HOOD: A Post Apocalyptic Novel (American Rebirth Series Book 1) (25 page)

I saw the Kaiser today. I couldn't believe it. He's just a damn kid. Probably twenty years younger than me. I kept expecting his officers to just nod at each other and shoot him in the back as he strolled around the courtyard, talking to someone I've never seen before. But it didn't happen. The way they look at him, it's like reverence. They were more protective of him than they were of themselves.

They really believe this nonsense? They believe we're going to change the world? They say, “We're fighting our war to destroy all war.”

Bullshit. You're fighting a war because you think you're smarter than everyone, because you think you're special, that there's some reason you survived it all. But you're all wrong. Human history is just a bag of shit hurled from a catapult. It's been soaring through the air for awhile, but at some point, it's hitting the wall.

Hood closed the journal again. He tried to remember the man's face, but his features remained blurred. All he could recall was dark hair.

How many people are you going to kill in your life? Even if you have no choice?

He snapped the thought off in his head. He needed to kill the doubter.
Channel your inner Whiskey. You want to survive? You want to save the ones you love? Then put the philosophy on the shelf and push the shelf out the window.

Ian had truly built his own empire. When Hood had imagined the Kaiser, he imagined a ruthless old despot at the head of a war machine. Maybe Ian was ruthless, but he ruled with the mind, with indoctrination and hope. It was more powerful than brutality and fear. The one thing more desirable than immediate survival was a future. History was littered with people doing horrific things under the guise of righteousness.

Slowly, the sun set, the orange glow coming in at a sharp angle from the westward-facing windows. Hood's mind veered between restlessness and contemplation as the time crawled. Kerry had been gone far, far too long.

His jeans lay in a heap next to the bed. He pulled them on, tossed his pack over his right shoulder and shoved his feet into his shoes as he bolted out the door and hurried down the barren stairwell. His side reverberated in pain with every step.

Outside the front door of the dingy apartment building, the refuse-littered street sat empty, except for corridors of orange sunlight between the packed houses. A forlorn feeling seeped through the entire area, and down the road loomed tall rigid fences with razor-wire curled atop them, a pair of blue helmeted soldiers on the other side. The stumps of chopped-down trees were visible everywhere that buildings weren't.

Across the street, an aging man in dirty pleated pants and a golf cap sat on a bench outside his home, with a cardboard sign next to him that read:
Bet me on a game of chess.

Hood started towards the man at a walk, his wounds aching with each step. Fear and impatience turned it into a hustling run. The old man looked up at him as he grew close, trying to hide the fear in his eyes with a stern expression.

“Take it easy, fella. I didn't think anyone wanted to play chess
that
bad.” The old man chuckled at his own joke.

“Did you see a girl come out of that building? Pretty.” Hood asked, his words accusatory despite his intent to remain calm.

“Oh, I've seen her. I knew the minute she came in. You must be the fella that guardsman was carrying in with her.” His voice carried a hint of condescension.

Hood grabbed the old man by the collar of his brown cloth jacket, lifting him to his feet. His body seemed to be acting on its own.

“You knew
what
from the minute she came in?” Hood said, staring into the man's yellowed bloodshot eyes.

“Hey now! Take it easy, Piss n’ Vinegar. I haven't done a thing. I just sit on my bench and watch.”

“If you want to live to touch another bishop you'll tell me what the fuck is going on in this rat hole, old ass man.”

The guy's hat fell off onto the bench behind him as Hood gripped him, the wispy gray hair on his head poking up into the air. He stared up at Hood with wild eyes.

“You're not the first rogue to get thrown in here and go off lookin' for those they take from him. It ain't gonna end well for you sonny. I'm tryin' to help ya.”

“She’s gone? They took her?”

The old man nodded. A chill ran through Hood's body.
I'm not losing her, too. I won't let them touch her. . .
The thoughts were overrun by his doubts.
You've been sitting around inside for hours. You don't know what they've done or where she is.
He felt every muscle in his body coming to life, ready to fight.

“Well they've fucked with the wrong rogue this time. I don't want a sermon, just tell me
who and where.
”

The old man smiled, baring worn teeth that still clung to his gums somehow. “What, you think slavers wouldn't get their paws into a place like this? It's free merchandise. They don't need nothing from the old and the sick though. Keep your eyes about, young fella.”

“Where are they? I'm not asking again.”

“School, down at the other end.” The old man slowly nodded down the street.

Hood released his grip. The old man shakily smoothed out his jacket, still grinning at Hood. It left a bad feeling in his stomach.
This place is no refuge.
His feet carried him down the sidewalk of their own accord, though he felt desperate and vulnerable without a weapon. A gun had become a part of who he was, his definition of personal security. Now he was in a foreign cage without one, alone.

The road curved, nearly every darkened building showing signs of life though few people were out to be seen. The smell of urine and waste emanated from an abandoned gas station. As the road straightened, two sour-looking figures cast wary glances at him from across the way, the unappealing smell of bad meat roasting atop their barrel drum fire.

He turned away to see the face of a ragged child staring at him out the murky window of a derelict house. Ahead, a patchy dog clawed and gnashed at a plastic bottle as it rattled across the street. As Hood drew closer, its head snapped up to look at him, and it dove away down an alley.
He doesn't want to end up cooking on top of that barrel,
Hood thought in disgust.

The slavers could be anywhere around here. You need something, anything you can use in a fight.
This sort of thing was more Whiskey's cup of tea. The only thing Hood had going for him was that he was quick. He wasn't about to try to overpower a group of slavers, that was for damn sure.

The road leveled off, and Hood could see the elementary school down the street. The charred storefront on his left had exploded long ago. Shards of glass glimmered in the tall grass and the sidewalk ahead of him. His mind spun into a whirlpool of ideas. He bit his bottom lip in consternation.
Could it work?
The sound of a scraping footstep spun Hood around.

A young boy gazed wide-eyed at him from around the corner of the building. He turned and ran up the cross street. Hood sprinted after him. The kid dove down the first alley, but Hood's long strides caught him quickly. He grabbed the kid by the arm. He tried to get away, then turned and looked at him with tears in his eyes.

“Don't sell me off. I just needed to sneak out and find medicine for my ma. Please, I made it all this way, just let me go!” The boy pleaded.

“What do you know about the people in the school?” Hood whispered.

The boy shut his eyes tight, shaking his head in denial of reality.

“Tell me, and I'll let you go.” Hood grabbed the kid by both arms.

“Slavers, under the Kaiser, that's what my Dad said. Dame Pria the man eater, he calls her. She has a gun. The only one in the whole camp. She and her men, they grab people and sneak them out of the camp to some other place.”

Hood looked the boy in the eyes, searching his freckled face for a lie.

“Tell me everything you know.”

♦ ♦ ♦

Hood moved slowly up the short steps from the sidewalk with the last light of the day, heading towards the front of the school. He felt even more naked without his backpack or Hoodie. A slaver lay back on the staircase in front of the door, his elbows resting on the top step.

“Well, now.” The words slid out of the slaver's cracked lips. They were surrounded by an unkempt chestnut goatee. He stared at Hood from beneath bushy eyebrows.

“I'm here to see Dame Pria.”

“Oh, okay then.” The slaver said with a laugh. He stood up, pulling a machete by the handle out of the leg of his pants. He moved the polished blade to Hood's neck, observing his reaction with a raised eyebrow.

Hood remained still.

The slaver took the blade away and slapped Hood on the ass with the flat of it. “Well then, get on inside, honored guest.” The slaver made a grand gesture to the door with a devious smile.

Hood moved towards the heavy double doors and swung them open. Inside, the trophy cases were shattered and empty, and displaced couches sat on either side of the hallway, each complete with lounging slavers. He heard the distinct echo of a basketball being dribbled in a gym somewhere nearby.

One of the slavers, a man with a braided red chin-beard, menaced Hood from his recliner.

“You lost, boy?”

“I'm here to see Dame Pria.” Hood said as loudly as he could.
This is all going to go to shit if she isn't here.

A chorus of the slavers' laughter echoed as they all rose to look at Hood.

“Well, you're lost now.” Braided beard said with a look of pity in his eyes.

Footsteps heralded the approach of a woman from one of the rooms. The slavers all stood up as she appeared, eyeing Hood coldly. She was a tall, middle-aged, not unhandsome woman, with a hawkish nose dominating her face. Her black hair was bound back behind her head, and she wore a low-hanging gun belt around her stonewashed blue jeans. In it, snugly holstered, was a pistol.

In the land of the disarmed, the one woman with the gun is queen.

“You're no one I work with.” Dame Pria said.

“No, I'm not.” Hood said.

“Well, this is interesting. What are you doing here, boy?” She moved slowly towards him. Two of the slavers flanked Hood. He held up his arms, and they thoroughly patted him down before moving away.

“I've heard you're the only people here who don't live like rats.”

She gave Hood a once-over, slowly pulling her pistol from its holster as she sauntered closer.

“You're a pretty thing. Don't make a lot of boys lookin' like you.” She bit her bottom lip as she stood a few feet away from him. “Someone's gonna pay
a lot
to get their hands on you,” she whispered, smiling. “I
love
it when they pay a lot.”

“I think you'd rather keep me around for yourself.” Hood grinning back at her with an equally cold stare. She raised an eyebrow.“I don't need you to tell me what I need.” She pressed the pistol against his forehead. Hood looked up at it, then back at her with another nonchalant grin.

“I know you're probably sick of the, ah. . . handiwork . . . of these ugly bastards.” Hood said. “Take me on and I get to not live like a rat, and
you
get a lot more pleasure out of this hell hole.” Hood shrugged. “I call that a win-win.”

She bared her teeth at him. “Or maybe I'll just use you up and blow your head off for being an arrogant fuck.”

“That would be my least favorite of your choices,” Hood said.

“Let me see what you got.” She said, pressing the barrel harder against his head. “And I'll decide whether you get to keep breathing my air.”

Hood held up his hands, and then moved them towards his jeans, unbuttoning them. “You're going to like what you see.”

Hood unzipped and then reached into his boxers. In one motion, he gripped the glass shard he’d secreted there and pulled it out of his trousers, pushing away her pistol hand with his left and driving the glass shard into her eye.

She screamed as the pistol went off.

He drove the glass deeper into her head, ignoring the pain as the glass sliced into his own palm. She let go of the pistol to clutch at her eye, and he flipped the pistol into his bloody right hand. Then he shot her in the head.

She collapsed into a gory heap.

The slavers stood dumbstruck as he held the raised pistol. They gripped baseball bats and pipes and one of them had a sword. The guy looked ridiculous.

“You all get the privilege of deciding whether or not you die today.” Hood said. “The pretty girl you guys took this afternoon. Is she here?”

The slaver closest to him shook his head, eyes ablaze with anger.

“You smuggle slaves out of the camp—I need a map to where you send them.”

All of the slavers cast glances at each other, but stood motionless. Hood aimed the iron sights at the closest slaver about fifteen feet away. “I know you have a map of the area. I need it.”

The slaver gripped his bat hard, fighting against his rage. Hood kept his grip firm but easy on the pistol as he focused on the man's head. The slice in his palm from the glass screamed in pain against the grip of the pistol. His blood dripped from the handle of the gun to the floor. The slaver opened his mouth to speak.