Two times two is four, four times four is sixteen, sixteen times sixteen is…uh. Well, there was that.
When I got my ass out of this situation, I was going to have a fucking field day placing bullets inside of rednecks.
If I got out of this
?
Fuck that, I am going to get out of this.
There was no other option. I had lasted this long and survived the goddamn Zombie Apocalypse; rednecks were not going to take me down. I wouldn’t be broken by a bunch of inbred trailer trash motherfuckers,
no fucking way.
My surroundings started to register. They had moved me.
It smelled clean.
I was in a house now. I knew this because I was lying on an actual bed and I could see out the window to my right. It was afternoon and we must be in one of the camps that lined the shore of Lake Pontchartrain. I figured out all of this because of my superb deductive reasoning. No brain injury here!
My window faced the water and the sun was to the left of me, if we were in the same area, the camp faced Lake Pontchartrain. If the sun had been to my right, we would be on the Lake Catherine side. We couldn’t have gone that far from where they grabbed me, so the location rang true.
I shifted and my whole body hurt. I moved my head and glanced up, jiggling my wrists that were still restrained, but now they were above my head. I was tied securely to the bed, both arms above my head, and latched to the bed posts with handcuffs like I was about to play a bit of slap and tickle with a lover.
A girl could only wish.
I also realized that I was completely nude underneath the covers. I sucked in a quick breath when I realized the state of my undress. Unable to help it, panic overtook me and I began to pant, my breathing coming in quick and shallow breaths.
Oh my God. What the…what the fuck had they done to me? Had I been raped? Had they raped me while I was unconscious?
I thrashed and pulled at the cuffs. It only aided in sending pain through my wrists and shoulders. The pain sobered me though, the shock registering in my brain and causing me to still.
Calm,
I told myself, trying to physically force myself to settle down. I tried to force myself to take deep breaths and assess my situation. My muscles were sore, but there was no pain or soreness between my legs, which would indicate a sexual assault.
I would be able to tell, right?
It would be quite obvious
unless he had a dick the size of a Vienna sausage…
The mental picture of a rapist with a teeny little weenie almost made my panic completely dissipate. This is where I would normally do a little mental chuckle.
Pause for a chuckle, it was almost there, almost…
so my mental health was still in semi-working order. I wouldn’t let this shit break me.
The door handle turned and I shut my eyes feigning sleep. Whoever it was, I wanted to get my bearings first before there was a confrontation.
“You up yet, girlie?” The woman’s voice rang out loud and grating to my ears. “C’mon, bitchy bitch, Floyd didn’t hit you that darn hard.” The covers were ripped off of me exposing my naked flesh to the cold air and my eyes shot open.
“There you are, bitchy bitch, I knew you was awake.” Her gap-toothed smile hovered over me. It took all my reserves not to grimace. I had a phobia about nasty teeth and hers were rank, yellow, and broken. “Your pretty little self is gonna feed me and my family for a long time. Those tits alone are worth some grub. The bikers ain’t gonna know what to do with you. Too bad Floyd hit ya in the face…that black eye ain’t flattering.”
“You can’t do this,” I hissed at her.
“Girlie, I can do whatever the darn thing I want with you. You’s mine; you killed my son.
You lucky I don’t throw you in with the dead an’ watch ‘em eat your skinny ass.”
“Which one was your son? The fat fuck I knifed on the street or the pervert whose face I bashed in?” She punched me hard in the ribs, and the impact knocked the wind out of me, pain throbbed through my side. I should have probably kept my mouth shut.
“Shut yo’ trashy mouth. I got me two more sons and they want a piece of your skinny ass. I’m being nice handin’ you over to the bikers. Gonna dress ya ass up like a stripper and hand you over, be done with ya. You gonna deserve every rutting those men put on ya.” She reached into the bag she had slung over her shoulder and pulled out a bright pink piece of material.
She pulled on my legs and began sliding the material over them. I could feel the scratch of her nails on my skin. Every time I tried to pull away she grabbed at me, grunting under the strain of it.
The dress was made from some cheap, stretchy material. She forced it over me with a bit of effort, trying to hold my legs in place while she forced it up over my body. It was one of those tube dresses that they sold by the dozens at big-box stores. The material was some nasty rayon blend and it was a color that screamed “hooker.”
I had always wondered what type of woman would buy outfits like this as I shopped for my cereal and bargain priced jambalaya mix. Well, now it was me wearing one of them.
And it didn’t even fit. The dress was two sizes too small.
Before Z, I had flirted with a size ten on a bad day, an eight if I had restrained myself for a month or so. I knew I had lost weight and seriously toned down since the shit hit the fan, but I was never going to be a small. The scratchy synthetic material clung to my skin uncomfortably.
There was no room to breathe and the material was so cheap it itched.
The woman reached up and uncuffed one of my hands so she could slip the spaghetti strap over my arm. She went to reach for my other hand but then thought better of it. She reached into her bag and retrieved a rusty looking Ruger and brandished it like it was going to scare me.
The crappy revolver didn’t scare me. The fact that she had two more sons that I hadn't clocked, sons that were probably just outside that door, and the fact that I didn’t know where I was scared me a lot more.
“Don’t cha move, bitch. I’m gonna unhook ya, but then we gonna get moving, and if you so much as twitch, I gonna shoot ya in the leg.
I won’t hurt the body parts that matter, but I’m gonna make sure it hurts
real
bad.”
She leaned her stinking mass over me and unlocked the second cuff, pulling the cuffs from my wrists. I had the urge to rub at my wrists, but I tried not to move. I didn’t want to test her by twitching. I needed more information before I tried to escape.
“Stand up,” she ordered, and I slowly got to my feet, testing my legs. They held me, and she yanked my arms behind me and cuffed me again, d
amn
. Then she did something unexpected. She put the bag that she was carrying over my head. It was a thin material and I could see through it barely, just enough to avoid running into walls, but not enough to feel secure in my location.
“Move, bitch, I don’t want to look at your face no more.” She pressed the gun into my back, and I moved forward. There was nothing else I could do.
Lamb ready for slaughter.
ZACH
As much as I hated admitting it, this surveillance mission was a bust. We were now going on eight hours at this location and there had been no movement other than the random Z or gator. The team was tired and we were going on a whim that the rednecks would return. It might be days or weeks before they came back to this outpost. And if they just left the body in the middle of the floor, chances were they weren’t coming back anytime soon.
“Boss Two,” I called to Blake.
“Boss One,” he responded. He couldn’t mask the sarcasm in his tone.
“Call it?”
“No one’s home and I doubt they’re coming back,” he stated flatly.
“Roger. Beta Team, we’re packing it in.” A few calls of affirmative responded as each one of my men sounded off.
It had now been twenty hours since Alexis disappeared. I was up against the clock and her life was on the line. I wanted to keep moving, keep pushing ahead. We couldn’t stop searching, but there was only so much my team could take.
Alexis was well liked and they would look for her until they collapsed, but this wasn’t a world where you could let yourself get fuzzy. Fuzzy led to mistakes and mistakes led to death. Death from another human or a zombie, it didn’t matter.
It was the same outcome.
It didn’t matter which way I turned it around, we had to head in. We had to rack out and we had to decompress. I wasn’t admitting defeat. I would find Lex, I just had to find another way.
I didn’t wait for the rest of the team to catch up.
I stowed my sensitive equipment and extra clothing in the waterproof pockets of my gear and jumped in the water. I was used to swimming long distances, could do it in my sleep as a Marine, so the ten yards through the marshy water was nothing. The chilly water helped me to refocus my thoughts and stay on track.
There were only a few more options open to us and I didn’t like any of them. Alexis could be anywhere and I didn’t have the slightest inclination of where to start looking. I knew the rednecks had to be holed up in one of the camps that lined Chef Menteur Highway, but there were hundreds of homes in this stretch of Louisiana.
It was going to be like finding a needle in a haystack, bad odds, but then again I wasn’t ever one to bet on a sure thing.
The sun’s got to shine on a dog’s ass at some point.
BLAKE
We rolled into the compound quiet and subdued. Everyone was in a bad headspace. Martinez and Romeo parked the vehicles and I went straight for the mess. I wasn’t hungry, but I hadn’t eaten in hours so I knew I had to fuel up.
I wasn’t in the mood to speak to anyone, so I just jumped out of the vehicle, stowed my gear in the entrance hall, and went straight to mess. I smelled like balls and probably looked like a bag of shit, but I didn’t give a fuck. Maybe it would keep the Chatty Cathys away.
Clara’s sister was one of the first ones to notice me and she made like she was going to walk over and chat me up, but something stopped her short.
It must have been the positive vibes I was giving off
–whatever it was, it made her turn the other way and scurry off. She probably wanted to question me about her fuckwit sister.
She didn’t want to do that right now.
She wouldn't get a pleasant response from me.
The food was still out, so I slapped a few items on a plate without really looking at what it was and then went to the farthest corner of the room to eat. I just wanted to be alone in my thoughts. I couldn’t wrap my head around our failure. I thought for sure we would go out there and find Alexis and Clara.
The rednecks could have gone anywhere.
They could have moved back into Slidell or even pushed into New Orleans. There was no way for us to know. We were blind and had very little resources to locate a missing person in this crappy world.
Someone slapped down something on the table and I looked up with a murderous glare.
Did I not make it clear by my actions that I wanted to be alone?
It was Zach.
Of course, it was Zach.
He sat down across from me and just glared back at me.
“You need something?” I asked, my mouth was full of whatever crap I had been shoveling into it, but I didn’t care.
“Where the fuck did they take her?”
“If I knew that, do you think I would be sitting here?” I answered, but I knew he wasn’t really asking me a question he expected an answer to.
“Actually, Blake, I have no idea what the fuck you would do. Since Z, you’ve surprised me at every turn.
I thought I knew you, brother, but I have no idea what the fuck is going through that brain of yours.”
“You just can’t let this crap drop, can you?”
“Nope, not gonna let this drop.”
“So what, I’ve done a few things off SOP, it isn’t exactly a standard operating world we’re in. For once in my life, I’m not a by-the-books Joe and you can’t get it. And why the fuck are you bringing this up now? Don’t you have something else to do, maybe hit the rack?”
“I just want to know what to do!” He slapped the table with his big palm and I flinched. Zach’s ice blue eyes were bloodshot and the bags under his eyes were dark and pronounced. He needed some serious downtime.
“You need to get some sleep, Zach, that’s what you need to do.”
“No, I need to find Lex,
now
.”
“We can’t look now, and if you don’t get your head on right, we’re not going to make any headway,” I shot back.