Man Eaters (14 page)

“I found this one hiding out,” number three said.

The leader, a tall guy in his early to mid-thirties, wearing a red plaid flannel shirt cut off at the sleeves sauntered over to Dallas. His hair looked like he’d fallen into a vat of car oil and his skin was scarred from teenage acne. His front teeth overlapped in the front, giving him a bit of a bucktooth appearance. “Here’s the dealio. We’re gonna take your weapons, your Humvee, and anything else you have.” His eyebrows rose when he said the word anything. “And you’re not gonna fight us or give us any problems onna counta we have no problem putting a slug through your heads.”

“No you’re not, onna counta we aren’t going to let you,” Dallas said more powerfully than she felt. “You’ve got wheels and weapons. You don’t need ours.”

The leader stood toe-to-toe with her. “That’s not how it’s gonna go down, babe. We want the Hummer, and if you noticed, there’s no one around to come to your rescue. So hand the rifle over.”

Dallas shook her head. “Fuck you.”

“Fuck me? Fuck me?” He tried to backhand her, but Dallas blocked it and brought her steel-toed boot down on the instep of his Nikes. He crumpled to the ground like a stepped on tin can.

“Jesus Christ, mother fucking bitch!”

Dallas tried to swing her rifle around, but the fourth man slammed his shoulder into her so hard, he lifted her off the ground and crushed her against the Hummer. All the air whooshed out of her as she sent an elbow to his temple. He staggered slightly, but kept Dallas pinned to the car with a meaty forearm.

“Fucking bitch! I’m gonna take more than your shit,” the first one growled as he rose and hobbled over to the Hummer. “Fucking stomp on me, you cunt.”

Dallas fought and scratched, punched and kicked, but they were both bigger and stronger, and finally managed to turn her around and shove her head to the hood using a forearm to her neck.

“Get off me, you fucking Billy Bob!”

Reaching around her, the first fumbled with her belt. “Watch and learn, boy. You can’t let a little pussy talk to you that way. You gotta give it to ‘em hard. Show ‘em who’s boss.”

Even pinned to the hood of the car, Dallas struggled to free herself. He was pressed up against her so hard, the rifle dug into her back.

“Let her go!” Einstein yelled. “Let her go, you ignorant piece of hillbilly shit!”

“You’re gonna wish you’d just given me the keys, bitch.”

As Dallas fought back, she looked up into the second floor window and saw Tate just standing there, watching.

“Hold her still, goddamnit!” Reaching around her, he grabbed her breast and squeezed it. “And trust me, boy, you just take it. The more they fight, the more they want it.” He grabbed her hair and yanked her head back. “And you want it, don’t you, you fu—”

Before he could finish his sentence, half his head was blown all over the hood of the Hummer, and as his body did the funky chicken to the ground, Dallas pushed herself away from the hood and swung her rifle around her shoulder, into her hands, and rammed the butt into the face of the shocked guy who had once been holding her down. As he crumpled to the ground holding his broken and bloodied nose, she bashed his skull again, sending him to the ground a bloody pulp. Wheeling around, she fired a shot above the head of the guy holding Einstein.

“Let him go this second you piece of shit or you’ll wind up like your dickhead buddy over there.”

The guy hesitated two seconds and ended up face down on the pavement next to his friend, a bullet shearing off the top of his head as promised. Dallas hadn’t even fired her weapon, but knew who had.

When she turned around, she saw Roper and Butcher both lowering their rifles.

“Are you okay?” Einstein asked, grabbing his rifle off the ground as he ran to Dallas.

“I’m fine,” she answered, feeling anything but. “I’m fine.” Dallas walked, rifle high, toward Cue and handed him the Glock. “Keep this on him. If he flinches, kill him.”

His man raised his hands in the air. “Don’t...don’t shoot.”

Dallas turned her rifle to the Lexus and shot out the two left tires.

“What the fuck?”

Dallas motioned with the rifle for him to get on his knees. “Your friends are dead. You have a car with two tires, and if you move or say anything, you’ll make this a hat trick. Understand?”

He nodded.

Roper and Butcher galloped over and Roper was off her horse even before he stopped. “Dallas?”

Dallas ran to her and hugged her tightly.

“Are you all right?” Roper stepped back and examined her. “Did he hurt you?”

“I’m fine. You guys got here in the nick of time.” Dallas winced slightly.

“What?”

“It’s nothing, really. Let’s just finish this and get the hell out of here.”

Butcher joined them, keeping her eyes and her gun trained on Cue. “Who the hell is he?”

“He’s with us,” Dallas said, rotating her shoulder.

“I think she’s hurt,” Roper said to Butcher, who peeked under Dallas’s shirt. “Yeah, she’s got a few deep cuts. I can take care of these later. What the hell was that all about?” Dallas shook her head. “Not here. Not now. We gotta get out of here.”

Roper gently rubbed the muzzle of her horse. “The horses are beat, Dallas. They can’t go much further today.”

“There’s an empty farmhouse about five miles outside of town,” Butcher added. “Follow us.”

Dallas returned her gaze to the kneeling man. “I’m going to let you live because I don’t believe we ought to be going around killing each other.”

“God bless y—”

“He’s got nothing to do with this. If I ever see you again, my face will be the last thing you see. Do we understand each other?”

“P-please take me with you.”

“You’re kidding, right? That ship has sailed, my friend. I leave you to deal with these creatures alone.” With that, Dallas and the rest climbed into the Hummer and set out for the farmhouse down the road.

The farmhouse was situated about a mile off the frontage road, and when Dallas pulled into the long, narrow gravel driveway, she was certain someone must have used this house in a horror movie. It was a typical California rancher, only it had a second story added on that made the house look like the Munsters lived there. Two dormer windows stared sadly out at the dying cornfields on either side of the road, and the grey shake siding gave the house its creepy, horror filmesque appearance.

To the right and behind was the barn, faded and peeling red, a shadow of its once former glory, its two large doors open like the mouth of a baby bird waiting to be fed.

When Dallas stopped the Hummer, she told Cue and Tate to check the barn, inside and out, and Coco and Einstein to walk the perimeter. “All of us will check the house for man eaters once we know the perimeter is secure.

When Tate reached for a rifle, Dallas grabbed his wrist. “Uh uh. Until we get to know you all better, the weapons stay locked up.” Holding her hand out, she waited for Cue to give her back the Glock.

“Still don’t trust me?” He asked, handing the gun over.

She shook her head. “At this point, Cue, I barely trust myself.”

Tate slowly withdrew his hand. “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me. You’ve got weapons to help us protect ourselves and you aren’t gonna hand them out?”

Dallas shook her head. “Please keep in mind that you’re a guest with us right now and, as such, you’ll either do things our way or you are on your own. What we have we worked really hard to get and while we’ll share some of that with you, we are under no obligation to share it all. Are we on the same page here?”

Tate and Coco looked askance at each other before nodding. Cue merely grabbed his stick and followed Einstein out of the car.

“How did you know the ranch was empty?” Dallas asked Roper as she unsaddled Merlin.

“We came up over those hills. Rode in, hollered, even fired off a shot. Nada.” Roper straightened up and looked Dallas in the eye. “What’s their story?”

Dallas filled Roper and Butcher in on the newbies, as well as sharing with them Einstein’s concerns about their growing numbers.

“The kid has a point,” Roper said, pulling the saddle off the sweaty horse. “We don’t know squat about them. Keeping them away from the weapons was smart, Dallas.”

“They can use knives or machetes, but until we know we can trust them, the weapons stay in the Hummer or with us.”

Once the house and farm were cleared, Dallas rolled the Hummer into the barn with the horses and closed the doors. Then they all met in the large kitchen and sat together at a round table that seated eight and had a lazy Susan in the middle.

After all the introductions were made, Dallas folded her hands together and proceeded. “We all saw what happened in town.” She leveled her gaze at Tate, who looked away. “And I’m sure Einstein can catch us up on anything we don’t already know, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that other survivors pose as big a threat to us as the man eaters. Einstein?”

“We already know that Hummer is a magnet for—”

“Excuse me, Tate,” Roper said coolly. “Dallas gave Einstein the floor. It’s time to listen.” Tate looked to Coco for support and received an eye roll that did not go unnoticed by the others.

Butcher leaned into Coco’s personal space and growled, “You can either fall in line here or get the fuck out of our way, but you will treat the rest of our party with a modicum of respect.”

“She didn’t mean noth—”

“Enough,” Dallas said. “Go ahead, Einstein. Tell us what we need to know.”

Einstein nodded, leaning forward. “In any sort of apocalyptic tale, there’s always the outlaws—people who prey on everyone else. They take survival of the fittest to the next level, preferring to be the only fit ones. They are just as dangerous to us as the military or the man eaters, possibly more so because they have no rules or laws to obey. Because of this, they revert to a more barbaric state.”

“Dude, I’ve seen movies, too, and sometimes, them guys are the ones w—”

“Tate, if you can’t listen, perhaps you’d like to take your girlfriend upstairs and prop her feet up for her until Butcher can come take a look at her.” Roper squinted as she glared at him.

“I can listen.”

“It wasn’t really a suggestion.”

The table was tense as Tate and Coco pushed their chairs away and headed upstairs like two petulant teenagers.

“This will never work,” Einstein said. “We need to cut them loose now.”

Roper and Butcher nodded in unison, while Dallas and Cue merely looked at each other.

“Tate may be right about the Hummer, though. It could be more of a problem than a solution.” Einstein reached for the rooster saltshaker and pulled it toward him. “There is one thing that’s been bothering me. In town, there weren’t very many man eaters and not many carcasses. My question is—where were the people?”

“The people? You mean the living?”

He nodded. “We should be either overrun with man eaters or see none at all, yet there were only a dozen or so in town. Where were the living people?”

Roper got up and started looking through the cupboards. “The kid asks a really good question. Are they on the roads? Did they see something on the TV that we didn’t?”

“It’s just something for us to be aware of. If we see a situation like that, we need to assume the living are in hiding somewhere.”

“We’ll need to make sure we have someone on watch all the time. Day or night,” Butcher said, rising. “I’ll go check on her, Dallas, and when I get back, I want to take a look at your back.”

Cue stood, stick in hand. “If you don’t mind, I’d like the first watch. I need to figure out in my mind if this is something I can do.”

Dallas tilted her head. “This?”

“Yeah. You know. Follow a group of people I had no hand in selecting.”

“Do you mean people or women?” Roper asked, stepping back into the room.

“I’m sixty years old and I’m not sure I can follow along quietly in a group where a boy—no offense, kid—is in charge of telling us all he’s learned from movies and video games. I sure as hell don’t want to put my life in the hands of a group that lives in a fantasy world.”

Roper raised an eyebrow in question. “There’s the door, Cue-Ball. No one is keeping you here.”

He held his hands up in surrender. “Whoa, chief. I’m not bailing. I just think we ought to try applying a little reason and logic to this situation.”

“Reason and logic? There are things that have managed to resurrect out there eating people for no apparent reason. We’ve been lead to believe it’s a bioweapon gone wrong. Where in all that do you see reason or logic?” Roper was right in his face, and Dallas had to lightly touch her shoulder to get her to back off.

“I meant no disrespect, ma’am. I just operate on a different set of principles.”

Dallas shook her head at Roper, who had a vein rising from off her forehead. “While I can appreciate that, Dallas is calling the shots, and you can follow with us or carve your own path, but whatever you decide to do, do it respectfully and soon.”

Cue-Ball started to reply, but shook his head and walked to the front porch.

When Butcher came downstairs, she took another look at Dallas’s back. “There are some Band-aids in the medicine cabinet. I’ll grab them and be back in a flash.”

When Butcher ran back up the stairs, Einstein picked up his rifle and headed for the back porch. “We can’t watch this place with just one set of eyes. I’ll take the back porch until dark.”

Dallas stopped him. “Don’t let him get to you, Einstein.”

He bowed his head “It’s no different than when I was in high school. I just don’t want you guys to think I’m just a nerdy kid.”

Roper put her arm around his shoulders. “That’s never going to happen. I promise. You’re one of us and I will always listen to what you have to say. Always.”

When Einstein was gone, Roper started opening up boxes of crackers, bags of chips, and a few boxes of raisins. “We might have a problem, Dallas.”

Dallas pulled out some bowls and pushed them over to Roper, who filled them with five different carbohydrate goodies. “I know. I’ve been thinking that, myself. I’ve also been struggling with something else Einstein is worried about.” Dallas grabbed a handful or chips and slowly ate them one at a time.