Hell's Children: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller (25 page)

She’d had enough. “Would you spit it out? What the hell do you want?”

“I want you to be my girlfriend,” he said. “Just you and me, steady. But once we do it, that’s it, you’re mine. Not like Trisha, running off like that. That happens, I gotta kill you. So think real hard about it.”

He smoothed her hair again, only this time he let his hand trail down her back. She stiffened when he went under her shirt, rubbing her back and feeling under her bra strap.

“Easy, now,” he said quietly. “That’s nice, right?”

Dutifully, she nodded.

“We can’t keep the little kids,” he said in a musing sort of tone. “But after your brother apologizes in front of everyone, well, he can live. Steve’s gotta die, though. He’s a backstabbing traitor, like the spic. We can kill him too, if you want. Would you like that?”

Lisa nodded her head. “Sounds great. Wonderful.”

Carter smiled gently. “Just lie back and close your eyes. Don’t worry about a thing. Leave everything to me.”

E
ddie’s plan was simple
, and he didn’t mind sharing with Jack.

“Centreville’s used up,” he said. “Everything’s been stripped clean. The farther east you go the worse it gets. North’s basically all little kids at the airport, and this crew down south is pretty dangerous. Think they got into some kind of military base or something. We never go there. But west …” He shook his head. “Blaze was so stupid—he told us everything west was a waste of time and wouldn’t let us look. Then you come along with all that food you stole. I’m thinking this other crew’ll want it back, and I think turning you in will get me in tight with them. I’m sick of being hungry all the time.”

“Me too,” the kid on the left said. Richard. The other’s name was Kyle.

“Why don’t you bring more people and just attack?” Jack said, hoping to somehow salvage his plan. “Then you can take everything back and be in charge.” So long as Eddie didn’t know where the cabins or Freida’s farm was, the Pyros still might solve his Dragster problem.

“What the heck would I do that for?” Eddie said, laughing. “That’s how Blaze did things. Him and that psycho sister of his. My way’s better. But listen, seriously: if you’re cool, I’ll put in a good word for you. Maybe when they get their stuff back they’ll forgive you.” He shrugged. “Best I can do. I’m actually really cool once you get to know me.”

Jack nodded. “I see that now.”

Eddie told Richard and Kyle to load up the back of the Humvee with the canned goods, snacks, and the rest of the prescription medicine. Afterward, he put Jack in the front-side passenger seat and made the others sit in the back.

“Can I have one of those snacks?” Richard said to Eddie.

“Me too?” Kyle said.

“Didn’t you eat before we left?” Eddie said angrily.

The boys said they’d forgotten to, and Eddie was forced to relent.

“Make sure you throw the wrappers out,” he said. “I don’t want them thinking we ate their stuff. This is our ticket in. We can’t screw it up.”

Richard and Kyle wolfed their snacks down and threw the wrappers out the window.

Eddie backed down the ramp and then headed west on 66.

“Blaze said your gang’s somewhere called Front Royal,” he said about thirty minutes later. “I’ve heard of it. Didn’t know where it was. Anyway, let me know where I gotta turn.”

Jack still didn’t know what to do and felt increasingly worried. If he’d held that piece of information back—the name of the town—he could have taken them to Warrenton, then said he had to go to the bathroom and made a run for it.

He tried not to swear. Eddie had already proven himself a killer. There wasn’t any way to escape without getting shot or causing an accident. But maybe he could talk his way out of it—offer some value to Carter other than revenge.

It used to be warring nations would have peace talks. In Jack’s case, he could offer a conditional surrender. Conditional, because he’d never reveal the location of the cabins, and he’d never betray his friends. But he was willing to offer a certain amount of dried beef—maybe some chopped wood or scavenged gear—in exchange for being left alone. Tribute, basically. Like in a real war. Then, come spring, he’d load everyone on the bus and find a new location—with their tails between their legs, sure, but alive, and not under anyone’s thumb.

It wasn’t a perfect plan, but it was the one he had. He’d figure out how to explain the whole
Eddie-thinks-I-stole-your-snacks
problem when it came up.

“All right,” he said, pointing at the exit sign. “That’s the one.”

“Finally,” Eddie said and slowed. He turned and looked behind him. “Kyle—gimme a pack of cookies. Chocolate, not oatmeal. And throw out the wrapper.”

The streets of Front Royal were empty. Jack was wary. Surely the gang would be on alert after losing five of their people. But when Eddie drove past the headquarters, the cars were all gone. The shot up windows, Jack noted, were now covered over with cardboard.

Kyle and Richard got out and knocked on a few doors, but nobody answered.

Back in the Humvee, Eddie cast him a suspicious glance. “You sure this is the place?”

“Yeah, but I don’t …” Through the rearview mirror, Jack noticed a car pull out from a gas station parking lot, heading their way. “I think that’s them.”

“What the heck?” Eddie said, looking around and then back. “What should I do?”

“I don’t know. You’re in charge, remember?”

Eddie slowed down, drove through an intersection, and stopped. The car behind them stopped just inside the intersection and waited.

“Maybe you should get out,” Kyle said. “See what they want.”

Eddie turned around. “No.
You
get out and see. Go talk to them. And leave your gun on the seat. We’re here as friends.”

“But I don’t
want
to get out. Why don’t you make Richard for once? I always—”

Out of nowhere, Richard hit him with the back of his fist. When Kyle yelped he hit him again and shouted, “Get out of the stupid car, wimp!”

“But I don’t
wanna!
” Kyle wailed, reluctantly opening the door.

Richard turned sideways in the seat and shoved him with both feet. Kyle fell into the street halfway and hung precariously by a loose seatbelt. Eddie, ever helpful, jerked the vehicle forward and Kyle fell the rest of the way. When he hit the brakes, the door snapped back, slammed shut, and he locked all the doors.

Kyle got up and pounded furiously on the windows, pulling door handles, and blubbering nonstop in terror.

Eddie lowered the back window an inch and yelled, “Just go see what they want, you big baby! We’ll be right here!”

“Come on, let me in! Please!
Please!
”

They yelled back and forth for about a minute, and Jack’s head—still not fully recovered from being bashed with a rock—began to throb. Eventually, Eddie backed toward the intersection, with Kyle keeping pace, staring at the waiting car and crying.

Abruptly, the car backed up a few feet, pulled a tight turn, and sped off down a different road.

“What the …?” Eddie said. “Did you see that? I don’t get it.” He looked at Jack for an explanation and got a shrug in reply.

“I’m just a prisoner.”

“Shut up,” Eddie said. He unlocked the door for Kyle to get back in. “This place is weird, man.”

They continued cautiously forward. More intersections, then a different car shot out of nowhere and blocked them. Eddie reversed and turned around—only to find his escape blocked by another car.

“I ain’t getting out this time,” Kyle said, covering his head when Richard tried to hit him again.

“Knock it off!” Eddie shouted. “
I’ll
do it, you stupid wimps.”

“Want me to hold your gun?” Jack said.

Eddie glared at him, cut the engine, and got out. He approached this newest car with his hands in the air. Just like before, when he got close, the car sped up and shot off. The first car was still there, though, blocking the other way.

Eddie swore and came back.

“Screw this. I’m getting out of here.”

He started it up and sped back the way they’d come. They made it through three intersections before more cars zoomed in and blocked them. Grimly, he tried to lose them in a residential section. After a confusion of turns, he pulled onto one of the major roads bisecting the town.

“Which way’s the interstate?” Eddie said.

“Back the way we came, then take a left,” Jack said.

Eddie shook his head and kept going, taking more turns at random, passing dealerships and restaurants and office buildings. A few minutes later, four more cars pulled out and blocked the way, causing him to stop and turn around again. This time, the cars weren’t content to wait and let them run away. They tore after them at high speed, easily catching the slower, bulkier vehicle. Then someone nudged them from behind. Then they did it again.

“Make them stop!” Kyle screamed.

“He’s trying!” Richard yelled.

Eddie absorbed each bump as best he could, but they came harder and harder, causing him to fishtail. He jerked the wheel of the ponderous Humvee to keep it straight. A minute later, he took an unlucky hit that bumped them into a curb. The vehicle spun around in a circle and suddenly shut off. Two more cars roared in and they were surrounded.

Boys and girls jumped from every car pointing guns at them.

Jack knew he was well and truly screwed at this point. The Dragsters hadn’t been content to communicate what they wanted. No, they wanted to play. Probably because they were bored. He knew how cruel bored kids could be.

“Jack, do something,” Eddie said, pointing his pistol at him. “Go out there and talk to them. Tell them you’re my prisoner for what you did. Please!”

“Fine,” he said, and got out with his hands raised.

A girl with blond hair rushed forward and pointed a revolver at his face.

“Hello,” he said. “My name’s—”

“Don’t care what your name is, dummy,” she said, and shot a round over his head.

The various Dragsters laughed, pointed, and fired more shots into the air. Yelling and crying from the Humvee added to the weirdness of the situation.

Rather than freak out too, the situation had an oddly calming effect on him.

“As I was saying, my name’s Jack. I think Carter wants me alive, at least for a while, so uh …” He couldn’t believe what he was about to say. “Take me to your leader.”

A boy with a pistol-gripped shotgun whistled for attention. “You say your name’s Jack? Jack what?”

“Jack Ferris?” he said. “I, uh, stole some of your grain—real sorry about that, by the way. I’m here to—”

“Wait a minute,” the boy said, coming forward with his gun pointed thoughtlessly at him, finger on the trigger. “You’re
the
Jack Ferris? From the Rippers? Greg’s gang?”

What the …?

“The real Jack’s got golden hair,” the girl said, pointing at him. “
Golden
haired, that’s what Greg said. His hair’s blond.”

Another said, “Golden hair
is
blond hair, you idiot.”

An argument abruptly sprang up about what degree of blond constituted golden.

“Check if he’s got a radio,” someone said at one point. “Maybe he heard about it there.”

“What’s this about?” Jack said, mystified and a little irritated. He wanted to get to his meeting with Carter and be done with it. “Why’s my hair so important?”

The boy with the shotgun walked over to the passenger door and tapped on it. The window rolled down and Eddie said, “What?”

“Just wanna look in your car a minute,” the boy said, peering inside. “Thanks.” He turned back to the crowd. “Doesn’t have no radio. Gotta be him.”

Jack narrowed his eyes. A nagging suspicion began to tug at him. “What exactly did Greg say to you people on the radio?”

The girl cracked a smile and said, “Shit—what
didn’t
he say. Tore Carter a new asshole, that’s what he did. We’re what’s left of the gang. We’re done taking orders from that jerk anymore.” She smiled apologetically. “We thought you were them. No offense.”

“So, Jack, what are you doing here?” the one with the shotgun said. He pointed at the Humvee. “And who are those guys? I’m Larry, by the way.”

He held out his hand. Jack shook it, not missing a beat.

“The one in front was going to turn me in to Carter,” he said. “His name’s Eddie, and he’s a backstabbing killer. The two in the back, I don’t know.”

“Is that right?” Larry said in a flat voice. He walked to the Humvee and tapped on the window.

“What?” Eddie said.

“Out of the car,” Larry said. “You two in the back—stay put.”

Eddie got out, his whole demeanor meek. Then he came around and stood where everyone could see him.

“Jack says you’re a backstabbing killer,” Larry said. “And we’re with Jack.”

Then he blasted Eddie in the chest with the shotgun.

“
W
hy are
women physically weaker then men?” Jack’s mom, Mrs. Ferris, had said when they stopped to refill their water from a stream. The boys and Mr. Ferris were a ways off, sitting on rocks and relaxing. Typical male behavior—lazing around while the women did all the work.

The Mitchell twins and the Ferris family were hiking in Dolly Sods, West Virginia, working their way to an overlook they’d camped at the previous year. Lisa’s parents couldn’t go because … well, the truth was both were overweight, and it was a five mile hike up and down hills. Jack’s parents, in their sixties, were healthy and trim, and could manage the trek almost as well as the kids.

“I don’t know about that, Mrs. Ferris,” Lisa said. “I’m stronger than Greg. And I can crush an apple in one hand. Jack can’t even do that. And I always win when we wrestle.” She laughed. “No offense, but even with all that karate, Jack’s sort of a wimp.”

Mrs. Ferris laughed too. “You’re still young. When they hit puberty, they’ll produce more testosterone, and that’ll stimulate muscle growth. By the time they’re twenty, they’ll be at least twice as strong as you if they don’t do anything but sit around, and a lot stronger if they exercise.”

Lisa didn’t think that was fair, or necessarily true. She’d seen women on TV run super fast and lift weights that even her dad couldn’t pick up.

“What if I exercise too? Wouldn’t I get stronger if I started now? Then could I keep up with them?”

“I’m sorry, no,” Mrs. Ferris said sadly. “Not in sheer physical strength, at least. The strongest man in the world will always be stronger than the strongest woman. You
could
outrun a man if you had to, but only if he’s out of shape and you’re in
good
shape. But again, biology’s against us. The fastest man in the world will always be faster than the fastest woman. In this case, it’s more because of the way our hips are structured, and because of the differences in the way men and women distribute weight.”

She looked hard at Lisa, and her face grew deadly serious. “If you’re ever in a fight with a man, unless you get very lucky or have some other advantage, he’s probably going to win.”

Lisa didn’t say anything for a time, letting the unsettling thought digest. Briefly, she considered not talking to Mrs. Ferris anymore. For an adult, she was actually pretty weird, as well as sort of cold. Jack said his whole childhood was based around his parents dying the day he turned eighteen. How messed up was that?

She couldn’t help herself. She had to know the answer.

“All right. So why
are
girls weaker than boys?”

Mrs. Ferris paused before answering, as if choosing the best words for her audience.

“Size and strength in animals often tracks closely with monogamy and polygamy. Do you know those words?”

Lisa nodded. She loved reading, and always had a dictionary handy when she did. She particularly liked grown-up books, though she had to hide them under her bed if they had
S-E-X
in them. Not from her mom, but from her dad. He was prudish about stuff like that.

Mrs. Ferris said, “Polygamous animals, like chimps and gorillas, tend to have larger males. Monogamous animals, like gibbons and beavers, exhibit no such sexual dimorphism. Why do you think that is?”

Lisa shrugged, feeling less and less comfortable with the conversation, but not wanting to be rude now that she’d committed to it.

“I’ll give you two reasons,” Mrs. Ferris said. “One: males are forced to compete with each other for access to females. When they fight, the bigger ones usually win, and they get to mate.”

Lisa frowned. “But that’s not true about humans. Humans get married. They’re—
we’re
—monogamous.”

“Tell that to any invading army since the dawn of history. Or any frat boy, or lonely barroom drunk.”

Lisa didn’t know much about drunks or frat boys, but she got the point. “So what’s the other reason?”

“Just this: weak females are easier to dominate. If strong men and weak females tend to have more babies, a pattern will eventually develop.”

Lisa nodded slowly. “You mean evolution, I’m learning about that now. Mom says we believe in God, so we don’t believe in evolution. But Dad thinks God
made
evolution. They don’t really talk about it much.” She frowned in thought. “I don’t know what to believe. But why do weak girls have to … um … keep on being weak? We’d just get eaten by lions easier. Right?”

“Without parents or a vigilant community,” Mrs. Ferris said, “boys would get eaten by lions too. You’re talking about competitive advantage. But there are other forces at work—sexual selection, culture, environment. In the end, though, it’s all a numbers game.”

Lisa was really confused now. Numbers game? What was this, math?

“Think of it this way,” Mrs. Ferris said. “Do you know what a human being really is? At its most basic level?”

“A person? Um … someone?”

Mrs. Ferris smiled gently. “Yes, in a sense. In another sense, a
human
is simply a way for human DNA to make more human DNA—a curious byproduct of a chemical reaction that happened three-and-a-half billion years ago.” At Lisa’s shocked, faintly offended expression, she added, “Unless of course we were
created
. As far as that goes, I’m more likely to agree with your father than your mother.”

Lisa pondered what she’d heard and clipped another bottle to the water filter.

Over on the rocks, the boys were laughing out loud about something, blissfully ignorant of the meaning of life. She loved her brother, but he could never be serious. She couldn’t imagine either him or Jack trying to dominate a girl. Still, she wasn’t completely naive. She watched the news sometimes and knew not every boy was the same. She also knew what
dominate
meant, even if Mrs. Ferris wasn’t saying the word.

Unexpectedly, she felt like crying. “Why are you telling me all this terrible stuff?”

“Because I want you to be prepared,” Mrs. Ferris said. “We women don’t have to be victims. There are things we can do to protect ourselves.”

Lisa wiped her eyes. “Yeah, like what?”

“Like you said, we can exercise.”

“But you said that wouldn’t help.”

“Not true—I said it won’t make us equal. But it
will
help. Another numbers game, but we can skew the results if we try. If you’re walking alone one night, chances are you won’t be jumped by an Olympic swimmer, right?”

Lisa nodded. “Yeah, I suppose.”

“So if you’re stronger than he expects, you’ll have a better chance. If you’re healthy—and you know how to fight—you can use your body far more effectively. You can increase the odds of survival.”

After that, Lisa felt more at ease. She felt even better when, the following week, Mrs. Ferris invited her to the gym.

At first, Mrs. Ferris started her on stretches, running on the treadmill, and lifting weights. She said most women didn’t like weights because they were afraid of growing big, ugly muscles, even though that was biologically impossible without anabolic steroids.

Despite the work she was putting in, Lisa wasn’t blind. She saw the burly men in the gym, and cringed at how much they were lifting—sometimes twenty or thirty times what she could. Heck, she could barely lift up the free weight bar with ten-pound plates on it. And here she’d thought she was pretty strong.

“If you can surprise someone,” Mrs. Ferris said, “you can end the fight sometimes even before it begins. Hurt the bastard and run away, then trust your cardio training. Most of these meatheads will fall over gasping if they have to run five feet. You don’t need to beat them to a pulp to win. You only need to outlast them.”

One day, they didn’t lift weights or run on the treadmill. Instead, they attended a self-defense class, which Mrs. Ferris paid for with her own money on the condition that Lisa hide it from her parents. Not entirely ethical, Lisa knew, but she also knew her mother would have forbidden her to go. Her parents also didn’t know she and Greg had gone shooting at the range with Jack, and with luck they never would.

The defense class was taught by a former mixed martial arts fighter and emphasized boxing, jiu-jitsu, and dirty fighting. Lisa loved it, because ever since Mrs. Ferris said she was just human DNA trying to make more human DNA, she’d felt something close to helpless—adrift in an unfair universe of violent men who could do what they wanted no matter how she felt.

There were several women in the class, and only a couple of girls and boys. As the weeks went by, she looked forward to training against the boys because she was able to beat them more times than not. And when she went home and tried the moves on her brother, she wiped the floor with him.

Now, two years later, Lisa looked back on those days at the gym and the only thing she wished is that she’d trained even harder.

* * *

“
J
ust leave everything to me
,” Carter had said, and gently eased her down onto the bed.

He touched her chest with his fingers and groped clumsily.

“Wait,” Lisa whispered. “Let me … um … I need to get comfortable.”

“Sure, no problem,” he said, overly agreeable. He had a look in his eyes she’d never seen before from anyone. A little like hunger and hate, mixed together.

Lisa arranged her legs beneath him, one on either side of his waist, then took his left hand in hers and kissed it.

He leaned down to kiss her on the mouth and she shied away, saying, “Not yet, don’t ruin it.”

Carter’s jaw clenched with impatience. She kissed his fingers again and spread her legs wider and he relaxed.

“What are you doing?” he said when she adjusted her right leg up high and sort of angled it sideways.

“I saw it on the Internet,” she said. “You’re gonna love it.”

“Huh? Saw what?”

Before she was forced to kiss his nasty fingers again, Lisa slipped her leg from beneath his arm, up around his neck, and then clamped down with her left leg. Simultaneously, she pulled his right arm straight with both hands and squeezed
her legs together. Carter yelped in shock. She squeezed harder to cut off his airflow, lest he alert anyone downstairs. He struck out with his left arm, flailing to hit something, but only landed a few ineffectual punches to her side.

Lisa was great at squeezing.
She
was the girl that could crush apples in her bare hands when she was twelve.
She
could beat up her brother and Jack—karate or no karate. Sure, the strongest man in the world would always beat the strongest women. But Carter wasn’t a man—he was just a boy, not to mention a bully who probably won most fights because his opponents were too scared to fight back.

Well, he’d caught a double dose of bad luck in Lisa. Not only wasn’t she scared, she
enjoyed
fighting back.

A moment came where Carter stopped batting against her with his free hand and began scrabbling at his side. Lisa’s eyes widened in alarm—he was going for his gun!

Rather than let that happen, she did the unthinkable—she rolled sideways off the bed, pulling him with her, trusting in blind luck for a safe landing. They landed, and it sure didn’t feel safe or lucky the way her vision swam down a funnel of fading light. She’d landed on her bruised back, and the breath was knocked clear out of her. Carter issued a weak groan and gasped raggedly for air. She still had hold of his arm, though her legs had shifted a little.

Before he could yell, she pulled back harder and
squeezed
, arching off her back for a tighter grip. Holding the pose, she squeezed like her life depended on it—which it did—and hoped nobody downstairs had heard them fall.

After what seemed like hours, but was probably only a minute, Carter’s body turned limp in her perfectly performed triangle choke. Still she held on, choking him with everything she had, now panting and sweating from exertion, her inflamed back and legs screaming in agony. When she couldn’t hold on any longer, she let go and fell back gasping for breath with the boy lying grossly between her legs.

“Was it good for you, asshole?” she muttered.

She crawled backwards on her elbows and lay flat. A minute passed and her eyes snapped open. She’d almost fallen asleep. Her whole body felt like a big, giant sore, and all she wanted to do was sleep. Instead of that, she got to her knees and checked Carter’s pulse—still there, and somehow he was still breathing.

Lisa got up, grabbed one of the pillows off the bed, and shucked it free of the pillowcase. She twisted the pillowcase in her hands like a rope, then sat behind Carter and wrapped it twice around his throat. Once again, she mustered her hard-earned strength and squeezed. For more leverage, she twisted it around her foot halfway and leaned back. In time, her hands began to burn and she let go, giving them a break. When they felt better, she resumed strangling him.

After he was finally dead, she let go, liberated the gun from his corpse, and stood up.

Lisa’s whole body shook, and she was as tired as she’d ever been in her life. But she was armed, she was desperate, and sleep could wait.

Upon checking the magazine, she swore quietly. There were only three rounds left. The idiot was carrying a nearly empty gun. There were ten of them downstairs, including that crazy girl, Cassie, and that traitor, Miguel.