End Days Super Boxset (60 page)

“Let’s talk business,” Arthur shouted. His voice began to grow hoarse. “Seems we both tried to fake each other out. Rather than some long, unnecessary shootout, I propose we make a trade and call it even.”

Elliot, Krystal, and Mayra lay alert in their positions around the camp, taking everything in and listening to Rob’s instructions on the radio. He told them to stay in place, and that Carlos was going to take the shot the first chance he got.

“Rob?” Arthur called out. “Look, we’re not going anywhere. You might as well talk to me. I have an army here. True, your traps did some damage, but I have five times the people you do. It’s a game of numbers.”

Rob pulled the trucker closer as the man quivered. “It’s time to get this show on the road,” he told him, and looked the man in the eyes. “When I stand up, you come with me. Got it?”

“I … what are you going to do to me?” he asked.

“Nothing. Just follow my lead.” Rob looked at Peter and Brad. “We’re going to lure Arthur out. One of you watch my six.” They nodded as Rob called Carlos. “Be ready. Take him out at first sight.”

Rob pulled the trucker up with him. “What’s your name?”

“Shane,” the man said, as Rob pushed his in front, gripping his shoulder with one hand.

“All right, Shane. Let’s take a couple of steps forward.”

Shane took a few shaky steps as they moved out from behind the barricade.

“Arthur! You want a trade? I’ll make a trade. One of your men here, Shane!” He nudged Shane a few steps farther with the barrel of his pistol to his back.

Arthur had yet to emerge, but he yelled back from his concealed position. “OK. What do I get for him?”

Rob wasn’t amused. “I’ll give you one minute to organize your people and get the hell out of here, or I’ll put one bullet in the back of his skull.”

There was no response on Arthur’s end.

“One minute!” Rob shouted.

“OK, Rob. You win. Hand him over,” Arthur said, holding a hand out.

“Come on out and get him!”

Silence fell over the camp. Everyone on both sides waited in heightened anticipation. The smell of gunfire from all the sentry traps lingered in the air. The kids stood huddled in the corner of the room as Mila took a look out the window. Carlos’s finger caressed the trigger of his rifle as he locked in on Arthur’s spot. Larry, Arthur’s right-hand man, was positioned one tree over with a hunting rifle of his own—locked-in on Rob.

“Ten seconds!” Rob shouted.

After a slight pause, Arthur gave in. “Wait! I’m going to come out. And if I
do,
I don’t want any funny business. Let’s settle this like men.”

“Deal,” Rob said.

Arthur emerged from behind the tree, slightly out of Carlos’s target area. He readjusted and was trying to line up a perfect head shot. Rob was right, however. Myra was a better shot than him.

Then everything happened so fast that Carlos didn’t know what to think. Arthur took three quick steps forward, pulled out a long .357 Magnum and fired at Shane, blowing three giant holes in his chest. The shock threw Carlos off balance, but he immediately fired, hitting the mayor in the shoulder and sending him down on his back.

“Now!” Arthur shouted, his mouth full of blood.

Shane’s body collapsed and left Rob open. Before he could jump out of the way, a shot hit him in the abdomen as though a rocket had just been launched into him. He flew back and hit the ground hard. Gunfire suddenly began crisscrossing everywhere. Brad jumped to Rob’s aid, hovering over him. Rob looked up at the sky in complete shock. The round had struck his vest and managed to completely knock the wind out of him.

“Rob, you all right?”

A barrage of rounds flew overhead. The men from the woods charged forward in one mass movement. Shots rang out from both sides. Carlos fired from the tower, taking several of the men down. Peter, Krystal, Mayra, Elliot, all did their part and fired back at the advancing men. More unarmed townspeople began to emerge, running in front of the men with guns, confusing the camp about how they should engage.

“Rob,” Brad said, “look at me.”

Rob was hyperventilating. It felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to his ribs.

“You are one lucky son of a bitch with that vest on, but we gotta do something. Another wave of townspeople is headed our way.”

Many had already made it through the camp and gone immediately to the cabins, tearing through them in search of stolen goods. Carlos did his best to stave them off, shooting all around them. Peter, Elliot and the others were overwhelmed as dozens of people ran past them and into the cabins. Gunshots followed. Mila’s gunshots.

“Oh God! They got in!” Peter said, jumping up. He signaled to his wife. “They’re in our cabin. We need to stop them.”

A rabid group ran past Peter, nearly knocking him over. He fired his pistol in the air as they scattered. Carlos had had enough and began shooting anyone in his sights. The frenzied mob didn’t seem to notice or care, even when their own hit the ground, dead.

Brad sat Rob up and pulled the vest off him to help him breathe. Larry and some of the others were in the process of evacuating Arthur from the center of the battle. Most of the freemen had left the site, allowing the townspeople free rein to raid and vandalize the camp.

“Mila,” Rob said, holding his side. “We have to go help her.”

Brad helped him to his feet, and they made their way to the Dunne cabin as Peter and Krystal ran by. Shots from the tower struck all around them, missing the scattering targets. A man suddenly charged Rob and Brad with a two-by-four cocked back and his face enraged.

With one arm around Rob, Brad raised his pistol and shot the man through the head. His body fell as others scattered. Sounds of distress erupted from the cabin. Glass shattering. People screaming. And then silence.

By the time Rob and Brad got there, they found the cabin raided, their people injured and the bodies of dozens of townspeople dead on the floor with gunshot wounds. He raced to the room to find only Mila and Ashlee. The children were gone. Ashlee lay on the floor beaten and injured. Brad let Rob go and rushed to her side in horror, screaming her name.

Rob looked over to see Mila crawling on the floor near the shattered window, crying. Reba was crouched down, terrified, in the corner.

“What happened?” Rob asked, frantic.

“They swarmed in here like animals. There were so many of them, we couldn’t stop them!” she cried. “They took the children.” She sobbed as Rob cradled her. “They said that now they have something we’ll trade for.” They held each other on the bloody floor as the reality of the situation began to sink in.

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

It was early evening when the cargo truck roared through the cleared streets of Tartarus with its precious cargo in the back. The roving metal beast gained the attention of townspeople within earshot. It had been so long since anyone had seen or heard a working vehicle, and they wondered if it signaled a change of things to come. The military-style truck was large and bulky, with a camouflaged canopy covering the back. The mere sight of it instilled hope.

“We’re saved!” a bushy-haired middle-aged man shouted from his ransacked house.

“Cliff!” his hesitant wife cried out as he vanished.

The man’s family stayed behind and watched from the window as he ran outside to flag the truck down. The truck’s headlights were off. Its bulbs even looked shattered. Smoke billowed from its long vertical exhaust pipe. There was a black star painted on the passenger’s side that looked like the symbol of the US Army. The sight only propelled Cliff further. He dashed through his overgrown lawn and ran out into the middle of the street as the truck steadily approached.

“Hey!” Cliff shouted, waving his arms frantically in the air.

The truck’s horn blared, and the shuttling beast showed no signs of slowing down.

“Get out of the way!” his wife shouted from the front door, clutching her tattered bathrobe. The truck was bearing down, a mere ten feet away from him.

Cliff flailed his arms. “We need help! Stop!”

The truck was getting dangerously close. The blaring of its horn grew more incessant. Cliff’s instincts took over, and he leapt out of the way as the truck zoomed by. Wind and exhaust enveloped him as he flew face-first into his neighbor’s yard. With his face in the dirt, he couldn’t see a thing. The sound of the truck’s engine became fainter as it sped on.

Cliff rose from the ground and wiped his face on his shirt sleeve just as two lines of people began to walk by on both sides of the road, trailing the distant truck like foot soldiers. Cliff knocked the dust off his jeans and looked more closely. The men were armed with rifles and appeared as shadows, backlit against the dusk sunlight.

“Get back in your house,” one of the men belted out in a gruff voice.

Cliff squinted, trying to see more clearly what this was, as a sinking feeling came over him. They weren’t soldiers after all. They were freemen, the gang of criminals who had taken over the town for the past two and a half months. Their makeshift fatigues were dirty and bloodied. They looked exhausted. Maybe the rumor he had heard was true, and they had just returned from an assault on Bear Mountain, where they had destroyed a supposed group of bandits who threatened the town. At least that’s what the townspeople had been told by Arthur Perkins, their mayor. Perkins had convinced over a hundred townspeople to join the cause, and from what Cliff saw, there were few townspeople returning.

“What happened?” Cliff asked as the freemen walked by, not even glancing at him. “Where is everyone?”

No one answered.

Cliff turned to try to catch another glimpse of the cargo truck as it turned away at the end of the street. “Where did you find that truck? What’s going on?” he asked.

His repeated questions were ignored.

“Damn it, answer me!” he shouted.

Larry, a lanky leather-clad biker type and the mayor’s right-hand man, stepped to the side and pushed Cliff away. Larry scowled, and his handlebar mustache twitched. His face was covered with black smudges, dirt, and sweat.

“I said go back in your damn house!” he shouted.

Cliff approached him, defiant. “I had friends who went up there!”

Larry crossed his arms, clearly amused now. “Well, aren’t you a feisty one?”

Silence came over both men as Cliff tried to catch a glimpse of anyone he knew passing by. They were all Arthur’s men. Not a single person he knew personally.

“I just want to know what happened to my friends,” he said.

“Sounds like you’re prying to me,” Larry said. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll let it be.”

“I’m not afraid of you,” Cliff said. “This is
my
town. And a lot of the people who went with you were
my
friends.”

“They’re dead,” Larry said bluntly.

Cliff tensed up in shock.

“Well…” Larry paused. “Not all of them. Most, though.” He patronized Cliff with a pat on the shoulder and walked off, leaving him standing there in the yard just as the sun faded and night encroached on the shattered town.

The cargo truck continued down an obscure nearby road, approaching a vacant warehouse commandeered by Arthur and his men and initially used as a hideout. But things had changed. The warehouse had been converted into a prison of sorts while Nyack’s modest town hall building had become freemen headquarters. Long since vacated by the real mayor, Jeanine Layton, the town hall offered Arthur and his men the appearance of legitimacy they so desired—even if acquired by force.

The four-term mayor had disappeared soon after the September 12 EMP strike, along with most of the county council. In this time of crisis, their absence was baffling, but not nearly as disturbing as the disappearance of the sheriff and most other law enforcement officers.

After the blackout, it took less than a week for the looting to start, two weeks for Arthur’s men to ravage the town, and two months to completely take it over. By then it seemed unlikely to most that things would ever go back to normal. As prisoners in their own homes, reliant on the freemen for necessities, and afraid of things to come, it seemed there was no end in sight to their daily nightmare.

Arthur rode in the passenger seat of the truck as Eddie, one of his trusted men, careened the truck over the bumpy dirt road to the warehouse. The engine ran fine for the most part, considering that the truck was so old. The Vietnam-era truck had been discovered during a raid of farmhouses on the outskirts of town. Its owner, a coarse, elderly man named Dewey, tried to stop the freemen from taking it and was quickly dispensed with. The discovery of a working vehicle had been kept a secret from the townspeople. Any such knowledge could possibly lead to a revolt. But now it wasn’t a secret, and he had some explaining to do.

As the sun faded behind the horizon, the town became barren and dark. The only light came from the flickering of kerosene lamps in some homes and outdoors, from the glow sticks raided from a local outdoorsman hunting shop. The truck was difficult to navigate in the dark on account of its blown-out headlight bulbs.

The truck rocked and shook along the rugged path to the warehouse. When the long, rectangular one-story building came into view, Arthur pointed ahead and shouted directions to Eddie over the noisy engine. “Go ahead and park around back!”

Eddie nodded and pulled onto the grass, where the ground got even bumpier. They could hear shouting from the back of the truck. Young voices, some howling in pain. Eddie carefully followed a line of glow sticks that led to the back, where a few guards stood, rifles in hand. The truck heaved as Eddie downshifted. Arthur flew forward, almost hitting the metal dashboard. The window was down, and a breeze blew through his hair.

Teresa, his wife, hadn’t given him a haircut in a few weeks. But that would have to change. Appearance had a lot to do with being mayor. At forty-five years old, Arthur had the look of a politician. He was tall, with a chiseled face, steely eyes, and a thick head of silvery hair that now fell just below his ears. Bruised and dirty, he was as exhausted as the rest of his men. But there would be no time for rest. Not that night.

The Bear Mountain assault hadn’t gone as well as he had planned. The mountain people were formidable foes, and they had defended their land well. Arthur and his men were unable to defeat them and seize the five cabins that made up their camp. Instead, they were staved off with a variety of booby traps—trigger wire and spikes hidden among them, like something out of a movie.

The mountain people were no joke. They knew what they were doing, and their leader, named Rob, posed a serious threat to Arthur’s vision of staying in charge when the power grid came back on. Arthur would have to destroy him… eventually. In the meantime, he had the best bartering tool that he could imagine: their children.