Through my scope, the men split into two groups — one clearing the dead off the road, one lifting the frame to swap the tire.
"Tiger! These dead look like somebody already dealt with them!"
"Right? They're all cut in half!"
"And these wrecks — somebody dragged them here..."
"Our tire was shot out!" The man crouched at the wheel straightened up. "Tiger! Something's wrong—"
He never finished. Thwip.
Bang. The second front tire blew.
This time even the slow ones understood. Something was badly wrong here.
They had walked into somebody's yard.
"Tiger, there's a big shot around here."
"This is their turf."
"So what do we do?!"
Tiger — the huge man with full-sleeve tattoos — hauled the rental agent up by the collar. "What the hell did you do? You told me nobody was out here!"
"I swear it was one woman who rented it!"
"Don't feed me that crap. One woman built all this?"
"I—I don't know. Maybe somebody took it over." The agent's eyes went everywhere except Tiger's face.
"Get out there!" Tiger shoved him forward.
Thwip. Another bolt. The agent bolted — and the shaft buried itself in the dirt exactly where he'd been standing a heartbeat earlier.
He crawled back behind Tiger and stayed there.
Watching that shot, Tiger's scalp went tight. Fast, dead accurate, and silent — no crack, no muzzle flash, nothing to shoot back at.
If that archer wanted them dead, there was nowhere on this road to hide.
Then the same thought hit all of them at once.
"She's got a range limit!"
"Yeah — she can only reach the front tires!"
It made sense. Only the front tires. Only when the agent got shoved out front. That line in the road was the edge of her reach.
"Tiger, what now?"
"We leave?"
Tiger's eyes went bright and wet, the way a hungry dog's do. Leave? Not a chance.
Go where, exactly? The truck was crippled. And even if it weren't — if they didn't take this place and put the people inside in the ground, they had no ground left to stand on.
He pulled open the rear door and hauled out two women. Hair wild. Clothes torn.
"You two walk in front. Move!"
Two young women filled my scope. Bruises everywhere. Blood at the wrists.
They went forward like sheep being driven — eyes wide, no plan, no way out.
I'd spent ten years in this world. I'd seen it a thousand times.
Women always paid first. The gap in raw strength and nerve is real, and once the rules come off, the worst of human nature does the rest. There is no floor down there. Only new depths.
What I hadn't expected was the speed. Two weeks in, and they were already treating women as equipment.
Reposted without consent from www.NovelPhoenix.com. Look up the title there to read it the way the author intended.
Tsk. And here I'd been telling myself I had no morals left.
I'd always figured I was the floor of human decency. These men were under the floor.
Under the floor isn't a person.
And things that aren't people don't get a bolt in the chest. My finger came off the trigger. I pulled a shaft from the quiver and lashed something to it — a little gift. This chapter was taken from novelping.com without permission.
"Move, or I leave you both out here for the dead!"
"Walk!"
Tiger stayed behind them, herding. When both women crossed into the kill zone and nothing came, his eyes lit up.
"Stop right there. Don't move."
He had his answer: whoever was in there still had a conscience. No shooting at innocent women. Which meant he could squeeze her with them.
"Tiger, so what's the play?"
"Drag the truck back, change the tire, put them out front." They hauled the pickup onto clear ground, pulled two spares out of the cargo, and lashed both women to the front bumper.
The message was plain. Touch us, and the women die first.
If she truly didn't care, they were inside steel and could still run. But if they got through that gate, they'd kill her before dark.
Morality was a pre-apocalypse luxury.
Tire on, hostages tied, they piled in — and stomped the gas at the wall of wrecked cars I'd built across the road.
It went smooth. Nobody even shot.
They were grinning at each other when — thwip.
A bolt with a pouch of fresh chicken blood slapped into the driver's door.
It went in at an angle, half buried in the steel, the shaft jamming the door shut.
Before anyone could shout, bolts hit the doors on both sides.
Bang. All four tires went at once. The truck spun and stopped dead.
Blood painted the whole hull — real blood, warm and copper-thick — and the smell rolled down the road like a dinner bell.
Every dead thing left on that stretch turned and came. They were sardines in a tin.
"Holy shit—"
"That bitch set us up! She planned this!"
"Can we get out?"
"The doors won't open!"
Tiger watched the road fill and made his call — window down, out through the gap.
He didn't do it stupid. He dragged one of the women out first and crawled behind her the whole way.
Halfway clear, a crawler clamped onto his ankle. He shoved the woman into it and rolled free.
Thwip. A bolt came for his back. Pure instinct saved him — by a hand's width.
He knew then: never let go of the shield. Get behind her and run.
He hauled her back in front of him and sprinted up the trail.
Half a mile in, the trees opened on a bunker so well hidden it read as hillside.
Razor wire coiled along the top of the fence. Cameras on every post. A steel gate you'd need a truck to dent.
Behind the wire, just visible: vegetable rows, chickens, ducks.
He stared. Fortifications, livestock, water, power — somebody had taken this place and turned it into a castle.
Somebody had bought it before the outbreak and built it out. Which meant... somebody had known? That was insane.
He was still working it out when the woman in his grip bit down on his hand.
* * *
Watching through my crossbow scope, I almost laughed out loud.
I'd seen the bite the moment it happened.
I wanted to watch her turn in his arms — and bite him back.
There's no sweeter sight than a man crushed by his own shield.
The wheel turns. Nobody gets skipped.
I watched the rest with real pleasure. Anyone who broke for the trees got a bolt — a helping hand.
By "helping hand" I mean the dead.
I'm not the good guy in this story. I'm a grudge with legs. Cross me, and the bill comes back a hundred times over.
From the tower I had the whole board. When the last of them went down, my eye drifted to one man still inside the truck.
The rental agent. Still tucked in his seat, still breathing. Say what you like — the man knew how to survive.
Everyone else ran. He stayed, locked inside his steel box.
I nocked a bolt, calm as anything, and put it through his window.
Thwip. Bang. The windshield shattered.
Every dead thing that had just finished with the others turned at the sound — including Tiger and his men, all of them up and walking again.
They hit the truck, poured through the broken glass, and reached for the last living thing inside.
Now he learned what suffocating felt like. What regret felt like.
Why had he brought them here?
Because he was the weakest man in that crew. He had to keep producing something useful or he'd be cut loose.
His first thought had been the bunker he'd leased a month ago.
He remembered her: young, pretty, and dumb enough to think she could farm mushrooms underground.
Mushrooms. In a bunker.
He'd been picturing it on the drive out — crates of mushrooms, and the pretty girl.
Bad luck for her, she'd be one of the turned — one woman against a truckload of armed men was nothing.
Good luck, she hadn't turned at all — the crew would have one more woman, and he'd get his turn with her.
Stupid, but God, she'd been pretty.
He never imagined the whole crew would fold in one afternoon.
He hadn't even laid eyes on her.
And then, through the flood of bodies pressing into the cab, he caught a shape in the trees ahead.
A girl, arms folded, watching him with no expression at all.
And he understood.
He was the idiot. The pretty girl who wanted to grow mushrooms was the big shot.
She'd been here the whole time. This was her land.
Too late to be sorry — a dead man's hands went through his chest.
Bark. Bark. Bark. Summer drove the last of them off the fence line.
I walked the road collecting my bolts, and came around the back of the pickup.
One armful at a time, I hauled their supplies home. A good day's work.
Call it restitution. The blind fools owed me.
I dragged the pickup into the barricade too. Nobody was getting through that gate now.
Back at the base, I laid the loot out and took inventory.