Justice (3 page)

At first, I got angry about the pixie jokes, the Police Academy references, the stupid nicknames and the constant sexual harassment. Now I used it as fuel. I haven’t figured out how to inspire that kind of thing in others.
Some got it, most didn’t.
You either break life or let it break you.
 

The cool thing about a post-Z world, the victims have all been eaten.
 

It took spine and a little bit of luck to make it in this world. You couldn’t sit around and lament about how the world dealt you a bad hand– ‘cause we’re all in the same boat.

We’re all fucked.

There were some things I couldn’t shake, though, in this new shithole of a world. Like my current nickname. I guess I should be grateful that they had nicknamed me Baby instead of Sergeant Hooks, or G.I. Barbie? I couldn’t sit back and love all over it, though. Being constantly referred to as a demeaning term of endearment wasn’t good for my self-esteem. It pissed me off every time it slipped out of someone’s mouth. And it was happening more and more as people at this damn compound became comfortable with me.
 

Apparently, I wasn’t scary anymore.
 

At first when someone called me Baby to my face, I punched them. It was a lot of punching. I’ve had to reign it in a bit, counting to ten usually worked. Alexis, who was ranking up there as an actual friend, who happened to be female, something new for me, was trying to break me of my distaste of the name. She was doing this by constantly using it. And since I felt guilty about punching her, I was stuck with it.
 

Alexis, who everyone called Lex, came to the Compound right after Z hit. She came with Blake Miller and Zach James, my bosses, and she's turned this place upside down ever since. She is the exact opposite of me as far as looks with bronze skin, dark hair and eyes, and almost a foot taller- no one would call Lex cute. Stunning, maybe, not cute. Not like me, who people liked to pat on the head and speak to in little girl voices. I usually responded to this with something bitchy, but it never goes over well.
 
I might not enjoy being a bitch, but Lex did. It was her most likable trait, in my humble opinion. When she turned her bitchiness on me, I didn't like it much, though. Especially when she used that damn nickname.
 

My retaliation was making her do lots and lots of push-ups. Payback’s a bitch.
 

“Ya fucking killing me, Baby,” she whined from a prone position at my feet.
 

One. Two. Three.
 

“Talk shit again, and you get fifty more,” I hollered in my deepest, butch, drill instructor voice. I might not have planned on being a drill sergeant, but it did relieve a bit of stress.
 

My drill sergeant back in the day, Staff Sergeant Kilpatrick, had been a walking, talking psycho. She had made my boot camp experience utter hell. Taking a special liking to me, she had made a point to constantly single me out. I never quite knew why her attention always fell my way. It might have been my uncanny ability to see the humor in most situations and remark on it. I remember the hat she wore with wicked clarity. She could get the brim of the hat right on the bridge of my nose and tear me a new asshole with remarkable usage of the English language. All while leaving a fine sheeting of spit over my face.

 
I wish I had a hat.
 
I wouldn’t have been able to reach Alexis’ nose though, I was too short.
Bummer.
 

I hadn’t given Staff Sergeant Kilpatrick much thought in the last five years, but she seemed to be resurfacing a lot lately since I found myself using some of her techniques. Zach James had assigned me ten survivors with the express instructions to “get their shit together.” They were a mixed lot, a few were self-trained, like Alexis, having learned quick and fast in this new world we lived in. Others were complete newbs, having somehow made it this far with little defense training. But they were eager and listened to me, and that was all I could ask for. They knew what we were doing was probably going to save their asses, so they paid attention.
 
Well, most of them. Lex was a bit of a smartass and gave me shit every time she could. It’s why I liked her.

The new world we lived in wasn’t friendly, it wasn’t kind. In a little under a year, humans had gone from the top of the food chain to the bottom. We were choice, Grade A, prime meat and death waited for us around every corner. To make matters worse, even the other survivors couldn’t be trusted. It was every man for himself in this shithole of an apocalypse and my group of survivors planned on being on the winning team.
 

This is where this bit of boot camp recreation came in. Gotta get the civvies in ship-shape order. Or whatever those damn Marines called it. I wasn’t hip on seaman slang. What it came down to was one thing– these civilians had to be turned into soldiers in a few weeks’ time. It was do or die, we had no room for error. If you stepped one foot out of our compound, you were fighting for your life, so they had to learn to fight.
 

To achieve this I was running drills with them, interspersed with a lot of cardio, followed with weapons training and then close-combat techniques. The goal was to form quick reaction skills, urban warfare skills and close combat defense moves. All of this would help them against our everyday enemy- the dead that walked the streets. The zombies that had brought the world to its knees last year. It would also help them with the mission our group was planning. A mission not against the dead, but against the living, specifically a group that had taken over an area of New Orleans called Lakeview.
 

When Z hit, most people had grouped together to survive. My group was comprised of my former co-workers and people we had picked up along the way. We were uniquely prepared for the end of the world, being conveniently employed as mercenaries. Most of us were former special forces, and my bosses were in possession of a self-sufficient compound in the middle of the swamp on the outskirts of New Orleans. Our bosses were well-prepared, surprising for two Marines.
 

I give them a lot of flak for their branch, but they did have their heads on straight. They had put this place together quickly and now we were surviving, trying to carve out a new existence. We had a rather good leg to stand on, at least compared to others.
 

The problem with our cushy existence and our adherence to a logical way of life was that we had become the only order in the area. Here we were trying to lay down some kind of moral and logical existence for ourselves, a fact that helped us as a group to survive, and it basically put a target on our backs.
 

Not all the humans left in this chaotic world were like us. Some were desperate, starving or a bit off their rockers, watching the world collapse around them. Others were using the end of the world to set up sick, depraved kingdoms. We were either an obstacle or potential victims.
 

The group we were targeting in Lakeview fell under the latter description. Depraved was putting it lightly. At first we had been content with leaving them to their side of the city. Lakeview was twenty miles away and in this world that was like being across the country. We had tried a no engagement policy until they had stepped over their line.
 

We couldn’t ignore them any longer. We had gotten a look at what was going on within their ranks, what they were doing and how horrendous it was. It was bad.
 

Three of the women doing pushups at my feet had suffered at the abuse of these men. The men who had declared Lakeview their domain. The women had been held captive, abused and forced to witness and participate in numerous unspeakable acts. I had only gotten part of the story, but what I had heard was bone-chilling.
 

My life wasn’t a Norman Rockwell. I had been through some nasty shit in my day, especially when I landed in foster care, but what the men in that gang were doing made my life seem peachy. I had only heard pieces and parts from Lani and Lex, but it was nasty. Repeated rapes, forced drug use, keeping the children hostage to control the parents, not to mention the constant abuse. It had me chomping to get in there and kick some ass. The human population might be severely in decline…but we could deal with losing a few more.
 

“Stop!” I yelled to my group and they all fell to their chests on the ground, some panting. Alexis was at my feet. She rolled onto her back and grinned up at me maniacally. I glared at her and she laughed at me.
 

“I’m not scared of you anymore,” she panted.
 
I could have kicked her. But I also wanted to smile. The fact that she was laying on her back at all was fantastic. Only a week ago she would flinch when you touched her anywhere near her injured skin. It must be nearly healed now. Thinking of her back had me itching to kill someone.

 
Alexis hadn’t told me the whole story. She had mentioned a few key points to establish the Lakeview group’s patterns and behaviors. But I had a clear picture of how she had made it out of there. I had been right there to witness her escape. She had been covered in blood, barefoot and beaten badly. Her back had been a mess of cuts and bruises from a beating she had endured. She could hardly hold herself up but managed to take down two of the gang members, and their leader.
 

Bleeding, broken and barely standing, Lex had helped another female, Melinda, to escape–and she had even gotten Clara out. Clara whose murderous intentions had gotten them both captured to begin with. Everyone wanted to see Clara pay for her crimes, but no one could quite figure out what to do with her since killing her was a little too much for the majority. Clara was currently locked in the infirmary. She traded one prison for another. I didn’t feel bad for her.

I didn’t want to think of Clara right now, it only got my blood boiling. Time for a change of scenery.
 

“Everyone up on their feet, stop whining. Time for some close quarters tactical training.” I clapped by hands for emphasis, like an asshole. Like Kilpatrick used to do. It was all about the motivation. I set a quick pace, running in an easy trot as they got to their feet.
 
Once they caught up, I waved them on to the secondary warehouse we had on the compound. Zach and Blake had converted the mostly unused warehouse into a training facility. We had put up some temporary walls and set up a few sleeping berths like the women had described were constructed in Lakeview.
 

We didn’t want any surprises and we wanted to be as prepared as possible. The group in Lakeview was a biker gang that had taken over a temporary military installment that was being used as a refugee camp. The gang went in and killed the soldiers who were left in the camp and took over as the leaders. The camp was in what were once a grocery store and the adjoining stores in a strip mall. It would be cramped quarters for fighting, dark because they had no electricity, and the bikers would be at an advantage since they were familiar with their surroundings.
 

It was going to be nasty.
 

A close quarters fight would be almost inevitable and I had to prepare these survivors for one of the most horrendous forms of combat. It’s one thing to shoot a target from far away and watch them drop. It’s another to be engaged in hand-to-hand combat, or shoot someone within close range. Nothing like seeing a person’s head explode and getting the gooey spray back.
 

In our briefings we had decided it would be best to draw most of them out of the buildings, but we knew we wouldn’t get them all out. Some would most likely stay behind to guard their stockpiles and the women.
 
This would force us to go in and drag their stinking asses out by their stupid leather vests. It wouldn’t be fun since they were armed to the teeth from what we would could tell.
 

 
“I think we’ve about had it with target shooting. You’re all competent with a weapon and you can shoot a target. But the thing about these bikers is they aren’t going to hold still and let you shoot them.” I pointed at Lani and handed her one of the trainer guns. It was bright orange and looked like a toy, but it had the same weight and grip as a .38.
 

“We've covered how to clear a room, movement, stances and now we’re going to put it all together with our weapons. If we go into the store to get these douchebags out, we’ll be in tight range, and there won’t be time to get in a perfect shooter’s stance. Best case scenario, we’ll catch them unaware and we’ll be able to flush them out of the store and on the defensive. Worst case, we’ll have to go in and fight. If that happens, we’ll have to use some critical tactics that none of you are ready for. These bikers will be within five feet of you, coming at you and most of them are handy in a fight. Barroom brawl style, at the least, military trained at worst. Across the room you have time to get off a few rounds, if you miss, you shoot again. Close range, you barely have time to get your gun in place. Come around the corner and I’m right here waiting for you.” I directed Lani and she did as told, holding her gun to her chest with both hands and swinging around the corner.