Whiskey Black Book Set: The Complete Tyrant Series (Box Set 1) (9 page)

Tori pointed the pistol at the door and waited for the old man to open it. She slowly backed up until the door handle began to turn. She sent four rounds through the door before it was even open. She heard him fall down the stairs and ran towards the door. She opened it and ran down to where he was lying. She sat on the base of the stairs, refusing to look around, just waiting for the old man to die.

When he was done moving, she searched him and found that he had a pistol in hand. It was an old Ruger 9mm. She took the pistol and went rummaging through the house. She wasn’t looking for evidence of life or death; she’d seen all she needed to see in that basement. Instead, she located some gasoline and matches.

Tori poured the gasoline all over the house until the container was empty. She stepped outside of the home and lit it on fire.

Tori walked away and began to cry hysterically at the fate of her baby girl Amelia. A new coldness washed over her spirit as she regained control.

Tori, not looking back, set her sights on a new destination. She was headed south to the place she wanted to go the moment the Flip went down. Gorham, Illinois, might have been the safe haven her and her family needed. It was too late for that now, but Tori had to think of her own self-preservation. Maybe, just maybe, Nathan, Denny, and some of the others were still alive.

March 3, 2033

Somewhere west of Knoxville, Tennessee

Tori was exchanging gunfire with a three-man group of raiders that had been stalking her from Charleston, West Virginia. She was taking cover behind a small four-foot-high brick wall that she had decided to use to make her final stand. It wasn’t much, but the old building that used to belong to this wall had crumbled years prior. The sturdy masonry had proved its worthiness.

Somebody paid good money for this thing,
she thought as she pushed the magazine release button on Bubba. The magazine fell to the ground, but she had a replacement magazine already in hand with fresh ammunition. Her Remington 270 was strapped onto her motorcycle and had more range than her 1911 .45 caliber, but she didn’t have the time to unstrap it without sacrificing her cover. Her bike was lying on its side behind the wall, but the rifle was sandwiched between the ground and bike. She would have to stand over the bike and pull upward with all of her strength to lift it. Her frame was too small to make such a hurried lift.

Bullets were bouncing off the wall, and sometimes they would catch the mortar just right that it would crumble and shoot debris out on her side of the wall. She returned fire as often as she could, but there was no way she was going to win this fight with her pistol at thirty to forty yards.

It was time to reload again. She only had one magazine left on her person. The rest were tucked away in her saddlebag. She had to make a big move, and she needed to make it fast. The men were catching on that she couldn’t take them out, so they had shifted their positions and separated to widen their angle on her. When she saw this, she prepared herself mentally to be shot or, worse, killed, and for what? A motorcycle? Her guns and ammo? Her body? All of these things were precious resources. Females were hard to come by, weapons and ammunition were not manufactured in the US anymore, and a motorcycle could travel great distances on a small amount of diminishing fuel.

No sooner than Tori stood up to establish her rights to life and property, the three men were shot multiple times by a group of about ten men.

Tori was thankful to have survived another round, but what now? Were these ten men going to take up the mantle of the first three and finish her off?

She had one pistol and two arms, so she pulled her boot knife out and kept it tightly gripped in her left hand. Bubba took up the chore of intimidating the new threat. Tori established which of the men looked the fiercest and she pointed Bubba at him. The other arm was outstretched toward whoever took a step toward her or even moved for that matter.

“Easy there, little lady,” the fierce-looking man said. “We mean you no harm. Look, you’re completely surrounded and we got the drop on you. If we wanted you dead, we could shoot now and end this standoff.

“Is that what you call this, a standoff?” Tori responded. “I could blow your head off right now and call it quits, too.”

“You’re probably right, but we’re from a town up the road that doesn’t shoot people for no reason,” the man said.

“If you’re such great people, then lower your weapons and let me leave.”

“You’ve got a point there. We’ll lower our guns, you lower yours, and we’ll talk.”

“They’ll be no talk’n. I aim to leave outta here and not look back,” she said. Tori just wanted to get back on the road and continue her course to Southern Illinois.

“We’ve got food and water. You’re welcome to stop by and visit. If you like our setup, then you’re welcome to stay. If you don’t, then you’re free to leave … with food and water. You can keep that as a symbol of our good graces,” the man said with a smile.

His beard and dirty teeth made him look fierce. He hadn’t shaved in months and it looked like he had poor hygiene, but who could argue about free food? Even his friends were unsatisfactorily maintained.

“You lower your weapons first,” she said.

The man told the others to lower their weapons. They did so, ever so slowly; each of them afraid that the woman was going to take a cheap shot at their friend.

“My name’s Tyler,” he said. He pointed at each of the others and said, “And that there’s Mike, and Tom, and Bill, Scott, Russel, David, Richard, Brad number one, and Brad number two. We got two Brads, so we just call them one and two.”

The man was trying to get Tori to smile, or at least to put her gun down.

“Please,” the man pleaded with her. “We’re not going to harm you.”

Tori slowly lowered her pistol and kept a very wary eye on the men.

“Here, we’ll help you with that,” Richard said, walking toward Tori to assist her in lifting her bike.

“I don’t need your help. I need your distance,” she said, pulling Bubba back up and pointing it into the face of the man.

All the other men raised their guns and pointed them at her again.

“Okay, okay,” Tyler said. “Everybody’s a little paranoid these days. Nobody’s going to shoot, right?” he asked his men.

Once again, they lowered their weapons and Tori followed. She returned to her motorcycle and lifted it to its wheels. She unstrapped her Remington and slung it over her shoulder.

Things hadn’t been the same for Tori since her separation from the posse. She had struggled to find her place in a cruel and violent world but had been running into dead ends no matter where her journeys took her. She missed her friends terribly, and because of the dynamics of the new world order, she found it impossible to make new ones.

Electricity had been re-established throughout the Midwest and Eastern United States, but the damage rendered by North Korea’s EMP had proven difficult for the West Coast. A viral pandemic had spread from the EMP-affected areas into the Midwest as well; Tori remained unaffected by the pandemic.

All over the United States, people were batched into large groups and trying to reorganize into civilized societies where free travel and free trade were at the forefront of the liberties they used to know. Despite the growing societal influences and common law practices, which varied from town to town, Tori was still vigilant and highly suspicious of any single person or group of people that she encountered. So naturally, when she heard of a group of
good people
that were rebuilding a society, she was curious but cautious.

“You guys go up ahead of me about a hundred yards. I’ll be watching from the back. If I like what I see, I’ll investigate your
good graces
,” she said.

“And if you don’t?” Tyler asked.

“If I don’t, then it shouldn’t matter to you. But I’ll tell you this: if I so much as think you’re pulling a fast one on me, I’ll cap you in the back of your skull with this.” Tori pulled up her Remington. “And I’m a very accurate shot,” she added.

“Well, I don’t think I like the idea of a rifle pointing at my head, but if that’s what it’s gonna take to get you to join our group, I’m in.”

Tori was happy with the arrangement. She felt like she had the upper hand so long as she had the range of her rifle.

The slow steady trip to their little society took about twenty minutes. When they arrived, Tori saw a painted sign on a gated community called The Casa.

The community had guards with long-range rifles posted on every corner. One woman was seen pumping water from a well into a small metal trough, which sat next to a washboard. There were no sounds of children playing, no toys or playsets, and nothing to indicate the existence of children. The fever had swept through the area in the past couple of months and taken a high percentage of lives from whatever was left of the already dwindling population. Children, young adults, middle-aged adults, and the elderly—all of them fell victim to the pandemic.

For years, the global government had been working behind the scenes, developing a contagion that would wipe out most of the population. There were some who had a natural immunity and others that had been immunized through governmental employment. Of those who were immunized, most of them were military veterans. By Tori’s reckoning, the survivors of the pandemic meant that only those trained for combat would make up the mass of the current population. That would make what was left of the nation dangerous by any standard.

One week later

Tori liked what she saw, for the most part. She assumed the lack of children was due to the fever, and she had taken shelter in a nearby location and watched the community carefully. It wasn’t until her food supply had emptied that she made the decision to approach the front gate. The guards were already familiar with Tori’s presence and were expecting her arrival.

Tyler walked up and met her at the gate. “It’s good to see you again.”

Tori looked at Tyler. She had not told him her name before, but she thought they had proven themselves worthy to know her name.

“Tori, my name’s Tori,” she said.

“Open the gate,” Tyler said.

The gate opened and the guards stepped back, allowing Tori space to pass through.

“My bike’s still across the way,” she said, hoping Tyler would show concern for its care.

“We’ll take care of it,” he answered. It was the answer she was hoping to hear.

Over the next several days Tori was getting acquainted with the men and a lady named Patsy. She was quiet and reserved. She only spoke when spoken to, and that made Tori suspicious of her. Tori was more assertive and aggressive, so when she came across a female that exhibited neither of these traits, she felt more comfortable in her absence. Soon she found herself talking to the men and spending more time playing cards and drinking liquor, a rare resource that the men seemed to have in plentiful bounties.

Not long after the Flip, liquor was discovered to be a primary bargaining chip; that and ammunition. For a pint of liquor, you could purchase vehicles, weapons, or ammunition; the higher the alcohol concentration, the better the deal. Liquor made great Molotov cocktails, was used as disinfectant, cleaned flesh wounds, and drowned away the sorrows of the new world order.

Tori was finally beginning to feel purpose when she was put on the schedule for guard duties. Her responsibilities consisted of weapons maintenance, inventory, inspections, eight-hour shifts standing at the gate, and twelve-hour shifts working the gatehouse, a wooden guard post with separate windows to face in every direction. The guard post was positioned at the front gate, and it maintained a log of everybody’s comings and goings and what they were taking out and bringing in.

There came a day when Tori felt pressure to secure her weapons in the armory. She seemed to be the only person still carrying around her pistol. The only other woman, Patsy, was never seen with a firearm. At first Tori thought it was odd that anybody would make a move without protection, but she figured it might have just been the feeling of security within the gated community; the place they called the Casa, the place they called
home
.

Tori went to Tyler’s apartment and knocked on the door. In a matter of seconds she heard the sounds of movement inside the apartment. Then she heard a chain lock being unfastened, then a bolt lock.

The door opened. “Yes?” Tyler asked, peeking through a small crack.

“Hey, I’ve been thinking a lot about how you guys trust the perimeter security so much. I may finally be comfortable enough to put my weapons in the vault.”

The comment took a lot for Tori to say. She wasn’t a trusting person since the Flip and hadn’t been that much more comfortable trusting people even before the Flip. She had a deep revelation that if America was going to rebound from what it had been through with the government’s betrayal of the people, the United Nations invasion, and the pandemic, then it would have to begin on a personal level, not just for her, but for each American.

“That’s great news, Tori,” Tyler said. “I’d say don’t feel like you have to jump in over your head, but you’ve already been a part of so much here. I think you’re ready for this.”

She didn’t respond to that. She just gave him a half smile and escorted herself to the armory.

The armory was a pole barn with only one entrance. It had no windows, which made sneaking into it an impossibility. The only way in and out was through the heavy main door. It had a small four-by-ten-inch square sliding peephole installed in it that could only be opened from the inside. This enabled the interior guard to look outside before opening the door.

Tori knocked on the door and the peephole slid open.

“Hey, Tori, what’s up?” the man asked.

“I’ll be storing my weapons now,” she said in an uncertain voice.

The man working the armory had received a phone call from Tyler, advising him that Tori was on her way. They had operable landlines in some areas; they only needed moderate power to operate them. The old phone company was being operated by a local militia group that kept the generators running for a moderate fee.

When Tori had said what she needed to, he could hear a tinge of uncertainty in her voice. In truth, she was rethinking her idea, but the sounds of the large metal door opening up to her pushed those doubts to the back of her mind. She couldn’t go back on her word now, not if she wanted them to trust her like she was trusting them.

The door opened and Tori walked in. The man secured the door behind her and escorted her to the pistol rack.

“If you want to give me your pistol, I’ll tag it and set it here with the rest of the community’s weapons,” he said.

She took a second to look around the room. Most of the weapons were tagged with small white labels, twisted into position on each weapon by a tiny metal wire.

She took the pistol from her back and paused for a moment. She then pushed the magazine release button and dropped the nearly empty magazine from the pistol’s grip. She canted the pistol sideways, pointed it in a safe direction, and pulled the slide to the rear, ejecting the .45-caliber bullet that she had in the chamber. She slowly and gently laid Bubba down on the countertop.

“Make sure you write
Tori Cunningham
in bold letters,” she said.

“I’ll take care of it,” he assured her.