His eyes narrowed as he eyed the closet door. “I’m trying to put an end to this mess and these fucking gangbangers are standing in my way.”
“What?” one of the girls mumbled.
He glanced at them. They’d taken off their shirts and were caressing one another as they kissed, watching him, inviting him to them. The stark contrast of pale white skin against the other girl’s dark skin was definitely interesting. “I said no.”
Grady opened the closet door all the way and there it was: his new weapon. “Let’s take you out for a test drive, buddy.”
22
LIBERAL, KANSAS
MARCH 7TH
Light filtered in through the drapes over the window, hurting Sidney’s eyes. She slowly became aware of breathing near her ear. Mark still slept on the bed next to her where they’d fallen asleep, huddled together for warmth the night before.
“Oh goddammit. No fucking way,” she hissed, shoving his hand off her breast and scooting her hip away from his erection. “Ew!”
“Wha?”
“Get off me, perv.”
“Huh?”
She sat up. The kid was obviously just waking up. He hadn’t been copping a feel while she slept, it was just how he’d ended up. “Get up. It’s morning,” she ordered.
Mark lifted his arm and looked at his watch. “Dang, it’s, like, noon. We must have been worn out.”
“Really?” Sidney looked at her own watch. “That sucks.”
Mark stood and shuffled to the window. He watched for a moment, then returned. “Doesn’t really matter. The crazies are still all over the place. A bunch of ’em are just sort of milling about.”
Sidney nodded, then went into the bathroom. She peed in the empty toilet and came back out. “Any sign of the Iranians?”
“A couple, but they’re all newly infected now.”
She unsnapped a button keeping one of her backpack flaps closed over a pocket and retrieved a pair of small binoculars. “Let’s see what we can see.”
After observing a while, Sidney decided there really wasn’t much to see at the fort and she handed the binoculars to Mark. “Not much left over there,” she said, sliding down the wall to the floor. “Not much left anywhere.”
Mark looked down at her before moving away from the window. He sat on the bed, then pushed himself off the bed. He sat down on the floor directly across from Sidney. “You okay?” he asked.
She nodded. “Yeah. I’m just…” She sighed. “What’s the point of all this?”
“We took out like twenty or thirty of those Iranian dudes,” Mark said proudly. “You and me. That’s twenty or thirty guys who aren’t gonna come after us later on.”
Sidney grunted. She didn’t like being stuck in this house. She hated the feelings of weakness and hopelessness that accompanied being trapped. They took her mind to a dark place, one that she’d thought she’d put behind her after she found out that she was going to be a mother.
“I’m just sick of always running and feeling like we’re never gonna be safe, y’know?”
“Yeah,” Mark agreed.
“And now we’re trapped in this house.”
“Only for a day or two,” the boy reminded her. “The crazies will get bored soon enough and move on. Then we’ll get back on the road. Or else, we could…”
He trailed off, not wanting to speak the words. Sidney knew he was offering to abandon their mission and return home. She could return to Lincoln and he could go back to Katie. It would be so easy to go back to the safehouse with their story of victory.
Sure, they’d put a minor dent in the Iranian operation, but in the grand scheme of things, what did it matter? Not counting last night’s action, they’d killed more than fifty of the foreigners in the last month or so. Yet, there always seemed to be more of them, waiting for their opportunity to kill Sidney’s group. That was why she’d chosen to take the fight to them. She was sick of running. Sick of wondering if today was going to be her last day. Sick of…of everything. She needed to find some type of safety and if that meant killing more Iranians, then so be it.
Sidney picked at her fingernail in frustration. “No,” she said. “We can’t head back. I can’t head back. You could though. You could tell everyone that we took this place out and gave them a lot of breathing room.”
“I’m not going back without you. You need me. Without me, that attack wouldn’t have worked at all, and, you would have fallen off the roof to the infected down below. Like it or not, you’re not Super Woman or something. You need my help.”
She nodded. He was right. He’d saved her ass twice already. “I’m grateful for your help. I really am, but—”
“Don’t,” Mark grunted. “Just don’t, okay?”
Their conversation ended in a stalemate, so Sidney went to her pack for some food. She had some old beef jerky and ramen noodles. Yum.
A few hours later, they heard the sound of an engine in the distance. Almost immediately after they heard that, the gunfire began. “What’s happening?” Mark asked.
They crawled to the window. The gunfire was coming from the base. Whoever was still alive over there had been quiet all morning and now they were shooting up a ton of ammo.
“They must have heard the truck too.”
They watched as the ambling horde of infected surged toward the base where several people were shooting. The defenders did a good job of putting down the crazies with head shots and decimating machine gun fire. Sidney found herself almost rooting for the Iranians to keep up the great work as they killed scores of infected, helping to clear the area for her and Mark.
“Should we try to leave?” she asked aloud.
“What?” Mark’s voice cracked slightly in his quick response.
“They’re
