“We could work together, ya know,” he said from somewhere on the opposite side of the cruiser. “We could run this town and have everything we’ve ever wanted, and no one could stop us.”
He was in the process of reloading as well and was fishing to see if he could locate my exact position. I wasn’t going to give him that opportunity. If he wanted to kill me, then he’d have to work to accomplish that goal. I could hear his spent mag hit the pavement and rustle about, which meant he was probably peering under the car looking for my legs. I chocked on the fear that grasp at my throat, cutting the air off and threatening to overwhelm me.
Staying focused on his location was all I could do. The light rain masked any further noises and I had to force myself to cut through the normal sounds, looking for those that were signs of impending danger. The thought of making a run for the pickup crossed my mind, yet I knew better than that, as I’d be gunned down before I made it ten feet.
I took a quick glance over my shoulder for Darren and saw him nowhere in sight. I had no cover fire to keep this Imposter pinned down, not that he would have any ammo left anyway, and there was no way I could accurately throw a pistol mag to him at this distance. I was on my own… once again.
I hated this guy almost as much as Smith. They both stood for the same thing and abused the power they had to further their own agendas without any thought to anyone but themselves. I was sickened by his words and as the fear drained from me like blood; it was replaced by pure rage. This guy had to die as Smith had and I wanted to be the one that took his life.
“I’ve got back up on the way, pal. So you might as well take my offer and join us or we’ll have no choice but to kill you and that skinny little bastard with you,” he stated from the shadows, although this time his voice sounded much closer than it had before.
I said nothing in return and that infuriated him.
“Answer me, asshole!” He shouted. “I know you’re still there!”
Instead of actually letting the bolt fall forward with its loud metal on metal sound, I had stripped a single round from the mag and placed it into the chamber, so when the magazine was slid into the weapon, all I’d have to do was pull the trigger. And I wanted to pull the trigger on this asshole almost as much as I did with Smith. This jerk was a choir boy compared to Smith, but still someone that
needed
to die.
“I know you’re at the front of my cruiser, which means you have nowhere to run,” he told me. “Do you really want to die right here in the street for nothing, when I’m giving you the choice to live instead?”
Darren had made his way around the back side of the pickup and crawled in. From the shadows he watched the drama unfolding before him, wondering if these guys were real police officers or imposters as I had implied, although deep down he already knew who they were. He could see me clearly, although he was unable to see the remaining guy and the fear that held him captive was telling him to run, because when the bad guy was finished with me, he’d surely come after him and that was not a comforting thought in any manner. The nearby street lamps didn’t give off the same amount of light as they used to, so he could easily be misidentified and shot.
“Drive away… just start the truck and drive away,” he told himself frozen with utter fear.
“Last chance, pal,” the Imposter told me.
I had been squatting there running every idea I could think of through my mind about how to get out of this situation alive. Everything I came up with seemed to sputter and die and I was running out of time… then it hit me.
Here goes nothing.
With no reply, he thrust himself up and around the front of the cruiser, the Glock in front of him ready to kill me. When he arrived he found that I was not there and quickly surveyed his surroundings, thinking that I had somehow slipped off into the night and was now watching him from the darkness. He was scared to move, knowing that if he went the wrong direction he would join his dead friend. It was a feeling he didn’t like, yet could not shake no matter how hard he tried, as he knew my short rifle had a larger and more powerful round than his pistol, plus I had the ability to standoff at distance and still kill him.
“Where did you go?” He angrily asked. “Where are you hiding, you son of a bitch?”
I slowly rose from the opposite side of the cruiser where he had originally been. When he made his move toward my position, I used the falling rain and his own movements to mask my own. And now I was behind him and I had the advantage.
“Behind you,” I replied.
I could see the twitch in his neck muscles as he heard my voice and with my red dot in the middle of his back, any attempts he made to swing around and shoot me would only invite swift violence. I’d kill him before he even turned a quarter of the way.
“Now just hold up a minute here,” he started with the pleading. “I’m sure there is something we can work out. Something that you want.”
“Actually there is,” I told him.
“Name it and it’s yours,” he said.
“I want to know how many people you have taken advantage of and killed since all of this started,” I asked him. “You can’t expect me to believe that I’m the first one, so give me a number.”
He stood there silent.
“What’s wrong, buddy? Cat got your tongue all of the sudden or would you rather I not know how vile and evil you really are?”
He still said nothing; however, his body language told me that he was getting ready to do something. He was ridged and tense; you could almost smell his fear aloft in the falling rain and it made me happy to know he was going through what he had put countless others through right before murdering them for their belongings.
“I’ve survived this long without robbing and killing others! But worthless pieces of shit like you don’t have the balls to fend for yourselves, so you take from others to make yourself feel good and justify every evil deed you do and call it surviving!” I coldly stated to him.
“Smith is going to have a field day with you,” he said.
“You mean the whacko science professor who liked to perform experiments on innocent people at the school not far from here?” I asked. “The same whacko that I stuck a needle into his throat while Officer Morris watched and could do nothing to help him as he withered in pain on the floor, dying a horribly painful death? Is that the Smith you’re referring too?”
There was no more courage in the Imposter. He knew as well as I did that Smith was dead, as I’d given intimate details that only those he tortured and murdered would have known.
“So, if your back up
is
coming… I’m willing to bet there won’t be many of them, as I killed quite a few of them during my stay,” I added and could not help the smile that began to form on my face. I loved the fact that this Imposter knew there was nothing he could say or even do to change the fate that was rushing toward him. There was an addictive flavor of power sweeping through me, calling me to some darkened place in a seductive voice and I was more than ready to answer.
“They’re going to kill you!” He stated with a false tone of authority in his voice and then quickly spun. A quick burst to his legs spun him the opposite direction and the Glock shot from his hand, hit the pavement and slid. He screamed in sheer pain and crumpled to the ground holding both of his legs. I came around the front of the cruiser toward him. The Imposter lie on the ground as the blood from his multiple wounds gathered under him and his cries of agony were music to my ears.
He didn’t try to hide the fact that he could see his Glock within grasp and looked from it to me.
“Go ahead, try for it,” I dared him.
“You’ll get what’s coming to you,” he said and cringed from the increasing pain. “You’ll never find him,” he added and tried to laugh.
“What did you just say to me?” I asked even though I had heard him clearly.
“You heard me, asshole!” He shouted.
He made, what I took as a reference to my son, which meant he and his dead partner had been at the school complex earlier. That’s probably why they were out on patrol, looking for me since I hadn’t left on the chopper with Johnny and Kember. Every muscle in my body, every shred of my being wanted me to pull the trigger and give him the death he was unknowingly asking for. From the corner of my eye I saw something and turned to see what I had been waiting for since the first gunshot.
Out from beside a nearby house a group of the undead shuffled into the glare of the streetlamp and continued toward us. I refocused my attention on the Imposter lying in the street, as he had seen them also and I lowered my rifle. “Looks like your backup is here,” I said.
“You can’t leave me here!” He shouted.
“Sure I can,” I replied and moved around him, kicking the Glock far out of his grasp as I went.
“Come back here!” He shouted. “Don’t you dare leave me goddammit! Get your ass back here and help me!”
His please went unanswered as I made it back to the pickup and got in. The small group was only a few feet from him at this time and Darren turned to me. “Aren’t you going to do something?” He asked.
I shook my head and started the truck.
“You’re just going to leave him there to be ripped apart by those things?”
“Yes, I am,” I answered.
“Then that makes you no better than they were!” He stated.
I spun and thrust the silenced barrel of the SBR to the side of his head, driving him back against where the passenger window had been until the shootout. I wasn’t easy about it and it wasn’t a tactic to simply scare him into line. “They murder people because they are too lazy or to damn scared to go find their own supplies!” I shouted to him. “I find what I need myself and kill only those that threaten me or those with me, but if you really think that, then you are more than welcome to get out and join him!”
The wail of sheer terror mixed with anguish pulled both of our attention to the undead who were now falling upon him, grabbing at him, biting him, and would feast on him even though he was still alive. The pain was unbearable I imagined, yet still it wasn’t enough suffering for what he had done and taken part in. Like Smith, hell wasn’t going to be the punishment they both deserved.
“What’s it going to be, kid? You in or out?” I asked him as I removed the weapon from the side of his head. He looked toward the floorboard and slid his seatbelt on.
I sat there and for the first time, I watched how they worked when they had gotten their hands on someone, quickly noticing that they were not in fact eating him as many reports had suggested. They killed him in the utmost gruesome way possible by ripping parts of him off and open, but not one of them began to feast upon his internal organs or anything external for that matter. They simply wanted to kill him and when that had been accomplished they turned their attention toward us with fresh blood running down their chins and spotting what little clothing they wore.
“Wait, why didn’t they eat him?” I asked.
Darren looked up from the floorboard and locked his anger filled eyes upon me. “What?”
“They jumped him and killed him, but they didn’t eat him,” I said. “I heard that those things would eat you after killing you or while you were still alive.”
“Sorry for your disappointment,” Darren told me. “Maybe we could run over his mangled body a few times until you felt a little better?”
“Kid, you don’t know the first thing about shit. Everything is rainbows and ice cream Sundays to you, huh?” I said, trying to keep my anger in check. “Those two assholes were going to kill both of us and I don’t know how many different ways there are to say it before you understand that and get it through your thick skull! Plus, and here’s the big thing. They knew this Smith asshole, which means they were from the school. The same people that had my son or at least that’s what they told me anyway. Said he was taken by the military a few days back.”
“You don’t know that for sure, you’re just speculating that in order to justify what you just did,” he replied in a snotty attitude.
I instantly noticed that he said or made no further reply to the latter part of my rant. He was only concerned with the first part and he seemed to be getting more hostile as I had brought up Smith and the school. Why? This kid was turning out to be another in a great line of stupid things I had done since day one. I regretted going back for him and the more I thought about it, I should have shot him down just like I did his nasty little slutbag.
“I’m looking for my ten year old son,” I told him. “That’s why I’m here. I knew this was where he lived with his mom and I was coming to get him, even though I should have done that over a week ago. I came here with a friend and my two year old daughter in a helicopter – a lot of bad things went down and we wound up in the school complex, surrounded by those assholes and under the command of a guy named Smith.” I explained to get a reaction.
“He was the asshole that was performing experiments on unsuspecting people, murdering them in cold blood and justifying it as looking for a cure!” I shouted as the story unfolded. “So don’t you dare sit there looking down your nose at me, putting me on the same level as those worthless fucks! Without me, you’d be dead right now, so explain to me how I’m no better than they are when I saved your sorry ass and they murdered innocent people?”