The Reaper: No Mercy (5 page)

Duane was a drug dealer from Ringo's home town and in fact had been employed by Ringo for several years. When the shit hit the fan, Ringo had brought Duane along out of the city. Regardless of his appearance, Duane was smart and cunning, an person of interest to the local authorities but one who had never been caught.

Ringo looked at the speaker and forced himself to calm down. He needed to control these men and be smart about it. A certain amount of fear kept the men in line, too much and he might lose some of them. Ringo had been doing alright so far, slowly expanding and consolidating his power base.

Many of his current followers were members of his old crew from Columbia, Missouri, but even more were new arrivals. Some had just walked up to the gate, or one of his scouting parties, recognizing kindred spirits when they saw them. Others were from a few of the groups they had come in contact with, who had no desire to be farmhands the rest of their lives. Still others were culled from the captives they had taken; the test for entrance was simple. Hand them a gun with one round and have them shoot one of their group, or, point to a female captive and order them to rape her. It was a brutal method of testing, but surprisingly effective in how many were willing to kill and rape their fellow man, or woman, in order to gain acceptance. And while Ringo knew that most were lazy fuckers, even drug addicts or the mentally insane, he welcomed them all. Those he couldn't trust he would use as cannon fodder, for he was making a new world, one in which he planned to be King of Missouri, or as much of the state as he could hold.

A mid-city drug dealer and loan shark from Columbia, Missouri, Ringo had risen high in the underworld, at least high in his estimation. He had quickly become known for his ruthlessness with those who owed him money. Those who owed him for drugs and had no ability to pay, he made permanent examples. The marks he loaned money to, who were late on their payments, would be dealt with more gently at first. It was true that it took willpower not to break their legs, but damaged marks didn't pay the bills. You had to be careful, and clever about it. The right amount of force and threat and your payments kept coming. Too much force and they were incapable of making payment. Payments equaled money, and money was power. A strong hand also equaled power, and Ringo was equally versed in both forms. However, this new world was all about power, as money no longer had meaning, so he went with what worked, and he was good at it.

Within days of the dead rising, he and his boys had taken to the countryside, heading north. They'd barely escaped Columbia, but that was cool, and Ringo knew what he was doing. This had apocalyptic end times written all over it, and in those brief times he had been imprisoned he had read his fair share of books. He needed a central location away from the major cities for what he had in mind, which is why he'd settled in Paris.

It did not take a genius to realize that after the crisis, many things would be needed. The need for physical labor was paramount, and that was a commodity he aimed to supply. There were many survivor groups out there, some much larger than others. Carefully he had cultivated contacts with these groups. Some he contacted himself, others his scouting parties had found. It was dangerous work without a doubt, but he had made deals and arrangements that would see his little empire expand. He wanted to be the Man. The man everyone came to when something was needed. It was simply supply and demand.

He had carefully marked their locations on a special map he kept hidden. With that map was a notebook with each groups’ needs! Girls, farmhands, construction workers. The list was almost endless, and they paid in a variety of commodities including gold. Gold had value, after all, and when everything returned to normal, he would have a lot of gold. However, other commodities were equally important: percentages of crops; refurbished windmill generators for when gasoline was no longer available; hoarded medical supplies and doctors he would have access to; the list was endless.

But not all new survivor communities were compliant. In fact, many had turned him or his men away at gunpoint. Some that did were too small to oppose his forces, and those he sent his boys after, cannon fodder first. They would beat them into submission, and then take the younger women and older children for labor or sexual slaves before killing the rest. Now, within a month of the crisis, he had accumulated an extensive list of communities that needed his services, and more that were interested, but had not committed yet. Everything was carefully written down in his notebook. After all, he needed to keep track of who needed what.

Duane had been closely examining the bodies, and now he turned back to Ringo. "Most of them were killed by headshots. That's good shooting, professional."

"Had to be those damn soldiers," Ringo said. Well over a week ago, one of his men had spotted a large convoy of survivors entering the city. With them had been a small group of soldiers with some really huge armored vehicles. They had occupied a group of industrial warehouses just south of town and after giving them a day, Ringo had gone visiting. That meeting had both gone well and not, for there were too many soldiers for his men to take on without a great many of them dying. The large guns mounted on those armored vehicles were crewed by men who looked ready to use them so Ringo had backed off, but not before arranging a truce. Leave each other alone and there would be no problems. Now it looked like the truce was broken, which infuriated Ringo.

"But they agreed to leave us alone!"

"I don't know what the fuck's going on, but let's talk to them. Gather up all the men." And with that, Ringo turned away to his waiting four-wheel drive truck, climbing in. It took only moments to call the rest of his men on the CBs, and within minutes he had over thirty vehicles lined up, all bristling with armed men as he instructed Duane to head to the military group’s position.

Paris was not a large city, and less than five minutes later they were pulling into the parking lot of the industrial complex. One of the men in Ringo's truck bed was holding their white parley flag high overhead as they came to a stop two hundred yards away. Then, once his men had lined their vehicles up, Ringo directed Duane to drive forward, slowly, until they reached a point halfway to the foremost warehouse.

Immediately two of the massive garage doors were raised, and Ringo found himself looking at the military vehicles with mounted guns, and armed soldiers standing to either side of them. One of those vehicles drove forward until it stopped twenty yards away, and a man exited from one of the rear doors. Ringo almost wished he had a grenade with him, as the door opened backward, what they called a suicide door, and tossing a grenade in would have been easy, but he'd used most they had acquired to create traps in the event they were attacked, and the others were back in his rooms at the cemetery.

"What do you want!" The speaker was the Army man who called himself Platoon Sergeant Rodriguez. Ringo scowled at him.

"A bunch of my men were killed by some of your Army boys," Ringo replied, but the Army dude was already shaking his head.

"Not any of mine, I assure you. I told you last week we wouldn't interfere with you if you left us alone. That still stands!"

"Then how can you explain a dozen of my men taken out with headshots? That has military written all over it. Snipers, man." Ringo let his anger and frustration show as he fingered the .44 Magnum strapped to his thigh, the palm of his hand resting on its grip as his fingers flexed outward, then inward. He could see the maneuver upset the man before him and inwardly he grinned.

Immediately the gun mounted on top of the vehicle swiveled around and Rodriguez took a step back before replying.

"If you really want to try something, go ahead. You have the numbers but we have the experience and firepower. How fast can you outrun a .50 caliber round? We had nothing to do with it and just want to be left alone, but if you push, we'll put a hurt on you that you won't ever forget," Rodriguez warned.

Ringo looked up into the muzzle of the machine gun pointed at him and felt renewed rage. This was too much! Then and there, he vowed to come back and fuck these guys up for this shit. He couldn't help himself. Even as the vehicle loomed over him, he didn't care. This was his turf and nobody fucked with him.

He didn't actually know what the armored vehicle was. Only that it was big at fifteen feet tall or so, the muzzle perched on top was large, and worst of all, the damn thing was aimed straight at him. That alone pissed him off even more as he rounded on Rodriguez.

"Then who was it?" Ringo scowled again as he gazed at this man before him.

"You're asking us? We mind our own business and will be out of here soon. We do not want any trouble, but we'll dish it out if needed." Rodriguez scowled back while taking yet another step back.

Inwardly, Ringo congratulated himself, as he knew people. He had an instinctive grasp on what they were feeling, and the more scared they were, the more apparent it was to him. He now knew these military assholes had nothing to do with what happened earlier. It was obvious these Army boys were scared of him, and his men, and were trying to keep the peace before moving on. That suited Ringo just fine. Not that he didn't think he could take them. Just that he didn't wish to lose half, or most, of his men doing so. It was a matter of numbers after all, and he had only so much cannon fodder.

"So you'll let me know if you figure out who it is?"

"I think not, Mr. Ringo. If someone is out to get your men, we will not interfere either way."

"Alright, fine. We'll continue to stay away from you as long as you stay away from us. I still think your boys had something to do with this," growled Ringo.

"Not us, but I can't say it's not warranted." replied Rodriguez.
Damn, the man was showing some spine after all
, thought Ringo, and he knew he needed to stamp this down hard and right now.

"If I see one of your boys even near our place I'll kill them, then I'll come after you!" Ringo was beyond angry. He hadn't learned anything, and had only wasted his time. He was mad, just barely able to control himself, and again vowed that nobody would fuck with him and live.

"Acknowledged. Goodbye." Just this soldier boy's smart ass attitude pissed him off and Ringo knew he had to get out of there, or it would be on!

Fuming, Ringo climbed back in his truck and signaled Duane to leave.

*****

Platoon Sergeant, or SFC Dennis Rodriguez watched as the leader of the gang sped off and the other assembled cars and trucks turned to follow. As the last one disappeared from sight, Rodriguez finally turned back to the M-ATV, breathing a sigh of relief before climbing inside. As he thumped the helmet of his driver to head back, his mind turned to the events that had just occurred. It was only moments before they were driving into the cavernous bay of the industrial warehouse to park alongside the other three armored military vehicles.

The M-ATV was a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, or MRAP, developed by Oshkosh Industries in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and SFC Rodriguez had four of them. Each had a CROWS, or Common Remote Operated Weapons Station, which was a versatile platform capable of mounting a variety of different weapons for a wide range of operations. The mounted weapons could be fired either by crew up top behind the cowling in case of a catastrophic systems failure, or remotely from within the vehicle. Rodriguez had two equipped with the M2 .50 caliber Browning heavy machine guns, with the other two carrying the M240B machine gun. It was these he had pointed at the gang as they drove up.

There was only one problem. Rodriguez had been bluffing, but Ringo didn't know that. Even though the ammunition cans attached to the M2s could carry four-hundred-linked rounds, and the M240Bs could carry one thousand, they had almost completely exhausted their munitions in escaping Moberly. He was now down to less than a hundred rounds in each M240B, and in the M2s’ case, he was down to less than fifty. Sure, they could have dished out some major hurt if attacked. However, this Ringo simply had too many men, and the end result would have been the demise of Platoon Sergeant Rodriguez, his men and all those he had sworn to protect.

Dennis was 5’8” and 170-pounds, with brown skin topped by black hair scattered with salt-and-pepper. Once slightly heavyset, he was now all muscle and bone with the strength behind it, as his Hispanic heritage came to the fore.

The industrial complex they had currently secured was the best location he’d been able to find in the limited time he'd had after the massive firefight in leaving Moberly, Missouri, against the undead. The remnants of the living had needed to get away from any form of major city, yet find a secure facility to house all the refugees they had gathered in as the undead rose and started killing. They had decided on nearby Paris for its remoteness and central location to major routes and resources. Mexico City, Missouri had been considered as a better possibility, but ultimately it was larger than Moberly, thus too many damn zombies. Now their group numbered almost three hundred, mostly women and children, and he was down to fourteen men. This sucked.

SFC Rodriguez had originally been Infantry, but he was now a Battalion supply sergeant with the 143
^rd
Transportation Battalion at the 54
^th
Street Armory in St Louis, Missouri. After ten years of active duty, he had eventually married and then gone straight to the Guard. Being stationed at a National Guard Supply Depot had suited him just fine, and he'd quickly found his niche. Boring but busy paperwork had occupied his days, and the benefits were generous. Those benefits had taken a nosedive when the divorce came, but it was well worth it. It taught him that with some, distance was a wonderful thing in a relationship, or lack thereof.