something is very wrong.
“Trey?” Her voice is shaky, but she’s trying to hold herself together and not freak out. “What are you doing?”
“Don’t talk,” he orders, dragging them back a step closer to the house.
I see Mary and Hannah poke their heads into the nearby window, trying to see what’s going on. Probably because of Reese’s raised voice. “Daisy, is Aaron inside?” Reese asks, his eyes locking on Trey’s.
“No.”
“Trey, this doesn’t have to get any uglier than it already has.”
He snorts, his grip on Daisy tightening. “You must think I’m stupid, huh? I know how this ends, and so do you. It ends with a bullet in my head and you assholes just moving on with your lives like nothing happened.”
“That’s not true,” Reese says, trying to calm him down. “Nobody here is getting a bullet to the head. We’re not barbarians; we can all settle this without violence.”
“And how are you gonna do that?” Trey asks, his face twisting into a sneer. “There ain’t no prisons for you to send me to. No police to keep me in line or punish me. All you’ve got is that weapon in your hand, and we both know it. You’ve gotta punish me somehow, and that’s the way to go.”
Reese doesn’t say anything, and a smile slowly spreads across Trey’s face. “I’m right. You can’t tell me we can settle things without violence when you know you came back here just to kill me for what I did to those two girls.”
Daisy’s eyes go wide. “What are you talking about? Trey?”
He looks down at her and his smile grows. “I found two girls on the farm and offered them a safe place to stay. I never said they would be able to leave, so that’s on them.” He laughs. “They were a nice distraction after a long hard day of doing work on this goddamn farm. A good way to let off some steam every once in awhile.”
She flinches, her face twisting into a grimace. “You’re disgusting.”
“Maybe,” he admits. “But can you blame me? A man needs some kind of distraction or he’d go crazy. Having those two girls was like my own little slice of heaven, a way to keep me sane and focused. I don’t know what I would have done without them.”
“How can you be so okay with hurting someone? It’s awful!” Daisy tries to pull away from him but he viciously yanks her back, making her cry out in pain. “You’re hurting me!”
“I don’t wanna hurt you,” he says, lowering his voice. “But I will if I have to. See, fear of pain is one of the best ways to get people to do what you want. And right now, I want you to shut up.” She goes silent, and he turns his gaze back to us. “So, what happens now?” he asks, lifting an eyebrow at Reese. “If you’re smart like I think you are, you’ll put your weapons down and let the two of us take off in that jeep of yours. It should have plenty of supplies to get me far away from this place.”
“Not happening,” Reese says tightly, his knuckles turning white as he clenches his weapon. “I have no guarantees that you won’t kill Daisy the second we let you go, when she’s no longer useful to you.”
“Why would I kill her?” Trey asks, eyes going wide, as if the thought truly hadn’t crossed his mind yet. But I see through it, and so does Reese. “I don’t wanna kill anyone I don’t have to. Waste of bullets. But she’s much more useful to me alive than dead. I give you my word.”
“Your word doesn’t mean shit, unfortunately. I know men just like you, Trey. You can feign feelings, even of remorse and love, but you don’t mean them and you never will. It’s all just an elaborate act, a way to get what you want. You can pretend that you have even a shred of honor, but that doesn’t make it true. You’re completely devoid of anything that makes someone human. You’re nothing more than a robot.”
“You’re wrong,” Daisy says, speaking up. We all look at her, surprised at how calm she sounds. Her voice is quiet, but she’s strong and sure of her words.
“What?” Trey asks.
“Evil makes someone human. Humans have as many bad qualities as good, and evil is just one of them. Anger, hatred, jealousy, greed…all things that make us human. Just because he doesn’t have a single redeeming quality doesn’t mean he isn’t human. You can’t forget that.” She looks at me, tears sliding down her cheeks. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you guys.” Her voice is so soft I can barely hear her, but I feel the weight behind her words, feeling so much like a goodbye. “I should have trusted you like you trusted me. I won’t let him use me to put any of you in danger…”
“Daisy—” I start.
She leans forward and sinks her teeth into Trey’s hand around her throat, drawing blood in one vicious snake-like movement. Trey flinches and the gun goes off with a loud bang. The bullet tears easily through Daisy’s head, exploding out the other side in a violent shower of blood and brain matter, splattering the side of the house and the porch. Trey drops her in shock, and she slumps lifelessly to the porch, arms splayed out like a beautiful broken doll that’s been discarded by a careless child.
It all happens in the blink of an eye. One second Daisy is alive and telling us goodbye, and the next she’s laying on the ground half down the steps, eyes wide open and blonde hair covering her face like a silk curtain. Reese wastes no time, taking the shot now that Trey no longer has a shield, all thanks to Daisy’s sacrifice. I don’t even see where Trey was shot or where he falls. I just scream as I drop to my knees—at Trey, at fate, at nothing in particular. I scream until there’s nothing left in me but emptiness.
The front door opens and Hannah struggles to run to Daisy, but Mary holds her back. Hannah kicks and screams, her eyes wide in horror as she stares at Daisy.
“Daisy?” Aaron’s voice carries up the driveway as he runs to the house. His breathing is hard and fast as he stops beside us, his face crumpling as he takes in the scene around him. He stares at the blood dripping down the steps, at her lifeless features, before dropping his weapon to the ground and shaking his head back and forth. “No, no, no. Not her. Please, no.”
I hear others running toward the house, but I can’t bring myself to look to see who it is. It can be a horde of zombies for all I care right now. I stare down at the ground, looking at the fresh snow and trying to ignore the cold feeling as it soaks into my jeans, anything to avoid having to see Daisy’s lifeless body. I wish I could just close myself off and not see, feel, or hear anything. Because right now, all I hear in this moment is crying. Aaron, Madison, Reese, and myself are all in tears or sobbing quietly, but I hear every bit of it and I wish I couldn’t.
Footsteps stop beside me, and I know before he even speaks that it’s Ryder. His quiet presence is the most reassuring and calming thing to me, but right now it doesn’t do much to help. I expect him to say anything, to ask if I’m okay, but he doesn’t. He just lowers himself to the ground and takes a seat in the snow beside me, taking my hand in one of his larger ones, offering me a comforting squeeze. We sit together in silence, neither of us moving.
Eventually Hannah stops screaming, and Mary finally lets go of her. She collapses to the ground and holds her face in her hands, her sobs racking her tiny body with so much force I’m afraid she’ll make herself sick. It’s odd, but even though I’ve felt no emotional connection to her, I have the strangest feeling to go over and offer my comfort, even though I’m in need of comfort, too. Madison beats me there before I can even consider leaving my own state of grief, putting her arms around the younger girl and offering her a shoulder to cry into.
“I’m so sorry things ended this way. I feel responsible
for this.”
I look up and see Anders through tear-filled eyes. His eyes are locked on Daisy, not on Trey as I might have thought. The grief on his face is unmistakable as he stares at her, and I feel a sudden rush of endearment for him.
“It’s not your fault,” Ryder says. “You couldn’t have known what he was capable of.” He looks down at me, tenderly smoothing hair away from my face, tucking it back behind my ear and pinning it with my hat. “What happened?”
I can’t answer him. I can’t relive it all so soon. Even if I wanted to speak, my throat constricts at just the thought of it.
“Trey tried to use Daisy as a shield. He wanted us to let him take her and the jeep and our supplies. He gave me his word that he wouldn’t hurt her, but I wasn’t stupid. He tried to make it seem like he thought she’d be more useful alive than dead, but I had no doubt he’d kill her and dump her the first chance he got. Daisy didn’t take too kindly to that. She told us she was sorry for not believing us sooner, and then she bit him. It was a reflex—the gun went off and she was gone, and he was wide open.”
“How did everything lead up to this?” Anders asks. “Nothing about him has ever led me to believe that he was dangerous like this.”
“That’s because you were only seeing what he wanted you to see,” I croak. Thinking about Trey’s true character gives me the strength to speak when I remember Molly and Alyssa. “He wanted you to think he wasn’t a monster so you’d take care of him, but his true self was hidden away in a survival bunker hidden on the neighbor’s property. He had two girls chained up down there to torture and abuse.” I look at Ryder, my eyes going wide. “We have to go back for them now! Reese and I promised we wouldn’t forget them when we were done with Trey.”
Ryder looks at Anders. “We have things we need to take care of here. Do you think you could ride out to where this shelter is and bring the girls back?”
Zombie World (Zombie Apocalypse #3) Page 34