Chapter Two:
The five men in front of us stare and smirk at us. From what I can tell in my frantic state, they all appear to be in their 20's or 30's, the majority covered in tattoos, and all with an unremorseful look in their eye. Now that I think on it, they may be from some of the various gangs throughout Shiawassee county (The area where Lennon, Durand, and some other towns are located in). Normally, these gangs pose little to no threat other than the usual drug trade and petty crimes, however, now that the worlds gone to shit, they must feel like nothing can stop them since there is no such thing as law enforcement anymore.
"What the hell do you two kids think you are doing in our territory?" says a white man carrying two hammers. He appears to be in his early forties and I presume that he is the leader of his gang due to the fact that the other four men are behind him, blocking our way to escape.
I stare at the man in dismay, a thousand things running through my mind, but I manage to say a response to him. I stammer, "We were just trying to get some supplies. My sister and I didn't know that this was your guy's area."
"Oh! You didn't know that this was our area!" The man retorts and then goes on to say, "Let me tell you, you little brat. This whole fucking town is our area, and you have the audacity to tell me that you didn't know?"
"We swear, we had no idea!" I plea in response, hoping that he would understand.
"Sounds to me that you are a liar you little shit." Says a burly black man in the back of the group.
"Lay off of my brother you jack asses." Jillian boldly says to them with her bow drawn, an arrow knocked onto it.
The men all begin to laugh raucously as their leader says, "Oh! Look here boys! We got ourselves a feisty one. Let's see if she can keep that act up with us later."
"Shut the hell up!" Jillian yells at them and I find myself just standing there, my mouth wide open in awe of my sister's courage. Drawing her bow back, Jillian takes aim at a guy in the back of the crowd and, getting a better look at him, I notice that he appears to be the same age as us, 17, 18, 19, and he looks scared shitless like I am making me wonder if he is being forced into this or if he is just a coward.
"You don't want to do that little lady," the leader sneers, "Sure, you may be able to get one, maybe two shots on us depending on how good you are, but, you are outnumbered and, plus I have this little beauty." At first, Jillian and I stare at him wondering what is so scary about a hammer but, he suddenly pulls out a pistol from his back pocket, making my heart drop. Shit, I think to myself, there is no way out of this, un phased, however, Jillian continues on.
"At least that means there are two more fuckheads out of this already shitty world, and yes, I am that good so who knows, maybe I could get three of you and then, the sound of you shooting me leads to you attracting the Walkers in the area, the remaining two of you would be dead before you know it so go on, try me." Jillian boldly says without a hint of quavering in her confidence, I just hope she isn't going to gamble our lives away.
"Sis, what the hell are you doing," I whisper to her, "are you trying to get us killed after mom and dad sacrificed themselves to save us?"
" Trust me Alec, I've got this." She whispers back without a hint of doubt in her voice, I remain dubious on how she expects to get us out of here though.
"Hey, did I say you two could talk?" the leader says, "I getting pretty damn impatient right now so you have ten seconds to drop your weapons and put your hands behind your back before I shoot, starting with your wimpy ass brother right there." The man flaunts his gun in my direction as if to get his point across.
"To hell with you." Jillian snarls, holding her ground. I get a tighter grip on my hatchet and I begin to pull out my knife when, I remember something that boosts my confidence. I remember that I brought my gun along and, even though it is clearly on my side, no one had noticed it yet, thank you God! With this new advantage, I take a step back and turn my side away from them discretely before anyone notices the gun. Now, how do I draw it without getting shot first?
"Fuck this shit," says an unintelligible man carrying an ax, "Just shoot the fuckers and get it over with."
"No!" the leader bellows, clearly annoyed, "We have no idea if they have others and we can use them as bait if something happens so, shut your trap and don't you dare speak another idiotic thing again or I will feed you to the Grays out there piece by piece." This instantly shuts the man up and it shakes me a little knowing that this guy doesn't screw around, even with his own teammates. The two men begin to argue giving me the chance I have been waiting for. I whisper to Jillian a quick plan.
"Shoot one of them, any of them, with your bow and then dive into the staircase, I have a plan, don't ask questions, just do it." I quickly whisper to her and she gives a curt nod in agreement. "Wait for my signal."
While they are distracted, I draw my knife and ready my hatchet. I used to train with it by throwing it into trees for fun so, I hope that it works now. Without further hesitation I gather every last bit of courage that I have left and yell, "Now Jillian!"
"What the he-" begins one of the men, a tall, muscular white man in his late twenties, but he is quickly silenced when Jillian releases and arrow and it skewers itself in the man's throat with a burst of red. He falls to his knees and begins to convulse. Before they regroup, I quickly aim and throw my hatchet at one of the men, the idiotic man who was just arguing with the leader, where it luckily buries itself in his chest. The man looks at me and then at the weapon lodged in his chest and, without any more movements, he topples forward with a pool of blood beginning to spread around him.
"Fuck!" screams the leader, "Teach him and his bitch of a sister not to screw with us!"
Jillian manages to release another arrow but, in the chaos of it all, it only hits the leader in the knee, causing him to howl in anguish. We bolt up the stairs just as he fires his gun, the bullet hitting the wall where I would have been.
"Go, go, go!" I yell to Jillian as we run up the stairs. I draw my gun and my knife and Jillian draws her spear. We go into the nearest doorway, waiting to ambush whoever comes up.
The only thug to come up the stairs, however, is the burly black guy, the teenager nowhere to be seen. As he walks past the doorway, I jump out and attempt to stab him with my knife but he hits me aside like I was nothing. I slam into the wall hard with my shoulder and crumple onto the ground in pain. The brute then pulls out a baseball bat spiked with nails and swings for Jillian, she blocks it with her spear, but it gets thrown aside in the process, leaving her defenseless. Before he gets another swing, I quickly stab him in the thigh and go on to elbow him in the face. He gets a couple of punches on me and then, in rage, grabs my neck and begin to put pressure on it.
"Let go you piece of shit!" I scream in a frenzy and I try to kick him. The man looks into my eyes and just laughs.
"Your all bark and no bite you little fly." He sneers at me, "Say goodbye to your sister." The man begins to choke me with all his force but, before I am about to black out, his eyes go wide and he drops me. Gasping for breath, I just stare in wonder when I notice Jillian's spear sticking out of his back. He turns around to look at Jillian's savage face and, for some reason, eerily laughs like a madman. Jillian kicks him to the ground, driving the spear through his chest cavity more, he lets out a breath of air, and finally dies.
"Holy shit Alec! Are you alright?" Jillian embraces me but puts a lot of pressure on my shoulder making me cry out. "Shit, sorry."
" It's fine," I say hugging her back, "There are still two douche bags downstairs to take care of." Without another word, we go downstairs to finish off the leader and the scared teenager.
When we get to the bottom step, we see the leader is on the ground holding his knee, the arrow on the ground next to him. Idiot, I think to myself. Jillian's arrows are barbed hunting arrows so they are going to do more damage pulling them out than leaving them in and, the scumbag did the worst thing he could at the moment, rendering him incapacitated on the ground with nothing left of a knee.
" You fucking cowards!" the man shrieks with all the venom he has. "Come fight me! I'll kill you two if it's the last thing I do!" The leader draws his gun on us but, before he can fire, Jillian looses an arrow into his hand causing him to scream and drop the gun.
"You bitch! I'll kill you, I'll fucking kill you!" The man snarls at Jillian.
"Oh for the love of god, shut up." I say as I walk up and burry my knife in his skull, rendering him a worthless husk. "Teach you to fuck with us." I mumble, turning the phrase he said against him.
The remaining thug, the scared, useless teenager, drops the knife he was carrying and raises his arms. "Please! Please don't kill me! I ain't done nothing, they forced me into it, I swear." He drops to his knees and begins pleading for his life.
I retrieve my hatchet from the man that it killed and Jillian retrieves her arrows. "Why shouldn't we burry and ax or an arrow in your coward ass self? You have ten seconds to give me a good reason before I assume that you are of no use to us." I say to the kid as I begin severing the heads from all of the dead bodies to strike fear into the kid.
"Doon't, doooon't kill me please!" he stammers.
"Time is ticking." I reply as I cut off another head.
"For the love of god! I'm just a kid, please I'm only sixteen!"
He is younger than I assumed, I think to myself before I say, "We are barely adults ourselves and you and your group were going to just kill us or worse. What makes you think I have any remorse for you and your piece of shit gang?" I go on to say, "I reckon time is all but over now." I begin to draw my hatchet back for a blow when he surprisingly says;
"Stop! I'll tell you where are base is! We have information of a cure in Atlanta. The piece of shit virus hasn't apparently spread down south."
"Atlanta?" Jillian questions before I can. "What makes you think Atlanta is any safer than Michigan or, for that matter, the rest of the goddamn world?" I can tell that Jillian is pissed because she is swearing a lot more, which she only does when she is extremely ticked.
"It's is just a rumor we heard from some survivors in Flint. It is the best shot we've got plus, don't you think that the heat won't do some harm to the undead bastards down? Even a bit?"
I contemplate what he just said. If it's true, then there might be hope for me and Jillian and we can finally be safe. We just need to get to Atlanta and… I drop the subject as it is a lot to take in at the moment and say, "Where are you held up?" I demand.
"In the garden shop about three miles from here." He says almost a little bit too at ease. The garden shop that he is talking about is Krupp's. It is a statue/garden emporium that almost gets no business, however, it manages to stay aloft which makes people rumor in my school about it being a drug dealership on the side. If they are held up there, they could easily have control of a main intersection on the road and they could fortify the shop with all of the heavy pieces of concrete and wood lying, they could be a bigger problem than I originally thought. I walk over to Jillian, she is cleaning off her arrows on the shirt of one of the decapitated dead guys. I ask her;
"Should we let him walk?"
"So he can go and bring back his goons after us? There is no way in hell I'm going to let that happen." She responds without looking up from cleaning her arrows.
"I dunno, he seems like he is telling the truth and he is worthless enough that he might be being forced into it. I say we let him walk but without anything but the clothes on his back." I respond.
"Whatever," Jillian replies almost a little too uncaringly, it makes me wonder how she is holding up after all of this, "it is your choice."
"Thanks sis, I know this is the best alternative than death." I walk up to the kid and kick his knife away, he retreats back against the wall and cowers. "Oh for the love of god! Quit being such a pansy ass bitch, we're letting you go." I say to him as I slap him on the back of the head.
"Really! Oh my god! I don't even know how to thank you, I-" he grabs my shoe as if praising me which I quickly pull back from, I cut him off before he continues.
"But, you are leaving here without any weapons and you are to go in the opposite direction of here, not towards Krupp's or that gang. If I find out that you go back to them and you tell them about us I will personally hunt you down, break your legs, and throw you to the Walkers." I say this to him with a sense of seriousness in my voice though I don't know how long I can maintain this facade. I open the front door, noticing that the walkers in the area are nowhere to be seen, I guess the jerks did us a favor. I continue, "If you say another word or complain I will kill you right here, you have 5 seconds to get your ass out of this house before I blow your head off." I pull out my gun and wave it like his leader did to prove my point. Without another word, the boy scrambles out of the house like a madman, about to run in the direction towards Krupp's, he looks back at me, remembers my warning, and runs the opposite direction of it. Relieved of having survived, I drop my tough guy act and go over to Jillian.
"Are you alright?" I say in the softest voice I can.
"Yeah," she replies, "I don't really want to talk about it now, can we just get our stuff and head home?"
"Of course Jill, let's get out of here." I give her a hug, grab the supplies we dropped and Jillian's hand, and start heading for the door.
"Alec." Jillian says to me as we are about to leave.
"Yeah?" I ask.
"Thanks for having my back."
"Anytime," I say, "We only have each other now and I will go through anything to keep you safe."
"Thanks little bro." She says, barely audible, I nod in response.
Without another word, we grab our things and leave the house without looking back. As we begin to jog, I think to myself how ruthless we became back there. To think that there are people like that or even worse than that out there makes me shudder. I hope, when the time comes, we can retain what last bit of humanity we have left in this hellish nightmare of a world.