The Wild Ones (Book 2) Read online

  Jamal hopped up onto the bumper of the truck, grabbed the mirror and hoisted himself up.

  “What are you doing, Jamal?” Eli asked.

  “The guy has a gun on him. Waste not, want not.”

  He was right. The only thing he was wearing was a holster around his waist and a gun tucked into it. It was like whoever had done this had purposely put within his grasp the means to either kill himself or kill them but had made it impossible for him to get it because his arms were outstretched like Jesus on the cross. Jamal sniffed hard as he finally made his way onto the top of the cab. He looked back at us before chuckling.

  “You’d think the cold wind would have shrunk his dick to the size of a needle but that is one well-hung dude.”

  Alexa and Brooke came around and then diverted their eyes.

  “Ah here we go,” Jamal muttered. “Ladies, what do you think? Out of ten what would you give my man in terms of manhood size?”

  “Jamal. Get down from there,” Alexa said turning back towards him.

  “Not until I grab his gun.”

  Eli yelled up. “Is that what you call it?”

  Jamal flipped him the bird.

  He turned back and reached for the gun. Just as Jamal’s hand latched on to the handle, the mans body went into a spasm, arching his back and thrusting forward. He let out a sick cry and began thrashing around. Jamal stumbled back, slipped and bounced off the hood, landing near our feet.

  “I’ll give that a ten!” Eli said before breaking into laughter. “And the crowd went wild.”

  “Hilarious, you want to give me a hand up?” He extended his arm, but I just walked past him and vaulted up onto the truck as my brother and the others came around. They were as startled by the sight as we were.

  “Scotty.” I looked over to Nick, and he gave a cautious headshake. I waved him off and got closer to the guy.

  “It’s okay, dude, we’re not going to hurt you,” I said.

  Now look, you’ve got to envision this. Here’s this long-haired, butt-naked guy tied to a truck looking like the female from the horror flick The Ring, minus the shirt. It was enough to put the fear of God in anyone. There was also the fact that because his black hair was covering his face I still didn’t know if he was a Z. He certainly hadn’t said a word to indicate that he was one of the living. I figured someone might go out of their way to strap a dead person to the truck to ward off other people, but someone who was alive? That was more than I was willing to grasp right now. I inched forward, slowly withdrawing my hunter’s knife. If the straps broke, and he attacked, I would stab him in the head.

  “I’m going to cut you loose, okay?”

  “Scotty!”

  I didn’t look back at my brother as I already knew what he was doing. He was giving me the ol’ stink eye. It was to be expected. As I got closer, I looked over his body. There were scars as if someone had whipped him badly.

  The man groaned and made grunting sounds like a caveman. For a few seconds I actually contemplated leaving him there. I heard someone climb up onto the truck behind me. It was Daniels. He got up close and put a hand on my arm. He had his piece drawn and was ready to use it.

  “Just in case.”

  I gave a nod and then reached up and cut the binds that held his chest to the truck. His body slumped forward. Now all that held him in place was his wrists. From behind his thick matted hair he sounded like he was gnashing his teeth and trying to bite us. It certainly wasn’t a good sign. As I reached up to cut one of the binds around his right wrist, Daniels grabbed me and pulled me back. “No. I don’t like this.”

  “Look at him, Daniels. Does his body look like he has the signs of a Z?”

  Daniels studied his skin.

  “Still. He’s not said a word, and he sounds an awful lot like them.”

  “And if he’s not, what then? We can’t leave him like this.”

  A minute or two passed and Daniels nodded but made it clear that if he tried to attack, he was going to shoot him. I was fine with that. I reached up and slashed the binds and his arm dropped. All the blood had rushed out of his hand, so I figured he wouldn’t have been able to put up much of a fight even if he wanted to. Now that he was hanging by one hand, I did the same on the other side. The guy collapsed to his knees on the roof of the cab, panting hard, his chest rising and falling as he sucked air in fast. We backed up a little, and then I leaned in.

  “Mister. Are you—”

  Before I could get the words out, he clasped my pant leg and pulled it causing me to fall back. The world went upside down. All that was between me and a seven-foot drop to the concrete was the grip this man had on my pant leg.

  I don’t even want to know what was going through Daniels’s head. I heard the gun cock and Daniels warn him. He couldn’t exactly tell him to let me go as I would have landed on my head. Nick rushed around and quickly got under my shoulders. The fact that this guy was holding me by one arm was surprising enough.

  “It’s okay, I’ve got him.”

  He released his grip, and I dropped down supported by Jamal and Nick. As soon as I was on the ground I hopped back up onto the truck even though Nick pulled on my jacket and told me to get down. I wanted up. I wanted to see this guy. Find out what his story was. Find out…

  “He’s human,” Daniels said before I had managed to climb up. As my head peered over the edge, I could now see his face. He scrambled back against the truck cowering, balling himself up.

  “It’s okay. We’re not going to hurt you.” I turned and shouted to Ryland to grab a blanket. He dashed off to collect one. “Nick, you got some water?” He reached into a pouch around his waist and pulled out a canister, he tossed it up and I unscrewed the lid and extended it to the man. From behind the strands of hair, scared eyes looked out. He moved ever so slowly forward, then reached out and snatched it. Then he scrambled back chugging it down as if he was trying to put out a fire, some of it ran down over his chin and he wiped away the blood. That’s when I could see what had been done to his face. It had been cut up badly, slashed, there were scars all over it. Some of which looked like they were infected with pus.

  “Who did this to you?” I asked in a low voice.

  He eyed me suspiciously. A blanket was thrown up, and I tossed it over to him. He wrapped it around his waist to cover up and continued to drink. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a protein bar. I ripped off the wrapper and slid it across the top of the truck. It stopped inches from his dirty feet. He couldn’t have bathed in weeks, or perhaps the layer of dirt came from smoke or bugs hitting him. It had to have been painful, cold and I’m sure there were times he must have wanted to die.

  We all stood there looking on in shock. This was a new form of horror that we didn’t expect to encounter. It was one thing to see the dead chase down the living and sink their teeth in, another to know that the living had strapped a man to a truck and made him endure the elements.

  “What is your name?” I asked.

  He stopped chewing, and looked at me, then continued until it was all gone.

  “You still hungry?”

  He nodded.

  “We have food. Something hot, maybe?”

  I reached forward to extend my hand, and he cowered back. “Hey it’s okay if you want to stay. I just think you’ve been up here long enough. What do you think?”

  He gave one nod and then moved to the far side of the truck and hopped down without assistance. When he landed his legs gave out and Lola hurried in to help him but he threw up his hands. Daniels was quick to tell her to stay back. She backed away.

  On the ground I assisted the man, telling him everything I was going to do before I did it. I had to earn his trust. He’d been so badly abused and traumatized that it was obvious that he was suspicious of us. We carried him over to the trucks and I helped him up into the cab of ours and started the engine to get the heat going. I glanced at his feet and hands and could tell he’d suffered a mild case of frostbite. They were red and swoll
en as if someone had struck them with a hammer.

  Daniels went and got an MRE and heated it up using an MRE heater bag. All it required was an ounce of water to activate the heat source in the bag. He tore off the top of the bag and inserted the MRE meal down into it. He poured in the water and reinserted the whole thing into a box so it could heat up for around four to six minutes. All the while I was watching the guy.

  “My name’s Scott but those who know me call me Scotty. You are?”

  I bent my head trying to get a look at his face.

  “Finn,” he croaked.

  “Finn?” I asked again because I thought I heard him wrong. He nodded as Daniels handed him the MRE and a spoon. He tucked into it like an animal that hadn’t eaten in days. He scooped feverishly and consumed it all in less than two minutes.

  “Looks like you needed that. When did you last eat?”

  He lifted two fingers, then changed it to three as if he’d lost track of time or couldn’t remember. Daniels gave him some more water, and he slowly started to relax as the heat from the truck warmed his limbs and he began to realize that we weren’t the enemy.

  “Finn, who did this to you?”

  He was licking the spoon clean when he stopped and looked out the window as if he’d seen a ghost. What I didn’t know until later was that he was reliving all that had taken place prior to us finding him. Tears rolled down his cheeks, and he dropped the empty MRE. Daniels made a gesture not to continue but to turn off the engine and step outside. He came around and told me that he was probably suffering from a form of PTSD. It would take time to work through it and trying to get him to think about it would likely only trigger a negative response.

  “One day at a time.” He breathed deeply and looked farther down the road. “We need to get out of here before more Zs show up, or whoever left him here returns.”

  Skinheads

  “Now that is what I call bloody creative!” Ryland said in his usual thick British accent while staring at the fence of the dead. They lurched forward but were restrained by horizontal poles that had been rammed through their sides connecting them to the next like a daisy chain. “It’s a human shish kebab.”

  We arrived on the outskirts of Indian Lake, twenty miles outside of Raquette Lake, a little after two in the afternoon. Like most small towns in Hamilton County, there weren’t many residents — just a hair over 1,300 to be exact. A cracking thunder rumbled in the distance, shaking the ground. On the horizon, beyond the line of dead was the community of Indian Lake. An American flag flapped in the breeze, stores and homes were on either side of a road that cut through the heart of the small town. The truck idled while we tried to decide what to do. It was obvious someone had set up the Zs in a line to prevent anyone from getting in and perhaps keep the rest of the dead at bay.

  “Any other way around?”

  “Nope. We have to cross Lake Abanakee,” Ryland said looking down at the map. I pulled over into a rest stop and got on the radio. Steaks of lightning webbed across the sky. Another thunderous boom echoed.

  “What do you think, Nick?

  White noise came back. “We’ll have to move them,” he finally said,

  I got out of the truck and told Ryland to stay while I went and assisted Nick. My eyes scanned the surroundings for trouble. It was very possible that the community had done this as a form of protection. Certainly it would have been quicker than building a fence. It had been a week since the infection had spread to our neck of the woods, so it was possible that a small town had rallied together and done what they could to hold the infected at bay. Not that we’d seen many over the past hour but we assumed that would soon change the closer we got to overpopulated cities.

  I kept my rifle low as I ran at a crouch to see where the end of the pole was. It had been inserted through the window of a community bank and the other end was connected to a real estate office across the street. Beyond the line of dead we couldn’t see any movement. No residents. No one guarding the perimeter. The place was a ghost town. The snarling freaks gnashed their teeth as we got closer, reaching out their meaty paws.

  “So?” I asked.

  Daniels looked at the bank and jerked his head for us to follow him. He stabbed two of the dead in the face and we slipped underneath their legs and made our way inside the bank. Paperwork was all over the floor, cash registers, drawers, hell there was even money as if someone had been through pillows stuffed with hundred-dollar bills and gone berserk. We followed the pole to the counter where it had been welded to the bench. I gave it a kick a few times, and it rattled, stirring up the dead and making them moan.

  “Great, how the hell are we going to get that loose?”

  We searched around the bank just in case the welding equipment had been left behind but it hadn’t. Nick kicked the pole multiple times hoping to break the weld, but that sucker wasn’t coming loose.

  “Shit.”

  “Smart,” I said. Not only were they protecting themselves against the dead, but they were preventing anyone from driving through with just a few metal poles from a hardware store.

  Nick paced up and down with an expression of frustration. He swung the rifle around his back and hopped up onto a counter. “Anyone got a hand saw?”

  When Nick asked for input, I knew he was stumped. We stepped back outside, and I looked around the back of the bank. While there was no pole coming out the back, there were lots of vehicles that had been rolled into place to prevent anyone from attempting to get around. It would take us the better part of half an hour to roll them out of the way but that was the only option. I motioned to the others to come and help.

  Jamal, Ryland, Alexa, Lola, Daniels and Eli came over leaving behind Diane, Tobias and Brooke to watch over the vehicles and keep an eye on Finn. Right now we had no idea who he was, how he ended up where he did or whether what had been done to him was some form of retaliation. Perhaps he wasn’t the good guy?

  Over the course of the next fifteen minutes we hopped into vehicles, stuck them in neutral and rolled them out of the way. It was a long and painful process but we were making progress. I just hoped to God that it wasn’t the same on the other end of town. My back was killing me and my chest was in my throat from putting my back into it. We were about halfway to clearing the area around the back of the bank when Tobias whistled and our trucks backed up. We all went on high alert. Earlier we’d made it clear to each other that if we were separated and ran into trouble, the others were to get clear of the danger — whether it was the living or the dead, there was no point in everyone getting trapped.

  “Fall back.”

  To the rear of the bank, pushed back from the road and parking lot was a blue, two-story, clapboard building that housed an excavating business. We circled around it, some of us taking cover in the cluster of trees. Taking a knee, I brought up my rifle preparing for the worst. Was it Zs? In the distance we heard the rumble of vehicles. Like the whine of a Jeep. Nick motioned for Jamal to get back behind the building as his body wasn’t completely covered. All around us was high grass which provided lots of cover. In between tall reeds I saw a green Jeep filled with four people. All of them were armed, all of them were skinheads. They must have parked on the other side of the bank as they disappeared and then the truck was shut off. Voices came next.

  “Can you see them?”

  “No, looks like they turned around.”

  Slipping around the building a tall man came into view wearing a green bomber jacket, black T-shirt with a white swastika, tight stone-washed jeans and Doc Martens. He held up a pair of binoculars to his eyes and looked down the road we’d come from. Coming up behind him were two more guys, one sporting a fierce mustache, another with his head covered in tattoos. A female strolled up wiggling her ass, then placed an arm around the one with the binoculars. The back and sides of her head were shaved real short, but she had long, dirty blond bangs. It was quite odd.

  “I told you it would do the job,” she nudged him.

  �
��Maybe not,” one of them said jerking his head our way. “Looks like the bastards tried to move the vehicles.”

  “Well that’s a first. Most just turn back.”

  He lowered the binoculars. “Yeah well, eventually someone will slip through. You know he’s going to want one of us down here around the clock.”

  “Not if we don’t tell him.”

  The tall guy grabbed the guy with tattoos and threw him up against the side of the bank, holding him there as he got real close to his face. “What have I told you?”

  “Come on, Simon, it’s not like he ever does any of the grunt work. We’re the ones who have to do it. Aren’t you getting tired of taking his shit?”

  “You better shut your mouth right now or you know what will happen.”

  He released him and the guy brushed himself off scowling. He walked off towards the Jeep.

  “Don’t go far. You’re going to be pushing these back in place.”

  The female came up to him and put her arm around him. “Simon, leave him be. Let’s go around back and you know…”

  He smirked and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Ryland perked up at the sight of them. The tall skinhead lit a cigarette and blew out smoke before scooping up the girl. She wrapped her legs around him and he carried her around the back of the bank. Pushing her up against the wall, he undid his pants revealing his fleshy ass to us just before she went down on him.