Revenence: Dead Silence, A Zombie Novel (26 page)

"What seems to be the trouble with your friends?" the one-eyed blonde with the flawless pearly-whites asked. 
Hook, line, and sinker...at least so far.

"Four guys came with guns, threatening to rape and kill us," Shari said, her voice cracking.  She felt Daphne claw her right side, fighting to maintain her composure, and their ruse.  "I don't know what's happened since we left.  We have to get back there."

"You really think you two can help your friends?" he asked.  "What kinda weapons did you come across, anyway?"  He eyes the backpack slung over Shari's shoulder.

Shari feigned discomfort.  "Just some knives, and some kind of gun," she said quietly, motioning toward the backpack. 

"You know how to use a gun?" he asked, his tone patronizing. 

She hesitated before she answered.  "Not exactly, but...I've seen it done."

The blonde smiled even more widely than before.  "Honey, I don't think you can save those people."  His tone was that of an adult talking to a child.  "You two are just gonna get yourselves hurt if you try and go in there, guns...
gun
...blazing.  Tell you what...."  He looked at his pack behind him, and they all stifled their grins in response.  "Me and my buddies, we hate to see ladies like yourselves being terrorized like that." 
By someone other than yourselves,
Shari thought.  "There's eighteen of us, and you say there's only four of them.  With those odds, they don't stand a chance."  He smiled, his pale blue eye twinkling in the blazing morning sun.  Kandi spoke up from her horse, on the opposite side of the blonde. 

"It's a shame he's an evil prick," she said, looking him over.  "I mean, other than the hideous hole in his head, he's pretty good-looking. 
Tsk, tsk.
"  Shari tried hard not to look revolted by Kandi's attraction to the sadist.

She stuttered.  "But we...I mean, I don't think...I...."

"Don't worry, we're not going to hurt you," he lied
.
  "And besides, what have you got to lose?  From what you said, the situation's already pretty bad.  You lead us there, we'll take care of those guys for you."  He locked gazes with Daphne.  "Your friend here...she doesn't talk much, huh?  She a mute, or something?"  Shari felt Daphne's fingers again, digging into her obliques. 

"No," she said, shaking her head as she twisted around to momentarily exchange glances with Daphne.  "She's just young, and she's still kind of shell-shocked by everything that's happened."

The blonde nodded.  "I guess I can understand that," he said.  "I figure we must all feel that way from time to time." 
He really thinks he seems human,
Shari thought, amused.  "So about your friends...the longer we talk, the longer God knows what's happening to them."

Shari sighed heavily.  "You're right.  I guess we really have nothing to lose.  Follow us."  She rode Eva back into the woods, riding close to full-speed, the sadists following behind her.  She narrowed her eyes into thin slits once they were all behind her. 
Idiots,
she thought. 
I can't believe they're stupid enough to think we're that stupid.
  She glanced to her left, where Kandi rode silently beside her.  They exchanged quick glances, eyes full of vengeance, then focused their gazes ahead, where the deathtraps lay in wait.  Shari thought of Fauna, and supposed she wouldn't approve of Shari hunting down human beings with the intention of killing them.  On the other hand, Fauna had often professed her belief in helping her fellow human beings.  The people these sadists were hunting hadn't done anything wrong, and they didn't deserve to be slaughtered simply for trying to survive.  The sadists themselves, on the other hand, were asking for it, in Shari's humble opinion.  It was the age-old dilemma of whether or not it was okay to kill killers to protect the innocent.  In Shari and Daphne's view of things, it was more than okay.  It was downright necessary for someone to step up and do it.  She figured that, even if she did suffer some kind of punishment for it in the next life, it was worth it to save the lives and well-being of innocents.  It was worth it to save women and girls, like Adrian's daughter, from being enslaved and passed around for the sake of the sadists' sexual gratification.  It was worth it to keep young children alive, or keep them from being orphaned when their parents are slain senselessly. 
Sorry if this would have offended you, Fauna, but I'll be damned if I'm gonna let these maniacs make the world any worse than it already is.  It's time for a new chapter in the saga of humankind.  It's time to build something lasting, something made with honor and integrity, from the ashes of our fallen civilization. 
Shari pictured a world where survivors could gang up against this minority of sadists, where they could put their foot down and let them know that their inhumanity would not be tolerated.  They needed to know that there was no place for them in the new world. 

I guess this is probably about the time where Adrian is gonna notice that his daughter isn't here.

"Probably," Kandi said, "but I'm sure it'll only enrage him all the more."

Yeah,
Shari thought,
I'm sure he'll blast them all to hell now...now that he doesn't have to worry about his little girl getting caught in the crossfire.

"Speaking of which," Kandi replied, smiling, "let's make sure
we
don't get caught in the crossfire!  I'd hate for us to inadvertently suffer the wrath of a man whose daughter is unaccounted for after having served the function of a pincushion for these monsters."  Shari grimaced in distaste.

Shari could faintly make out the spike nets up ahead, hoping she could only perceive them because she knew where to look, and that the men were none the wiser.  She carefully navigated Eva through the narrow space between the nets, hoping none of the men behind her were observant enough to notice.  She held her breath, waiting to hear calamity ensue behind her.  She counted in her head...
One, two, three, four.... 
She heard a muted sound as the net entangled the first ATV.  She stopped and looked back, watching as an expression of puzzlement briefly overtook the one-eyed blonde's features, then quickly dissolved into one of seething anger.  She watched as the man was rear-ended by the ATV directly behind him, and five more ATVs and one dirtbike drove over the other nets to either side of him.  The rest of the sadists behind them attempted to slow down, but it was too late.  They had been riding bumper-to-bumper while doing about thirty-five miles per hour, and the result was a pile-up involving seventeen of the eighteen vehicles.  Shari did a quick head-count, taking note of the three sadists at the front of the pile-up who appeared to be dead, having been ejected from their vehicles and subsequently run over.  She saw one lying lifelessly, eyes wide, his skull cracked open like an eggshell.  Another had flown into a tree, mangling his rib cage and face.  Shari winced as she saw his flattened, disfigured features, nose pushed into his skull.  The third was simply sprawled lifelessly over the steering wheel of his ATV, arms dangling.  Five more seemed to have sustained severe injuries, including the blonde ring-leader.  He dismounted his ATV, stumbling in Shari and Daphne's direction as he clutched his abdomen.  There was no visible wound, but Shari could vaguely glimpse a trickle of blood running from the corner of his mouth. 

"Ha!" Kandi gloated.  "Arsehole probably ruptured some organs.  Go ahead, walk around, force yourself to bleed out all the more quickly!"  She cackled, clearly enjoying the harm the sadists had sustained. 
And there's still more where that came from,
Shari thought, grinning.  She saw that the blonde was now bleeding from his eye sockets, and the pupil of the remaining eye was dilated.  "
Ooh
, and brain damage, to boot!" Kandi cried.  "You know, I'd say he's done for!"

"
Get those bitches!"
he thundered, raising his arm to point at Shari and Daphne.  Shari guessed that raising his voice had been a bit too much for his traumatized, compromised body and brain, because immediately upon finishing his sentence, his eye fluttered heavenward and he crumpled to the ground. 

"Well," Kandi said, "let's hope that ruins their morale, at least a little, to see their leader slip away." 

Maybe a little
, Shari thought,
but not much.  Let's remember, they're sadists.  They're self-absorbed to the max.  They're all their own bottom line
.  Of the eighteen sadists, fourteen remained, including ten who were relatively unmaimed.  The four who had suffered non-lethal injuries had afflictions ranging from broken bones to what appeared to be head trauma.  A couple had the same dilated pupils in one eye that she had seen on the blonde.  One was lacking in mobility, having suffered a complex break in his right leg.  It was bent at a cartoonish angle, like the pictures she had seen of soccer injuries, except that it appeared to be snapped in half in at least two places.  There was also one who had managed to avoid the spike traps, riding in her direction, closing in on her. 
He's the one to contend with,
Shari thought.  She rode on, carefully guiding Eva between the piles of yellow black walnut leaves marking the punji pits.  She glanced behind her, pleased to see that the men who were now on foot were closing the distance between where the spike nets had been and where the punji sticks patiently waited to impale them.  All fourteen of the men were shooting in Shari's direction, but she was pleased to see that none of them were very good at hitting a moving target.  She also noted that none of them had a particularly formidable weapon.  She hoped that the one on the ATV would drive into the trap.  He would mostly likely avoid the punjis themselves, but at least it would ruin the one functioning  vehicle the sadists had left.  She looked back, seeing that he was lucky enough to drive between the traps.  She glanced back at Daphne and opened her mouth to speak, intending to tell her to go ahead and drive a spike into the brain of the man pursuing them...but she realized that Daphne was way ahead of her.  Shari watched, mesmerized, as the spike sailed through the air and plunged effortlessly through the man's eye and out the back of his skull.  The man twitched for a moment, a stunned look on his face, and slumped backward onto the trunk of his ATV as it slowed down.  It slid gently into a tree after it had come to a near-stop, then sat idling as the man stared with dead eyes up at the clear, blue morning sky.

Kandi let out a loud, joyous whoop.  "It's amazing how easily that thing goes through a head when the prick's driving forty miles per hour in the opposing direction.  He just helped the physics right along, didn't he?"  She cackled again, throwing her head back, her blonde ringlets jostling as she convulsed with laughter.  "Thirteen left, then!  Let's get on with it!"  Gunfire pierced the air all around them as the remaining sadists continued firing. 

We'll get on with it after we see how many succumb to the punjis,
Shari thought.  She turned to look behind her, and watched as one man fell into a trap.  He howled in pain, impaled in both legs.  He struggled in vain to lift himself from the pit, unable to free either leg.  A second man tumbled into a pit in the next instant, then a third and fourth.  The remaining nine men had time to react and avoid the traps, ignoring the pleading shrieks and whimpers from their fallen comrades. 

"
You can't leave me in here, man!
" sobbed one man who managed to break his legs upon his fall into the pit, and had then been skewered through his pelvis with a punji.  He was stuffed buttocks-first into the pit, his mangled legs folded at the knee and pressed into his chest.  He clawed desperately at the pantleg of a luckier sadist as he leapt over the pit.

"Thanks for pointing out that pit to me!" he said to his rectally-impaled mate, a note of sarcastic cruelty in his voice.

Shari heard a familiar, muted sound...Adrian issuing two grenades from the treetop.  Her head spun around to look behind her.  Seven of the nine sadists left were moving in a rather tight cluster, hugging the treeline to avoid the pits, and the grenade landed in the middle of the cluster.  Shari winced as the first grenade detonated, then the second, producing a patch of hellfire roughly fifty feet wide.  For a moment, she couldn't see what was going on within the flames and black smoke clouds.  Adrian had taken out a couple trees and countless saplings along with the sadists. 
I think the second grenade was overkill
, she thought, smirking.

"Yes, a bit much," Kandi agreed, her eyes lit up.  "I love it!"

There were now two sadists left, mouths agape as they witnessed the carnage unfolding, having been lucky enough to choose the opposite side of the clearing to avoid the punji pits.  Shari glanced up toward the treetop, noting that Adrian was raising the launcher again to finish them off.

"Adrian, no!" she shouted. 
We need at least one of them alive,
she thought.

"Not to mention the fact that those two twats are a waste of a grenade," Kandi added.

Adrian sneered, and reluctantly lowered the grenade launcher, producing Shari's sniper rifle instead.  He sniped one of the men, then lowered his rifle and descended the tree as Shari and Daphne aimed their weapons at the one remaining sadist, who had tossed his gun to the ground.  Adrian stormed his way over to the properly petrified young man as he stood with his arms raised in defeat, his terrified face shining with perspiration.  Adrian spit on the corpse of the sadist he'd shot in the head, then grabbed the surviving one by his belt and the neck of his shirt, throwing him into the nearest tree.  Shari's eyes widened, impressed. 
The little douchebag's skinny and all, but still...that takes strength. 
The sadist clutched around his ribcage, gasping.  He seemed to struggle for air, and Shari worried that he may have suffered a collapsed lung. 
Fuck, Adrian--how do you expect him to talk now?