“Sorry,” I lied, “we don’t have any spare. We wouldn’t want to expose you to any unnecessary danger, so we’ll meet you afterwards.”
“Who do you think you are, John Rambo?” the man said sarcastically.
It was nearing two o’clock on Wednesday morning. I think tiredness must have got the better of Jack because he answered, “Fuck you.”
The man sprang out of the car, walked up to Jack, and stood inches from him.
“Say that to my face, you pussy,” he said.
“They’re holding me hostage. The one that you called a pussy is a rapist; I’ve seen him do it to three women. This one is as well,” Jerry shouted, as he looked up at me.
I realised he was trying to work the situation to his advantage. I kicked the back of his leg and he dropped to one knee.
“Did you see that? That’s how they’ve been treating me, look at the blood around my mouth.”
“Shut up, Jerry,” I shouted.
“Hey, what the hell?” The man said, looking around Jack towards me.
“Ignore him,” Lea shouted, “do you think I’d be travelling with them if they were rapists?”
The situation was escalating. Two survivors, most likely tired and stressed, were probably now in an even bigger state of confusion.
“There’s no need for this. Let’s all just calm down and talk it through,” I pleaded as I tightly squeezed the back of Jerry’s neck.
“Come on, Mark. It’s not worth it,” the woman shouted from inside the car. “Let’s just leave them and go and find a place to stay for the night.”
He didn’t respond to her, instead he focused back on Jack.
“Are you going to say it to my face?”
I couldn’t believe what was happening, rather than being confused or wanting to ask questions, he just seemed angry that Jack had sworn at him.
He poked his finger into Jack’s chest, “Pussy.”
I knew what Jack’s response would be and tensed up.
Jack leaned back and then thrust a violent head-butt straight into the man’s face. He staggered backwards, holding his eye.
He paused for a second before launching himself at Jack, shouting, “You mother fucker.”
They collided and hit the ground together, then started wrestling. I let go of Jerry, ran over and grabbed the man’s shoulder to pull him away. He swung his elbow around, and it caught me flush between my eyes. The momentum knocked me back a couple of yards, and for a moment, I was seeing stars.
“He’s running,” Lea shouted, and I heard a couple of shots.
A surge of anger shot through my body. I wrapped my fingers into the shape of a fist, and then jumped on top of the man and punched him in the back of his head as hard as I could. He tried to roll out of the way, but only succeeded in pulling Jack around with him. Jack now sat on top of his chest, and rained heavy blows into the man’s face.
“Stop it, leave him now. He’s had enough,” I shouted.
I had been thrown away from the fight when he rolled.
I turned quickly and looked for Jerry, he was gone.
“He ran away as soon as you let him go, over there between the trees,” Lea said, pointing to the opposite side of the highway.
“Did you hit him?” I said.
“I don’t think so.”
“Shit.”
I shouted in frustration as I looked back towards the scene of the fight.
The man had stopped struggling underneath Jack.
“I’m letting you go now. If you try that again, I’ll hammer your face. Do you understand?” Jack spat.
He nodded, Jack released his grip and the man hobbled back to his car holding the left hand side of his face. He got back into the passenger seat with a grunt.
As the car pulled away, he shouted out of the window, “Thanks for nothing, you fucking douchebags. If I see you again, I’ll kill you.”
Jack looked at me, shaking his head.
“What an idiot. Shall we go after Jerry?”
“I’m not sure it’s worth the effort. We’ll just have to get to Hermitage before he does and hope he wasn’t lying.”
I called Jerry’s name twice, unsurprisingly, there was no response.
“Shame I didn’t get him, but I’m glad he’s gone. I know where Ron lives anyway.”
“Yes, we know, Lea,” Jack replied, dusting himself down.
“Come on, let’s go. I’ll drive, I reckon we can make Hermitage by first light. We don’t want that creature getting a head-start on us,” I said.
I looked at Lea who was climbing into the passenger seat.
She shook her head, “You guys can really be dicks sometimes.”
We waited until Mark’s vehicle vanished in the distance, and then set-off again.
“We’re not stopping for anybody now until we get to Hermitage,” Jack said. There was no disagreement.
During the night, we were forced into swapping vehicles twice as our attempts to syphon fuel was unsuccessful. I reasoned that modern cars had a valve to stop siphoning and we didn’t want to waste any more time out in the open. The cars we chose were parked at the side of the road, and clean of bodies. We rolled along towards Hermitage in a Chevrolet without Sat Nav, but it was a straight road all the way. Inside the Chevy, I found a rolled up road atlas and calculated that it was about a mile on foot cross country from the highway to Anthony’s house.
The first signs of dawn appeared in the sky as we approached our designated point, and I slowed to a crawl along the tree line. To our right was a break in the trees to accommodate overhead wires, and the house was somewhere beyond, out of sight. The highway around us was quiet.
“Let’s get some fuel into us before heading over,” I said, the others nodded agreement and we slid out of the car.
Jack grabbed three cans of baked beans and spoons from the back of the Chevy. The ring pull made the cans easy to open, and as I chewed the first mouthfuls, I thought of Bernie and his apartment. I imagined getting some revenge for his death and all the others we had seen by destroying Genesis Alliance. From what we had seen of them so far, I was confident, but was also now concerned that we might be caught up in another activation. My mind switched from Hermitage to Monroe, and I walked round to the front of the Chevy to speak to Lea. She was staring off towards the opening in the trees, apparently lost in thought.
“Do you have any idea what we might face if we go to Ron’s?”
“No, not really, are we going there next?”
Jack had followed me. “It depends what we find here. This guy might have all the answers. If there’s a way of stopping it all and getting away now, then fine, but I think we are on a collision course.”
“Do you want to go back?” I asked Lea.
“I want to see Martina again. But if it means getting you guys in trouble…”
“Don’t worry about that. Do you remember seeing any people around Ron that could be dangerous?”
“It’s hard to say, maybe one or two, but none of them really stood out that way.”
“I reckon there will be a few armed guards,” Jack said. “Ron isn’t going to leave himself exposed is he?”
“Are you going to try and kill Ron?” Lea said, with a wide-eyed expression.
I wanted to avoid having a hypothetical discussion over the future of Ron. Firstly, we didn’t know if we were going to Monroe, secondly, I thought it might start Lea thinking about what the consequences of such an action would be for her.
“Forget about that for now. We can’t afford to get into a long firefight here. It’s reasonably safe to assume that Anthony will be armed if he’s at home, if he has plenty of ammo, then we might not take him from a distance. He could call for back-up, so we need to be quick once we get there,” I said.
“How shall we take the house? A pincer movement? He might be expecting something if Ron’s told him about Orange County,” Jack said.