The day after: An apocalyptic morning (12 page)

              There was a soft, almost gentle WHUMP and a blast of heat and fire immediately exploded outward from the building. Mark ran away as quick as he could, escaping any burns from the rapidly spreading flames. He could not outrun the screams of those inside however. They were the shrill, high-pitched wails of nearly seventy people dying in sheer agony. They went on for the longest time, for much longer than he would have thought possible.

              Less than an hour later, while the gas station was still sputtering flames in a few places, the party inside the church was in full swing. Except for those unlucky souls that had been stuck with guard duty, everyone was drunk on the liquor supply that had been found. The women had been stripped of their clothing and handcuffed to the pews. Stu and the others were taking turns raping them in a variety of fashions. Some were forcing the women to blow them, others were forcing themselves into anal openings, others still were performing their acts in the conventional method. All of the women had been beaten to varying degrees, some simply with fists, others with steel-toed boots or gun butts depending upon their level of resistance. Since there were more men then women, most were being raped by several people at the same time. Two of the younger ones had had their handcuffs removed and were being forced to lick each other. All of them had begged to be killed at some point but that was simply not in the cards for the time being. That would be like purposely breaking a favorite toy.

              Mark simply sat there, chain smoking cigarettes and sipping from a bottle of Wild Turkey that someone had handed him. He didn't feel like partaking in the pleasures of the conquest. He could not get the screams of those dying men, women, and children out of his mind.

              But after a while, as he drank more and more, his brain began to rationalize what had been done. True, it had been a rather grisly way to go but, in the long run, he had actually been doing those poor bastards a favor, hadn't he? Obviously they were not equipped with what it took to survive in this new reality. Wasn't it better that they be removed relatively quickly instead of suffering through the eventual starvation that they would have faced? Wasn't it the responsibility of the strong to remove the weak?

              The more he thought about this, the more sense it made. Soon, when about a third of the whiskey bottle was coursing through his veins, he began to get a boner as he watched Turbo and Zipper taking turns fucking one of the younger women up the ass while Stu was forcing her to suck his dick. A smile formed on his face and he stood up, passing his bottle off to a new recipient as he walked over.

              "Get the fuck outta there, Turbo," he said, grabbing the younger man by the arm and pulling him to the side. "It's my turn." Turbo grumbled a bit but offered no physical protest.

              "Yeah, Markie!" Stu yelled, giving him a drunken thumbs-up. "Bag this bitch! Show her how we do it downtown!"

              Mark grinned at Stu as he unbuckled his pants and let them drop. By the time he forced himself into her back door the thoughts of what he had done earlier were nearly forgotten.

              "Did you and Christine have a fight?" Jack asked as they sat on a fallen log after eating their lunch of cold vegetable beef soup. They were in a small clearing in the middle of a thick stand of old growth pine trees. The rain had a hard time falling directly upon them but it had a rather easy time of dripping from the branches above in thick, heavy drops. Their log was located in the zone of least moisture, a zone that they had become intimately familiar with and had learned to expertly locate in any surroundings. Christine, the object of this new discussion, was off in the trees relieving her bladder.

              "A fight?" Skip asked blankly, looking at the fourteen-year-old before him.

              "Well, yeah," he said. "You haven't talked to each other all day and I saw her crying a few times while we were walking. You haven't been talking a lot either. You're usually teaching us things while we're moving but you haven't done any of that today. Is everything okay?"

              "Everything's fine," Skip replied. "Or at least as fine as they can be. Things will be back to what passes for normal here pretty soon."

              "So you're gonna make up with her?"

              "Make up with her?"

              "Yeah," he said enthusiastically. "You're like the coolest boyfriend she's ever had. The rest of those guys were all a bunch of dweebs tryin' to impress her. But you're like the real thing, you know?"

              "Uh... thanks," Skip said carefully. "But I'm not really Christine's boyfriend."

              Jack looked confused. "But you guys were... you know... doing it."

              Skip fought to keep his expression neutral. It was a battle that he won, just barely. "Doing it?"

              Jack blushed a little. "Last night," he said, embarrassed.

              "You... uh... heard us?"

              "You guys woke me up," he said. " Christine's elbow bashed me in the head like five times. You sounded like you were tryin' to be quiet but you weren't doin' a very good job of it. Especially not towards... uh... the end. It kinda grossed me out a little thinkin' that was my sister doing that right next to me, but I got used to it."

              "Jesus," Skip muttered, about as embarrassed as he'd ever been in his life. Had they really thought that Jack had slept through the whole thing? They really had.

              'It's cool though," Jack told him, giving a fairly passable man of the world look. "I mean, what else can you do, right?"

              He sighed, having to struggle just to meet Jack's eyes. "Look," he said. "What happened last night was... was wrong. I did something that I really shouldn't have done and that I regret now. You don't have to worry. It won't happen again."

              The reaction that this proclamation produced was not at all what Skip expected. Jack looked downright alarmed by it. "It's okay," he said quickly. "I wasn't complaining or nothin'. You don't have to worry about me. If you want, I'll get out of the lean-to at night until you're done."

              "What?"

              "Or I'll build my own. I don't want to get in the way of you guys. I'll give you all the privacy you want. Really."

              "We won't need any privacy," Skip said. "What happened last night won't happen again. I'd just assume everyone forget about it. You won't have to build your own lean-to or go out into the rain."

              Jack, if anything, seemed to become even more alarmed. He chewed on his lip for a moment, seeming almost on the verge of tears. Finally, he blurted: "Are you going to leave us then?"

              "Leave you?"

              He nodded. "Go off on your own," he said. "Since you and Christine aren't... you know?"

              So that was what was on his mind, Skip realized. Jack thought that if he and Christine were not going to sleep together and be boyfriend and girlfriend, that there would be no reason for him to stick around. "Look, Jack," he said seriously. "No Micker what happened or happens between Christine and I, I'm not going to leave you guys to fend for yourselves. I promised your mother and I'll promise you, I will take care of you as long as I'm able to and as long as you need someone to take care of you. I'm not going to leave you."

              "Okay," he said softly, but he didn't seem entirely convinced. "But if you and Christine ever want to... you know... do it again, you go ahead and do it. Don't worry about me."

              "I'll keep it in mind," Skip said, letting his head fall into his hands.

              Christine came back a moment later, entering the clearing through a gap in two trees. She did not look at either one of them. She simply unshouldered her rifle and sat back down on a different log. The rest of the lunch break passed in silence.

              An hour later, at the summit of a steep ridge, Skip, on the point like always, spotted something. He saw a small patch of something orange between the trees about fifty yards in front of them, a color that was very out of place in the green and brown environment of the forest. At this first hint of something unusual he held up his left hand, silently indicating to his two companions to halt in place and keep a sharp eye out. It was probably nothing to worry about but you didn't stay alive in a hostile world by assuming that. Christine and Skip, seeing the signal, obeyed it instantly, as he had taught them to do.

              He dropped to one knee, training his rifle towards the area. He gave two more hand signals to Christine and Jack: "Spread out to the sides and cover my flanks". They both trotted about twenty yards in opposite directions, both of them finding fallen trees to use as cover. Had they been under fire, Skip would have covered this move with bursts from his rifle, but since they were not, he simply kept his eyes open and his finger upon the trigger. Nothing jumped out at or attacked them during the move. Once the two kids were in place, Skip took a moment to check their positioning. He was pleased with what he saw. Both of them had placed themselves so well that he had a difficult time even spotting them. Both had their rifles trained outward at forty-five degree angles, covering the sides and allowing him to cover the front. They now had an overlapping field of fire that would allow them to shoot at anything in a 180 degree arc without having to shift position. They really were quick learners.

              He watched the mysterious orange blot in the trees for nearly two minutes, waiting to see if it would move or not. It did not. Neither did anything else. He raised himself back to his feet and gave a brief whistle, getting the attention of the kids. They looked over at him and he pointed to himself and then forward, giving them the signal that he was going to move up and check things out and that they were to stay back and cover his advance. They both nodded their understanding to him and he began to pick his way forward, moving tree to tree.

              He made it about twenty yards before the smell hit him. It was the thick, sickly sweet odor of decay, an odor he had smelled a thousand times during his days as a patrol cop. It was the distinctive stink of a dead human body. Not even the rotting corpses of the large animals they had passed smelled quite like that.

              He continued to move forward until he had a clear view of the orange that he'd seen. He was now able to identify it as one of those bright orange hunting caps that some hunters liked to wear to keep from being mistaken for a deer. It was lying next to the body of a man in blue jeans and a T-shirt. He was sprawled on his back under a tree, his arms and legs splayed out to the sides. He was barefoot. About ten feet away was a smaller human corpse, that of a young teenage boy. Thanks to the constant rain there were no flies about them and there were no ants covering them. But larger animals - rats, raccoons, coyotes, maybe even a bear - had certainly taken their fill. Their faces had been almost completely chewed away, as had large chunks of their arms and legs. Though Skip had seen more than one dead body in his time, these were particularly grisly looking to him.

              He examined the area around him for a few moments, searching for anything else that did not belong. Seeing nothing, he waved Jack and Christine up, giving them the all-clear signal. They came trotting up quickly, their rifles clanking as they moved.

              "Oh my God," Christine cried when they got close. "What is that smell?"

              "Gross," Jack agreed.

              They came around the last set of trees and stopped in their tracks as they saw what was on the ground. Both moaned a little in disgust but neither backed away.

              "Hunters," Skip said, stepping a little closer to the bodies and breathing through his mouth. "Looks like a father and son. They were ambushed by someone."

              "Ambushed?" Christine asked. "How do you know? Maybe they just died."

              He pointed to the tree right in front of where the father lie. "Brain and blood splatter," he said, pointing out some grayish specks that marred the bark. "This man was shot from behind as he walked up the hill and then he fell backwards onto his back. It looks like the boy was shot almost at the same instant since he didn't try to run away. All of their supplies, their guns, even their shoes are gone. Trust me on this. It was an ambush. Somebody killed them for their supplies."

              All three of them silently contemplated that for a moment.

              "Skip?" Christine asked softly. "Could that happen to us? I mean, we're probably carrying more than these two were."

              He looked at her, instinctively wanting to lie to her but knowing that she wouldn't believe him. "That is probably the most likely thing to happen to us," he said. "These guns we're carrying will keep away the casual robber but these packs we're carrying are a magnet for the kind of people who would do this."

              "Is there anything we can do to stop it?" Jack asked, looking nervously at the forest around them, probably envisioning armed bandits just over the next rise.

              "We can try to spot them before they spot us," he said. "We can keep alert for danger. People who ambush will usually stalk for a while before they make a move. Other than that," he shook his head sadly, "nothing."