Fail State, page 16
part #2 of End of Days Series
"Who would like to eat me?" The bellybutton asked.
“Oh no, we’re full,” replied man boobs one and two.
And they all fell about laughing. The little ones and the McGuigans and fashionable Darryl at any rate.
Not Tammy and Roxarne, though. Roxy had been nudging her in the ribs all the way through the pulled pork rolls.
“What?” Tammy asked in a low, strained voice.
"He keeps looking at me," Roxarne muttered, nodding at Cracker Barrel Darryl who was sitting almost opposite them on the other side of the campfire.
Tammy glanced through the flames, and sure enough, he was grinning like a fiend at Roxarne. Like she too had just flashed a few acres of boob.
That particular Darryl winked at them.
"Excuse us, gentlemen," Tammy said as sweetly as she could manage, which she calculated was sweet enough on account of her having learned to sugar talk her way through a hard shift at the Dollar General.
"Where y’all going now?" asked the big shirtless McGuigan.
“Secret lady’s business,” Tammy said, standing up and hauling Roxarne up with her. “Come on,” she said with some urgency and haste.
“We cain’t leave the kids.”
“We ain’t doing that. Come on.”
“Mom?” Bobby Jr said, sounding worried.
“Ain’t nothing,” she smiled back at him. “Look after your sister.”
Tammy and Rox walked out of the firelight, huddling together about twenty yards away, in the dark. The night sky was cloudless and a billion stars shined with hard brilliance.
“We need to settle on which of us is going to ride the Cracker Barrel over there," Tammy said, “if it becomes needful to do so.” She hurried on before Roxarne could reply. "And I volunteer it to be me because God knows I dragged us all out on this hell trip, so it should be me that pays the price.”
"But he's been looking at me, Tammy," Roxarne protested.
"That don't matter," Tammy shot back. "You know what men are like. They think they want one thing, until they get another, and they're happy enough to make do with that rather than nothing. So it’s gonna be me. I’ll do it.”
"That don't make any sense at all, Tamara,” Roxy said, and Tammy new she was getting worked up because that Tamara thing was always a tell. “And even so that's only one of them,” Roxy added. “What about the other three?”
Tammy looked back across the little camping area and into the small circle of light. Both McGuigans were giggling and jiggling and all of the kids, save for her little Bobby, were rolling around in delight.
"I think those big ones been taking their pleasure at the bottomless buffet so long they've forgotten how to find it anywhere else," she said. "As for the sleeveless Darryl, I don't get any sort of vibe off of him. Maybe he's a gay redneck.”
"There ain’t no gay rednecks," Roxarne insisted. "That's just the way of things. But maybe he lets his brother do the talking and he just picks up the leftovers."
"I thought Cracker Barrel Darryl was his cousin," Tammy said, confused.
"No," Roxarne said. "The Darryls are cousins to the McGuigan's but brothers to each other. That's why they look so much the same."
"Huh," Tammy said. "I did not realise that. Do you think they're like the Sheridan brothers? Word was those boys would not date a girl unless she would date them both."
"Oh, gross," Roxarne winced, firming in her resolve. "You cain't do it, Tammy. You cannot pull a train full of Darryls. Not even two of them. Not for any reason.”
“Honey we got four good reasons sitting over there. If I have to do it, I will. You notice the way they parked us in. We can't even get out of here without their say-so."
Both women regarded the scene around the campfire with real distaste. None of this felt good.
“Maybe they'd go for a hand job," Tammy suggested.
After a pause, Roxarne agreed, if reluctantly.
"A handjob for a pulled pork dinner seems a fair trade. I guess.”
It did not come to that, however. Because when they returned to the camp fire the Darryls had gathered up all the plastic plates and camp cutlery and taken them inside the trailer for cleaning. Big shirtless McGuigan was off at the edge of the forest, urinating massively and groaning as though very pleased with himself to be doing so. The other McGuuigan was nowhere to be seen but all four kids were still sitting around the fire, so Roxarne rejoined them and without thinking on what she was doing, Tammy Kolchar went to the motor home to offer help with the dishes. Or a quick wristie if such should be required in lieu of payment for their dinner.
That was both a bad step and their deliverance, for approaching the entry to the motor home she overheard the Darryls in animated conversation about what was to come next. Roxarne had been right about Cracker Barrel Darryl, who was fixing to have his way with her, whether she fancied such a thing or not. He almost seemed to hope not.
“I do love it when they fight,” he said.
But they were wrong about all the rest of it. Turns out the others were not to be recompensed with anything as wholesome as a freely given hand job. Turns out the objects of their lustful intentions were not the women at all.
Not grown women at any rate.
“Help you, ma’am?”
Tammy shrieked and jumped.
The missing McGuigan was standing behind her. Where he had sprung from she did not know. But she could see from the grin on his face that he had heard what she had just heard. Or enough to make no difference. His grin was sick and wrong. Electrical shocks coursed through her body. Just under the skin, but all over. The world began to fade away at the edges. Going dark and pressing in all round until she took hold of her foolish senses and shouted “NO!” and kicked the McGuigan so hard in the balls that her boot sunk into his groin like he was a monster made out of swamp mud.
And so it was that Tammy Kolchar came to be running through the West Virginia wilderness in the full dark of night, carrying her children, pursued by four perverts—or perhaps three and a plain rapist—when she stumbled on the rough ground and tumbled headlong to her end.
This had to be the end, she thought as she gasped, winded, and groaned at the bright, white explosion of pain in her side, even as she pulled a crying Bobby and Wynona close to her, as if that might protect them from what was coming.
“Keep running Roxy, keep going,” she cried out, although she barely had the breath to whimper and what she wanted most was for her friend to double back and sweep them up somehow and carry them away. Roxy and her two, Jakey and Liana, were such a long way ahead of Tammy that she didn’t imagine they’d even heard her.
But then Roxy was always good at miracles. Small ones anyway. Like fashioning fairy princess costumes out of bubble wrap for the wings, or building whole castles from the cardboard boxes Tammy brought home from work for Bobby’s ninth birthday party. It was Roxy who’d got her the job interview at Dollar General when Tammy’s husband took off to the fracking and then took up with that waitress there. And of course it was Roxy, always Roxy, who kept them moving this last week or so whenever Tammy had just wanted to pull over to the side of the road and give up.
It wasn’t Roxy who appeared out of the night time forest though.
It was a Darryl. And then another Darryl. And what seemed like an eternity later, the huffing and puffing and cursing McGuigans. They were all swearing at her. All promising the most awful reckoning. Her babies wailed and trembled in her arms.
“Y’all are gonna regret that,” one of their hunters panted and gasped, but Tammy never did find out which one, because Roxy came back and they all died.
One woman and two children crashed through the undergrowth towards Rick. They ran without pause or obvious direction, just trying to put as much distance between themselves and their pursuers as possible. The second woman — wait, was there a second woman? Or had he simply mistaken the cries of one of the children for another adult.
A shotgun blast, aimed into the treetops, lit up the ridge-line ahead of him and he saw in the bright flash of light that there was indeed another woman, and she was down.
Everything happened quickly then, but not so quickly that Rick Boreham lost track of the sequence.
First a young boy and then a girl of about the same age ran past the tree behind which he had taken cover. The girl kept moving swiftly, but the boy, perhaps alerted by his heightened senses stopped and turned to call to his mother.
He saw Rick, a dark silhouette, completely still, and he cried out in alarm instead.
His mother—at least Rick assumed she was his mother —called back.
“Keep going.”
But she ran past the same tree and, looking for her son, saw Rick.
She gasped and turned tail. Literally running back from where she had just come.
“Keep going Jakey,” she called over her shoulder, and Rick could not help himself.
He smiled, faintly. Almost fondly.
Some mad maternal instinct, buried deep in her animal hind brain, had switched on and she was trying to lead him away from her children.
He didn’t move from cover.
Instead he raised his weapon and waited on his target.
The first one appeared over the crest, a thin man. The tree line was spare and he blocked out enough stars for Rick to lay the iron sights on his centre mass.
A small voice cried out behind him.
“No!”
It was the boy.
He thought Rick was going to fire on his mother.
Small feet crashed through the undergrowth toward him as another figure appeared in outline above.
The woman was halfway back to her friend when the last of the pursuers struggled into view. They were much bigger men, and Rick fancied he could hear their laboured breathing as he squeezed the trigger.
Two rounds took the first man in the chest.
Another two dropped the one beside him.
The boy, just a few steps away now, wailed in distress.
Rick had almost no time left to make the final shots.
He killed the nearest of the big men with a clean hit, but the boy slammed into him, ruining his aim on the last.
The gun roared but he was certain the rounds did not find their mark.
21
Mere anarchy is kicking ass
Jonas heard the engines as soon he was clear of the building. A heavy metal thunder that he could feel in his chest. His hand dropped to the pistol at his hip, but he made a conscious effort to leave the gun alone. Instead he followed Muller and O’Shannassy as they marched the quarter mile from the county offices to the Seattle Gate. It seemed to Jonas as though half the town had joined the group by the time they reached Big Al's place. These fucking idiots were going to get themselves killed if they were heading into the sort of trouble he suspected was waiting outside the gate.
He couldn't break away though. Not without being noticed. He wasn’t a pussy or anything. He was just being rational. While everybody else was swinging their dicks and losing their minds, Jonas seemed to float above it all. And nothing he saw from up there gave him good feelings. Hundreds of dumbass locals hurried onto Main Street, many of them armed, but not all with firearms. Some carried shovels and pitchforks like an angry mob from some bullshit black and white movie. His guys joined him, hurrying toward the Seattle Gate and the deep, industrial growl of the engine noise; Leo Vaulk, cosplaying The Punisher (if The Punisher had really let himself go to seed), and Dale Juntii who carried an assault rifle taken from a raiding party. It would have been hard enough sneaking away with those two flanking him, but as they passed the sidestreet that ran up next to Al Barrett's diner and out into the fields of Mullan Park, Brad Rausch and Chad Moffat appeared at the head of a dozen or so men and women who’d been working on the Wall.
So how many of these losers had stayed behind to actually stand guard out there? Jonas thought.
He’d seen Joe Wolfenden's militia crew earlier, but there was no sign of them now. Part of him wondered whether they might have got smart and bugged out. But no. That wasn’t Wolfenden's style. The man had accepted the shelter of the town in return for aiding in the defence, and he hadn't shown any sign of reneging on that deal. (A deal Jonas had brokered, in fact). Anybody lucky enough to find themselves behind high walls and strong gates was probably there for the duration now.
The engine roar grew louder as they approached the Seattle Gate. The makeshift structure had always looked imposing, despite its hasty construction and improvised design. But to Jonas, it now resembled a child's play thing, a fort glued together from matchsticks and toothpicks. Goose flesh stood out on his arms as the massed iron choir of —what, a dozen?— powerful motorcycle engines began to resolve itself into the savage roar so many individual machines. He was no expert on big ass bikes, but he could tease out the weaponised double-shot report of a big squad of Harley-Davidson's from the continual volcanic rumble of Japanese and European rides.
His boss in Miami had ridden a Harley. Jonas had learned to hate the sound of them.
"This is it, boys," Leo Vaulk said. "The dim and bloody tide is loose."
"The fuck you saying?" Dale Juntii asked. His voice was tight and his lips barely moved.
"Our man Leo is a poet," Jonas said, trying for a cool, detached tone, and almost choking on his own spit. How the hell he could do that when his mouth was drier than Death Valley he didn't know. His legs felt light but leaden at the same time as though he might float away or simply collapse with the effort of dragging their impossible weight forward one step at a time. Walking beside him, Juntii looked like a human tractor, gearing down to push through whatever lay ahead.
"The blood-dimmed tide is loosed," Jonas recalled aloud. "And mere anarchy is, fuck, I dunno, kicking ass all over the world or something. It's a poem. Right, Leo?"
Leo Vaulk rolled his shoulders and hefted the shotgun he was carrying, as if to test the weight. He wore three handguns about his body. One at each hip and another in a shoulder holster. The black composite handle of a fighting knife poked out of some weird sort of neoprene holder he'd Velcroed around one of his biceps. It looked like the sort of thing you might stick a big ass phone in if you were going out for a run, but Leo had jammed this gigantic pig sticker in there. He looked ridiculous. They all did.
"This’ll be the Angels," Leo said, before adding, "The Hells Angels." Just in case there was any doubt. "I've dealt with these assholes before. We need to put them down and put them down hard."
Dale Juntii chuckled.
"Leo, you're a security guard. The only time you dealt with these assholes was when you held the door open for them to come into the bank and make a big cash deposit."
"Fuck you, Dale,” Leo said, but without any real venom.
It was all just a monkey dance, Jonas thought. A bunch of apes screeching and beating their chests, hoping to avoid any real violence and damage. He'd seen plenty of it, repping for the sort of lower tier douchebags who couldn't afford a top shelf Jew from Harvard.
"Jesus Christ, is anybody actually standing guard anywhere?" Jonas asked, mostly for the sake of moving his jaw, and stopping his own screeching monkey brain from running wild with visions of everything turning to shit and blood. The rolling thunder of engine noise and the growing buzz of frightened, excited exchanges between the heavily armed but anxious residents of Silverton meant he had to raise his voice to be heard. He squinted and blinked a trickle of stinging sweat from his eyes. The sun seemed to have climbed high overhead in the space of a few short minutes’ walk from the county offices. The reek of body odour, his own and everyone else’s, was overpowering. A few steps ahead of him, Sheriff Muller strode towards the gate as though he was merely rambling along Main Street to take the morning air. His light tan uniform shirt, however, was stained with sweat. Two dark patches under his armpits were quickly spreading across his back and down towards the heavy leather utility belt he wore loosely under his paunch. He spoke into his walkie-talkie as he advanced on the gate, but Jonas could not make out a word of the exchange.
"I don't know how many guns they got left on the Wall," Juntii said, raising his voice to answer Jonas’s mostly rhetorical question. "I saw Wolfenden and a few of his guys heading out through one of the breaks."
"Probably getting the fuck out of here while they still can," Leo groused.
"No," Juntii said. "I reckon they were gonna work their way around the flank. Take some high ground."
The crowd, maybe three or four hundred strong, bunched up as it approached the Gate. The fortifications here were much more substantial than those guarding the approach from the Cascades. Most of the traffic they’d had to turn back came from the city, after all.
Boasting two towers, instead of the single one that commanded the Cascades Gate, a firing platform accessible by three separate ladders and running across the entire width of the road, the town's main defensive works – if you didn't count the improvised steel breastworks of the Wall – pushed another 25 or 30 yards toward the forest on both sides of Main. The construction was mostly of pinewood, but Wetsman’s engineers had reinforced the palisade in front of the firing platform with sandbags, a few steel plates and I-beams scavenged from the half-renovated shell of the former Silverton Ironmongery. It had been halfway towards being rebuilt as an artisan bakery and cheese shop when the Chinese had launched their cyberattack.
Standing just beyond the last structure at the south-western end of Main Street, the gate enclosed the tiny park where Jonas had left his roommate’s stolen mountain bike on that first crazy fucking day back in August. As Sheriff Muller hauled himself up the main ladder, followed by Deputies Milfull and Tilly, and a little more slowly by the county Comptroller with his bad arm, the good people of Silverton gathered in loose clumps and knots behind the gate. Nobody issued any orders not to group together, but with so many people carrying so much edged metal and firearms and blunt instruments, people naturally gave each other a little bit of elbow room.
