Free Snareville by David Youngquist Page A

drawer of the desk. He looped the chain of a badge over his head and tucked a pair of handcuffs into his back pocket. He buckled his gun belt into place and slid a nightstick into its ring.“Some things do still matter, Cat. Thanks for reminding me.” He turned to the kids. “Joe, go find Mister Kenny. Tell him I’m brining someone to his office. Pony, go find your folks. They’re EMTs, right?”
    Pony nodded.
    “ Good. Bring them here. They can help. Sherrie, you stay here with your aunt and Rachel. Whatever you do, don’t tell Danny.”
    “ Why?” Cori asked.
    “’ Cause Rick Mueller is Jenny’s husband.”
    “ Shit,” Cori whispered.
    “ Exactly.”
    The arrest went easy. Mueller sat at his desk while he went over some papers. He didn’t deny what he'd done. He tried to justify it, just like every other rapist Tony ever dealt with in his ten years as a deputy.
    The girl wanted it, Mueller claimed. She deserved it.
    Tony backhanded the nightstick across the bridge of the man’s nose. It crunched like an egg.
    Mueller sat there, stunned, as the blood poured from his nostrils. Tony yanked the professor's arms around and cuffed him. Then he lifted Mueller from his seat by the hair and dragged him out to the quad runner. Mueller stammered protests the whole time Tony was dumping him into the fish wagon.
    “ If you don’t shut up, I’ll turn you over to Danny and his crew.”
    Mueller didn’t say another word.
    The trial went swift. Two days after his arrest, the professor sat in a small car at the first checkpoint headed out of town. In the passenger seat rested an SKS rifle and a bandolier of ammunition. In the rear seat lay a backpack full of food. Behind the wheel, Mueller sat gingerly on a pillow.
    “ Normally, you could make Chicago in a couple hours. Don’t know what it takes these days. The CDC up there said they’d take you.”
    Kenny leaned against the roof of the car. Mueller stared straight ahead.
    “ Taylorville, Indiana is a few hours farther along. You’ve got the directions. They said they’d take you, too. Those're your choices.”
    “ Great. Another hick town like this one, or pushing a broom at the CDC. Who’s going to take care of Daffy?”
    “ Your girl will be fine,” Tony said from the other side of the car. His deputy badge still hung around his neck. “She’s got friends she can move in with. They’ll have room for when the baby gets here.”
    Mueller's eyes shifted. “You’re all going to die out here. Peoria isn’t that far south, you know, and Princeton is still full of walking dead.”
    “ Maybe,” Kenny said. “But at least we won’t have you around.”
    They turned to the sound of hoof beats coming up behind them. Cori thundered up on her Thoroughbred. She was decked out in riding togs with a whip tucked into the top of her right boot. She swung off her horse and walked over to the driver's side of the car.
    “ Rachel wanted you to have these,” she said.
    She handed a jelly jar through the open window. Inside the clear liquid floated two pale, pink orbs.
    “ She says this way, you’ll always know where your balls are.”
    Gagging, Mueller took the jar. “You’re all a bunch of ignorant savages.”
    “ Yep,” Tony replied, grinning. “And we’re okay with that. You better get goin'. And, you come back here, you’ll be shot on sight.”
    “ Fuck you.” Mueller looked at Corri. “And the horse you rode in on.”
    The others stepped away from the car as the professor put it in gear and drove off.
     

Chapter Four
     
    An explosion got my attention. It wasn’t a gunshot—no report to it. More of a deep boom than a sharp crack.
    I keyed the two-way radio and put my team on full alert. It was mid-September, almost five months since the outbreak. A lot of the Zeds in Princeton had moved on. We pretty much owned the north end of town. That was why the explosion surprised me.
    We were on another supply run to Wally World. We always left the back doors