Red Robin: Post-Apocalyptic America Page 4

  Scout pushed that unpleasant thoughts from his mind. Digging around in his back-pack he pulled out his most prized possession, a seven- inch- high, green plastic Hulk figurine, which he stood up carefully, using some small rocks to prop him up. Going back in his bag he pulled out his last bottle of brandy, popping the cork and drinking himself warm while he smoked another cigarette.

  He remembered when he’d been held captive in the Keep and how terrified he’d been and freaked out from being under ground for so long. He shuddered as he recalled the rivers under the stronghold flowing red with blood. He’d almost been killed there, but he’d met a friend one fateful evening, and his friend had saved him and helped him and his other friends escape, and now that friend was his hero.

  The night was getting colder. Scout worked a little harder on the brandy. He took his heavy, military issued, camouflage coat out of his back-pack and shrugged into it. Off in the distance, he heard the mighty hawk cry and almost smiled before remembering… Fortress was gone.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Pops led the group, Jessie scouted ahead of them, and Lucas brought up the rear. With Pops pushing them, they’d managed to cover a lot of ground. Now, they stood bleary eyed and weary, watching the sun come up on the rim of a canyon.

  Pops was surprised they’d managed to travel all night without being attacked. He wondered where the Blood- eyes that had been on their trail had disappeared to. Jessie told him it was a large force on their tail. It wasn’t like the eaters to travel in such large numbers this far away from the Keep. It was too hard to provide enough human meat for them all. The more Pops thought about it, the more he didn’t like it. He looked across the canyon toward Fortress; starting to get a really bad feeling.

  Jessie came jogging up to them. Pops smiled, he looked so much like his mother, tall and athletic with almond colored skin and thoughtful, dark eyes. He’d been running all night but still wasn’t breathing hard. “It doesn’t look good,” Jessie said to his dad.

  “I’m listening,” Pops replied.

  “They passed right by us last night, came within two hundred yards and didn’t attack us.”

  Pops took a moment to think about what Jessie told him. “How fast were they moving and which way were they heading?”

  “Real fast, toward Fortress,” Jessie answered.

  “We need to get there,” Pops said, motioning for everybody to get ready to move out. They were still a half day away from Fortress. If his guess was right, the people in there, including his oldest son, were going to need all the help they could get.

  The rescued people struggled to keep up with their rescuers. They’d been on the run for several days with little to eat or drink and hardly any sleep. It took the group nearly an hour to pick their way down into the bottom of the canyon. Pops frowned at their slow progress but said nothing. As they walked the length of the dusty canyon floor, they kept their weapons ready and their heads on a swivel, stopping short, surprised to see a naked woman staggering toward them.

  She was filthy from head to toe, her mouth swollen and cracked from lack of water. Her dirty blond hair hung in matted clumps. Pop’s reached out to try and steady her, drawing his hand back an instant before she cut it off with a serious looking Bowie knife.

  “Easy, we’re here to help,” said Pops.

  Jessie worked his way around the half- conscious woman as she backed away from Pops, barely able to stand up, the knife’s blade held straight out in front of her. Jessie grabbed her from behind, pinning her arms to her sides.

  Pops stepped in, disarming her before covering her blistered and scraped body with his own leather duster. She stared up at him with a blank expression on her face; as if to say she had nothing left.

  The group rested in a circle, each of them on the lookout while Lucas gave the lost women some water.

  “We have to keep moving, “said Pops.

  “We’ll have to carry her. She’ll slow us down but not too much,” suggested Lucas.

  Pops smiled at him, nodding in agreement. Of the three of his son’s, Lucas reminded him of himself the most. Not just because he was built like him, and looked identical to him, but because of the quiet way that he carried himself.

  “All right, carry her, let’s go.”

  Lucas gently tried to pick her up. She screamed and pushed away from him, stumbling back the way she’d come.

  Pops grabbed her as she lurched by him.

  “We have to wait for the soldier…we can’t leave him here. He saved me, I can’t leave the soldier!” she screamed hysterically.

  One of the older women they’d rescued earlier, came up with a blanket. She put the blanket around her and spoke to her in a soothing tone. Exhausted, the woman sank to the canyon floor. “We can’t leave the soldier,” she said; her tired voice echoing flatly in the canyon.

  Pops bent down and looked her in the eyes. “Where is he?”

  She pointed to a nearby spot where there had been a rock slide. Pops and his boys spread out, weapons raised as they approached the area carefully. Pops smelled it first, then his sons, and then the rest of the group.

  The smell was coming from three dead snogs. A man was standing in the middle of them, buried up to his waist in fallen rocks. Wedged in and unable to free himself, he was covered in snog blood, but alert. He held an ancient, double bladed battle axe, and seemed more than capable of using it. Pops and his sons were surprised. They’d battled many snogs… killing three of them by yourself while being trapped up to your waist, was more than impressive.

  “Found your women back yonder, wandering around. She told us where to find you, wouldn’t leave without you…said you’re a soldier,” Pops said to the trapped man.

  “Much obliged, names Daniel Brady, the woman’s name is Chloe.”

  “Daniel, you can call me Pops. These are my sons, Jessie and Lucas.”

  He and the boys started to clear the boulders pinning the man. It took several minutes to free him. Once out, Pops helped him walk until he got the feeling back into his legs.

  Daniel was beyond relieved that his legs were not injured or broken.

  “We’re going to Fortress, you’re welcome to come along, although we feel like it could be under attack,” offered Pops.

  Daniel looked at him and nodded. “I’m ready.”

  Pops nodded and took off toward Fortress again; worried for his oldest son and all the friends they’d made there. Chloe and Daniel were reunited. They hugged and leaned on each other, both of them struggling to keep up with the group. After a while passed Daniel put her on his back and carried her. “Thanks…” he said to Chloe. He smiled as he felt her hugging him tighter.

  “You’re welcome, thank you… we make a good team ya know…” she whispered in his ear.

  Daniel didn’t answer her. He was a soldier, heading straight into the mouth of hell. He didn’t need a team mate. He needed an army. He swore at himself for feeling happy to see her again. He couldn’t allow himself to feel anything for anybody, and he knew it.

  Once they made it to Fortress he would have to leave her behind. He swore at himself again as he realized… he didn’t want to.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  In the end… there is only time

  Relentlessly pulling us

  gripped in its inescapable undertow

  surging eternally forward

  never deterred, never delayed.

  Merciless time mocks our arrogant attempts

  at immortality.

  In the end, even the end is consumed by time.

  - Poet

  The man everyone called Poet was in fact, Thomas Aaron Bradley.

  He and his wife and unborn child were living in the high rent district in downtown Boston when the government turned off the lights so they could create chaos and invoke martial law.

  Thomas’s wife had been having a hard time with her pregnancy and was taking some time off of work to rest and prepare for the baby, which was fine with Thomas. They would finally
have time to reconnect before the baby came and took all their time away.

  Thomas worked from home as a well- known poet and novelist, who was flirting with the best sellers list. Those days were special to him. They were the last days he shared with his wife before she was savagely murdered. He’d been dreaming about those times when he suddenly awoke.

  The first thing he saw after regaining consciousness was blood. There was a lot of it, and it smelled rank already. The flies had laid their eggs and the maggots were having their way with him. He sat up quickly, throwing up clear bile as he realized the entire left side of his face was hanging precariously from a thin strand of skin and muscle.

  Feeling the maggots burrowing into his open wound, he swatted frantically at them, gasping and groaning after accidently hitting his hanging, mangled face. Keeping his head still, he looked for the old lady, trying hard not to think about the maggots. Breathing in and out slowly, he looked around at the burning remnants of Fortress.

  He saw and heard several snogs, screaming and feeding around him. Lying back down, he struggled with a large piece of flooring from the destroyed watch tower, covering himself with it. He could hear the Snogs and Blood- eyes passing by him as morning became late afternoon and the rotting stench of the dead and the dying, and the pain from his horrendous wound, made him feel as if he was going to go quite mad. Finally, he lost track of time as he faded in and out of consciousness.

  “Pssst…psst…Poet, is that you man? Are you alive under there?”

  Poet’s heart jumped as the flooring he was under was abruptly pulled off of him, revealing the blood stained and battle weary old lady. She was holding an axe handle in one hand, leaning heavily on a garden rake. Her stick thin, pasty white left leg was bandaged in a splint from mid- thigh all the way down to her bony ankle.

  Poet tried to smile, but couldn’t because his face was falling off.

  “…be still friend, and quiet, the Blood- eyes and the snogs are not long gone,” the old lady whispered.

  Poet nodded weakly. “Fortress is lost,” he muttered.

  His friend paused for a moment before answering, looking around for enemies. “We hold the inner bunker; they have everything else. The problem is, you and I just happen to be right in the middle of everything else.”

  “Oh… is that all…thought we might be in real trouble,” Poet slurred painfully.

  The old lady chuckled and smiled, taking a long, thin piece of white cloth out of her back pack. “This is going to hurt,” she warned, leaning toward his ruined face.

  “Wait…” Poet said weakly. He reached into his tattered vest pocket, pulling out the rest of the joint they’d smoked earlier, and handed it to her. “You’ll have to do the honors.”

  She took the joint and lit it, taking a long drag and blowing it directly into his ruined nose and mouth. Poet smiled at her with his eyes as the smoke enveloped him and took the edge off of his pain.

  She waited a few moments. “Are you ready?”

  Poet nodded, trying to look brave. The old woman rolled up a bandana, stuffing it carefully into his mouth. “Here we go,” she warned. She pulled out her dented flask of whiskey, pouring some on his shredded face.

  His muffled screams were disturbing to her as she clumsily put the floppy, hanging piece of his face back - sort of- then used the long strip of cloth to temporarily hold it in place. Poet did not give them away, much to his credit he passed out before he could. After the field surgery, the old lady sat smoking a cigarette she’d found on the dead body of one of her friends she’d come to Fortress with.

  She really had no clue what to do. Their situation was not good- at best. They were stuck between hundreds of Blood- eyes and snogs. She couldn’t move Poet and it would be dark soon. “Other than that, things are going pretty smooth,” she said to herself. Frowning, she puffed on the smoke, remembering the battle.

  The berserkers had attacked in force first, then, the Blood- eyes had joined them. The battle had gone back and forth for over an hour. The people of Fortress had somehow managed to stop the blood crazed eaters and were getting ready to mount a counter attack of their own, when it happened.

  The old lady cried noiselessly as she relived the scariest minutes of her rather impressive life. They’d just opened the gates to counter-attack, when they’d been trampled and mauled by hundreds of shrieking snogs. It was more than most of the Fortress fighters could take. Many of them had run as soon as they realized what was attacking them. The ones that stayed and fought had been annihilated; shredded into bloody pulp as the rampaging snogs ripped through everything in their paths.

  The old lady had watched, horrified, as they fired arrow after arrow down into the invaders until, one by one, the watch towers had been toppled over by the sheer numbers of the enemy. The few remaining Fortress fighters had been forced back into the underground bunker. While the Blood- eyes and the snogs tried everything they could to get inside to their juicy flesh.

  She peered through the smoke surrounding the bunkers stone walls. She could see some of the terrified survivors inside, shooting arrows into the enemies surrounding them. Between her and Poet and the Fortress’ bunker were several hundred very pissed off and hungry Snogs, and Blood- eyes. “Piece of cake,” she mumbled.

  Poet came to with a jerk. The old lady tried to hold him down; to keep him from knocking his face off again. The pinkish blue, early evening sky turned black with smoke as they watched the Fortress being set on fire and heard the screams of the unlucky survivors roasting alive in the bunker.

  They held hands while they listened to the last of their brave friends dying. The savages were staying busy for now, but what would happen when they became bored with the roast and started to prowl around the battlefield?

  “We have to move,” Poet whispered hoarsely. His voice sounded strange to himself.

  “You’re in no shape to travel,” argued the old lady.

  “We stay, we die! We go…” he grunted, pushing himself up to his feet, gritting his teeth against the mind shattering pain washing over him.

  The old lady hopped along beside him, steadying him while they stumbled away from the burning Fortress, to God knows where; away from the only safe place for miles around.

  “We almost got them,” the old lady muttered, looking back longingly at their destroyed home.

  “Yep, almost…” Poet agreed, as they made their way higher into the mountains.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Darius sat back on his heels, balanced precariously on the pebble strewn, foot- wide ledge at the very top of the Keep. He’d just about readied himself to jump. He was all out of will to live.

  An instant before he stepped off the edge and plummeted to his death far below, the messenger hawk appeared right in front of him, driving him back with its great beating wings before settling on the edge of the drop-off. It looked at Darius like it knew what he had been planning and wasn’t too happy about it.

  Darius couldn’t meet its withering stare. “I know…it’s just… you can fly away from this place, me… I’m stuck here…”

  The hawk swiveled his head back in forth, searching the skies for the ever- present roving bands of vultures that Siros also had under his spell. Satisfied there were none about, the hawk lifted his leg to Darius and let him open the canister containing the latest news from Over Watch.

  Darius put the message into his tattered, dark green jacket without reading it, replacing the message with one of his own. The hawk was so close to him that he could see its heart beating behind his feathered chest.

  “You know…you’re about the only friend I have.”

  The hawk bobbed his head at him, before flapping its wings and rising up and away from the Keep. Darius watched with glistening eyes as it left him. “Say hello to Scout, Tom and Tinker. I wish I could fly away with you, my friend,” Darius waved his bony arm at the hawk as it tucked its wings and rocketed out of sight.

  “Who am I kidding? I’m not going anywhere,” h
e muttered to himself. He carefully backed his way off the ledge and into the crack that led to the tunnel leading back into the Keep. Darius smiled, thinking about his friends, Scout, Tom and Tinker.

  He, and his dear friend Candle, had helped them escape, but had stayed behind. Not long after that, the hawk had started coming around, and Darius had started to get to know it, and the hawk helped him send messages and information to his friends so that he could try and help them from afar.

  His friends had begged him to go with them but as long as his mother was held captive in the Keep, he wouldn’t try to escape. At least, he thought she was being held against her will. The truth was, he only saw her every now and again and every time he saw her she looked less and less like his mother and more and more like the creature she was becoming.

  On account of she was married to Magnus, his step-father. Magnus allowed Darius to live in seclusion, locked away from the rest of the Keep’s population, on account that he would not, even under threat of torture and death, eat human flesh like everyone else.

  Darius’s mother had turned cannibal as soon as Magnus had ordered her to. Darius had almost starved himself to death in protest, until his mother had stepped in and convinced Magnus to keep him alive and to have the servants bring him just enough food to live. Now, he only saw his mom from time to time, whenever her conscience got the better of her changed heart and she invited him to breakfast.

  Darius frowned at the memory of the last time he saw her. She was changing. The human flesh she was eating was turning her more into one of the Blood-eyed creatures and less like his mother.

  He made it without incident back into the pitch-black tunnel, leaning his back against the rough rock wall, while he waited for his only friend in the Keep to come and light the way for him. It wasn’t long and he heard him, scurrying and darting from one rock to another.

  “Candle, I’m over here, friend,” Darius whispered.

  A rat the size of three rats with eyes that glowed, pinkish red from radiation scuttled over to him. Candle and Darius had a lot in common, well maybe not a lot, but they both hated Magnus and they were both starving to death. Darius helped keep Candle fed, and Candle showed Darius how to get in and out of the Keep without being seen or eaten.