I
sat
with my back to the wall of the trailer. Inside everything had been stripped out.
A few hours after we had been locked inside, the door opened and they tossed Ethan Winthorpe in. Battered and bruised, he looked as if they had done a serious number on him. What had they hoped to gain from beating the crap out of him? I had to wonder if Sebastian had done it simply as a means to get back at him. He arrived unconscious. Jess had badgered one of the guys outside to give her a bottle of water and a rag so that she could tend to him. I was certain they only gave it to shut her up. When Ethan finally came around he glanced at us and drank down a whole bunch of water before speaking.
“I hate the taste of blood.”
“Seems Fritz loves it.”
“How did you all end up back here?”
“That awesome escape plan went south.”
“Where’s Johnny?”
“If I was him, I would be miles away from here.”
I got up and went over to a small hole in the side of the trailer. I glanced out. Ten of Fritz’s men were sitting around a fire tossing back beers like they were on vacation. “I would kill for a beer about now.”
“Really?” Elijah said. “I would just like to get the hell out of here.”
“No chance of that. They have this place surrounded.”
A few minutes later the door opened and they tossed the rest of the leadership inside. One after another they rolled across the floor bloodied and beaten.
“Guessing you opted not to drink the Kool-Aid?” I asked.
Ben who was looking a little worse for wear got up and went over to Annora.
“Were you aware that your father thinks he can create a permanent cure for bites?”
“He’s not my father. At least I don’t see him like that anymore. And as for the cure. Perhaps he has. Since the apocalypse kicked off he’s been obsessed with finding it.”
“But will the immunes die?”
Her eyes dropped. “The kind of surgery that he wants to do will kill them.”
“But then he would have a permanent cure?”
She chuckled to herself as she wiped blood from her mouth. “There’s no guarantee. It’s all hearsay. The only way he could know for sure is if he had performed the operation successfully. He hasn’t. All of the immunes are already dead from the surgery he’s attempted. That leaves just Johnny.”
“He’s insane.”
“As much as I agree, Ben, what he’s trying to do is end this. Even if he isn’t going to give it away.”
“What’s the point?”
“Control. Power. Having the cure would make him a god. A giver of life. You can’t put a price on that. Whether people love or hate him, they would flock in droves to be around the one who had the cure.”
Ben nodded. “He wouldn’t have to threaten them. They would do whatever he said in order to prevent death.”
“You got it.”
I strolled over. “So how come you haven’t figured out a permanent cure? You’ve been at it a year and we are still no closer to it.”
“It’s not for lack of trying. I could have performed surgeries like what my father wants to do but I would have never placed a person’s life in jeopardy.”
“But daddy dearest would. I bet you must feel real proud.”
She scoffed. “Yeah, he’s the real father of the year.”
“What about your mother?”
“Dead. Long before this all started. I’m glad she never got to see him this way.”
I leaned up against the wall of the trailer. “We are screwed either way. In the slim chance Johnny kills your insane father, we end up no closer to discovering a permanent cure. If he hands himself over, we are in the same boat.”
“Not exactly. There is a chance that my father is on to something. Though admittedly he might be going about it the wrong way.”
“Has he shared it with you?”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
We all looked on, waiting to hear something that might give us some sense of hope.
She shook her head and sighed. “Maybe it can work. I don’t know for sure without placing someone at risk and performing the surgery.”
“You think what he’s suggesting is right?”
“I think it is,” Imara from district six said. “Let’s face it. Without finding a permanent cure, how do we hope to get society back to the way it was?”
“You would be willing to kill someone for it?”
“We are talking about the cure for the human race. The reality is, we are all lucky to be alive. If I knew what humanity needed was contained inside my brain, I would willingly take the chance.”
“Well, that’s you. Your decision. He shouldn’t be making a decision for others. That’s what makes this wrong,” I said.
Elijah got up and started banging against the trailer wall. “Let us out.”
“Calm down. You’re just going to piss them off.”
“I don’t give a fuck. If I’m going to die, I’m not going to make it easy for them. Come on, you fuckers,” Elijah yelled.
From outside you could hear the men laughing. They just thought it was one big joke. One of them fired off a few rounds at the trailer. The bullets snapped overheard and a couple ricocheted off the metal.
I felt Elijah’s frustration, I was struggling to keep my cool. Waiting to be killed by a lunatic makes you think about your life. All the things you could have, should have or would have done differently. I wished I had told Izzy how I really felt. Sure there had been rumors of us screwing around on the beach, or hooking up in some car in the community but those were all false. The truth was, she had never really got over Dax. I would have always been compared to him. I thought about my parents, Castle Rock, Specs and all the good times we had before this. I thought about what I would have done with my life. None of it seemed to matter anymore. The safe zone was meant to be a good thing. And if a person measured what was good by being able to stay alive, then yes, it was good. We had managed to survive a year inside the walls. But it wasn’t home. Home was made up of family and they were all gone. Home was found in friendship and that had been torn apart.
I sighed and slumped down to the floor.
Where are you, Johnny?
W
aves lapped
against the boat as we made our way across to Shelter Island. I had a feeling the boat was going to sink. It was only meant to be a three-man boat, maybe four. There were six of us squeezed into the small space weighed down with assault rifles, vests and enough ammo to take out a small army.
When we finally made it to the shore, we hopped out, stayed low and moved forward. My assault rifle was on the ready. We didn’t expect to see anyone patrolling Shelter Island. Those who had patrolled the beaches usually checked once an hour but with everyone’s weapons removed and all the focus placed on section A and the armory, we didn’t anticipate running into anyone for a good twenty minutes. The armory was located at the heart of the community just off Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike. It was a small history museum that had been gutted and renovated with steel cages to house weapons. Along with rifles, handguns and grenades there was a bit of everything inside that building. Land mines, rocket launchers and every kind of machete, sword and knife you were liable to find in army surplus and gun shops. Some of it belonged to those who arrived, but most had been collected over a period of a year from homes and gun shops in the city.
We stayed off the roads and worked our way across fields, through woodland until we reached it. There were ten people guarding the place. They weren’t taking any chances. A couple of trucks were positioned outside blocking off the road that led up to the building. Some of the men had lit campfires and surrounded the perimeter with wire. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they had hidden a few land mines in various places to ensure that no one got close. Then again with the way they were acting like idiots, I threw that idea out the window.
In the brush we waited for what seemed like almost twenty minutes. It wasn’t a case that we couldn’t have moved in on them immediately but we were waiting for the other seventy guys to arrive at the access points. If this went wrong, the enemy would swarm us.
Lincoln held up a radio. “Gary, are you in position?”
“We are just coming up. Shit, dude, you didn’t tell us how many there were.”
We had kind of been a little vague on the exact number. The truth was we really didn’t know. We knew it was above a hundred. Though in all honesty, it was more likely two hundred.
“No going back now,” he said over the mic. “They’ve seen us.”
“Get into position. Pull the trucks around and open fire on them.”
There were a few minutes of silence. Then over the sound of the radio we heard gunfire. It was like an explosion of fireworks going off. I kind of wished I had been there to see the look on Fritz’s face.
Lincoln handed me the night vision binoculars. I peered through.
“You sure that’s the place?”
“Yeah,” I said as I watched a couple of men walking around the perimeter holding fully automatic rifles.
“So how do you want to do this?” Brolin asked.
“As fast as possible. If they radio through before we take them out, we’ll be up shit creek without a paddle.”
I screwed on a quick detach suppressor on the end of my AR-15 and moved out. Two of us were going to take the west side, two the north and two the east. The assault would be fast and unless anything went wrong, we would have six of them down within the next couple of minutes leaving only four of them remaining. No doubt they would panic.
Shouldering the rifle, I crouched and moved forward in the darkness with my scope focused on one of the men. Wren was off to my right doing the same. When we got into position, we waited for the men to do their rounds. I used a small light that I flicked on and off to indicate to the other five to fire when ready.
Now despite the fact we used suppressors, it still wasn’t silent. There’s always a pop and when fields surround you and there’s no sound except for crickets, it didn’t take long for the other four to realize what was happening. Two of them bolted upright from their seats and looked as if they were making a run for the radio in the truck when Brolin rushed in firing like a banshee. Fucking guy was nuts. He must have thought he was in some video game. Yet the way he handled himself, I had to wonder if he wasn’t telling the truth about having a military background. Shooting at the best of times required a steady hand but when you throw running into the mix it became a hell of lot harder. But he handled it like a boss.
The others rushed into the building as we fired rounds at him. One of them was hit, the other got inside. By now he would have been shitting himself. Alone, inside an armory. It didn’t matter that he had the means to kill. One person up against six, those weren’t good odds.
“You might as well come out.”
“Fuck you.”
Brolin looked at me and laughed. “Guy must fancy himself as Rambo.” He pulled out a grenade.
Lincoln immediately grabbed his hand before he pulled the pin. “What the hell are you doing? We came to retrieve the weapons not blow the whole bloody place up.”
“It’s a fake, asshole.”
“What?”
“Trust me.”
Lincoln released his grip. Brolin yanked the pin as he ran at the door. He gave it a swift front kick and fell back on his ass. I burst out laughing. What a guy. The grenade rolled a short distance away from him. Now for someone who said it was a fake, he sure as hell jumped up fast and made a run for it. I looked at Wren and then grabbed her and we fell to the ground.
There was a massive explosion.
“Brolin!” Lincoln shouted.
“Shit, sorry, I must have got it mixed up with the real ones.”
“Oh my god, you amateurs,” I muttered to myself before recalling several times when we had screwed up. It was par for the course in a war that no one was trained for.
“Listen, we don’t want to harm you. Come out and you’ll live.”
Right, like that was going to work. These guys didn’t negotiate. I pulled up my gun and crouched towards the front door. I stepped to one side and reached over and tried the handle. It was locked. I looked back at Lincoln. He shook his head and came jogging over. He pulled a shotgun around and fired several times at the lock. Splinters of wood burst all over the place, and the handle buckled. A quick jab with the butt of my gun and it opened. We knew he was going to open fire and sure enough he did, but that wasn’t the worst of it. It was the grenade that rolled out that had us hightailing it. Another explosion and then it went silent.
“There is always one. One asshole who has to hold down the fort.”
“I have this!” Axel yanked out a flashbang. I took it from him and got in close to the building. I gave it a clockwise twist and pulled the pin. I tossed it inside and then it exploded. Now I knew he wasn’t just going to come out of there. I took the chance and slipped in just after it went off. When the smoke cleared, he came into view behind a stockpile of rifle containers. I don’t think he even heard me come in as he was coughing and trying to get his breath when I unloaded a bullet in his head.
“All clear!” I yelled as I my eyes drifted over the arsenal of weapons. I pressed ahead and got close to the man on the floor. Beside him was a radio, it was crackling. On the other end was the voice of Steadman.
“Come in, Markus?”
I
ignored
the radio and we began loading up the two trucks outside with as many weapons as we could.
“Speed it up,” I said to Brolin who was dragging ass. “It won’t be long before they send men out to check on them.”
“Let ’em and we’ll finish them off like we did these ones.”
I stopped in front of him. “Just load up the truck.”
“How do you want to do this?” Rayne asked.
“Wren will go with you, I’ll take Brolin and Axel with me. She’ll show you who to distribute them out to.”
“You think they are going to help?”
“They will once they know that everyone is going to help.”
I wasn’t sure, to be honest, that anyone was going to risk it, that’s why I planned on focusing on those who usually kept weapons at their homes. The ones who hadn’t relinquished their firearms. The last thing I needed to do was try to convince people to get on board. We ended up forming a line and passing crates of weapons between us until the trucks had more than enough to arm at least five hundred people. We couldn’t take it all. There was too much and not enough time.
“Stay safe,” I said to Wren. I leaned in and kissed her. We gunned it out of there and began going from house to house in the immediate area. Wren and the others would head towards East Hampton and Montauk. When we arrived at homes, people didn’t need an explanation, they were just pleased to able to get a weapon and know that someone was doing something about our unwelcome visitors.
Those who wanted to fight jumped in the back. We had visited fifteen homes by the time we encountered Fritz’s men. With the three of us up front and thirty men and women in the back fully armed we were fully ready for an assault.
As we pulled out of a home and made our way up to Sag Harbor, we came around a bend and up ahead were two trucks blocking off the road. I hit the brake and our headlights lit up the faces of fifteen men.
Brolin was about to get out and unload rounds but I started backing up.
“What are you doing?”
“Right now the best course of action is avoidance.”
Problem was, the moment we started reversing they jumped in their trucks.
“Fuck this shit.” Brolin pushed out of the vehicle while I was reversing and dropped down to one knee. He’d been the first to grab up a rocket launcher from the armory.
“Do you even know how to use one of those?”
“Point and shoot.”
“Brolin, get back in,” Axel yelled.
“Buckle up bitches, time to light up the night sky.”
With the truck sideways, I pulled around and looked in my mirror. On one knee he waited until they were getting close before he hit the trigger. An explosion of smoke and fire as one of their trucks caught some air. The explosion echoed. If Fritz didn’t know they had trouble, he did now.
“Holy crap. And that is how you do it, my friends, booyah!”
Brolin gave a bow as if he had an audience before jumping back in. The moment his ass cheek hit the seat I slammed the accelerator down and tore out of there. From behind us we could hear gunfire.
“Fuckers are shooting at us,” Axel said casting a glance in the mirror.
“No. That’s our group.”
As we peeled away, I watched as the second truck that hadn’t gone up in a ball of fire came to a grinding halt after our group unloaded a flurry of bullets that smashed up their windscreen and took out the driver, engine and front tires. Smoke poured out the front and those who had survived fell out the side doors.
“Now the party has started,” Brolin started yelling like a banshee. This guy was going to get along with Baja. I was sure he was a long-lost cousin. He was certainly as crazy as Baja.
We continued on our way going from house to house and distributing weapons even to those that chose to remain. Within another twenty minutes we had forty plus people in the back of the truck.
“Johnny.”
Then his voice came over the radio. Axel looked at me as I continued to drive. The truck bumped its way down a long driveway to the next house.
“Seems I underestimated you.”
“Yeah you did,” Brolin said tapping his hand against the door.
“I have a friend of yours here who wants to speak to you.”
Then her voice came over the speaker. “Johnny?”
Jess? I slammed the brakes on and heard the load in the back slip forward. I grabbed up the handheld radio.
“Jess.”
Before she could say anything Fritz came back on the line.
“Now I have tried to work with you but you continue to be a thorn in my side. Why would you withhold the cure from millions?”
“You have no guarantee it will work.”
“Listen, I’m going to give you one last chance to hand yourself in. If you continue to piss me off, I will have no other option than to kill the rest of your friends. Do I make myself clear?”
I didn’t respond. My thoughts were all over the place. I was torn between handing myself in and what that might mean — death. No matter what anyone would say, it wasn’t an easy choice. There was no right decision to be made. I had no way of knowing that he wouldn’t execute them the moment I handed myself in.
“How do I know you won’t hurt them?”
“You have my word.”
“Your word means shit, Fritz.”
“You are wearing my patience thin. Perhaps you need some incentive.” He muttered something to one of his men and the next thing I heard was the sound of Jess screaming. But it wasn’t anything I had heard before. Fear shot through me.
“Okay, okay. Enough. Leave her,” I yelled.
The screaming continued for another twenty seconds before they stopped doing whatever it was.
“Have I made myself clear? Now this is not up for negotiation. You come in. You bring the weapons back and all this trouble goes away.”
“Where do you want to meet?” I replied.
I heard him scoff. “Section A.”