Free An Axe to Grind by Hope Sullivan McMickle Page B

leather bondage mask over her face and belted it behind her head. He’d found the mask on a mannequin at the adult bookstore next to the railroad tracks, and although he’d never been into the kinky shit, the mask certainly did an excellent job of preventing bites. He’s already zipped up the nose and mouth slits; the lack of oxygen was not going to be an issue for this woman.
    “Let’s go, princess,” he said, laughing as she bucked and squirmed beneath him.
    It only took a moment more to secure her feet in the shackles and he stood back up, grimacing and rubbing his back. He watched the girl struggle for several long moments before he released the noose on the catch pole and removed it from her head, doing the same with the snare that had been attached to her ankle. He absently tossed the snare aside; he’d re-rig it tomorrow. The wind blew through his long, graying hair as John reached down and pulled her up by her manacled wrists and carried her like an awkward piece of luggage to the back of the police cruiser. He’d decided not to drag her since she was pretty. There was no sense doing more damage. He opened the back door of the squad car and shoved her in head first.

    ACDC’s album Back in Black was in the rotation today. The ride to White Auditorium was less than two minutes, even though John took the long way so he could hear the end of Hell’s Bells. He’d ripped the two-way radio out of the cruiser and replaced it with an Alpine stereo and a 50 disc CD changer, which was housed in the trunk. Triggering the lift to the garage door, John parked in the empty bay of the fire station and leapt out of the vehicle to lower the door behind him. The fire station had been housed in the massive city auditorium since it had been built in 1940 as a multi-purpose facility. With seating for 2,000, a fire department, and numerous city offices, it had been a simple task to clean, fortify, and defend. The facility offered him more room than he would ever need. The fire station served as his primary base of operations, although he maintained his living quarters on the second floor of the building. A little more than a year ago he’d spent a week removing the surveillance equipment from the jail across the street and re-installed it throughout his building. A large bank of generators he’d scavenged from the Home Depot were housed in a shed behind a small area of chain link fencing, and they provided plenty of electricity. He’d worried a little about electrocuting himself when he’d installed those damn things. A quick glance at the monitors revealed nothing out of the ordinary, outside or inside the building. Satisfied, John hauled the girl out of the police car by her feet, sliding her onto the concrete floor. She gazed dully at him, oddly submissive. As she lay on the floor John retrieved the hand truck from where he’d stashed it and laid it flat on the ground beside her. The girl weighed no more than a hundred pounds, and it was an easy matter to roll her over so she laid flat on the hand truck, enabling him to secure her to it with thick leather straps that went around her shoulders, hips, and knees. Once she was secure, John removed the mask. She exceeded his expectations, and would make an excellent addition once he’d prepped and cleaned her up. John bent down and grunted with effort as he raised her to an upright position. Behind him, fingernails scrabbled against the metal garage door. One of the external monitors confirmed that two walkers were outside, probably drawn by the sound of his engine. John figured if they continued to loiter around he’d burn their sorry asses, but at the moment, that sounded like more work than he’d planned on that morning over coffee. Getting the girl was plenty of work in and of itself.
    Since the garage door was constructed with heavy sheet metal and secured with multiple locks from the inside, John figured they posed no immediate threat. Hell, there were dead people