“That’s what life is, though,” Jack whispered to himself. “It can be cruel, and it’s often unfair. And all we can do is do our best … and I’ve done my best to help you, Nick. All I can do is pray that God is watching over us and helps you to pull through.”
He closed his eyes and finally felt himself drifting off to sleep again. But then, as he was on the verge of slipping into slumber, a loud crack jolted him awake. And this time, he knew that he wasn’t merely hearing things. He had heard a window being smashed, he was sure of it.
He leaned over to Kate and gently shook her awake. She opened her eyes, blinking in confusion for a while, but a smile came across her face when she saw Jack. When he turned, his face caught some of the gentle orange light, though, she saw the expression on his face, and her smile vanished. “What’s wrong?” she whispered.
“Someone’s in here,” he whispered back. “I heard a window breaking upstairs.”
“Oh my God,” she gasped. “What are we gonna do?”
“Take ‘em by surprise,” he said as he got out of his sleeping bag, his movements slow and careful to avoid making noise. “But first we need to figure out exactly who they are, and how many of them are in here. If it’s the whole gang … I guess we’re going to have to fight. But if it’s just a few scouts, I think we could handle them without having to fire a shot. If there’s just a few of them and we can take ‘em out silently, it’ll buy us some time to figure out how to escape this place.”
“Should I wake Susan and Nick?” Kate asked.
“No, let them sleep; they need rest, especially Nick. Take your pistol, a gas lamp, and the tomahawk. I’m gonna carry this guy,” he said, picking up the big fireman’s ax. “Follow me.”
Kate slid quietly out of her sleeping bag, lit up the gas lamp and picked it up with one hand and held her pistol with the other after tucking the tomahawk through her belt. They walked with soft, deliberate footsteps across the floor and past the old cells, and got to the stairs, where Jack disabled the tripwire.
“Why are you doing that?” Kate asked.
“I want them to think they’re sneaking up on us and that we’re oblivious to their presence,” Jack said. “If they think they’re the hunters and we’re the unsuspecting quarry, they won’t be as careful as they should be. All right, now that that’s done, I need you to turn the gas lamp down as low as it’ll go without the fire burning out. We don’t know if these guys have a light, but whether they do or don’t, we don’t want to give away our position by letting ‘em see this light.”
They went carefully up the stairs to the ground floor of the town hall. The gentle white light of the gas lamp threw out eerie, phantasmagorical shadows and gave the long hallways with their high ceilings, marble busts and dark, somber oil paintings a surreal and almost nightmarish atmosphere.
Every few seconds, they would stop and listen for the sound of footsteps. They hadn’t heard anything yet, and Jack was beginning to wonder if he wasn’t losing his mind and hadn’t imagined the whole thing. But finally, when they stopped near the main stairwell to listen, they heard the sound of voices. There were two people at least, and they were speaking in low, hushed tones.
Kate and Jack, now on edge, their hearts racing, waited and listened. They couldn’t make out what the men were saying, but it sounded as if they were on the next floor up. There were two distinct voices, but no more. Jack felt sure now that there were only two men here, or maybe three at the most. They would probably be coming down to this level soon enough. Jack knew he had to come up with a plan fast.
There were several office doors near the bottom of the stairs, and none of them were locked. “Kate,” he whispered, “this is what we’re going to do. You’re going to go into one of these offices with the lamp. When you hear them coming down the stairs, say something like ‘Jack, wake up, I think there’s someone here,’ soft enough to sound scared, but loud enough that they’ll hear what you’re saying clearly. I’m gonna hide under the stairs here, sneak up on the bastards when they think they’re surprising us and whack ‘em with the ax. If there’s three of ‘em, I’ll have to shoot, though. So stay down, lie on the floor.”
“Okay,” Kate said nervously. The plan sounded quite risky and dangerous, but they didn’t have many other options at this point. She hurried into one of the nearby offices and left the door half-open so that some of the light from the gas lamp was thrown out into the hallway.
Meanwhile, Jack took off his shoes, wearing only socks on his feet so he could move silently across the tiled floor. He melted into the dense, black shadows under the broad wooden stairs, gripping the fireman’s ax loosely in his hands, his jaw clenched with determination. There he waited, with each passing second feeling like it was stretching out, and it felt like agonizing hours of suspense were trickling by instead of minutes.
Finally, though, he heard footsteps on the stairs above, coming down slowly and cautiously. He heard two voices whispering but couldn’t make out exactly what they were saying. As they came down the stairs, he noticed a dancing orange glow thrown onto the walls; one of them was carrying a Zippo to light the way, it seemed. When they got halfway down, they stopped abruptly. Jack guessed they had seen Kate’s light in the office two doors down from the end of the stairs. The light from the Zippo abruptly went out; Jack knew the men were now preparing to attack. He tightened his grip around the ax.
The men came very slowly down the remaining stairs, careful not to make any noises. Jack’s heart was drumming in his chest like a chugging Harley motor. When the men got off the stairs, they paused. Jack had to hold his breath, for they would soon walk past him and be mere feet away from him in the dark. Now, finally, when they whispered to each other, he could hear what they were saying.
“Remember, it don’t matter much if we kill the dudes,” one rasped in a soft, harsh whisper. “But Mark wants the bitches alive. Don’t shoot the whores; I’ll fuckin’ shoot you if you do.”
“We don’t know if it’s them that’s in here,” the other whispered back. “Might be some other folk.”
“Who the fuck else could it be, dumbass?” the other whispered back. “We done killed everyone else who was stupid enough to stick around here. It’s them; I know it is. Now come on, let’s blow some holes through them dudes and catch us them whores. Hehehe, you an’ me can have us some fun with the older one right now. It’s the kid we can’t touch ‘til Mark’s had his fun with her.”
Whatever fear had been bubbling in Jack’s core turned quickly to white-hot wrath when he heard what these monsters were saying about his wife and daughter. He now had no compunction at all about using the ax on them … but he was able to think rationally through the almost blinding wrath, and he realized that it would be very advantageous if he could keep one of them alive, for now.
The men stopped talking and started sneaking over toward the office. They walked right past Jack, passing so close that he could smell the foul reek coming from them; it seemed that these were not men for whom cleanliness was particularly important. Soon enough, their forms were illuminated by the light thrown out of the office, and that little bit of light was all Jack needed.
One man was carrying a shotgun, and the other had a pistol in his hand. Jack came rushing quickly but silently up behind them, and then with a swift, hard jab of his as he smacked the pistol out of one man’s hand, but even as the man was yelping out in pain and surprise, Jack had turned and swung it in a mighty, vicious blow at the other man’s head. The blade hit the side of his skull with a dull, wet thwack, accompanied by the sickening crunch of bone splintering. The man was dead before his body even hit the floor, but the weapon was now stuck in his head and yanked out of Jack’s hands.
The pistol had gone flying, but the other man had reacted quickly and now had a knife in his good hand. With a wordless snarl of aggression, he lunged at Jack, who dodged the blow and grabbed the man’s wrist. They fell to the ground, struggling furiously, wrestling for control of the knife.
“Kate!” Jack yelled out as he fought. “Kate, help me!”
The man was bigger and stronger than Jack, and he started punching Jack in the face with his injured hand. The adrenalin of the fight was canceling out whatever pain was throbbing in his hand, which had been broken by the ax. The blows were powerful and heavy, and Jack could do nothing to ward them off. Both his hands were on the man’s wrist, trying to control the knife. Flashes of light blazed briefly behind his eyes with each thumping punch than landed on his face or skull. He could soon taste blood in his mouth and felt its warmth washing over his face. He tried to kick and knee the man as they struggled, but his blows seemed to do nothing to his opponent, who fought him with even greater fury.
“I’m gon’ kill you, motherfucker, I’m gon’ beat your fuckin’ skull to a pulp!” the man snarled as he continued to rain down punches on Jack with his maimed hand.
At that point, Kate came running out of the office with the tomahawk in one hand and the pistol in her other. She saw what was happening and screamed.
“Hit him with the tomahawk!” Jack gasped as he fought for his life. “Hit the bastard!”
Kate knew she couldn’t risk taking a shot at the fighting men in case she hit her husband, so she charged in with the tomahawk. She slammed the blade into the man’s back, and he yelped with pain. He punched Jack again, though, so Kate hit him again, this time on the side of his face. She wasn’t strong enough to do any lethal damage, but it was enough to shatter the man’s cheekbone and open up a deep gash in his face. Finally, his attacks against Jack began to falter, and Jack was able to wriggle free of his grasp and yank the knife out of the man’s hands.
Kate raised the tomahawk to strike another blow, this one aimed at the back of the man’s skull.
“No!” Jack yelled, panting and gasping. “Don’t kill him, we’ve got him now, we’ve got him.” He kicked the man off him, then jumped on top of him and pressed the knife against his throat. “You gonna stop fighting now, asshole?” Jack growled. “You’d best do that, or my wife is gonna bury that ax in your skull.”
The man’s adrenaline was wearing off now, and he was beginning to feel the pain of his injuries. “Okay, okay,” he growled, “I surrender, okay. I surrender, dammit.”
“Wise choice,” Jack muttered. “A very wise choice on your part. Kate, get something out of that office, tape or something, that we can tie this jerk up with. He’s our ticket out of here … yeah, this idiot is our ticket out of this place.”
32
Kate found a few rolls of packing tape in the office, and they used them to tape the man to one of the office chairs, wrapping it around his arms and torso to lash him to the back of the chair and his lower legs to the chair legs. When they were done, there was no way the man would be going anywhere, no matter how big or strong he was.
Jack, whose face was bruised and bloody from the man’s punches, with one eye badly swollen and his nose bleeding, stared coldly at the prisoner. The man looked—and smelled—like a backwoods hillbilly. His long, blond hair was greasy and stinky, and what few teeth he had in his mouth were rotten and crooked. He had some poorly done tattoos on his pale, hairy arms, and his bulbous nose looked as if it had been broken a few times. Blood was oozing from the deep gash on his face that Kate had given him, but the fires of defiance and aggression continued to burn in the man’s pale-blue eyes.
“I’m gonna ask you a few questions,” Jack said coolly. “And I suggest you answer them truthfully.”
“And if I don’t? What you gon’ do then, city boy?” the man growled, smirking.
Jack shrugged. “Take you up to the attic where your buddies won’t find you and leave you there. You’ll die of thirst over the next few days, or maybe the cold will get you first. Either way, it won’t be pleasant. If you tell me the truth, though, I’ll give you a fighting chance to survive.”
The man said nothing; he simply scowled at Jack.
Jack took this as a sign to continue. “Who’s this Mark guy?” he asked. “And what are you people doing here in this town? I heard you talking to your dead buddy out there about the townsfolk you’ve killed or driven off.”
“Mark’s our leader,” the man admitted. “Mark McAllister. Remember that name because you’re gon’ be beggin’ Mark for your life before you die. We took this town when the power went out because … well, because we wanted to, an’ we could. With no damn cops or nothin’ around, why shouldn’t we? We got plenty of guns, way more than you realize, so why shouldn’t we take what we want, huh? First rule of nature, baby—only the strong survive. An’ when that thing happened that made all the electronic stuff die, Mark knew that this was our time … our time to rule. He been waitin’ for things to back like they were in the ol’ pioneer days. An’ now … now he got what he been waitin’ for. What we all been waitin’ for.”
Jack sighed and shook his head. “It didn’t take very long for people like you to come out of the woodwork, did it? I can’t say I’m surprised, though. But why did you attack us? Why me? Why my family? You’ve taken the town, all we wanted to do was pass through, yet you and your friends and this Mark guy, you tried to kill us.”
Jack thought he already knew the answer to this question, but he wanted to hear it from his enemy’s lips. The man’s eyes drifted over to Kate, and the filthy look he gave her, as well as the salacious smile his lips curled into, told Jack everything he needed to know about his enemies’ intentions without the man having to say a word.
“Mark likes teenage girls, and the rest a’ us guys, we need women,” the man simply said with a shrug, still leering his vile smile at Kate. “Simple as that, really. Nothin’ personal. We just got needs is all.” The look he gave her made her skin crawl, and it took every ounce of restraint she had not to slam the tomahawk into his skull. Jack, too, had to exercise enormous control, seeing the man look at his wife like that, but he knew that they had to keep the man alive and not injure him further if they were to escape the town with their lives.
“You’re disgusting,” Kate spat. “Disgusting and sick.”
“It’s how nature made us,” the man countered. “All critters need to breed; it’s just instinct is all.”
“You may be nothing more than an animal,” Jack growled, clenching his fists and fighting back the desire to slug the man in his face, “but we’re not like you and your scumbag friends. We still believe in basic human decency, the rule of law, and a code of morals and ethics. But I guess that’s something a person like you just wouldn’t understand, is it?”
“Fuck you,” the man snarled.
Jack chuckled humorlessly and shook his head. “You’re very predictable, aren’t you? I was expecting a response like that, and you certainly didn’t disappoint me. Anyway, let’s try another question. How many people are there in this gang of yours?”
The man smiled mockingly. “Gee, wouldn’t you like to know? You think I’m stupid, asshole? I ain’t tellin’ you that.”
“I think we should chop his fingers off one by one until he talks,” Kate snarled, gripping the tomahawk tightly and glaring at the man. She hadn’t forgotten how he had looked at her and what he had said about her daughter.
“Believe me, I wouldn’t mind doing that. I wouldn’t mind it at all,” Jack muttered, “but we’re not going to stoop to their level.” He turned and locked a fierce stare into the man’s eyes. “I’m not going to torture you, no matter how despicable a person you are. Nobody deserves that. You can answer my questions, or you can refuse, but one way or another, you’re going to help us get out of here alive … because if you don’t, you’re going to die.”
The man’s face remained expressionless. Eventually, though, he smiled. “Whatever you say, man,” he said cryptically.
“All right,” Jack continued, “well, I know that there are a few of you around. And obviously, you all split up to look for us. If your friend Mark had known we were in here, he would have sent all of you in to get us.”
; The man’s smile remained unwavering. He said nothing, and his silence confirmed to Jack that what he had just said was correct.
“So, you’re all spread out right now, looking for us. I’m guessing that means that the blizzard’s died down a little outside if you people are walking around outdoors.”
“Maybe it has, maybe it hasn’t,” the man grunted.
“We’ll find out soon enough,” Jack said. “All right, next question. Where are your snowmobiles? I know you’ve got some.”
The man chuckled and shook his head. “Now, why the fuck would I tell y’all that?”
“Maybe because you’d rather live than spend the next three or four days here dying of thirst. My father is a plumber in this town, you see. He worked in this town hall a lot, and he told me where all the little secret spaces between the walls are. You’re a big guy, but I bet we could cram you into one of those spaces,” Jack said, smiling savagely. “Your buddies would never find you. They wouldn’t hear your screams…”
“You wouldn’t do that.”
“I’ll do whatever it takes to ensure the survival of my family,” Jack said, and from the hard look in his eyes, the man could tell he meant every word he’d said.
“So what do you want,” the man muttered, sounding as if he was beginning to cave beneath the pressure. “You wanna kill Mark? You wanna kick us outta this town?”
“I just want to get my family out of here,” Jack said. Of course, he did want to kick these marauders out and punish them for everything they had done here, but he knew that he would have a higher chance of getting the man to cooperate if he kept his demands within reason.
Survive the Day Boxset: EMP Survival in a Powerless World Page 69