“The Rev?” I asked.
“He owns the house and the barn out back. He let us stay and in exchange we help protect him.”
“Who is the girl?” I asked.
Steve snapped his mouth shut.
“See that. And we were doing so well too.” I said, making tsking noises with my mouth. “Who is the girl?”
Steve remained steadfast, but Amos spoke. “We’re not allowed to talk about her. She belongs to The Rev.”
“Why is she kept in the basement?” I asked.
“Shut up, Amos,” Steve warned.
“Here she comes,” Crefloe said.
At that moment, Suzie stepped out from around a tree. She simply stared at the two men, each of whom had turned to see who she was. I imagined their thoughts. Suzie was still mad at me and more than a little crazed, and here she came out of the darkness, her left arm missing, pirate patch over her missing left eye, face implacable enraged.
Amos wet himself.
Steve looked confused.
“They started talking already,” Crefloe said.
She turned to regard him with a single crazy eye.
“But then they stopped,” I said.
She looked at me.
“They won’t talk about the girl.”
She turned to them, her face somehow more twisted.
“WWWSD?” she said, spelling each and every letter.
When they didn’t respond, she repeated louder, “WWWSD?”
“I–I d-don’t know what that means,” Steve said.
“WWWSD?”
“Puh-please. Can you tell me what that means?” Steve asked, panic in his words
Crefloe shook his head. “It means you are shit out of luck, Steve.”
“It stands for ‘What Would William Shatner Do’,” I said. “Captain James Tiberius Kirk had a special place for women. What do you think he’d do knowing there’s a young girl being kept in the basement against her will?”
“It-it’s not against her will. That’s where she lives,” Amos screamed in frustration.
“Why does she live there?” I screamed back
“The Rev won’t let her into the rest of the house. She’s crazy,” Steve said, eyeing Suzie nervously. “A total fucking nut job.”
I wondered now who he was talking about — Suzie or the girl — or both.
I strode over to Steve and squatted beside him. “You’re going to tell me everything you know about the house or Suzie here will pretend she’s Captain Kirk and you will take the full brunt of her wrath. Phasers set to kill. Photon torpedoes. The whole fucking nine yards.”
One glance toward Suzie, whose eye seemed to be screwing out of her face, and Steve was spilling everything he knew. We found out a lot. Maybe too much. When he mentioned the monster in the barn, that made us all stop and wonder what the hell was going on.
They hadn’t actually seen the monster, but they knew it existed because of its howling. Turned out Amos and Steve had only been with the Tribe for two weeks. They hadn’t suitably progressed far enough for the Rev to tell them everything. But the relationship between the girl and the Rev was definitely a strange thing. They weren’t allowed anywhere near the girl, but had brought her food on several occasions, which they left for her at the top of the basement stairs.
Rolando, last name unknown, was the barn master. He handled the horses and apparently the monster. Carl Upchurch was his assistant. Wherever Rolondo went, Carl was at the man’s side.
Emma Driscoll, Frank Spatz, and Sara Wong took care of the day-to-day runnings of the house.
And the Rev, well, he didn’t seem to do too much at all. He stayed in his rooms on the top floor and had his food brought to him, except for Sunday services. As it turned out, he was called the Rev for a reason. It seemed he had been an actual Catholic priest before the invasion. I was frankly stunned he was still practicing. After all, if one were to believe in a god, you’d have to figure that a total fucking invasion of the planet might be enough reason to show yourself and save your worshippers. But that argument was for another day.
“We just going to leave them here?” Crefloe asked.
It was getting on toward night. I’d stayed longer than I’d wanted. I stared at the naked prisoners sitting on the ground. I know what I should do to them, but I didn’t want to do it. Arguably, what was another stain on my soul? I was already a mosaic of what I’d seen and done. Still, killing them was unnecessary and I wasn’t going to do it.
“WWWSD,” Suzie said under her breath. Her hands were balled at her sides. Her entire body was rigid, punctuated by a single furious dot of hate that had once been her eye. She wouldn’t stop repeating herself. She’d performed her part of the plan admirably, but somewhere along the way she’d lost what little sanity she had. “WWWSD?” she hissed.
What would William Shatner do indeed? He’d let them live. He’d put them in a position where they couldn’t do any harm, then let them live.
“We’re going to leave them.”
Crefloe nodded. “I can do them if you want me to,” he said, meaning if I was too soft to do it. “Don’t mean shit to me.”
“No, Cref. If I wanted them dead, I’d do it myself. Let’s leave these two alive. It certainly won’t hurt anything.” I knelt and stared Steve in the eyes. “You don’t owe the Rev any fealty. You don’t owe them nothing. If you want to live, you need to go away. Anywhere but here, understand?”
Steve and Amos both nodded.
“I don’t want to see you again.”
They both nodded again.
I stood, adjusting the strap of my pack on my back.
I heard a twig snap in the growing darkness of the woods. I slammed myself to the ground right as a shotgun blasted, chunking the tree I’d just been in front of.
I rolled to my left and brought my M4 up. I fired three controlled bursts — left, right, and middle — then rolled to my knees and put a thick tree between me and whatever was out there.
Crefloe ran into the woods behind me.
I wasn’t worried about him running away. He was probably going to circle back and try and get behind my attackers.
The shotgun fired again.
But as I aimed toward the spot, automatic gunfire erupted from a spot ten yards away, peppering the tree, digging divots in the earth. I felt a warm breeze on the side of my head, followed by a burning pain. Blood immediately began to seep free. I stood and dove deeper into the woods, rolling first right, then backwards, then left. I low crawled toward a wide tree and pulled myself behind it. I touched the side of my head and felt warm blood. I’d been grazed.
Then I realized that I’d left Suzie.
Shit!
I waited for the sound of movement.
One minute.
Five.
Ten.
Fifteen minutes ticked past with only the sound of the wind in the trees.
Thirty minutes later, I began to pick my way back toward the clearing. When I got there, I noted that Steve and Amos were gone, their cut zipties in a pile where they’d sat. As was Suzie. There could be only one place they’d take her. And I’d go there, even knowing they were expecting me.
The barn was lit up like a Christmas tree. Two guards stood sentry at the main door. What I hadn’t expected were all the people. There must have been a hundred filing into the barn. The only explanation was that they’d come from other nearby homes.
What day was it, I wondered.
Was it Sunday?
Was that what this was all about?
Was the Rev going to have one of his services?
I’d bandaged the wound on the side of my head and then grabbed some mud to blacken my skin so its sheen would be dulled even in star light. I’d also stashed my pack in a hide site. I needed to move fast, and its bulk could only hamper me.