Iron Mike (20 page)

“Which eye did I say?” Mayhew asked his men.

“Right, boss,” Tommy said eagerly.

“That’s right,” Mayhew agreed, turning back to Mike. “Now, this poker still has plenty of heat in it, but after I take your eye, I’m gonna have to re-heat it all over again. What kind of shit uniform you wearing, kid?”

“Mayhew, stop!” Kari screamed. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, just please, leave him alone!”

Mayhew stopped, looking from Mike to Kari as if considering her words. He stood up and handed the poker off to Tommy, who seemed disappointed. “Set that to warmin’, Tommy,” Mayhew instructed. He walked over to where Crank held Kari in a headlock, despite the zip ties on her wrists. Crank was sporting a nice bruise on his eye, Mike noted dully. It would be a hell of a shiner in a few days. He tried desperately to pay attention to Kari’s words while his breathing slowed, but his mind still reeled from the pain that wasn’t easing. He would give anything to lie down in the patch of snow a few feet to his left.

“So?” Mayhew asked.

“It’s an American uniform,” Kari replied levelly. “It’s the uniform of the U.S. Resistance Front, which is the only military force we have left. The five branches of the military are completely gone, and the RF is all that stands between you and those Feeders.”

Mayhew laughed without humor. “If you mean those Bitch-Slugs, your ‘Resistance Front’ hasn’t done shit,” he snapped. “We lost three good people already, and there ain’t no way to kill those fuckers.”

“The Resistance has killed over two dozen of them,” Kari lied easily. “You need to have the right chemical components. It’s like a recipe – you have to follow it exactly, or it doesn’t do anything to the … bitch slugs.”

For the first time, Mayhew looked uncertain. “What’s the recipe?”

Kari laughed out loud, the sound heavy with sarcasm. “Yeah, right!” she exclaimed. “Not until we make a deal, Mayhew.”

Mike continued rubbing the plastic zip tie against the branch behind his back, keeping his movements small. The fire in his neck was almost unbearable, so the pain and blood oozing from the blisters on his wrists barely even penetrated. He knew he’d never be able to cut the plastic tie without a knife, but the enemy had been stupid and careless. With enough determination and lubricant, he could slip out of the binding. And when he did, he would kill every one of those bastards.

Mayhew looked at Kari. “How about I make you the same deal I made your little boyfriend, bitch?” he leered.

Kari smiled without humor. “Your choice,” she replied. “But then, you’ll never know for sure if I gave you the right ingredients, will you? Not until you’re buried up to your neck in Feeder and realize, oops, that one-eyed, tongueless bitch must have left out one itsy-bitsy component.”

Mayhew scowled. “What kind of deal you want, sweet butt?”

Mike struggled to concentrate. Something important was happening between Kari and Mayhew, and he needed to be alert and aware, not operating on fuzzy autopilot. She was manipulating the man, and Mike needed to participate, to react as Mayhew would expect. “Kari, don’t,” he croaked, making it come out as a weak, hoarse whisper. Mike smiled inwardly as he noted the infinitesimal relaxation of Mayhew’s shoulders. He hoped the other men were relaxing as well, dismissing Mike as a potential threat.

“Safe passage for both of us. We get the bike with the sidecar, one of the jugs of fuel, half the weapons.”

It was Mayhew’s turn to laugh. “And what even makes you think I’ll keep up my end of the deal?”

Kari kept a straight face, pulling on every technique she’d learned in her sophomore year drama class. “Because I think, before all of this happened, you were a decent man, Mayhew,” she said quietly. “I think the invasion changed you, like it changed everyone else. I trust you to keep your word if you give it.”

Mayhew looked at her levelly. “One bike. No sidecar, no fuel, no weapons.”

Kari waited a long moment, and then nodded reluctantly. “Deal,” she said.
As if there was a choice.

“Deal,” Mayhew repeated. “Now, what about your recipe, Betty Crocker?”

“You know the Flying J about eight miles west of Ashland?”

Mayhew nodded.

“We hid a small cache of supplies inside the store, under the counter behind the register. A copy of the recipe is in with the cache.”

Mayhew’s eyes narrowed. “How stupid do you think I am, girl? No one hides cash anymore – it’s worthless unless you need toilet paper. You got no fucking recipe!”

Kari shook her head resolutely, deliberately ignoring his question. “A cache of
supplies,
Mayhew. A stockpile, or a stash. It’s in a backpack we were taking to the National Guard facility in Charleston. That’s where we’re heading, if we get clear of you and your boys.”

Mayhew studied her for a long moment then nodded, smiling as he lied. “Fine. We let you two go when Tommy brings that backpack to me.”

Kari shrugged. “You trust him with a bottle of Maker’s Mark? Fine by me. We’ll wait.” She suddenly had everyone’s attention, as she had known she would.

“Maker’s Mark?” Jimbo asked, a disbelieving hunger in his voice.

Kari didn’t even look at him, her eyes steady on Mayhew’s. “It’s a catalyzing agent in the formula,” she said convincingly. “And, obviously, it’s hard to come by.”

“You’re bullshitting me, sweet butt,” Mayhew said, his voice dark and menacing. “Don’t take me for a fool.”

Kari shook her head in exasperation. “Why would I do that?” she challenged. “There’s no advantage to it. You’ll just be back here in half an hour and be more pissed off than you are now, more inclined to hurt us rather than just kill us.”

“She’s lying,” Mike coughed, shivering violently. “There’s no recipe, no booze. There’s no fairy princess, either.”

Kari scowled at Mike. “Don’t be a douche, Mike. If we’re dead, no one outside Kentucky will benefit from that formula. Remember who the enemy is, soldier! Mayhew and his friends might be jerks, but they’re not aliens!”

Mike turned away, as though unable to come up with a retort. He shifted uncomfortably, and the plastic zip tie finally was finally coated with enough blood to lubricate itself off the thickest part of Mike’s wrists. It took almost more willpower than he had to wait silently while Mayhew considered his options.

Finally, Mayhew nodded to Crank. “You and Tommy watch them,” he said. “Jimbo and me will go get that backpack.”

As Crank nodded, Mayhew approached Kari, backing her up against the side of a rusted Ford Ranger that seemed like it hadn’t moved in a very long time. “If you’ve lied to me, sweet butt? If you try to play me for a fool? I swear to you by everything holy when I get back here, you will beg me to let you die. You understand? What lover boy went through will be Christmas morning with extra presents. I will burn your cunt so badly and so deeply with that poker you will never even
think
of having children. You hear me? And after a few days, or weeks, depending on how long I let you last, I’ll make sure you never have kids, because I will impale your cunt and watch you bleed to death.”

He stared into Kari’s eyes until she looked away. She knew he meant every word of what he said.

“She’s lying,” Mike insisted stubbornly. His body was still slumped, defeated, while he worked his way easily out of the perfunctory loops of the tow chain and began wrapping it tightly around each hand. This time, he didn’t want his blood to lubricate the garrote.

Mayhew barely glanced at Mike. “We ain’t got nothin’ but time in this glorious new world of ours. Looks like Jimbo and me are just going to go find out then, won’t we, boy?”

Crank took up a guard position to the side of Kari, his shotgun pointed at Mike, as Jimbo and Mayhew drove away in the jeep. There was something eerily dispassionate in his expression – in everything he’d done so far. Mike fought not to squirm impatiently. They would get one chance at this and he needed to make it count.

“I’m tapping that,” Tommy announced, the moment the jeep was out of sight.

Crank didn’t take his eyes off Mike as he replied in a disinterested, almost bored tone. “Might want to reconsider that, Tommy. Remember what happened to the last brother who hit one of Mayhew’s women.”

“She ain’t his woman. He’s made no claim, and the bitch scratched my face,” Tommy argued, a slight, obnoxious whine in his voice. “Hell, he’s calling her sweet butt.”

Crank shrugged indifferently. He glanced at Kari, but turned back to Mike almost immediately.

Be patient, Mike cautioned himself. He’ll get distracted soon enough. Wait.

Kari couldn’t wait. She made her move prematurely, perhaps unnerved by the conversation, perhaps too hyped on adrenaline to rein it in long enough. Either way, Tommy was barely in range of the knife when she swung, and as such her reach was long, unbalancing her. Tommy knocked her wrist away hard, and Kari cried out from the pain. Something was broken; she was certain of it. She attacked Tommy with hellcat intensity, striking him as she’d been taught, with everything in her arsenal. Tommy fought back, with no finesse, but more upper body strength and the skill and proficiency of an experienced street fighter. Mike “struggled” against invisible bonds, drawing an amused half-smirk from Crank.

“A little help here, bro?” Tommy snapped, as Kari landed a roundhouse kick to his upper thigh, dropping him momentarily.

Crank laughed, the sound like swallowing glass. “No way, man. I got guard duty. You tappin’ that is all you, brother.”

Mike almost screamed in frustration. Of all the interbred rednecks on the entire planet,
he
had to get a responsible one? Really? It had already been several minutes since Mayhew and Jimbo left. In another ten minutes, they would reach the Flying J. In ten minutes and five seconds, they would be heading back in this direction. They would be furious … and deadly.

“Let her go, ass-wipe!” Mike shouted, pushing a tone of authority into his voice. Tommy glanced back at the tone, allowing Kari a vicious jab that would have broken his windpipe if it had connected. He backhanded her across the face, sending her sprawling, and then immediately jumped on her, pinning her arms. He wouldn’t be distracted again.

Crank, on the other hand, was still paying too much attention to Mike for him to make a move. Mike held his wrists closely together and thrashed and struggled as though in a frenzy to escape. Crank watched him for several moments before flicking his eyes back to the more interesting struggle. He was glancing away more often, but only for quick seconds at a time. What was the best way to get an enemy to ignore you?

Fabric tore – Kari’s shirt, probably. Mike couldn’t see what was happening because Kari and Tommy were down on the ground, but he could hear the sounds of the struggle, Kari’s grunts of determination and gasps of pain as she landed and received blows. It sounded like an evenly matched wrestling competition … except Kari was fighting for her life, not a trophy.

“Get off her, you mother-fucker!” Mike shouted, not having to feign the fury in his voice. “You stupid inbred piece-of-shit, get the fuck off of her. I am going to fucking kill you!”

As he hoped, the more he ranted, the more confident and distracted Crank became. His glances away lasted longer and longer, his attention clearly on the rape in progress. Mike waited.
Whites of their eyes,
he thought bitterly, as he continued to curse and shout.

When the moment came, it was over almost instantly. Mike uncurled the tow chain from his left hand and arm, holding it securely in his right. He leapt up and grabbed the back of Crank’s head with both hands, snapping his neck with one vicious, sudden twist. It was a much more visceral feeling to snap a man’s neck than AI Palmer had warned them in training … but otherwise, it went exactly as Palmer said it would. Crank dropped like a hot brick.

Tommy hesitated just one second too long before turning around. In that second, the tow chain was wrapped around his neck, and Mike’s knee was in his back. As Tommy began bucking, Mike shifted position, yanking the piece of shit off of Kari and dragging him away from her. Mike quickly averted his eyes, deliberately not seeing the blood or the viscous white fluid between Kari’s legs. He dragged Tommy over to the tree line, giving Kari privacy and time to pull herself together. There, he slowly and methodically tightened the chain until he choked Tommy to death.

It takes longer for a man to die that way than they show in the movies. It takes up to two minutes, long minutes that can stretch into days, and then another minute or so after death for all of the twitching to stop. Mike waited through all of it with grim patience. When he finally dropped the body, he turned to see Kari next to him, her shirt shredded, the zipper and front panel of her jeans torn, her face bruised and bloody. The hunting knife was in her hand.

“Loser dropped it on the bridge,” she explained, her voice a shaky, hysterical sob. She stabbed Tommy’s body through the heart. Then she did it again, and again. When his chest was the consistency of hamburger, she left the knife sticking out of him and turned into the bushes, puking her stomach inside out.

“We need to find ambush positions,” Mike said quietly, handing her Crank’s shotgun and removing the knife, then rolling what remained of Tommy to pull the Glock out of his waistband.

“Or get out of here before they get back,” Kari countered, looking at their motorcycles.