The Secret Apocalypse (Book 8): Rage Against the Dying Read online

  “I was.”

  “What happened? You look like shit.”

  “Ran into some trouble in Kingswood.”

  He says we ran into trouble, and for a second I get this awful feeling that he’s going to rat us out.

  “Someone had cleared the infected out,” he explains. “Herded them out into the desert.”

  “You’re kidding? Who’s mad enough to do something like that?”

  “Don’t know. But it means at night, the town is ripe for the picking. We’ve got a few extra cars.” He points over his shoulder with his thumb. “We’ve got this here fire truck. And this ridiculous Mercedes Benz. We had to clear out at day break. Didn’t want to risk getting into it with the Desert King. But we’re going back tonight. Xavier just wanted to make sure I get this fire truck back to the compound. He thinks it could be quite useful for the coming war.”

  The guy looks past Clark, towards the truck. “Looks like it’s already been in a war.”

  “Yeah, happened on our way out of town. Left it too late. People from atop the wall took some pot shots. Damn cowards.”

  The man looks back at the fire truck. Looks at the Merc. At me. “All right, you better get these vehicles secured. And get yourself looked at by the Doc. You look terrible.”

  “Thanks, man. Will do.”

  The man with the black bandanna over his face wishes us luck and the other men pull the road spikes out of the way. He then adjusted his goggles and he kind of looked at Kim and myself as we drove off. And I got the feeling he was studying our faces. I’m guessing he did this because he probably didn’t recognize us. But he didn’t say anything. I’m hoping Xavier has a lot of people back at his compound. I’m hoping it would be impossible to know everyone.

  We drive through the checkpoint, headed for Clark’s hide site.

  Chapter 32

  It takes about an hour or so to get to Clark’s hide site. We turn off the main road and drive about ten minutes along a dirt track. We finally see it. It looks like an extremely large farm house. Two stories. A huge veranda wraps right around the second floor. I’m guessing the bomb shelter will be out the back, hidden from view.

  We approach the house slowly and park the Merc and the fire truck out front, satisfied that since we’re so far off the main road, no one will see us.

  “Guys, we found something,” Jack says with a weary voice.

  “What is it?” I ask. “What’s wrong?”

  He points at Sarah. She is holding something. She has it wrapped up in one of the fire blankets.

  “Well? What the hell is it?”

  “It’s her arm.” Jack answers quietly.

  “Her arm?” Kenji repeats, completely not following.

  Her severed arm. This is the work of Marko. It has to be.

  “Are you sure?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” Sarah says softly. “I’m sure.”

  Jack looks unbelievably worried. He pulls me aside, “She found it on the backseat of the fire truck. When she found it she was hysterical. She’s calmed down now. But I’m worried. This could push her over the edge.”

  “So how the hell did it end up in the back of the goddamn fire truck?” Kim asks.

  “Don’t know,” Jack answers. “Marko must’ve put it there somehow. When we weren’t looking.”

  “Maybe when we left it at the house,” Maria suggests.

  Damn. Marko is still toying with us, still trying to break us down. This is a clear message from Marko. It says, he is coming for us. That he’s not done with us. It is a clear and sick message that says he is having the time of his life.

  “What do we do with the arm?” I ask.

  “Don’t know,” Jack says. “Figured we’d let Sarah decide that. Maybe she wants to bury it…” He trails off because he doesn’t know what to say and no one knows what to do. And even though we’ve been through so very much, we’ve never experienced anything like this before. And he says, “I just don’t know.”

  I look over at Sarah. She’s almost holding the thing like a baby. Her head is lowered. Her eyes are closed.

  “We can do that later,” Kenji says, turning to Clark, getting straight down to business. “Where’s this bomb shelter?”

  “It’s out back.”

  Clark leads the way and we all follow him. But as soon as we get around the back of the house Clark freezes. He stops dead. He raises his hands and then takes a small step backwards. There is a look of absolute shock and fear on his face.

  Kenji begins to raise his rifle even though we are massively outgunned. Even though Kenji has maybe two bullets left. Three at the most.

  There a six men standing in front of us, waiting for us. I get the feeling they’ve been waiting for a while. All of them have bandanas over their faces. Most of them have goggles on. Some of them are wearing ski masks. They look like a gang of bandits.

  One of the men steps forward. He’s wearing a pair of dark tinted goggles. “Don’t move, kid,” he warns Kenji. “Don’t even think about it. We will put so many holes in your body, they’ll be calling you Swiss cheese at your funeral. Or whatever it is you people do with your dead.”

  Kenji lowers the rifle because he knows it’s a hopeless situation. He might get one, might get two, but it won’t be enough. There are six men here. All of them are armed to the teeth. If Kenji even looks like pulling the trigger, these men will open fire, killing Kenji, killing the rest of us instantly. Our only hope right now is to plead our innocence, our only hope right now is to see if we can bargain our way out of this.

  “Put the gun down,” the man says to Kenji. “We don’t want this to get messy. Well, we don’t want this to get any messier than it already is. That goes for all of you. Lower your weapons before this gets out of hand.”

  Kenji and I place our near empty rifles on the ground. As does Jack. Kim throws the magnum out of reach. It lands on the dirt ground with a thud. Our homemade spears and the axes are back in the fire truck. Not that they would’ve done us any good.

  “Damn, that’s a piece of hardware,” the man says, eyeing off the magnum. “I call dibs.”

  “Did you really think we bought your story back at the check point, Clark?” one of the other men says. “Did you really think we wouldn’t track you? Did you really think no one knew about this place?”

  He keeps saying ‘we’, but I don’t remember seeing this guy at the check point. Maybe it’s just the way these people talk, the way they think.

  A group mentality.

  A pack mentality.

  “Yeah,” Clark says, regaining his calm demeanor. “For a second, I actually did.”

  “You’re dumber than I thought,” the man with the dark tinted goggles says. “Never understood what Xavier saw in you. Speaking of Xavier, he will be very interested to get his hands on this place, to get an accurate inventory of all the stuff stored down there in the shelter. Very interested. And we’ll all be rewarded for our efforts. That’s right, we’re going to get all the credit for this score. Could’ve been you. But you played this all wrong. You got greedy, Clark. You got selfish.”

  “He doesn’t have to get his hands on anything,” Clark says. “I can make it worth your while. I’ve got food. Ammunition. Take as much as you can carry. We can all get away clean. We can all start over.”

  “You want me to keep secrets from Xavier? You want me to lie to Xavier? Are you out of your goddamn mind? You know what happens to deserters and liars. Speaking of which, what do you think he’s going to do to you? You think he’ll let you off lightly after everything you’ve done? I mean sure, you have spent a lot of time getting into his good books. But I just don’t know if it will be enough. Who knows? Maybe it will be. Maybe he’ll let you off lightly. Maybe he’ll put you away for a bit. And maybe he’ll leave you with a reminder of your transgression. But it’s hard to tell with Xavier. He’s the kind of guy who could fly off the handle without warning, you know?”

  Sarah is still holding on to her arm. It is still wrappe
d up in a fire blanket.

  One of the men sees this and I’m pretty sure he thinks it’s a gun or a weapon of some kind. And rightly so, because there’s no way anyone would think that a girl is holding onto her own severed arm.

  The man, the leader, he walks up to her with all the confidence in the world. “I thought I told you to drop your weapons?”

  “Do I look like I care what you told me to do?” Sarah says quietly and defiantly. “Do I look like I care what any of you tell me to do?”

  I’m pretty sure Sarah says this because maybe she really has been pushed over the edge and maybe she has lost all fear of death.

  “Oh my god,” the man says. “We’ve got a fighter on our hands. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I heard you guys caused a whole lot of damage in town.”

  “By damage…” Sarah says. “You mean… we killed your people.”

  And I can’t believe she is taunting this man, this heavily armed man. What the hell is she trying to do?

  “Yeah,” he says. “That’s exactly what I mean. Now drop your weapon before I blow your goddamn brains all over the ground.”

  “This is not a gun,” she says. “It is not a weapon.”

  She unravels the blanket and her severed arm falls to the ground. The limb is covered in dried blood and dust. The fingers are clawed and stiff with rigor mortis. And as hardened as this guy is, as tough as he is, the sight of the severed arm takes his breath away. He stumbles back. “What in the world…”

  “This however,” Sarah adds, holding up a handgun. “This is a weapon.”

  And she aims the gun not at the man in front of her, but at the men behind him, at the guy with the biggest and meanest looking rifle. She shoots him and the man next to him, shoots them square in the chest and they both hit the dirt quicker than I can figure out what the hell is going on.

  Kenji springs into action, picking up his rifle, using the remaining three bullets to kill two more men.

  And now there’s only two men left. The leader with the dark tinted goggles and one other. And even though they are both heavily armed, they run off, escaping in the chaos. In a matter of seconds, they’ve made it around to the other side of the house. I hear car doors slamming shut. An engine. Suddenly a black SUV, tears down the dirt track, heading for the main road.

  Sarah shoots of a couple more rounds. But her aim is not good. Her balance is not good. The bullets hit the dirt, the side of the house. She can barely lift the gun.

  Clark runs back towards the front of the house, towards the cars. He jumps in the driver’s seat of the Merc. “Come on!” he shouts, life returning to his mortally wounded body, life fueled by sheer panic and absolute fear of a fate worse than death.

  “What are you doing?” I ask. “Let them go. They’re running away. We don’t need to…”

  “Yes, we do,” he says, cutting me off. “If he gets back to Xavier, he’ll lead them right to us! If Xavier finds us, finds out we killed more of his men, we are all dead.”

  And that’s all there is to it. We kill them because we have to. Because if we don’t kill them, they’ll kill us.

  Simple. Pure.

  Chapter 32

  We pile into the Merc. It doesn’t take us long to get back to the main road, doesn’t take long to catch up. It doesn’t take long for the tables to turn, for the hunter to become the hunted.

  Clark has his foot to the floor. There is dried blood all over his face and his hands. The dried blood on his hands cracks as he grips the steering wheel.

  Suddenly, there is gunfire from the SUV and bullets tear into the hood of the Merc. Clark swerves, losing control for a second. The car slides and slides and slides off the road. We eventually come to a stop, facing the other way. Clark quickly turns the car around, getting us back on the road, wasting no time. He knows how important this is. If we don’t get these guys, they’ll bring an army down on top of us.

  The SUV disappears momentarily, but there’s only one road, nowhere for them to go, nowhere to hide. Clark again picks up speed, driving faster and faster. The engine redlines and Clark has to back off a little. No point in destroying the engine.

  We drive for maybe half an hour. Only felt like a few minutes. Still no sign of the black SUV.

  Up ahead is the fuel station where they had set up the check point.

  “Slow down,” Kim says. “They might’ve stopped here. We need to be careful.”

  “No,” Clark replies, eyes fixed on the horizon. “They won’t stop. No point. They’re going to get Xavier. They’re going…”

  And he doesn’t get to finish his sentence and he doesn’t get to tell us what these guys are going to do, because right at that moment, there are two very loud explosions… multiple explosions… in very quick succession. The car swerves back and forth, it swerves all over the road. Clark loses control and has no hope of ever regaining control. The car turns sideways and we begin to flip and roll and everything slows down and then everything speeds up and I have no idea where I am in the world. And I have no idea what the hell just happened.

  I hear screams. Maria. Jack. Kim. My own.

  And then I don’t hear anything.

  Have I blacked out?

  What the hell is going on? Did someone shoot a missile at the car?

  Was everyone wearing their seatbelts?

  And then someone is standing over me. And no, I haven’t blacked out, and no, we haven’t been taken out by a heat seeking, laser guided missile.

  There’s a man standing over me. He drags me out of the car.

  There are more men.

  Dressed like bandits.

  Like savage marauders.

  Men dressed like they have lost all sense of humanity, all sense of right and wrong.

  They drag all of us out and away from the car. They line us up on this lonely and isolated road. The car is a complete wreck. It is upside down. It has come to a stop on its roof. The tires, all four of them are shredded.

  The road spikes.

  Clark forgot about the road spikes. We all did.

  Damn. How much will this mistake cost us?

  My guess is a lot.

  My guess is we’re about to pay a heavy price for this mistake. Because right now we are completely surrounded by armed men. At least fifty. A lot of them are wearing motorcycle leathers. A lot of them aren’t. A lot of them have guns. A lot of them don’t. But each and every one of them is armed. With knives. Axes. Baseball bats. Crowbars. There’s even a couple of swords here and there.

  One lucky bastard has a chainsaw.

  Make that two.

  Damn. We are so screwed.

  Clark has led us to our deaths. And yeah, I know he had the best intentions, the very best, even though the best intentions in this particular instance meant chasing down a couple of guys and killing them. But like I said, and like people have been saying for thousands of years, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, the best intentions.

  And the road to hell is paved with the bones of the tortured.

  A man steps forward. I recognize him instantly. He is wearing the full motor bike leathers that are probably reinforced with bullet proof and bite proof Kevlar. He is wearing a motor bike helmet with the tinted sun visor.

  This is Xavier.

  Fearless leader of this army of savages, of these marauders.

  He carries a shotgun.

  There is a sword strapped to his back.

  He hands his shotgun to one of his men. And he takes a hold of his sword.

  It is a kind of weapon I have never seen before. It has a straight blade. It is double edged. The blade is decorated with an intricate pattern. The thing is a work of art. But the way he holds it, the way he grips the handle, it reminds me that this work of art is also an instrument of death.

  “Good morning ladies and gentleman!” he shouts, startling all of us. “Boy have we had a long night. A long goddamn night. I don’t know about you bastards, but I haven’t slept. Not one goddamn wink.”


  He paces in front of us slowly, sizing us up. He keeps his helmet on. He keeps the visor down.

  “Just look at you kids. I can’t believe it. you look so… so… pathetic. I honestly, hand to god, I honestly cannot believe for one second that it was you. I cannot believe that you little brats caused me all this trouble. That you killed my people. I cannot believe it. I am stunned. Stunned, I tell ya. You must be tougher than you look.”

  We are. We are tough. We are strong as a group.

  “So? Who’s in charge here? Or is it more like a committee type thing. Knights of the Round Table. I bet that’s how you do it. Kids these days, you’re so idealistic. Don’t worry, we’ll beat that out of you. Life will beat that out of you. Come to think of it, death will beat that out of you as well.”

  “Can you get on with it,” Sarah says. “We don’t have all day.”

  Yes, Sarah has definitely lost all fear of death.

  And Xavier stops dead in his tracks. “Hold the phone, Reginald. What the hell did you just say?”

  He kneels down next to Sarah. Her face is reflected in the visor, but it’s all distorted, it’s all curved and fishbowl like, it’s all wrong.

  He grabs her arm. Inspects the wound, the stitches, the stump. “Seen this before. I do not envy you. But look, if you keep shooting your mouth off like that, I will be forced to make an example out of you.”

  And then without warning he rams his helmet into Sarah’s face and she flies back and I’m pretty sure her nose is broken and maybe her entire face is broken.

  I hear Maria’s sharp inhale of breath as she looks away. We are in shock.

  No one moves. No one speaks.

  We are frozen.

  Xavier stands up and begins pacing again. “Speaking of examples and punishment, and all things unpleasant and yet equally as necessary, it is time to get down to business. And boy, it is an unpleasant business. You killed my people last night. Six and counting. I say counting because there are a few others with some very serious burns and very serious shrapnel wounds, that honestly, even before the world ended they would’ve had a hard time making a full and miraculous recovery from. To say their prospects are very limited, that their outlook is very bleak, would be putting it lightly. So yes, we are still counting our dead. And how many of my men did you kill at the farmhouse just now? Four? Goddamn it!”