Cannibal Country (Book 1): The Land Darkened Read online

  A few nearly burned out candles cast enough light through the room for Trooper to see that it was empty. He half-turned to Wyatt and motioned for him to join him inside.

  They moved as softly and with as much care as possible, not exchanging a word. They’d already discussed what they would do and the order in which they’d do it a dozen times.

  First, they moved ten cases of food into the doorway. With that finished Wyatt leaned out the door and did his best impression of a great horned owl. Trooper heard the front left wheel of the shopping cart squeak as it approached.

  With the food taken care of, Trooper moved through the maze of boxes and toward the back room. Wyatt was close on his heels and he could hear the boy’s breaths coming fast and nervous. He thought about telling him to quiet down but that would just make more unnecessary noise so he let it be. Besides, if a bit of panicked breathing gave them away they were already screwed.

  The door to the back office was closed. Trooper spun the knob and opened it with as much care as his old hands could muster. But his caution appeared unneeded as rumbling snoring drifted through the doorway.

  Thank God for small favors, he thought.

  Inside the room, he spotted Big Josh sitting in a wheeled chair behind a metal desk. His head was tilted back at an angle that made Trooper’s neck hurt just looking at it, and his mouth hung agape. He seemed to be the source of most of the noise, but the card cheat wasn’t far behind. He appeared to have been laying on a stained, yellow couch when his upper body tumbled off, leaving him half reclining, half sprawled on the floor.

  With the men momentarily out of commission, Trooper’s eyes scanned the room for firearms and it didn’t take long before he found what he needed. Setting in a magazine display rack were upwards of two dozen pistols and revolvers of varying calibers. Stacked against the same wall was a row of long guns, everything from .22 rifles to an AK 47.

  As much as Trooper would have preferred to take the rifles, as they were both more accurate and more deadly, the handguns would be easier to transport and as time was of the essence, he settled.

  Wyatt spread his pack open while Trooper filled it with guns and ammunition, only stopping when he worried the weight of the haul might split the bag at the seams. He nodded to Wyatt who zipped the bag closed.

  As they slipped out of the room, Trooper lamented the fact that the .44s, his .44s, were still on that roid-raging asshole Big Josh’s waist. He gave brief, but serious consideration to marching back into the office and taking them from the holsters, but he hadn’t survived seven decades by being stupid and didn’t see any purpose in changing course now.

  They were halfway out the front door when a stair creaked.

  “Son of a bitch,” Trooper muttered.

  “What are you doing back here?” Stretch asked.

  Trooper turned toward the man who’d reached the bottom of the staircase. Damn the man for being a teetotaler. “Josh told us to come back tonight with the woman, remember?”

  “Yeah.” Stretch’s eyes narrowed. “So where is she?”

  Trooper pointed to the office. “In there. I might be kind enough to share but I’m not going to stick around and watch. That’s not my scene.”

  Stretch paused halfway between Trooper and Wyatt and the office, and Trooper could practically see the gears turning inside his head. He hoped the man was dumb enough to fall for this. After thirty seconds that felt like an hour he came up with, “Can I?”

  “Can you what, son?”

  “Watch?”

  Trooper sighed. That wasn’t the best possible response, but it wasn’t the worst. He felt Wyatt pulling at his coat and shook the boy off. They’d need to be quick now, but at least they had a chance.

  “If you so choose,” Trooper said.

  Stretch grinned, revealing oversized, horsey teeth to pair with his long face. He moved toward the office and Trooper pushed Wyatt out the door and into the street.

  It was only a moment before he heard Stretch scream. “Fucking cocksuckers!”

  There was more shouting, more commotion, but Trooper didn’t plan to stick around to listen in. He turned to Wyatt. “This is the part where we run.”

  And they did.

  Chapter Thirty

  “Are we moving too fast?” Seth asked. He glanced side to side as he wheeled himself up the street. It seemed like every nosey bastard in this shitty excuse for a town had their eyes on him and his mother. “I feel like we’re going too fast and look suspicious.”

  Barbara was at his side, pushing the shopping cart which teetered on overflowing with ten cases of canned goods hidden beneath a heap of clothing. “You’re being paranoid. Most of them are drunk, anyway.”

  To prove the point, a man standing beneath a dead traffic light bent at the waist and projectile vomited all over the road. Seth made a quick turn to the left to avoid the splatter.

  As he stared ahead Seth saw they were three blocks away from the edge of town. Three blocks away from freedom. He thought this scheme was ridiculous when Trooper proposed it but he was beginning to believe it might just work after all.

  Then he heard the yelling.

  “Fuck,” Seth muttered.

  “Yeah,” Barbara said.

  They ceased forward motion and turned to find out what had gone wrong and to what extent.

  He saw Wyatt running. He saw Trooper trying to run, but it was the awkward, loping gait of a lame animal. And he saw a tall, gangly man standing outside the bank building, balled fists raised into the air like he was praising Jesus at a Sunday morning worship service.

  “You cocksuckers get back here!” Stretch bellowed.

  Nah, he’s probably not the worship type, Seth thought. He glanced down at Supper. “You might want to hide.”

  The dog’s ears perked up and Seth made a shooing motion with his hand. Supper trotted off the road and laid down under a tattered awning that read, Buster’s Big & Tall Shoppe. “Huh.” Seth said mostly to himself as he realized the dog was probably the smartest of all of them.

  He tugged on his mother’s coat. When she looked down on him he saw her face twisted in a grimace of worry and fear. “Well?”

  “Well, what?” She asked.

  “Are we going to join this fracas or stand here like two assholes who intended to buy our way into the peep show but left our wallets at home?”

  That made her smile, a little. “I vote we stand here.”

  “I vote we join in.”

  “Then we’ve reached a stalemate.”

  “I’m your parent. My vote counts double.”

  “I don’t think that works anymore.” He slid the shotgun, which had been covered by a blanket in his lap, free.

  “So just like that, you overrule me?”

  “Come on, mom,” Seth said. “You don’t want to miss all the fun, do you?”

  Barbara reached behind her back and pulled out the piece of crap .22. “No, I suppose not.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Wyatt felt his ear catch fire before he heard the gunshot. Once the report of the gun shattered the silence he realized that his ear was not, in fact, on fire, but that he’d just been shot.

  His free hand, the hand not gripping the duffle bag full of guns, went to the side of his head and came away hot and sticky and covered with blood that looked rusty orange in the light of the torches.

  “You okay?” Trooper shouted.

  They’d both stopped running. “It just grazed me.”

  Another gunshot rang out and Wyatt heard it explode into a building nearby. A woman with a beer gut barked out a scream and took off in the opposite direction. He looked to Trooper who’d caught up to him. “Now what?

  “We can’t outrun bullets,” Trooper said as he gripped the .38. “So I say we start shooting back.”

  They looked to the bank where Big Josh and the card cheat had joined Stretch on the crumbling remains of the sidewalk. Josh had a .44 in each hand but swayed side to side, like a greenhorn mariner tryi
ng to remain afoot during high seas. He fired and the bullet whizzed off course before hitting a woman Wyatt thought looked familiar. As she fell in a heap, he realized it was one of the girls who’d been standing on the corner with Allie when they arrived in town. One of the men he’d later seen harassing Allie, the one with the destroyed nose, knelt beside her and shook her limp and lifeless body.

  “Marge?” He said. “You go and die on me?”

  Marge didn’t answer because she was dead.

  Josh shot again, but that bullet bounced off the street, ricocheting wild and harmless. About that time the cheat fired off the bolt-action rifle he held in a death grip. That round too went astray, slamming through a window of an abandoned storefront.

  “Give me that you drunk ass.” Stretch grabbed the rifle from the cheat who appeared grateful to be relieved of it. He contented himself with clutching one of the granite columns near the bank’s entrance and tried to keep the building from collapsing.

  “Fuckers think you can steal from Big Josh?” Big Josh yelled.

  “By God,” Trooper said. “How I do loathe a man who refers to himself in the third person.”

  Trooper aimed and squeezed the trigger on the .38. The bullet didn’t quite hit its target, which had been center mass, but it did clip Josh’s left shoulder and caused him to drop one of the guns as he howled in surprise.

  Wyatt realized he was standing there with his proverbial thumb up his ass and got around to taking a shot of his own. That one zipped by Stretch as he was busy aiming the rifle, distracting the tall man.

  The momentary distraction cost him his life because a half-second later Trooper sent a bullet through his throat. Blood shot out like water from a drinking fountain, so hot it steamed in the cool, night air. He dropped the gun and fell to his knees, grabbing at his neck, but bled out within moments of hitting the concrete.

  Although only recently awoken from his opioid-induced stupor, Josh must have realized standing in the open wasn’t the best of plans and he took refuge in the bank’s doorway. Wyatt shot and chunks of limestone blew out, leaving behind an irregular hole, but Josh was unharmed.

  Big Josh responded with a shot of his own. It came close enough to Trooper that the old man dove to the street, landing in an awkward and, from the look on his face, pained heap. Wyatt was about to run to him when--

  “Fucking fuckers think you can come into our place and kill our whores? Steal our shit?”

  Wyatt sought out the voice and found the thug with the malformed nose marching his way. His shirt was stained with the dead woman’s blood and, in his hand, he held a machete.

  “What kind of dumbass brings a knife to a gunfight?”

  Wyatt knew the voice of course, but even if he didn’t such a wiseass, cocky comment could only come from one person. He turned and saw Seth in his chair, the butt of the shotgun pressed against his shoulder. The thug with the disgusting nose turned too. Just in time to catch a spray of buckshot in the face. The nose was the least of his worries now.

  Although the plan wasn’t going as smoothly as they’d intended, Wyatt was relieved and optimistic about their chances. For a moment.

  “Get off the street!” Trooper shouted.

  Wyatt almost asked him why. After all, they had the upper hand.

  But they didn’t.

  Wyatt looked toward Trooper and saw the rest of the thugs from the alley coming their way. And three of them had guns.

  Mohawk took a shot at Wyatt who felt the wind of the round blow past him.

  Barbara fired the .22, but the round went astray and Wyatt saw the grip of the gun dissolve in her hands. About that time a shot came from Big Josh’s direction and sparked off Seth’s wheelchair frame.

  Then T-Bone raised a rifle and aimed but Wyatt knew the score. There was a time to stand and fight and a time to run. He just had to figure out which this was.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “That boy of yours better hurry the hell up sugartits, because I’m closing this door in T-Minus five seconds.”

  Barbara put on her best pleading look as she stared at Doris who filled the doorway to the bar. In one hand she held an aluminum baseball bat, in the other a bottle of cheap whiskey. The barkeep looked into the street where gunshots went off like firecrackers on the Fourth of July.

  “She a friend of yours?” Trooper asked. He was bent at the waist, a hand on each knee, and sucking in big mouthfuls of air as he recuperated from his mad dash.

  Barb shrugged her shoulders. “We recently became acquainted.”

  She wanted to tell Doris to wait, to not lock Wyatt out there in the open with the bastards who were trying to kill him, when Wyatt made the potential plea a moot point.

  “Took your sweet time didn’t ya, handsome?” Doris smacked him on the ass as he scooted past her and into the bar. Then she slammed the door closed and switched three deadbolts to keep it that way.

  Wyatt had been carrying Supper, only setting the dog down once they were safely inside. It took a brief glance at her son for Barbara to see the blood. She gasped at the sight of the head wound, already imagining the worst. When he got close enough, she grabbed his shirt and pulled him to her.

  “You’re hurt. Let me see.”

  Wyatt fended her off with his forearm. “I’m fine. The bullet just grazed my ear.” He turned his head, displaying a channel that had been carved along the helix.

  “They shot you?” The question came out in a startled bark. The realization that her oldest had come within two inches of getting shot in the skull made her head swim. “You could’ve been killed!”

  He took hold of her shoulders. “But I wasn’t. So don’t freak out.”

  Don’t freak out, she thought. He said that like he was five minutes passed curfew on a Friday night. He was almost killed. How was she supposed to not freak out? As she pondered that question, their reunion was interrupted by a foreign voice.

  “Lookie who tucked tail and ran when the shit hit the fan.” Barbara saw Pete and Allie sitting side by side in a corner booth. Both looked half-sloshed. Pete glared at Wyatt with amused, glassy eyes. “Not such a hero now, are you, kid?”

  She watched as Wyatt saw them. He ignored the man’s putdowns, his eyes locked on the waifish woman at Pete’s side. Barb knew the look on Wyatt’s face and she didn’t like it. Not one bit. This felt almost as dangerous as the gunfight. Maybe worse.

  “Fuckeroo, this is the most excitement I’ve seen since a forty-eight-hour layover in Jakarta.” Doris bellied up to the bar and grabbed a fistful of shot glasses. “Who’s joining me?”

  “I will!” Seth was already wheeling himself in her direction.

  “Jesus, Seth.” Barbara chased after him but he beat her there. Doris already had a shot waiting for him. She knew the proper thing would be to tell her young son that there was no way in hell he was drinking that hooch, but the more she considered it, there wasn’t anything proper about this situation. Or the world in general. So what good was putting on airs?

  Seth grabbed his glass and downed it in a gulp. That was followed less than two seconds later by a retching cough that brought half of it back up his gullet and onto his shirt. “The fuck is that?” Seth asked. “Lighter fluid?

  “Pardon me, kid. Jim Beam’s a little outta my budget.”

  “I’ll take one of those.” Trooper took a glass and made short work of it.

  Barb swallowed her drink, enjoying the fiery heat that slipped down her gullet and settled into her chest. She needed that.

  “Any of you yay-hoos got a plan to get out of this?” Doris asked.

  Barbara looked to the men in her life. Their blank faces were answer enough.

  “Didn’t think so.” Doris poured more shots. “Maybe this’ll spark some creativity.”

  A few of them managed to get a drink down, but Barbara had just brought her glass to her lips when a volley of bullets punctured the walls of the pub. One of them shattered a bottle of liquor that had been residing on the shelf with the
rest of the stock. Damn shame, Barb thought as she saw the spoiled contents rain to the floor.

  “Shit!” Allie yelled.

  Pete clutched his upper arm while scarlet blood oozed between his fingers. His face was contorted in pain and the woman at his side stared at the rest of them, pleading.

  Wyatt grabbed a dirty rag from the bar and his undrunk shot before going to them. He handed the rag to Allie and Barbara noticed their fingers touch as she took it.

  Pete removed his hand from the wound to reach for the shot glass. Blood ran out like water from a faucet. “Gimme that, hero. I need a fucking drink.”

  Instead, Wyatt held it out of reach. “It’s not for that.”

  “Then what’s it for?”

  Wyatt grabbed Pete’s arm a few inches below the hole. “Hold still.”

  He poured the alcohol over the wound. Pete yowled like a cat who’d just had its tail stepped on by a five hundred pound man. He thrashed, but Wyatt held firm, his attention now on Allie. “Take that rag and tie it tight so he doesn’t lose too much blood.”

  Wyatt let go of the man and, for a second, Barb thought she was going to see her son get sucker-punched in the jaw, but Pete stopped himself and Wyatt returned to the group.

  “Goddamn it!” Doris muttered.

  Now what, Barb thought. Then she saw Doris examining a patron who Barb hadn’t even realized was there until just now. She recognized him from her earlier visit, the gray-haired man who struggled to stay on his barstool. Now he was leaning over a table like he was taking a nap or sleeping off a bender.

  “They killed Mute Sam,” Doris said.

  “Are you sure he’s dead?” Trooper asked.

  Doris grabbed a fistful of his spaghetti-like hair and lifted his head. Blood ran from his mouth and a bullet hole marred his bare chest. “Yeah. I’m sure.”