THEM (Season 1): Episode 1 (3 page)

Lackey number one nodded while lackey number two replied with the sick enthusiasm only a true sociopath could muster. “That’s right, Jimmy!” That one reached over to the woman and grabbed her hair to yank her head around roughly as he leered at her. “We gonna be real nice to you—make it last.” He licked his lips in a way that reminded me of a wolf from a Saturday-morning cartoon I’d seen as a kid.

Jimmy, who I now assumed was the leader, began loosening his belt with a grin that said he was enjoying tormenting this poor woman as much as he was going to enjoy raping her, and his two companions stepped forward to grab her as he began his preparations. Since it seemed they were all too intent on their sick festivities, I cleared my throat loudly to get their attention. At that, one of the lackeys noticed me and tapped the leader on the arm, gesturing with a nod in my direction.

He turned and looked at me, angling his body so I couldn’t see his right side. The other lackey who hadn’t noticed me was startled by my appearance, and dropped his hand towards the Smith and Wesson service revolver tucked in his waistband. I’d seen a P226 holstered on the leader’s right hip before I’d revealed myself, and the lackey who first noticed me had a sawed-off break-over 20-gauge resting on his left shoulder.

I made eye contact with the lackey number one and shook my head “no.” He stopped his hand just before reaching the pistol, but I could see the tension in his eyes. He wanted to draw on me. Stupid. Numbers and alcohol will make even a craven man act boldly.

I decided to try to defuse this if I could. I had no doubt I could take them, bunched up as they were and with me getting the drop on them. However, I was worried the woman and child might get caught in the crossfire. So, I cleared my throat and spoke up.

“You know, I was just asking after some caravaneers—glad I ran into you fellas. Need some intel on how the Corridor is looking these days.”

The leader, who incidentally looked like a white Pancho Villa, hat and all, spat in my direction. He reminded me a bit of a young Gary Busey, around his
Lethal Weapon
days; he sure was an ugly sumbitch. “Piss off, cowboy, we’re busy.”

Then and there I decided to call him Pancho Vanilla. If he lived through this, that’s the sort of name that would stick with a fella for life. Don’t get much meaner than that. I nodded and gestured at the woman bleeding in front of them.

“I can see that, sure enough. Fact was, I was hoping I could persuade you to leave off the woman, in exchange for taking up something that was more profitable.”

The one who’d first noticed me spoke up. “She ain’t yers. We know cuz’ we asked if’n she had a man. Said no. Finders keepers.”

I sucked air between my teeth. This was going south for sure. I noticed the third one’s eyes going tight, and could see his hands starting to clench. He was going to draw shortly. Better that I ended this my way.

A good way to tie a man’s brain up and make him hesitate is to ask a question, so I did. “How much would it take to convince you gents to leave this woman be?” I let that register for about half a second, and then I shot the third one in the left eye. Moving off the
X
, I immediately began firing on the other two, hitting the other lackey in the upper chest as I sidestepped quickly to draw their fire away from the innocents.

The one I hit in the chest dropped, but he wasn’t out completely. I could see him fumbling to bring the scattergun around. Pancho Vanilla was coming up with the Sig to put a bead on me; he’d drawn without me seeing it. Slick. I’d need to put him down next.

By the time I noticed the leader bringing his gun around, Skinny Dude had brought the barrel of his sawed-off to bear on me. I took a dive roll, feeling a tug and burn on my left ankle. I was sure I’d caught some shot in that side, and hoped it wasn’t too serious. I returned the favor by coming up to a knee and dropping him with a Mozambique using my strong gun hand.

As I came to my feet to close the gap and make sure the two lackeys were down, I noticed that the leader was nowhere to be seen. Looking around frantically for him, I heard a commotion behind the nearest house, followed by hoofbeats moving rapidly away from my position.

The woman and child were cowering behind a tree, but appeared to be fine. I ran to the corner of the house and sliced the pie as I came around, being careful not to flag my approach with my weapon. There would have been three horses, and he could have sent one off with a slap to fool me into thinking he was gone. I didn’t see anything, so I continued around the house, hugging the wall as I went. I dropped and took a quick peek around the corner only to see him hauling ass off in the distance, sombrero and Mexican poncho flailing in the wind, and two horses left behind.

I holstered my side arms and went back around the house, drawing my golok as I went. Coming up on the two bodies, I turned each over and severed their spinal columns with two clean strokes of the blade. Gory, to be sure, but in my line of work you learn to be thorough. Two more strokes and their heads were severed completely.

I left the shotgun and the service revolver loaded on the front porch of the house, but stripped the men of their ammunition. Along with their guns, I left the horses for the woman to do with as she pleased. She’d taken the child inside the house while I was cutting the heads off the corpses, not an unexpected reaction considering the situation. I moved over to the horses and rifled their saddlebags, finding more ammo, including some silver shot.

You’d think the shots would’ve drawn some attention, but unless someone raised the alarm, Donnie’d assume it was just some fool wasting rounds on Zs. So I took what I could carry and tied the bodies to my mule, then dragged them out a ways and buried them. I should’ve just left them for the constable to deal with, but I didn’t want to traumatize the girl any more than she already was by leaving them there. Even so, I really wished it was Donnie Sims and not me dealing with this, and for some reason I was sure this wouldn’t be the last I heard from Pancho Vanilla.

- - -

[3
]

M
ost settlements operated a storehouse where people could go and barter goods for the benefit of the community. Lucky for me, this settlement also had what passed for a doctor, a midwife who had a great deal of experience treating trauma and gunshot wounds during the Great War. She was also good with herbs and whatnot, which made her a triple threat. I stopped in to see her on the way to the Scalded Dog, and had her dig out the shot that was buried in my leg.

Surgery was a scary thing in these times, what with there being little to no modern medicines available. Still, the village midwife knew her stuff, and I needed to get the shot out before I ended up with an infection. Thankfully I had only been hit with a few pellets, and they were fairly close to the surface. I was in and out within an hour, my wounds dressed with an herbal poultice to prevent infection. She gave me instructions to come back and have the wounds cleaned and dressed every day for the next few days. We’d see about that. I had a stockpile of fluoroquinolone, a potent antibiotic that was stable for years after expiration, so I’d just keep an eye on the wounds and start on the meds if it looked like it was getting infected.

Right now, though, I still had that chit burning a hole in my pocket and I fully intended to claim my canned peaches. There were a few other things I was hoping to find as well: some strong cordage, something to read, and hopefully a bottle or two of clear grain alcohol, which was good for any number of uses. Some folks in the settlements had their own stills, but I preferred alcohol that was prewar era. It was getting harder to come by each year, but occasionally I’d find a place that had some on hand.

Despite society at large regressing to a somewhat agrarian economy, scavenging was still popular and prewar goods were in high demand. If you had the balls and the skills, one or two scavenging forays a year into the larger cities and some deft trading could keep an enterprising person in eggs, meat, and canned fruits and vegetables year-round. That’s if you were lucky. My experience was that no one’s luck held out forever.

Sam Tucker, however, had been the exception to the rule. As long as I’d been hunting these parts, Sam had been taking scavenging trips to cities up and down the old IH-35 corridor, and he would know if anything had changed recently out that way. If he’d been hanging out at the Dog lately, chances were good that he’d scored big within the last month, meaning he might have more recent news for me.

I’d hit him up for whatever intel he had, but first I’d better check in on Kara. She was barkeep and owner of the Scalded Dog, ever since her old man passed on and left it to her. And by old man, I mean her common-law husband, or whatever you’d call it in a greatly lawless postapocalyptic society. Kara’s late ex was a biker before the creeps came, and had run the Dog as a popular biker hangout back in the day.

But motorcycles and all other forms of motorized transportation were a rarity these days. Fuel had been scavenged and ran out within the first few years after the bombs fell, and with no means of new fuel production what survived in tankers and underground storage soon went bad. Still, some folks tinkered with light motor transport, converting old diesel engines to run on biofuel, but it was becoming less and less common as time went on since even cooking oil was scarce. Not to mention that the noise tended to draw attention, which was something most folk wanted to avoid these days.

So Kara ran the place as a sort of community watering hole, serving conversation and moonshine, and making a tidy profit for herself when caravaneers and scavengers came through on their way back from salvaging forays in the Corridor. She was tough as nails, as solid as the old whiskey-stained countertop she served drinks on, and needless to say our relationship was more than just friends with benefits. We’d once even talked about moving in together, but we jointly decided against it so long as I was still hunting. I didn’t think it’d be right for her to outlive two husbands in one lifetime, and she wasn’t too keen on the idea, either.

I knew she wanted me to stop hunting and settle down, maybe work with Donnie in the settlement keeping the peace, but thus far she’d had enough respect for me and what we had between us to not force the issue. So we enjoyed each other’s company when we could, which was whenever I passed through town. And I kept the really bad element from harassing her by virtue of her being known as “Scratch’s girlfriend.” Although truth be told, she could take care of herself just fine.

I had to admit that sometimes it was difficult to leave her alone. But I just kept telling myself it was better this way, and Donkey kept her mouth shut on the matter, so I left it at that. I sometimes joked that one day I planned to retire and make a proper woman out of her, which typically got me slapped because she knew I was going to hunt until... well, you know. A leopard can’t change its spots for stripes.

As I walked into the bar, I knew I’d messed up by not stopping in to see her first thing. She must’ve heard I’d come back into town, and she was probably pissed that I hadn’t made a beeline over here to see her. I could see the worry written in the circles beneath her eyes and the crinkles in her forehead, and far be it from me to want to put another wrinkle line on that pretty Irish face. It was hard enough finding a woman with all her teeth, much less with a figure and looks to boot. Life was hard in the postwar era, and it took its toll on people, aging them young. Ever see anyone smile in those old photographs from the 1800s? I used to wonder at that; now, we all know why they looked so grim.

Kara looked up and half smiled, half grimaced at me as I walked in. “Well, if it isn’t mister tall, scarred, and handsome.” Kara liked to tease me about the fact that I looked Hispanic, taking after my mother’s side of the family, but that despite my appearance my parents had seen fit to saddle me with a fine Irish name. The comment about the scars, well... hazards of the job. She told me once that she liked scars on a man, and at the time I didn’t know what to think about that. Still don’t, I suppose.

Her eyes hardened for a moment, and she blew a lock of auburn hair out of her face as she went back to scrubbing the counter furiously. “Finally decided to stop by and let me know you were still alive, did you?”

“Kara, I just stopped in to see Donnie so I could get paid. You know I was coming by to see you before I left town; a few minutes wasn’t going to make much difference...”

“Easy for you to say, since you’re not the one waiting.” She stopped wiping down the bar, tossing the old T-shirt over one shoulder and looking me up and down while I stood there silently. “I have some rabbit chili on in the back, if you’re hungry.”

“Thanks, I’ll...” Kara had already turned her back on me and retreated into the kitchen by the time I was halfway through a reply. I wisely decided to let it slide, and as she walked back in with an old stoneware bowl and a spoon, I figured I’d take the hint and just move the conversation along to safer waters. “How’s business been?”

“Light, but steady. Seen fewer caravans coming from out East though.”

I nodded at that. Could mean something, might not. What it did mean for sure was that I needed to talk to Sam. “Sam Tucker around?”

“Yeah, he came in with the last caravan, and has pretty much been a fixture here for the last few days. Drinking heavy too, so I guess that makes up for the dip in traffic here of late. You drinking anything?”

“How about a glass of your finest?” Point in fact, Kara just served whatever she could get her hands on. Despite the scarcity of supplies and resources there was always someone who could brew up a batch of hooch or moonshine. Enough farmers still raised and harvested good corn that it wasn’t uncommon at all for there to be white liquor in most settlements. However, the taste left much to be desired, as did the hangovers. Good thing I rarely drank.

“Funny you should mention that. A caravaneer stopped in last week and traded me a few bottles of pre-bomb whiskey and vodka. Figured I’d keep it aside for a rainy day, but I might let you have a sip or two if you’re planning to stay over tonight.” The look on her face was expectant, without being needy; Kara was anything but.