Forsaken World:Coming of Age (19 page)

If they moved slowly before, they crawled now, carefully looking for anything out of place. When they reached the top, they found a trail. Lance pointed at where it weaved around a tree, and more leaves were there than anywhere else on the trail.

Ian nodded and moved up then carefully brushed the leaves away, and his eyes almost bugged out of his head. It was the biggest steel jaw trap he had ever seen. It had to weigh over fifty pounds with large, triangle teeth on each jaw. If anyone stepped in it, they were losing the leg.

Turning his head, Ian motioned Lance up, and Lance stopped looking at the trap. He leaned over, putting his lips on Ian’s ear. “Number sixteen grizzly bear trap.” Ian nodded, only understanding what he was looking at: a trap that could take a leg off.

Staying close to Dino, they moved over the crest and stopped, looking at a house and barn below them and through the trees. Pulling out cameras and binoculars, they scanned the area.

They saw two men and two women standing at the barn with several kids moving around the backyard with two large dogs. Everyone but a toddler had a gun, and most had a bow, compound bow, or crossbow with them.

After watching them for half an hour, Lance tapped Ian and motioned to leave. Grabbing gear, they slowly moved away and saw a tree stand. Not stopping to check it out, they moved as fast as they felt they could with traps around that could take your leg off.

The sun was near the horizon when they reached the buggy. Not saying anything, they climbed in and headed home. Before they reached their ridge, Lance got another twenty-six to win for the day in their macabre game of killing stinkers.

Topping their ridge, they had to pull out their goggles to make it home. “Coming home,” Lance called over the radio.

“Area clear,” Jennifer called back.

Inside, the girls and Jennifer followed them on the monitors as the two drove down to the cabin. When they reached the back fence, Jennifer and Carrie ran out to open the gates. When Lance and Ian were inside, they closed the gates with a sigh of relief. The group was together and safe for the moment.

Chapter Fourteen

Five days later, everyone was in the bunker, staring at the large map on the wall. It was now marked with what they had found. Section one to the west, section two to the south, three to the east, and four to the north.

Hanging off one of the shelves was a map just like the map they had found at Bones’ house; Jennifer had put the same colored pins as the map in the pictures. They knew black was a safe house that some of the gang stayed at sometimes. The only green pin marked the survivalists, and they could only figure that meant trouble. White pins meant survivors. The first survivors Ian and Lance found weren’t marked on the map.

It wasn’t until they found a small group in section two and made the connection. Ian and Lance found another group of at least three families in section four that the gang hadn’t found. Just inside their three-mile corridor, there were four groups that the gang had found but hadn’t hit. They were under no illusions; Ian and Lance had found several houses that had been hit by the gang and even watched them attack a group of survivors.

“Maybe it’s because they have a lot of weapons?” Jennifer said, moving over to the section of wall that had pictures of the gang hung up. On Bones’ computer, they found a shit load of pictures, and Bones was good enough to label them with names. Listening to the radio, they had figured out the hierarchy. Now, the pictures hung on the wall with Boss Hogg at the top.

When the boys left, Jennifer went over what they found and organized it. Lance and Ian looked at the pictures one night after they got back and found a picture of Boss standing beside Don. They knew how big Don was, and Boss could lick salt off his head. Not only was Boss taller, he was twice as wide. Boss had a gut, but it wasn’t big, and he wasn’t fat.

“Jennifer, you’ve seen the pictures of all the weapons they have stored at the two safe houses. Shit, I’m almost worried about what they have,” Ian said, looking over at the wall of pictures. The one thing in common in all the pictures was all of them had evil, dead eyes. There was no compassion on any of their faces.

“I’m just suggesting,” she said with a sigh.

“Well, keep on because I can’t think of shit,” Ian said, making her grin.

Lance walked up to the map, looking at the second safe house in their three-mile perimeter. “Okay, Hoot stays here sometimes,” he said, pointing at the map where the other safe house was. “And Bones stays here sometimes,” he said, pointing at the first one he and Ian visited.

“They don’t seem to stay long but do come back every few days,” Ian said, moving up beside Lance.

“And each has survivors near them that they know about and some they don’t,” Lance said, thinking. Finally, he threw his hands up. “Fuck if I know why they haven’t attacked the survivors they know about. We know they don’t play well with others.”

“Maybe they are saving them because they know them,” Allie said behind them.

Lance looked at Ian, and Ian shrugged and said, “Best idea I’ve heard about the white pins.”

“Yeah, they might be collaborators,” Lance nodded.

“Are we going to warn the ones they haven’t found?” Jennifer asked, walking over.

“Why, they know the gang is moving around. Shit, that first group has grizzly traps out for people,” Ian said with a shiver.

“No, we don’t make contact,” Lance said. “We can’t afford to let anyone know we are here. If they get caught, they could be forced to tell about us.”

Ian moved over to the map marked with pins. “Okay, the red pins are places they are going after for supplies, and we know they are hitting those further out first. We don’t know what the blue or silver pins are for, and none of those are in our perimeter.”

“There’s that silver one just outside of section four. It’s only half a mile,” Jennifer said, pointing. “We can go see what’s there.”

“Not yet,” Lance said, wanting to remind her that was outside the perimeter, and the closest blue pin was six miles to the south. “Ian, we need for them to think we are to the southwest. That area has a lot of towns, and that means stinkers. If they look for us there, they will take losses. How do we do that?”

“Leave false clues at places,” Ian said, and Lance looked over at him, confused. “We have a printer. Print a brochure of a spot, and leave it at a place we get them at with a deed.”

“Damn, that’s good,” Lance mumbled. “Anything else?”

“Use the radio,” Allie said.

They looked at each other, nodding. “She’s learning,” Lance said with a grin.

“Shit, hanging around you two, she hasn’t got a choice,” Jennifer laughed.

“Only do stuff at the pins outside our circle that way,” Carrie said.

They looked back at her then turned to the map. “It’s risky but has merit,” Ian said. “Concentrate on the red areas to the southwest before they go for supplies, leave a fake clue or two, and I would buy it.”

“What about inside our perimeter?” Jennifer asked.

Lance glanced at Ian then turned to Jennifer with a grin. “We can hit them without them knowing they were being hit by a deed,” he said.

Getting worried, Jennifer stepped back. “I’m scared to ask, but how?”

“Not letting them know they are being attacked,” Lance said, and Ian started laughing.

“Oh man, you really want to do that?”

Lance nodded. “I think it would be fun.”

“Well then my friend, let the games begin,” Ian said, holding out his hand, and Lance reached out and shook it. They turned and held out their hands to Jennifer and the girls, and they all shook hands. If the Devil Lords would have known what was coming, they would’ve pulled up camp and left. Kids or not, Lance and Ian were masters at what they called deeds: any action or prank used on others. A deed was used to get even.

Over the next two days, Jennifer got to watch two masters go to work. Ian and Lance poured over the map, finding several spots to attack and then backup spots. For each spot, they planned something different and a couple of their past favorites. Unlike in the past, it didn’t matter if someone got hurt. In fact, that was the priority. The level of intrigue and planning for the deeds blew her away.

With their surprises ready, Ian and Lance headed out.

It was three days after the boys headed out that the Devil Lords found trouble. It started at Bones’, but nobody ever knew. Bones and over a dozen other bikers were at the house with some women that didn’t want to be there. They had only been there for a few hours when every one of the bikers started shitting.

All five commodes in the house quit working after one flush, and everyone had to go outside to take a shit. By the second day, none of the gang was doing anything but shitting their brains out. It never occurred to them to notice none of the women who were tied up got the shits.

One of the bikers, after falling back in his shit as he squatted down, cut a hole in a lawn chair outside so he could sit down as his bowels exploded. The five women would watch them lie around then run outside most of the time with liquid brown shooting out of their ass. None of the bikers wore clothes after the first day.

At the end of the second day, Bones called back and told Boss what was going on, and Boss told him to stay put and not infect the rest of the gang. A doctor they had acquired told Bones to make sure they all drank plenty of water and washed their hands, and if they could find some anti-diarrhea medicine, take it.

The morning of the third day, all the women had escaped, but none of the bikers cared. Some of them had lost over twenty pounds in two days, and they still couldn’t stop shitting. Being the smartest, Bones went and checked the water pump. It was a top-of-the-line system with UV light emitter and triple filtration with a water softener. All the filters were clean, and the readouts showed it was putting out clean water, and the flavoring system was still putting in the soft berry flavor, but Bones did change the flavor bottles.

On the third night, one of the gang died. He may not have been able to move alive, but he could dead; he was still shooting liquid brown out of his body as he attacked one of the others. By the morning of the fourth day, Bones was the only one alive.

Bones had crawled in his closet in his bedroom as over a dozen stinkers that used to be part of his gang beat on the door. He didn’t understand it. His computer had crashed, wiping everything, then everyone got sick, and Boss wouldn’t allow anyone to come and check on them. It wasn’t even noon when Bones closed his eyes as he lay on the closet floor that was covered in watery brown liquid, but he was up and banging on the door trying to get out only to join his friends once again an hour later.

If Bones would have taken the water softener filter apart, he would’ve found the problem. Lance had cooked down the boxes of laxatives and several waxes he had gotten from the supply houses and made a ten-pound block of super concentrated polyethylene glycol. Lance went to the pump house, took out the softener filter, and took it apart then put in his block of polyethylene glycol. Putting the filter back together, he and Ian went to all the toilets and shoved hard plastic down them so they would overflow.

Luckily for the women, they never drank the water, and Lance didn’t figure the bikers would, so he went around and dropped some concentrated tablets in bottles of whiskey around the house. Ian did laugh when he saw the bottle he pissed in was half empty.

Once the bikers started shitting, they started drinking water. One thing about the human body: If it needs water, it will drive you to find it. And find it the Devil Lords did—in the mouth and out the ass at almost supersonic speeds. What no one, not even Lance knew, was his concentrated diarrhea bomb wasn’t needed after the bikers drank the whiskey. The only way they wouldn’t have shit themselves to death would’ve been in a hospital. The contaminated water was just insurance.

When nobody answered from Bones’ safe house, Boss made it off limits so the rest of the group wouldn’t catch what they had.

As Bones was shitting his brains out on the second day, one of Boss’s lieutenants was walking into the bathroom at a safe house just north of Artemus, Warlock. If he would’ve looked into the bottom of the bowl, he would’ve seen a little bit of salt. And if he would have looked harder back up into the sump, he would have seen two exposed wires.

But Warlock was hung over and had just arrived as he unzipped and moved up to the toilet. Under the carpet, his weight closed the circuit, waking up the two wires in the toilet. When Warlock’s urine hit the water, six thousand watts traveled up the stream of urine. Warlock’s body flung back, crashing into the plaster, and became lodged into the wall.

Several of his buddies came running in to find him stuck half in the wall with his dick hanging out and peeing on the floor. They tried to wake him up for several minutes before one finally checked his pulse and found he didn’t have one. Knowing what that meant, they carried him outside and shot him in the head. They called the Boss and told him Warlock had a heart attack, which was kind of right, but they had no other explanations, and Warlock was a big guy.

It wasn’t until the fourth day that one of the guys with Warlock went to the same bathroom to take a dump that anyone got suspicious. Nothing happened when the Devil Lord dropped his logs, but when he pissed, his body catapulted across the bathroom.

When his buddies heard the noise and came in, they found him with his head lodged in the wall Warlock had been stuck in. None of them even checked his pulse; they just pulled him outside and shot him in the head. It was then that several of them carefully inspected the toilet. When they lifted the lid of the tank, they saw it was full of a grainy powder.

Not thinking, one of them reached in and was thrown across the bathroom, breaking the sink. When his buddies checked him, they found him dead. Leaving the body, those who remained jumped on motorcycles and left the house with the demonic toilet.

The grainy powder was ordinary table salt. Water alone doesn’t conduct electricity, but salt water conducts it very well. To make sure he didn’t get electrocuted, Ian had pulled up the carpet around the toilet and placed two strips of metal down. When Warlock stepped on them, the demon toilet came alive.

The group leaving Warlock’s headed back to Pineville and was hauling ass down the road, trying to get there before sundown. When they came around a curve, none of them saw the quarter-inch steel cable stretched across the road about chest high to someone on a motorcycle.

The eighteen bikers were riding in two columns, doing sixty and weaving around stinkers that moved at them on the road. Only when they were attacking did a truck lead the group.

When the first two hit the cable, they came to an instant stop, but their bikes didn’t. The wire had no give, but the trees it was tied to did, and they shot back as the next two hit before the trees could release the tension.

Like lemmings falling, the bikers plowed into the cable. Only the last two managed to slow down and try to duck below the wire, but that didn’t help them to dodge all the bodies and motorcycles in the way. They crashed and were thrown across the road, sliding into the ditch.

Only a few were coherent when moans sounded around them in the woods, and the smell of rotten eggs filled the roadway. Over a hundred stinkers poured out each side of the road from the trees, drawn by the sound of the motorcycles and the crash. None of those coherent ever got a shot off before the stinkers got there.