HOOD: A Post Apocalyptic Novel (American Rebirth Series Book 1) (7 page)

Whiskey moved closer to stare Hood down, the creases in his forehead pronounced. Someone exploiting or hurting Taylor was an idea Whiskey didn't look like he wanted to entertain. “Let me explain something to you. We have to save her. Every hour it takes us to get to her, her life expectancy goes down. I don't give a damn if he's your long lost clone. I don’t care what he thinks he's doing. If anyone gets in the way of us getting her back, they are not long for this world.”

Hood shook his head, his brow set as he stared back at Whiskey. “You don't think I feel the same way? She's my fucking sister, Whiskey. But Ian is my brother. He's not some maniac. You and I know damn well not every person under the Kaiser is doing it of their own will. I'm telling you, we're on the same side.”

Whiskey did little to hide his doubt. “Yeah, well. It sure don't seem that way.” He turned away, resuming his search for anything of value.

Hood shook his head. “I got the Sheriff talking.” He looked at the old man's contorted body. “That murderous bastard thought himself a godly man. He won't be stringing up any more innocent people in the name of god anymore. He told me the Kaiser wanted to bring me to the Church of the Epiphany in D.C.. Stands to reason if that's where they are headed, that's where Ian will be bringing Taylor.”

Whiskey's demeanor softened, the weight of not knowing where to go lifting from his broad shoulders. “No kidding. How'd you get him to tell you that!?”

“I just kept talking to him. He sure as hell wanted to talk. Just a lonely bitter old man, I guess,” Hood's eyes again were drawn to the crumpled body.

Whiskey clapped Hood on the shoulder. “Hell of a job, kid. I don't give a damn what this Kaiser thinks he's doin'. We're gonna get her back.”

Hood grinned. “Took the words outta my mouth, kid
.
” He said it in a mock-Whiskey voice.
You can fight. That's what you can do for those who died. Fight to save your sister, fight for anyone worth fighting for.
That's what they would do.

“Come on. We've got to take what we can and get moving,” Whiskey had returned to his stoic demeanor as he turned to continue inspecting the contents of the portable, though clearly he carried himself with a renewed determination.

Hood exhaled deeply through his nose, thinking about the crew. There would be no more nights when the whole crew would pile into Hood and Whiskey and Taylor's house to drink and party and gamble until they'd watch the sun rise over the trees on the roof. The image of Lucky in his last moments, collapsing in the road was stuck in his mind. Lucky would never again drunkenly try to breakdance or hide in the bushes to scare Whiskey on patrol. Billy would never again sing inebriated guitar ballads about Kate Anderson's ass or about Lucky's made up sex stories or the day they stumble upon a wandering band of women to correct 'the ratio' of Clearwater.
They're all gone.
Hood's eyes welled, and he gnashed his teeth, trying to fight it back.
It doesn't make sense. How can people who were once so alive just disappear? Gone for good.

Stop it. You can't think about them now. There will be a time and a place to mourn those you've lost, but it is not now.

Hood walked over to the old man's fading cigarette on the ground. He snuffed out the remaining embers with his foot.

“Sorry, Sheriff,” Hood said quietly, squatting next to the body. “Maybe try not to be such a murderous bastard next time.”

Hood picked up the old man's Glock. The black finish was worn down to metal on all the edges. He pulled back the slide and caught the bullet that came out of the chamber. The same bullet that could've ended up as shrapnel in his brain, under different circumstances.

“You deliverin' a eulogy?” Whiskey said impatiently. “We gotta get what we can and get out.” He picked up the keys to the truck on the nearby table, holding them up and shaking them for Hood to see, a thanks-a-lot gesture. “The old man kept fuel out here somewhere.”

Hood couldn't look away from the body. The slack-muscled look of the dead still unsettled Hood. The smell of urine was hard to ignore. The old man's face was stuck in mid- sentence, mouth open and a bloody chasm in the back of his head. Hood wanted to bring him back to life and kill the old man himself for what he did to the people he loved. But that anger quickly faded.
Is it his fault? Or is he just a depraved old man who's lost his mind? It's the Kaiser who did this. He built an empire of violence and control. But maybe that's just an inevitability. Remove law and government and someone will take over.

“I know this bastard deserved it twice over,” Hood scratched the stubble on his cheek. “But I still feel kinda bad for him.”

“It's about time you get over that nonsense.” Whiskey said, his words calm but the demand clear. “There's no room for that anymore.”

Hood still crouched over the Sheriff's body. “Don't worry. I won't hesitate to waste any evil fucks trying to stop us.”

He stared at the lifeless body, trying to accept it. A person one second, nothing the next.
You forfeited your right to live, you sick bastard. You and everyone else like you.

“What, you wanna ask him out on a date? Or are you gonna do somethin'?”

Hood looked over at Whiskey, who was waiting for him to acknowledge the need to get moving. His jaw was set but his bushy black eyebrows sat calm over his eyes. Hood tossed the Sheriff's pistol to Whiskey, who snatched it out of midair, glanced at it, and tossed it back.
Hood didn't want to even carry it, vaguely afraid that it had absorbed all the horrible things the Sheriff had done over the years.

Hood walked over to the workbench and picked up his AK, along with two magazines taped together upside down for quick reloading. He unwound the leather strap that was wrapped loosely around the stock. His .38 with chest holster sat on the table too. He took off his hoodie and put the pistol back in its rightful place. He tucked the Sheriff's pistol into his backpack, throwing it over his shoulder.

"Looks like you're headed back home to D.C.," Whiskey said, picking live rounds out of a toolbox.

"Yeah, looks like it." D.C. Was a wasteland now. It was home only in the nostalgia of his mind.

Hood walked outside the portable, arm resting on the AK slung across his chest. The sun had almost entirely disappeared behind the old dark shack and tall grain fields. A crow pecked at the corpse of one of the few wasters the Sheriff had kept around, skewered by one of Whiskey's crossbow bolts. The crow lifted his head as Hood got close and flew away in a flutter. The nerves of dancing so close to death came out in a shiver as Hood breathed deep.

The sunset sat on the horizon over the distant tree line the same way it had that day. He and Taylor had waited in D.C. for days after it was clear civilization was falling part. They held on to hope that Mom, Dad or Ian would come home. But once the D.C. survivors started to turn on each other, they’d fled into the country.

He could still remember the orange glow of the sunset lighting the plastic red gas can on the oil-stained concrete, as he sat deflated against an empty pump station, lost, directionless, with no idea what to tell Taylor when he got back to the car. Next thing he saw was Whiskey standing there, lowering his rifle. For some reason Whiskey had decided he was not a threat. Hood never asked him exactly why. He could've shot him, or just walked away without ever saying a word to Hood. Now Whiskey was the closest thing to family Hood had left. It was an uneasy alliance between them at first—Hood was skeptical of Whiskey's intentions when he first took them in, and Whiskey never said much about it in his usual manner. But slowly Hood and Taylor had grown to love their new life in Clearwater. Hood had gained a sense of purpose like he had never had before. Through the camaraderie of fighting for Clearwater, Hood and Whiskey had developed a bond. But they were in unfamiliar territory now. Clearwater was gone.

Hunger rumbled in Hood's belly. He exhaled deeply as he looked out over the fallow field. Hood leaned his forearm on his rifle, the strap digging into his shoulder.

Hold on, sis. We're coming for you.

Chapter 5 – Strangers

The truck bounced on the cracked old road. The crates of food and supplies and tanks of gas all clattered loudly as the truck shook. They had more than enough supplies than the two of them would need. It was almost a hindrance, having so much valuable cargo. But they weren't about to leave it behind. So in the back it all sat, making too much noise and reminding Hood of everything they had just lost. His eyes still itched. The images from the destroyed town still hung fresh in his mind. It was surreal to go back and see everything they had built so quiet, so devoid of life. Instead of kids running in the streets and townspeople working in their fields, Clearwater was the smell of ash in the wind, burned down houses and bodies, so many bodies. Bodies that days ago were people who sweat and made jokes and held each other. It seemed that some of the townspeople got away, but it was hard to be sure. They didn't have time to mourn, to bury, even to search the whole town over. They had to save Taylor, and time was not their ally. They had no idea how long the Kaiser would stay in the ruins of D.C..

Whiskey's shotgun sat in between him and Hood in the cab of the truck. Hood left his AK between his knees, barrel pointed up, safety on.

“It's hard to believe it's all gone.” Hood's arm hung out the window, the barely visible scrub on the side of the road passing by in the dark. “We didn't even get to bury them.”

“We're not talkin' about it,” Whiskey kept his eyes forward, urging the truck along faster than his normal cautious pace.

“You just want to forget that it all happened?”

“That's not what I said.”

Hood clenched his fist, digging his nails into his palm before resting his thumb on the barrel of his rifle. He wanted to put it all out of his mind, stay focused on what they had to do. But the drive was long and there was little else to think about. Even the house the three of them called home, burned to the ground.

“The Kaiser has his whole damn empire. How are we going to do this?” Hood asked, leaning back into his headrest and staring at the plastic gray interior ceiling.

Whiskey rubbed his beard. “Very, very carefully.”

Hood looked over at Whiskey, who still stared straight ahead. Hood shook his head with a disbelieving grin at the absurdity of it all. Whiskey looked trapped in his own thoughts.

“This is fucking crazy.” Hood focused on the arc of the headlights cutting a path into the darkness, illuminating the leaf-covered road. “But it could be worse.”

Whiskey snorted. “How do you figure?”

“It could have been Lucky who rescued me.” Laughter started to well up in Hood. It was all wrong. He didn't want to laugh, he wanted to cry, he wanted to burn away the memories of the crew that were stuck in the forefront of his mind, memories he wanted to hold on to, memories that brought the pain of knowing so many people he loved had died so suddenly. “In which case he'd be sitting there right now, swearing up and down about how he once saw a smokin' hot babe dragging a dog with no legs around on a leash.”

Whiskey's laugh was deep and unexpected, still focused on the road. “How could you even say something like that?”

Because that is who he was.
Hood closed his eyes.
They all deserved to live long lives, and they're dead. The Kaiser kept me alive, like I deserved it and they didn't. I wanted to run away from reality, wanted to pretend I didn't have to kill, wanted to pretend we could take and take and take and no retribution would come.

Whiskey itched his elbow, hand on the wheel. He wore a faint, melancholy smile and his eyes looked far away. “Every goddamned story he somehow works a smokin' hot babe into. He could be talking about his grandpa's funeral and he'd start with how this smokin' hot babe served him coffee, or instead of a pastor there was a smokin' hot babe givin' the sermon.”

“So dis' one chick, she takes me home to her parents’ house, and I swear, she wants me to read her a bedtime story while we’re doin' it, so I'm like, OKAY.” Hood mocked, gesturing excessively with his hands and pretending to smoke a cigarette.

Whiskey bellowed, holding his wrist in front of his mouth. “I don't know what's worse, If he made that story up, or if he didn't.”

“That fucking kid,” Hood was unable to stop himself from smiling. What the hell would Lucky say to him now? He knew exactly what he'd say:
Yeah, real great, Rob. Keep mopin' and feelin' bad. You're a real piece of shit for survivin' in this fucked up world. Or maybe, you should find that punk ass Kaiser and make him a fuckin' cheese grater for me. Maybe you should find some sweet thing and ride her into the sunset. I know you're one of those one woman dudes. You're one of those penny loafer dads. That's cool. But I'll be fucked if I got lit up just to see you sit around and feel bad.

The laughter died down and the only sound to fill the cab was the hum of the engine. Hood bowed his head, his hands resting just below his knees.
How many people has the Kaiser done this to?

“We have to kill him,” Hood stated. “Or this will never stop.”

Whiskey clicked his tongue.