The Borrowed World: A Novel of Post-Apocalyptic Collapse (21 page)

When I returned the full LCP to her, I reminded her that the weapon was ready to go and to be careful with it.  She rolled her eyes at me.

“Grew up with guns,” she reminded me in a sarcastic, lilting voice.  “Remember?”

My GPS was fully synced and indicated that it was accurate to within fifteen feet of my position.  I zoomed out and used the GPS’s waypoint tools to do a quick measurement from our current location to where I approximated Lloyd’s house to be.  This type of route measurement was not completely accurate because the handheld unit made it difficult to trace all the twists and turns of the road but I came up with a distance of 8.3 miles.

I repeated the distance out loud.

“How does that translate into hours?” Randi asked.  “How much longer am I going to have to be walking?”

“If we’re going mostly downhill on this paved surface we might do three miles an hour or better,” I said.  “With breaks, let’s say three hours or so.”

“I can do three hours, I think,” she said.  Then she added, as an afterthought, “I’m out of cigarettes now.”

“Good,” I said.

“Bastard,” she snarled.  “You’re the one who’s going to have to listen to the complaining.”

I smiled.  “No, I won’t.  You’ll be too winded to complain.  If you have breath for complaining, we’re not walking fast enough. If you complain, I’ll just step up the pace until you can’t complain anymore.  Keep that in mind.”

She mulled this over.  “You’re not just a bastard, you’re a
cruel
bastard.”

“Let’s go.  We’ve got miles to burn.”

Through most of my hiking experiences, I was always excited to return to walking after a break.  I enjoyed the breaks too, slumped against my backpack, enjoying a view, but there was something about the resumption of the trip that always carried great potential.  It was when the world opened up to you.  Walking the trail was where you saw things – the views, the wildlife, the indescribable play of light that photographs almost always failed to capture. 

However, the pleasure of resuming our walk on this beautiful day, in this beautiful place, was short-lived.  We were walking in a straight line on the shoulder of the road, taking long strides and eating up ground.  I was on point, Gary at the rear.  We stayed close to the shoulder so we could duck over the edge of the road if we saw or heard someone coming.  For the first mile or so there was nothing to be concerned about.  Then a scream cut through the near silence.

We all flinched, hands moving toward weapons, muscles tensing.

“What the fuck?” Randi said.

“That was close,” Gary said.  “Just around one of these bends in the road.”

The road followed the contour of the mountaintop, snaking around every shoulder, ridge, abutment, outcropping, or draw in the mountain, making it nearly impossible to see for any distance at all.

“What are we going to do?” Randi asked.

Another scream came, dropping to an anguished wail.

“That sounds like Katie,” I said.

“Shit,” Gary muttered.

“I’m going to take a look,” I said.  “Do you guys want to stay here or come with me?”

Gary and Randi exchanged a quick glance before replying that they were coming with me.  I dropped over the weedy shoulder of the road and started following the direction of the road, walking along an angled bank that offered some concealment from the road.  The grassy bank was dew-soaked and we were constantly losing traction and sliding.  After several minutes of fighting with the wet bank we arrived at the source of the screaming.

I held a hand up, stopping Randi and Gary behind me.  We dropped against the bank, creeping higher on the shoulder.  Through the weeds we could see three ATVs, one of them with a trailer hooked to it.  Four men and two women were scattered among the ATVs. I recognized one of the men and one of the ATVs from the day before.  It was the passenger with the jail tattoos.  He was probably the partner of the man we’d killed last night.  He’d made his way back to his family or some group of lowlifes that gave a shit about them.  Now he was back with reinforcements.

At the center of the group was Katie.  She was on her knees on the ground, her hands resting on Walt’s still body, a puddle of blood running from beneath him.  I could not immediately see how he’d been injured or killed but there was a lot of blood.  The older of the two women stepped forward and grabbed a handful of Katie’s hair, pulling her away from Walt’s body and onto her back.  She dragged her for a short distance and then began kicking and stomping Katie, still holding her by the hair.  Katie screamed and tried to protect herself but it was useless.  All she could do was try to protect her head and face from the blows and kicks raining down on her.

“What did you to do my son, you fucking bitch?” the woman kept screaming at Katie, her voice harsh and raspy.  “Did you kill my son?  Was it you that killed him?”

Katie sobbed, unable to respond.  She looked like she was going into shock.  The other woman, much younger, likely a sister or someone’s wife, stepped forward and kicked Katie in the back, right over the kidney.  She then landed a series of punches on the side of Katie’s face, one after another, hurling abuse at her the whole time.   After the last blow, she slung Katie by the hair.  Katie sprawled onto the pavement.  The woman bent and spit into Katie’s face.

The men surrounding the fight did nothing to stop it.  In fact, they looked amused by the whole thing, smiling and joking.  One even lit up a cigarette.

“I like a good cat fight,” the man from last night said. 

“What I wouldn’t give for a scoped rifle,” Gary whispered beside me.  “Even a .22 caliber would be an improvement.  We’ve got nothing that’s accurate at this range.”

It was probably a little less than a hundred yards to where all of this was taking place and our handguns with open sights were insufficient for the job.

“What do we do?” I asked.  “Do we leave her?  Do we wait for them to leave and let things play out?”

“That girl hasn’t done anything,” Randi said.  “I killed that old bitch’s son.  I don’t want Katie to die for something I did.”

“What do you propose we do?” I asked her.

She looked at me like I was an idiot.  “Why don’t we just rush them?” she said.  “They’re all looking the other way.  By the time they notice us, we’ll be close enough to shoot them.”

Gary and I looked at each other.

“Might work,” Gary said.  “We’d have to be quiet and move quickly.”

The younger woman who’d punched Katie and spit on her now stood over Katie’s body, staring down at her with disgust, her breath heaving.  “Fucking bitch,” she said.  “Let’s just kill her now.  She ain’t gonna tell us shit.”

The woman reached into her back pocket and withdrew what looked like a .22 caliber mini-revolver, probably a North American Arms model.  She put a thumb on the hammer and pointed the gun at Katie’s head.

“Let me kill her, Mom,” she said coldly.  “Please, just let me kill her.”

The older woman looked down at Katie’s trembling, blood-spattered form and shook her head.  “No one’s killing her until I know what happened to my baby.”

The older woman, apparently the mother of the man we’d killed, walked to the ATV cart and returned with an old-fashioned butcher knife. 

“Last chance, girl,” the woman said to Katie.  “You start talking or I start cutting your pretty little face up.  I’ve butchered livestock my whole life and I ain’t scared of a little blood.”

“She’ll do it,” the man with the tattoos said.  “She’ll cut you, bitch.  You better tell her what she wants to know.”

“We have to do this now.  Randi, you take the two on the farthest left,” I said.  “I’ll take the two on the farthest right.  Gary, you take the center two.”

“Why do I get the center two?” Gary said.  “That’s where Katie is.  I don’t want to hit her.”

“I don’t either.  And you’re a better shot than I am.”

Gary didn’t have anything to say to that.

“Let’s hit it,” I said.  “We walk quickly toward them with weapons up.  Don’t run.  Don’t draw any attention.  Take firm, quiet steps.  As soon as the first one turns, we start shooting.  Remember your shooting lanes.”

“What the hell is a shooting lane?” Randi asked.

“Just remember to shoot the ones I told you to shoot.”

“Why didn’t you just say that instead of trying to be all tactical?”

“Sorry,” I replied.  “Let’s do this.”

We shrugged out of our packs and checked our weapons.  I confirmed that everyone was ready and started to stand.  No one on the road noticed.  Everyone in the group ahead of us had their eyes glued to the older woman waving a butcher knife toward Katie’s face.  I started to walk toward the group, checking to see that Gary and Randi were with me.  I tried to check my speed to make sure that we were aligned as close as possible so no one would be out ahead and get shot when the chaos started. 

Ironically, it was Katie who saw us first.  We had closed half the distance when Katie peeled her hands from her face.  She was clearly in shock, accepting that she was going to be tortured and then die.  The woman stood over her, talking to her in a low voice that kept us from understanding the words.  We closed ten more yards.  Katie raised her head and she was looking straight at us, blood running from her nose and mouth.  Gravel was embedded in gashes and abrasions.  Ten more yards and the old woman noticed Katie’s eyes, noticed her distraction.  Maybe she even saw our reflection in her pupils.

We were at twenty yards when the first head turned to us.  It was the old woman who held the knife.  Her hate-filled eyes widened and she opened her mouth to yell something.  The words never left her mouth.  Gary’s .40 caliber Hydra-Shok round caught her in the face and sheared everything from frontal lobe to brain stem.  She dropped the knife and fell onto Katie.

The man I’d seen the previous day, the one who was no doubt a partner of the one we’d killed last night, was in my sights.  I had planned on him being my first target.  I was set to double-tap him center mass when he dropped behind an ATV.  I started to pursue him but saw my secondary target turn toward me.  It was exactly like a shooting drill I practiced at home, shooting at spaced targets.  The man was a little older than me with a shaggy gray beard and long, unkempt hair.  He wore a greasy t-shirt and blue mechanic pants.  He raised a shirttail to reach for a revolver, but I caught him before it came free of his waistband.  Another double-tap.  One to the neck, one through the breastbone.  He fell with a grunt.

I returned my attention to my first target in time to see him roll into the ditch, partially obscured by an ATV.  I fired at glimpses of him, but didn’t connect.  He scrambled up a short bank, dodging my shots, and disappeared into the treeline.

Randi was blasting away, not having much luck.  The LCP had nearly non-existent sights and her first shot, no doubt targeting center-mass as we’d told her, went a little wide and caught a skinny guy that looked like a meth dealer in the arm.  He grabbed for his arm, and she emptied the pistol at him, catching him again in the shoulder and once in the abdomen, and he went down.  The remaining man, fortyish with greasy black hair, stubble, and a dirt-covered face, dropped behind the ATV trailer.  Gary and I both plowed rounds into it, punching holes in the plastic sides of the trailer and dropping the man behind it.

I turned my eyes back to the remaining woman in time to catch her raising that tiny revolver on Randi.  Before my brain could tell my hand to center up on her, she thumbed and dropped the hammer, firing a .22 round in our direction.  Randi screamed and the woman’s thumb began to draw the hammer back again for a second shot.  By this time, Gary and I were both moving our weapons to target the woman.  Just before we fired, we saw a blur of movement in front of her.  The movement caused me to hesitate for a fraction of a second.  It was the butcher knife in Katie’s bloodstained hand that caught my eye and there was a brief flash of reflection from the blade as it plunged into the vile woman’s abdomen.  She doubled over in pain, dropping the pistol.  Katie withdrew the knife and was on her instantly.  She pulled the woman down to the pavement, plunging the knife repeatedly into her chest and neck.  Katie’s violence was the only sound in the great silence of the parkway.

Gary and I watched until her movements slowed and she dropped the knife.  She fell over sobbing, curling into the fetal position.

“Cover me!” I yelled at Gary.

I scrambled up the bank and looked for the man who’d escaped me.  I could see the trail he’d taken – the broken branches, displaced rocks, missing chunks of moss – but I would not pursue him.  He was probably in there waiting for me to do that.  I knew, though, that by leaving him alive I was taking a big chance.

Aside from the one that got away, everyone in that group had been hit at least once.  They’d all dropped but I didn’t know if any of them were still dangerous or not and I had to check on Randi.  When I returned to the road, I holstered my weapon, closing the steps to where she fell and was holding her face, blood seeping between her fingers.  She was cursing in a low voice, repeating the same words over and over.  That was a good sign, at least.

“Randi, where are you hit?”She continued her mumbling curses.  I took her by the wrists and pried her hands from her face.  It was immediately obvious that a round had simply grazed her cheek.

“I’m a nurse,” she hissed.  “Give it to me straight.  How bad is it?”

“It’s okay,” I said.  “It just grazed you.  You’ll be okay.  You may not be able to smile for a few days, though.”

“Good thing there’s nothing to fucking smile about then, isn’t it?” she said.  “It burns like hell.”

I yanked a bandana from my pocket and pressed it to the side of her head.  “Hold this on the wound.”

“Great, a snot compress,” she mumbled.

She did as I asked, though, and I stood to assist Gary.  He’d apparently checked everyone and was convinced they were no longer a threat.  He was bent and digging in the pocket of one of the men.

“What you got?” I asked.

Gary held up a pack of Marlboro Lights.  I held out my hand and he tossed them to me.  I shook one loose and pulled it from the pack, sticking it between my lips.  I took the lighter from my pocket, flicked it, and sucked the flame to the tip.

At the sound, Randi’s eyes opened and widened.  I removed the cigarette from my mouth and handed it to her.  “Good for what ails you.”

“Bless you,” she said. 

“Don’t thank me,” I said.  “Thank Gary.”  I turned to him.  “They all dead?”

“No, but they will be before long.  Nothing we can do.”

Gary holstered his weapon and went to check Katie, who’d crawled over to Walt.  Gary checked Walt first, then slowly drew his hand back.  It was obvious that he was dead.  I looked around, found a ratty old blanket in the ATV trailer, and draped it over Walt’s body.  Katie was no longer crying, but emitted a tired, wailing moan.  Gary helped her stand and led her to one of the ATVs, helping her take a seat on one of the racks.  It looked like exhaustion, hysteria, and shock all rolled into one.