Alive! Not Dead! (36 page)

“I know where there are warehouses of food.  Frozen food,” she said.

“Frozen food isn’t good until it’s thawed.”

“That’s what fire is for you dumbass,” she said under her breath.

“Yeah, and I’m going to cook your pussy real soon.  It may be frigid now, but soon it will be all warm and buttery.”

“Fuck you,” she said turning away.

He grunted.  He grabbed her by the hair again.  As she screamed, he dragged her over to a different table.  Mindy and I couldn’t do anything.  Our legs had no strength to stand up.  We couldn’t go defend her or help her.

Dane held her down on the table.  Jace held her arms back.

Why holding her down with one hand, Dane undid the clasps on his overalls.  They fell to his feet.  He wore no underwear.  He shoved himself between the woman’s legs, raping her.

She screamed, begging them to stop, telling them she knew where they could find fresh food, but the men didn’t listen.  They brutally beat her and raped her.

Afterward, out of breath, Dane pulled his overalls back up.  He buttoned them.  He came back over and sat in the chair again in front of Mindy and I.  “That’s what you get when you mouth off,” he said.

I asked “You eat your own
cum
? In the pussies you cook… is
that
what makes them taste all buttery?”

He backhanded me.  The slap was strong enough to send me flying onto my back.  I felt fresh blood start to pour out of my nose.

Jace came over, too, buttoning up his overalls as he walked over to us.

The woman lay on the table, humiliated, broken.

“It makes you feel like a strong man, doesn’t it,” I said, talking through my bleeding mouth.  “Makes you feel strong cooking little boys and beating up on women…but you’re a
fucking worthless stain of shit.
  If you need to cut someone up, do it to me you fuck!”

“As you wish,” Dane said.  He looped my tied wrists back over the chain hook, quickly grabbed the hoist controls and lifted me up
into the air.  Mindy was begging him “
Please No Please
.”  He went back to the table where Pete’s sawed body laid.  “Where’s the fucking hack-saw?” he yelled.

“Here,” the raped woman said.  She was standing behind him, her face bruised, bloodied.  She had untied her bindings.  She held the hack-saw tightly as she quickly sliced through his bearded neck.

Dane spun around totally off-guard when he heard her voice.  This allowed the woman to quickly saw deeply through his throat.  Dane went down into a ball on the ground as his head rolled away.

Jace was in dis-belief.

With every ounce of strength, I pushed myself forward on the hoist.  It was enough to kick Jace in the gut.  This caused him to stumble backward.  He lost balance, pin-wheeled his arms, and went ass-first into one of the burning barrels.

The barrels were 55 gallon drums.  His weight carried his ass half-way down into it.  He was stuck.

The fire burned him right in the barrel.  He was unable to get out.

He screamed like a little girl as he burned.

The woman went over to the hoist controls.  She let me down.

Then all three of us just lay on the cold cement and cried.

We had to leave the building because the smell of Jace burning got too strong.  We all helped each other crawl/walk out to the front of the store.  Our bloody footprints followed us out the door.

The car sat exactly where I had parked it.  I painfully climbed behind the wheel while Mindy slowly got in front with me.  The other lady lay down in the back seat.

It took some time, but we made it back to the house around midafternoon.

Even though I didn’t want to, I stopped at the pharmacy.  Painstakingly climbing through the broken window, careful not to cut myself on any of the leftover glass lying around since my shoes and clothes were gone, I
grabbed several boxes of pain killers off a shelf near the front of the pharmacy.

Back at the house we all went to bed to sleep off our pains and sorrows.

She told us that her name was Liz Carter.
 
She had been an owner/operator of a Kroger food warehouse in Houston.  She was a very professional woman.

We all sat around the living room of our house, mending.  There was nothing really to do other than sit there.  Moving hurt
our bones.  Our muscles ached.

Most of my pain was in my upper arms, and I’m sure the ladies felt that way, too.  Who knew how lo
ng we had hung from the ropes?

It was two days after our escape.  Thankfully we hadn’t eaten all of the fish.  I
painstakingly cooked some patties on the grill.  We each had bottles of water to drink.

I told Liz everything that had happened to us.

Mindy asked Liz “Why did you stay here? Wasn’t your home in Houston?”

“It
was,”
Liz said.  “But my mother got sick shortly before the world ended.  I took a few weeks off to come stay with her up here, to watch over her, take care of her.  I would take her to the clinic for her appointments; make her meals.  We would watch TV together.  She liked the soaps.  She would do a lot of knitting.  But then her health took a bad turn.  She fell sick with the flu or something similar to it.  She never got over it.  One of her doctors said they thought she might have had a slight stroke as well.  She died during my second week with her.  I called work, told them.  They told me to take as long as I needed to get things done.  I set up her funeral and all the arrangements.  Two days after her funeral I was cleaning her house, going through her stuff and the whole house shook.  I mean, it shook hard! It knocked the fireplace off the side of the house! Outside, people were screaming.  Fires were burning.  For a while I thought the whole town was going to burn up but thankfully a line of thunderstorms came through and knocked the fires down.  All of mom’s neighbors were killed.  For the longest time I thought I was the only person left alive, but then the stalkers came around.  They were so scary and so relentless.  I hid in mom’s cellar.  I never knew she had canned so much food! I stayed there, eating the canned beets, the bread and butter pickles, the cucumbers.  I really have no idea how long I stayed there.  It felt like forever because I never saw much light.  I slowly made my way outside.  All of the stalkers were gone – and you told me they all went to the northwest for some reason?”

“They were drawn there,” I
said.  “I have no idea why.”

Stalkers.
  Where have I
heard them called that before?
I remembered hearing it somewhere…but who had said it?

“The northwest…” she said quietly.  She was lost in thought.

Outside, faintly, a dog barked.

We were quiet for a while.  We didn’t think twice about the dog bark.

“Where did they go in the northwest?” Liz asked.

I said “Not really sure.  We were told this by someone in the military.”

She laughed quietly.  “Oh, the
military
…”

“Yes.”

She was lost in thought again; then said “We should go to Houston.  Not only to get further away from the northwest, but I’m sure the food warehouse down there is ok, too.  It lasted through all of the hurricanes these last few years.  Remember Hurricane Jess? That one really tore through Houston, but my warehouse survived with barely a scratch.”

“The northwest is gone now,” I said.  “Remember what I told you about the split?”

“That’s right! It’s gone! Good.”

“Maybe when we’re all better we can head down to your warehouse,” I said, leaning
my head back against the wall.

“Ok,” she said.  “I’m sorry about your little boy
.”

“He wasn’t ours,” Mindy said.  “We only met Pete a few days ago.”

“Oh…”

“We met him…I’m sorry I can’t talk about it.”

“It’s ok.  I understand.”

The dog barked outside again, louder, closer.

Mindy asked “Is that a dog?”

We listened.  It barked again, sounding even closer.

“It is!” I said.

We were sitting in the living room at the front of the house.  There was a large picture window overlooking the front yard.  Suddenly we saw a mangy dog come running into the
yard.  It ran to the front door of our house.  It started scratching to get in.

We all were in too much pain to jump up or answer the door.  I slowly stood up, making my way there.

“Wait, Dan,” Mindy said.

I turned to her.  “Why?”

“How did the dog know we were in here?”

“Probably our scents.”

“Just wait a sec,” she said as she managed to stand.  She walked to the edge of the picture window.  She peered down the street.  “I’m gonna check to see if…”

A good-sized rock
came sailing through the picture window.  Luckily all of us weren’t in the direct line of fire.  Glass rained down into the living room.  The dog stopped scratching the front door.  Instead, he jumped through the window.  He didn’t bite or attack us.  His tail was wagging like mad.  He was happy to see us!

We all were confused.

I looked at the dog, then at Mindy.  Her mouth was hung open.  She was staring at what was left of the window.

A huge slob of a man with a long snarled beard stood in the window.  He had a red bandana.  He had a shotgun pointed at us.

“So this is where you went to after killing my boys,” he said softly, angrily.

Liz screamed.  I saw in her face that she recognized this man.

“Scream all you want,” he said mercilessly.  “You’re mine now.  I’m gonna slice all three of you fuckers up.”

“Please, leave us alone,” I said.

“You know I can’t do that.  But, I’m really not after you two – not really, still gonna kill ya but, that bitch there, she’s toast.  She slammed my hand in a car door and that hurt like a motherfucker.  I’m gonna make her pay.”

“Please, no…” Liz whimpered.

He stepped through the broken window.  He was huge.  He probably weighed close to 400 pounds.

“But I was told to track you down,” he said as he pointed his gun at me.  “You’re Dan Kingsley, right?”

That stunned me.  How would he know who I was? I didn’t answer.  I was simply shocked.

“And you’re Mindy Thompson,” he said as he pointed the gun at Mindy.

She was just as shocked as I was.  She asked “How do you know our
names?”

“Some fella in a military uniform stopped me.  He told me to bring you back to the market.”

Liz was shocked, open-mouthed.

“Let us go.  Please,” Mindy begged.  “We just want to live our lives.”

“I can’t let you do that,” the fat man said.

“Come on man,” I said.  “We’ll do anything.  Just let us go.”

He shook his head no.

I was in too much pain b
ut I still tried to fight him.

It was a mistake.  He had me pinned on the ground before I even realized it.  My body screamed in agony.  He taped my hands behind my back, taped my legs together, and gagged
me.  He used duct tape to bind me.  I couldn’t budge.

He did the same to Mindy.  She didn’t fight him.  There was no use.

Liz struggled with him.  He shoved her around pretty hard as he taped her up.  “You’re gonna get fucked up,” he told Liz.  “Paybacks are a bitch, they say.  Well, heh, you’re my bitch, and paybacks are hell!”

When he was done taping her up, he hoisted her over his right shoulder.  He carried her outside after tel
ling his dog, Teller, to stay.

You watch them, Teller! Stay!
And if they try to get away, sic the man’s balls!”

Outside, at his pickup truck, he let the tailgate down with a thud.

“Here’s payback number one,” he said.

He slung Liz’s body down into the back
of the pickup as hard as he could.  When her body hit, the truck bounced on its shocks.  There were snaps as bones broke.

He thre
w her face-down into the truck.

We were bound, sitting on the glass covered couch.

The dog sat in front of us, not growling, just watching us, panting.

There was nothing we could do.  I couldn’t budge.  My hands were bound.  I couldn’t get my fingers around to rip the tape.  I couldn’t turn to face Mindy.  I could only turn my head.  She was crying.  Her mouth was covered in duct tape, too as well as mine.

Even when I tried to squeeze out of the tape, my sides hurt too much from our earlier beatings.

All we could do was wait.

Washburn found us,
I thought. 
What’s he going to do to us now that we’re caught? If only I could get out of this fucking tape!