Alone at the End of the World Ch. 04

Annette ran to her son. Janet cowered in the shallow muddy water, screaming. A heavy latino man ran from the bushes and grabbed her arm, threatening her with a pistol. She grabbed at it, but by then the college boy got up to her and threw her to the ground with a vicious blow to the side of the head.

Annette fell, unhurt but unbalanced. Her hair was streaked with Harold's blood from the college boy's hand. The mailman limped from the woods, aiming a gun at Janet, bellowing at her to hold still.

When the three were all duct-taped and kneeling in a row, the college boy whooped once and went to wash the blood off of his hands. He walked boldly up to the mailman and hissed in his face.

"Y'see? You dumb hick, we'll be eating by this afternoon. If we had listened to you, we'd be starving and halfway to nowhere."

The mailman crossed his arms and scowled, grumbling something under his breath. Unaware of how submissive his posture was.

The college boy glanced at the three of them. His eyes roved over Janet's body. He was twitchier then ever. He licked his lips.

"Might as well... We're gonna be good boys... Give them their women and brat when they give us the food. We should get it while it's hot, right?" He yodeled some high shrieking laughter.

Janet whimpered and leaned into her sister. The duct tape across her mouth went around her entire head twice, no chance of letting it go. She was twisting her wrists, but the duct tape was thick and double-wrapped there as well. Annette tried to comfort her sister, tucking Janet's head under her chin. Ned was crying and leaning into her side. They all depended on her, but she couldn't help any of them.

The mailman slouched up, his face pasty and nearly grey from the pain. "No. No you little fuckwad. We are human beings. We are not going to rape these girls. You fucking animal." He glared at the others. "Why aren't you trying to challenge him? Don't you see what he's trying to do to these girls?"

The bus driver looked down at his shoes, crossing his arms across his chest. The manager did the same, but not before glancing at the sisters. Across the clearing, Harold stopped twitching.

"I wont let you." The mailman snarled, shaking his head. "I wont--" The collage boy swung his arm with the handle of the knife sticking from his clenched fist. He struck the mailman across the jaw with the exposed knife butt.

The mailman fell like a sack of potatoes, letting out horrible womanlike screams of pain, clutching his broken jaw. Ned screamed through the duct tape. Janet groaned in terror. Annette just watched with shiny horrified eyes.

The college boy stood over the bleeding screaming man. The bus driver took three limping steps away and retched into the undergrowth. The college boy looked down, licking his lips.

"You're so fucking useless. The college boy whispered. "You're either with us, or against us."

He knelt. Janet screamed. He slashed the knife quick across the mailman's throat, opening up a thin red line in comparison to Harold's ragged gash. Blood still gushed from the thin red wound, but the mailman had time to shriek and gurgle for about thirty seconds, writhing around and churning the dirt to a bloody mud.

The college boy looked at his two followers. "Anyone else have a problem with me taking what I deserve?" The bus driver didn't answer, cowering in the bushes, wiping his mouth. The manager shook his head vigorously.

The college boy dragged Janet away from the others by her upper arm. Annette screamed and struggled, flopping on her side like a worm. Ned cowered into a little ball, tears streaming down his flushed and sunburned cheeks.

Janet screamed and bucked and struggled, but the college boy pinned her down. The tape bound her at her ankles and wrists as well as the swatch across her mouth. The college boy tore off her tank top and unbuttoned her jeans and yanked them down to her knees. He pulled down his pants, but his penis was limp in the thick greasy patch of pubic hair. He pressed his limp cock against her crotch, but he couldn't get hard. He swore and tried to grope her bare breasts, but he didn't get hard. After about a minute, he swore and gave up, pulling up his pants and leaving her on the ground to curl up on her side and weep, trying to hide herself from the sun and the eyes of her family.

The manager edged up, his eyes were shiny. Janet began to wail. He knelt clumsily over her, and she managed to curl her knees to her chest and lunge out with a single well placed kick.

The points of both of her callused feet (the toenails still decorated with chips of purple nail polish from BEFORE) hit something soft and vulnerable under the once-rounded stomach.

The manager fell to his side, letting out a shrill squawk of agony, cupping his crotch in both hands. He hadn't fallen far away. Janet curled her legs to her chest again and let out another full-body kick that hit him in the cheek and forehead. Her heel connected with slightly less force to his eye.

He rolled away, snarling and sobbing with pain.

Janet squirmed. She rolled over to where the manager had dropped his pistol. All three of the men were running for her, but too far away.

She rolled on her stomach with the pistol held clumsily in her duct-taped fingers. She made sure that the barrel was pointing away from Annette and Ned, and she fired as many times as she could.

She couldn't hope to aim, to kill her kidnappers. But she still shot nine rounds into the trees, and the echoes carried for miles.

---

Nine shots echoed in the distance, and it galvanized the entire farm. Everyone was in the farmyard in less then a minute. Even Jonah, leaning on Thad's arm for support. Even Mark, leaning dead-eyed against a tree.

"We have to go." David said curtly. "But we have to defend this place. It could be survivors, it could be the bandits trying to trick us. But that's also where the river is, and Annette, Janet, Harold and Ned left to do laundry about an hour ago. The women and kids should stay here. Mark, Davis, Jess, and Thad will come with me. Everyone else stay here, everyone but the kids have a gun, and stay on the roof or by the windows. We leave in two minutes, so get ready."

The Doc was arguing with David. Thad lead Jonah up to the attic. He expected Jonah to protest, to argue, but Jonah was quiet. Despite his silence, the young man was clinging to his arm with though force to leave marks.

"Be careful, bring them home." Jonah whispered, clinging to Thad's arm. Jonah hugged him fiercely tight. "Watch him, watch Mark... I don't know if he's going to do anything."

Thad wrapped his arms around Jonah's waist, hefting him into the air in a bear hug. Jonah's feet dangled. "I'll come back Jonah. I wont let anything happen to you, or anyone else."

Thad kissed the side of his head and set Jonah down on the bed, covering his lover in blankets. Jonah watched him leave, tears streaming down his face.

Thad came down, his pistol shoved into the back of his pants and one of the rifles cradled in his arms. He had a light pack with water and ammo in it. The Doc was standing among the group, holding a rifle and looking scared, but determined.

He saw Thad glancing at him. "Janet's out there. I'm not just going to wait around here!" His voice was defensive, and afraid. Sweat gleamed between the thinning strands of hair on his temples.

"Hey, just keep your head." Thad murmured. "We're gonna get them back."

They headed into the woods, Mark in the lead and Jess trailing behind. Thad hoped so.

---

Janet wasn't screaming anymore.

Annette curled her body around the body of her son. Tears streamed down her face, and she was having a hard time breathing. Her mouth was covered, and her nose was clogged with crying. Snot ran in clear streams over the duct tape on her mouth.

Janet was still naked, dressed only in the jeans crumpled around her taped ankles. The college boy had beaten her. Trails of tacky blood blotched her chest and side and thigh and face like bizarre war paint. The manager had kicked her too, the minute he could stand. The bus driver cowered in the background, his eyes pale and weak and old. Janet's hair was the color of strawberries, her lips were darker, cherries that had swollen so full of sap that they burst and trickled. Bees and flies landed on her face, sipping the blood.

Then the crazies came.

There were so few left, but nine shots drew them like bees to blood.

A white-haired gentleman with a torn suit and a collar of blood went down with a bullet in the head.

A teenage girl stumbled, even after two shots disintegrated the better part of her legs, she kept coming, crawling while blood fertilized the earth.

Then three of them came in a pack. Two middle aged women, women that looked enough alike to be sisters, and an elderly woman who's head jerked to the side every few seconds.

The woman on the left fell to bullets. The elderly woman crumpled when the college boy swung at her throat with the hunting knife. Blood painted the college boy's face, except for a white slash of bared teeth.

The last woman launched herself on the bus driver. The meek old man who had lost his nerve, cowering against the trees. He wailed as she sunk her teeth into his shoulder, with enough force to break his collarbone. She tore a gash in his shoulder, starting from the collarbone to his neck, tearing at the end, a tendon in her mouth.

Bullets disintegrated her head, but they missed the bus driver. He fell to the ground, gargling and twitching, not ten feet from the still-warm body of Harold Numquist.

There was a silence, a pause, a respite.

The college boy ran to Annette and Ned, ignoring the motionless groaning body of the girl he had beaten nearly to death.

"We have to go." He growled, dragging Ned in one arm. "Leave the bitches, they'll give us food for this one. Less to carry. Leave them for the runners."

Annette screamed through the tape, she writhed like an animal, like an animal in a trap. She wouldn't let them take her son.

Then Mark burst through the foliage. The others had stopped for a moment, to process the event, to process the danger and make a plan. Mark had no regard for himself anymore. He walked into the foliage in wide strides, cocking the shotgun he braced against his stomach.

The manager's head disappeared in a spray of red globules. The blast was huge, and it echoed for miles. The birds flew, shrieking and flapping.

For a moment, for a terrible moment, it looked like Mark would blow away the college boy, as well as the limp six-year-old boy in his arms.

But Mark paused.

The college boy dropped Ned into the dirt, and pulled his pistol out in something that looked like a liquid flash of light.

Four bullets struck Mark in the chest, as Mark pulled the trigger on the shotgun.

---

Back at the house, the waiting was horrible.

Melvin and Jenna were taking watch. Vera stayed with Jonah. She was so scared. She fingered the necklace she wore. It had Davis's wedding ring on it. He had been going through a divorce BEFORE, and two days ago, he had given her the ring. It was too big for any of her fingers, even her thumb, so she wore it on a chain around her neck. She rubbed it in her hands until it was warm, almost alive.

Jonah saw how worried she was, and despite his own fear, his own panic, he reached out and held her hand, tried to lend her whatever strength he had to offer.

Jonah was the first person that Vera told her secret to.

The men were only gone for an hour, but it felt like an age, and it was Jenna who saw them returning. She saw Thad and David carrying Mark between them, and she saw the Doc and Jess carrying Janet, who was covered Jess's shirt, which fell to her knees but did nothing to hide the brutal beating she had sustained. Annette trailed behind, Ned clinging to her shirt, weeping and stumbling. She was looking around frantically, eyes wide, gripping a gun.

Janet and Mark were hustled into the RV, and the Doc ran to get his supplies.

---

Thad went up to Jonah as soon as his hands were empty. Mark was alive.

God knew how it was possible. He had four bullets in his torso. One had torn through his side, two had landed in his left shoulder, and one had shattered his collarbone. He had been streaming blood from all of his wounds. But he wasn't dead. He wouldn't die.

And for the moment, Thad didn't care. He needed to make sure that Jonah was okay.

He burst into the attic to see Jonah on the edge of the bed, struggling to stand up. Thad loped across the room and sat on the bed, pulling Jonah into his arms.

Jonah clung to him, burying his feverish face into Thad's neck. "Are you okay? Are you okay? What happened?"

Thad just squeezed Jonah to him. Maybe it was just that he had survived. The sheer raw thrill of his survival... But he was so horny he couldn't stand it.

Jonah moaned when Thad delved his hands under the teenager's clothing. He yielded to the older man's touch, to Thad's grasping needful hands.

Thad was rough, but not violent. There was a kind of desperate energy to his movements, but his touches were gentle. Jonah was out of breath, his pulse was racing, his skin was on fire, but nothing hurt.

Thad flung him on his back on the bed and nearly tore the t-shirt over his head. The kiss was rough, stubble burned their lips, Jonah's was light and sparse, Thad's was rough and damp with trickling sweat.

Jonah got into the mood fast. He clung to Thad's rippling back through his shirt, his fingers digging into Thad's skin. He arched his hips up, humping against Thad's crotch, feeling his arousal through four layers of cloth.

Thad growled with need, and went down Jonah's lean body. He bit Jonah's neck, blunting the force so he wouldn't hurt his sick lover. Jonah let out a whimper of need, of soaring arousal. He grabbed at the hem of Thad's shirt, yanking it up with all of his strength, feeling the seams give and tear near the base.

Thad shucked his shirt, and pressed his face into Jonah's thin soft chest. He opened his mouth wide and sucked on the skin all around Jonah's tiny nipple, sucking the tender flesh into his mouth, and applying gentle pressure with his teeth. Jonah mewed and squirmed.

Thad slid down and yanked Jonah's jeans down below his buttocks and took Jonah's cock into his mouth, sucking it in with a pressure that was gentle but needful. His hands moved up Jonah's body, stroking, grasping rubbing. Jonah's nipples and chest were swollen and red from the marks of his mouth.

"God... Oh God... Thad!" His voice was a whisper, ecstatic, transcendental. Like a man caught in the convulsions of a religious experience.

Jonah climbed up the stairs. "Jonah... Jonah did you--JESUS."

Jonah cried out, bucking his hips in ecstasy as Jess bolted down the stairs, face flaming and stomach sick. No one could misinterpret those sounds, Jonah was coming. If not for those sounds, he would have barged in and torn Thad from the frail kid. Jonah was on his back, his bruises livid against his pale sweaty skin. Fresh red marks stained his body.

Jonah lurked in the stairwell, glaring down his shoes and waiting for that keening desperate sound of pleasure keyed down and he heard the rustle of fabric.

He barged up. "Jonah, are you okay?" He glared at Thad who looked back with equal dislike and frustration. He still wore his jeans and the bulge of his arousal was thick and angry. Jonah looked washed out, like the energy had been torn from him. He pulled the cover over him, and his face was flushed and embarrassed. He nodded breathlessly.

"What happened?" Jonah whispered, surreptitiously pulling up his jeans under the blanket.

---

It was a strange scene, full of strange emotions.

With the exception of Bert and Jenna, who had agreed to take a shift, everyone was gathered around the RV, which the Doc had made into a hospital. He was in with them still. Annette tended to her sister, but no one else was let in. The Doc came out once to ask for strong lights and someone to hold them. Melvin agreed, his face pale. He asked for boiled water, and for someone to boil the rudimentary surgical tools in his bag. His hands were in yellow latex gloves, and the latex was painted a bright garish red.

Jonah walked out of the house, leaning on Thad for support. Vera ran up to greet him, but her face was strained. In normal circumstances, everyone would have been happy for Jonah's recovery... but normal is just a word, a word as inaccurate as Good and Evil.

"He's been in there for almost forty minutes." Vera whispered. The Doc shouted for more hot water, and for someone to boil bandages.

"He hasn't said anything for or against."

Jonah looked at the RV, tightening his grip on Thad's forearm. Were there still bloodstains on the carpet? Were there new ones now?

Thad glanced down at Jonah, and saw blood dripping from the boy's clenched fist. He snatched Jonah's wrist, and the hand flopped open loosely, showing four deep crescents curled loosely on the palm. Thad looked into Jonah's pale eyes, and something passed between them.

Thad went to David, who was apart from the others. David was sitting on a tree stump, staring at the trailer.

"Is there anything I can do?" Thad murmured. "I don't like just waiting, and I haven't contributed as much as I should."

David didn't even look at him. "Make dinner. Take over the watch, help clean guns, redistribute Harold's belongings. Always things to do here, we're always just so fucking busy."

Thad frowned, but didn't react. The leader had lost a member of his group, and it looked like he would lose another. He headed towards the house, with Jess and Jonah tagging along to help.

---

Dinner was beans. All kinds of beans, white beans, wax beans, green beans. Made into a sort of chili with spices and tomato paste and an entire head of garlic.

It was passible. No one, not even picky Ned ever turned down food anymore. Short of food allergies or food poisoning, everything was edible.

In the middle of the meal, the Doc came back. He looked exhausted.

"I'm just coming back to get dinner for Mel and Annette and Janet. Janet's gonna be fine, she's woken up and she doesn't have a concussion. Everything else will heal, the damage wasn't too extensive."

Everyone was looking at him as he spooned beans into a large bowl. Everyone wanted to speak, everyone had one thing on their mind, but no one wanted to be the first to say it.

The one who broke the silence was Ben, looking down at his plate and pushing the beans around with his spoon.

"What about Mark? Is he okay?"

The Doc shook his head, not disagreeing or agreeing with the statement, but in wonder.

"I've never seen anything like it. He hasn't woken up, hasn't been moving around. I removed the bullets from his shoulder and side. He opened up an artery, and he has a fractured collarbone and Sternum. He's lost pints of blood. But..." The Doc shook his head again. "He's... a machine. His heart is thumping along like he's a racehorse."

"He might just be okay."

The Doc sounded hopeful. Gerald Everette had never borne the brunt of Mark's anger or abuse. The Doc had never had any reason to be afraid, and Mark had saved Janet's life. He had gone into the clearing when they were waiting, holding back for an opportunity, with no regard for his life. In the Doc's eyes, Mark was a hero.

Doc left the building, his thoughts humming with hope and relief. Ben looked down at his food and stood up, piling beans into a bowl.

"I'm gonna take some up to mom and dad." He whispered, hiding his face.

Jonah tightened his grip on Thad's hand under the table. Jess glared through the window, his eyes on fire, lit up with a cause. Thad looked through the window, making sure to keep his face still.