Authors: Jeremy Laszlo
“That’s not good.” Noah sucks in a deep breath.
“No shit, you think?” Greg glares at Noah. “I can’t see them behind us, but I bet we can lose him once we cross that bridge.”
I look across the bridge ahead at the other half of the small town of Wherever. It looks like it might have been a quaint little town that had potential to grow into something large and incredible at one time. There are a dozen red brick buildings along the main street with a tall, red and brown town hall at the main intersection of the town. The town hall’s bell tower reaches high up into the air where it looks like someone set a fire, but it didn’t spread down into the building. The roof might be scorched from falling, blazing debris, but the layer of ash hides it. The street lights have hooks where hanging baskets dangle empty and forgotten. There are tipped-over mailboxes and newspaper boxes all over the sidewalk. The windows for most of the businesses are smashed in. The exteriors of the buildings are exactly what you’d expect to find in a small town here in the south. It makes me miss the normal world.
Taking a sharp left, heading west—I think—Greg heads toward a cluster of town houses and apartment buildings that contrast with the quaint exteriors of the main drag. They’re modern and all weird angles and neutral colors that now blend into the ashen world around it. He drives as far as he can on fumes, the truck coughing and sputtering as we continue toward one of the apartment buildings. Eventually, we all brace for the final, choking gasp of the truck before the engine stalls.
“Noah, grab my rifle,” Greg shouts angrily as he kicks open the door. “The two of you—get down in the floorboards and stay put.” Greg looks at me with a very serious expression on his face that is only brought out when he’s about to do something desperately stupid. “You got a gun?” he asks me as I scoot over to the driver’s side of the bench while Lexi and my nephew slip down into the floorboards, sinking into the drying gore of his birth.
I nod to him somberly.
“You do what you need to,” he tells me, before taking a deep breath and running toward the back of the truck.
Chapter Four
Slipping awkwardly down by the gas pedal and the brake, I look over at Lexi who is as pale as a ghost from everything that has happened in the last hour. I feel for her, but right now, we have a group of insane madmen coming for us and I’m not sure that I’m going to be able to sympathize with her verbally at this particular moment. Before I lie down completely, I grab the handle of the door and swing it shut, situating so I can look out the half-dollar sized hole in the door where my father got shot. Outside, the world is bright, filled with lazy, swirling dust and ash making a murky, brownish gray cloud that is thick enough that it’s working as a veil for Greg and Noah.
I have no idea where they ran off to. I can’t see a thing, honestly, other than the vague, basic silhouettes of the businesses across the small street. Even in the end of the world, this town is small enough that it would be nice to live in. Of course, I have to take into consideration that they’re just up the road from an encampment of deranged men who are interested in burning men alive after tying them to street signs and traffic lights. I’ll have to pass. I bet there are a lot better, quaint little hollows up north. That is, if I’m truly looking for a simpler aesthetic to experience the apocalypse with.
There’s no way of tracking where the guys have gone and I feel completely alone. It’s the kind of feeling that I used to get when everyone would go to the bathroom and leave me at the table in a restaurant. I feel like the eyes of the world are ashamed of me, awkwardly watching me and flushing with embarrassment. Who knows where they’ve run off to or what kind of soldier-boy plan they’re trying to surmise? I look over at Lexi again, wondering if she even has a gun. I doubt it, and how is she supposed to hold her son and fire a gun at the same time? I wish that Greg and Noah were still here, setting up to open fire on those freaks when they finally do show up. I say a silent, frantic prayer to anyone or anything that might bother to listen.
Rubber grinds on dusty asphalt and I know that they’re near. They’re coming around the corner and I can feel it deep down inside of me that there’s a lot of them. I open my eyes, ending my prayer and looking out my little peek hole, staring toward the intersection as the dust cloud continues to clear, like a crystal ball revealing a terrifying image to me. Their white truck rounds the intersection and the motor whines, choking on the dust and struggling after chasing us for so many miles. It’s completely covered in dust and ash that the truck has thrown up on them in our flight. It looks like some kind of cartoon pickup truck from a movie as it comes to a halt behind ours. I can see three men in the bed of the truck. All of them have bandanas wrapped around their noses and mouths, but their eyes are exposed to the ash wake. Two of them are frantically rubbing at their eyes, trying to get the dust out with no success.
The driver’s door swings open and I see a man step out of the truck, shooting up from the door and instantly lifting what might be an Uzi. It’s short and compact and it looks like it packs a punch. I wonder what dead mobster or drug dealer he stole it off of. Did he burn the man alive for his sins? The driver lifts his gloved hand in the air and gives his silent orders to the others who are stepping out of the truck and jumping out of the bed. They slowly fan out, their guns pointed at the truck, and I feel like a cornered fox.
I squeeze the grip of my Sig, reminding myself of what courage is. The leader, in a long duster that’s spattered with white paint, looks over the truck, nodding to one of his companions to move in closer. I lift the Sig free from the floor and I wonder how many of them I can kill off before they open fire on the cab, killing all of us. How long until they kill me? I might get two of them if I’m lucky.
Watching others climb free from the back of their truck, I count six of them and I can hear their boots approaching, crunching the dust, ash, and dirt under their feet as they walk closer and closer to us. If there’s six of them and I can kill two of them, maybe Greg and Noah could pin down or kill the other four. That would make the playing field a little more even. We might make it out of this. But that’s trusting that Greg and Noah have a clue about what they’re doing.
“They’re gone,” a man says bluntly over on the opposite side of the truck.
“Check the cab,” the Leader orders. “They might be hiding.”
“I got blood all over this door,” another man over on the passenger’s side says. I point my Sig at the door, aiming at about the height of where the man’s chest will be when he throws open the door and gets a good look at Lexi. The sight of a newborn breastfeeding on the floorboards of a five-ton truck might be enough to stop him there. “We must have hit one of them real good. I mean, that one bled out like a pig.”
“Good,” the Leader growls. “Maybe it was the bitch that killed Father Thompson.”
“Maybe,” someone close to the door mutters happily. I peek through the eyehole and try to catch a glimpse of the man approaching my door. I can barely make out his bare chest that’s now covered in gray. He’s one of the men from the back of the truck. “There’s no way they’re in there,” he says, rubbing his eyes with his gloved hand.
“Check the back,” the Leader orders, apparently content that there’s no one in the truck.
I feel the truck shifting and the sounds of people clambering into the back of the truck. I keep my eye on the man who is near my door, as he turns his back to me and looks back toward the Leader and the others who are searching the truck. I try to keep my breathing steady, but it’s hard. It’s shaky and raspy. With each footstep, the truck sways and moves. The sound of containers shifting and moving reverberates through the body of the truck. They’re making sure they have everything that they need.
“It all in there?” the Leader shouts.
“No,” a voice shouts from the bed of the truck. “There’s a ton missing, but I think we got most of it.”
“What’s missing?” the Leader asks, his voice moving as he’s talking. He’s making his way to the back of the truck. He wants to get a look at it himself.
“Most of the dehydrated food,” the voice in the bed of the truck says as he continues moving, checking through the inventory. “There’s a bit missing, but we’ve got most of it.”
“Maybe they traded some of it,” a newcomer muses.
“Maybe,” the Leader grunts.
On the other side of the cab, I listen as my nephew starts to let out a series of tiny little grunts. They’re the muffled kind of angry grunts that a newborn makes when it’s deprived, unhappy with the way things are going. I look at Lexi’s head, terrified that she’s not going to be able to get it handled. How is she going to get it handled? She has no idea what she’s doing. She has no idea how to handle any of this. I adjust my grip on my Sig and look at her, knowing full well what Greg meant before he vanished with Noah. I can almost see the future, feeling what’s about to come. I hold my breath in my lungs, listening to the whimper and the ruffling as Lexi tries to get her son to keep quiet, to keep comfortable or do whatever needs to be done to stop him from crying out.
That’s when my nephew decides that he’s had enough and lets out a wail that seems a million times louder and stronger than the other wails that he’s done in the past hour. He blasts everything out of his tiny little lungs and I feel my heart sinking. It’s enough for me to feel the cold, sickening terror dripping down into my stomach. All the noises in the bed of the truck and outside melt away and all I can hear is the simple, tiny little wail. Everyone hears it. I feel like every living soul left in the world has stopped what they’re doing and is now listening to the sound of my nephew crying out. I feel like I’m going to throw up at the sound of his cry.
“What the hell was that?” the Leader snaps to his men ,and I feel and hear the heavy footsteps in the back of the truck as one by one every last one of the fanatics drop out of the bed and head around the side of my father’s truck, making their way toward the cab. Their feet grinding against the asphalt is enough to drive me mad. With trembling hands, I grip my Sig and wait for whichever door opens first. I’m certain that I can kill one of them and that will be enough for them to open fire on all of us. They’ll kill us and I won’t have to worry about what they might do to Lexi and my nephew. It’ll be enough to get them angry enough to commit murder against a child and a post-partum mother. “I told you to check the cab.”
“I didn’t see anyone,” a voice on the passenger side of the truck grumbles as I feel the weight of the truck leaning toward the source. I point the Sig, prepared for when he whips open the door. The shadow of his arm gripping the bar is cast across the corner of the window and I can see the shadow of his head on the dust-covered window as his hand fumbles for the handle. “I don’t see anyone,” he reports back to the Leader.
“Open the damn door,” the Leader barks.
The door opens and I look at the man in the light of the world beyond the door. His face is covered in a film of dust and ash which means that he was in the back of the truck. His white and gray face is completely coated and his blue eyes look bright, popping with clarity as he looks down at Lexi. His dark hair is combed back, thanks to the grease in his hair from having not showered or bathed in God only knows how long. He has a handsome, ghostly face that might have been to his advantage back when the world had rules and made sense. He’s wearing a leather vest that he’s splattered white paint on and painted black crosses on both flaps hanging over his chest. From his neck hang dozens of cross necklaces that have tarnished and turned dull in the harsh environment that has claimed the world. He stares, the strap of a rifle hanging across his chest as he looks with a bewildered and completely surprised look on his face.
“Holy shit,” he mutters as he looks down at Lexi and the newborn. The expression on his face is frozen, stunned with awe as he looks at the tiny life bundled in my sister’s arms.
With a loud crack, I watch that handsome, ghostly face of his explode as a bullet rips through the front of his face and sinks into the seat of the truck. Blood, gore, and white bits of gristle coat everything, and thankfully my nephew is sheltered from all of it. A spray of red lingers and slowly sinks, coating everything in crimson droplets. His grip on the door and the grip bar immediately releases, along with the stance as his whole body comes crashing down. There’s a loud bang and a thud as his body collapses onto the street, leaving a gory, hideous trail. I feel sick to my stomach, but I point my Sig at the door as the hinge brings the door shut.
“It’s an ambush,” the Leader shouts.
“They’re on the rooftops,” a woman shouts. I’m surprised by that. There’s a woman among all of these male, bloodthirsty killers. I would expect a woman to have more common sense than these madmen. Why would they bring her along in the first place? They were all clad in white, looking like boys in a cult who had their heads buzzed before entering the commune. Why would they give her a gun and send her out with the killers in charge of bringing back the stolen goods? Why would she come? I immediately hate the woman. What kind of a woman puts up with all of this tyrannical testosterone?
The world outside of the truck explodes into a world of gunfire and screams. Through the window, I can see the plumes of dust puffing wherever the bullets smack into the side of the apartment building. They have no clue where Noah or Greg are and I hope that they keep hidden long enough to take out a few others.
“Hold your fire!” a voice shouts over the sounds of the survivors unloading everything they have at the rooftops of every surrounding buildings. “Hold your fire!” he shouts again, silencing the last gunman who is determined to kill Greg and Noah, even though he sounds like he doesn’t have the slightest clue where they are. “Hold your fire, damn it.” The man taking charge of the situation shouts one last time. “Everyone find some cover and get down—”
The crack of a gunshot silences him and I can hear his body’s loud thump as he falls against the asphalt, the sickening smack of his skull on the concrete sends a shiver down my spine. Everything explodes into hell again and my nephew starts screaming, wailing over the tumult on the other side of the door. They fire at everything, shooting in all directions, trying to find where Greg and Noah have set up to pick them off one by one. I keep my pistol aimed at the passenger’s door, looking over my shoulder briefly outside to see if there’s anyone hiding on this side of the truck. If there is, I might be able to fling open the door and open fire on them before they realize what’s happening. My nephew keeps screaming and with each cry it feels like someone is punching the exterior of my glass brain, sending white cracks running all throughout my sanity.
The weight of the truck shifts and I can tell that someone is trying to take cover in the back of it. I weigh the option of whether it would be worth the risk, climbing into the seat to get a peek and maybe put a bullet through the window and kill whoever thinks they’re being clever. The storm of bullets and blasting beyond the passenger door reminds me that I should stay put until Greg and Noah have put bullets through the last of them. My heart is pounding, thundering against my chest and I try to keep composed. I try to keep my sanity while all of this is happening around me. There’s no way we’re going to make it if we don’t get the last four of the gunmen. They need my help, but I can’t leave Lexi and my nephew alone. That’s just begging for one of the strangers to get the drop on them and take them hostage. I’ve seen that movie a dozen times before.
The person taking refuge in the back of the truck opens fire and I hear a deeper shot ring out, loud and true from the rooftops and the person hiding in the back lets out a scream. It’s a sharp, pained scream, the kind of scream that you’d expect a wounded animal to emit if it could talk. I listen to the tone of the pained voice and I immediately recognize it as the woman. She’s been hit and she’s limping through the bed of the truck, trying to get to the tailgate. I can hear her breathing heavily, grunting and groaning through each pained step. She’s dragging one of her feet as she makes her way toward the tailgate, but another shot rings out from the rooftops and I hear her slam against the metal. There’s a moment of absolute silence that follows the woman crashing into the cold surface of the truck, that’s followed by her foot twitching against the metal bed of the truck. She’s dying. She’s already dead though. Her body is just catching up with reality.