The Survivors Ch. 01

I moved into an empty stall as the door at the front of the barn opened. I peered through a knothole in one of the boards in the wall of the stall. A bearded man was dragging a woman or girl by one arm and being none to gentle as she struggled.

"Might as well relax missy," he said. "We took you fair and square, and I drew the high card, so you're mine first."

That was all I needed to hear.

As they came abreast of the stall I was hiding in, I took a stun gun from a belt pouch and slipped out of the stall to move up behind them. I zapped the girl first, getting her on the back of the neck. She slumped down without a sound. As the man started to turn in shock, I drove my knife into his kidney; then again a backhand slash across his throat put him down quietly and permanently. I couldn't chance the girl coming to and screaming, so I ripped the dead man's shirt into strips, then bound and gagged her. I put her in the stall where I had been lurking and moved toward the partially opened barn door.

From the barn, I could see the house clearly. All I had to do now was to find a way inside without being seen. I left the barn, keeping to the shadows as I eased around to the back of the house. Some fool had left the back door open. No doubt thinking that they were nice and secure here. I moved to the door, and after a quick peek inside, entered. I was in the kitchen of the house. The smell of the rotted food on the unwashed dishes nearly made me puke. I threaded a suppressor onto the barrel of my .45 and started down the hallway toward the front of the house. If they thought that they were safe, they most likely wouldn't have their weapons within reach. The more I could kill before they woke up to the fact that they were under attack, the easier it would be to finish off the rest. I wasn't interested in taking prisoners. Well, not for long anyway.

There were three men in the living room engaged in raping a woman on the floor. Two were holding her down while one writhed atop her. The woman saw me with my gun in my hand, but didn't make a sound and turned her eyes the other way. My first shot took out the guy holding her legs. As he slumped, I shot the one holding her arms. The man on top of her tried to lunge for a gun on the floor nearby, but the woman wrapped her arms and legs around him, holding him long enough for me to put a bullet into the side of his head. She rolled the body off of her and scrambled to her feet. I grabbed her arm and pulled her close to whisper in her ear. "How many are there and where are they?"

" Four more in the house upstairs with my daughter," she whispered back. "And one more that took my sister out to the barn."

"The one in the barn is dead and your sister is safe but tied up out there. Go out through the kitchen and go to the barn. I'll meet you there when I'm done here." I whispered to her. Then I gave her a shove toward the hallway and moved on to the stairs leading to the second floor. I eased up the stairs, keeping my feet next to the wall where any loose boards would be less likely to squeak and give me away. The first two rooms I checked were empty. In the third a man was sleeping. My knife made sure he would never wake up again. In the next room, I could hear the girl sobbing and pleading and male voices laughing and jeering at her. I moved to the door of the occupied room and found it partly open. I pushed the door open with my foot and saw the girl tied to the bed while a man was amusing himself by jabbing her bare belly with a lit cigar. No one looked up as the door opened until I spattered the cigar man's brains all over the wall with a pair of shots from the .45. The other two men dove for their guns. I shot the one on the right first, a double tap that put him down. The one on the left got off one shot that grazed my side before I put a round into each of his shoulders. The girl on the bed was rigid with terror, as scared of me as she had been of the men who had been torturing her. I couldn't blame her. She flinched when I approached with my knife out and opened her mouth to scream. But she closed it again when I used the blade to cut the cords holding her feet to the bedposts, and then cut her hands free.

"Your mother and aunt are out in the barn. Go there and stay put until I get there. Got it?"

She nodded and scooted off the far side of the bed, then sidled along the wall as far from me as she could get until she could bolt out the door. I turned back to the man I had shot in the shoulders and kicked him over onto his back.

"You and me are going to have a little chat about your operation here." I told him with a smile.

A half hour later, I had all the information I needed from the captive. I dragged him by the hair outside to the barn and thrust him inside. I tossed the older woman my knife. "Do what you will with him," I said. "He is of no more use to us."

As I went back into the house to search it more thoroughly, I heard the man begin screaming. It was a long time before he went silent.

I found the keys to a pickup in the pocket of one of the dead men. I pulled it up to the front door of the ranch house and started loading it with anything useful I could find. The biggest prize though was a trailer-mounted generator that would provide electricity up at the cabin.

When the women emerged from the barn, they found the blankets that I had left by the door. The older woman cut holes in them and they put the blankets on like ponchos. The older woman returned my knife. "I am Sheila Davenport. My sister is Christie and my daughter is Tammie."

"I'm Michael," I told her. "Get everyone into the truck. We leave here in 5 minutes with or without you."

She wasted no time in herding the others into the truck. I took a last look around, then got into the truck and started the motor.

"Where are we going?" Sheila asked.

"To my place." I replied. 'Where you'll be safe from men like that."