Devon explained the first danger they would need to bypass was a couple of guys he thought looked like bikers, only they didn’t ride motorcycles, they rode mountain bikes.
“One guy is kinda fat, and the other dude is skinny, and they have some girls, but they don’t bring them out.”
“Girls? Like their wives or girlfriends?” John asked, genuinely concerned.
Jared was already shaking his head, remembering the gangs he’d seen on his way through the built-up areas of San Carlos before he met Bart.
Devon’s face grew dark. “No, the girls, they take ’em—they keep ’em at their place, probably tied up ’cause they don’t come out even when the two dudes are gone.”
“How many?” John asked, menace replacing concern in his tone.
“I seen ’em take three, but there has to be more. I’m not always watching those guys,” Devon answered, his eyes darting about the group of three men.
“I think I’d like to meet these two guys,” John said, his tone unchanged from before.
“Stay on task, man,” Barry chirped.
John turned on him. “You shut your mouth, Barry. Did we help you, and are you helping us, and is this kid now helping all of us?”
Barry twitched his hands slightly without throwing them in the air. “We can’t go around saving the world, John. We have people relying on us to get what we came for and get back.”
“Maybe I should have had that same attitude when Essie was hiding under the kitchen sink while her father rotted on the floor less than fifteen feet from her, Barry,” Jared interjected, coming to John’s aid.
“No one’s asking you to go, Nancy,” John fired off. “But I’m gonna have a look-see ’cause it’s the right thing to do.”
John turned to Devon. “What time do these tick turds get out to their little ambush spot, and can you show me how they get there?”
Devon pumped his head, his eyes widening at the thought of these three men going out and actually looking for the men he spent every waking hour trying to avoid.
The two men usually didn’t wake till after 1000 hours and would take their time abusing their houseguests and eating before heading out to a choke point on a major thoroughfare. Devon showed John, Jared and a somewhat reluctant Barry to the general area by 0900 hours. Three hours later two dirty-looking males arrived, walking as if they were the apex predators in this region. Unbeknownst to the degenerate mountain bikers, there were other hunters in the area, with retribution on their minds.
Devon remained saucer-eyed, watching mostly John as he prepared for whatever he was going to perpetrate on these two unfortunate souls. The two mountain bikers were so brazen they had placed lawn chairs behind a large planter box on the side of the road, where they could sit and wait in relative comfort for their victims to approach. John looked over at Jared, who appeared calm, but the tension was obvious in the way his eyes darted about the area.
The mountain bikers accessed the back side of the planter box by way of a small alley, which ran between two three-story stucco office buildings that probably hadn’t been maintained all that well before the solar flare and now were even more run-down. The mountain bikers never had to walk down the street to reach their ambush point. John could clearly see the men from the shoulders up and figured if he and Jared fired simultaneously, they had a pretty good chance of getting both men at once.
“Hey, Jared,” John whispered. “You good to shoot one of these guys?”
“Just shoot ’em? Now?” Jared replied and shook his head. “They haven’t done anything yet.”
“Yeah, just shoot ’em.” John rolled his eyes. “They’re set up to ambush people right now. You wanna wait till they kill someone before you’re comfortable shooting one of them?” John’s voice elevated a hair too loud for Jared’s comfort, causing him to glance at the two mountain bikers behind the planter box. Neither would-be ambushee appeared to have heard John’s voice. “Fuck it. I’ll shoot both of ’em,” John hissed in an irritated whisper.
Before Jared could react, John hefted the rifle into his shoulder, centered his red dot sight on the fat guy, and squeezed the trigger. John was immediately back in the sights as the rifle bucked, centering the sight on the skinny guy. He pulled the trigger just as the man began to duck. John searched for the man in his sights just as the skinny mountain biker made a dash for the alleyway. John nearly flinched as Jared’s rifle barked in his ear and chunks of concrete erupted off the wall of the alleyway.
The fleeing mountain biker didn’t fall, keeping his feet pumping underneath himself, and disappeared from Jared and John’s sight.
“Not good, boys,” John yelled, getting to his feet. “Devon, show me where that house of theirs is. He’s gotta be headed home.” John grabbed the stunned lad by a shoulder and stared him in the eye. “Confirm there are only two of these shitheads?”
Devon shook his head, eyes round as Frisbees. “One—one now,” he stammered.
John studied the kid for a moment, then almost laughed as he gave him an affectionate shove while releasing his shoulder. “Yeah—one now, so one to go. Let’s get a move on. I’d like to meet him back at their pad and finish this.”
Devon took off at a run with Jared, John and Barry in tow. Five hundred yards later, Devon stopped and pointed ahead. The skinny man was unarmed and staggering towards the front gate of what appeared to be his den of iniquity. All the surrounding homes appeared fairly normal middle-income residences, and then there was this two-acre plot with a house set back about fifty yards from the street with a ten-foot fence complete with barbed wire encompassing the property’s entire perimeter.
The skinny man was fumbling with a large padlock on the front gate, blood soaking through his shirt on the back side from
