Outbreak: A Survival Thriller (17 page)

Despite his manly strut, his
voice is thin and high, and I detect the uncertainty of a man who never learned
to wear his power with the same ease that comes naturally to men like the
Colonel. It probably still comes as a surprise to him every time he beds a
pretty girl, even against her will. Before the Outbreak, decent women probably
ignored him.

I keep the 9mm aimed at him.

“Are you alone?” he asks Melanie.

She nods.

“You know what happened here?”

Another
nod
,
this one more frantic.

“You feel like
tellin
’ me? Or do I have to, uh”—smiling, he throws a
glance over his shoulder at the man with the rifle, then looks back at Melanie—“do
I have to fuck the truth out of you? Huh, girl?”

His threat falls flat. He must
know it did. But who is there to judge him in this new world, where men like
him can make their own laws just by pointing a gun?

Hatred wells inside of me. It
eats away at the knot in my back, restoring me, letting me to rise into a
crouch.

“Just don’t hurt me,” Melanie
says. “I’ll tell you anything you want, just please don’t hurt me.”

“Oh, no worries, no worries,” the
driver says with a dismissive wave. “I’m not gonna hurt you. I’ll treat you
real good. A pretty girl like you will have everything she needs.
Food, decent clothes, a pot to piss in, a sleeping bag to keep you warm
at night.
I just want to know what happened here. That’s all,
sweetheart.”

Melanie nods and lets her arms
drift down.

“
Ho’d
on nah, honey,” the one with the rifle says, a husky voice. “Don’ make me go an’
shoot ya.”

The accent is faintly Caribbean.
One of his thick dreadlocks dangles between his face and the rifle. It’s right
in his line of sight.

Melanie lifts her arms again. The
one with the plaid shirt motions for his partner to calm down.

“Relax, Johnny. She’s just a
girl. She ain’t a threat to us.”

“You check to see if she be
packing, Eddie?” Johnny says. “Even dese girls can fight. You know that as well
as I do.”

The more Johnny talks, the wider
the distance between his head and the rifle becomes. Another dreadlock swings
down into his line of sight. At this point, if he had to fire suddenly, he
wouldn’t hit Melanie if she were a brick wall facing him.

Unless he’s an expert who just
happens to be full of
himself
.

My finger grazes the trigger. I
could shoot Johnny first, but I’m afraid Eddie could be a quicker shot with
that revolver than his casual demeanor implies. And if I shoot Eddie first,
Johnny might automatically fire the rifle, hitting Melanie by chance.

“Let me handle this,” Eddie says,
needlessly pulling up his pants again.

If Eddie goes for his revolver, I
will shoot him first. Johnny will most likely swing the rifle in my direction.
If he does that, he’ll never get the chance to aim it.

Eddie reaches behind his back.

I almost shoot him, but Melanie
speaks and Eddie freezes. I give it a few more seconds.

“They tried to take it from me,” Melanie
says, sounding girlish and desperate.

Eddie’s brow furrows in suspicion.

“Take what, sweetheart?”

“The men who made that fire. They
tried to take my virginity, but I got away. I made the fire and I got away.”

A sob spills out of her. Smiling
now, Eddie reaches out in a calming gesture, no longer about to pull the
revolver. He approaches Melanie as if to soothe her. Either he genuinely feels
pity for her, or the thought of Melanie still being a virgin has excited him to
the point of complete idiocy. How does he know she isn’t packing a knife?

Now I’m aiming at Johnny. His
rifle poses the most immediate threat.

Take out Johnny first,
then
shoot Eddie in the head before he can whip out his
revolver.

“Hey, now,” Eddie says to Melanie,
taking another step toward her, to which Melanie responds by taking a step
back.

I’m about to squeeze the trigger
and erase Johnny from the picture when Melanie, in a moment of cleverness,
points at the warehouse and shouts, “There they are!”

Johnny swings around with his
rifle to aim at his imaginary attackers. Before he can complete the turn, I
squeeze the trigger and put a bullet in his skull. The sky goes pink above his
head with misted blood.

There are screams from the women
in the truck as Johnny falls among them. My pistol, aimed squarely at Eddie’s
midsection now, makes another loud crack, only a second after the first.

Eddie drops his
revolver—I’m actually impressed that he managed to get it out so
quickly—and doubles over like a man about to vomit. He lifts his head to
get a look at his executioner.

I let him study me, crouched
there among the trees with my pistol aimed at him. But I don’t shoot. Instead,
I watch the realization dawn on Eddie that coming here was the worst mistake of
his life. After a few moments during which the color drains from his face, he
coughs out a burst of blood and tips over onto the pavement.

He is still alive and conscious.
A belly wound is a terrible way to die. He watches me approach, probably
wondering why I’m wincing in pain, when he’s the one who’s been shot. But the
ache in my back has diminished into a dull throb, and I manage to bend over and
pick up the revolver. It goes straight into my utility belt for later
inspection. I barely notice Melanie get up and run into the woods where we left
our stuff.

“Kill me,” Eddie says in a
trembling voice.

With a solemn shake of my head, I
tell him honestly why I won’t.

“I don’t want to waste the
bullet.”

He blinks stupidly at me, and
then his eyes crinkle at the corners, promising tears and weeping. I still
won’t waste a bullet on him. But I also don’t want to hear him cry.

As I go for my knife, Melanie
takes care of the matter for me. She puts an arrow into his head. It makes a
dull crack as it enters, killing him instantly.

The people in the truck have watched
the whole thing. When it’s finished, they regard Melanie and me with
dumbfounded expressions.

“You’re safe,” I tell them as I
open the tailgate.

Melanie and I drag Johnny’s
corpse out of the truck and toss it aside. I give the hunting rifle a quick
once over and toss that aside as well. Old and poorly maintained. Probably
would have jammed on him if he had tried to shoot.

The prisoners seem to trust us,
especially the old man. Dressed in a worn black sweater and jeans, he watches
me through a squint. A smile rises inside his scraggly white beard. A few of
the girls begin to cry openly in what I can tell is pure relief. The old woman
extends a hand to Melanie. She receives it warmly and gives it a reassuring
grip.

“You’re all free,” I tell them.
“But I recommend you let us take you to a safe place. We have a house not far
from here. It’s empty, and there’s food and water.”

They accept this in silence, and
I perform a headcount. There are two teenage girls, three women in their
twenties and thirties, and the old couple. All of them are frighteningly skinny
and dressed in clothes that clearly haven’t been changed or washed in over a
week.

“Ride with me,” I tell Melanie.

We get into the truck, sliding
over seats covered in greenish fabric riddled with holes. It stinks of body
odor in here. A
bobblehead
doll is stuck to the dash.
Its enormous head shivers and shakes, the bright orange swaths of hair above
its freckled face and gap-toothed smile clearly that of the “What, me worry?”
guy from those old
Mad
magazines.

I tear it off the dash and fling
it outside. With a hard turn of the key, I start the engine. It comes to life
with a comforting rumble.

“How’s your eye?” Melanie says.

“I’ll live.”

The words
without depth perception
run through my mind but go unsaid.

“And your back?”

I nod. “Better.”

Melanie leans over and plants a
kiss along my chin, just below the handkerchief she secured there earlier.

“Your house,” I say. “Then we’ll
figure out the rest.”

She nods. “Okay.”

I drive us onto the main road weaving
through the industrial park. Infected stragglers have started to appear from
all directions, probably having heard the sound of the gunshots and picked up
the scent of the two slavers, but even those capable of running aren’t fast
enough to catch up. I’m thankful for the plow as we hit a few that stray into
our path.

“I hope Mom and Sarah are okay,” Melanie
says, biting her nails.

“I’m sure they’re fine. Do you
have any gasoline at your house?”

She looks at me, wide-eyed. “Not
anymore. Why?”

“We’ve got half a tank. Enough to
get us there, but I’ll have to do a supply run.”

She puts a hand on my thigh. “
We’ll
have to do a supply run.”

We both shudder as a bang goes
off behind our heads: the small window in the back opening. I glance at the
rear-view mirror. The old man’s face squints back at me.

“Sorry,” he says. “Window caught
along the darn track.”

“It’s okay,” Melanie says,
twisting around to face him. “How is everyone?”

“Much better now, miss.”

I keep my eyes on the road. “Need
anything?”

“Just a name,” the man says. “Pete
Hirscham
. And you are?”

Melanie and I introduce
ourselves
. We keep it on a first-name basis since we might
have to part ways with these people at some point. At least, that’s how I think
about it.

“I just wanted to say thank you
for saving my family,” Pete says.

“Are they your daughters?” Melanie
asks him.

He gives a single, firm nod. “And
my wife, Linda. My sons Luke, Michael, and Tobias perished during a gathering
hunt. We were on our way to a community called
Brightrock
when we happened upon those two men in the woods. I guess they were trying to
take us back to their camp. I’m glad that didn’t happen. You youngsters are a
gift from the Lord.”

The way he
said
“Lord” tell me he means it literally. His eyes have gathered moisture.

“
Brightrock
,”
I say. “Are you sure it’s a real place?”

“Oh, yes. I’ve laid eyes on it
myself. My wife and daughters stayed in the woods while I went ahead. It’s
about the purest place left on Earth. A community devoted to God. It was when I
returned that we got kidnapped. I blame myself for it.”

I swerve to avoid an overturned
car but can’t avoid plowing into an infected man crawling on all fours to get
across the street.

If there is a God, I thank Him
for the snowplow.

“Anyhow, I intend to return,” Pete
says. “You kids are welcome to come and bring your families. We could use the
extra hands, especially those fit for gathering hunts.”

Melanie and I glance at each
other. She lifts her brow in uncertainty, mirroring how I feel about such an
arrangement.

“I don’t want to offend you,” I
tell the old man, “but we’re not really religious—”

“It’s all right, son,” he says
and reaches inside to lay a hand on my shoulder. “I was a pastor at a church
north of here. I met many young men like you. When they had questions about the
Lord, I preached His word. But when they weren’t interested, I told them I
loved them anyway, and that I hoped they treated others with the compassion
that makes us all kin.” His expression darkens. He gives a righteous nod. “Not
like those two men back there. They were no kin of mine. Animals
is
what they were.”

“I want to go there,” Melanie
tells him. “To
Brightrock
, with my mother and my
little sister.”

“Hearing that makes my heart
sing,” Pete says, and I can tell he’s genuinely pleased.

We’re ten minutes away from Melanie’s
house, which
is
a few miles down the road from our
high school. I’d rather postpone this conversation until after I’ve had a meal
and decent night’s rest.

“You have military training,”
Pete says. “But you’re too young to have served. You were, what, sixteen, seventeen
during the Great Reckoning?”

I nod, assuming “the Great
Reckoning” is just a biblical-sounding name for “the Outbreak.” I like his
version better, actually.

“I just turned seventeen when it
started to spread,” I tell him. “I was never in the military, but my father
was.”

“And he trained you—trained
you
well
, I see.”

I nod again, hoping he won’t ask
me about my Dad.

“Was he in Special Forces?”

“He was. What makes you say that?”

Pete grins. I sense he has something
hidden up his sleeve.

It turns out he does. Literally.

“I want to show you something,”
he says.

He pulls back from the window and
takes off his black sweater, evoking a cry of protest from his wife.

“Peter, put that back on,” she
says in a cutting voice.

The old pastor ignores her and
sticks his arm through the window. He’s wearing a yellow undershirt that was
once white. I watch with growing interest as he lifts the right sleeve to
expose a tattoo the runs along his triceps.

“Oh, not that ugly thing,” his
wife nags at him.

My eyes widen. I can’t believe
what I’m seeing.

Rendered in what looks like
ancient, faded black paint is a dagger with the blade pointing down. Ornamented
with jewels and a leather grip, the blade is partially covered by a coiling
scroll on which I read three words, one on each coil.

DEATH

BEFORE

DISHONOR

Below the dagger’s point is an
elaborate logo that reads:

75 RANGER RGT