In The End: a pre-apocalypse novel (16 page)

He went back to the main room and
saw Terry come out of the kitchen walking slowly and carefully as he carried a
pot of water with steam rising from it. Elizabeth was standing by the table
pouting. She had been left alone in the main room with Bo, who she was afraid
of because he was so big and he never talked.

Terry spoke as he passed by Jim.
“There’s a guy talking on the short-wave! He said only Denver and Colorado
Springs were hit with nukes and the feds have a terrorist cell member in
custody who says this is only the beginning.”

“Holy shit!”

“I’ll be right back after I get
this water to the women.”

Jim went over to Liz and said,
“While your mommy is busy being a hero, would you like to listen to the radio
with me?”

Liz looked around and considered
that the only alternative was to sit with the big silent man, so she slid out
of her chair and walked toward Jim who she thought was much nicer.

Jim took her by the hand and led
her to the kitchen. Terry came in a moment later and dragged a metal stool over
to the table and sat down.

Two men on the radio were talking
to each other via shortwave. The one currently speaking sounded like a young
Asian-American.

“Normally, they don’t say anything
but ‘Death to America’ when they get caught. The fact that this guy is talking makes
me think he may be telling the truth.”

“Homeland Security said his threats
are baseless. He’s just
blowin
’ smoke,” said another
guy with a New England accent.

“Of course they would say that!
They don’t want people to panic.”

“I can see a couple
jihadis
nuking Colorado, but do you seriously think North
Korea and Iran could follow up with additional strikes? And if they could, why
haven’t
they?”

“Don’t forget, he also said Russia
and China were uncommitted. So they might decide to join the alliance against
us.”

“There is no alliance against us,
kid. This was nothing more than a couple of goat-fuckers who got lucky. And all
they managed to do was kill a bunch of people in Colorado. They didn’t take our
defense systems down like they intended, so even if there was a big alliance
against us, things didn’t go as planned.”

“Only because we have Cheyenne
Mountain on stand-by, otherwise we wouldn’t… Shit, shit, shit! Harold, is your
TV on?”

“
Ayuh
.
I’ve got ESPN on. Why? Oh Lord! The Emergency
Alert System just came on.”

Inside the lodge kitchen, they
could faintly hear the discordant two-tone signal in the background of one of
the men’s houses.

The Asian-American screamed into
his mic, “Holy fuck! Did you hear that? They said, ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ but get
to a bomb shelter! Right! I’m alarmed, dude!”

The kitchen door swung open. Bo
ducked down and poked his head in.

“There’s someone here. I figured
ya’ll
would wanna take up your positions by the door like
you been
doin
’.”

Jim asked Liz to wait right there
until he came back and to listen to the “show” on the radio. He and Terry
headed to the main door and ran into Angela entering the room from the hall.

“I think I heard a truck, or
something big pull up,” she said.

“Yeah.
We
know. This place is Grand Fucking Central today,” Jim said as he went past her
heading toward the door. “How’s that guy doing?”

“Tori actually managed to get the
bullet out and Geraldine is stitching him up. I couldn’t watch. I don’t know
how anyone can do that, but I’m glad that some people can.”

“A guy on the radio said that nukes
only hit Denver and Colorado Springs; most likely they wanted the Peterson
base, but—“

“So we can go home?” Angela asked,
excited.

“But there may be more trouble on
the way. We don’t know yet. And Liz is in the kitchen by herself.”

“Oh… I’ll go sit with her.”
Angela’s excitement was short-lived. She turned left toward the kitchen
thinking of how wonderful it would be to go home and to have electricity, and
her cell phone, and the internet. She smiled, happy to at least know that her
family and friends were all alive.

Bo walked over to the fireplace to
get out of any potential line of fire. Terry and Jim waited for a knock.

“That’s Tori’s car,” Trey said. “I wonder what Carl’s
driving since he left his bike at your house.”

“What do you think we should do?”
Monica asked.

“I think the only thing we can do
is go in with guns in the open and tell him we’re taking Tori and Liz and he
ain’t stopping us.”

“What if he has a gun?”

“He probably does, knowing him. But
I don’t think he wants to get shot. There’s two of us and one of him.”

“And whoever else is in there with
him,” Monica said, looking at the other cars in the parking lot.

“I don’t think the
Unforgiven
are here. No one in the gang has a BMW, or a
station wagon. I’m going in. You can stay here and wait if you want. In fact, I
think it would be better if you did.”

“Are you kidding me? If Carl’s in
there, I want to see him. It’s not over between us.” She pulled the slide back
on her gun, loading a round into the chamber.

“Okay.” Trey tucked his gun into
his pants and picked up the shotgun. He racked it and a shell flew toward the
dining area. “Damn. This thing was set to go.” He fetched the shell and loaded
it back into the shotgun. “I’m ready when you are.”

“Trey, if anything happens, I just
want to thank you again for helping me.”

“
Nothing’s
gonna happen to us.”

They got out of the RV and started
walking to the lodge. Trey walked a little faster, trying to stay in front of
Monica.

Terry heard the RV doors shut and
said, “I guess they finally decided to come and visit. I should cut some peep
holes in this wood so we can see outside.”

“Yeah.
Blinding us to potential threats probably wasn’t one of your better ideas,” Jim
replied.

The knock they’d been waiting for
finally came.

“Who’s there?” Terry called out.

“I’m
lookin
’
for my sister, Tori. She said she’d be here.”

Terry turned and nodded at Jim. If
he was Tori’s brother he had no problem with letting the guy in. Jim nodded
back. Terry opened the door and quickly raised his pistol and yelled, “Gun!”
when he saw Trey and Monica. He backed away from the door and aimed at Trey’s
head.

“Hey, hey!
It’s okay,” Trey said, raising his shotgun above his head horizontally. “I’m
just carrying this for self-defense.
I don’t mean nothin’ by
it.
We’ve been through some hell lately.”

Terry could see that both of them
looked like they’d been beaten pretty badly, and the guy looked and sounded
sincere. He lowered his weapon. “Come in, but put that on the mantel. There’s a
child in here.”

“Is it my niece, Lizzie?” Trey
asked as he walked over to the fireplace and laid the shotgun down on the
mantel. Monica put her gun behind her back while Trey was assuring Terry that
he wasn’t a threat. She didn’t intend to put it down or give it up. As long as
she had it she knew she’d never be touched against her will again.

Angela and Liz came through the
kitchen door. When Liz saw Trey, she ran toward him with a big smile. “Uncle
Trey! Uncle Trey!” She was glad to see someone she knew after being cooped up
in her grandparent’s cabin for a week.

Angela came over and introduced
herself to Trey and Monica. Everyone in the room except for Bo gave their names
and shook hands.

“Angie, any news
on the radio?’

“Jim, there’s been nothing on the
radio but static.”

“Mommy!”
Liz ran toward the long hall. Tori and Geraldine were coming down the hall.
Tori stopped and scooped Liz into her arms.

“We’re all done, baby. I hope
you’ve been good.” Tori froze when she saw a woman pointing a gun at her. She
slowly put Liz down and said, “Go to one of the rooms behind me.
Any one of them.
Now!”

“Step aside!” Monica yelled. Tori
looked behind her and saw Carl reach down and pick Liz up with his right hand.
He shifted her over to support her weight on his left hip and wrapped his left
arm around her. He pulled his gun out of his pocket with his right hand and
pointed it at Liz’s head.”

Jim and Terry drew their guns. Trey
ran to the fireplace and got his shotgun and ran back to Monica’s side.

“Let her go, Carl!” Trey yelled.

“I don’t know what the hell’s going
on here, but everyone needs to put down their weapons and just calm the fuck
down. And you, put that shotgun down,” Jim said.

Trey remembered he also had a
pistol, so he placed the shotgun on the dining table behind Monica. He pulled
out his pistol and aimed it at Carl.

“Tori and the kid are
comin
’ with me,” Carl said to the group of people pointing
firearms at him. “Let us out of here and no one gets hurt.”

“That ain’t gonna happen, Carl.
Your reign of terror ends right here. You put my niece down, now. If anything
happens to her, so help me God…I’ll make sure you die slowly.”

Tori had her back against the wall.
Her heart was thundering in her chest as she stood only a few feet from her
daughter. “I just worked to save your life,” she said to Carl.

“Ain’t nothin’ personal,
Tori.
Your brother done brought this on.”

“Why don’t you take me and let her
go?” Tori said, breaking into tears. “Please! Let her go.”

“Everyone just back away and make a
path to the door!” Carl yelled.

No one moved,
then
suddenly Geraldine stepped forward out of the group in the main room and
started toward the hall.

“In the name of the Lord, I command
you to release that child! In Jesus’ name, I command you, devil!”

Carl fired his .22 and Geraldine
stopped and stood still. Blood oozed out of a small hole between her
eyebrows.  Her knees unlocked and she collapsed. Angela ran to the kitchen
for safety and to get away from the dead body bleeding from the head.

“Momma!”
Bo yelled, bolting from the hearth and coming to her side. He kneeled down and
saw the dead stare in her eyes.  He got up slowly and turned toward Carl.
Liz was screaming and struggling to get free.

Tori held her arms stretched out
toward her daughter, crying, “Please, let her go. Please, Carl.”

There was ten feet of hallway
between Bo and Carl. Bo suddenly got up and flew down the hall with his arms
out in front of him, reaching for Carl’s throat.

Carl fired once as the big man rushed
toward him with impossible speed. Bo closed the distance between them in two
seconds and knocked Carl backwards as he closed his hands around his neck. Carl
fired as he fell, his shots going wild. He let go of Liz to break his fall with
his left hand.
Tori went to grab Liz and was
hit by
one of Carl’s stray shots. She picked up her daughter and ran with her to the
manager’s office.

Carl was making a choking sound,
trying to pull Bo’s hands off his throat with his left hand and turning the gun
in his right hand to point it at Bo. He fired repeatedly, finally hitting Bo
with his last two bullets. When Carl heard his pistol dry-fire, he started
hitting Bo’s left arm with the gun.

Terry and Jim came into the hall
when they heard Carl’s gun clicking with no ammo. They grabbed Bo’s arms and
pulled him backwards off of Carl. “That’s enough, Bo,” Terry yelled. “Let him
go.” Bo reluctantly released his grip on Carl’s throat and started to cry. They
released him and he crawled back to his mother’s body, leaving a trail of blood
from his bullet wounds. He collapsed next to her and wrapped a bloody arm
around her.

Carl quickly picked up the gun and
tried to stand up, coughing and choking. His face was red and he had thumb
imprints on his throat. He couldn’t talk yet. He just waved his gun side to
side at Jim and Terry, gesturing for them to get out of his way.

“His gun’s empty,” Trey said.

Jim and Terry stepped aside while
keeping their guns trained on him. They looked at Trey and Monica who stood
side by side also aiming their guns at Carl.

“Your gun’s empty, Carl. It’s over.
You’ve done all the harm you’re gonna do in this life.”

Carl dropped the empty pistol. “Are
you gonna shoot an unarmed man, Trey?”

“God knows you deserve it, but I
ain’t like you, Carl. I don’t know what we’re gonna do with you, but I ain’t
gonna shoot you in cold blood.”

“I am.”

A shot rang out and Carl jerked
back a step and grabbed his stomach. Blood seeped out between his fingers.
Everyone turned to look at Monica and saw smoke drifting off the barrel of her
gun.

“Go ahead, bitch. Finish me off!”
Carl yelled.

“No. I like Trey’s idea of you
dying slowly,” she said.

Jim looked at Terry, not sure what
to do next. He couldn’t believe what had happened in the last two minutes. He
shook his head, thinking of a line by Charles Bukowski, “Humanity, you never
had it.”

“I don’t know what’s going on here”
Terry said. “But I know one thing; Tori won’t help you again after what you
just did. And you killed the only other person who might’ve been able to save
your life.”

“Why did you shoot him?” Jim asked
Monica.

“He beat me and raped me,” she
answered so quietly they could barely hear her voice.

“Oh. In that case...”

Jim put his gun in his back pocket and
grabbed Carl roughly and started forcing him toward the door.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Outside,” Jim replied.

“What the hell for?”

“So you can die cold and alone like
you deserve. Plus you’re getting blood all over my nice clean floor, you piece
of shit.”

Terry ran over to the door and
opened it. Jim shoved Carl through the doorway, slammed the door and locked it.

Carl fell to the ground and stayed
there for a minute, unable to move due to the pain in his stomach.

They all thought he was going to die,
but they were wrong. He’d survive this and he’d come back and kill every one of
them. He was tougher than they thought. He already survived getting shot once.
He’d do it again.

He summoned his strength and stood
up. It hurt less when he was standing, so he decided he’d be better off just
walking away instead of driving. He slowly walked across the lot and turned
right onto the road.

He didn’t know where he was going
to go or what he was going to do next. But he’d think of something. He just
needed to find a nearby place to hole up while he recovered again.

He held his right hand on his
stomach and focused on taking one step after another. The more he walked, the
less he felt the pain. He looked down and was pleasantly surprised to see that
the bleeding from his stomach had already begun to slow.

He started to laugh. He was
actually going to be okay. Fuck that bitch, and all the rest of them too. He
would definitely be coming back. Maybe he’d just set the place on fire and then
shoot them as they came running out the front door.

He reached the highway and had to
make a decision about which way to go. As he tried to recall which way would
get him to shelter the quickest, he heard the sound of an engine coming around
a bend in the road.

The timing was perfect. He could
catch a ride. The Lord truly did provide to those in need. He saw a white Ford
F350 come into view. He pulled his right hand away from his gunshot wound and
put his left hand in its place. He waved his right arm at the truck and smiled
when he saw it slow down and
veer
gradually to the
side, pulling over for him.

The bearded driver got out first
and started walking quickly toward Carl. Then the other doors opened and three
more men got out. One of them shouted, “Hold up a second! We gotta do this
right. You can’t just go up and slit his throat on the side of the road.”

Noah looked back over his shoulder
and said, “Watch me.”