Payload

by RW Krpoun

  “Stupid whore,” the man said irritably and reached down to drag her back up, jumping when he realized there was a very large man half-sitting at the foot of the steps. More impressive was the yawning bore of the shotgun pointed at his face.

  “Manos arriba, vato,” Chip kept his voice low, trying to sound tough and be unheard by anyone in the trailer at the same time.

  The gang member froze in a crouch, the muzzle of the shotgun gripping his full and undivided attention until the girl rolled onto her back and kicked him squarely in the groin.

  As the gangster slumped to the deck Dyson vaulted over the rail, wringing a startled gasp from the girl, and rapped the man over the ear with his sap. He swiftly flex-cuffed the man’s wrists behind his back and then ran a flex-cuff through a rail support and around the man’s right arm.

  Marv came up the walkway, staying low, and heaved Chip onto his feet as Dyson searched the gangster. Stepping up onto the porch, he grabbed the girl’s shoulder. “How many more gang members are inside? How many shooters?” he whispered.

  “One, in the living room, and four…no, five women captives,” the girl whispered in clear but accented English.

  “How many in total? How many dogs?”

  “I saw six dogs, a couple gang women, but I don’t know how many men.” She thought for a moment. “More than eight.”

  “Take her to the east corner and keep watch,” the Ranger told Chip.

  Carefully taking her by her still-bound right arm, Chip helped the girl down the stairs and to the east corner. “Hold still,” he whispered as he dug out his folding knife. “I’ll cut the cuffs off.” He was desperately aware that she was the prettiest girl he had ever touched, and that he was soaked in sweat, with melting shoe polish on a face that was too round to ever be considered handsome, with a pack, bandolier, guns, and camouflage rags tied loosely to his jeans and camo shirt only adding an impression of bulk to his three-hundred-fifty-odd pounds.

  “OK.” She turned and leaned forward, offering her wrists.

  She was a tall girl, maybe five-eight, he noted absently as he guided the blade under the white plastic strap and began carefully sawing away. A lot of women never noticed that he was six one because of his width.

  “I’m Sylvia Santiago,” she whispered over her shoulder.

  “Chip Wilson,”

  “Are you guys SEALs or something? That was amazing the way you snuck up on that bastard.”

  The strap parted, and Chip folded his knife one handed and took a knee at the corner. “I have to keep watch. No, Marv, that’s the guy you talked to, he’s an Army Airborne Ranger, but the rest of us are sort of volunteers. We call ourselves the Yard Gnome Action Team.” He winced-that sounded so lame.

  “That is so cool!” Sylvia whispered. “So you guys just go around being heroes?”

  Chip opened his mouth to deny it but an image of fighting their way step-by-step out of a horde of zombies, five rescued civilians in the middle of the group, flashed across his mind, and he closed it. “Just doing what’s necessary, ma’am,” he said. “I’m from Texas-we don’t let things like this stand.” Take that, John Wayne, he thought.

  “That is so cool,” Sylvia laid a hand on his shoulder. “I’m from Miami originally, Little Cuba, but I moved to Little Rock after my parents passed. I’m working as a beautician while I get my teacher’s certificate…”

  The gang banger in the trailer was sitting in an easy chair watching porn on a big screen TV with the sound muted, a double-barreled shotgun across his lap. Four women, their hands bound behind them, were crammed on a sofa across the room. He turned towards the door, saying something in a humorous tone of voice, only to catch Marv’s sap across the temple, sending him crashing to the floor.

  “Oh, shit! I think you killed him!” Dyson blurted as the Lobo, eyes rolled back into his head, began to convulse.

  “Too bad,” Marv muttered, gesturing for the women to remain quiet. Kicking the shotgun away he stepped over to the sofa. “Are there any more armed people in the trailer? Any shooters? Be very quiet.”

  “No,” the woman on the far left, a tough-looking blonde with a soft Arkansas accent, whispered. “But there’s a girl in the back bedroom, she’s a captive.”

  “OK, we’re here to rescue you, but we’ve just started. How many shooters are there? How many dogs?”

  “There’s about ten men, three women that I saw, and about six dogs, pit bulls.”

  “OK, sit tight, we’ll cut you loose in just a minute.” He turned to Dyson. “I’ll clear. Stay here.”

  “Chip,” Marv motioned him over to the deck. “You have a basic first aid kit handy? There’s a girl inside who…needs a little help. The other girls can take care of her.”

  “Yeah,” Chip shrugged out a pack strap; Sylvia, who had followed him, caught the pack and held it steady while he extracted the kit. “Here.”

  Dyson, leaning against the rail with the muzzle of his Mini-14 resting on the bound gang-banger’s forehead, eyed the Cuban girl. “You weren’t kidding about being good at this, hoss. That sentry never heard you.”

  Chip, shrugging back into the pack with Sylvia’s help, stared in bewilderment at the Georgian, who cut his eyes towards the pretty Cuban girl and winked.

  Marv stepped back out. “I need one of your blur rags, Chip.” Dropping a knee into the bound man’s ribs, he pulled his Gerber dagger and laid it alongside the man’s cheek. “What’s your name, asshole?”

  The first word of the man’s response was profanity, which turned into a cry of pain when the point of the dagger opened a three inch gash on his cheek, and ended abruptly when the Ranger chopped his other hand across the front of his throat.

  “His name, nickname, is Gato,” Sylvia ventured as the man gagged and coughed.

  “OK, Gato, here’s how we roll: you answer fast and truthfully, and I won’t cut you again,” Marv put the blade over Gato’s left eye. “I just saw what you guys did to the girl on the bed in there, so to be honest, I’m kinda hoping you’re not the pussy I think you are. Make any noise, and you lose a nut, by the way.” He jerked his head in the direction of the thumping bass. “But I doubt they could hear you from here, in any case.”

  “Mannnn, you don’t know who you messin’ with, cabrone,” Gato hissed, sweating harder than Chip.

  Marv grinned humorlessly. “I killed your friend inside, cracked his skull like an egg. I’m going to kill your friends and companions. Give me a a reason and I’ll kill you, Gato, and it doesn’t even have to be that good of a reason. You trash are in the big leagues now, vato, and you’re badly outclassed. This morning we chopped our way through a town’s worth of zombies and this afternoon we’re taking out the trash. How many shooters?”

  “Fuck you, man.”

  Marv slammed the butt of the dagger into Gato’s temple, stunning him, and then sawed off his right ear. Sticking the point of his dagger into the deck, he held the bloody flap of tissue and cartilage in front of the man’s eyes before shoving it into the Lobo’s mouth and tying the dirty blur rag in place as a gag. Wiping his dagger on Gato’s shirt, he sheathed it and stood.

  “That was a big extreme, dude,” Chip observed, putting an arm around the shocked Sylvia.

  “You didn’t see the girl in the back room,” the Ranger shrugged. Noticing the arm around Sylvia, he shrugged. “You might be the brains of the outfit, but I still give the orders, understood?”

  “Yeah,” Chip tried to sound cool and tough, but didn’t quite pull it off.

  “Let’s let Gato suck on his ear and think about his long term prospects,” Marv swung his M-4 around. “Bear’s count seems about right, with three gang women and around a half-dozen pit bulls to keep things interesting. Less two shooters.” He gestured towards Sylvia. “Leave her here, we’ll come back when its over.”

  “OK.” Chip grabbed the Tec-9 from the deck and the spare magazines. “Sylvia, do you know how to shoot?”

  Chip flattened himself against the white clap
boards, breathing hard from the crouching run to the roadhouse.

  “Suck it up, fat man,” Dyson whispered, grinning. “You don’t want your tall tamale to hear you wheezing.”

  He flipped the Georgian the bird before turning to watch the west corner. At the back of the roadhouse he could faintly make out the music itself over the bass and the rattle of a large ice machine.

  Marv had led them from the trailer to the west corner of the roadhouse and then he and Brick had crouch-walked under the mesh-covered windows to the back door, whose cell-door-looking anti-burglary door was closed.

  Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Brick snipping off the hasp of a padlock on the back door with a pair of long-handled red bolt cutters. Taking a shaky breath, he settled his shotgun into his shoulder and waited.

  Slipping through the back door Marv got a strong feeling of deja-vu: the back door opened into a large kitchen, same as the Bob’s Busted Barrel, except this one was well and frequently used, and the walk-in freezer was to his left. A young black woman with one eye swollen shut was sitting on the floor with her back to the freezer’s door, hugging herself, tears cutting tracks across her face. She gasped at the Ranger’s sudden appearance, clapping her own hand across her mouth at his gesture for silence.

  Marv mouthed ‘rescue’ and mimed moving on all fours out the door. As the young woman scrambled across the floor he eased past the food preparation area and moved to the nearer of two swinging doors leading into the bar itself, Brick on his heels.

  Dyson stopped the girl at the door. “Be very quiet,” he whispered over the music. “We’re here to rescue you. How many shooters are there?”

  “Thank you,” the woman sobbed. “Thank you.” She rallied, and mopped at her tears with the back of her hand, wincing when she brushed her eye. “There’s…there’s two out in that trailer, and six captive women.” She struggled with a memory, and pressed on. “Six dogs, pit bulls. Nine more men and three armed women.”

  “Are there any more captives?”

  She sobbed twice, her entire being wracked with pain. “No…not…anymore.”

  “OK, there’s going to be some shooting, so what I want you to do is snuggle up to that ice machine, you’ll be safe there.”

  She grabbed his arm. “There’s two men with guns in that trailer.”

  He gently detached her hand. “Not anymore.”

  “I count five men and three women,” Marv kept his voice as low as he could and still be heard over the music and conversation from the other side of the doors. “Plus at least one dog.”

  “How we go?” Brick asked.

  “If you guys feel like you can’t shoot a person, take out the dog and fire into the ceiling to keep their heads down. We do this bunch, its four on four plus the dogs. You guys ready?”

  “No, but lets go anyway,” Dyson said, trying to grin. He honestly hadn’t planned on killing anyone, had hoped that he wouldn’t have to kill anyone, but after seeing and hearing the black girl in the kitchen he could feel his position changing. He still hoped he wasn’t going to kill anyone, but he was feeling less upset about the possibility.

  Marv passed him and Brick each one of Addison’s bombs. Settling his M-4, he switched on his CB, spoke, and pointed. Brick slowly nodded one, twice, and on the third nod he and Dyson twisted the igniters.

  Crouching behind the ice machine (he had dropped a couple cubes down his shirt front, which had felt like Heaven), Chip rested his shotgun against the cool metal and watched the corner ten feet away. To his right Martha, the young black woman who had come out of the kitchen, was curled into a ball. He would have liked to say something to her, something comforting, but he didn’t dare take his attention from the corner, and frankly, he was in need of comfort himself.

  The two explosions nearly gave him a heart attack. Because Marv had commented on black powder back at the quarry Chip expected Addison’s bombs to be akin to M80s on the Fourth of July, but what he had just heard sounded like the roof should be a hundred feet up and still travelling. Hard on the heels of the explosion was shooting, slow deliberate shooting. It occurred to him that a week ago he wouldn’t have known you could tell something from the way you heard gunfire, but a week ago he had been a different person. A week ago it had been a different world.

  A week ago the pit bull coming around the corner would have had an easy meal of him, but instead it caught a load of buckshot that ripped out its throat even as it negotiated the turn. Chip didn’t even recall firing, but he racked the action reflexively, unaware that Martha was screaming beside him, and shot the second dog high in the belly, knocking it half around. A second shot sent the dog sprawling, and in the distant corner of his mind it occurred to Chip that shooting zombies was so much easier: no thrashing, very little blood, no noise.

  The movement at the corner coincided with a metallic shriek by his head and Chip instinctively fired, only afterwards realizing that it was a person he had shot, a man in a black concert tee shirt with a gun in his hand. The red ruin the buckshot made of his face brought a rush of hot, metallic bile to the back of his throat, but Chip just swallowed hard and worked the action.

  Chip wasn’t sure if he could keep the contents of his stomach down or that of his bladder in, but he was going to guard this corner if it killed him. Like Marv had told Gato, they were playing in the big leagues now.

  Marv slid a fresh magazine into his M-4 and dropped the partial mag into his goggle pouch as he slid next to the front door. Brick rushed the other side, shooting the thrashing dog in passing. Behind them Dyson was double-checking the eight.

  The Ranger swung around the door frame and fired at a man racing towards the roadhouse; the man promptly disappeared behind a car, hit or taking cover, he couldn’t be sure. Brick was firing, and the music blasting out of the sound system in the open trunk of the car in front of the doors died. A moment later he fired again, and a dog howled in agony.

  Chip heard Dyson call his name. “OK.”

  The martial artist slid in alongside him. “Hey, you’re bleeding.”

  “He shot at me,” the husky Gnome jerked the shot towards the still twitching body. “They always move so much?”

  “Seems like,” Dyson shrugged, leaning close. “Looks like just a little cut on your ear. You’ll live, and it ought to impress your new girlfriend.”

  “Are they OK inside?”

  “Not eight of the bad guys,” the Georgian said grimly. “Three of them women. I shot a guy, I was checking them and he…he went for a gun. Marv already had shot him a couple times. Brick got a couple for sure.”

  “Zombies are a lot easier.”

  “Yeah. That’s about the only good thing you can say about zombies, but it’s the truth.”

  Marv tried for the guy with the automatic weapon, but he ducked back too quickly. Brick had picked off one of the roadblock guards, and Dyson had reported via Chip’s CB that another guard and two dogs had been dealt with around back.

  The remaining two guards were well positioned behind a concrete planter that also served as the base for the roadhouse’s tall sign, and there wasn’t much the two Gnomes in the roadhouse could do about it. For the last five minutes they had been exchanging gunfire to no effect.

  The flat barking of an AK to the east sent Marv darting across the battered sidewalk to the side of the car with the sound system, Brick following a moment later as a Mac-10 rattled off a burst and gravel fountained off the planter. One of the two gunmen tried to break and run, but was cut down by Brick and Marv.

  “All clear,” Marv said into the CB, and a minute later Bear and Addison emerged from the tree line to the east and headed across the parking lot.

  “Check them to make sure,” Marv advised over the CB, “Six to Two, move up.”

  “Check it out, Gato,” Marv said, shoving the bound man against the side of a parked car. “They’re strapping your buddies to fence posts. We’re gonna put signs on them, stuff like ‘rapist’ and ‘utter pussy’. We’re gonna diss
them with the signs, and we’re gonna leave them to the vultures. See that post with the red bandana on it? That’s your post. I’m going to hang a sign around your neck ‘snitched on the others’.”

  “Fuck you, man, I ain’t no rat,” Gato snarled, defiant despite the oozing wound where his ear had been.

  “Nobody will believe that with a sign around your neck,” Marv shrugged. “You help me out, maybe sometime down the road you get a chance to even the score.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “OK, fine,” the Ranger shrugged. “I guess you owe FASA some loyalty.”

  “FASA?”

  “Come on, you don’t think the government sent us because you were robbing people, do you? You a bunch of prison maggots-why would we bother with you?”

  Gato started to reply, then frowned and stared into the distance. “You after us because we took their money?”

  “”Yeah,” Marv nodded. “It’s open season on FASA assets. And don’t think we had to cut off any ears to get the FASA guys to talk. They gave us computers’ worth of stuff.”

  The gang-banger shook his head.

  “C’mon, you hear anyone reading you your rights? See anything that looks like a badge? You’re a freakin’ terrorist, Gato, you are at war with the entire US of A, and you’ve got Bin Ladin’s chance of clemency. So talk to me about your home boys in FASA, man. They threw you in the grease, after all. How do you think we found you?”

  “It wasn’t like that,” Gato said sullenly. “It was just a straight-up job: set up a roadblock and watch for an RV, gave us a picture, man. See it, stop it, and make a call, simple as that. We ain’t no terrorists.”

  Marv felt a cold chill run down his spine, but he kept it off his face. “How many more road blocks?”

  “Five. Our whole outfit.”

  “Where?”