The day after: An apocalyptic morning (11 page)

              Stu's group spread out and found cover across the street from the church, their weapons trained on the doors and windows. When a man stuck his head out the front door to see what the shooting had been about he promptly had a bullet put through it by an M-16 round. The man dropped in a heap and that was when the screaming began inside; a chorus of feminine wails intermixed with the cries of children.

              The battle did not last very long at all. From the top window of the church, two muzzleflashes erupted as two of the townspeople tried, ineffectively, to drive away their invaders. A brief but intense barrage of automatic weapons fire at the window answered this attempt at defense. The glass exploded, tinkling to the ground below, and a series of holes appeared in the wooden frame of the building. No more shots were fired from that window. At the back of the church three women and one man tried to rush out the back door and flee. They were cut down by hail of bullets before they even cleared the doorway. At the front, a young woman carrying a baby in her hands tried the same thing. She and her child were similarly gunned down, their bodies thumping to the mud.

              There were no more attempts to escape the church after this. Stu knew that the townspeople had realized that they could neither drive their tormentors away nor escape from them. They would now be setting up to defend against an attempted breach of the building itself. Even as dumb as these people had proven themselves to be they were probably smart enough to have trained every weapon they had on one of the two doors that allowed entry. They would methodically pick off each person as they came through if a frontal assault was attempted. Stu had no intention of wasting either his men or his ammunition that way.

              "Inside the church!" he yelled loudly, his voice carrying across the rainy street and through the windows. "We are a heavily armed militia group and we have your church completely surrounded by armed men! You cannot escape us! We did not have any wish to harm you. We are just here to take your supplies! Drop your weapons, come out peacefully, and surrender your goods to us and we will leave you in peace! If you do not come out, we will fire tear gas into the building and kill you as you exit! You have one minute to comply with this! One minute!"

              There was no answer from inside at first. It was only when Stu began to loudly count down from thirty seconds that someone spoke. A hesitant voice yelled out: "How do we know that you won't kill us?"

              "You don't!" Stu yelled back. "But you know that we will kill you if you don't do as we say! You have twenty seconds left! If we don't start seeing people coming out with their hands in the air by that time, the tear gas goes in! If the tear gas goes in, we will not accept surrenders and you will all die! Nineteen... eighteen... seventeen..."

              "All right," the voice finally yelled back. "Stop counting! We're coming out!"

              "Men first! And keep those hands in the air!" Stu reminded them. "Leave your weapons inside! Do not try to run once you get out here or you will be shot!"

              One by one, the men emerged, hands in the air exactly as Stu had ordered. They were led by the pastor of the church who was, amazingly enough, dressed in his traditional black suit. In all there were eleven adult males, ranging in age from late teens to late sixties. One of them was wounded, suffering from a bullet in the shoulder, undoubtedly taken during the barrage of gunfire at the upper window.

              "Lie down, face first in the mud over there!" Stu commanded. "Keep your hands out in front of you!"

              They did as they were told, none of them trying any cute moves. Stu and the rest of them relaxed somewhat once the men were secured.

              "Now the rest of you!" Stu yelled. "One by one, hands in the air, no weapons! Do it now!"

              They came out slowly, docilely, marching through the doorway and out onto the muddy lawn. The women, like the men, were of a wide variety of ages, everything from late teens to geriatrics. The largest age group however, was early to late twenties. Some led small, crying children by the hands, whispering encouraging words to them. Others carried smaller children in their arms, holding them tightly.

              "Oh yeah," the man next to Stu said as they watched. "Look at all that pussy! We're gonna have a good time tonight!"

              "Shut the fuck up," Stu said mildly, his eyes never leaving the group, keeping a constant lookout for the slightest sign of danger.

              Once everyone was out of the church, Stu directed the women to sit down on the ground, separate from where the men were lying. They all complied, most of them hugging children to them. The moment they were all seated, Stu gave a hand signal to his group and they suddenly shifted their position, moving to the left, out of the line of fire from the front of the church. They all kneeled down once again, finding cover behind new objects.

              "Mark!" Stu yelled loudly. "They're out and under control! Move in and secure the building!"

              "Moving!" came the faint reply from the other side.

              It took about two minutes before Mark and his group emerged through the front door. "Secure," he told Stu. "And they have a buttload of goodies in there. Canned food, dry food, cigarettes, beer, even hard liquor. It's a motherfuckin' gold mine!"

              "We'll go through it later," Stu said, standing and waving his men to do the same. He began to walk towards the two groups of captives, relaxing now that they no longer presented a danger. "Good job everyone. That was by the fuckin' book." He looked over the smaller bunch, the men. "Who's in charge?" he asked.

              "I guess you could say that I am," the pastor announced, looking him in the eye defiantly. "Just take what you want and leave us in peace."

              "You bet, padre," Stu answered. "But in the meantime, I'd just like to say that you made that way too easy for us. If you would've had a decent defense set up here, we never woulda fucked with you."

              The pastor said nothing and Stu did not push the issue.

              "Where are those twist-ties at?" Stu asked his group at large.

              "Right here, Stu," Harley, a former methamphetamine brewer, announced, holding up a bag of heavy duty zip-ties that they had found in the EDCCC storage room. The cops used them for securing people's arms during mass arrests.

              "Okay," Stu said. "Let's get a detail formed. Harley, Zipper, Billy, Joe, and Spanky, move the men over to the gas station one by one. Keep a close eye on 'em and waste 'em if they try anything funny. Do them just like we told you earlier; hands and feet."

              One by one the men were led over to the gas station building under heavy guard. Once inside the former convenience store portion of the station, they were laid down on their stomachs and directed to place their hands behind their backs and their feet against their butts. A zip-tie was then used to bind all four extremities together, making it impossible for the person to move. It took about ten minutes before all eleven were safely hobbled and stored.

              Once this was accomplished, the group of bikers gathered before the women and children. They held a quiet discussion among themselves as they looked their captives over, gesturing and pointing a lot, laughing to themselves, but talking too softly for the women to hear. Eventually an accord was reached among them. Stu, Mark, and two others stepped forward and began pointing at various members of the group.

              "All those we just pointed out," Stu said, "I want you to stand up. Leave your children if you've got them with the other women."

              There was hesitation until Stu fired a shot over their heads. "I mean fucking now!" he screamed menacingly.

              Slowly the chosen females stood. There were eleven of them in all and the reason for their selection was glaring obvious. They were the youngest and most attractive of the group. They began to shudder in fear as they realized what was in store for them.

              "Harley, Zipper," Stu ordered, "get 'em in the church. Have 'em sit down and keep 'em under guard. Hands off of them for now."

              "Right," Harley grinned, looking lewdly at the raid's bounty, his cock already erect in anticipation of what was soon to come. "You heard the man," he yelled at the women. "Get your asses moving. Into the church, right now."

              Slowly, miserably they marched off to the doorway, the guards flanking them. Several children began to wail as they saw their mothers taken away.

              "Shut those fuckin' kids up!" Stu barked at the remaining women.

              They did their best to comply with this command but it was futile. One of the great truths of life is that children will cry when upset and there's not a thing that can be done about it. Stu, realizing this, did not repeat the order. Instead, he ordered his men to start moving the remaining women and the children over to the gas station to be with the men. "Secure 'em the same way," he said.

              "The kids too?" someone asked.

              "The kids too," he confirmed.

              It took the better part of a half an hour to accomplish. Not all of the women went as docilely as the men had, particularly when they felt the children were being mishandled. One of them, an early-thirties babe that had missed the cut of those led into the church by virtue of the fact that she looked like a truck-driver, slapped Mark across the face when he grabbed her four-year-old son roughly by the arm.

              "You don't need to be so rough!" she said defiantly, standing her ground. "They're just kids!"

              That was the last thing she ever said. Stu stepped forward a moment later and bashed her squarely in the face with the butt of his rifle. She fell, choking and gagging on her own blood, to the ground. Two more strikes to the forehead quieted her. There was no more rebellion after that.

              Once they were all securely tied and bound inside the church, Stu, who was smoking a cigarette that Harley had brought out to him, turned to Mark. "You know what to do now."

              Mark looked at his leader doubtfully. He was looking forward to the night's festivities as much as anyone but he was not at all enthusiastic about his next task. "Are you sure we hafta do it that way?" he asked. "Why can't we just shoot them?"

              "We don't have enough fuckin' ammo to be wastin' it like that," Stu replied, giving his underling a seething glare. "Do you have a problem doin' it the way I told you?"

              Mark cowered under Stu's gaze. "No, Stu," he said. "No problem at all. It's just a pain in the ass to find the supplies."

              "It's a tough job, Markie," Stu said, continuing to glare. "That's why I picked you for it. Now get it done. While you're doing that, I'm gonna take a look around and figure out where to post some guards. If the supplies are as good as you say then we'll stay here for a little while and rest up. And once the job's done, it's party-time."

              "Right," Mark said, taking a glance at the gas station building. "Party time."

              He found a five-gallon bucket near the outside of the church. It's sparkling cleanliness in a world in which everything was now covered with mud told Mark that it was what the townspeople had been using to collect their drinking water in. He picked it up and began looking for the next item he would need. Less than a minute of searching led him to a twenty-five foot garden hose that was still attached to the useless faucet outside the church. Using his folding knife, he cut off a six-foot length of it and slung it over his shoulder.

              Just outside the gas station itself was a Chevy pick-up truck mired to the axles in mud. It would probably still be there when archeologists uncovered this town ten thousand years or so in the future. Mark pried open its gas cap with his knife and then inserted the hose down into the tank. With a few sucks on the other end of the hose, amber gas began to flow. He let it pour into the bucket until it was about three-quarters full.

              After taking a few deep breaths and bracing himself for what he had to do next, he picked up the bucket, carrying it carefully to avoid spilling any, and carried it inside the gas station store. Lying on the floor, most of them crying or yelling or praying, were 69 men, women, and children, all hog-tied with plastic straps. When he began to pour the gasoline on them, their cries turned to screams of panic. They begged him not to do what he was about to do. They pleaded with him. They cursed at him. Many of them began to vomit uncontrollably. One of them, a child, began to convulse. He tried his best to ignore them.

              He made sure every person was liberally soaked with the fluid and then he spread the remaining gas over the counters and on the floor. With their deafening cries echoing in his ears, he walked back outside and threw the bucket to the ground. He stood against the wall next to the outside of the door and took a box of waterproof matches from his pocket. His hands were shaking so badly that it took him more than ten tries before he was able to get one of the wooden sticks to light up. When it did, he closed his eyes and, without stopping to consider his actions any further, threw it through the doorway.