No Easy Hope - 01 (43 page)

“He…he shot him. Right in the head. Right there in front of us. Something changed then, in all of us. It was like, some kind of ceremony or something. We just quit giving a shit about anything. We didn’t have any women with us, so when we found some…we…did things to them.”

“Like beating and raping them?” I asked. “Starving them? Terrorizing them?”

The man nodded as much as his bindings allowed him to and closed his eyes. Tears slid down his sweaty cheeks as he squeezed his eyes shut.

“Fuck, man, I never wanted any of this. Jack always knew what to say to keep people on his side, no matter what he did. After a while, it was like everybody started to enjoy it. Not having any rules, not having anybody to answer to. We could do whatever we wanted, take whatever we wanted. Nobody could stop us. It felt…good. Powerful. We didn’t have to bust our asses for shit pay in a stinking sewer any more. Jack always talked about some fucker named Darwin and how we were apex predators, and all kinds of crazy shit. The other guys bought into it. I wasn’t so sure, but I was scared to piss the others off, so I went along.”

“Why didn’t you just leave?” Steve asked. “Why stay, if you disagreed with what they were doing.”

“Because of the infected, man.” Don wailed. “There are so goddamn many of them. There’s no way I could survive on my own. Hell, even with sixteen of us, we were having a hard time keeping them away. We kept having to move from one place to another. About the time we settled in somewhere, the damn infected would come around and we had to run away. That’s why we were…”

He stopped talking, stammering as if realizing he had said too much.

“That’s why you were what?” Steve said.

“That’s…that’s why we were staying in that farm house. It looked safe.”

Steve smiled that creepy ass smile of his and reached into his pocket. He pulled out a sixteen penny nail and held it up for Don to see, before taking a step back and kicking a fist sized rock up out of the dirt.

“Don, up until now you have been doing pretty well. That being said, I know a lie when I hear one. Now in order to avoid any unpleasantness, I’m going to ask you that question again, and this time you are going to tell me the truth. What were you doing to protect yourselves from the undead?”

“What do you mean? We were staying at that farm. It was out in the middle of nowhere, we didn’t think…”

Don trailed off as Steve approached him. Steve put the tip of the nail against Don’s shoulder and held the rock a few inches above it.

“Let’s try that one more time, Don. What were you planning?”

“I don’t know what-

His words turned into a scream when Steve cracked the rock against the nail and drove it an inch into Don’s shoulder. Steve stepped back as the man writhed against his chains and sobbed in pain.

“That was just a taste, Don. Just a taste. If you don’t start telling me the truth, you are going to get the whole fucking menu. What were you and your asshole buddies planning?”

“We…we needed a place with a wall. Something we could reinforce. A couple of us found that housing development, and some people were already there.” Don gasped between sobs. “Jack wanted us to watch you guys and figure out how many of you there were.”

Steve nodded, then reached up and ripped the nail out of Don’s shoulder. He screamed again, and sagged against his bindings.

“Let me see if I can sum this up for you, since you seem to be having a little difficulty.” Steve said. “You and those other sons of bitches saw us clearing the dead out of that neighborhood, and decided to hang back while we did the hard work. I’m guessing you followed some of the workers back to the compound, and realized that you were outnumbered. Somebody goes back to your buddy Jack, and tells him that there is this big group of people with lots of food and weapons just waiting to be murdered and robbed. Jack gets stars in his eyes, and starts coming up with ways to take us out and steal all of our shit. How am I doing so far?”

Don said nothing. He just hung there, crying like a baby. Steve continued on, his voice growing in volume.

“You know what else I think? I don’t believe for one second that you were an unwilling participant. A fat tub of shit like you, you’ve probably never had a piece of ass in your life that wasn’t drugged, or making you pay for it. I bet every time somebody brought in some poor helpless girl who was terrified and begging for her life, you jumped to the front of the line to get your tiny little dick wet, didn’t you? Well I hope you enjoyed it, you worthless hog-fat motherfucker. ‘Cause that was the last thing that you will feel for the rest of your very fucking short life that will not be agonizing pain.”

Steve turned to me, his face a mask of disgust.

“Help me get this piece of shit down.”

Don sobbed, and begged, and apologized as we loaded him into the back of the truck, trussed up like an animal. His pleas fell on deaf ears. We took him back to the compound and dumped him on the floor next to his buddies. Any hint of hope or defiance went out of them like air out of a balloon when they saw Don’s bloated, sobbing carcass slap the concrete in front of them. We took the rest out to the same tree, one by one, and got roughly the same story out of every one of them. They all tried to make it sound like they were the victims, that they did not have a choice, they only did it because they were scared. I didn’t really give a shit. They did it. I spent all the previous night listening to Andrea try to comfort the victims. Listening to them cry. Thanking Andrea for feeding them. They were so hungry, so thirsty. It had been days since they had eaten. Since they were given water.
Please don’t let them take us again
…

Bill and Ethan finished with the victims by four in the afternoon. Ethan looked like he was ready to rip the prisoners apart with his bare hands. Bill just looked sad, and very tired. Robert was with Andrea and Stacy. His sister was not doing well at all. Bill had done everything he could for her, but her internal injuries were extensive and severe. Bill just didn’t have the equipment he needed to operate. Robert’s ruined face went still when Bill gave him the bad news that Marissa probably would not last the night. He nodded, and walked slowly and carefully back to where his sister lay, as though he might shatter if he stepped too hard.

Two of other victims were doing better. A few meals, some clean water, and a little medical treatment had done wonders for them. The man and one of the women were effusive with their thanks. They were the marauders most recent acquisition. Fortunately for them, they had not been used quite as hard as the victims captured before them. The other two women were silent, speaking only when asked a question, or offered food. Their glassy eyes stared off into an unfathomable distance while they sat listless on the ground. I felt so sorry for them. If I had thought I could do anything to comfort them I would have, but there just wasn’t anyone home to talk to by that point.

Bill called a meeting. Steve explained to everyone what happened the previous day. After setting the rest of the team up in surveillance positions, he made his way to the marauder’s camp near the housing development. They had returned sometime the previous night, and Steve watched them through a rifle scope when Robert and his sister happened by. They were talking loud enough for the marauders to hear them from their camp. Robert and Marissa were on the other side of a ridge from the marauders and did not see them until after the bastards were already on top of them. The cold-blooded shits took them prisoner at gun-point. Once they had them tied up, Steve crept closer to listen in on their conversation. They were taking the girl back to the abandoned farm, and they were planning to have some sport with Robert. Their idea of sport was tying a man up to a tree, firing a few shots in the air, and watching from a distance while the infected tore them apart. Apparently, they had done this more than once.

The leader, Jack, explained to Robert and his sister exactly what was going to happen to them, and then ordered four of his men to go with him to the gas station to pick up supplies. It was just dumb luck that we had planned to use the same gas station as a rally point and were able to set up the ambush.

Two of the marauders took Marissa back to the farm. We found out from the other victims that they made the captives watch while she was gang raped. One of them got too close to her mouth, and she bit a piece of his face off. I would have cheered for her, except for the fact that the man she bit flew into a rage and nearly beat her to death on the spot. He only stopped because one of the other rapists puller him off of her. He did not do this out of pity, mind you. He simply had not taken his turn yet. He did his business while Marissa was unconscious, the sick fuck. As the meeting went on, I felt less and less bad about killing them.

It took everyone by surprise when Steve told them that the marauders had been watching us for some time, and were trying to work out a way to attack us. That little bit of news caused the blood to drain from quite a few faces. At the end of the meeting, Bill informed everyone that he was going to ask the victims what they wanted to do with the surviving marauders. That night, Bill sat down with the victims and spoke with them for a long time. Robert was the one that finally came up with their sentence. I turns out that Robert was a firm believer in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

We drove them out to a secluded spot, and cut down a tree. Steve drove anchors into the ground on both sides of it and tied the prisoners down. One of the victims, the petite teenager that Steve rescued from the fire at the farmhouse, asked us to cut their clothes off them. We complied. When we finished, Steve set a small black duffel bag on the ground, and gave Robert a radio with instructions to call us if there was any trouble. Then we walked away.

 It was not long before the screaming started.

I’m not sure what they did to them, but they were at it for a while. After they had taken their pound of flesh (literally), Robert called us back over on the radio. I almost lost my lunch when I saw the prisoners. The thing that made their condition so terrible was not necessarily what their victims did to them, but the fact that they were still alive. The victim’s revenge wasn’t complete, however. Robert whispered something to Steve, and Steve nodded. He pulled his pistol out and fired a few rounds into the air, then told everyone to back off up a hill nearby. We got about fifty yards away and hunkered down behind an old fallen pine near the top of the hill. The road where we parked our vehicles was close by, just in case we needed to bug out. We sat down and waited.

I think the prisoners were begging us to help them, or maybe kill them. It was hard to tell, considering that none of them had a tongue in their heads. They really started crooning when the infected showed up. I didn’t stay to watch the rest. They may have deserved it, but I already had enough nightmare material to last a lifetime. Listening to the screams was bad enough. A few endless minutes passed while I sat motionless in the cab of my truck. The screaming stopped, and I heard four muted cracks. I decided to let Steve keep my sniper rifle. I didn’t want it after that. The others came back to the trucks soon thereafter, and we rode back to the compound in silence.

That night, as I lay in Stacy’s bed trying not to think about the last couple of days, I heard three loud reports in rapid succession. Coils of dread wrapped around my gut as I grabbed a rifle and rushed outside the compound to see what happened. It was Robert and two of the other victims. The two women with the thousand-yard stares, the silent ones. The three of them lay on the ground in a rough triangle, each of them clutching a pistol in one blood-spattered hand. Under what was left of their heads, black pools of blood expanded outward reflecting the silver moonlight. The guards on the roof came down and told us what they saw. The victims came outside, and walked about thirty yards from the warehouse. The guards didn’t think anything of it, as people often left the compound in the early evening to enjoy the cool fall air.

“Man, I expected them to walk around the factory, or sit down and talk or something. Next thing I know, they all pull out guns. The guy, he says ‘On the count of three…’ and when he gets to three,
bang
. I tried yelling at them, but they acted like they didn’t hear. I swear to God, I couldn’t do anything to stop them.” One of the guards said.

“It’s alright,” Bill reassured him. “Go on back inside, I’ll get volunteers to take the watch.”

Ethan walked over and stood next to me. He huddled inside a wool jacket in the cold, and stared at the bodies.

 “Why do you think they came all the way out here?” He asked.

“I’m guessing they didn’t want a stray bullet to hit anyone inside the warehouse.” I replied.

Ethan turned away and went back inside.

I sat down and cried.

The next morning, we gave them a proper burial, and Bill said a few words over them. We found a note in Robert’s shirt pocket.