HOOD: A Post Apocalyptic Novel (American Rebirth Series Book 1) (16 page)

He leaned his head back against the wall, closing his eyes.
They won't stop me. I will find Taylor and Ian, I will save them, and I'm going to kill the Kaiser for putting us through this hell.

The cellar doors swung open with a bang and Leonard walked down with two of his lackeys carrying guns and flashlights.

“Hope my monster didn't make too much of a mess down here,” he said to the guys.

Hood stood up with a jingle of chains. “Well, you might need a winch to pull him out.”

The flashlight beams that focused on Hood caused him to shield his eyes with one hand. Just holding up his arm was exhausting. Looking down at his clothes, he saw just how much blood was on him.

Leonard stood for a moment in disbelief. He sighed, looking annoyed. “All of this lying and not dying you're doing is really fucking pissing me off.”

He ran his fingers over his mustache.

“Something to eat would be nice,” Hood said. His legs felt weak.

“Why feed the dead?” Leonard said. “Last chance, Ryan Seacrest. Where is your comrade and the supplies?”

Hood managed a slight grin. “You know you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.”

Leonard shook his head, motioned to the two men and pulled out his revolver.

They approached Hood, guns trained on him. One unlocked his manacles and the other stared him down, rifle raised. Fear washed over Hood again.
They're just going to execute me here.
He tried to think of something to say or do, but he could barely think.
He still wants something from you. Use that.
Hood's heart ran wild once more in his chest.
What can I tell him that he will believe?
With the flashlight in his eyes he could barely make out the features of the man beside him, aside from his heavy brow and wide chin. He contemplated jumping him when the shackles were off, but this was a tight squeeze and he'd be dead before he could wrest the gun from his hands.

After the shackles were off they handcuffed him and prodded him forward. They moved slow up the stairs and out of the cellar, into bright sunlight. It was a beautiful day with a cloudy blue sky. There were a number of men with guns waiting around, some joking with each other, some silent. Leonard motioned and his captors shoved Hood down the street. The nearby buildings and houses were shuttered and dark, long since looted. Looking back at the cellar, Hood could see the building had once been a bar. No one spoke as they walked. It was surreal, so much so that his mind struggled to process it.
You're being led by a firing squad.

Hood thought about trying to run, about some kind of escape. But they had too many people and there was no cover. They approached a broken chain link fence that stood around a construction lot of dirt and gravel, with a few rectangles of cement and rebar sticking out of the earth. As they walked towards the back of the lot, the smell of death and decay filled Hood's nose. It was sickly sweet and it made him feel ill. In a fenced-off lot there was even less chance of escape.
I’m fucked.

Be calm. There's a way out of this.

They led him to a large pit from which the smell emanated. A mountain of desiccated bodies stared up from inside. This was their dumping ground.

Hood's hands started to shake. His hunger, mixed with the horrific smell, made his stomach feel like a black hole. The men led him to the edge of the pit, where Leonard stood in front of him.

They're just trying to scare you.
He pleaded with himself. It wasn't working.
This is where they will kill you.

“All right,” Leonard said, flicking away a cigarette. “You know what I want.”

Hood contemplated lying to him. What could he say? He had told Leonard the truth, but that wasn't what he wanted to hear. What
did
he want to hear? Where could he send him?

Leonard raised the chrome revolver to Hood's forehead. Why hadn't he come up with a convincing lie? He was so nauseous he could barely think, and the smell of death was overwhelming.

Leonard pulled the hammer back and pulled the trigger.

Click.

Silence. Hood exhaled with a shuddering breath, doubling over. Tears came out of his eyes. He gasped, not knowing why he deserved to live or what reason he had to live aside from seeing his family again, but he desperately wanted to survive.

A sinister smile crept across Leonard's face. He opened the revolver and slowly put six bullets in it, flipping the cylinder closed with a flourish.

“Scary, huh?”

Hood said nothing, struggling to pull himself together.
The man just wants to know something. Tell him anything. Make it up. Just don't fucking die in this hell.

Leonard took a step closer.

His green eyes were beaming with sick pleasure in his dominance.

As Hood opened his mouth to speak, he heard a familiar bird call.
He'd heard it hundreds of times before. Hood looked up at Leonard and smiled back.
Get ready to die you piece of shit.

“Okay then. I think I'll put you right over there, next to the bodies of your girlfriend's family,” Leonard said, raising the revolver. Hood sprang into action, pushing the revolver aside with his handcuffed hands and grabbing Leonard by the suit jacket. He yanked the two of them backwards into the pit. They floated in the air for what seemed like an eternity before crashing onto the spongy bodies of the dead. He felt the crack of old bones beneath them. The smell of rotten flesh decaying filled his nose, his mouth, his entire being. He gagged violently. The boom of shotgun blasts fired from somewhere outside of the pit.

Next to him, Leonard vomited out a once-hearty meal. Hood was, for once, glad there was nothing in his stomach. The revolver lay on a fleshy ribcage next to Hood's head. He grabbed it and spun around. He squeezed the trigger, the shot blasting gore out of Leonard's head while he vomited again.

Quickly Hood rolled Leonard's body over himself as cover, blood and fluid from Leonard's head pouring onto his face. The tangy metallic taste forced his stomach up, trying to hurl itself out with a vengeance. He spat the blood out of his mouth. Bullets thwacked into Leonard's corpse and the other bodies around him.

He aimed the iron-sights and shot at Leonard's soldier, who was firing at him from the side of the pit. The man doubled over, collapsing to the ground. Hood fired once more, connecting with the man's head. He peered around Leonard's body and saw no more of the men, though gunshots and shotgun blasts still blared. Hood tossed Leonard's body off him, lifting himself up into a massive cloud of insects. He ran to the edge of the pit, his feet crunching down into the corpses with each step. He pulled himself out onto the flat dirt, which felt like a freshly made bed by comparison.

Hood jumped to his feet. Several of Leonard's men lay face down in pools of blood. Two men moved in opposite directions to flank a concrete piling riddled with bullet scars that Whiskey was using for cover. Hood pulled the revolver to sight, training on the closer man as he strafed across with rifle raised. There was no doubt or hesitation. Hood exhaled and squeezed the trigger, the hammer slamming down with a loud crack and the man falling into a heap.

Whiskey moved to the other side of the piling, away from the man who was trying to flank him, pushing a cartridge into the shotgun. Hood pulled his pistol to sight on the other side of the piling, about head high. The man charged around the other side just as Hood pulled the trigger. The body collapsed a few feet from Whiskey. The shot echoed across the construction yard, followed by silence. Hood leaned over, putting his hands on his knees.

Whiskey stood up, the sound of his methodical footsteps coming closer. Blue sky shone behind him and the faintest bit of smoke still trailed from the barrel of his police-issue shotgun.

“You beautiful bastard,” Hood said, all the muscles in his body loosening. “You pulled it off again.” He collapsed into a sitting position, arms on his knees, still clutching the revolver in his hand.
Holy shit.
Hood was scared to turn and look at the pit of bodies now that his life was no longer in danger.
How the hell did I make it out of that? How could anyone stand up to that onslaught of death?
A creeping thought in Hood's mind told him that this was not the worst of it. This was just an outpost, a serfdom of the Kaiser's.
I don't know what kind of hell there could be out there worse than this, but I hope I never have to see it.

Whiskey looked around to scan the area, then down at Hood. Hood held up his hand for aid in getting to his feet.

Whiskey shook his head, repulsed by Hood's outstretched hand. “Don't touch me, you’re disgustin'.”

Hood slowly brought himself to a standing position from on all fours and looked down at his clothes. The shirt and jeans he had been wearing were covered in blood and decayed human remains.

“Any of that yours?” Whiskey quipped.

Hood lifted his arms and inspected himself. With the adrenaline wearing off, the stench was overpowering.

“Fit as a fiddle,” Hood said, shaking his head in disbelief. “I can't get the smell out of my head though.” He shivered thinking about it. He spat out blood. When he realized it wasn't his, he dry heaved violently, repeatedly, his body refusing to stop.

Whiskey snorted, looking around at the bodies. “You are one lucky prick.”

Hood spat, though his mouth was dry and devoid of saliva. “Was that luck? Or pure skill?” Hood pulled off his shirt, wiped his face with what little of it wasn't disgusting and tossed it away.

“You're so full of shit.” Whiskey said. “I smell a load in those drawers of yours.”

“You're welcome, by the way.” Hood slapped Whiskey in the chest of his flak jacket, moving away from the horrid scene.

“
I'm welc–
are you serious?” Whiskey shouted. “No, no, you come back and thank me.”

Hood snorted. “Yeah, you really had those two guys under control.”

Whiskey's face twitched. “Oh,
okay.
What were you gonna do if I didn't show up, bust out a shovel and dig your way out?”

Hood held up a middle finger. He picked up an automatic rifle from one of the dead men and walked towards the hole in the chain link fence.

“
Don't
say thanks, asshole!” Whiskey held back a gag at the smell emanating from the pit and got moving. “Yeah, nice to see you again too!”

Hood made a heart shape with his hands over his head.

Chapter 10 – Fray

Hood and Whiskey searched the nearest ransacked colonial houses outside the construction area. Hood scoured cabinets and storerooms for water to clean himself off with, while Whiskey growled complaints that they were wasting time, and needed to clear out Leonard's bar before the rest of their captors grew suspicious.

Hood felt that death was inside him, surrounding him, and he desperately wanted to cleanse himself of the stink of it. The thought that sickness and rot had invaded his body was one he could not shake from his mind. As he hustled from house to house clawing through dust covered belongings, his thoughts drifted to the the Leonard's bar, and Kerry.

He clenched his jaw thinking about her. They had wasted so much time here. What happens if they make it to D.C. And Taylor, Ian, the Kaiser's soldiers are all gone?
Whiskey wouldn't say it, but we both would know it's my fault. Because she lured me in to this pit of vipers. Because I was too stupid to see it. Kerry did all this for her family, and they were dead the whole fucking time. She was too stupid to see that. She’d struggled in the vain hope she was keeping them alive. By the looks of the bodies, they'd been dead a long time. She might've fucked up, but she doesn't deserve this. I might've done the same thing in her shoes.

He hoped she was gone so she might go on living, never having to know what happened. But he also wanted her to be there. Maybe it was brushing so close with death; maybe it was the loss and hopeful naivete they shared, but passion for her welled up inside him.

He tried to shake it out of his head. It was just a distraction, an animal impulse. He wasn't going to lose focus. Not again. They had to get to D.C.
Please, let them still be there. I don't know what I'll do if they're gone.

Hood cursed under his breath in a fit of joy and Whiskey cursed loudly in relief when they found and extricated a bottle of distilled water from a musty garage. It was hidden behind plastic two-liter bottles filled with used motor oil.

Hood tore off his clothes and poured the water over his head, the cold freshness of it gliding over him. He felt invigorated, baptized by its purity.

Whiskey reappeared in the doorway to the house from the garage. He tossed him a towel and dropped a pile of clothes onto the ground before going back inside.

Hood scrubbed himself violently with the towel, which smelled faintly of detergent and dust. He was alive. He felt foolish knowing now that Whiskey's prevailing sense of mistrust was justified. Hood knew he shouldn’t feel any remorse for killing anyone who could be a threat.
We're all just animals, now. Fighting to stay alive. Do not hesitate.
Hood gnawed on his lip, the clean water tasting like heaven.
That's not true, though.
Hood scrubbed his hair with the towel, hoping to get the filth out.
We're still alive. Other people like us are still alive. The sick bastards like Leonard, they're the ones that have to die. They're the ones we have to kill. They have to be hunted down like the animals they are.