Free Outbreak: A Survival Thriller by Richard Denoncourt

her quiver. My fingers are on my holstered Glock. Soon, the infected
will lose track of where the fireworks came from and start fanning out, and
everyone—including the man behind us—will be in a world of trouble.
    “I said toss your weapons and come
toward me. Now.”
    Melanie and I do as we’re told.
Without my pistol, I feel like I’m missing a hand. We turn around, press our
backs to the wall, and lift our arms in surrender.
    The area behind the motel is a strip
of parking spaces. The Jeep I saw at the Citizens’ Bank is parked sideways
across three of them, facing us. My stomach sinks at the sight of it,
especially when I recognize the man with the neck tattoo staring at us from the
back seat.
    The one who spoke to us wears the
same faded red bandanna and holds the same automatic rifle as yesterday.
Instead of standing in the front passenger seat of the vehicle like before,
he’s in a shooting stance a few feet away. The rifle is an M16—serious
firepower even in a situation like this. You’d have to be insane to bring a
weapon like that out here.
    Unless you’re
hunting something that might shoot back.
    “What do you want?” I ask the
tattooed man in the Jeep, since I know he’s the leader.
    He doesn’t respond. He just
stares at me. His eyes are wide, like he’s watching a lottery in which one more
lucky number stands between him and a big win.
    Bandanna approaches me, flips the
rifle around, and jabs the butt stock into my stomach. I double over, the
breath knocked out of me.
    Melanie places a hand on my
shoulder. I brush it off and rise, quietly struggling to breathe. Bandanna
steps back and aims the rifle’s deadly barrel at me again.
    “Your stash,” he says.
    It’s hard to concentrate while
staring down the barrel of a gun that could tear you to pieces. I blink at him,
frozen with indecision. My stash is
back on Exeter Road, but Melanie’s stash is in the Lubroline station down the
street. I’m not sure what he’s talking about.
    “I don’t mean the girl’s stash,
either,” the man says as if he’s read my mind. He pulls his lips back in a
grisly smile that reveals a twisted mess of brown and yellow teeth. “I know
that one probably ain’t shit. Yeah, we’ll get to it later, but what I want to
know is where you come from, kid. You ain’t from this part of town, are ya? You got new
gear, a fancy pack, a nice Glock. I know there’s
more where that came from.”
    I glance at my pistol, which he
has kicked back toward the Jeep. No one has moved to pick it up. The driver of
the vehicle, who still looks like a wild man from the mountains, stares
intently at Melanie. The one with the tattoo hasn’t moved or changed his
expression at all.
    They won’t wait much longer for
me to answer. There’s no way I’ll give them my address. Then I think: what if
they threaten Melanie?
    “ Caballeros ,” the guy with the neck tattoo says in a surprisingly
crisp and springy voice. “Let’s finish this at base camp, shall we?”
    Caballeros . That’s Spanish for “gentlemen,” only there isn’t
anything Spanish about him. He’s just having fun. To them, this is probably
another day at the office.
    I barely have a chance to blink as
the guy with the M16 rushes forward. He jabs the rifle’s butt stock into my
face, knocking me out.

CHAPTER 9
    “Wake up, little scavenger.”
    He says it in a sing-song voice
that reminds me of the lullaby that begins with, “Hush, little baby.” Behind my
closed and heavy eyelids, I picture the way my mother looked when I saw her
crouched in her bedroom, only the keyhole between us, her face covered in slash
marks.
    I don’t want to go there ever
again. I open my eyes with a gasp.
    The first thing I notice is the dark
ceiling high above me, followed by the way the cold, stagnant air smells, a
combination of concrete and gasoline. My right eye remains half shut, sealed by
what I know is dried blood. It coats my face like a layer of hardened paint.
    Something