Riposte (The Redivivus Trilogy Book 2)

by Kirk Withrow

  Bill chuckled softly and muttered something about her liking it rough as she snaked her way up his neck. He sighed with pleasure when her soft skin brushed past his ear. The smell of his hot, musty breath was overwhelming even in the rank confines of the room.

  She knew her plan was a long shot, but it was all she had. Frankly, she was not all that concerned about whether it would even work. She was well past the point of caring if she lived or died; her only goal being to deny the pitiful excuses for men what they wanted. In truth, she had eagerly anticipated death as she lay on the sidewalk. That these men took that away from her only added to her fury.

  She knew she needed to work fast in order to avoid detection. With the skill of a well-trained concubine, she used her body to distract him as she deftly slid her lips around to his in hopes of delivering the literal kiss of death. Her tongue moved with urgency, forcing the contents of the foil packet into his mouth. She tried not to think of the consequences she faced if her plan failed. It has to work!

  Her son, Aaron, had suffered from asthma as well as myriad other allergic issues. In addition to countless inhalant allergies, he was also deathly allergic to peanuts. They had discovered this when he was four years old and a small amount of peanut butter on her fingers came in contact with his skin. Within seconds the boy was facing certain death in the form of severe anaphylaxis. Throat swelling and lungs failing, his face quickly turned a sickly shade of blue as his oxygen supply was cut off. She watched the light in his eyes slowly fade, only to be replaced by a pleading so intense it made her want to join him in order to escape the misery of watching him suffer helplessly. All of sudden, she remembered the EpiPen his doctor had prescribed as a precaution in light of his allergic predisposition. Slamming the device into the meat of his small thigh, Aaron barely winced as the needle deployed, and the lifesaving medicine was administered. From that experience, she knew something of the fear that such a condition could incite. If her observation had been correct, Bill’s reaction to the earlier discussion was not the result of a profound distaste for the creamy substance but rather due to a severe allergy to peanuts. Everything hinged on that being the case. She only hoped the man had not remembered to bring an EpiPen to this little party.

  Momentarily caught up in the eroticism of the situation, Bill let out another brief sigh of ecstasy before his expression shifted abruptly with the realization of what was happening. Just as the deadly smell registered in his panic-stricken brain, he felt the first tingle in his throat warning him of the swelling that was already beginning to choke his life out. He let out a shrill cry of alarm as he pulled away violently.

  Thinking fast, she immediately unleashed a cry of her own in the hope of masking Bill’s all too evident pleading. Her ruse worked, as she heard raucous jeering and catcalls coming from the two dumbasses eagerly waiting their turn in the other room.

  “Git you some, Bill!”

  “Save some for us!”

  Struggling to stay tight against the man until the job was done, she rode his wilting body to the ground. Keeping her head close, she locked her legs around his body realizing she only had to control him for a couple of minutes. He flailed and swatted frantically to no avail. In seconds, Bill was no longer capable of screaming, his constricted airway unable to draw the requisite breath needed to generate sound. She watched with callous indifference as his eyes flooded with the all too familiar panic and pleading brought on by impending asphyxiation.

  As he struggled in vain for a mere fraction of the ubiquitous, yet completely unattainable oxygen all around him, she quietly retrieved the second packet from her pocket, tore it open, and squeezed the nourishing substance into her mouth. The renewed spark of fear in his eyes at the sight of the second packet made the creamy spread all the more satisfying. In that instant, the peanut butter was the absolute best thing she could ever recall eating, and she lamented not having been able to enjoy the other packet as she licked her fingers. That’s not entirely true—I did enjoy it. Scooting Bill’s lifeless body to the side, she arranged it to appear as though he was merely resting in the darkened room.

  Quietly, she searched Bill’s pockets for anything of use but came up short. Moving to his pistol, she checked its load. When she discovered both the magazine and the chamber were empty, her mind froze at the unexpected hitch in her plan. Think! You can do this. You just need to get one of the other’s weapons. Then, without bothering to button her shirt, she feigned breathlessness and called out to the other room, “Turtle, you’re next!”

  This brought on a renewed round of hooting and hollering from the biker as he shuffled toward the door. She heard Chowder complaining about always having to be last or something of that nature. When the door cracked slightly, she said in an affected nubile tone, “Come on in. Bill is tired and wants to rest. Maybe watch a little? I’d really like that.”

  With a nervous chuckle of excitement, Turtle glanced toward Bill’s body lying motionless in the dim light, and said, “Want to see how it’s done, eh? I suppose the master can share a few tricks!” She rolled her eyes at his bravado. With the increased courage garnered by the initial success of her plan, she strode confidently toward the lanky man who fumbled clumsily with his belt. His demise began in much the same way as Bill’s had.

  “Let me help you with that,” she said softly as she reached into his waistband and drew his hunting knife. With a quizzical look of surprise, he started to speak, but the only sound that came out was the gurgling hiss of air escaping through his severed trachea. She fought back an intense wave of nausea as the blade bit deeper, and she felt the spurting release of warm, sticky blood gushing down her arm. The arterial spray hit her with such force that she envisioned it coming from a fire hose. As he collapsed into her, she eased the dying man to the floor as quietly as possible. Eyeing the pistol in his waistband, she drew it and was relieved to find a full magazine and a round in the chamber.

  Eight shots, three men left. Well, two men and Chowder’s fat ass.

  Wasting no time, she burst through the door and fired three quick shots into Chowder’s ample belly. The impact of the bullets sent his bulky body flying onto the sofa, the momentum toppling it over backward.

  Writhing in pain, the fat man groaned, “What the?”

  Any other words he intended to say never saw the light of day as she pulled the trigger again, sending a .45 caliber full metal jacketed bullet tearing through his throat and brainstem, before punching a hole through the back of his skull with a spray of blood, bone, and brain matter.

  Just two more miserable bastards left.

  From somewhere outside the house, she heard the voices of the other two men. “Aw, hell! Come on. Let’s go find out what they done to her now!”

  She hastily retreated to the second story where she lay in wait for the men she knew would come for her. Thankfully, she did not have to wait long once they discovered their dead comrades.

  Hate-filled screams of rage preceded their heavy footsteps pounding up the stairs. She crouched on the far side of a bed trying to become as small as possible. The awful things the man shouted and the venom in his voice caused her to tremble. As the sound of the approaching men grew closer, she began to hyperventilate.

  With a loud crash, the bedroom door burst open. “I know you’re in here, bitch! I can see your filthy footprints,” the enraged man bellowed.

  Realizing she was squeezing her eyes shut, she reluctantly opened them and saw a pair of snakeskin cowboy boots standing on the other side the bed.

  Without a second thought, she brought the pistol around and fired directly into the man’s left foot. The report was deafening within the narrow confines of the bedroom, and through the haze, she glimpsed the damage the bullet inflicted before the man toppled to the floor in agony. His snakeskin boot appeared as though it had molted, revealing a cloven hoof where the bullet shredded the center of his foot underneath its scaly exterior.

  Landing on the carpeted floor with a dull thud, the man im
mediately looked to where she hid crouched behind the bed. He began to point his gun in her direction but another shot erupted from the .45 caliber pistol before he had the weapon halfway.

  Staring intensely, she waited for the fifth and final man, but saw no sign of him. Cautiously, she stood and eased out of cover. As she crept around the foot of the bed, she heard quiet whimpering coming from just outside the room. She entered the hallway and found the last man sitting on the ground, back against the wall. When he noticed her, he raised his red-rimmed eyes to meet hers, and she saw the same odd, aloof smile she had seen earlier. Although he said nothing, she halfway expected him to ask her if he could still tend the rabbits. After a moment of indecision and second-guessing, she placed the barrel against his forehead and squeezed the trigger.

  The strange smile never left his face as he slumped to the ground. I guess that makes me George.

  Numb from the thought of what she had just done, she let the pistol fall from her hand as she moved wraith-like through the house. Upon reaching the dining room where she had been bound to the table, she felt dizzy and braced herself against the wall to keep from falling. As she stared at the gore-encrusted room, her dizziness crescendoed into a violent, whirling vertigo that threatened to slam her into the ground. Clamping her eyes shut tightly, she prayed for everything to disappear. She leaned into the wall and slid to the ground, hoping it was all merely a dream.

  * * *

  Unsure of how much time elapsed, she was roused by the sound of voices coming from within the house. Her eyelids strained against the blood that glued them shut. Although she could not see the source, she could plainly make out what was being said.

  “What the hell happened here?” one man asked, voice muffled by the handkerchief covering his mouth and nose. “What kind of person would just slaughter men like this?”

  Another, deeper voice spoke in reply, “What was she supposed to do? They would have killed her, or worse.”

  The first man said, “This doesn’t look like self-defense to me. Look at the bodies; most of them were savagely murdered. I don’t think anyone aside from the Devil himself, or at least one of his minions, could do something like this.”

  With disagreement evident in his voice, the second man rebuked, “John, this is Kate we’re talking about here!”

  The woman charged out of the corner upon hearing her name, knife raised high above her head, poised to cut the two men down. Before she reached them, however, she felt a forceful tug on her shoulder. Although she tried to pull free and continue forward, the restraint did not relent. In the distance, as if speaking to her from a million miles away, she heard the faint word repeated over and over with gradually increasing volume and clarity.

  “Kate. Kate! KATE!”

  Bolting upright, her breath coming in ragged gasps, she gazed bleary-eyed at the enormous black man sitting next to her in the Hummer. Composing herself, Kate said, “Reams? I’m sorry… I must have been dreaming.”

  7

  October 22, 2015

  Marengo County, Alabama

  Crouched behind the rocks, Ava’s mind raced frantically, energized by the knowledge that her father, John Wild, was alive and less than a quarter of a mile away from her. It pained her to think that he did not know she was still alive. In fact, she expected he had already been to their house and assumed she, like her mother, was dead. I need to tell him I’m alive—to tell him I’m here! I need to get to him! The thought that he might leave after finding her mother’s mutilated corpse nearly made her jump up and race across the field right then. It took everything she had to stay pinned behind the cover of the boulders. Too much was happening too quickly, and she found it almost impossible to think with a clear and level head. She stared across the impossible distance with circumspect eyes.

  Tears of joy, screams of frustration, and snarls of anger all rattled around inside her little body at once, slamming into her like the brutal waves of the rising tide. It’s not fair! Damn it! She knew that was a bad word but she thought it anyway, no longer caring about such things. If the world could be so cruel as to place a father and a daughter in such close proximity yet keep them separated by such an insurmountable distance, then bad words like that were far less than it deserved. She felt her emotions rising rapidly like steam in a pressure cooker, and she fought to get a handle on them.

  Understanding that she needed to act now or risk losing the chance to reunite with her father, Ava took a long steadying breath to calm her addled mind. She glanced over her shoulder toward the indomitable horde below—still reaching, and still every bit as massive. For now, she was out of sight atop the large rock formation, opposite the side she had climbed to reach the vantage point. She racked her brain for ideas about how to get off the rock and around the imposing swarm safely. If she had all the time in the world she could probably lay low until the majority of the infected lost interest, pulled elsewhere in pursuit of their next victim. She had escaped several tight spots in such a way before, and she knew that with enough time something else always captured the attention of the mindless monsters. Sensing the hands of the clock spiraling out of control with maddening speed, she realized she did not have that luxury. The time to act was now or never. ‘Fish or cut bait!’ as Dad would say.

  Trying desperately to come up with any semblance of a plan, she laid out the facts about her current situation as her father had instructed to do when she faced a tough situation with no obvious solution. Considering the resources at her disposal, she came up with very little. She had food and water for a day, maybe two if she rationed it carefully. She had no weapons and was so far outnumbered that anything short of a guided missile was not likely to be of much use anyway. All of these disadvantages, she reminded herself, were no different than the ones she had been saddled with since the beginning of this wretched epidemic, and she had survived thus far.

  When she thought about exactly what had allowed her to survive alone in this dangerous and desolate world for so long, she knew it was largely due to what she possessed inside rather than any extraneous resources at her disposal. Chief among these were her quick, sharp mind and her uncanny ability to move with speed and stealth; fortunately, she still had these in her arsenal.

  At once, an idea came to her. Reaching into her tattered backpack, she pulled out the disgusting ziplock bag Jim had given her the day she met him. The initial bag was sealed inside several others in order to more securely contain its noxious contents. When he first tried to give her the vile parcel she adamantly refused, thinking the man some perverse deviant. Once he explained, however, she eventually accepted his disgusting offering with great reluctance. Inside were the partial remains of a dead raccoon that Jim had scraped off the side of the road a couple of weeks earlier. Rotten and stinking, he told Ava that the rancid material could be used to mask her scent from the infected in an emergency. Although it was far from perfect and supremely disgusting, he had done just that with success on more than one occasion. ‘Enough carrion can hide even the sweetest little girl,’ he had told her, following it up with a little grin.

  Stranded on an island amidst a veritable ocean of the infected, she truly hoped he was right. As she stared at the grisly contents, she remembered a time just before he died when she found the previously flat bag to be swollen and distended—inflated like a mephitic balloon given to some unfortunate child by the world’s most twisted birthday clown. Jim deflated the bag and resealed it before handing it back to her for safekeeping. The rotting smell of the putrescent gas, an odor so strong you could taste it, made her vomit then. She could hardly imagine how much worse it would be now.

  Retrieving a piece of precious toilet paper from her pack, she tore it into two pieces before stuffing her nostrils full of the pillow-soft tissue. Given that toilet paper had become more valuable than gold and harder to find than a three-legged unicorn, she silently mourned the loss of even a single sheet. When she felt the cold, rubbery chunks of decomposing meat squishing between her
fingers and saw the mangled bits of fur floating in the dark, watery mélange, she struggled to keep from retching. Who am I kidding? I’d give a thousand sheets of toilet paper if it would keep me from smelling this disgusting roadkill ever again.

  Staying low, she eased over to the far side of the boulder, trying to muster the courage to carry through with her plan as she went. “Come on, Ava. You’ve done this sort of thing a hundred times before. You can do it. Dad is waiting,” she said, hoping to bolster her tenuous resolve. Like a swimmer mentally preparing for the icy shock of frigid water on a cold autumn morning, she took several long, deep breaths and opened the ziplock bag. Despite the toilet paper nose plugs, she immediately smelled the cloying stench of death that wafted out of the bag. As soon as the noxious vapor reached the back of her tongue, the taste immediately caused a rush of bile to flood the back of her throat. The bitter flavor proved a welcomed reprieve from the acrid taste of death it replaced. Reluctantly, she dipped her delicate fingers into the bag and scooped out a sample of the cadaverous goulash.

  Unable to issue the command for the next requisite action, the vast majority of Ava’s cerebral cortex simply shut down, relinquishing control to some primordial brain center that lacked the capacity for reason. As if on autopilot, she smeared the tainted, oily consommé over every conceivable part of her body. The vapors exuded by the raccoon pâté made her eyes water profusely. It felt as though her body was absorbing the deathly molecules, incorporating them into the very fabric of her being and forever altering the essence of her soul.