CHAPTER TEN

Liza peered cautiously around the street corner. She saw a stack of rotting flesh lying in the road around the corner and smirked grimly. Some humans had either done some damage to some zombies and won the battle, or some zombies had done some damage to some humans and won the battle. It was hard to tell. Either way, it looked safe now. She turned to the others and tried to look relaxed as she waved them forward, signaling silently that it was safe, and they moved on around the corner. They were tired, sweaty and stinky and they just wanted to hurry up and find some other survivors. Arielle had a nasty knot on her head from where her head had banged into the pavement during the hand-to-hand fight with the sprinters, and she was looking a little dizzy. Either way, they were all still breathing, and that was good enough. Liza silently pondered if they would ever find any other survivors, as their muffled footsteps dully echoed on the street, occasionally a discarded newspaper blowing by or a stray cat running past. Liza saw Jay's hungry gaze following one of the cats, and shook her head in disgust. Even she wasn't starving enough to eat a fucking cat.

Eventually, three streets further, Daniel could stand no more of the silence. "Why are we doing this?" he asked hoarsely, and stopped in the middle of the road. "What's the point? All the survivors are dead or gone. We could search all day long, all night long, and never find a single fuckin' survivor. And now Phil's dead because of it, God damn it. The man was my friend."

Jay gave him a calm look and pointedly adjusted the SKS on its shoulder strap. "Shut your mouth. You've made your point."

Daniel kept going, though. He obviously wasn't intimidated at all. "We shouldn't have come out of the safety of that apartment building in the first place. You led us like lambs to the slaughter. You don't care if you sacrifice us all just to find a few other survivors. Well, I'm gonna live through this thing. I'm gonna fuckin' make it." Daniel's voice snapped at the last few words and he began sobbing brokenly and he was yelling through his tears by the time he finished.

Jay smiled simply. "We have to try. If you want to try to make it back to the apartment building, that's totally cool with me. Good luck, and have a nice trip." Jay kept walking past, staring straight ahead. Arielle and Liza stared at Daniel, and the three of them were silent for a moment.

"He's gone crazy," Daniel pleaded desperately. "Come with me. I can't make it back alone. You know that." Liza and Arielle walked after Jay without a word, Liza holding her limping lesbian lover up and supporting her with an arm around her shoulders. "YOU'RE ALL MANIACS!" Daniel shrieked shrilly after them, and he fell to his knees and began bawling his eyes out like a baby. "THERE'S NO MORE FUCKING SURVIVORS!"

"Cut it out, dude.. Please. You're fucking annoying and you're going to draw zombies to our position, asshole."

Daniel, Jay, Liza and Arielle all stared in stunned awe at the place where the voice had come from. Three other survivors crouched inside the shattered display window of a sporting goods store, with guns aimed and ready to fire if needed, in case Jay and his group were bandits.

"I don't fucking believe this," Daniel whispered, his voice echoing however in the silence. He was genuinely puzzled by the sudden appearance of a trio of survivors.

One of the other survivors gestured with his firearm. "Put all your guns down. Put them all down. You know how it is, hard times and all that. Can't trust anyone almost." Jay and his comrades found this more than generous. Most survivors shot first and asked questions later. They dropped their weapons quickly. The leader of the new group of survivors nodded with a smile. "Now, if you all want to live, get on your knees and put your hands behind your heads very slowly." They knelt on the cracked concrete and obeyed.

The leader hopped out of the window to the sidewalk, his boots crunching on the broken glass as he approached Jay's group. "I can't really trust y'all too much . . . Y'all could be murderers for all I know . . . " He turned to one of the other two survivors with him. "What do we do with them?"

The other man -- stout and red-faced -- blinked a few times and gave a crooked grin as a sly look crept across his face. "These people? This should be fun . . . "

Liza cast a worried sidelong glance at Jay, but he seemed pretty calm.

--

The Pastor sighed as footsteps pounded down the hall of the small house near the side of what had once been an interstate in what had once been a state of the USA. The Pastor had politely knocked on the boarded-up door of the house, he had seen someone peek through the peephole cut in the door and then the footsteps had run away. The sinners inside recognized his face, apparently, for he could hear someone shouting inside that they all had to get away right now. The cold-blooded killer shook his head good-naturedly and then he stepped back and began kicking repeatedly at the wood of the door with his heavy boot. Wood splinters sprang everywhere until the Pastor finally broke through a Pastor-sized hole in the door and entered the house, inhaling the scent of sinners. It smelled like sex and cheap beer. It didn't matter; they were going to have the privelege of meeting the Pastor's divine bullets.

"Don't be frightened," the Pastor yelled, his voice booming through the house. "This experience will be therapeutic for all involved."

The sixteen men of the safehouse leaned out of doors from all directions and opened fire, and a full-scare firefight broke out in the confines of the house. The Pastor ducked down on one knee and leveled his Desert Eagle. The first shot missed, blowing a hole through the door jamb by one man's face. The Pastor breathed out calmly and adjusted his aim and squeezed the trigger. The survivor shrieked as the bullet tore through his left thigh and he fell out into plain view, writhing on the floor. The Pastor put a bullet into his brain and fired off three rounds at the other men rapidly before advancing towards them. He fired two rounds into the chest of one man and threw back his head and laughed at the violently red splash of blood that sprayed from the sinner's body. His laughter was cut off as a bullet struck him in the shoulder of his concealed body armor, and he brought up the Desert Eagle and the survivor that had fired at him toppled, shot twice in the chest as well. Another man was shot in the stomach before the remaining ten survivors retreated up the stairs of the safehouse towards the second floor where the women and children were situated, with the Pastor in hot pursuit.

He aimed the Desert Eagle up the stairs at the last man in the line of retreating defenders and shot him down like a dog, four bullets to the back, before reloading and stomping up the stairs after the others, intent on continuing his insane killing spree. He entered the second floor and ducked as a shotgun blast hit the wall where his head had been a second before. The Pastor calmly fired one shot into his opponent's head at pointblank range, and two other men were hit multiple times before dying. The final six attempted to surrender, but the Pastor just walked by, calmly shooting each of them at point-blank range before entering the nursery where the women cowered helplessly with their children. Shots rang out rapidly and then the Pastor exited the nursery, reloading his Desert Eagle with a grin on his face, obviously pleased with himself.

His female protegee stood at the top of the stairs. She had entered after him, observing the way he battled, as she had been instructed to do. "Killing women and children?" she asked with her lips trembling in horror. "I don't know if I could do that."

The Pastor smiled gently and kissed her softly. "It's not your choice, my dear. You must take into consideration that they are sinners against the Lawwwd. It's a stroke of luck for them that I exist to send them down to the depths of Hell with Satan himself. I'm just setting the example for you to continue in my stead when one of these damned sinners eventually sends me up to be with my Lawwwwd." The Pastor's face clouded in anger. "That little whore sinner and the Rider came closer to killing me than anyone ever has. They will be the next to die. I promise that."

He left and the woman followed reluctantly. They burned the house behind them.

--

Jay stared defiantly at his interrogator, blood streaming from his nose. "What, is this some kind of punishment for all the loving I gave your mother last night?"

The big man slammed his fist into Jay's jaw again and the tied-up Rider reeled back from the force of the blow. The interrogator hit him again then grinned widely. "You don't speak unless spoken to. I ask the questions around here, do you understand?" His knee piledrived into Jay's belly twice, and he waited for the Rider to answer. When Jay finally choked out an affirmative, the interrogator seemed satisfied that he'd wiped the smart-aleck look off of Jay's younger face. He also seemed very satisfied by the blooming bruise on Jay's jaw. He sat back, taking a sip of coffee and observing his victim.

"That was kind of nice," Jay croaked, panting just a little. "Maybe we should hook up again next Saturday night, baby." He grunted as the interrogator laid the coffee aside and smashed a fist into his belly . . .

"Wipe that stupid look off your face," the bigger man growled. "The boss really doesn't care what I do to you. And that includes using these." He held up pliers and grinned, rubbing the pliers menacingly over Jay's puffed-up lip.

"You're such a sissy," Jay taunted, spitting a wad of bloody saliva onto the ground at the man's feet. "Fight me like a man. Untie me, and let's rumble, big boy." His face was red with anger and he had the murderous smile on his face that he always had right before people died. Right before a lot of people died.

"You're not a problem at all," the interrogator replied arrogantly, and undid the ropes. Jay took the man's beefy arm immediately and twisted it painfully before kicking him in the chest, knocking him stumbling backwards to land on his back on the ground. He slammed his fist into the interrogator's stubbled jaw and then smiled as he took the pistol from the holster on the man's left hip. He stepped back and -- predictably -- his former captor turned and tried to flee desperately. Two bullets struck his upper back and he toppled, then a third bullet blew his head off. Jay stepped over his body and headed further into the base of the survivors that had captured Jay's group.

As a precaution, two guards had been placed outside the door to the room Jay was being interrogated in. Jay opened the door, firing point-blank. Casually stepping over those bodies as well and retrieving pistol ammunition from them and reloading, Jay took in his surroundings calmly. It looked like he had been interrogated in one of the back storerooms of a J.C. Penneys, and as he got further into the base, he discovered he was right. What kind of whack job group of survivors/bandits would use a J.C. Penneys as their base? That was just idiotic.

He heard a faint scraping sound near another door and headed to it, opening the door and aiming the pistol inside. A man turned around from where he was on top of Arielle on a crude bunk. Arielle sat up as well as much as she could, with the ropes still tying her down. Her eyes were swollen almost shut and she didn't look too good. The bandit's eyes widened in alarm and he reached for his own pistol lying on the table nearby. Jay's bullet ripped through him and he toppled, dead in an instant. Jay put another bullet through the back of his head and then he approached, averting his eyes from Arielle and untying her quickly. She grabbed her clothes nearby and hurriedly dressed, arming herself with the man's pistol and then kicking his dead body, hatred gleaming in her swollen eyes.

As they hurried through the rest of the base, Arielle was crying unashamedly and Jay didn't blame her. He just hoped that they hadn't done the same things to Liza. If they had . . . Jay gritted his teeth silently. If they had, they were all going to die.

Jay and Arielle burst through the door of the last room that they hadn't checked, and saw Daniel and Liza tied up against a wall, being interrogated and beaten by the three original bandits that they had first met, out in the center of the town. The three bandits turned, expecting to see some of their own people, and instead saw two of the people they thought were supposed to be tied up, aiming guns at them with murderous looks on their faces. One man was shot in the chest right off, but the other two dived to the ground and returned fire with their own handguns. The second one was shot six times by Arielle, who had turned into a one-woman killing machine with her fury.

The last man, the stout and red-faced one from before, crouched in the middle of the blood-stained floor and gazed pleadingly at Jay. "Please. Please!! I can lead you to the other bases. You could have weapons, food . . . You could free all the other people that the other bases have imprisoned. You could be a hero, Rider."

Jay looked to where Arielle was untying Liza and Daniel, but he was really looking only at Liza. She shrugged a single shoulder and smiled, and she was beautiful even with her lip bleeding badly. Jay turned back to the cringing coward kneeling before him. "Where is the first base?"

"In a supermarket," the man replied instantly, eager to please and not die. "On West Ave. I can lead you--"

Jay cut him off. "We'll just get another prisoner from that place to tell us where the next one is. You, however . . . You are going to die. I don't like you." Jay shot him three times.

He headed towards Liza, and kissed her hard on the mouth, not even caring about the smeared blood, just wanting to be close to her. Because as soon as they could get organized again . . . they were heading to West Avenue.