Dead Highways (Book 2): Passage (26 page)

STEP 9:
Back at the SUV, with Brian safely in our care, Robinson would get on the radio and let Ted know the good news. Ted would then head toward the main road, Commercial Way, where we would swing around in the car and pick him up.

STEP 10:
Robinson would drive us back to Cathy’s house, while Bowser, Ted, and myself would all exchange congratulatory high-fives. Cathy and Brian would hug, kiss, cry, and say over and over how much they missed one another. And then bright and early in the morning we’d come back to pick up Kyle and Brenda at the start of their first patrol, with Charlie being none the wiser.

Just. Like. That.

Ten steps.

It was almost too easy. And it would work perfectly until around step 7 or 8.

Then it all fell horribly apart.

“Ted, come in,” Robinson said over the walkie.

No answer.

We were in the car center, hiding behind the service desk. The lights were on, thanks to the store generator that Charlie and the gang were likely keeping up and running, but only the bare minimum. At least half of the light fixtures had no power going to them, or they had been manually shut off.

Again, Robinson held down the little button on the walkie and reached out to Ted. But Ted didn’t reach back out to us.

I had déjà vu, thinking of yesterday when Robinson and I had hid in the back of the military supply truck, sweating our balls off, waiting for Ted to respond, and wondering if something had happened to him.

“Should we just go look for Brian?” I asked. “We can’t wait here forever.”

“Please. Let’s get moving,” Cathy pleaded.

Robinson tried one final time to get Ted on the radio, and then clipped the radio back on to his belt and led the way out of the car center.

We stuck to the outer aisles of the store, guns in hand, snaking through the hardware and sporting goods sections. We walked quickly but with soft steps. As we navigated past the toy section and into the electronics, Ted finally chirped in.

“Robinson. Robinson. Are you there?”

Robinson didn’t stop, so neither did the rest of us. He grabbed the radio off his belt. “Yeah, I’m here. I tried to get you earlier. What’s going on out there? Do you see them?”

“I was spotted.”

“They spotted you?”

“Not the guys in the store. A group of infected.”

Now Robinson stopped, a grim look settling on his face. “Do you need our help? Should we come back for you?”

“I locked myself in a car. But they have it surrounded,”
Ted said.

“Are the keys in the car?”

“I wish. I was lucky enough to find one that wasn’t locked.”

“I could go out and help,” Bowser said.

“Should we send somebody out to help you?” Robinson asked into the radio.

“I think I’ll be okay for now. They can’t get me in here. But when you’re done in there, you might have to come out and help lure them away. Unless I can figure something out in the meantime. I’m in a small car near the front entrance. Maybe three or four spaces out. You can’t miss me. There’s about seven people outside the car banging on the windows.”

“Wait … why are you so close to the building?”

“I had a position at the back of the lot, but then they spotted me and I had to run. Figured it was smarter to run toward the building.”

“I don’t know about that. Do you see anybody at the entrance? Do you see Kyle?”

“No, I can’t see anything. The view is blocked by a truck. They weren’t up there before. Not when I was running for my life.”

“So you never took a shot then?”

“No, never had a chance. And like I said, I never saw anyone to shoot at anyway. But they could be there now for all I know. If so, there’s no way they don’t see all these guys surrounding me, which could present a problem.”

“Let me go out there,” Bowser said. “I’ll be okay.”

Robinson considered it for a moment, and then nodded to Bowser. Bowser took off in the direction we had come, toward the car center. He didn’t even try to be quiet, bursting into a full gallop.

“Bowser’s coming out to help you,” Robinson said to Ted. “Stay where you are.”

“Very funny.”

“Stay in touch.”

“I will.”

Just as we came upon an entrance to the back hall, Brenda emerged through the doors, scaring the shit out of us. She seemed just as surprised, if not more, to see us standing on the other side.

Brenda was mid-fifties, big boned, with a worn look to her, like she’d visited one too many truck stops in her life. She had bottle-colored brown wiry hair with gray roots. She wore a big husky shirt to cover her big husky frame. Blue jeans. Steel-toed boots. I swear if she had pulled down her pants right then and said, “Check out my penis,” I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised. She had manly facial features, big nose, strong chin, wide jaw, all of which gravity had not been kind to. Her skin sagged more than Bowser’s shorts.

“Shit, there ya are,” she said in her beefcake voice. “I was gonna go look for you.”

“Where are the others?” Robinson whispered.

“Still up front. Come on, I’ll show you where they got Brian.”

“Is Kyle up there with them too?”

“Of course,” she said, waving us in. “Come on.”

She was eager to have us follow her.

Too eager.

Yet, we followed her anyway, without a second thought.

The back hall had fewer functioning lights than the main store, and smelled of dust and cardboard. We passed row after row of various merchandise, around a bend and into the receiving area, where we came to a sudden halt. A dark haired man was handcuffed to a large metal rack. Both hands. His arms spread wide, giving him little room to squirm. His face was badly beaten, purple and red. His clothing stained with blood.

Cathy’s husband.

“Brian!”
she yelled out, but didn’t make a move toward him.

Brian sluggishly raised his head, looked over in our direction. He was alive, just as we had hoped to find him, but barely aware. In his state, I wondered if he even recognized his wife.

What we hadn’t expected to find was the three men standing in front of him, guns pointed in our direction.

Charlie, Brett, and Mike.

“That’s far enough,” one of the men said. He was shirtless and skinny, though not as bad as me. He had some muscle definition at least. He had a baseball cap on his head, and was chewing something. Tobacco, maybe. “Good work, Brenda.”

“No problem,” Brenda said, sauntering away from us, proud of herself.

“You bitch,” Robinson said.

I think the correct term for Brenda was
butch
, not bitch. But who’s keeping score?

Brenda the butch bitch turned around and smiled. “You got that right.”

“Keep your thoughts to yourself nigger,” the man standing in the middle said. It was striking how easily he could fire out the N word without the slightest hesitation, like he’d said it a thousand times in the past. He had a wife beater on, and was much taller than the other two. Older. Around Robinson’s age. With a dark mustache and an angry fire in his eyes. “Put those guns down now. Less you wanna die.”

Robinson and I slowly placed our pistols on the ground. Cathy wasn’t armed, so she just stayed huddled behind us, crying. The shirtless man approached us carefully and then swept the guns off the floor.

“Welcome to our home,” the man in the middle said. “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Charlie. The man holding your guns now is Brett. That’s Mike.” He pointed to Mr. Quiet on his right. “And of course you already know Brenda. I’d ask for your names but I don’t really care.”

“What did you do with Kyle?” I asked.

Charlie smirked. “Turn around.”

I cautiously turned to look behind me, praying Charlie wouldn’t take the opportunity to shoot me in the back. Though I might have preferred that to being shot in the face, as he had purportedly done to Theo.

“Hi, there,” Kyle said, rifle up and pointing at us.

“Why did you do this?”

Kyle shrugged. “You didn’t give me much of a choice. You were gonna come in here regardless if I helped you or not. This way I could try and control the outcome.”

“And a fine job you did,” Brett yelled.

“So … that’s it,” I said. “It was all a lie? You said he treats you like crap. Was that a lie too?”

“No, that’s true. He does pick on me. But what am I gonna do about it? He’s my older brother.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake. If I still had Sally on me, I think I might have shot myself right then for being so easily fooled. And by a sixteen-year-old kid who looked like Ellen DeGeneres, of all people. But all I could do was shake my head and wait for what was coming to us.

Death.

“Have you ever been gang raped before?” Kyle asked, securing my hands to a metal rack with plastic zip ties.

They put me between Cathy and Brian, with Robinson on the front end. Quiet Mike stood guard, gun up, finger on the trigger, watching our every move—making sure we didn’t try anything. Brenda paced around further out, keeping an eye on both entrances to the receiving area.

I almost slipped up and told Kyle I was a virgin, and then realized that
definitely
wouldn’t make the situation any better. For all I knew, he was asking a serious question, not just returning the scare I’d given him earlier. And I was about as fresh a fish as they were likely to find in these end times.

“Actually, I have,” I replied. “It’s a long story.”

He looked at me questioningly, unsure of whether or not I was being serious.

Success!

Then he went to help Charlie finish securing Robinson.

“Nice uniform,” Charlie said to Robinson. “I had one a lot like it.”

“I heard,” Robinson scoffed.

“Oh yeah, what else did Kyle tell you about me?”

“Enough.”

Charlie leaned in close to Robinson’s face. “Did he tell you what happened to the last guy like you that thought he could fuck with me? I shot him in the face.”

“You’re sick.”

Charlie coughed in Robinson’s face. Then he grinned wildly. “Hope you don’t catch it.”

Shirtless Brett, now revealed as Kyle’s older brother, held up Robinson’s walkie-talkie. “Boss … what do you make of this?”

Charlie took the walkie, examined it.

“The guy out front has the other half,” Kyle said.

“And he’s the last one?”

“No, there’s one more. Another black guy, with a big beard. I don’t know where he is. He should have been with them.”

Charlie walked back over to Robinson. “Where’s your black buddy, huh?”

“Don’t know.”

Charlie drew back and launched his fist into Robinson’s stomach—as hard a punch I’d seen outside of a boxing match. The
thump
sound made me wince. Robinson instantly crumpled forward as much as the zip ties would allow him.

Charlie gave Robinson a moment to recover, and then said, “Let’s try this again. Where’s your buddy?”

“Stop it,” Cathy cried out. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because I can, that’s why. See … watch closely this time.” Again Charlie slammed his fist into Robinson’s stomach, even harder than before. Robinson grunted, his head bobbing forward, spit dripping out of his mouth. “What are you gonna do about it, huh?” He began slapping Robinson on the side of his head. “What do you got for me?”

“Let them go,” Robinson said, breathing heavily. “You can torture me all you want. Just let them go.”

Charlie started laughing. He looked back at his associates, who joined him in joyously mocking Robinson’s suggestion. “You think this is a negotiation? Man, you’re dumber than you look.”

On my left, Cathy continued to sob uncontrollably, while her husband to my right looked on in a daze, his eyes barely open, swollen black and blue. His nose had a trail of dried blood running out of it. His clothes were sliced clean open in numerous places, as if he’d been in a knife fight. He hung from the rack by his hands, his legs wobbly beneath him. He had lost a lot of blood. He couldn’t take much more punishment. He was near death, and perhaps death would be best. I didn’t think I could last as long as he had—a whole day as someone’s punching bag—a channel to release all the hateful energy in their heart.