TAGGED: THE APOCALYPSE (15 page)

She heard a
whooshing sound behind her, and the side of the coop erupted in flame. She could hear the panicked chickens clucking and flapping and the sounds of the infected moaning became louder.

“Come on
, we have to open the door.” She ran around to the front of the coop and began struggling with the large barn-sized door.

“Get the nets!” Jackie ordered
, and everyone scrambled to arrange the two empty remaining nets in front of the door. Smoke was filling the coop and the chickens were throwing themselves against the door and walls, flapping and clucking, desperate to escape the smoke and billowing flames. “Shooters ready!” The shooters lined up on the truck beds, and pointed their weapons down at the closed barn-sized doors, over the heads of Eve and the men down below.

Jackie and Sven each had pistols in one hand and long rifles strapped to their backs
. Sven handed Eve a pistol. Jackie, Sven and Eve flung open the giant double doors and out came pouring smoke and panicked chickens. A few infected wandered blindly into the light and were shot by Sven, Jackie and the shooters. The smoke seemed to confuse the infected and they seemed much less aggressive.

In the span of three minutes, hundreds of panicked chickens flew into the nets. They increased the day’s chicken run take by the power of
ten in three minutes. Most of the infected remained packed together in their circle in the middle. A few stood in deeper shadows near the door. They were shot.

Some of the men wanted to shoot into the pack. “No!” Jackie said. “If they rush us
, we’re dead. Help me lock these doors back up.”

The net of chickens
was so heavy it took every available hand to load into the open beds of the large truck. The entire building was consumed in flames now. A few infected ran out of cracks in the building, their thick hairy manes aflame, their tattered clothes alight carrying the sweet sickly smell of burning human flesh in the smoky air. They were shot immediately. Horrible screams and sounds of torment issued from the burning coop. Eve strained her eyes from the truck, afraid to approach, ready to flee. Finally, through the fire and smoke, she thought she glimpsed a huddle of infected digging into the dirt and throwing it on top of themselves. They couldn’t run safely into the dim daylight of the last days.

“We will return tomorrow for the rest of the chickens in the other coup,” Jackie said.

Eve held out the gun butt first to return it to Sven. Sven began reaching for it then changed his mind, instead tousling her newly cropped hair with his large hand. Her body temperature flashed hot at his touch, and she felt her cheeks flush. “I like your hair. Did you do something to it?”

Eve was tongue tied
, and she was angry with herself for reacting so transparently. She opened her mouth, but no words came out.

Sven cocked his head and leaned down to get a look into her
down cast eyes.“You keep the pistol. You’ve earned it.”

A fresh issue of
tormented screams and howling emanated from the building as they pulled away in their truck. The building collapsed in flames but she saw no infected run out of it. Sven smiled at Eve before getting behind the wheel of the truck. Everyone was smiling at her and had words of encouragement for her. Eve realized that she wasn’t afraid, and right now at least, she didn’t want to die.

Animals. These men were filthy animals. Actually, animals were much better than these men. Brit peered out from the corner of the guardhouse, feeling trapped. “You have to stop this. This is going to get us all killed.” Brit spoke quietly to Dennis. Thompson had removed Alexis from the cell where they were holding all the girls, to have his way with her. Alexis said, “Be gentle, big boy,” and forced a nervous smile.

When Thompson was done, immediately Rusty wanted a turn. Candy said, “Leave her alone now. That’s enough.”

“Who do you think you’re talking to, bitch?” Rusty opened the cell and slapped Candy across the mouth. “You’re not in charge.”

“And you think you are?” Candy said under her breath
, then smiled very broadly. “Look, this will be over in a few hours. Don’t do anything you’ll regret.”

Rusty pulled her roughly out of the cell and shoved her into the next room. “I’ll show you who’s in charge.”

Candy never made a sound, but when she came out of the room to be put back into the cell with the other girls, her clothes were disheveled and there was a large red handprint across her face where Rusty had slapped her.

“S
he is fucking hot!” Rusty had a big smile on his face. Thompson smiled back. “Like porn star hot! No wonder she charges so much. I think I’ll have a go at Alexis after all.” He moved toward the cell after the briefest of pauses. Alexis shrank toward the back of the cell, behind the other girls.

“No. That’s enough.” Dennis stepped in front of the cell. “They’re on their way back. Pull it together.” Dennis dispatched them to the guard gate catwalk.

“I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do?” Brit went to the cell after they were gone. The girls huddled in the back in a terrified bunch. “Do you need anything?”

“Yea
h, let us out of here.” Candy fixed him with a steely glare. “Look at what they’re doing to my girls. Brit, I can offer you unlimited free visits. You help me, I help you. Let us out. They’ll never know what happened, and I’ll owe you one.” Candy realized her mistake after the words were already out of her mouth.

“I…I can’t.” Brit turned away
, involuntarily putting his hand to his mouth to choke back the bile. “I’m sorry. I really am,” he said, and hastily shut the door behind him. He couldn’t think of anything he wanted less than constant pressure to have sex with women, by accepting free unlimited visits to the girls.

Sven mulled over Eve’s reaction to him moments before. It was obvious she liked him and they had a connection. When he touched her hair, he could feel her immediately respond and it was hot! He wanted her. At that moment, all he could think about was taking her to a private place to cuddle up with her. He needed to know her physically, emotionally and at the deepest levels of his being. But there was the issue of Brit…was she simply playing them off against each other? Raising her price by playing the field? Sven had to admit that to some extent this was what his thing with Alexis was about. Sure, she was an attractive woman, but really he just needed a little emotional space from Eve who had become a bit clingy after the death of her parents and it never hurt to gauge a woman’s interest…

“They took the girls…Candy…over.” Zeb’s voice
crackled over the radio as they came within a few miles of the plant.

“Say again?” Jackie spoke into the radio
riding shotgun while Sven drove.

“They took Candy and the girls. They are holding them hostage in the guardhouse.” Sven slammed on the breaks
, crushing the chickens against one another in the net, and tossing Eve and the others forward in the back of the truck. They needed to think this through. There could be an ambush waiting ahead.

“They better not hurt Candy,” Sven shook his head.

“What do you advise? Over.” Jackie stepped out of the truck and spoke loudly into the radio.

“They say they just want to talk
,” Jeb said. “Frank, the Doc and some others are set up in the bottom of the tower as defenders. About half of the folks from Building 3 are in the bottom of the tower. The other half stayed in Building 3. We’re buttoned up tight here at the top. It’s just me and Mack up here.” No one had seriously considered the possibility of attack from within their own ranks.

“
Sit tight. Don’t let anyone in or out. Don’t engage the enemy unless absolutely necessary…” Jackie began.

“Th
ere won’t be any shooting from our side,” Dennis broke into their conversation. Apparently, he’d been listening the entire time. Jackie took his thumb off of the send button and stomped around outside the truck cursing silently. “This is a peaceful protest, if you will, of the current division of goods in the community. We merely wanted to get your attention.”

“You have my attention, Dennis.” Jackie spoke through gritted teeth. “What is it that you want?”

“We want half of everything. And as a show of good faith, we want all of the chickens you scavenged today.”

“Let’s go back.
First of all, I understand you are holding Candy and the girls as hostages.”

“They are not hostages. We needed to get your attention.”

“Have any of them been harmed?”

“Absolutely not
,” Dennis lied.

“I’m going to need to speak to Candy before we can continue negotiating
,” Jackie said, getting control of himself.

“First of all, I’m calling the shots here
, not you. Number one, I’m going to need you to agree to our demands. Number two, upon agreement, I can offer you safe passage back into the power plant and the tower. I would hate to see you all have to spend the night outside the gate. No telling what could happen out there…” Dennis’ voice was measured and reasonable in an ‘I’ve got you by the balls’ kind of way.

“If we don’t get these chickens out of this net and inside they’re all going to die. That means no food. We don’t bring these chickens in,
you
starve. We are prepared to spend the night outside the gate. We considered this possibility before going on this scavenging run,” Jackie lied.

“Half of everything and all of the chickens in exchange for Candy and the girls,” Dennis
said.

After
ten more minutes of negotiation, Jackie bargained Dennis down to half of the chickens in exchange for Candy and the girls and safe passage. The remaining exchange of goods would occur the following day.

Brit chewed his fingernails mercilessly as he watched the exchange of the chickens. Candy and the girls were held at gunpoint by Rusty and Thompson at the front of the guard tower facing the entrance. This was bad, really bad.

“If any of you ladies decides to run, you’ll be shot,” Rusty threatened.

Candy just glared at Rusty. She never took her eyes off of him. Alexis held her stomach and looked down. Brit saw movement out of the corner of his eye by the fence to his right. It was a sniper wearing camouflage lining up a shot on them. Brit was too far to see his eyes, but he looked at him and nodded and then stepped back into the concrete entry way out of the line of fire. Finally, peaking tentatively around, he thought he saw the sniper nod back. He hoped that the man, whoever it was would tell Jackie that he saw him and didn’t reveal his position. He knew that Zeb had more shooters on top of the tower facing the fence, but they were on the other side of the guard gate house. Likewise, they had all available guards up on their catwalk, ready to fire should anything go wrong.

Jackie and Sven had the chickens ready when Dennis lumbered over. Dennis was having trouble dragging the chickens himself
, so Thompson ran out to help. Dennis gave the signal to Rusty, who released the girls. They took off running toward the tower. Candy just stood there looking at Rusty with something in her mouth. She stepped toward him and spit a big wad of gooey phlegm into his face.

Rusty
was momentarily in shock, then back handed her across the face where she landed in a heap at his feet. Then realizing he had a rifle, he turned the butt side to her and was about to bash her before she could get up. Candy lifted her arm to protect her face.

“Let her go! Candy
, get out of there!” Jackie boomed. Every gun from the chicken run trained on Rusty and Dennis.

“Let her go
, Rusty,” Dennis called. Rusty lowered his weapon. Candy turned and slowly walked away toward the tower with her head held high, not looking back.

“That one. That motherfucker right there. The one with the red hair. See him?” Candy pointed, stone faced, at Rusty. Rusty could feel someone watching him on the back of his neck as he helped Dennis and Thompson to drag the net of clucking, squawking and flapping chickens the final few feet into the guardhouse. Rusty turned and saw Candy pointing at him. They locked eyes momentarily from a distance. “Dead. You hear me, Jackie? That fucker is dead.” She turned her back and stalked away into the tower.

“We’ll take care of it,” Jackie nodded.
“It was a mistake letting them go the first time. No good deed goes unpunished.”

“He raped me
.” Alexis stood behind Candy, speaking barely above a whisper to Jackie, her face a mask of pain, tears flowing. Jackie turned away. Alexis immediately turned toward Sven, “He raped me.”

“Who?”

“Thompson.” Alexis appeared terrified as she
pried her eyes from her feet to look across the gap between the buildings, but didn’t point and showed only defeat and pain, not anger.

“Tell Candy
,” Sven said, and began pulling again at the net filled with terrified chickens. Alexis took it like a slap in the face, her mouth hung open with the shock of the latest blow. Sven saw her reaction and regretted blowing her off, “I’ll see what I can do.”