by Gary Hickman
“Shit,” Priest thought to himself. This makes the mission ten times harder. His team could help, but it was way too dangerous to take on a dozen trucks and the infected. He sat there for what seemed like hours, even though it was five or so minutes. An idea came to him, so he raced back to the compound as fast as the bike could take him.
He keyed his comms, coming up the road. “Hey, get me 10 grenades.” Most of the team came out to meet him. When they came out and handed him the grenades, Priest explained what he had seen.
They all wanted to go with him and no one more than Shaw, who was champing at the bit. He assured them it would be like a snatch and grab. Quick and easy. They still didn’t like it, but they would follow his orders to stay. He told them to be on standby in case he needed them, then said his goodbye’s and rode back down the access road toward the horde.
CHAPTER 38
As Priest rode back toward the shit storm, he thought about how the odds of achieving the desired result was very slim. He thought to himself, “I will have to hit this thing hard and fast. Creating even more confusion than the infected are creating will give me my best chance.
The infected are unpredictable, which is more of a problem for the local yokels than it would be for me.” He saw the chaos in front of him and decided the best way to go about it was head first.
He dropped the throttle and the Ninja 1000 launched forward like a rocket. A bright red pickup, with two men in the back, was driving in the circle they had created trying to get the infected bunched up together.
Priest plucked a grenade from his vest, pulled the pin with his teeth. He released the spoon, held it for a second, and then threw the grenade into the truck bed.
The men in the truck were still focused on the infected, so Priest put some distance between him and the truck by letting off the throttle. In front of him, the grenade exploded in the truck bed and instantly killed the two men in the bed.
The explosion sent glass and shrapnel into the cab of the truck, killing both the driver and passenger. The truck went careening into the middle of the circle, slamming through throngs of the infected.
Priest looked ahead and was selecting his next target when a bullet whizzed by his head. He looked back to see a black truck with a guy pointing a rifle at him hanging out the back of the bed.
Priest punched the bike and caught up with the next truck in line in the circle. He had a grenade out and was closing in on his next target as bullets continued to fly by him. He glanced back again, and the truck was trying to gain ground, but with the uneven terrain, it was having a hard time increasing speed. This also kept the man in the back from getting a good bead on him.
The Ninja wasn’t the best at handling this terrain, but he was managing. He increased speed, popped the spoon and tossed the grenade into the bed of the truck to his right. This time he sped by the truck before the grenade went off. He heard the explosion and watched out of the corner of his right eye, but saw nothing.
He looked back to his left and saw the truck coming to a stop on the outside of the circle. “Damn,” Priest thought to himself. It would be better if they wrecked to the right and killed a bunch of these damn infected. As Priest looked around at the state of things and noticed the circle’s formation was deteriorating.
“I need to break this thing apart quicker,” Priest said to himself. “Time to get stupid.” Priest slowed down and dropped his left foot, lowered the bike and let the momentum bring it around in a 180-degree turn and propelled himself in the opposite direction. Facing the oncoming trucks, he shot right by the truck that was shooting at him earlier.
Priest rode by the next truck, which was brown, and Priest pulled out the Glock and started firing into the windshield. The driver turned the wheel to their right, which angled the truck into the infected in the middle. This also gave Priest an accurate sight picture of the driver’s temple, which he did not waste the opportunity of, and put two rounds into the side of the driver’s head. He has time to see what happened afterward.
Priest was garnering some attention now and more people were taking shots at him. He knew he couldn’t keep this up, but he just wanted to disrupt this operation enough to make sure the infected weren’t led to the compound.
He spied a smaller truck, which was a little slower than the rest and took off for that truck. It was light blue and rusted out all to hell. He pulled out a grenade and extracted the pin, but he lost his grip on it and it dropped from his hand.
The grenade went off near the front of another truck and blew the tires and part of the engine. The truck came to a halt immediately.
With the reduced speed and visibility, along with the focus on the infected, another truck came from behind and didn’t see the truck stopped right in its path before it was too late. The rear truck, which had six men in the bed, slammed into the disabled truck, launching the men onto the ground. Infected swarmed the men, ripping and devouring flesh.
Priest took this time to call it quits and let the rest play out. He performed another 180-degree power slide turn and headed off to this right.
While riding west toward the compound, multiple things happened at once. The repeat of a loud high caliber machine gun reached his ears as the back wheel of his bike and sprocket disintegrated.
The bike shot out from underneath him and because of high rate of speed; it hurled him 50 feet onto the pavement. It forced all the air out of his lungs and he felt a few cracks form throughout his rib cage. He slid and then rolled a few times before coming to a stop on the shoulder of the eastbound lanes. He was dazed and in some pretty decent pain, and he had trouble getting up. His body just wasn’t working like it was supposed to.
He heard a vehicle approach quickly, and he continued to get up. He got to his knees before a blow to the back of his helmet brought complete darkness and he fell back to the ground unconscious.
CHAPTER 39
Priest woke up still lying on the ground. He felt like shit, but at least he was feeling something. He looked around and noticed that his helmet, riding jacket and riding pants were all gone. He glanced over to his left and saw the Ninja 1000 laying on its side. Not expecting the bike to be in any working order, Priest got up painfully and walked over to it. Everything still looked intact, but he thought back to before and was sure the rear of the bike was toast. Maybe it was just asphalt broken up from the rounds that got caught in the rear tire. He inspected it, and surprisingly everything seemed fine. Regardless of the condition of the bike, he needed to get the hell out of there and make it back to the compound.
Apprehensively, Priest started the bike, and it roared to life. He took off, expecting the worst, but it seemed to roll fine. Priest raced back to his new home on the compound. He quickly sped up, but it would not move any faster than 40 mph.
“Must have taken some damage on the throttle when I laid it down,” Priest thought to himself. “Just keep it moving and get back to everyone. We’ll check it later,” was the only thing on his mind.
There was a faint sound of engines in the distance. He craned his neck to see if he could pinpoint where they were coming from and realized the sound was coming from behind him. He looked over his shoulder to see three trucks approaching from his rear and heading straight for him.
Priest dropped the throttle to race out of there, but the bike wouldn’t respond. It stayed right around 40 mph. He didn’t have to look back this time to know the trucks were getting closer. The revving engines were getting much closer. He was on the highway so there were no alleys, no buildings where he could hide. Nowhere he could hope to lose them. They were bearing down on him and he could sense it, he could hear it, he could feel it.
“Why don’t they just shoot me? Why not just kill me and be done with it already?” he thou
ght to himself.
Yelling and screaming along with the roar of the truck engines now reached his ears? Screaming and hooting like wild animals. The anticipation of them reaching him was overwhelming, and the tension was physically debilitating. Every muscle in his body was tight, like steel cables being twisted and stretched. His head was pounding, and he could feel the blood surging in his ears.
Suddenly, he felt hands on his arm, grabbing, clawing, and ripping. He looked to his right to see a pickup right next to him. His eyes went wide when he saw the infected in the back of the truck, heads tilting back and forth, screaming and yelling. A few of the infected in the truck’s bed had a hold of his arm and were trying to pull him off the bike. He attempted to wrench his arm out of their grip, but they were incredibly strong. A couple other infected in the back reached out and grabbed his shirt and pulled him off the bike. Although he was fighting them with everything he had, it seemed futile. Feeling the situation was reaching a desperate point, he stretched down to his left thigh and grabbed his Walther PPQ. He cursed loudly as his hand came away empty. His pistol was gone, both of his pistols were gone.
“Fuck,” he yelled, as they pulled him off the bike and slammed him into the bed of the truck. They jumped on him, screaming like banshees as he fought to keep them off. He was swinging, kicking and thrashing about, trying to gain some freedom from their grip. Trying to create some space between them, so he could wriggle out from underneath them and maybe jump out the back. There had to be something….something to give him a fighting chance.
Priest screamed as the excruciating pain overtook him as he felt them taking bites out of his arms and legs. Then they ripped at his skin. They pulled his entrails out, laughing and screaming as they held them up as trophies. One leaned in and took a bite out of his throat as he attempted to scream. The scream wouldn’t come, only gasping and gurgling. He rocked his head, trying to remove the gnashing teeth from his throat. He gathered all the strength he could muster and screamed out.
He jolted awake, gasping and panting.
“Well, look who’s awake,” a voice called out that he didn’t recognize. Priest struggled to open his eyes and look around, but they would barely open. His eyes were pulsating and throbbing and something crusted them halfway shut.
Priest tried to wipe them, but his hands wouldn’t move, wouldn’t budge. They felt like they weighed 50 lbs, and he had lost feeling in them. He rotated his head to the left and right and saw he had handcuffs on each raw and bleeding wrist. Priest was on his knees with his arms stretched out, cuffed to a railing on each side. Stripped down to a t-shirt and jeans, they were both covered both in blood. He felt his lips with his tongue, and they were split and bleeding in various places. His throat was parched, like he had gargled with barbwire. As Priest regained his wits about him, every inch of his body screamed out in pain. Every inch protested movement and cried out, trying to gain his attention all at the same time. A slight grin came over his face as he embraced the pain as a welcomed friend. The pain allowed him to focus, allowed him to keep his mind in the present.
“Take it in. Take it all in. You aren’t home anymore,” that same voice said to him. He opened his eyes as much as they would allow to look around the room.
Priest analyzed his environment and thought, “A maintenance building of some sort? No, it looked more like a horse barn and tack shop. There was a man sitting in a chair facing him with three more men standing behind him. The man in the chair was leaning on a sledgehammer with the head against his cheek.
“Ah, there he is, it’s about time too. I worried I hit you too hard.” The man said as he held the hammer up to his face and examined it.
“It split that helmet, though. Just like cracking an egg. Oh, and the boys here worked you over quite a bit as well. I mean, with you killing so many of their friends, I’m sure you can understand how they might be a little upset. Truth is, we had to pull them off you before they beat you to death.”
In a low raspy voice, Priest finally spoke, “Yeah, they did a pretty good job on the dog pile seeing how I was already down. If they would like to try me now, I would be more than happy to return the favor.”
The man in the chair looked at him quizzically. A smile broke on Priest’s face as he snickered, then spat out a wad of blood and phlegm. The man stared at him for another brief second and then broke out in laughter like that was the funniest thing he had ever heard. He went on for a while, tears rolling down his cheeks.
“My God, you are funny.” The man was wiping the tears off his face. It took a few minutes for him to compose himself. “Whew. That was good. You know what makes this even funnier?”
Priest shrugged, as much as he could with the shackles on his wrists. “Because my associates here, probably don’t realize just how true that is.” He laughed again, but nowhere close to the spectacle as before. The men behind him started shifting nervously.
Priest didn’t know if they enjoyed being called out, but he didn’t give much of a shit either.
“My, my, my, where are my manners? Let me introduce myself. My name is Thomas, Thomas Baker. I am the mayor of our little paradise here, called Boone.”
When Priest pictured mayors he thought of fat, balding men with floppy jowls and a handkerchief to mop up the sweat constantly rolling off their head. This Thomas guy had a southern accent that sounded like an old southern gentleman of high society. His appearance, however, differed from the image his voice projected. This “Thomas”, was fairly tall from what Priest can determine with him sitting in the chair. He was lanky, a little on the thinner side, and wore khakis with a button-up shirt. Except for the fact that he tried to cave his head in, Priest thought he might have sat down for a beer with him under different circumstances. He had sandy blonde hair that was cut short and a close-cropped beard. Thomas Baker noticed Priest analyzing him and answered the unasked questions.
“No, I am not really the mayor, well one that was voted upon, anyway. This group, however, has made me the mayor.”
“No shit,” Priest uttered.
Thomas looked at him for a moment.
“My boys really messed you up, didn’t they? Perhaps seeing the picture I have in front of me, might clue you in to the seriousness of the situation at hand. Thomas got up from his chair and walked out of the room.
He was getting a kick out of this, Priest thought. Thomas came back into the room with a small mirror and held it out in front of Priest.
“Holy shit, they did a good job. My compliments to the artist,” Priest said. He could see that his eyes were practically swollen shut, crusted together with dried blood, and were black and blue. He had cuts all over his face and his lips were busted and split. He had blood crusted in this beard and cuts all over his face and head.
As Priest looked at the broken face in the mirror, he said in a raspy voice, “I’ve been tortured by the best and you fuckers are going to have to do better than this.”
That seemed to amuse Thomas. “I really like you; you know. I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage. You know my name and I’m curious to know what yours is?”
“Priest.”
“What?”
“They call me Priest.”
“Is that your first name, last name or a nickname?”
“Just Priest.”
“Well, Mr. Priest. Let’s you and I have a little heart to heart talk, shall we?”
“Please, let’s,” Priest replied.
Thomas laughed again. “Ah, I love this guy. Okay, Mr. Priest, here’s the deal. Our little family here is all about survival. It’s been a major part of our life to prepare for this event, for this series of events leading to the end of the world as society knows it. If I may be so blunt, you and your people have encroac
hed on our property and have interrupted our plans. We have included that facility in our plans ever since they started building it. They hired many people from this town to build it and so, have intimate knowledge of its amenities and how those fall so perfectly into our plans. They have been in that facility, seen how self-sufficient it is. Oh, yes. It is everything we have been planning and living for. So, we will not just let you and your people come and take it away from us.”
“Are you bitching about your ass hurting?” Priest replied.
Thomas was taken aback for a second, but a sly smile comes across his face. “Lawrence, please teach Mr. Priest some manners?” The man to Thomas’s left stepped forward and punched Priest in the jaw with a gloved hand.
Priest spit out some blood.
“Lawrence, I’ll remember that shit,” Priest growled.
“Now, before I was so rudely interrupted. Mr. Priest, what I need from you is a key, so to speak. A way to unlock that facility. Actually, it is better defined as a way in. I would appreciate it if your people just left and gave us that facility with no trouble, but I feel that will not happen. Mr. Priest, you are my key to get in there, and I don’t much care how it happens. Whether you talk them into it, whether we use you as a hostage, or whether you walk right up and let us in. One way or another, you will be the way to our salvation, which includes that entire compound on the hill.”
“You don’t sound like the rest of these country fuck Cro-Magnons. How is that?” Priest answered.
Thomas again looked at Priest with amazement, “Well, that was a compliment and a slight in the same sentence. Even though it was quite rude, I will answer it anyway. I am the orator for our grand movement. The voice for public meetings, assemblies, etc. They have appointed me the “mayor” of this town, and my job is to talk to other groups, communities or other entities in power and negotiate treaties, alliances or any other means necessary for our survival.”