by Byrd, Daniel
The docks were vacant, much to his surprise. The gates in the road meant abandoning the car was a reality, so he quickly pulled over to the side of the street and got Katherine out and on her feet. She stood up, but wouldn't budge from that spot.
"Katherine, we have to move!" he pleaded. She stared at the water past the few buildings without the look of haste that Joel was displaying as he tugged her arm. "Katherine!"
"I don't want to do it again…" she muttered, low enough that Joel hadn't heard it. He was focused on the five zombies that were racing down the street from the direction they had come from. If he was being nice with Katherine before, he wasn't now. Scooping her up in his arms, he darted across the road and around the gate, not daring to look back at the threat behind them. It was terrifying. All five of the pursuers were actually faster than him, and gaining ground quickly. If they reached him, he was screwed. He couldn't drop Katherine and leave her defenseless so he could fight back. Hell on his heels, he ran as hard as he could, when he realized something; he didn't even know which boat belonged to George!
"Fuck…fuck…fuck," he panted as he came to the edge of the walkway and looked left to right. There were five boats tethered to the land, but he didn't have the time to investigate which one was the right one. The five corpses were upon them. Joel turned his back to the water as the first, a young man who had probably been in his early twenties, pounced at him. Joel moved to the side as the creature flew past him and collided with the side of a large fishing boat before falling into the water with a splash, leaving a dark red stain on the side of the vessel. Above the stain were the letters A-L-B-E-R-T. Joel almost smiled. “Heaven provides.”
Running to the stepladder, he heaved Katherine up and over the side. She didn't land on her feet, but he was a bit more preoccupied with the other four zombies behind him. The tether wasn't far from him, but it would take time to undo, "And then Heaven denies."
He ran to it and crouched low, cursing George for being such a careful man. The knot was neatly done with the rope wrapped around the base many times. There wasn't any time to make an attempt. Joel stood and braced himself as a man about his age growled and reached for him. Joel was quick. He stepped beside the man and kicked his leg out from under him, sending him stumbling over the edge and into the water to join the first somewhere below. Next was a woman who couldn't have been much older than Katherine. Joel was thinking of a way to deal with her when the left side her of head exploded in a mist of blood, carrying her body to the ground. Joel snapped his head around from left to right, looking for his mystery savior as the remaining two zombies were popped in their heads as well with the deafening sounds of gunshots. Joel wanted to find the shooters and thank them, but he was in a hurry, and not convinced he wouldn't get mistaken for a zombie himself. Undoing the knot, he quickly unraveled the rope and tossed it onto the boat, but before he could get into it Katherine began to scream.
"Katherine!"
Joel ran for the stepladder, but a gloved hand reached up from over the inside. Joel backed away as a figure donning a black helmet with a red visor stood atop the edge of the boat with an odd rifle in its hands. It looked like something out of a super villain’s evil lair.
"Who the hell are you?!" Joel shouted at the figure. The helmet tilted to the side as if the figure was examining him. It then looked above Joel. He turned around to see three more figures with the same apparel, all armed with the same weapons. Whoever they were, they sure as hell weren't military. Strap on their shoulders held extra magazines for their rifles, and the belts carried everything from grenades to what looked like…hazardous material containers? Joel kept his back to the boat as he swiveled his head back and forth to keep tabs on all four strangers. The three in front of him slowly inched forward, forcing Joel back until his feet found the edge of the concrete. There was no running.
"What do you want?" Joel demanded. The one from the boat laughed behind him.
"You need not worry," the muffled voice said in a foreign accent. It sounded French, but from what part Joel had no idea. "All will be fine. Were you hurt?"
"Um…no?" Joel answered hesitantly, noting the tense postures of the other three. This wasn't a friendly checkup; they meant trouble.
"I believe a 'thank you' is in order," the armed individual on the far right said in an aggravated tone. That one was German.
"Yes," the first agreed, "because of us, you are in prime condition."
"Prime condition? What are you babbling on about?"
"Do not worry about it.” The Frenchman reassured him. “Just come with us. We will keep you safe."
"Hell if I will,” Joel argued defiantly.
"Well then," the one on the right said, "it would look as if we have to do this the hard way."
"Remember," the Frenchman said, "no weapons. We cannot physically damage him. He is fit, and I am sure Abzu would hate for us to upset the doctor with compromised subjects."
"Right," the others responded in unison. Joel didn't like being discussed as a product. He didn't know what they were planning on doing with him, but he was ready to fight if he had to. He was a trained soldier; fighting was what he prevailed at. The armored four around him may have seemed intimidating, but they were in for a surprise if they thought he was just a normal guy.
"You three take care of this tough guy," the Frenchman ordered. "I will handle the woman."
Katherine!
Something in him was on the verge of snapping. He didn't just want to defend Katherine. He wanted to murder these people. For some reason, all of the pain, all of the hatred he had been brewing within himself over the past day was beginning to boil over…but it wasn't sorrow he felt. It was pure malice. He wanted to make these men suffer as he had.
The three converged, but Joel was ready. The one on the right reached for his arm, but Joel quickly snatched it, and with a quick tug he had the man right before him, vulnerable to whatever he wanted to do next. Joel felt a surge of sheer joy as he wrapped his hand around the man's neck and swiped his right leg out, slamming the man to the ground by the throat. The other two sped up their assault, but Joel remained calm. Reaching for the grounded man's thigh, he snatched the knife from its sheath and thrust his arm up. The blade slid into the throat of the man above him, and Joel was actually a little disappointed that he couldn't see the look of shock on his face through the visor. He could only imagine that the inside of the helmet was beginning to fill with blood from his mouth. The last man standing yelled out as he drew his own knife and swung at Joel. Joel flashed him a twisted grin. The amateur's pathetic reflexes would doom him. Joel grabbed his arm at two points with both hands and got in his face. The man was grunting as he struggled to overpower Joel, but Joel only wanted to inflict as much pain as possible into something that could actually feel it for a change. He wrenched the mans wrist until the knife was released. Following that, he flattened his own palm and twisted the man's arm so that he'd have a clear shot.
"You shouldn't have toyed with me. I've already had the second worst day of my life, and then you cunts wanted to take myself and an innocent girl hostage? Wrong move, prick," he growled. He brought his arm back, and with as much force as he could muster he drove his palm into the man's elbow, bending it the wrong way until he felt the bone break beneath the thinly armored sleeve. The man cried out in pain as Joel released him to drop to his knees clutching his broken arm. Joel could see his own reflection in the man's red visor as he grabbed him by the neck and lifted his head up. His own face was smeared with blood from the man he had stabbed not even a minute ago. He took a good look at himself and smiled, knowing he was scaring the hell out of the man at his mercy, and that was unfortunate for the quivering fool, because Joel had none.
"What the fuck are you?" the man asked Joel in a shaky and pained voice. Joel picked his knife up off of the ground and held it to the man's throat as he circled around him to his backside, tracing the thin material with the point.
"I'm someone who thought he
was doing the right thing for a very long time, until I found out how little any of it matters. I'm what happens when a man is pushed, oh, so far beyond his emotional limits. I'm," he said softly as he knelt down to his victim’s level and placed the blade under the man's left ear, "a murderer."
The man was uttering something under his breath as Joel prepared to jab the knife through the material covering his neck and deep into his skin, but he stopped when he realized what the man was saying.
"Are you praying?" Joel asked him. The man continued to chant away, and Joel laughed. "God can't help you now, you wretched scum."
With that, Joel jerked the blade in just under his ear and guided it across the man's neck in a swift yet powerful motion. There was no cry of pain as the man fell forward onto the ground and bled out. Joel figured it was kind of hard to make a sound other than gurgling your blood with a giant slice in your neck. He stared at the body in disgust before he reached down and pulled a pistol from the man's holster. It resembled an American M1911, but with a stainless steel frame and slide. Examining the slide, he saw the letters 'G-S-R' engraved into it.
"A SIG...German manufactured weapons in England, huh?"
The man he had thrown to the ground first had silently grabbed another knife from its sheath behind his waist, and was beginning to rise behind Joel. Joel worked the slide and made sure the chamber had a round, and then spun around to point the gun at the man's screened face. The armored kidnapper froze, knowing he couldn't move faster than a bullet fired from feet away.
"Tell me something," Joel growled, "are those tacky visors bulletproof?"
The man's body language suggested that he was nervous, but when he tensed up to act, Joel saw it. The bastard had barely moved his arm back when Joel put a bullet through the visor. The plastic pushed against the man's skin as the bullet punctured and pierced the flesh under it. Joel actually hoped that it was a hollow point as the body carried the rest of the frame to the ground. He could only assume that the bullet hadn't penetrated the back of the helmet. That just meant that the headgear was filling with the contents of the man's skull. Disgusting, but sickeningly satisfying.
"What the hell?!"
Joel looked up to see the man who had ordered his capture. He was holding an unconscious Katherine by the hair in his right hand, and had a pistol in his left. The sight had Joel pointing the GSR at him without another thought.
"What did you do?!" the man shouted as he trained his own gun on Joel.
"I could ask you the same. Who are you people? Why are you here? Are you responsible for these abominations?" he demanded, tilting his head in the direction of the bodies of the formerly undead.
"I am about to be responsible for your death!"
Joel smirked. "How creative. Tell me, do you think you're a faster shot? After all, your friends seemed to think they were better fighters. That combined thought process...well," he said with a slight chuckle, "you can see the results."
"Who are you?" the man asked in an enraged tone as he jerked Katherine's hair.
"I asked first," Joel replied with a smirk, keeping tab of the number of harmful things this fuck was doing to the girl, "And I'm not telling you anything until you let her go."
The man muttered a few choice words before the helmet nodded. "Fine." He tossed Katherine by her hair back onto the floor of the boat with a thud. That only served to piss Joel off even more. He was determined to kill this man slowly and painfully after he got answers from him.
"Since you will be dead soon anyway," the Frenchman began, "I will tell you this; we are not going to stop just because there are people like you who think they can fight back. There is quite a lot of money to be made off of these outbreaks, and as long as people live in fear, this new capitalistic war economy will thrive. People like me can only profit."
"That's not true," Joel retorted. “You can also die and rot like the rest of them."
"Damn shame," the man said in disappointment. "You would have made a lot of money with us had we known you were military-trained first."
"I don't give a damn about money. I want vengeance."
"Vengeance? Vengeance drives a man to do dark things, my friend."
Joel shook his head. "I'm already there." With that, he quickly shifted the sight down to the man's knee and squeezed the trigger. Before the man could even react, his knee exploded in a shower of red, causing him to topple off of the edge of the boat and hit the edge of the concrete. He grabbed on for dear life, fighting against the pain that was his ruptured kneecap as he struggled to pull himself up. As his head met the solid ground, Joel's foot stepped down on the helmet.
"That armor's not that impressive. Tell me something," Joel began, "do you know what it's like to be defenseless against those monsters?"
The man was still too busy gripping over his knee to pay Joel any mind, other than to hope that he wasn't going to finish him off. The angle of his head on the ground allowed him to see Joel's point through his visor, as two of those points made their way across the dock to them.
"Well," Joel said as he looked upon the newcomers, "if not, I guess you will soon enough."
"Wait!" the man spat through his pain. “You do not have to do this!"
Joel laughed as he approached the boat. “No, I don't. However, I want to."
The man cried out, begging for mercy, but Joel was already climbing into the boat as he heard the painful wails of the Frenchman while the zombies fed upon him. Katherine was still knocked out on the floor, but he had to get them away from there before he could check on her. He climbed the ladder to the controls, and as his face emerged at the top of the ladder, it was met with a rifle butt before everything went black.
Chapter Fourteen - The Little Things
The sunlight slowly crept across the room and over the bed in its attempt at giving Katie Thompson a warm awakening. Her eyes refused to open, but seven in the morning marked the beginning of her day. At least, that's what her alarm clock kept trying to remind her. She reached out and slapped the annoyance before pushing the covers off of herself. With a bit of coaxing, she willed her body to sit up on the bed and stretched. Sitting on the edge of the mattress, she smiled at the view outside of her window. The skies weren't exactly clear, thanks to the smoldering ruins of 'Old America' as some had come to call it, but compared to what she had expected of her new life, she was more content than she’d anticipated. To Katie, it was a beautiful morning in a place where the undead didn't pose a threat. She was only missing one thing, or more specifically to her, person to make it as close to a perfect morning as it could be. Well, perfect in regards to how life was now. Waking up knowing her family, friends and home were gone was still the hardest part. It would always be the hardest part. She missed her parents. They weren’t there to tell her everything was going to be okay. They wouldn’t be ever again, and it tortured her inside.
After showering and getting dressed, she descended to the first floor of the building and entered the lobby, where breakfast was being served. Being that it consisted of freshly scrambled eggs, country ham and the crispiest bacon Katie had ever tasted in her life, she wasn't sure if she was still dreaming or not. Warm as the food was, it couldn’t melt the cold grasp of depression strangling her mind. Still, thinking about anything else was better. Nothing to her could ever explain the abundance of food that existed within the haven. All she knew was that the place it was all stored in was heavily guarded, and even still no one knew exactly where that was except for the military. The officials knew that to keep the citizens happy they had to promise food, shelter, and protection. Amazingly, all of that could indeed be found within the haven limits. Her thoughts had been tainted with preconceived notions thanks to the apocalypse movies she had grown up watching.
As she poked at her eggs and ruminated the thoughts filling her mind, from how Max was doing to what her shift at the laundry mat would be like that day, another plate clanged onto the table next to her. She looked to her left to see the bright smile o
f a young brunette girl who couldn't have been much older than herself.
"Mind if I join you?" the girl asked her.
"N-no! Go right ahead!" Katie replied. She hadn't actually made any friends since she'd been in the haven, and the idea of getting to know someone new after Max had gone was exciting. The girl took the seat next to Katie, put her hands together for a quick and silent prayer, and proceeded to carefully enjoy her meal. Katie kept her left eye glued to her, jealous of how gracefully she did everything. She even wiped her mouth off with a napkin after every bite. After a few moments of silence between the two, the girl finally beamed at Katie.
"I'm Macy, Macy Baker," she said in a cheery voice.
"Nice to meet you Macy, I'm Katie Thompson."
"I hope that you don't mind that I sat here. I just thought you looked a bit lonely. It isn't the first time I've noticed either."
Katie went quiet. She had eaten here alone every morning, not daring to strike up conversation with anyone else. Most of the people around her appeared rather occupied with their own melancholy. Lost family and friends, lost homes and the loss of a normal life raddled everyone in one way or another. Other than that, having lost two of her friends to death herself and two more to military activities, she was worried she was developing attachment issues as it was. She didn't want to get to know someone else just to lose them all over again.