Suckers Page 3

  Sobbing the hardest I had yet, I held her back from me with a hand on her chest while I drove my screwdriver deep into one of her eyes. As the others had, she collapsed instantly and fell to the floor in a heap. Dead at fifteen, and by the looks of things, she'd been dead for days.

  After covering all the corpses with towels and blankets, exhausted, heartbroken, and sickened by everything I'd just had to do, I spent the night in the foyer with the double doors locked, hoping against hope that more non-infected survivors like me would show up, and I could help them.

  With literally tons of canned food in the cafeteria kitchen, I figured a group of survivors could hole up in the rink for a year if need be. Until the government, or the military, or whoever, got things under control and made everything safe again, if they were ever going to, which I was beginning to doubt more and more.

  When not a single fellow survivor had knocked on the double doors by noon the following day, I'd left the rink, posting a large poster-board sign on one of the doors. All survivors welcome. Key beneath white stone planter nearby. Food in kitchen. Showers. Laundry facilities. Industrial generator and back-up generator. Clothing for kids and adults. Help self to all.

  Good luck.

  E. Blake, owner.

  PS- Corpses of undead that I killed inside. I apologize, but you will have to remove them yourself if you want to shelter here permanently.

  I can't spare the time, because my sisters are alive in Nashville, and I need to get to them quickly. Please be as respectful as possible when moving/burying the bodies. Many of these people were my friends, and the rest deserve respect, too. Thank you.

  I'd decided to leave the key under the planter instead of just leaving the doors unlocked so that random Husk People couldn't shamble on in to the rink, possibly attacking any survivors who later entered.

  Driving out of Detroit in my SUV had been fairly easy and uneventful. I'd picked up a desperately-waving family of five along the way, a middle-aged mom and dad and three teenaged sons, and then had taken them to the mom's parents' house on Nine Mile Road in Warren.

  Almost immediately after, a grandfather and grandson pair flagged me down and begged for a ride to West Bloomfield, and I took them. After that, I didn't give anyone else any more rides. Leaning on his cane in my passenger seat, the grandfather had told me I shouldn't.

  "These are dark, dark days, Miss," he'd said. "You women are now a small, small minority of folks left in the world, and there are already groups of men roaming around, up to no good, if you understand me. Best to head to where you're headed without stopping."

  I did, driving at least a hundred miles south before nearly running out of gas. An elderly man running a tiny gas station pretty much in the middle of nowhere filled my tank and gave me a gallon container filled with gas as well, very kindly refusing any form of payment, saying that survivors had to stick together. I'd stopped only because he was so elderly and wizened that I was fairly confident he wouldn't try to pull anything on me.

  I was in the uninhabited boonies of northern Ohio when I ran out of gas again, having used the spare gallon a ways back. Not knowing what else to do, I transferred the contents of my suitcase to a duffel bag in the back of my SUV and continued on foot, terrified but determined.

  For the next nearly two years, I killed hundreds of Huskers while continuing to head south in fits and starts, having to shelter in abandoned houses and factories during the winter months, when it was just too cold and snowy to keep going. I foraged for wild berries, helped myself to fruit from orchards, and took lots of canned food from empty houses. Farmhouses tended to have particularly good supplies, though some had already been scavenged by the time I arrived.

  I met good survivors, like four brothers who escorted me through a ten-mile stretch of Ohio, with the oldest saying that there were far too many male predators in the area for them to have a clean conscience doing otherwise.

  I met far less moral survivors and had a few narrow escapes. I sometimes stayed with various groups of wandering elderly and mixed-gender survivors for a week or two at a time, once for three weeks when I'd been sick with a deep, rattling chest cough that had weakened me.

  But mostly, I just traveled by myself and hid from other survivors, not wanting to find out if they were the good or bad kind of people. And always, inevitably, I continued heading south, to Nashville.

  * * *

  Presently, in a vast grassland in southern Kentucky, I was oh-so-close. I wasn't positive, but I was pretty sure the Tennessee border was only about twenty or thirty miles away. But also presently, I was boxed in by sixteen or seventeen men. Men who I was certain were going to rape me, possibly killing me in the process, whether intentionally or not. And even if I could take out one of them with the screwdriver I'd come to call Phillip, I knew that wouldn't do much. There would still be fifteen or sixteen men left to contend with.

  Brandishing Phillip, I shouted at the advancing men again, trying my best to be threatening and tough while mentally being in absolute anguish. "I'm going to kill one of you; I swear it!"

  My sisters were waiting for me. I'd come so close. All for nothing. Just for horrendous violation and possible death. But I felt like I owed it to myself, my parents, Jess and Eb, Sandor and Marta, and everyone else who'd ever loved me to not just lie down and volunteer for the inevitable. I had to kill as many men as I could first. I had to try. Especially if there was a chance that me killing even one of the men might spare another woman from being raped.

  When the fastest man, who'd come from the west, reached me, I thrust Phillip's point in his direction with a grunt, and I did connect with my target, stabbing him. For just a split-second, I felt the familiar jolt that came along with stabbing, followed by the immediate feel of flesh giving way.

  However, nearly at the same time time that I'd been stabbing him, the man had been attacking me, clothes-lining me with one meaty arm. I went down backward, and I went down hard, hitting my head on something that felt like a brick. Before losing consciousness, which I did within a fraction of a second, I heard a curious sound. It was a loud, clear roar.

  CHAPTER TWO

  When I came to, however long later, my head was throbbing, and I was sitting in a moving truck. A quick glance to my left and right told me that I was sitting between two men. My head had been resting on the muscular shoulder of the man on my right, who was shaggy-haired and kind of grimy-looking, which was how my very brief first initial impression had struck me. The man to my left was generally a little cleaner-looking, my very brief first initial impression of him. I'd also gotten the impression that he was handsome, maybe even incredibly so. One second was all my brain had needed to take in and process a quick flash of strong jaw, golden brown stubble, and deep-set green eyes fringed with thick dark lashes.

  I honestly didn't know what to do. Didn't have a clue. My knee-jerk reaction was to thrash and fight, demanding that the driver stop the truck immediately and let me out. However, as much as a rising sense of panic was making me want to shove and claw my possible captors, I didn't want the one driving to plow the truck into a tree as a result, possibly accidentally killing me in the process.

  I also didn't want him to crash because on the chance that he and his buddy were rare "good guys" of the type I'd met in Ohio, I didn't want him and his buddy to be injured or killed, either. And, as much as I had a vague-yet-somehow-strong-at-the-same-time intuition that I was indeed some sort of a captive, I also had a secondary gut feeling that I hadn't come to any harm while I'd been passed out, and that these two men were somehow responsible for that being the case.

  After all, no other part of my body besides my head hurt, and my head could be easily explained by me hitting it on the brick or whatever it had been when I'd been clothes-lined.

  Within just a few seconds of me opening my eyes, lifting my head, and glancing around, the green-eyed man to my left, the one driving, glanced over at me and spoke. "Thought you might come around soon. How do you feel?"
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  I felt confused, and wary, and semi-panicked, and sort of angry and scared, all at the same time. Not knowing who I was dealing with, though, and not knowing whether or not they'd take enjoyment in my jumble of negative emotions, I just said I was fine.

  "I would, however, like to know who the two of you are, and what's happened to me, please, if you don't mind."

  Now that I was full-out looking at him, and had been for a time-span longer than a mere second, I could see that my first impression of the man to my left had been dead-on. He was incredibly handsome. Really, devastatingly handsome wouldn't have been far off the mark.

  I guessed he was somewhere in his mid-thirties, handsome in a classic, masculine, rugged sort of way, but with high cheekbones that for some reason made me think of fine art, like a sculpture made by an Italian master centuries earlier. His longish, wavy dark hair, which was brushed straight back from his forehead, was the kind that might make a woman want to run her hands through it, tangling her fingers in the curls that rested against the nape of his neck. If that woman didn't have a sense that she was being held captive, that is.

  In response to what I'd said about wanting to know who he and his buddy were and what had happened to me, he opened his mouth to speak but was cut off by his buddy, to my right, who spoke in a deep, decidedly gravelly sort of voice with a bit of a southern drawl, which his companion had as well.

  "We'll ask the questions. You answer. That's how it's going to work. And if you're one of those female Borderliners sent up to try to infiltrate our group and spy on us, we'll find out real soon.

  “We're heading to meet up with some of our people right now, and one of them is a woman who lived in Borderline not too long ago. She'll tell us if you're one of them. Even if you're new, she'll still be able to tell. She has a sixth sense for anyone who's bought into their bullshit."

  Feeling incredibly defensive, even though I had no reason to be, I glared at the slightly-grimy man to my right. "Look. I have no clue what you're talking about. I've never been to 'Borderline.' I don't even know where it is. And I'm certainly no spy.

  “Far from me trying to infiltrate anyone's group, you two have apparently abducted me. Which, if you want to talk about bullshit, there's some, but I'm not standing for it. I demand to be released right this second."

  The slightly-grimy man to my right scoffed faintly. "Ain't gonna happen."

  "Really. Well, how about if I-"

  "Whatever you're thinking about, don't even try it." Glowering a bit, the slightly- grimy man looked me dead in the eyes. "Really."

  With my anger and indignation possibly making me a little irrational, I'd been going to say how about if I just punch you upside the head and let myself on out of the truck, even though the latter action really wouldn't be to my benefit since the truck was still moving, doing fifty, at least, on a straight stretch of back country road.

  Something in the slightly-grimy man's gray eyes when he'd said really had told me that I probably really shouldn't say anymore right then, so I didn't, turning my face forward to stare out the windshield.

  No one spoke. With both cab windows partially rolled down, a spring-scented breeze continually rushed into the truck, making me think that it was probably the first or second week of April. Focused on my end goal of getting to Nashville, as always, I really hadn't been paying much attention to little things like buds opening on shrubs and trees in recent days, and it had been a while since I'd taken a glance at a calendar while raiding a farmhouse.

  The spring-scented breeze couldn't entirely mask all other scents in the cab of the truck, though, and those scents were the scents of my two muscular captors. Woodsy and entirely masculine, both faint scents were somewhat similar, though the scent of the green-eyed man to my left was just somehow cleaner, with maybe just a trace of soap.

  His scent was essentially just like his appearance, rugged and masculine though not entirely without clues that pointed to recent bathing. The faint scent I was picking up from my right was far muskier, earthier. Yet, I had to concede that it wasn't the scent of outright body odor.

  It was just a heavier type of scent, one that a man with an incredibly nice natural scent might get after not showering for a few days.

  I couldn't deny that I actually found this scent kind of enjoyable or appealing in some deep, primal way, and I also found the green-eyed man's scent pleasant, to say the least.

  I didn't want to be having these thoughts. I really did not want to be having these thoughts. They smell like scum, I told myself. They smell like the sick freaks that they probably are.

  After maybe a minute or so, the green-eyed man to my left spoke while steering the truck around a slight bend with one hand. "You have a name?"

  I thought for a moment before responding. "My name is Evangeline, but friends call me Eva. So, you can call me Evangeline." I turned my head just a fraction to glance at the man to my right. "Same goes for you."

  Just out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw the green-eyed man's full lips twitch with just a hint of amusement before he responded.

  "Well...Evangeline...you can call me Nick. My full name is Nicholas Hardwick, but friends call me Nick...and you can, too."

  "I'll call you Nicholas Hardwick."

  Again, I thought I saw his lips just faintly twitching.

  "All right...fair enough. The man on your right is Blaine Miller, but you can call him GM if you're ever so inclined. That's kind of a nickname some of us call him sometimes. Stands for Grease Monkey. We call him that because he's the most mechanically inclined of our group...keeps all our cars and bikes in good working order."

  "Well, good for him, but I think Grease Monkey is a perfectly horrible nickname, and I'll be calling the man on my right Blaine Miller. If I ever call him anything at all."

  After a quiet snort, Blaine spoke in his low, gravelly voice. "You gotta lighten up."

  Indignant, I turned my face to look at him. "Excuse me?"

  "You heard me."

  To my left, Nick cleared his throat. "If you're not a Borderliner, what community do you come from, Evangeline?"

  Now it was Nick's turn to receive an indignant look from me.

  "Who said I come from any community at all?"

  He lifted his broad shoulders in a slight shrug. "You're too clean not to have come from a community...too well-groomed. Maybe you didn't leave a community in the past few days, but sometime in the recent past, you-"

  "I'm well-groomed because I've made it a daily priority to be, no matter what."

  It was true. During my slow march south, I'd always made keeping up on my hygiene and grooming an absolute priority, even though it wasn't always easy. For some reason, it had felt so important to me. Crucial to my survival, somehow. This wasn't to say that I'd been walking around in the woods with a full face of makeup on or anything, or even any makeup at all, but as for basic hygiene and bodily upkeep, I hadn't been neglectful.

  Not even when I'd realized that keeping up with my daily grooming routine was probably costing me a couple of hours a week, hours I could have been marching toward my goal. That didn't matter, though. I'd felt too strongly that staying clean and kept-up was helping me move toward my goal, was giving me strength somehow, even though time-wise, it was slowing me down.

  Maybe it was a dignity thing. Maybe it made me feel like I was still a human being that my sisters would be glad to see, and not some wild animal stalking through the woods.

  I'd seen travelers, both men and women, who did look wild animal-like. Some people had just clearly given up, too focused on daily survival to give any thought to bathing, combing hair, or washing clothes. I'd met one thirty-something woman traveling with a half-dozen male relatives of various ages, and she'd had dried food all over her face. She'd also had at least a hundred burrs tangled in her matted brown hair, literally.

  And I'd had a feeling that her light brown shirt was once pale tan or white. Her family members had been in similar shape. The woman had told me
that two of them were former attorneys. She herself had used to be a fashion designer in New York City.

  I felt for people who were so focused on daily survival that they couldn't wash, and I understood the temptation and thinking. Grooming was just one more thing to worry about when you were constantly fighting for your very life, having to deal with Huskers and groups of dangerous men, both.

  I got the mindset. I also wouldn't have been surprised if the woman I'd met had thought that her unkempt appearance might deter men with minds bent on violation, even though I didn't think that body odor and dirt would deter these types of men. But I got the thinking.

  Additionally, I thought it likely that a fair amount of depression probably factored into some travelers' grooming standards, or the lack thereof. And I’d definitely experienced depression over the past nearly two years. I just hadn't allowed myself to fully feel it, if that made any sense. I really hadn't allowed myself to feel much of anything. I had the idea that doing so might somehow throw me off my goal, the same way that I felt my daily grooming kept me on it.