The Devil's Road: Devil Dog Book 2 (Out Of The Dark) Page 8

  “The wire’s too tight,” the idiot on the left said in a whiny voice, so I smacked his left ear with the barrel of the KSG and really made him whimper.

  “You’re not going to kill us?” the one on the right asked me.

  “Let’s get my friends first. You boys can live through this as long as they’re unharmed, and you don’t give me away. First one of you raises the alarm, and I blow a hole big enough for a basketball to go through. You feel me?” I poked him in the back with the barrel of the shotgun.

  “I feel you… just don’t hurt my family,” the man begged.

  “I’m not normally one for killing women and children,” I told him. “Don’t make me make an exception.”

  I knew it for the lie it was, but judging by their reactions, neither of them wanted to call my bluff and find out.

  7

  We stayed off the well-worn path between the highway and the community. A lot of feet had been traveling through there lately. Surprisingly, the men led me to the back fence of a property in total silence. The lawn was overgrown like everything else, and at the opposite corner from where I was standing was a tarp sectioned off into a square shape with no roof. It gave off odors that led me to believe it’d been an open air latrine for a while now. I was also surprised to see the back corner of the fence had already had its ties cut three-fourths of the way down. Apparently somebody had liked getting in and out of the backyard that way as I saw no other gate or way in.

  “This the one?” I asked him.

  He nodded, not wanting to make a sound, as I’d reminded him twice now. We stepped over the chain link that still held on to the bottom of the post, and I kept the men close to me and in front of me with the stick. One hard pull on that would put a ton of cutting pressure on their wrists, and both were already leaving small crimson droplets from a stumble early on. I hadn’t meant for these to be so effective, but it worked far better than I’d anticipated.

  We moved slowly, and I cradled the shotgun across my wrist again as we approached the back of the house. A sliding door was open, probably to let heat escape. Without a screen to slow us, we walked into what turned out to be a combination dining room and kitchen with a large oak table.

  “Hey honey, you guys done with the toll booth already…?” A blonde woman in her early thirties stood there, her mouth dropping open as I stepped in the doorway behind the both of them.

  “David, honey…”

  “Shhhhh,” he whispered to her urgently. I looked around and was somewhat surprised to see Courtney and Jamie sitting at the dining room table with coffee cups and sour expressions on their faces.

  “Hey,” I told them both, and Jamie shot to her feet.

  She closed the distance and almost tackled me in a hug. Courtney was half a second behind, and I dropped the stick so the men wouldn’t get their wrists cut off and held the shotgun in one hand, still more or less pointed at them.

  “Where’s Luis?” I asked them.

  “At the preacher’s house. Him and one other guy Luis beat up.”

  “Hey, you assholes don’t move,” I said, pushing the ladies back and smacking the man on the right in the ear with the barrel, making him hiss in pain.

  “David, what is going… OH, my God… they’re…” She started raising her voice, and I really didn’t want to do it, but I swung the shotgun up until it was pointed at her throat.

  All noise shut off and the volume was immediately muted.

  “Don’t make a sound. I’m here for my friends you kidnapped—”

  “Mommy? Are there any more raisins?” a small child’s voice interrupted me, coming out of the hallway that led to darkened rooms.

  “Dick, you don’t understand,” Courtney said. “It’s not their fault.”

  I lowered the shotgun.

  I had cut the restraints off of the men, and we all sat around the kitchen table. Well, they sat, I held a shotgun up. The little girl who’d wandered out of the bedroom for a snack was sitting in her mother’s lap. I had the shotgun pointed low and ready as they spoke up.

  “Pastor Horton started the toll collection. He calls it a tithe, but it’s really a toll,” Linda told me, who was David’s wife.

  The other man was Kevin, a friend of David’s who’d been working the roadblock, ambush point, tithe, toll spot… I didn’t care what they called it, it was highway robbery. Literally.

  “Tell me about Pastor Horton again,” I said, more of a command than a request.

  “He came into town about four years ago when Pastor Michaels passed away,” David said. “And he was a real fire and brimstone type. We thought he must have gotten our little Lutheran church mixed up with a Baptist church or something. He got real popular with the younger crowd. Then he started asking for a separate offering for a community set of supplies.”

  “Wait, you didn’t tell me this before. What set of supplies?” I asked him.

  It was Kevin who answered. “He was real big into watching the doomsday preppers show and wanted to build a community stockpile. If something were to ever happen, everyone would have something to eat. It sounded like a dumb idea at first, but now… I wish we would have listened a little better.”

  “So if you guys are so well stocked, how come you’re robbing people at gunpoint?” I asked them.

  “Linda was just telling us about a group raiding them for supplies when you three boys showed up,” Jamie said.

  Linda nodded and then said, “The first raid was the worst. Pastor Horton was shot in the shoulder. If we didn’t have a veterinarian here, he probably would have died. As it is, the doctor was able to dig the bullet out of his shoulder and get enough antibiotics in him. I think eight other people were killed in the raid and twice that were hurt, only to die later.”

  Her words were soft, and when I saw her eyes tear up, I had to wonder who it was that she’d lost that made her so sad.

  “It’s been going on like this for a while then?” I asked them, somewhat incredulously.

  “For about six weeks now,” Kevin said. “If we don’t have a weeks’ worth of supplies for them, they start shooting people. They’ve done it twice since then. We got desperate, we didn’t have enough for the week’s tithe…”

  “So when you said tithe or toll, you didn’t mean just to you and the community?” Courtney asked, her expression going from thoughtful to horror-struck during the entire exchange.

  “Right,” David said softly.

  “If I bring the rest of my team in here, will we be attacked?” I asked the townsfolk, bluffing to gauge their reaction.

  “No, in fact, come in the way we did and it’ll cause fewer problems,” Kevin said, a curious expression on his face.

  I squinted at them. Why was it that they were being so open and helpful all of a sudden? Weren’t these the same men who’d robbed and kidnapped my friends, and then beat Luis so badly that he was in rough shape… What did they see in us?

  “I don’t know if I trust you,” I told him simply.

  “Are you willing to help us?” David asked.

  “What do you think I can do?” I asked him.

  “You said you had people with automatic weapons. And you guys must be good, I mean, you got the drop on both of us, and we’re pretty decent hunters ourselves.”

  I almost laughed out loud. First, because he expected us to help, and second because they thought they were good hunters? They were hiding in a drainage pipe, not in a real hide. Then I checked myself. I obviously was a long time out of the military, but I probably had a military-type flair about me still. Jamie had kept up the haircuts, and I kept my beard very close or shaved off. It did something for me, reminded me of who I was and wanted to be. Then it clicked; maybe this was what the men here were seeing in our friends. What once was, and a bit of hope?

  I looked over at Courtney and Jamie, who were looking at me with open expressions. I wanted to ask them what did they think, but I could already see it in their eyes. They were giving me the same look as David�
��s wife, Linda, and they’d obviously talked to her for a while, telling her about me.

  “How many of them are there, and when’s the next tithe?” I asked the townies.

  “You’re serious? You’re going to help us? I mean, it’s usually twelve guys, sometimes more and… tonight…” Kevin said, surprise in his voice.

  “Yeah, If you’re on the up and up. Kevin, will you go with Jamie to collect the rest of our group and ferry supplies back here?”

  “I can do that,” he said, standing up.

  I pulled the .45 out of my holster and offered it to Jamie, figuring hers had been confiscated. She took it and pulled the slide to make sure it was loaded. I fished out two mags and handed those over as well.

  “If he gives you any trouble…” I let the words dangle, but she gave me a smile.

  “How far away is the rest of the squad situated?” Jamie asked.

  “Half a mile past the roadblock, east of here and on the south side of the highway. They have night vision gear for the dark and long-distance eyes on the road, so ride in the middle of the road until they make contact.”

  “Yes sir,” Jamie said, giving me a mock salute with the pistol that had me almost dropping to the floor as the barrel pointed my way for half a heartbeat.

  “What do you need us to do?” David asked.

  “You three,” I said, pointing to husband, wife, and daughter, “are going to come with me to find Luis. Then we’re going to talk to the pastor. Jamie, meet us back here, and we’ll all form a plan once introductions are made.”

  It was Linda who knew where to find Luis, and it was in the same building we’d find Pastor Horton - at the church in the center of town. We walked, letting the small family go ahead of me while Courtney walked beside me. She gave me a look and I kind of knew what she was asking, so I pulled a knife from its hiding place and gave it to her. She folded her arms, hiding it.

  “What’s your take?” I asked Courtney.

  “They’ve done some bad shit, but only because they were forced to. I think they’re telling the truth,” she whispered to me.

  “They better be, or I’m going start the killing with David and walk away from this shithole,” I whispered back just as quietly.

  Linda and David were a few steps ahead of us, and although I wasn’t trying to be overheard, I must have been. Linda had a stutter step and almost tripped. When she got her balance, she looked back at me with sad eyes. David pulled on her hand, and she started walking again. The daughter, though, was just a nonstop chatterbox and often roamed ahead of her parents a few feet, bending over to pick dandelions. She was a white girl, but she reminded me so much of my little Dormouse that something inside of me ached.

  “Dick… Give them a chance,” Courtney said.

  “Let’s see how Luis is,” I told her. “And then I’ll let you decide.”

  I felt exposed walking in the open. We were in the southern edge of a subdivision, and the church was somewhere in the middle. Everywhere I looked, front lawns had been ripped out, and fresh loamy dirt had been planted with a variety of crops. Everything was meticulously weeded, and the folks weeding things barely gave us a passing glance, though one couple did a double take when they saw me holding the shotgun at the ready. But nobody gave us a problem.

  “Who’s idea was it to plant crops?” I asked David’s back.

  “It was Pastor Horton’s. He threw out the HOA’s ideas, and we all tore up the lawns and planted what we could. The school’s old football field is almost all corn. Good thing we didn’t get enough money to put in AstroTurf,” he said, laughing nervously.

  That was actually pretty smart. Something didn’t really add up, though. There were more than the normal number of people alive and in a small concentrated area.

  “Is everyone here the same folks who were here from before the event?” I asked.

  “For the most part. Some had kids or other family members walk in or ride their bikes in right after it happened. Still, we lost a lot of people,” Linda told us, and then to her daughter, “Cassie, don’t get too far ahead, a car might—” her words cut off.

  Habit. Despite a radical shift, the habit was still there.

  “Hey, David, who’s your new friends?” an older man said, stepping out of a newer-looking house that had an overflowing lawn of what appeared to be made from squash plants.

  “These are the folks from the road. We’re going to Pastor Horton’s to check on their friend, Luis,” David called back before I could stop him.

  The old man grunted and gave us a nod. He turned and bent over to pick up something and I tensed, expecting a gun, or anything but what he stood up with. A garden hoe. He walked out, and between the rows he started turning over the dirt. I couldn’t see any weeds, so I guess I knew why now.

  “That’s kind of weird,” Courtney told me after a few steps.

  “Yeah, I wasn’t expecting that,” I told her.

  “Most of the community had nothing to do with security or the roadblock. Please keep that in mind when we get to the church. I don’t want anybody to get hurt,” David told me, turning so I could see his face.

  Courtney said, “You know, David, you’re lucky this man wasn’t close enough to us,” she nodded at me, “to have stopped you. You would have had a lot of people hurt or dead.”

  Linda stopped and turned to look at me for a moment. I stopped and stared. David ran ahead a couple steps to get Cassie’s hand and then stopped as well. Linda walked up and looked at me. “You’re mad, aren’t you?” she said after a moment, her gaze locked with mine.

  “I’m not angry,” I told her, hating the delay.

  “No, I mean, there’s something wrong with you. You’re always on edge, always ready to fight. It’s enough for me that you’re just trying to help your friends, but you’re ready to kill anybody who gets in your way, aren’t you? I can see it in your eyes.” Her accusation hit me hard, but I didn’t let it show.

  “Live by the sword, die by the sword,” I answered. “Your husband and his friend Kevin aren’t soldiers, warriors. They would be so much cannon fodder if somebody with training came along. You get more than one, it would have been an all-out slaughter. If that makes me a madman, then yes. You get in the ring with a junkyard dog, you’re going to get bit. Just don’t pick a fight you can’t win.”

  She stared at me a second longer. Her green eyes weren’t flat and dead like so many people I’d run across; hers had a good dose of intelligence and thoughtfulness behind them. She snorted and turned, taking her husband’s hand and walking, her back ramrod straight.

  “Looks like you pissed her off,” Courtney whispered.

  “I’m surprised you’re so calm in all of this. It’s Luis that’s hurt,” I told her.

  “Oh, I’m pissed, but they didn’t shoot him, and he gave better than he got. They talked about that one guy being half dead - well, he dropped four of them before they finally got him down. I think he’s going to be barking mad when we get him out of there.”

  “Where’s the rest of the guards or raiders who work the roadblock?” I asked David.

  “Probably seeing where Kevin and I went off to, and then out here. You didn’t really have to leave our guns behind you know.”

  “Sure I did,” I said, grinning.

  What happened had been a little dumb luck and a ton of attitude. Throwing the snake at them had been a snap reaction, but the primal fear of snakes affects almost all men. Plus, I thought it had been a copperhead by the look of it. That made me shiver, and I looked over at Courtney, who had the knife out and low to her side. I looked up and saw we were leaving the roadway and cutting through what had once been grass at the end of a cul-de-sac and was now leafy greens. A wide path had been trampled flat in the grass, and it led directly to the church, which was across a parking lot. A small chain link fence separated the areas.

  A gate had been installed and was left swinging open towards the church, so we went through. There were people all around the chur
ch. The entire lawn system had been ripped apart here and planted with a variety of crops. Close to thirty people gave us a wary glance as we walked past row after row of produce, and when David suddenly changed directions to a row of green beans to the left, we all followed.

  “Pastor Horton,” Cassie yelled. The little girl pulled her hand out of her mother’s and ran ahead of her father.

  She ran for all her little legs were worth and launched herself into the air, to be caught by a man in his fifties with his one free arm, his other arm being held at his side in a sling. His hair and beard were going gray, though some of the dark brown it had once been still showed, and he was tall and slender. He had the look of a guy who ran cross-country or hiked great distances for fun. Every bit of him seemed to be surrounded by an aura of health, despite the bum shoulder. And this was the man who had ultimately led to my friends being robbed and kidnapped? He caught Cassie easily and swung her up in the air with one arm like she weighed nothing. Her pigtails flew out, and she screamed with delight, fear, and fun.

  “Hello, David and Linda,” he said, finishing the Superman routine and putting Cassie down. “Who’s your friends?”

  “Pastor, this is Courtney,” Linda said, pointing to her, “Luis’s girlfriend. This is—”

  “That’s Dick, he’s a bit of an ass, but I think you’ll like him,” David interrupted.

  I just met him and he’d already formed an opinion? What is this, Dick, This is Your Life? I just scowled in response.

  “Courtney and Dick. I knew they had taken in three, but I didn’t think there was a guy with them?” the pastor asked after a tic.

  “They didn’t, I invited myself to this party,” I said, taking the safety off the shotgun.

  The click was only intended for intimidation purposes, and it worked. The pastor’s eyes went wide when he noticed Courtney holding the knife out in the open now and the ugly black scary gun I was holding. I almost laughed at the comical expression.

  “Well then, let’s go inside and talk. I don’t want any violence, I really don’t.” He stepped over a row and started walking towards the main steps leading up to the church.