Free Regeneration (Mad Swine Book 3) by Steven Pajak Page B

brother’s
chest.
    Unimpressed by the brandishing of the
weapon, Brian started to walk toward him.
    “ Stop there or I will shoot,” the
young man said. “I swear I will, please don’t make me.”
    Meanwhile, several of the other men
who had kept their distance to keep us covered with rifles now
surged forward and grabbed my brother. He struggled with them,
striking them with elbows and knees, even head butting the woman
when she got too close.
    “Get a hold of him!” the man in
charged shouted.
    Everything happened so quickly, it
took me a few seconds to react. I finally moved my ass to
intervene. I pulled one of the men away, shoving him to the ground,
making room for me in the tangled mass. I grabbed my brother in a
bear hug and put my lips close to his ear so he could hear me.
    “ Just let this happen. Let them
take us inside . You understand?”
    He continued to struggle for a
moment, then finally subsided. He nodded his head; he would comply.
I felt his body go limp and he stopped struggling. Raising my hands
above my head, showing my intention to submit, I shouted, “Okay,
we’ll cooperate. Everybody just calm down. We’ll cooperate.”
    We were both shoved roughly up
against the trailer again. I couldn’t see who was behind me, but
both of my arms were pulled up and my wrists were roughly bound. My
arms immediately began to ache and my wrists burned.
    The man who seemed to be the leader
spun me around so that we were face to face. “I don’t call this
cooperation,” he said, pointing to his right cheek where a small
welt already arose and blood trickled down from a small open
wound.
    “My bad,” Brian said. “That’s on
me.”
    The woman who Brian head butted spit
in his face. “This asshole broke my nose,” she said.
    “That’s my bad, too,” Brian said.
    The woman grabbed a handful of
Brian’s jacket and cocked a fist, but she paused before throwing
the punch.
    “Donna, that’s enough!” the man in
charge said. To me he said, “Anymore of that type of cooperation
won’t be tolerated. Right now we are being nice, but we can also be
not so nice. You dig?”
    I nodded my head. “We dig. What about
our horses?”
    He looked at them for a moment, then
turned to the young kid. “You and John get those horses detached
and bring them inside. Do it quickly before the dead things show
up, got it?”
    “I got it, Randy,” the kid said.
    “And get whatever gear they have and
bring it,” Randy said. To me he asked, “Satisfied?”
    “Yes, thank you,” I said.
    “ That is cooperation,” Randy said.
    They led us to one of the containers
that blocked the right side of the road. It was one of those ship
cargo containers and it faced perpendicular to the others so that
its doors on either end were accessible from either side of the
road. We exited the container and came face to face with the front
gates of Randall Oaks. We were home.
    But home was very different than we
last remembered; the gates which had been damaged by Providence
during the war are now completely ruined. The northeast corner of
the wall that surrounded and protected the community caved in and
one of the green containers now blocked the gap in the wall, the
loose bricks of the old wall lay in jumbled piles against the metal
container.
    The fields to the north from which
Providence rained hell on them with snipers flanked by makeshift
walls made from pieces of old chain link fence, corrugated metal,
wood and other materials to create the barriers. As we looked upon
this changed landscape, I couldn’t help but think I’d truly stepped
into the apocalyptic landscape of a Mad Max movie.
    For the first time since we saw the
barriers and were ambushed by these strangers, my heart lept into
my throat as slick coils of fear gripped me. I feared what happened
here and what had become of our friends we’d left behind. Had they
been taken, held captive by this group? Were they even alive?
    We entered Randall Oaks, bound by
thin coils