Coffee first… then any type of food he could add to their pantry would make him happy. The burden was already on him to provide food for the whole family, but now, it was even scarier with the addition of three more people, and a donkey.
Deep down, Grayson knew help wasn’t coming anytime soon. This was the real deal. The shit had hit the fan, and much more would fly before it was all said and done. He needed to get more food while the gettin’ was good.
Mickey and Frank both were meat guys. After seeing the limited amount the neighborhood was able to salvage by drying or canning, visions of fresh steaks and chicken danced in their head.
They had no idea just how delusional they were…
Jake had only one thing on his mind: Gabby. He hoped to find some special something to bring back to his wife. Chocolate, or berry-flavored chap-stick, even candy… anything at all to show her how happy he was that she was home safely, and show her he could provide for her too.
He couldn’t help but feel a bit like a hanger-on. He wasn’t blood to Grayson; he was just married into the family. He hadn’t really heeded Grayson’s warning of an event on an apocalyptic level, and now that it had actually happened, he wished he had taken it all more seriously. He had checked all the right boxes and went along the best he could. He’d packed him and Gabby bug-out bags, he’d agreed to help Gabby prep a little bit of food at the house; he’d gone through the gun training, and helped with the garden occasionally.
But in the grand scheme of things, Jake knew what he’d done was like a fart in the wind in comparison to what Grayson had done. He’d only barely gone through the motions to keep peace with his brother-in-law and his wife, never really believing they’d need any of it. At times, he’d even thought it was a waste of his time and money; money he could’ve spent on Gabby, or on something for Ruby, even.
It was Grayson that had made sure he and Gabby—and everyone else in their family—would have food and water in their bellies a month from now. It was Grayson that had bought the farmhouse out in the country, instead of a fancy home in an upscale subdivision like Jake had done, for the specific possibility of the fan blowing the shumar around at some later date. He did it to make sure the house he chose was far away from the madness of town, and had its own water supply. Instead of spending his weekends Netflixing and chilling—like Jake usually tried to do—he’d used his every free weekend to work on the garden, making sure they had a renewable food source.
Add all that to his freakish inability to proficiently use a gun like a real man, on top of his other issues that Gabby didn’t even know about, and he was feeling like somewhat of a failure to his beautiful wife.
Jake shook off his poor-me thoughts and watched the scenery roll by. They were almost into town, now.
Grayson was still deep in thought beside him, one hand tightly gripping his gun and the other rubbing his jaw. Jake admired his ability to keep going despite what must have been the terrible pain of a toothache; he looked awful.
They had barely spoken since they’d left Tullymore. The crowd in the back had their eyes peeled for trouble and probably couldn’t hear each other over the wind anyway. The whole group rode in near silence. The first fifteen minutes of the trip was uneventful, like driving through a ghost-town—except they still hadn’t been in town yet, just passing houses on the two-lane blacktop road toward the city. They hadn’t seen a soul.
Until they did.
Suddenly, Jake slammed his foot on the gas, hoping he wouldn’t lose any of his five passengers in the back of the truck. “Tucker! Nine o’clock,” he screamed out his window, warning them of the motorcycle he’d just passed.
The motorcycle came out of a side-road like a gunshot, in hot pursuit.
Grayson let go of the death-grip he had on his gun long enough to grab the dash in a moment of panic. In the back, Tucker wobbled on his feet, swaying as he pointed his rifle at the motorcycle gaining on them.
The crotch-rocket motorcycle was tearing up the road behind them, eating up the distance between them in seconds. There was no denying it was after them, and it carried two people.
“What the hell?” Grayson said, looking over his shoulder as the riders zoomed up. He turned back and checked his gun.
Jake kept his eyes on the road. “Are they armed?” he yelled over the roar of the engine.
“I can’t tell yet. If they are, it’s with handguns.”
As the bike got closer, closing the gap, Jake could see flashes of it in his mirror. Two passengers, both in black helmets with tinted face-shields and wind-breaker jackets. Similar thin-ish frames. Definitely not a Harley. Definitely not bikers. Could it be just a couple kids on a rice-burner playing around?
“Tell them don’t shoot unless they have to,” Jake yelled. He didn’t want the death of two adrenaline-chasing teenage boys on his hands.
Grayson stuck his head out the window to relay the message, only to pull it in quick when Jake jerked the wheel to turn down a side gravel road. The bike turned too, giving chase, kicking up rocks and sliding around in the gravel at top speed.
Jake hoped they’d lose them to the gravel. He screamed toward the window, “Hang on!” He swerved, trying to make them a harder target. His view of the bike was limited around the heads of five people bobbing around so he couldn’t see what they were doing. Couldn’t see if they had guns.
His people in the back all swerved left and then right, Tucker nearly falling and then standing up again, sloppily trying to take aim. Tarra pushed him aside, and went down at the far end of the bed on both knees, looking out at the motorcycle, spreading her arms and tightly gripping the tailgate.
Tina pushed the three men behind her, and stepped in behind Tarra, slightly to her right. She took a knee, balancing her gun across Tarra’s right shoulder. The men watched in fascinated amazement at the two women crouched down low behind the metal gate, one providing support and the other with an eye behind the scope, pressing the rifle tight against her own shoulder.
Tarra waited until Tina was steady, then yelled over her shoulder to the men, “Stay back. She’s got this.” Her words were lost over the wind and the scream of the bike, but the men weren’t coming any closer anyway. She looked over her shoulder, and Tina gave her a nod—their signal—and she let go of the tailgate with her left arm and reached around to stick a finger into her right ear.
Jake snatched glances of them from his rear-view mirrors and did the best he could to keep the truck steady again, while sweat beaded on his forehead and his heart raced in time with the motorcycle.
No way. It’s an impossible shot at this speed anyway, he thought, hoping they were just posturing to scare the bike riders away. But it didn’t look like posturing. The two worked together like a well-oiled machine, not even needing words.
Tarra yelled at the two on the motorcycle. “Final warning. Fall back!”
The bike kept coming.
Tina and Tarra held their pose.
Jesus. These women act like a seasoned assassin team… serious, steady, and deadly.
Jake couldn’t let them shoot it out. But if the passenger on the motorcycle had a gun, the five people in the back of his truck were like sitting ducks right now.