Justice (12 page)

“He’s gotta be in there,” she whispered over the com. “I’m going in there to get the scumbag.”

Blake looked pissed and he held his hand up for her to wait and get down. We used the counter as cover and crept closer to the room.
 

“I’m going in first,” Blake whispered and I could see Lex’s shoulders tighten in frustration. I think she really wanted to go in there guns blazing, but Blake was trained for this and she wasn’t. No matter how much life experience Lex had clocked in her time in this post-Z world it wouldn’t come close to what Blake and Zach had racked in their time in the Sandpit.
 

The room had three large glass panels covered with thick make-shift curtains along the front of the room. Blake moved to the side of the windows and motioned for Zach to take the other side. Lex and I held back, we would be needed soon.
 

Blake raised his weapon and fired two shots into the glass window. The safety glass came tinkling down to the floor in a crunchy waterfall of tiny shards. We went low after Blake’s shot, taking cover as a barrage of shots fired from inside the room.
 

There was someone in there hiding.
Score
.

Zach stood and fired into the room again, not seeing a target, only firing for effect.
 

“Come out now, you’re surrounded. We can stay here all day, can you?” Blake called.
 

“Fuck you!” a gravelly voice shouted from inside the room.

“Oh c’mon, is that you, Junior? Don’t you want to come out and play with me.” Alexis stood and I grabbed her leg to pull her down again.
Crazy girl!

“
I knew you’d be back, ya slut. Should have taken you from the old man and fucked you properly. Then none of this shit would be going down,” he called, and I could hear the smile in his voice. The fucker was enjoying this.
 

Blake wasn’t.

Blake threw a flash bang into the room and everything exploded in light and sound. The men were quick. They didn’t even bother with the stairs, they jumped up the three feet through the broken glass and were in the room hollering at Junior before I had moved from my position.

Lex and I followed. She rushed in while I covered our backs.
 

Blake and Zach were screaming at a man, who was pushed into a corner. He was gripping a revolver in shaking hands. He pointed it at Zach and Blake but his eyes were blinking rapidly and tearing. He probably couldn’t see much.
 

“Put the fucking gun down!” Blake screamed.
 

“Shoot the motherfucker!” Lex screamed.
 

The gun dropped to the man’s feet and Lex surged forward with her gun cocked and ready. I grabbed for her and she violently shrugged me off, but it aided in slowing her down.
 

“Lex, stand down!” I yelled at her. She turned, her shoulders slumped, and she gave me an apologetic look.
 

 
Zach was already on the man, pushing him to his stomach and holding his M4 to the man’s head.
 

“Are you the leader, the one called Junior?” Zach asked, his voice even and restrained.
 

“Fuck you,” the man said, his voice muffled from being pressed into the dirty carpet.
 

“That’s him,” Lex said, walking closer to the man. “How’d ya like the present I left you when I escaped, Junior? Did your daddy turn? It’s something I’ve been wondering since Z started. Do all the dead turn, or do you have to be bitten? What happened, Junior? Was daddy a zombie when you found the mess I left you?”

“My father was weak, an addict, I should have taken over a long time ago. I would have fucked you so hard you wouldn’t have been able to move, much less escape.”
 

Zach kicked him in the ribs and he hissed out a muffled cry. He must want to die. Or he was that cocky. I found my finger moving to my trigger. I shouldn’t have stopped Lex.
 

Lex motioned for Zach to step away. I was surprised when he stepped back to the wall. Alexis walked to Junior and stuck a foot under him. She turned him over with a hard kick of her booted foot. When he was on his back and looking up at her, she stepped forward and pressed down on his stomach with her foot, making him wince.
 

“I knew you wanted more,” he smiled, his lips bloody from the takedown.
 

“I did come back for more, but this time you’ll be the one on the bottom.” She kicked out, a hard slam into his ribs. Junior gasped and curled into a fetal position.
 

“I can’t wait, cunt,” he managed to spit out.
 

I looked up in time to see Zach raising his weapon. He cocked it, but Blake yelled something to stop him. Zach looked at his friend but continued to raise his gun.
 

I wanted this worthless piece of shit eradicated from the planet too, but Poche wanted this one in particular left alive and technically he was on his back, at our feet. Shooting a man, unarmed and broken at our feet, wasn’t how you did things. Our world might be shit, this guy might be the worst of the worst, but, we had a plan and that plan was to handle this civilized, like. If they surrendered, if they were down, we were taking them prisoner.
 

You didn’t shoot helpless men.
 

Blake surged across the room and gripped Zach’s wrist. He was too slow, though. The gun fired and the bullet slammed into the floor only a few feet from Junior. In this tiny room, the explosion from the gun was deafening. My ears began to ring as the last of the sound faded away.
 

The whole world had slowed down again. The flickering of one lantern in the corner was our only light besides the flashlights on the ends of some of our rifles. Blake held Zach back, his arms around him, saying something to him that I couldn’t make out because my ears were still ringing with the echoes of the shot. Zach’s eyes were wide and crazed and focused on the man on the floor. The gun still gripped in his hand.
 

Junior was a nothing of a man. He lay there, on his back, bloody, but he still had a smile on his face. The motherfucker was enjoying this. This punk kid, dressed up like a biker, dirty and unkept, had caused quite a shitstorm.
 

Lex pushed between the two men and placed her hands on Zach’s face to make him focus on her. Blake was still talking Zach down as Zach looked from Lex to Blake and back again. Lex managed to free the gun from Zach’s tight grip and then pulled him into a tight embrace.
 

I looked at the man who lay on his back between us, the cause of all this drama. He didn’t look like much. How had someone like this done so much damage? In any other situation he would be your average guy. There was something wrong with him, though, something off. In the midst of this craziness he lay there, staring up at all of us as if he didn’t have a care in the world, as if we were entertainment. He looked back and forth between us like this was just another day for him.

When he began to laugh, drawing the attention of the trio still fighting for control in the corner, I had had enough. I bent down, grabbed him by his shirt and punched him hard in the face. He slumped, unconscious in my grip. I let him fall to the floor, not caring about his head slamming into the hard linoleum.
That solved that problem.
 

TWENTY | AWOL Kiddies

My com buzzed with static and I was surprised I could hear it since there was still a low ringing in my ears.
 

“We have area three secured. The women are being evacuated,” a voice I didn’t recognize came over our communication.
 

“Ito, check in area five?” Poche’s voice asked.
 

“Area now secured, sir. We’re moving in on area four. Male civilians have not been evacuated,” Ito replied after a short pause.
 

I walked out of the small room, leaving Blake, Zach and Alexis alone to calm down. I could relate to what Lex was going through. She had never told me what had happened here, but the fucker on the floor had made it pretty clear.
 

There was no worse feeling.
 

The feeling of being helpless. Someone stronger having control over you, controlling you in every way, even sexually, was soul-shattering. Especially if that person had no concern about your well-being.
 

I had decided a long time ago that it would never happen to me,
again
. If you could think it, I had experienced it when I was neck deep in the foster care system. Nightmare after nightmare, until I had finally had enough and learned how to defend myself. It pained me that Lex had experienced this. But she was strong, she wouldn’t let it rip her apart. And it helped that she had killed one of her abusers and had the other one at her feet. I never had that satisfaction.

“I need a status on area four,” Poche’s voice again in my ear.
 

“Area four is deserted, sir, the children are gone,” Murphey answered. She must have broken off from the main area and joined up with Ito.
 

“What do you mean, gone?” Poche asked.
 

“Gone. No one is here. Back door is open.” I could hear the exasperation in Murphey’s voice.
 

“Shit, we need to find them. Someone could have taken them, or they’re out there alone. I need trackers on them, stat,” Poche responded, his professional radio voice gone.

“Murphey, I’ll meet you in the back lot, we’ll find them,” I spoke into the com.
 

“Are y’all good in here?” I asked as the trio came out of the small room, Zach dragging Junior behind him.
 

“Yeah, we’re gonna round up all the prisoners and secure them,” Blake said, placing his gun down on the counter and digging out a bigger torch from his pack.
 

“Call in five to do clean-up, they were dying to get in on the action,” I smirked and Lex rolled her eyes, but she returned my smile.
 

“Go find those kids,” she said and motioned for me to leave. She didn’t have to tell me twice. That’s all we needed was some stupid biker holding a bunch of kids hostage.

TWENTY-ONE | Empty Junk Drawers

It took forever to make it across the lot. The gunfire had stopped, but I wasn’t taking chances. I hurried the children as fast as I could, but some were slow and all of them were scared.
 

When we made it to the first house, I noticed the door had been kicked in. We couldn’t stay there if the house wasn’t secure. I moved them further into the neighborhood, but it looked like the same fool had done it to all the houses in the area. I would have to use a board or something to secure the door.
 

I made a split second decision and had them enter one of the larger houses on the block. I would have to deal with the door later.
 

“C’mon kids, hurry.” I motioned for them to enter. “Nick and Pete, take the lead just in case.” Nick had a bat and Pete was carrying what looked like a tire iron. They nodded and went in fast while I fell to the back of the group and made sure all the kids entered, counting off each of them. I wasn’t concerned there would be any biters inside, we had cleared this area a long time ago.
 

When the final child ran into the house, I breathed a sigh of relief, which quickly led to fear as I heard the soft pound of footsteps coming my way. It was rhythmic, a fast run, not biters, but still scary as hell. They were coming fast in our direction and when I turned to face the base, I saw the flash of something in the distance. A flashlight.
 
They were far enough away that they might not have seen me. I clicked off my light and rushed into the house.