Murphy's Law (Roads Less Traveled Book 2) (11 page)

Payback’s a bitch, Shakes.

“I’m trying,” Kyra whispered back.

She’d never thought much about muscles before, never had reason to. Now she was wishing she’d spent a little more time working out and a little less time dieting and trying to stay skinny. After grunting and only making it partly to her knees, Devon hissed beside her; his cue that Shannon was returning. They quickly let themselves fall back into prone, hanging positions, pretending to be unconscious. Shannon walked back into the dilapidated room, ducking to miss a broken two-by-four, and stopped in front of the carcasses to admire her handiwork.

She had watched Shakes very closely when he’d used the heavy metal chain things to put the bitch and the bossman up in the air, then she had used them to hang the rest of the bad men, so she could peel them upside down. Guts were oh-so-fun to watch when they spilled out that way.

* * *

Jake scrunched his nose. “Goddamn, do you smell that?”

We were approaching a gently sloping hillside at the far end of the field behind the Gasco Stop-N-Shop off route 17. I stuck my finger in Jake’s face and made a shushing sound.

“Do you always have to state the obvious? Be quiet.”

We’d tied the horses up at the gas station. A risky move, yes, but we were going to need as much stealth as possible to pull this off. As far as I knew, they could have recruited more criminals to their cause, and on the other side of this hill could be a battalion of piss-and-vinegar thugs. Our jacket pockets were loaded with all the ammunition we had left after several encounters of the dead kind on the way there, which amounted to pretty much two reloads each, not counting our sidearms. We’d be fine as far as those were concerned.

We crouched down and started up the bank, bent low at the waist and our heads so low the high grass tickled our noses. So far things had been very quiet, which surprised me and left a bad feeling deep in my gut.

They’re not here
.

We neared the very top of the ridge, and I use that term loosely. We may have been in eastern Ohio, but the hills and valleys were nothing like what we were used to. This hill had a very gradual slope, a wide top, then I assumed another gradual, long slope down the other side. Rolling hills, some would call them. Anyway, we neared the top of the ridge and were trying to decide how best to crawl or walk across the wide area when a sudden shout cut through the air.

“No!” a male voice yelled.

It sounded like it had come from below us. We hit the ground and held our collective breath, on our bellies with our rifles in position to start firing on whatever might break the crest of the knob. I looked down the line at the others, catching their eyes, judging their state of panic or lack thereof. Mostly they were in the same shape as me; slightly curious, a bit frightened, and increasingly pumped-up. The man’s voice hadn’t sounded demanding as much as afraid. Yes, his voice had been laced with fear or terror, the difference in degree at this point didn’t matter much.

“What’s going on down there?” Zack mouthed. I shook my head and started belly-crawling through the grass.

The others followed, trying to be quiet but the swish-swish of the weeds sounded incredibly loud. We moved like this all the way across the wide open flat, the same male voice shouting or screaming at regular intervals as the minutes ticked by. When we finally reached the other side, just above the descending slope, the others slid up next to me and we wiggled down into the grass as far as we could. It may have covered us, may have not.

Turns out it didn’t really matter; the camp, or what was once a camp, had been destroyed and now stood empty.

* * *

Kyra tried not to watch. She even tried not to listen, but as tightly as she’d squeezed her eyes shut, she simply couldn’t shut out the sounds. His shouts were on the verge of becoming screams, and she knew Shannon had already begun peeling his flesh away like the skin of a banana. Of course it wasn’t as easy as that, hence the revolting sounds it made. She had to give Devon credit; he was restraining himself incredibly well. By this time, the others had already screamed themselves into unconsciousness.

For one terrible moment Kyra caught herself wondering what the hell had happened to make this girl snap. Whatever it was, it must have happened before Day One, and the dead people appearing out of nowhere had pushed the kid right over the edge. She remembered Kasey saying one time that the girl never used to be like this. Well, not like
this
; at the house she was only withdrawn and listless, barely recognizing when others spoke to her. But this? Whatever—or whoever—it was that had gotten to her so severely sure did a bang-up job driving her batshit crazy in world record time.

Devon was breathing heavily and Kyra heard Shannon walk away from them; probably to peruse over her tabletop of assorted torture instruments, mostly consisting of pliers, knives, a fork, a razor, and a straw. You don’t want to know what she used that for. Kyra opened one eye and glanced quickly at him. He actually didn’t look too bad. Shannon had started out slow this time.

“Are you okay?” she mouthed to him once her eye had caught his.

He nodded once and set his face in resolve, hoping to boost her confidence a bit. Kyra thought she heard footsteps off to her left so she quickly shut her eye and tried not to whimper.

“What the
fuck
is
this!
” someone yelled. The same someone who had come up behind Kyra’s left. She opened her eyes and looked around frantically.

“Oh my God,” Kyra uttered.

Zack was standing at her side with his pistol aimed at Shannon. She tried to look around for the others, but her position made that difficult.

“Jesus, Shannon. Shannon! Put it down. Put it down now and back up,” a female voice said, this one coming from the other side of Devon. Kyra closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

About time the fucking cavalry got here
.

* * *

Since Day One, I’d seen a lot of crazy shit, I admit. No sense denying it. But this definitely took the cake. After walking around what was left of the campsite, we quickly came to an agreement that this was the same place we had been looking for; the bodies of the women went a long way in confirming that. The yells we heard had been coming from the ramshackle farmhouse, most of which had collapsed due to time and the elements. It wasn’t very difficult to ascertain what had happened judging from the blood and general violence of the scene. Or so we had thought. Remember what I’ve said about assuming?

We followed a blood trail to this wreck of a house, around the back, to the only part still standing. After watching for a few seconds through gaps and holes in the wall, and after shaking off the initial alarm we all experienced, we quickly decided the freakshow slaughterhouse needed to be closed down. So now there I was, standing beside some big beast of a man whose chest looked like an Etch-a-Sketch, Zack over next to Kyra so we could both keep our pistols leveled on Shannon, and the other two behind the upside-down Bobbsey Twins, covering our exit.

“Shannon, I said put that shit down now, or I will shoot your crazy ass!” I repeated my request.

I chanced a glance at the guy hanging next to me; he looked awake and lucid. Blood ran down his chest in tiny little streams from small incisions where the skin had been cut and pulled away from the muscle, maybe half a dozen overall. It was collecting in the hollow of his throat and running down both sides of his neck. It hadn’t made it to his face or eyes yet. Hopefully we’d be done with this and have them down before that happened.

I glanced over to Zack next, who was bull’s-eyed in on Shannon, then back at Jake and Mia. Mia looked the way I felt; furious, repulsed, and ready to puke at any second. Jake, on the other hand, couldn’t take his eyes off Kyra, and those eyes were filled with murder. No, not just filled. Overflowing. He looked more alive than he had since Ben died.

That’s when it suddenly hit me.

That’s when I finally understood what had been happening to Jake, what had been preoccupying his mind. Well, I didn’t have time to deal with that just yet, what with crazy girl here and the possibility of deadheads showing up at any second. Over in the corner was a pile of yuck, an aromatic combination of arms, legs, bowels, assorted other organs, and lots of blood. I just couldn’t believe Shannon had done all this.

“You want to play with me?” the girl said.

“Oh no, she didn’t,” Mia muttered approximately two seconds before the crazed girl charged Zack.

Before he could react, Shannon crossed the floor, leapt at him, wrapped her arms and legs around him, and began furiously stabbing something into his back, over and over, with her right arm. I wasn’t sure what sort of weapon she had, only that it was sharp and blackened with blood. What happened next was all a blur.

Zack’s pistol hit the floor.

Mia stepped up and grabbed frantically at Shannon’s swinging hand with her own.

Zack stumbled and threw himself around, trying to dislodge the maniac.

Jake jerked his pistol left and right, trying to get a shot at Shannon.

“Kasey!” Kyra screamed.

It was enough to snap me out of it. I walked straight over to where Zack had slipped in gore and pinned himself against a couple of fallen beams, knocked Mia out of the way, and brought the grip of my handgun down hard at the base of Shannon’s skull. One crack and she was out like a light. Zack let her fall, not even attempting to hold onto her, and fell to his own knees. The back of his shirt was soaked with blood from several dozen knife-cuts that had damned near ripped the shirt from his back. Jake hurried over and helped Mia steady Zack, holding him upright on his knees while Mia determined how badly he’d been injured. I stared at the bloody, filthy girl on the floor, noticing the weapon in her hand was a three-inch paring knife.

This is how she looked when we first found her
.

While I stood there in shock and oddly detached from the coppery-blood smell that hung thick in the air, Jake leaned Zack back against one of the broken beams and strode over to the still-hanging Kyra and her buddy. His pistol was still drawn, and I knew something was about to happen, but for some reason I couldn’t move. I didn’t feel anything at all.

“Is this one of them?” he asked Kyra.

She stared up at him and said nothing. The bloodied man was also looking up at Jake, but not with fear. He actually looked quite comfortable. Jake shifted his piercing gaze to the upside-down man and repeated his question.

“Are you one of them?”

“Well, son, depends on what you mean by ‘them’,” the man answered. Jake was growing angrier by the second, his eyes filled with hate and sweat pouring off him.

“Fair enough, mister. Are you one of the convicts? From Cedartown?” he tried again.

The man coughed as blood began running into his nose. “Yeah, I’m from Cedartown.”

Jake looked at Kyra, looked back at the man, raised his pistol, and shot the man in the head. Once again I was snapped out of it.

“Jake!” Mia and I shouted.

She was still holding up Zack, who seemed to be drifting in and out of consciousness. I, on the other hand, was free to stop him. I holstered my sidearm and tried to do just that. Instead of swinging his gun to the left and taking aim on Kyra, he swung to the right and aimed at my forehead. I skidded to a stop just inches from the barrel and sucked in my breath. The room was filled with a silence it probably hadn’t known since before Shannon had set the wheels of torment into motion. I held my hands out to the sides and tried reasoning with him.

“Christ, Jake. Starting to scare me a little here, you know?”

“I don’t wanna hurt you, Kase, but I will, if you try to stop me.”

His hands and voice began to tremble.

This was a good sign, I could work with this. I tried to plaster the most appeasing look I could muster onto my face before I continued. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Mia was no longer next to Zack.

“Believe me, Jake, I know how you’re feeling. But you know as well as I do, that what we want to do and what we
should
do are usually two different things.”

“She killed Ben. She’s the reason he’s dead. She’s the reason your house is gone, Kasey. Your
house
. She’s the reason we’re out here in bumfuck Egypt, runnin’ from everything that farts. She’s the reason for everything!” Jake bellowed.

I wasn’t sure what he meant, but there was too much going on at the moment to find out. His gun hand was shaking almost out of control now, which brought an amusing mental picture to mind of him shooting my knee-cap off instead of my face. I restrained myself; nothing worse than laughing in the face of a madman.

“Jake, listen to me for a second,” I said softly, calmly. “Remember what we promised each other? Do you?” I fought the need to piss down my leg while he physically fought to forget the moment I was talking about. “Answer me, Jake. I know you remember.”

Through tears that now spilled freely down his cheeks, he swallowed, his voice rough. “Yeah, I remember. We promised not to let each other do anythin’ stupid.”