Slowly We Rot (24 page)

          Multiple bright beams
came on out there in the dark.  One was trained right on Noah’s face, forcing
him to squint against the glare and turn his head.  His heart was doing a
stuttering double-time beat as surprise gave way to terror.  And yet a calmer
part of him was thinking the beams of light made good targets.  He had not yet
taken his hand away from the strap of his rifle.  And now that hand curled more
tightly around the strap as an itch to tug the rifle free and start firing
became almost too strong to resist.  To his left came a nearly inaudible sound
of Nick taking a shuffling step in the direction of the cart.

          A firefight seemed
imminent and unavoidable.  Noah’s terror continued to mount, but now it was
joined by a primal excitement and he realized a part of his psyche—a possibly
somewhat unbalanced one—couldn’t wait for the shooting to start.  The one thing
that tempered the urge was his dismay at how easily these people had crept up
on them.  For Noah, there hadn’t been the slightest sense of enemies
approaching until those slides were racked.  It suggested a level of stealth
that was eerie bordering on inhuman.

          Nick took another
shuffling step toward the cart.

          That resonant voice
boomed out again.  “You don’t seem to be comprehending the situation.  There
are guns trained on you from every direction.  You don’t have a chance in hell
against us.  This is your last warning.  Drop your weapons and gear and get
down on your knees.”

          Noah was inclined to
disregard the warning and take his chances in a firefight.  He didn’t know
anything about these people, but the vibe was sinister.  He had a strong
feeling bad things would happen if they surrendered.  Maybe this guy was
right.  Maybe they really didn’t have a chance in hell against them.  But he
figured they might as well go down fighting.

          Then, however, he
realized he hadn’t heard a peep from Aubrey in a while and that was extremely
odd, unless she’d spotted the intruders early on and was lying low to elude
them.

          As if the unseen
speaker had read his mind, he called out again from the darkness.  “We’ve got
your girl, son.  Pretty little thing in a black dress, right?  She’s outside. 
If you want to see her again, you best do as we say.”

          Noah took the rifle
from his shoulder.

          “Easy, son.”

          He knelt carefully to
set the weapon on the floor.  Then he removed his utility belt and pack and set
those down, too.  He heard Nick mutter a curse before also beginning the
process of disarming.

          Then they both got down
on their knees and waited.

A group of several men converged
around them from out of the darkness.  The claim of guns being pointed at them
from every direction had not been a bluff.  Noah now knew he would have been
cut down within seconds if he’d tried to use his rifle.  It was also clear
these people were seasoned and well-practiced stalkers.  In addition to
encircling them without making a sound, they were somehow able to subdue Aubrey
and spirit her out before she could raise the alarm.

          “You assholes better
not have hurt my sister.”

          A hand snapped hard
across his face.  “Mind your mouth, boy.  You’re in no position to make
demands.”

          Other men knelt behind
Nick and Noah and bound their wrists with lengths of rope.  They were then
jerked to their feet and patted down.  A hand went into Noah’s rear pocket and
plucked out the slim paperback he’d tucked away there.  After a moment’s
perusal, the man searching him flung the book into the darkness.  Now he would
never know how
Shadow Rider
ended.  He added this to his rapidly growing
list of grievances against these people.  He vowed there would be a reckoning
for that, just as there would for the rest of it.

          The pat down was
finished within moments and they were pronounced unarmed.  This appeared to
satisfy the apparent leader, a short and slightly-built man in dirty dungarees
and a gray knit shirt.  He had a bandanna around his neck and wore a brown vest
open over the shirt.  This was the same man who’d slapped him moments ago. 
Noah studied his incongruously mild-looking expression with interest, already
imagining how it would feel to kill the bastard.

          They were marched
through the store at gunpoint and soon arrived at the glass-strewn lobby.  It
was still afternoon and Noah had to squint against the bright sunlight as they
continued through the lobby and out the entrance.  But relief swept through him
when he saw Aubrey.  Her hands were bound behind her back.  A tall, bearded man
with a weathered-looking NYPD baseball cap tugged down tight over a probably
bald scalp had a double-barreled shotgun aimed at the back of her head.  Someone
had shoved a gag of some sort into her mouth.

          Noah wished he could
communicate some kind of reassurance, but the means of doing this eluded him.  Any
gesture of reassurance would have amounted to a lie anyway.  Their captors
hadn’t said much yet, but their body language conveyed a clear message.  These
were ruthless, aggressive predators.  There was no hint of compassion in their
flinty eyes, only malicious intent.

          Most of the men were youngish,
in their thirties or early forties.  The one exception was an older man with an
enormous gut that strained a dirty white shirt.  Red suspenders held up grungy
brown trousers.  Wisps of gray hair peeked out beneath the brim of a black
derby hat.  Propped on his shoulder was a wooden baseball bat.  Several sharp
spikes protruded from the fat end of the bat.  His only other weapon was a
revolver in a holster at his hip.  He sneered when he took note of Noah’s
scrutiny.

          “The fuck you looking
at, boy?”

          Noah grunted.  “I’m not
real sure.  Some kind of sad, old clown, I think.”

          The older man lifted
the bat off his shoulder and took a step in Noah’s direction.  “You laughing at
me?  How about I perforate your smartass skull?  We’ll see who’s laughing
then.”

          The short man in the
vest stepped between them.  “That’s enough of that, Hal.  This is a matter for the
Judge.”

          At the mention of this
Judge person, much of the intensity seeped out of Hal’s red-faced expression.  He
backed off and the bat’s handle returned to his shoulder.  “Well, that’s fine,
then.  Hell, you should’ve said so in the first place.”

          In his head, Noah
instantly added a capital “J” to this “Judge” person’s title.  It was clear he
was someone who commanded respect among these men.  Noah almost wished the one
called Hal had put some spikes through his skull.  The odds of the Judge being
a mercy-minded individual seemed slim.  He was probably a sadistic opportunist
who’d seized the reins of authority after all the people formerly in charge in
Henryetta were killed by dead things.  The dozens of bodies hanging from power
lines on the way into town were probably there on his say-so.

          The man in the vest
propped his rifle on his shoulder, inserted two fingers in his mouth, and let
out a piercingly loud whistle.  Soon Noah heard a dim clatter that grew steadily
louder.  In moments riderless horses emerged from behind a building on the
opposite side of the street.  A second group of horses harnessed to a long
wooden wagon trailed behind them.  A lone man sat in a driver’s perch at the
front of the wagon.  The horses all came galloping across the main road at
impressive speed.

          The riderless horses
reached them first.  As they drew near, Noah noticed they were all saddled and
bridled.  Some of their captors immediately mounted the beasts, one of which
whinnied loudly as its rider climbed atop it.  In the next instant it dropped
an impressively large pile of steaming shit on the parking lot.  The
horse-drawn wagon rolled up to a stop close to the loose knot of men and
animals moments later.  The short group leader briefly conversed with the man
sitting in the driver’s perch of the wagon.

          Then he started issuing
orders.

          “Get these thieving
shitheads in the wagon.  We’ll be going straight to the Judge.  Hal and Scott,
you ride with them and make sure they behave.”

          Hal’s ruddy features
arranged themselves in a leering expression that made Noah’s skin crawl.  “You
got it, boss.”  He took the bat from his shoulder and looked right at Noah as
he waved it at the wagon.  “After you, ladies.”

          The comment elicited
chuckles from the other men.  Their amusement deepened the despair gripping
Noah.  He was positive no one among them was even a little interested in
treating them with basic human decency.  He nonetheless felt compelled to make
a last ditch appeal to the leader.  “You in the vest, hold up there a minute.  You’ve
gotta listen to me.”

          The short man had been
about to mount one of the remaining horses.  He turned away from it when Noah took
some steps in his direction.  “You’ll hold your tongue if you know what’s good for
you, boy.  You’re on thin ice as it is.”

          A strong hand gripped
Noah’s shoulder from behind, stopping him cold.  “Just listen a minute.  We’re
not thieves.  We’ve scavenged for supplies in I don’t know how many empty towns
just to be able to keep going.  That’s all we were doing here.  If we’d known
there were still people here, we would have done things differently.”

          “Is that right?”

          Noah’s nod was
emphatic.  “Swear to fucking God, man.”

          The leader regarded him
for a long space of moments with a slack, emotionless expression.  Then he
shrugged and said, “Don’t matter what you thought you were doing.  The law is
the same regardless.  You and your friends are criminals.”  He gestured to the
man behind Noah.  “Teach this one a lesson.  I told you not to run your mouth, son. 
You should’ve listened.”

          And with that he turned
away from Noah and climbed atop his horse, grabbing the reins and pulling on
them to calm the beast as it whinnied.  Noah heard a low chuckle close to his
ear and knew severe pain was imminent.

          He was right.

          A big fist drilled into
his lower back with breathtaking force, dropping him instantly to his knees. 
The same fist felt like a cannonball hitting him as it connected with the back
of his head and made him pitch forward.  He heard yelling from Aubrey as his
cheek scraped asphalt.  She shrieked in pain as another man struck her.  This
resulted in a predictable roar of rage from Nick, which was subsequently
silenced when one of the men on horseback pulled up beside him and whipped the
stock of a rifle across his face.

          These things happened
within moments as Noah remained on the ground, utterly unable to defend himself
or go to the aid of his companions, who were suffering as a result of his
actions.  But he didn’t have time to feel bad about that, because the man who’d
knocked him to the ground had a knee planted in his back and was punching him
in the back of the head again.  That big fist landed three more crushing blows
before the leader called for a stop to the punishment.

          Noah guessed this was
done only because much more of it would have resulted in his death.  The leader
clearly didn’t care whether he lived or died, though.  He merely wanted Noah
still breathing when he was brought to stand before the Judge.

          His head was throbbing
as he was hauled back to his feet and dragged over to the wagon.  The pummeling
he’d taken had turned his vision blurry, but he could see just well enough to
discern that Aubrey and Nick had already been loaded into the wagon’s cargo
hold.  The bearded man in the NYPD cap was also in the wagon.  He was probably
the one the leader had called Scott.  He reached down and grabbed Noah under
the arms, lifting him up into the wagon with the other man’s assistance.  Scott
then gave Noah a savage heave that sent him sliding all the way to the back,
where he stopped when the top of his head struck wood.

          Through the ensuing
fresh burst of pain, Noah heard a snapping of reins.  Horses whinnied and in a
moment the wagon started rolling forward, slowly at first but rapidly picking
up speed.  A clatter of hoofbeats soon turned into a cacophony of sound.  Some
minutes passed before things came back into focus for Noah.  The juddering
motion of the fast-moving wagon wasn’t doing his throbbing head any favors. 
But he finally felt steady enough to attempt sitting up.

          He turned over with a
groan and put his back against the wagon’s rear wall.  The sight that greeted
him almost made him wish he hadn’t tried so hard to fight off unconsciousness. 
Nick was sprawled face-down in the middle of the wagon.  He was alive but
unmoving.  Noah guessed he’d taken some additional punishment after getting
whipped with the stock of the rifle.  This was worrisome, but not nearly as
much as what was happening to Aubrey.

          The fat man in the
derby hat sat with his back against a side of the wagon.  He had Aubrey pulled
up against him between his spread legs.  One massive arm was wrapped tight
around her midsection to hold her in place.  The hem of her ratty black dress
was hiked up and his right hand was between her legs.  Noah shifted around a
bit and tried hard to summon the strength to launch himself at the perverted
son of a bitch.

          Scott made a clucking
sound and aimed his double-barreled shotgun at Noah.  “You stay right where you
are, kid.  I’d hate to have to blow your fool head off.”

          Noah’s gaze flicked
from the shotgun’s long barrel to Aubrey’s detached expression and back again. 
The rage engulfing him did not abate.  To the contrary, it intensified.  His
whole body was shaking with the force of it.  But any attempt at heroism was
doomed to fail.  It’d be suicide.  There was a significant amount of give in
the length of old rope knotted around his wrists.  Getting free of it wouldn’t
be difficult, but he wouldn’t be able to make it happen in time to give himself
a real chance.

          Hal was staring right
at him, his lips peeled back in a grin that revealed rotting teeth stained the
color of mustard.  He licked his lips and waggled his eyebrows in an
exaggerated leer.

          Noah grimaced and looked
away.

          He spent the rest of
the ride in the wagon filling his head with fantasies of how he meant to kill
these men.