Joseph Talluto - Taking It Back

“No, sir.” came the reply.

“I better not, you useless piece of shit. Boxer!” the leader called.

A small specimen by the truck spoke up. “Yeah!”

“Check out that truck. Tell me what you find.”

“You got it, Van.” The little guy ran over to the truck, opened the door and brought up his rifle dramatically to cover the interior. I nearly laughed. I could see Charlie just shake his head in my peripheral vision.

Van, the leader, shoved his nasty face into the oldest man’s face. “Where are the people who drove that truck?” No answer. Van‘s face got red and he pulled out his pistol and aimed into the face of the man next to him. “I don’t like to repeat myself, fucker. I’m counting to three, then I’m killing your friend and feeding him to the zombies. Got it? One…”

I stepped out of the store and pointed my rifle barrel at Van’s forehead. “Two,” was all I had to say. Behind Van, the other two men were caught off guard and fumbled for their weapons. I could see Tommy coming around the black truck, his gun up and ready. Behind him I could see the inert form of Boxer on the tracks.

To his credit, Van didn’t flinch. “I’ll still kill this fucker, unless you drop your gun, hero.” Van sneered at me.

I pressed the barrel of the rifle into Van’s head. “What makes you think I’ll let you live one second after that gun goes off? Kill him, he’s nothing to me.” That earned me a panicked look from the man under Van’s gun.

Van worked that one around in his head and I could tell he wasn’t good at math. “Boys! Shoot this asshole!” Van yelled to his men.

Nothing happened. Van was becoming confused. Something was wrong, but he didn’t dare take his eyes off me. Behind him, Tommy had effectively disarmed his cohorts and they were kneeling on the ground, hands on their heads, mumbling threats I couldn’t hear.

“Question for you, Van,” I said.

“Fuck you.”

“What comes after two?”

Van’s eyes got wide and it finally dawned on him that he was going to actually die if he kept this up. He reluctantly lowered his gun and I used my left hand to take it from him. It was an engraved, ivory stocked Springfield. 45. Very nice. I wondered who he stole it from. I passed it over to Charlie who came out of the store aiming his gun at Van as well. I figured Van’s eyes were going to pop out of his head if we offered up any more surprises. Resistance was the last thing he expected. Instead of tired, scared old men, he was suddenly facing battle-hardened veterans of the Upheaval. I’m sure had he suspected we were there, we would have had a more serious disagreement.

I shoved Van out into the street where he landed unceremoniously in front of his men. He jumped up immediately, but I was ready and slammed a fist into his head, knocking him back face first against the truck door, denting the panel. Van slid down, holding his nose, which seeped blood through his fingers.

I hunkered down in front of the two men and they stared hatred at me. “Howdy,” I said. “I need to know where your base is and if you tell me, I’ll let you go warn them. If you don’t, I imagine things will go badly for you.”

“Fuck you,” the older of the two said. “We’ll kill your punk ass. Who the fuck do you think you are? We own this area which includes you.”

I was unfazed. “Okay. The hard way it is.” I stood up and Charlie and I gathered up the weapons. I walked back to the men at the general store, and handed them the guns.

“These are yours. Do what you want, but I would suggest you get everyone out of here. Head down the tracks and get to Verona. They’ll take you in.” Several people had wandered over from the fields and were standing in the distance.

I addressed the people. “My name is John Talon. You people need to decide how you want to live. If you stay here, you’ll likely be killed by the group that has been terrorizing you or fall prey to the next gang that comes along. Verona is alive and so is Coal City. Take the tracks and move quickly.”

I started to walk back to the truck, Charlie following with Tommy bringing up the rear. The old man called out, “What do we do with these guys?”

I turned back and smiled at him. “They’re all yours.” I watched the people of the town surge forward and as I climbed into the cab of the truck, I could hear a high pitched scream as the people took their revenge against their oppressors.

“Three,” I said to no one in particular. Charlie chuckled and Tommy looked at me like I was nuts.

We found more of the same in Ransom with the populace being cowed by the group of renegades. Ransom had actually put up a fight against the group and had several people hanging outside town as an example to the rest. Another score to settle.

Ransom had about three hundred or so people living in it and they were all looking for a way out. I pointed them in the direction of the tracks and when we pulled out, a long line of people and belongings was headed northeast. None of the gang showed up, so I imagine they were in for a surprise when they came back to a ghost town.

Kernan was similar to Ransom with the exception that we managed to get into a little firefight with the representatives of the renegades. Charlie took a graze to his upper arm and I got nicked in the leg because I wasn’t bright enough to get myself fully under cover, but neither was serious. We killed four of the group with the remaining two beating a hasty retreat to the north. I came to the conclusion that we were not going to finish this unless we went after the rest of the gang, so after a brief powwow, it was decided that Charlie was going to take the survivors of Kernan over to Streator, if anything was left of it, and establish connections there. We did manage to find Tim Harlan, who was overjoyed to hear his brother was still alive.

For Tommy and myself, it was time to go hunting. We had a pretty good idea where our quarry was, but it was still going to take some doing to find them and deal them a blow they would not forget. As Machiavelli once said, “If you must do injury to a man, it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.” So it would be.

I pulled out the map that had brought us this far and I outlined what we knew so far. “The farmhouse was about here,” I said, placing a small pebble on the map. “The group had extended its activity over these towns here.” I placed additional pebbles on Kernan, Ransom, and Kinsman. “Everyone says that the scumbags always went north in some fashion. Since most scumbags rarely show any incentive beyond really lazy, I’m going to hazard a guess that our little friends are probably here.” I pointed to a spot labeled LaSalle Lake Fish amp; Wildlife Area.

“What’s there?” asked Tommy.

“As far as I can tell, water. But without any serious intelligence or someone telling us where to go, we have to start somewhere.” I wasn’t sure, but I did have a gut feeling about the place.

“Are we leaving in the morning?” Tommy wanted to know.

I hesitated. “We may have to do this one at night.”

Tommy stared at me. “Are you nuts? We never go out at night. The Z’s are always more active at night. It would be suicide!”

I shrugged. “What choice do we have? We go in the morning, they’ll see us miles before we will see them. We at least know that they won’t be out at night, for the same reason we shouldn’t be, so we can move around without alerting anyone.”

“Fine.” Tommy said grudgingly. “But I get the shotgun.”

“Deal. But get some rest. We move out in 3 hours.”

“Oh, like I’m gonna sleep now.”

We moved out just as the sun was setting. It was the best time to be moving since it was hard for zombies’ vision to adjust between the light of the sky and the dark of the ground. With any luck, we would be past any problems before they could figure out where we were. We couldn’t find a vehicle to take us where we wanted to go, but we did manage to scrounge up a couple of usable bicycles. In all honesty, if I had to travel at night, I would rather have the bike. It was quiet, it was quick, and could go overland much easier than a car could. Besides, with the way my luck was running, we probably wouldn’t have been able to find anything better than a beat up Cutlass with a bad muffler and out of time cylinder.