Verge of Extinction (Apex Predator Book 3) (10 page)

Kerry sat down in front of Jen, setting the plate down in front of her.  She didn’t know what to say.  She’d been thinking about something all night, but wasn’t sure how to broach the subject.  Finally she blurted it out.  “I need something of Mike’s”

“What?” Jen asked.

“I know it sounds strange, but I need something of Mike’s.”

“Why?”

Kerry pulled a coin out of her pocket.  The coin was oversized and appeared to be made of tarnished brass.  The coin had an arrow head enameled in blue with a yellow lightning bolt emblazoned in it.   “This belonged to my uncle.  He was in Vietnam.  He gave it to me when I was twelve.  I was competing in my first spelling bee.  I was so nervous.”  She felt that familiar knot forming in her throat.  “When I was nervous, he told me to put my hand in my pocket and give it a little rub with my thumb.”

“So, what happened?” Jen asked.

“I don’t know.  He called me on my cell phone that first morning and told me to lock all the doors and stay inside.  I didn’t listen and went to work.  I haven’t heard from him since.”

Jen’s heart sank.  “I was really asking about the spelling bee.”

“Oh, I won.  Uncle Eddy was so proud of me.  We went out for pizza and ice cream after that.”  A tear began to plow through the grime on her cheek.  She shook her head and wiped the tear on her sleeve.  She held the coin closer to Jen.

“You see, Uncle Eddy was my closest relative.  He was always there for me.  He was there for me when the world fell apart.  I just wasn’t smart enough at the time to understand it.  I’m sure he’s dead, and he probably died trying to get to me.”  The tear returned.  This time both cheeks became streaked.  “I am going to make a shrine for the ones we’ve lost.  I want Uncle Eddy’s coin and something of Mike’s to start it.”

Jen didn’t know what to think.  She had never thought about something to commemorate the dead.  There had been so many in the last month.  But, she could see how it would be a nice thing.  She looked around the room.  There, pinned to the end of his sleeping bag, was his name tag from his work uniform.  He had pinned it there when Theresa and Davy were there so neither of the children would sleep in his sleeping bag.  He had always been self conscious about his foot odor and didn’t want the kids to have to sleep in his foot funk, as he had put it.

She slipped the pin out of the sleeping bag and handed it to the younger woman.  Kerry’s face brightened.  She could already envision how her shrine would look with the coin and the shiny name tag with the words “Mike Walters” engraved in it.

Moss Point MS

Tina could feel the tears rolling down her cheeks.  Things had most definitely not turned out the way she and Heather had planned it.  She looked up.  The balding man in front of her smiled at her with an evil smile.  She knew she was going to die.  Even now the grin sent a shiver down her spine.  How did this happen?  When did it happen?  But she knew.  It all started when he showed up.

Tina and Heather had been secretaries together at a small accounting firm in Mobile.  They had been friends for several years.  They had laughed, joked, dated the same guys, and even gotten into trouble at work together.  They had been forced to associate only outside of work after an incident involving one of the owners.

And, that was where they were, at breakfast before work, on the day the world ended.  Neither of the women had recognized what was going on.  First, there was a commotion outside of the coffee shop, the next thing they knew a man covered in blood came crashing through the window.  Two more followed him in.  The trio began attacking patrons and employees alike.

The two girls were frozen with fear.  Luckily for them, there was a couple standing behind them in line that recognized the scene for what it was.  Cathleen and Erik grabbed the women and dragged them away from the coffee shop of carnage.

An hour later the four were on I-10 heading west.  The couple were both ex-military.  Tina picked up on that without asking.  The man, Erik, was very bossy.  He never asked the two girls to do anything.  He was always ordering them around.  It drove Tina crazy that this man would think he’s in charge.  They hadn’t elected him.

His wife was no better.  Oh sure, she would always ask.  But, she wasn’t really asking.  She was still ordering them around.  When they finally found a safe place somewhere in Mississippi, they kept at it.  They would spend hours forcing them to listen to lectures on survival, weapons, and stuff they called personal protective equipment.  Like either her or Heather were going to be butchering those things.  Tina planned on staying as far away from the dead as she could.  They didn’t need to know all of that stuff.

The two girls had discussed leaving the couple, but reluctantly decided to stay.  They decided to keep cooking and cleaning.  Then Andrew Wiggins showed up.  They had found him one day while foraging.  He had been alone and looked and smelled like he hadn’t showered in a week.  They had taken him in.  He seemed so weak, as he climbed the stairs to their hiding place.

He was tall and thin.  His receding hairline made him look older than his reported thirty years.  He wore blue jeans that hung off of him and a denim vest.  The scar on his left cheek was still a pale-pink.  Tina told Heather it made him look somehow tougher than his 155 pounds should have.  Heather had mentioned something about liking the bad boy type when she and Tina had been alone.  The man was definitely cute, Tina had agreed.

He told a story of an escape from a city along the Florida coast.  He told them of his brothers who had not made it.  No one in the group seemed to know if those brothers were blood relatives or some other form of brothers.

Erik asked about his name.  He said he recognized it from some book.  Andrew simply answered that his dad had been an Orson Scott Card fan.  He told them that he grew up with his father calling him “Ender.” He was almost sure that was why he didn’t like to read, he chuckled.

The honeymoon with Andrew soon ended for Erik and Cathleen.  Even as he regained his strength, he would refuse to do anything for himself.  He didn’t wash one dish, forage for any food, nor pick up one piece of garbage from the floor.  When pressed, he would simply tell them he still felt too weak.

Then one night it happened.  While Erik and Cathleen were sleeping, Andrew woke the two girls.  He told them that he could see they were tired of living life under the yoke of such unfair leaders.  He admitted to them that he had some friends around and they would be glad to take in a couple of pretty girls.

The girls agreed that things were not to their liking and wanted out.  Andrew told them that he had a plan.  All the girls had to do was to kill their two rescuers in their sleep.  At first Heather was reluctant.  “But they saved us,” she pleaded with Tina.

“No, they didn’t save us.  They brought a couple of slaves along so they wouldn’t have to work so hard.  They deserve this.  They should have listened when I said they ain’t in charge.”  Without hesitation, the black woman pulled out the knife that Erik had given her that first day.

The look she gave Heather was not one of pleading, but of demanding.  She was demanding that she too take part in this act of mutiny.  The young blonde slowly withdrew her knife.  Her gaze fell upon the blade.  There was a large eagle engraved in the blade.  Cathleen had told her that she had bought it while deployed to the Middle East.

She hesitated.  The black woman suddenly grabbed her wrist.  When she made eye contact, the older woman’s eyes were filled with hatred.  “Do it!” she hissed.  “Do it now!”  The younger girl drove her knife into the neck of the sleeping Erik.  The man struggled for a moment.  He gasped for breath as blood poured from his neck, filling the room with the metallic smell of blood.

A glance at Cathleen showed a much calmer scene.  Tina had plunged the knife through the left ear of the sleeping woman.  She hadn’t move as she died, the blood oozing around the knife.  Tina’s face betrayed the hatred she held for the former soldier, turned rescuer.  She drove the woman’s head into the decking with her boot as she jerked the knife free.

That was a week ago.  Things had gone from bad to worse.  Some of Andrew’s friends had shown up later that day.  There were seven of them that first day.  None of them were clean shaven, or even looked like they had been at any time in the past.  Many had dark, monochrome, tattoos.  Tina recognized them as prison tattoos.  These men had all spent time in prison.  Over the next few days, the group saw a steady influx of every form of bad character.  There were gang bangers, outlaw bikers and drug dealers.  By the time they had all arrived, there were twenty-eight in all.

The two women found out exactly how bad these twenty-eight bad boys were.  The next few days the women were truly treated as slaves.  They were forced to serve the men food, clean everything, and cook.  The men did nothing but drink.  Well, some of them had other habits that weren’t as socially accepted.  Tina couldn’t believe that anyone could shoot up these days.  When she asked the question, she received a backhand and was told to mind her own business.

Then one of the men crossed the line.  A big guy named Ernie with a red beard decided that Heather was there for his pleasure.  She turned him down.  The next thing she knew, he was slapping her and dragging her into another room.

Tina didn’t hesitate.  She leapt over two of the men who were hooting and laughing at the crying girl.  As she did, she drew out her knife and stabbed the man from behind.  She had been trying to stab him from behind into his genitals.  She missed, but managed to sever an artery in his leg.

The man immediately let go of the blonde girl’s hair and clutched at his own inner thigh.  Blood spurted from between his fingers as he rolled on the ground.  Heather regained her feet and began kicking her would-be rapist as hard as she could.  It took her a minute to realize that the room had gone dead silent.

Andrew stood menacingly at the door.  “Take them,” was all he said.  The others fell upon the girls like a pack of wild dogs.  Before they were finished, neither woman had a shred of clothes.  Tina’s hands were tied behind her back and to a beam in the ceiling with an electrical cord from a lamp that no longer worked.

Heather was tied in a similar fashion across the room.  The two women could see each other.  Tina could see a rivulet of blood streaking its way from the corner of Heather’s mouth.  There was a fresh bruise over her left cheek that was swelling to the point the girl couldn’t open her eye.

Most of the men stood around the women.  It was obvious that several of them were aroused.  The bulges in their pants betrayed just how long it had been since any of them had had any kind of release.  Tina knew what was going to come next.  She didn’t have to wait long.

Andrew re-entered the room.  He looked at Ernie’s body. The men had been so angered and so focused on the now naked women that they had allowed the man to succumb to his wounds, curled in the corner.  A pool of blood was spreading under his lifeless body.

“You think you can murder one of us and not be punished?”  Tina tried to speak, but he cut her off before she made a sound.  “You did this to yourselves.”  With that he turned and strode out.  “Have your fun,” he said laughing as he strode away.

Suddenly, Tina’s arms were thrust up, forcing her back to flex and her hips to be thrust towards the rear.  A jolt of pain ran through both shoulders as the muscles, tendons and ligaments strained against the weight of her body.

She struggled to look up.  The man abusing the younger blonde woman was much less patient than her own assailant.  He already had both hands on the woman’s hips and was spastically thrusting behind her.  The girl was screaming.  The man was laughing.

Suddenly, she felt hands on her own hips.  She tried to kick her feet, hoping to provide a moving target.  The man let go.  Stars exploded and her head snapped forward as a meaty fist smashed into the back of it.  Before she could recover, the man had entered her, his fingers digging into her sides as she began to struggle again.

The other men in the room began to cheer loudly.  She looked up again.  Tears clouded her vision.  She saw Heather struggling against her attacker.  This man was smaller than the first.  He was older, his gray mustache curled up in a sinister smile.  Tina watched as he landed a series of punches on the back of the younger woman’s head and neck.  Heather stopped moving.  Her head slumped forward, blood and spittle dripped onto the floor.

The abuse lasted for another forty-five minutes.  When it was over, she looked to Heather.  She could see the girl was also broken.  Her body convulsed as she sobbed.  Tears and blood continued to drip from her face.  She looked to the older woman for strength.  Her eyes pleaded for help.  But there was none.  Tina didn’t have anything left to give the young girl.  She just wanted to die.

Andrew strode into the room.  The sinister grin he always wore seemed even more menacing now.  “Have you two had enough?”  The girls looked at him in disbelief.  Was he going to cut them loose?  “Well, speak up,” he laughed.  “We could keep you like this until you’re ready for a second round.”

It was Heather who spoke first.  “I have,” was all she could muster.  The man’s little grin grew into a smile.  He looked to Tina.  “You?” he asked.  The woman just nodded her head.  “Good,” he said excitedly.  “Now we can get down to business.”

He turned his head and yelled for everyone to come into the room.  The men assembled near the door, Andrew was on the opposite side of the room, the woman in front and to each side of him.  “Well done, gentlemen.  These two women are responsible for the death of one of our brothers, and you have dealt them swift and severe punishment.  They have both agreed that your punishment has taught them a lesson.”  The men began raucously cheering and laughing.