Reapers Isle: TheParaplegic/Chronic Gamer Returns for the Second Book in his Reaper Series (13 page)

“Let me guess a purple metallic Juke?” said Rees

“You got it buddy.” I said smiling “Rees, I think, I can probably get a couple before they get too close. Then we take the rest as they come.”

Rees nodded and checked his rifle to make sure he had a round chambered, pulled his Browning and chambered a round, then placed it back in his holster. I pulled my Browning out of its holster, chambered a round and checked to make sure the safety was on, turned to give it to Derek. Who backed up with his hands up as if to say no.

“Derek listen, we are going to have to get you trained up on the weapons anyway. So you might as well get used to having one in your hand. Anyway the safety is on and it is to only be used if they get too close. All you have to remember is that the end with the hole points towards where you want to shoot. This here is the safety and you only flick that if you mean to fire it and only then.” He looked like he was going to shit himself when I put the pistol in his hand. “The other thing is, you are going to stay here round the corner out of sight. If I say run, then we all run, find somewhere to regroup and try a different route or find another car.”

Derek put his back to the wall, I checked my rifle to make sure a round was chambered, went to the corner and knelt down looking toward the crossroads and the Reapers, Rees stood behind my right shoulder. I don’t know what it was but just as I was to take my first shot, the Reapers all turned and looked at us. I was looking at a young female and took my shot, time seemed to slow as I watch through the scope on my rifle. The round hit higher than I intended and took the top off her head. It entered above the eyes and because it was angling upwards the blood and brain matter seemed to fountain from the crown of her head. They then came running and leaping down the road toward us. My second round, I compensated for and hit the male in the chest. I was aiming at center mass, so it was a good shot. Rees had started to fire when I was squeezing off my second round and had two down, so that left us with four. I had just enough time to pull off one more shot using my scope. I lined up on an elderly looking Reaper at the rear and fired, which went to high again. (what the fuck is going on, I used to be better than this.) The round went through the Reapers throat and must have severed the head from its neck, because the head bounced and rolled around as the body fell beside it. That just left three Reapers to take care of. I was just moving my rifle to take a shot when the Reaper I was aiming at’s head exploded in a splatter of brain, black blood and pale pieces of bone and brain.

I looked across at Rees and he grinned at me (that’s the second time he has taken my kill the fucker.) and switched to his Browning, letting his rifle fall on to it’s sling. The last two came in close and I stood up quickly and swung my rifle butt up and into its jaw. I heard the crack followed by a tooth and blood come from the broken jaw. As it hit the floor I stepped on its naked chest and stamped on the head, until it was misshapen and black blood leaked out of its ears.

The shot from Rees’s pistol startled me and I spun round just as the last Reaper just seemed to fall forward onto its face. I looked down at the fallen Reaper’s head and it had a hole roughly the size of a tin can through the back of it. What little hair that was left on its head was matted with black blood, bone and brain. Carefully moving up to the crossroads I looked to the left and Rees covered the right. I didn’t see any Reapers heading from that direction, I looked over to Rees and he gestured that his side was also clear. I looked behind me to see if Derek had moved up, but he must have stayed put like I told him to. I went back to the corner and found him huddled on the floor with both hands on his ears, one hand still holding the pistol I had given him. Reaching out I gently took the pistol off him and put it back in my holster.

Then I knelt in front of him and said “Derek, we have to get going mate. I don’t know if all that shooting will bring more, but you have to get up and move.”

His head shook a little.

“Look, your family is relying on you to get this done. Remember, Christine and the girls want you to be there for them and not huddled in the dirt at an industrial park. Come on get up, you’ve managed to get them this far and we just have to go a little further.”

He looked up at me with red rimmed eyes and said “When you started shooting, I just started to cry.”

“Not every person is cut out to use guns and not every person are cut out to survive, but you are a person cut out to be a survivor. We will shoot you just helps us by keeping an eye out. That is if you don’t want to use a gun, does that sound fair?”

He nodded, so I took his arms and helped him stand. Together we walked round the corner and up to where Rees was waiting. He looked at me and then at Derek, he saw the red eyes and knew what had been happening. We jogged across the road to Derek’s car, as we got near he pulled his keys out of his pocket and pressed the door button. We heard a chirp and the indicator lights flashed to show us that the doors had unlocked.

Chapter Fifteen

Derek ran to the drivers door, dropped the fuel can and the hose to the floor. He grabbed and opened the door and climbed inside. Walking over to the car I looked inside at Derek, he turned the key and the dashboard light lit up. Well, at least he didn’t leave anything on to drain the battery. He looked up at me and said “It has about an eighth of a tank left.”

Rees came and stood beside me looking around.

“We knew that we had to get some fuel for this, but I didn’t think we would need much.” Said Rees.

“Yeah, I’m thinking that we probably need half a tank at least to get from here to the island.” I said.

I looked around where the car was parked, but didn’t see anything nearby to get fuel from.

“Right, this is probably the best idea. Rees you and I go looking for something that might have fuel in it. Derek you stay in the car. You’ll be fine with the door closed and locked, try and keep out of sight if you can. One other thing what does this thing use for fuel?”

“I never thought of that, it uses petrol. It had better miles to the gallon for town driving, that was one of the reasons we got it.” Said Derek.

“Ok, Derek get your head down and we will go find fuel. Hopefully we should be back soon.” I said.

He closed the door and slid down in the seat. Rees and I turned and looked up the way the car was pointing. I picked up the fuel can and tied the hose to my belt. I nodded up the road and we started walking, I slung my rifle on my back and pulled my pistol. In front was a row of units and at the end on the right we could see a pick up. You know, like the ones you see in America, that had become popular over here.

“That’s bound not to use petrol.” Said Rees.

“Let’s try the other way, there might be one down the other end of the units.” I said.

We turned and headed down the other way, got to the end and we found we could go left or right. We hit pay dirt and found four cars pulled up outside of a unit. We stood about twenty meters away, and listened for any kind of noise. Rees pointed that he was going to move over to the left and I should move over to the right. The cars were parked on my side so if I needed all I would have to do is drop and I would have the cars between myself and any problems. Rees went down to one knee so that he would have a more stable firing position. He would be covering me whilst I checked the cars for petrol.

The first car was a petrol so I crept up to the fuel cap and pulled it open. Pushing the hose in the hole until it hit the bottom of the tank. Put the fuel can on the floor and opened the cap. I sucked on the end of the hose until I thought I could feel the fuel coming and pushed it into the can. There was fuel in there and everything was going well, until I heard a shout and then the unmistakable sound of Rees’s rifle fire. Then the glass window of the car shattered and glass rained down on me.

Then there was a wang sound above my head and a hole appeared in the door near to me. Someone was shooting at us, I raised my head so I could peek over the rear of the car. Bad idea as the back window of the car shattered and I was covered in glass again, but I did see which direction the shots were coming from. A unit three down from where we were had a large window that was open and the shots came from inside. I lay on the floor near the rear tire and tried to see if there was enough clearance to shoot at the window. I could see the window, but to be honest, there was no way I could have taken a aimed shot.

I leaned back against the wheel and looked across at Rees, luckily where he was the shooter wasn’t going to be getting a good shot the angle was all wrong. He shouted across “I’ll lay some cover fire down there, you get a better shot ok?”

I nodded and started to move down to the bonnet of the car whilst staying behind the cover of the car. I got to the bonnet and stayed down, I nodded to Rees to start his cover. He raised his rifle and started shooting, I waited until his fourth or fifth shot and aimed over the bonnet at the window through the scope. I could just make out a shadow just inside the window and fired on where I thought was a center mass shot. We both heard a scream and then there was nothing, we had no shots coming from the unit.

I crossed over onto the side that Rees was on after picking up the fuel can and the hose. We worked our way down the units till we came to the one with the one window. Rees tried the handle and slowly opened the door making sure he stayed out of the opening. When we didn’t get shot we entered I went left and Rees went right. As soon as we entered we both heard the moans and cries coming from the office. The door was open and we both entered with our rifles raised, what greeted us, well lets just say it shocked me. It was a young man about twenty five or thereabouts. My shot had taken the rifle he had been using and broken it just in front of the trigger. The round must have then defected into his stomach and travelled downwards and out through his groin. From his stomach to his knees was covered with blood, and he was trying to keep pressure on his stomach. The thing was Rees and I knew he wouldn’t be alive much longer, he had turned a deathly pale and we both knew he was already dead.

Crouching down in front of him I asked “Why?”

He coughed and said “Dad, told me….” His eyes closed and he stopped breathing.

“I think we better get out of here Walker, I don’t like how he said his dad told him to.”

I stood, nodded and we left as quickly as we could, it took us roughly twenty minutes to get back to Derek’s car. We got there and saw that everything was ok and Derek was looking out of the windscreen. (so he hadn’t done a runner whilst we were gone.) I poured the fuel into the tank and Derek told me we had just over half a tank. That should be enough to get us to the island, now we just had to hope that tide was out when we got there. Rees was in the back seat and I got in the passenger side, I thought seeing as it was Dereks car he should drive.

Picking up the radio I keyed the talk button “Becky, you there?”

There was a pause, “Hey, Jay it’s Marc not Becky. You lot ok? We heard a lot of shooting!”

“Yeah, we’re fine. Just ran into some Rearpers and then someone was taking pot shots at us. Don’t worry, no one is hurt, we should be at the entrance in the next five minutes. When we get there, we will go lead, can you and the women follow behind us.” I said to him.

“Yeah, how long till we get to the island?”

“To be honest from here I am not sure, but we should be there well before dark. The only problem is if the tide is in when we get to the causeway. We will have to find somewhere safe for the night. The next time the tide will be out will be tomorrow.”

We saw the Land Rover and we flashed our lights, then drove past them and they followed behind as we headed north.

“So we might not be able to get there today?” said Marc.

“I think we will be able to, it is a tidal causeway. So it happens twice a day and it hopefully won’t be too much of a problem. Anyway, lets sign off I want to save the batteries.”

“Okay will talk to you later unless something happens.”

The radio went silent and we drove on with the gray sky above, looking like rain. Travelling the east coast road was good and we managed to move quite quickly. I think that was mainly due to this road being really only a tourist traffic and local traffic road very little in the way of transporter traffic. That being said, we did have to drive in and out of a few stalled and broken down cars. There were also a couple of wrecks that we had to drive on the hard shoulder to miss. Again the lack of dead bodies and blood hinted that the bodies had been moved.

We came to the turn off that lead to the tidal causeway to Holy Island and pulled off the main road and down the causeway. It was only about three quarters of a mile long and we could see the island from the shore. There was a sign which had times that the tide came in and went out. Looking at the times we had about three quarters of an hour before the tide changed and we could cross. I was standing beside the Land Rover looking at the sign when a stupid idea crept into my head.

“Hey Rees, come here a minute.” I shouted.

He came out of the bushes zipping his fly up, “What’s the matter Walker?”

“What would happen if this sign fell down and disappeared?” I asked.

“Well, people wouldn’t know when the tides changed and so they wouldn’t know when to cross.” He said a smile creeping across his face.