Dark Apocalypse: A Post-Apocalyptic Family Saga

by Gabriel Alexander

  The locals on the wall were achieving victories as well. They managed to kill ten more rebels before having to reload again.

  “Reloading!” could be heard again from the walls. And right after they reloaded, they resumed firing, hitting no less than twelve rebels who were poorly defended behind the cars or who weren’t even in cover.

  The mortar teams fired two projectiles at the same time, one killing the last three remaining locals in front of the walls, while the other hit the gates, reducing them to splinters. Drake Junior, who was watching the whole scene through his binoculars, said in his walkie-talkie:

  “We’re in business. Get in! Get in!”

  “Roger that, sir,” one of the rebels said. “Moving in. All right, people, you heard the man. Let’s go, let’s go!”

  Some of the rebels started running toward the entrance on foot, while the others got in the trailers and entered via the cars. Up on the walls, the locals kept firing, hitting a few rebels from time to time. But now that the rebels managed to get inside, the locals lost the advantage of being protected by the metal plates. Now, both sides had equal chances of being hit. And that’s exactly what happened. Now, the rebels started hitting more and more of them, who fell from the walls like rocks after being machine-gunned from down-bellow. To make matters worse, two mortars hit the wall, ripping fourteen unlucky locals to shreds.

  “Everybody get off the walls and get inside the houses!” Simon yelled. “Now! Now!”

  The locals obeyed their leader and started climbing down the walls, among the bullets fired by the rebels, who kept harassing them as they climbed down. The locals were not letting up either. They kept firing at the rebels while climbing down, sometimes hitting a few of them, but sometimes they missed, because they were running and couldn’t aim properly.

  Suddenly, another mortar hit a house head on, blowing it to smithereens.

  “No! That’s my house!” a woman next to Simon, Julie, Thomas and Melissa yelled. “My daughter was in there. Oh, my God! Jessica!”

  The woman tried to run toward her house, but Simon grabbed her by the arm and stopped her.

  “Mary, don’t. Mary, listen to me… Mary…”

  The woman escaped Simon’s grip and ran toward her house. But she barely managed to put a few yards between her and Simon, when a mortar hit the ground next to her, spinning her up in the air and ripping a foot and an arm from her body. She collapsed dead on the ground.

  “Shit!” Simon yelled. Then, he turned toward Melissa, Thomas and Julie and said:

  “All right! Let’s run toward my house. Once there, we’ll take cover and we’ll defend it to the last breath. No way I’m letting these fuckers take what’s mine. Come on! Let’s go!”

  The three started running, dodging the rebels’ bullets. From time to time, they would shoot a rebel who had the misfortune of being in front of them or to their side. At one point, they stopped next to a house and took cover behind it. Simon peeked from behind the wall.

  “Eight rebels on the other side. On three… One…two…three.”

  They jumped from behind the house and machine-gunned the eight rebels coming toward them. Then, they reloaded and they kept running, shooting at whatever rebels came their way, sometimes hitting them, sometimes missing them.

  They eventually reached Simon’s house. They opened the door slowly and entered, guns high.

  “Let’s check for rebels!” Simon said.

  “I’ll take Julie and check downstairs,” Thomas said. “You take Melissa and check upstairs.”

  “Got it!” Simon said.

  Simon took Melissa and headed upstairs, while Julie and Thomas were left downstairs to check.

  Simon and Melissa started climbing the stairs cautiously. When they got to their end, they started treading carefully. Any squeak in the floor could give them away. They first approached the door leading to Simon’s office. Melissa took position to its left, while Simon took position to its right.

  “Three… two… one,” Simon said, before bashing the door and jumping inside. Melissa shortly followed him.

  “Clear,” Simon said. “Let’s check the other rooms.”

  They got out and headed toward Julie’s bedroom. They applied the same tactic. Then, they checked Thomas’ room. All clear upstairs.

  Downstairs, meanwhile, Julie and Thomas checked the kitchen, the dining room, the bathroom and the living room. The only room left was the basement.

  They took positions in front of the basement door. Thomas was in front, while Julie was behind him. He opened the door carefully and aimed his weapon in front. He started treading on the stairs and getting down. The place was not too illuminated, but the light coming through the only tiny little window was just enough for them to make out the room.

  “Clear,” Thomas said. “Let’s go back upstairs.”

  They climbed back up the stairs, but when they reached the top, three rebels opened the door and got in. Thomas saw them in time and reacted quickly. He immediately got back on the stairs and signaled Julie to stop. Then, he aimed his gun and shot at one of the rebels, who collapsed dead on the ground. The other two ran back quickly and took cover behind the door. They then fired back at Thomas, but they hit only the wall, causing splinters to jump up from it. Thomas then fired back, but he missed as well, hitting just the door frame.

  “How many?” Julie asked.

  “Two,” Thomas answered.

  “Then let me have one.”

  She climbed up the stairs and started to fire toward the entrance, alongside Thomas. But they didn’t hit anything this time either. The two rebels returned fire as well, but they also hit nothing. Then, all of a sudden, the two rebels were shot from their left by someone unseen. They fell to the ground, dead.

  Thomas and Julie came out from behind the door and they saw Simon, at the top of the stairs, with his gun smoking, still aimed at the door.

  “You guys okay?” Simon asked.

  “Yeah, we’re fine,” Julie answered.

  “Good. Come upstairs. We’ll defend our position from your room, Julie.”

  “Okay, let’s do this,” Julie said.

  ***

  Most of the locals who were still standing entered their houses and started defending them from upstairs. Very few of them took cover behind wooden panels installed a day earlier as shields. Despite that, the tide of the battle now turned in the favor of the rebels. Their numerical superiority started to take its toll on the locals. They were just like Hydra’s heads: every time a local shot one down, two more took his or her place. They seemed to be endless.

  This doesn’t mean that that the locals didn’t score occasional victories. At one point, four rebels entered a woman’s house, in search of its inhabitants. After searching upstairs and downstairs, they found nothing. Then, they headed for the basement. They opened the door and climbed down. Inside, they saw ten kids prone down and crying in fear. They approached them.

  “Well, hello there, children!”

  The kids turned their heads and started crying even harder.

  “Don’t worry,” one of the rebels told them. “We’re not gonna hurt you. We’ll just take you away and make good soldiers out of you, that’s all. We need decent warriors. And you will make the perfect warriors. The whole county will shake in fear when they’ll hear your names.”

  “I hardly doubt that,” a woman’s voice said from behind them.

  The four rebels turned around, but it was too late for them. The woman aimed a pistol at them and shot all of them in just a few seconds. They didn’t even have time to turn their weapons toward her. She then headed toward the kids. She kneeled in front of them.

  “Is everybody okay?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. We’re fine,” a little girl said.

  “Good. That’s good. Now, stay here until I tell you to come out, okay?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  After saying that, she headed toward the stairs and climbed up.

  ***
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  Thomas, Julie, Melissa and Simon kept firing like hell at the rebels who were approaching the house. They managed to kill about twenty, but the bastards kept coming. They were resilient as hell, not showing any sign of giving up.

  As she was firing, suddenly, Melissa heard a click. The clip was empty. She took it off and put her hand into her pocket. But it was empty.

  “Shit, I’m out of ammo,” she said.

  Thomas threw her a clip from his pocket.

  “Use it wisely,” he told her.

  Which is exactly what she did. As soon as she reloaded, she started firing at the incoming rebels. And she hit ten, before she ran dry again.

  “I’m o…”

  But she couldn’t manage to finish the sentence. A bullet hit her right in the head and splattered her brains on the ground. She collapsed immediately.

  “No!” Thomas yelled. Then, with rage in his heart, he aimed out the window.

  “You sons of bitches!”

  Then, he started firing again, killing five rebels who had the nerve to approach the house. Simon and Julie, fueled by Melissa’s killing, also registered successes, Julie killed six rebels and Simon eight, until, eventually, the inevitable happened and they ran out of ammo as well.

  “I’m out,” Julie said.

  “I’m out too,” Simon said.

  “I’m out too,” Thomas said as well.

  “Now what do we do?” Simon asked. But before he could get an answer, they heard a whizzing sound coming toward them.

  “What’s that noise?” Julie asked.

  And all of a sudden, the ceiling on top of them exploded in huge chunks of debris, which hit them in the head. The last thing they saw before losing consciousness was the rebels, entering the room and aiming their weapons at them.

  ***

  A kick in the gut woke Thomas up.

  “Wake the fuck up, you scumbag,” the rebel above him said.

  Thomas woke up in excruciating stomach pain. A rebel grabbed him by the collar and sat him up.

  “Get on your knees,” he said, aiming his gun at him.

  Thomas looked around. They were in the town center. He saw Julie and Simon kneeling to his left, hands tied. He then looked to his right and saw a long row of townsfolk, in the same position. Next to them, there were rebels, pointing weapons at them. Then, the leader himself, Drake Junior, came toward them.

  “My, my,” he said, while looking at Thomas. “Look at you. The mighty warriors who bragged about bringing me down. All tied up and kneeled down before me.”

  He then looked at Julie.

  “Aren’t you the one who said that you are gonna cut off my dick and make me suck it and then shove it up my ass?”

  “And that’s exactly what I’m gonna do, you peace of shit,” Julie replied, before spitting him in his face. For her boldness, the rebel behind her hit her in the head with his weapon.

  Drake Junior whipped the spit off his face.

  “You got balls,” he said, “for a bitch. I’ll give you that. And nerve. But in case you missed it, you, along with your entire town of war dogs, sort of speak, are now tied up and kneeled before me, so I can decide your fate. You lost, pretty girl. Your war is over. And we won. Which is why now I will have to punish this entire shithole of a town for the nerve of killing my men.”

  “Please, no!” Simon said. The rebel behind him hit him in the head with the weapon and said:

  “You speak when spoken to, asshole.”

  “No, no,” Drake Junior said, before walking in front of Simon. “Let him say what he has to say. Come on, hotshot. Speak up!”

  “Please,” Simon said. “We didn’t know that we were gonna lose. We didn’t know that your armies are more powerful. But now we do and we respect that. We respect their strength and their might. And most of all, we accept defeat. So… so, in other words, we accept your offer of ninety percent of our food per month. Hell, we are willing to accept even more. If there’s anything else besides food that you will want from us, we will be more than happy to oblige. Just… just please, don’t hurt my people. Please. We were foolish. Now we understand that. And we apologize. But please, I’m begging you, don’t hurt us.”

  Drake Junior laughed maniacally.

  “Well, aren’t you the optimistic one.”

  He looked at his men.

  “This guy here believes that we will spare his men if he apologizes and throws our previous offer in our face again.”

  The rebels started laughing.

  “I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that, pal,” Drake said, looking at Simon. “Not anymore. Our offer expired. Now, we have to punish you and your town of mutts for killing my men. You messed with me. Now I am gonna mess with you. What goes around, comes around.”

  He then looked at his men again.

  “Waste them all!”

  “No, please!” a woman yelled. “Please, please spare my children. I’m begging you!”

  Her two children were crying next to her.

  “Stop! Hold your fire!” Drake Jr. said.

  He went in front of her.

  “So you want me to spare your children.”

  “Yes, please.”

  “What about your husband? Don’t you want me to spare him as well?”

  “My husband died fighting you. My children are all I have left. I’m begging you, spare them.”

  Drake Junior was silent for a few moments.

  “Okay,” he said. “Spare her children.”

  “Thank you, sir, thank you! I appreciate it.”

  “Waste only her.”

  “Mommy, no!” the children yelled, hugging her.

  “It’s okay, kids,” the woman said, hugging them back. “I’ll always be with you from up there. Mommy loves you both.”

  Drake Junior nodded at the rebel behind her. He nodded back and put a bullet in the woman’s head, who died before hitting the ground. Her children started yelling and crying and hugged the corpse.

  “Mommy, no! Mommy!”

  Drake Junior pointed at the kids.

  “Take them and put them in a truck.”

  “Yes, sir!” a rebel said, before taking the kids and taking them to a truck nearby.

  Drake Rim then addressed the rest of the rebels:

  “Kill everybody else except for those three,” he yelled, pointing at Thomas, Julie and Simon. “I’ve got other plans for them. Big plans.”

  The rebels complied. They shot all the townsfolk in the head, except for Thomas, Julie and Simon, whom they took to a truck.

  “You sadistic bastards. You will all pay for this, I swear to God,” Simon yelled, while being loaded in an army truck, covered with a tarp.

  The truck lurched, slowed to a crawl, and accelerated at a steep angle. “Watch it,” shouted the rebel in the passenger seat. “You’re gonna get us killed driving like that.” Another lurch threw him and the driver violently to the left. “Fucking hell, Pete!”

  Their headlights danced over the dark wall of abandoned cars, long ago consumed by rust, along the side of the road. Wide jagged cracks scarred the pavement like lightning across a starless sky.

  Thomas, Julie and Simon were sitting behind a truck, with their hands tied, guarded by eight rebels sitting next to them. At one point, Julie looked at one of the rebels. He had no shirt on, his nipples had piercings in them, so did his ears and nose. His hair was dyed red, and he had a rooster style haircut. He was wearing torn jeans and black boots.

  The rebel noticed Julie looking at him.

  “What is it, babe?” he asked. “You’d like me to fuck you? If so, don’t worry. Once we get to the camp, you’ll be our sex doll. Everyone will stand in line to fuck you. And sometimes, we’ll even have some group sex with you. You’ll get to have three or four of us at the same time. And the most pleasured from this thing will be you. Just imagine yourself sucking a cock, while two more will be inside your ass and cunt at the same time. Maximum pleasure, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I’d say th
at I don’t like people who brag about what they don’t have,” Julie said.

  Upon hearing this, the smile dropped from his face. He got up, took a few steps, and hit Julie in the face. Blood dripped from her mouth.

  “Don’t you laugh at me, you stupid bitch,” the angry rebel said.

  “Leave her alone!” Thomas said.

  “Or you’ll do what, pretty boy?” the rebel asked. “Your hands are tied. You plan on beating me with your hands tied? Huh?”

  He then put his face close to Thomas’

  “Don’t you worry, pretty boy. We got big plans in store for you too once we get back to camp. You will be our leader’s pet. When he says “fetch,” you will go fetch. When he says “jump,” you’ll ask “how high?” And when he takes a shit, you will be there to bury it and wipe his ass. And that’s what you will do for the rest of your pathetic, miserable excuse for a life.”

  “Really?” Thomas said. “I doubt that. You see, if your leader touches me with his filthy hands, I’ll cut them off the very next second.”

  The rebel laughed.

  “I don’t know who your mother and father were, pretty boy, but you inherited the balls from both of them.”

  He then punched Thomas in the face.

  “Touch my brother again and I will kill you.”

  The rebel turned toward Julie again.

  “Did you hear that, boys and girls? She just threatened to kill me if I touch her brother again.”

  Then, he turned toward Thomas and punched him again.

  “Well, little Miss Sunshine, I just touched your brother again. Go on, kill me. Come on, don’t be shy. Let’s see what you got. Kill me! Kill me!”

  “That’s enough, Hogan!” another rebel said. “Get back to your seat. Now.”

  The rebel was silent for a few moments, before saying: