American Blackout (Book 2): Slaves Beneath The Stars Page 6

  “Because somebody’s flying a plane doesn’t make them a good guy.”

  “I’ve met a few miserable pilots, never any sociopaths.”

  “Different time.”

  “Can we take a look at the earthmovers?” Cricket asked.

  “Sure, we’re twenty minutes from Betty and Marty’s. Siphon some gas from the Barracuda and we can take one home. Seriously, if I see a car that doesn’t look like it’s been sitting since the attack in May, let’s siphon some gas for your car.”

  Gasoline started to separate after a month of sitting in a dead car, making combustion less than efficient. Stashed in the trunk were hoses and a pump for siphoning. Hank shared generously from the fuel tank alongside his garage, but they still needed to keep scavenging for fuel.

  Cricket scanned the sky and found the Cub one last time, a pencil mark above the trees, disappearing over West Virginia. Lawrence pointed to a car approaching, and they got in the Barracuda and drove around back.

  Lined up, ready for takeoff, were a dozen earthmovers, yellow like the Piper Cub but dirty and full of graffiti and broken cab windows.

  “If the savages can’t get control of something, they destroy it—nice.” Cricket shielded her eyes from the sun, walking alongside one of the beasts. Its tires dwarfed her.

  They both smelled rotting flesh. Diesel took the sensory news with gusto. Snout to the ground, he kept moving.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Lawrence said, covering his nose and mouth with the front of his shirt, heading back to the Barracuda.

  “Be there shortly; headed for the last monster truck.”

  Between the next two beasts she found a man, on his back, his torso heaving like he was breathing with the help of an iron lung—mechanical and forced. A large possum emerged from his torn belly. Diesel whimpered and Cricket held on to his collar. The nocturnal creature still munched away in the late morning inside the human cafeteria when Cricket and Diesel startled it. What was left of the man’s head was twisted well past ninety degrees. Probably shot, followed by a head-plant ten feet below the cab onto hard clay and gravel.

  Vacuuming every last smell, Diesel stayed close to Cricket, glancing at her for instructions—Can I eat this dead thing or just smell it with my high-powered snout? Cricket clapped twice, a signal her dad had used to keep Diesel focused on human objectives rather than the canine world’s endless distractions.

  Cricket heard the boom of Lawrence’s pistol-grip shotgun, ran back to the car, and found two teenagers running toward the river.

  “They were approaching the car, coming right at me,” Lawrence said, pausing to gulp air. “I yelled ‘stop.’ They wouldn’t, so I shot over their heads.”

  They started the car and headed for the road. No sign of the boys. Once they were across the river, Lawrence gave directions and asked Cricket to slow down, saying that the roads were much worse, littered with more debris than forty-eight hours earlier. They even spotted two dogs on a sidewalk fighting over a severed arm.

  15

  Crossbow

  Betty and Marty Kain lived several miles south of the Ohio River in a small town called Clearfield. Driving slowly, Cricket and Lawrence passed old farmhouses and ranch homes on smaller parcels of land, with no sign of activity. Twice they had to stop. Lawrence threw aside trash and car parts, and Cricket stood guard, expecting an ambush.

  When Lawrence pointed to the next house on the left, she saw the school bus that Marty drove parked alongside a three-car garage. On five acres, the house was a seventies split-level and needed paint; but the yard was neat, the grass cut, and no one was in sight.

  They parked between the school bus and a red maple close to the asphalt driveway. Behind the house, the forested land rose rapidly and seemed to touch a fat cumulus cloud.

  Gazing at the land, Cricket shivered instantly, forcefully, like when she was fourteen hunting deer, sensing the animal before seeing it.

  Lawrence and Cricket examined the front and side of the house: no forced entry and no broken windows. Lawrence examined the lawn and the trunk of the maple and other trees for damage that might indicate anarchy had spilled into the yard of his in-laws.

  Lawrence Davies pressed into life with a handsome, concerned look for every waking moment. Even when he grinned at his wife and boys, a seriousness pressed into the corners of that smile, a sadness he couldn’t abandon. For several months he had lived with the possibility of never seeing his family again. Whatever quotient of sunny optimism he had once possessed, the Brazilian and a small-fry pervert named Anton had ruthlessly shattered.

  It wasn’t quite noon, and the sun streamed through the fall leaves. Diesel made large sweeps across the yard, guided by his snout, looking to Cricket for limitations on his freedom.

  “Where’s your gun?” Cricket asked Lawrence.

  He patted his pocket. “Guns make Anne’s parents nervous. My .380’s small.”

  She wore the Colt on her hip and headed for the trunk, where she placed the shotgun inside and pulled out the crossbow that Anton had used against her.

  “Always prepared.” Lawrence smiled painfully, like he was looking at a medieval torture device.

  “I’ll be back within the hour, checking out the ‘back forty.’ Tell the Kains I’ll meet them soon. Be careful.”

  Lawrence paused at the front door before knocking. He stared, not so much thinking of what he was going to say but as if employing X-ray vision to probe the house’s interior and its occupants’ thoughts—Superman at his best and most serious.

  Cricket and Diesel aimed for the woods. Once they were inside the forest of mostly tall, colorful, black cherry trees, she let Diesel lead the way. He ran and sniffed, exhaled loudly, had a pensive moment or two that passed for thinking, and then off he trotted to smell and taste more of earth’s flavors. He pushed further into a dense section of woods.

  Besides the Colt, Cricket kept a gravity knife on her left ankle, and on the other a subcompact, and extra magazines in the pockets of her leather vest. She could drop the crossbow anytime and have enough firepower to seriously damage any adversary.

  Perhaps the Kains were worried about the prison break and felt that staying in familiar surroundings with good neighbors was their best chance for survival. But for the last few miles before reaching their house, Cricket and Lawrence hadn’t seen anyone patrolling, actively protecting their families and property, and saw only a few families doing yardwork.

  Twenty minutes later the forest became spacious, with old-growth trees and less underbrush. She spotted a man in the distance using a horse to plow a field. This didn’t register as quaint and photographic, but as a harbinger of starvation and disease to come.

  Another shiver and Cricket gripped the crossbow tightly, glimpsing people ahead. Possible attack? But then she realized that the attackers were frozen and no attack was coming. A half dozen people had been tied to a row of trees and skinned.

  All ages, male and female, each face a mask of torment. The smell told her the butchering had occurred several days ago. She moved quietly toward the slaughter.

  As a hunter she had routinely skinned animals for years and had grown accustomed to hanging the deer, pulling down its skin, and removing it like a sweater. But this butchery showed a hatred of life itself—cruelty upon cruelty. A terror destined to scar the minds of the living.

  Cricket couldn’t look away, yet couldn’t go forward. She fell to her knees and prayed the way Sister Maria did when tragedy had struck another human being, friend or foe. She beseeched God directly, not with a bowed head but with eyes forward, her prayers said aloud.

  Much of the bloody exposed muscle had turned black from blood collecting in the limbs and abdomen. The glistening fascia that enclosed the muscle looked hacked and ripped too; someone had destroyed that thin membrane of protection.

  Yellow jackets entered and exited the mouth and a missing eye of one woman whose long, blood-matted hair remained intact. The others had been scalped. Heads hung lo
w, each one showed signs of earlier torture: fingers missing, gouging, and burn marks before the hell of the flaying.

  The gift given her as a teenager—that of “seeing” a buck a split second before turning and spotting it—had returned. In her mind’s eye she saw a man, curious, armed, and moving toward her. Cricket at first ignored the intrusion. She had more to say to God, looking for assurance that eternal peace and love were the victims’ reward. But when Diesel froze, pointing in the direction of the predator who made him growl, she abandoned the meditative world of absolute love for the immediate one of brutal survival and blind justice.

  Cricket quieted Diesel with a strong caress along his back, assuring him she was fully present and ready to answer the horror that had chilled her soul.

  The arrow was ready to fly, the safety off. She silently took cover behind a large tree. She was no longer looking but listening for her attacker, trying to map his position in her mind. With her back against the tree, she looked ahead and to the left and right, finding nothing except the horror of the dead.

  The Colt made more sense, but she didn’t want to alert other savages. If the stalker fired first, then the Colt would be her response. She heard rustling and estimated the savage at her five o’clock position. More leaves crunched, the snap of a dead branch, and she sensed an imminent attack. The thug was impatient, angry at his clumsiness, making even more noise, a stranger to the woods. Had he seen her hide?

  She inched clockwise around the tree, when the savage let out a war cry and charged. She held off for a long second and then raised the crossbow and came out of hiding. Stumbling and cursing over the ground was a short white guy, shaved head, pistol aimed at the opposite side of the tree. He shifted his arm to take the shot when Cricket fired, catching him in the right side, heart level. He was still running, but now the gun was pointed down and he was crashing to the forest floor.

  He hadn’t fired but his hands still clasped the gun. She dropped the bow, charged her assailant, pulled the knife from its sheath, but before she could run the blade into his throat, the man raised himself up on his knees and struggled to aim the heavy .45 revolver, shaking in his hands.

  She had her gun out and circled the man, who turned slowly to keep her in his sights. Blood dripped from his mouth and he talked gibberish, but soon stopped for a ragged breath. She wouldn’t rush him, not knowing what strength he might still muster. Diesel also circled, barking once before Cricket quieted him.

  The numerous tattoos and hardened face said escaped con. He drew one leg up, attempting to stand. As he attempted to keep her in his sights, she danced left and then right, several times, to help waste his last energies. She thought of retrieving the crossbow but didn’t want to turn her back on the man. He seemed to be getting stronger, not dying, and a smile rose on his face. Hand on the Colt, she was tempted to answer his cockiness with a headshot, but refrained and continued the dance moves.

  Cricket grabbed a large branch and Diesel stood still, knowing she was adding something new to the game. “Hey, jackass,” she said through clenched teeth, and cracked the man across the skull.

  The man’s head swiveled left, blood jetting from his mouth as he collapsed. He grunted loudly and then inhaled to gather air for a scream, a last SOS. She ran for the crossbow. His grunting grew louder, and he attempted to rise. Only a few feet away, she shot him in the chest. Pink-slipped from this life, he froze in disbelief and collapsed. Knife out, she released a cry of exhaustion and slit his throat deeply for the butchered people.

  Cricket was soaked in sweat. Diesel kept several feet away, snout to the ground, formulating a canine analysis of the man’s remaining scent. Not impressed, the dog turned around and resumed combing the forest floor’s ten thousand smells of life and death.

  She surveyed the woods for several minutes, expecting “buddies.” Her strength returning, she examined the dead ex-con: why the extravagant killing? Definitely not trying to conceal their butchery. After seeing the decapitation tat on the killer’s arm, she roughly pulled up his dirty T-shirt: “Death to the Infidels” revealed which religion inspired the terror against the Kains and their neighbors.

  She checked the man’s pockets and found nothing. He carried only the never-fired revolver. Some distance away, Diesel celebrated their success by breaking from a comfortable trot and charging the corpse. He hit the brakes in front of the dead thing timed with a quick bark—a final send-off to hell.

  On the way back to the Kains’ house, Cricket reloaded the crossbow. She quietly approached the back of the house below the kitchen window and checked inside. Voices. But she couldn’t see anyone.

  She went around to the front of the house, climbed the steps, and knocked. Soon a short, frightened woman came to the door, head covered with a light blue scarf. Cricket, with her crossbow, Glock at her side, and wild, dark-haired banshee look, inspired fear, and the woman brought her hand to her mouth.

  “Am I speaking to the lady of the house?” Cricket asked.

  “Oh, young lady, you need to turn around and head back home.”

  “I am home.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “I do. How many salesmen are you entertaining, right now, as we speak?”

  The woman went mute. Cricket raised one finger and the woman stared at the crossbow dangling from her hand like it was the most mysterious body part in the cosmos. She finally nodded yes as a large voice boomed from the living room.

  “Invite our guest in,” the man said.

  Cricket and Diesel followed the woman into the living room, where an enormous black man sat in a La-Z-Boy facing Mr. Kain and Lawrence on the couch. He ignored Cricket’s and Mrs. Kain’s approach as if they were of little matter and he would settle any important business with the two men seated across from him.

  He wore black dress pants and a white T-shirt. On a rope belt hung a sheathed bowie knife.

  “Who is this uncovered harlot?” the man addressed Marty Kain.

  “Emily Cricket Hastings,” she announced, and smoothly raised the crossbow and fired.

  The man reached for the knife, but the arrow had already pinned him eternally to the La-Z-Boy. He and the chair were now one, though he was alive enough to pull the knife from the sheath and drop it on the carpet. Mrs. Kain was screaming, and Cricket heard her name stated in various registers of incredulity, including a few “Emily’s.”

  “Mrs. Kain—shut up!” was all Cricket said, knowing that the lung had been pierced from the foamy blood pouring from his mouth, wetting the shaft of the bolt. Cricket raised her leg and slammed the arrow deeper into his chest. Mrs. Kain groaned and ran to the kitchen. Lawrence stood up.

  “Cricket, that’s enough. He’s dead.”

  She ignored him, snatched the knife off the carpet, came back around the La-Z-Boy, and sliced deeply across the front of his neck, spraying the recliner. Claubauf had done a good sales job creating his supervillain Ajax. But this was no criminal mastermind bleeding to death in front of her.

  “Now he’s very dead.” Cricket addressed Mr. Kain. “Did you know about the murder of your neighbors?”

  “We heard something about punishment—did you have to kill him?” Mr. Kain asked.

  “Several times. They were going to kill you or enslave you. I guess it would have been your choice. Tomorrow was the deadline.”

  “Yes, the tenth.”

  Cricket, shaking from the encounter, took a deep breath and went to the front of the house to check for more trouble. Lawrence understood and headed to the back. When she returned to the living room, Mrs. Kain sobbed into her husband’s shirt.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Kain, I’m Cricket. We need to leave immediately.”

  “He wanted us to convert,” Marty Kain said, holding his wife, who was silenced by the horror in her living room. “They’re everywhere, up and down the street. He just showed up at the door.”

  “We leave—now!”

  Lawrence grabbed some food from the cupboard and threw it in a
shopping bag. “That’s it. No time to pack another thing.”

  Mr. Kain stared at his son-in-law. “Oh God, this is our home, our whole life. It’ll kill us to leave.”

  “Stay and you die like your neighbors I found in the woods.” At the window, Cricket pulled back the white curtain and watched the street.

  Betty Kain looked up. “They told us we would be allowed to live, even if we didn’t accept their religion.”

  “You’d be living at their whim,” Lawrence said.

  Cricket and Lawrence helped the Kains toward the door.

  “These aren’t Jehovah’s Witnesses that smile and thank you and leave peacefully.” Cricket felt Mrs. Kain stiffen, but the woman had no strength to resist.

  “Betty, I’m so sorry,” Lawrence said. “You need to live for Anne, for the boys.”

  At the car, both husband and wife mentioned things that would take only a moment to gather. They were met with the silent determination of a young woman and their son-in-law, who would have none of it.

  “Did you convert?” Lawrence turned to his in-laws in the back seat as Cricket sped out of the driveway.

  “No,” Mr. Kain said. “We said we needed some more time.”

  “They were pleasant, and Mr. Waylon was very polite.” Mrs. Kain rubbed her shoulders. She did want to live. Cricket smiled before hot-rodding the Barracuda out of Clearfield.

  “I saw a very different side of him when he walked in today,” Mr. Kain said. “I never saw the pleasure to dominate, to kill. But I saw it in his eyes.”

  “How many came to your neighborhood?” Lawrence said.

  “Forty to fifty.” Mr. Kain hugged his wife, who was shaking. “He said we didn’t have much time and that we’d end up like some of our neighbors, who outright refused their demands.” Mr. Kain looked back to catch a glimpse of his life receding. Tears streamed down his face. “I know it’s only things, material stuff, but it’s memories, too.”