He flinched slightly. “Please.”
“I value your life less than that of the zombies. They do what they do because they are compelled to do so. You did what you did out of self-interest. You purposely came here to murder my family. I will not so much as give you a fucking aspirin until you answer my questions.”
“Five…there were five.”
“I don’t know why I would expect a potential murderer to tell the truth.” I put my rifle down making sure the muzzle was pointing straight at his head. His eyes crossed as he stared down the bore. His hands were clamped against his shattered patella, which was fine, it wasn’t my target anyway.
“What are you doing?” he asked as his eyes got big.
I clamped one of my hands over his mouth; he started to shake his head back and forth. “Stop,” I told him through clenched teeth, “or I’m just going to blow a hole in your face and be done with it.” He must have seen something in the set of my eyes because he did stop. “You see, there are kids upstairs, and whereas I know you don’t give a shit because you were going to kill them, I care a lot. I don’t want them to be exposed to what I am about to do.” I clamped my hand harder over his face and quickly reached behind his damaged knee and started poking and prodding the wound, wiggling loose bone fragments and torn tendons around.
Tears streamed from his face as his screams were muffled in my hand. His breathing was hitching heavily he was in so much pain. His eyes started to close when, with a pop, I pulled two fingers from the back of his leg. I removed my mouth clamp and slapped him hard across the face.
“Don’t pass out on me, champ,” I told him.
“Please,” he begged quietly.
“How many?”
“Ten…there were ten of us.”
“How many truck drivers total?”
“I’m not sure...wait!” he said as I began to move my hand back in place over his mouth. “Over eighty…maybe a hundred.”
“How many zombies?”
“Fifteen, sixteen thousand. I think I heard Kong tell the lady running all of this. She’s...she’s the one you need to watch out for.”
“Yeah, I’m well aware of that.”
“I told you everything, please can I get some help now.”
I stood up and stepped over his body, I rapped on the steel reinforced door. “Hey, shitheads!” I yelled. “I know there’s still six of you out there, want to know how I know.” No response. “Because one is still alive, mostly. Not for long, though, I imagine. Shock alone will probably take him in the next twenty minutes or so.”
Another long wait, I did not think they would respond. “Who is it?” one of the men asked.
“What’s your name?” I asked the guy on the ground, I had to nudge him with my foot. It looked like he was going into pass out mode again.
“Adam,” he rasped.
“Adam,” I repeated.
“If you kill my brother, I’ll gut you like a fish!” the man yelled through the door.
“Empty threat. First off, you were already going to kill me. And I’m the one in here with your rapidly dying brother. Funny you should say ‘gutting’ since I just happen to be holding a fillet knife,” I lied.
I heard hammering blows on the door. “I’ll fucking kill you!” Adam’s brother screamed. His fist blows kept raining down. They eventually began to subside and were replaced by a quiet sobbing. “He’s all I’ve got left.”
I can’t lie, I did have enough humanity in me to have that tug at me a bit. I just had to keep reminding myself of what they had initially come here for: the destruction of my family.
“You willing to trade?” I asked him.
“What do you want?” came his cautious reply.
“I want all of your weapons, then you can take his bleeding ass out of my basement.”
“Fine,” I heard him say quickly.
“Fuck no, Chaz, I’m not giving up my gun. Not here, not now,” one of the attackers shouted. “That bitch will cut our throats if we go back with our tails between our—”
A shot rang out. I waited for the echo of it to die down before I spoke. “Chaz, you still there?”
“Anyone else got a problem with us giving up our weapons?”
I didn’t hear any other dissention.
“Now what?” Chaz asked.
“After you’ve put down all your weapons, with your hands raised I want you to step back from the house so that someone on the deck will be able to see you,” I told him.
“How do we know you’re not going to kill us?” he asked.
“Simple, I’m not you. Better hurry up, Adam is looking mighty pale.”
BT was at the bottom of the stairs with everything I had asked for. I looked over to him.
“Man, I just got down here,” he told me.
“The exercise will do you good, it looks like you’ve been hitting the MRE oatmeal cookies a little hard lately.”
“Fuck you, Mike.” He turned and went back upstairs to check on the status of the gunmen.
“I love you too, man.” I told him. “And stay low, the damn snipers are still out there.”
“Yeah, mom,” he told me.
“We’re waiting!” Chaz yelled impatiently.
“You can wait another minute,” I said under my breath. Or maybe not, I thought as I looked behind me at Adam. He was about as pale as I once figured vampires were; I now knew that wasn’t the case, but just last year that was what I thought. Adam’s breathing was shallow and anything less than a world class hospital wasn’t going to do him much good.
“BT says everything is good to go,” Angel yelled down the stairs. “He also said you were an asshole.”
“Angel!” her brother Ryan shouted.
“Well that’s what he said,” she defended herself. It kept going, but the door upstairs closed and the rest was lost to me.
I grabbed my rifle and took a long look at Adam. I wasn’t completely sure, but his dilated pupils gave me the impression he was no longer focusing on anything on this plane of existence. In fact, they were so wide, they looked like the last thing he had witnessed had scared the shit out of him. I wondered if that would be the last expression I would have when the Dark One came to claim me. Wait…could he claim me? I had no soul to lose? If I made it through the rest of the day I was going to grab some beers and think on that for a little while.
I made sure I was ready to fire and opened the door. Five men peered intently back at me, it was easy to determine who Chaz was by the worried expression on his face.
“All of you turn around,” I told them.
“See! I fucking told you he was going to kill us!”
“I’m going to check for weapons, I’ve been burned by the honor system before,” I told them.
BT was again in the basement. “Can you cover me?” I asked him.
“You want me to do anything else? Maybe get you a glass of water, shine your shoes, do a little tap dance?”
I looked over at him questioningly.
“Sorry, little amped up. Go ahead, I’ll cover you.”
“Gee thanks,” I told him as I put my rifle up against the house. I checked Chaz first; except for a fingernail clipper he was clean as a whistle. The second man had an ankle pistol and a Bowie knife, the third had two grenades shoved in his front pants pockets, I was wondering if he thought I might think these were his balls and just leave them alone. The fourth was also clean, the fifth had a sawed off shotgun shoved down his pants.
“You’re kidding right?” I asked. He shrugged. “Take it out nice and slow, please.”
I jumped when his gun went off. Dumb ass had wrapped his hand around the trigger, when he pulled up he fired, neatly obliterating the front part of his right front from his body. He toppled face first not even attempting to break his own fall. I could hear Gary’s retching from above us.