by Jack Hunt
Daniels shuffled over. “Time we move in.”
“What?”
“They are going to shift those vehicles back into place. We use this to our advantage.”
Nick came up alongside us wanting to know what we were talking about.
“He wants to move in on them.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Nick asked.
“Do you want to find another way around?”
“We don’t know how many of them there are in town. If one of them escapes we are screwed.”
“And if they don’t?” He let his words linger as his gaze bore into Nick. Nick looked over to Jamal, Ryland and Alexa. It wasn’t like it was the first time we’d encountered trouble with the living. On the way back to camp from Tupper, a group of men had tried to steal what we had, and we had to end them, but this… we had no idea how many more there were and it wasn’t like we were going to put it to a vote. Daniels turned his attention to the guy who was getting head from his girlfriend while his two buddies were around front teasing the Zs with a dead rodent they’d scooped up off the road. They were obviously used to Simon’s extracurricular activities.
“Alright,” Nick said. “How you want to do it?”
Daniels filled us in and I moved over to the others to bring them up to speed.
Within a matter of a few minutes, we moved out of the bushes, staying low with our rifles on the ready. We used the rear of the bank and the vehicles to provide cover. Daniels crept up behind the skinhead while he was getting it on and pressed the tip of his Glock against the back of his head.
“I know. This has gotta suck,” he whispered into the skinhead’s ear. Nick moved around the guy at the same time and grabbed the female, pulling her to one side while the guy’s wang blew around in the breeze like a wind chime. The skinhead put his hands up. Daniels didn’t even give him a chance to pull his pants up. Ryland and Jamal went around the east side of the building to make sure that if the others attempted to make a dash for the Jeep they wouldn’t get far. Eli, Alexa and I moved out in combat intervals, darting from one vehicle to the next until we had the two of them in our sights. Daniels didn’t want to shoot anyone. He figured if we did it his way, we’d be able to get by whatever awaited us inside the town. You see, here’s the thing about Indian Lake; our initial goal was to stay on NY-28 and keep going east but after coming across these loons, plan B was to exit via Sabael Road, connect with Big Brook and then get onto Chamberlain which would take us around the town but to do that we still had to enter the town of Indian Lake.
Daniels kneed him in the back of the ass forcing him towards the corner of the building. “No one needs to get hurt. Now tell your pals to drop their weapons and get on the ground.”
“I don’t know who you are, mister, but you have picked the wrong people to fuck with.”
“Um, I’ve heard that a lot in my line of business.”
As they came around the corner, his buddy, the one with the stache, glanced over. His eye lit up, and he immediately swung around an AK47. Suddenly tempers flared and everyone was bellowing at each other all at the same time.
“Let him go.”
“Drop your weapons.”
“I’ll shoot.”
“Don’t you shoot, you idiot,” Simon yelled.
One of them darted towards the Jeep but came to a grinding halt as Ryland and Jamal came into view from around the bank, the crosshairs of their rifles pointed at his chest. “I would advise you to do as he says,” Ryland interjected.
“Get on the ground and no one dies,” Daniels bellowed back.
An expression of hesitation.
We came from behind the vehicle to let them know they were outnumbered.
Nick had a hand on the back of Daniels’s shoulder, his handgun pointed at the men while Daniels kept his against the side of Simon’s head.
“Do as he says,” Simon ordered, using some common sense. They were cornered and weren’t getting out of this any other way than complying or dying. A few seconds of reluctance and they lowered their weapons and got on the ground. While they were doing this, our trucks came back down the road.
Daniels shoved Simon over to where the others were and told them to get up against the wall of the bank.
“You gonna shoot us?” Simon asked.
“No, I want to talk to you.”
Simon shook his head. “You have no clue, do you?”
“So fill us in. Who are you?”
Behind us the two vehicles pulled up and the rest of our group got out. As Finn stepped out of the truck, one of them started laughing. “Well look who it is. Holy fuck. He’s alive.”
Before any of us could register what he was on about or who he was referring to, Finn darted forward, pulled a handgun from Tobias’s holster and fired a round into the face of the one going by the name Simon. A burst of red mist and he slumped over. It was so fast, I couldn’t even grasp what had happened until it was over. Nick tackled Finn, knocking him to the ground while Tobias rushed in and scooped the gun up. Nick had to wrestle with Finn to get him to calm down. He struggled for a moment and then all that remained was a broken man, tears rolling down his cheeks.
“What the heck was that about?” Ryland asked, his eyes as wide as dollar coins.
The female skinhead clawed her way over Simon’s dead body, crying and saying his name over and over again. The other two looked on in shock, not at us but at their fallen brother. If he could even be called that. I didn’t know much about skinheads but I knew they were a tight group.
“Look, man, just let us go. We won’t say a thing,” the guy with the stache said. “You can go your way and we’ll go ours.”
“Shut up,” the one with the tattoo said.
“But—”
“Shut up, you pussy.” The one with the tattoo turned his eyes towards Daniels. “Oh you are so fucked.”
“How do you know him?” Daniels asked.
“It doesn’t matter. He’ll come for you and you’ll wish you were already dead.”
“Who?”
He laughed and shook his head refusing to answer. Nick hauled Finn to his feet and dragged him back to the truck and put him inside. He then had Tobias keep an eye on him. He returned and grabbed hold of Daniels. “We need to get these vehicles moved and go now. Someone will have heard that shot. If not their pals, the dead, that’s for sure.”
He nodded and gave the two guys on the ground a kick.
“Get up! You’re gonna help.”
“What?”
“You want to join your friend?”
“No.”
“Then get up and start moving those vehicles.”
They rose and quickly assisted us in moving the vehicles out of the way. All the while the girl lay across Simon sobbing and eyeing us with a look of death. Alexa watched over her with a semiautomatic. “She tries anything, shoot her,” Daniels said.
Live Or Die?
It didn’t take long to shift the vehicles and create a clear path. I’d remained at the corner peering through a set of binoculars, expecting any second to have an army of skinheads barreling towards us. Fortunately for us that wasn’t to be. However, it had attracted the dead. They were like rats sniffing out a chunk of cheese. The echo from the gunshot had brought them out of the woodwork. Call it bad or good luck, all I know is they were the ones that saved our asses.
“Zs at two and one o’clock!” I yelled and extracted my knife not wishing to create more noise. Jamal reared up his rifle, and I slapped it back down. “No. We still need to get the hell out of here. You open fire and…”
The staccato of Eli’s semiautomatic took the words out of my mouth. Jamal shrugged and joined in firing several rounds and puncturing the skulls of the dead. The quiet morning was shattered as we brought down eight that had stuck their ugly faces out into the light of day. No sooner had the gunfire stopped than Daniels had the three skinheads lined up against the wall. He brought around his gun and was about to shoot them in the head.
“Daniels!” I hurried over. “What are you doing?”
“You want them going back and telling the rest?”
“No, but…” I glanced at them. The one with tattoos all over his mug couldn’t have been older than my brother.
“No buts, they live, we die. Simple as that.”
You gotta understand what was going through my head in that moment. I was first trying to process killing innocent people. Innocent? Yeah, as far as I knew they were no different from us. Holed up in a town trying to survive and even though they hadn’t had a chance to kill us, there was no telling if they would have if the shoe was on the other foot. Then of course there was the fact that here was a cop ready to snuff out the lights of those that he once signed up to protect. Yeah, you could say I was a little conflicted. Sean, that guy wasn’t innocent, neither were those who shot at us but these three?
“Nick.”
He shrugged. “He’s right.”
Now I know there are going to be some patriots, die-hard lunatics who just believe that it’s kill everyone no matter who the hell they are, but that wasn’t me. Like it or lump it, I figured there had to be another way. Tie them up. Leave them. Chances of us seeing them again were slim to none. They had no clue who we were, or where we were going. Were they really going to hunt us down? No one in their right mind chased after an armed group and risked facing the dead and all manner of obstacles just to seek vengeance for the death of one of their own.
“Please, listen to him,” the tattooed guy said. He’d picked up on my hesitation and was milking it for all it was worth.
“Shut the hell up!” Daniels said swiping him across the face with his gun. I turned to walk away and then my eyes fell upon Finn. I turned back and walked over. Again, maybe I just needed a reason, but I had to ask as I knew we weren’t going to get a word out of Finn, not while he was in that comatose state.
“Your buddy. He knew that guy over there, didn’t he?” I asked.
The one with the tattoos nodded.
“Who is he?”
He stared at Finn, then his chin dropped.
I crouched down. As I did, the guy with the stache spat in my face. I turned my face and wiped it and gritted my teeth, withdrawing the Glock from my waistband. I leaned forward and pressed it against the man’s skull.
“I’m actually trying to fucking help you. My friend here. He wants to put a bullet in you, so I would strongly advise you don’t do that again, and you answer the question. Who is he?”
“One of us.”
I frowned and slowly released my grip. “What?”
“Well he was one of us until he took a liking to colored skin.” He spat again, however this time it was on the ground. Jamal overhead what he said and lunged forward but Nick pulled him back. I cast a glance over my shoulder towards Finn. He was sitting in the truck unaware of the conversation. I turned back to the skinhead.
“So you tied him to a truck?”
He smirked. “Yeah, but not before having a little fun with his wife, and daughter.”
I felt my blood beginning to boil. There were few things I hated more than bullying but one of them was racism. There was no need for it. I rose up and looked down at him.
“Tell me something, why?”
“Why what?”
“Why all the hate?”
He laughed. “If you have to ask that you are not worth—”
Before he could spit the words out I executed all three of them with a bullet each to the head. I caught the look on the face of the skinhead with the tattoos a second before I turned the gun on him. Panic. Regret. Fear?
I pushed my gun back into the holster on my waistband and turned back towards the vehicle without looking at anyone. I didn’t need to, I could feel their eyes boring into me. Nick grabbed my arm, and I shook him off. My head was shaking as I walked the short distance back. I hopped in and waited for the others. No one lingered and no more words were exchanged as we rolled out. I didn’t say anything to Finn but the expression on his face when I got back in the truck said it all. Now as I look back, I know that those three deaths were a defining moment in who I would become in the days ahead. For better or worse, it was then I knew there was no coming back for any of us.
I gunned the engine, tearing around the corner of the bank and bouncing off the curb onto the road that led down to NY-30 south. The engine roared as we tore past Indian Lake Theater and Marty’s Chili Nights restaurant before veering right. Farther up Main Street, seconds away from turning off, we spotted them, or maybe it was the other way around. A large group had gathered on the street, each of them dressed the same as those we’d left behind in a pool of blood.
Over the two-way, Nick sounded panicked.
“Go, go!”
I didn’t need to be told, neither did I reply, I already had my foot nailing the accelerator to the ground. We careened around the corner onto Sabael Road knowing that it would take them only a few minutes to jump into vehicles and pursue us. I hoped to God that there weren’t any more road blockades. There were. There were only three roads into Indian Lake and they had sealed them all off. In the distance I could see the long pole, the snarling Zs and no exits. Vehicles had been rolled into position. My eyes flicked to the rearview mirror. Far behind Nick I could see two Jeeps kicking up dust. My heart was racing as I continued to barrel forward without letting up on the gas.
“Scotty,” Alexa said. “Scott!” she yelled realizing what I was about to do. There was no other choice, we had to go through it. Now I’d seen the way they’d threaded the bars through each of the Zs. They might have been welded on either end but they weren’t welded together, at least I hoped not. I gave that truck everything it had. Stores and homes whipped past in my window. The deafening roar of the truck’s engine piped out through a throaty muffler as we gained speed. I remembered the way the truck handled going through a wooden gate, would this be different? I sure as hell hoped so.
There was no protesting over the two-way radio, which made it clear that Nick knew this was the only solution.
“Hold on tight,” I said. Alexa strapped herself in as did Finn. Those in the back held on to the lip of the truck bed and waited for impact. The front end of the truck crashed into the poles, knocking the dead high into the air. One landed in the rear of the truck. I heard a gunshot but didn’t look back to see who had taken the shot. I was too busy trying to prevent that truck from sliding off the road. While the impact had been better than I thought, it didn’t mean we were out of the woods. The Jeeps were still on our tail. I swerved left onto Big Brook Road. The road was less than stellar. Gravel kicked up, tapping against the sides of the metal like a hard rain. I swept my mirrors for a second, and a third time. It wasn’t panic I felt but exhilaration, the way someone might feel when they launched themselves out of a plane. There was a sense of danger; a knowing that one wrong move and it was over.
“Are they still behind us?” I asked Alexa who was checking to make sure that everyone in the back wasn’t injured.
“Yeah, I can still see them.”
Gunfire could be heard. Whether it was from them, or us, it was hard to know. I focused only on what I could handle, keeping those tires on the road. We were getting close to the river. We shot past an RV park full of Zs, most of them pressed up against a gate. As we got closer to the breakwater, or causeway, I was pleased to see it was clear. That was the only thing I was worried about. Then it hit me. The idea, that is. I swerved to the left side of the road and eased off the gas.
“Scotty, what are doing?” Daniels shouted.
“Trust me,” I yelled.
Nick’s vehicle shot by at a high rate of speed and I reversed ours across the road so it was horizontal, preventing them from getting by.
“Everyone out.”
No one wasted any time asking why as the two Jeeps were heading towards us. We all jumped out, and I told everyone to get behind the truck and open fire. Whether they agreed or not, they did it. Alexa,
Daniels, Ryland, Lola and even Finn grabbed up a rifle and aimed at the Jeep barreling forward.
“Fire!”
The staccato of noise was deafening. Bullets tore into the grill, steam hissed out and the windshield shattered. As the occupants died, their vehicle went out of control. It jerked to the right, flipped, rolled and then burst into flames. We continued to unleash round after round through the flames hoping that at least one of the bullets would hit its mark. Whether one did or not, it didn’t matter, the white Jeep Wrangler behind it skidded to avoid the disaster. We jumped back in our truck and I floored it. The tires squealed loudly and the smell of burning rubber and smoke was all we left behind as we peeled away. Up ahead, Nick had slowed to wait for us. Upon seeing us approach he took off, and we crossed the river to the safety of the eastern side, leaving behind a fiery wreck. We never did catch the name of who was in charge of their group but I had a feeling we’d learn more about them in the coming days. Finn stared down at the rifle in his hand, nodding.
“Thank you,” he said without even looking at me.
“I did that for us.”
“No, I mean back at the bank.”
I didn’t reply but replayed the event in my mind. The look on their faces, the way I felt inside as I took their lives.
“Her name was Destini, my daughter, that is. My wife…” Finn muttered before another tear fell from his face, “she was called Keyarra.” I thought he would continue, open up and tell me more about them and how he came to walk away from the group but he didn’t. He leaned back and closed his eyes. Alexa looked over at me and studied me as if seeing me through a new set of eyes. My eyes flicked to the rearview mirror in time to see Daniels wrap his arm around Lola and pull her in tight before covering the two of them with a blanket and settling in for the long journey. Ryland was in the middle of reloading, a look of determination on his face. All of us were changing, adapting to the new environment and reconsidering what it would take to survive. Me? Well you don’t even want to know what was going through my mind.