Life As We Know It Read online

They couldn’t see a single thing inside the warehouse. Jack went to turn on his flashlight, but Vanessa slapped his hand away.

  “NO. They will see the light from outside.” She said.

  “Well we have to do SOMETHING.” Jack whispered urgently. “Guys? Guys? Its me, Jack.”

  Off in the distance, Jack heard a muffled noise, and the sound of a chair banging off the hard concrete floor.

  “What was that?” Vanessa asked.

  Before Jack could answer, the bright lights of the warehouse were turned on. The lights temporarily blinded Jack and Vanessa, as they had been in complete darkness the whole time.

  “SHIT. Someone’s going to see us!”

  As their eyes adjusted to the unpleasant lights, Jack saw 3 blurred people sitting on chairs. They appeared to be tied up. As his eyes focused, his fears were confirmed. It was Charlie, Rory and Penny. Surrounding them were about 20 men with machine guns pointed straight at Jack and Vanessa. And right in front of Charlie, Rory and Penny was a large bald man.

  ***

  “Well, well, well. I’m a bit disappointed to see you here Vanessa. But I am quite interested to see what you are doing at 2:00 AM with a prisoner.”

  “W-w-we are b-b-busting out of h-h-here. And we are t-taking them with us.” Vanessa said, terrified.

  “You know what. I respect that. You have to stick together in this crazy world. I never liked you much anyway. So go ahead. Leave with them. I understand. You.” He finished, pointing at Jack.

  “You look like a tough man. A good soldier. How would you like to join our humble little army?”

  “Fuck you.” Jack spat at the bald man.

  “That’s pretty fucking rude. But you know what? I’m willing to let it slide, simply because I know you are going to love what happens next. My name’s James Waters, by the way.

  “Ok, James, why the fuck should we listen to you?” Jack asked.

  James drew his pistol, closed his eyes and pointed his gun to the left. With a loud ‘BLAM’ he fired the gun, and one of his guards slowly dropped to the ground, a bullet hole directly between his eyes.

  ***

  “Untie the prisoners.” James said, startling everyone.

  “What.” Said one of the bleary eyed guards.

  “DO AS I SAY!” Roared James.

  The guard walked with great caution towards Charlie, Penny and Rory were tied. He carefully untied the prisoners, and they jumped up. Penny ran straight into Jacks arms. After Penny had let Jack go, both Charlie and Rory shook Jacks hand.

  Charlie leant over and whispered into Jacks ear.

  “The haven’t taken ANY of our weapons yet! They are all still in the van, which is still on the road out of here! A couple of dents, nothing major.”

  Jack acknowledged this. It was quite good news.

  “What do you want with us, asshole?” Rory said.

  “Her.” He said, pointing at Penny.

  ***

  With that, 3 large guards grabbed Penny and dragged her back to where James was standing. Jack tried to grab for her, but he received a punch in the stomach. He dropped to the ground and started wheezing.

  Charlie stepped forward, saying, “What the hell do you want with Penny?”

  “Is that her name? Well, I can assure you, it is nothing weird, if you are worried about that. I’m not going to kill her, I’m having here as a replacement for Vanessa, now that she is leaving with your group. An eye for an eye, after all. I just understand that you guys are a very strong group. And I just want to break you. I realise that we would have a tough time killing you all, but I swear to god, if you EVER come back here, that is EXACTLY what we will do. You got that? You lose. But, I am feeling nice today. So, I tell you what. Me and all of my friendly guards here are going to leave right now. We are going to give you 10 minutes to say goodbye to your dearest Penny, and then we are going to come in, take her, and force you the FUCK out of here. Understand? Oh, and I should probably take the guard I just killed out of here, shouldn’t I? We wouldn’t want his corpse dampening the mood in here, would we?”

  With that, James turned on his heel and walked out of the warehouse with his guards following, only stopping once to drag the corpse out with him.

  Jack, recovering from his punch earlier, walked over to Penny and embraced her.

  Meanwhile, Rory was thinking about the possibilities. No matter what this asshole thought, with no weapons, there was NO WAY they could escape this place with Penny. If they left Penny here, they could leave. Surely Penny would understand –

  As if Penny could read Rory’s thoughts, she suddenly spoke.

  “You have to leave me.” She said.

  The response from Jack was predictable and undeniable.

  “NO!!” He shouted. “I will NEVER leave you, especially not now.”

  “You MUST. There isn’t any way you could possibly win against him. You have to leave me. I know it is going to be hard, but you will survive. I know you will. You guys are tough. You were made for this world. Trust me, I don’t exactly want to stay here, but I will be fine. Vanessa, was it?”

  Vanessa nodded her head, and Penny ploughed on.

  “Vanessa, apparently I am some sort of replacement for you. Was your job that awful?”

  “It wasn’t fun. We are slaves to him. Even the guards. They just do his bidding. They only respect him out of fear. That is all. We are beaten if we don’t do absolutely EVERYTHING that he says, but he doesn’t do anything further than that.”

  “See? I will live, and I want you to promise me that you will never give up. You cannot let the zombies win like this. Fight them, destroy them and then live.” Penny finished. Penny grabbed walked over and grabbed Charlie in a big hug. He was going to miss her more than words could say. Next she hugged Rory and said goodbye to him. Finally, she walked over to Jack and hugged him. She beckoned for Charlie and Rory to join them, and they grabbed Jack and Penny in a monumental group hug. They stood there silently until the doors to the warehouse opened with a groan, and James waltzed in through the door.

  “Oh. How touchingly sweet.” He said. “Times up.”

  As the group hug broke apart, Jack whispered something into Penny’s ear. Neither Charlie, Rory or James heard it, but Penny did. As two guards hauled Charlie, Jack, Rory and Vanessa out of the warehouse and over to the highway where their van was, James grabbed Penny and at sneered at Jack with a look that very clearly stated ‘you will never see her face again, and you know it.’ While James took Penny to the chairs that they had just been untied from, and tied her up again, she reflected on the last words her husband had said to her.

  I have NOT left you. I will come back…. for you AND for HIM.

  Chapter 5: Planning for War

  “Hurry up! Bloody MOVE IT!”

  The two guards were pushing Jack, Charlie, Rory and Vanessa roughly throughout the trees and scraggly bushes that had started to grow on the highway.

  As they made their way through the untamed highway, Charlie looked over to Jack. He realised that when James had taken Penny, he had crossed a line. Charlie knew that Jack would stop at absolutely nothing in order to get Penny back. One of the guards pushed a gun into Jack’s back, and that is what finally pushed him over the edge.

  Jack turned around, grabbing the gun as he did so. This motion caused the guards hand to snap back awkwardly, breaking it with a foul CRACK. The guard yelled with a mixture of pain and surprise.

  Jack aimed the guard’s gun at the guard and fired.

  The guard dropped, a solitary bullet hole in his right eye.

  Jack turned around and emptied the gun into the other guard. He, too, fell with a dull thud.

  “Do NOT fuck with me, assholes.” He said.

  ***

  “Jack.” Rory said, clearly horrified at what had just happened. “They were people. They were assholes, but they were people. And you killed them.”

  “THE WORLD IS FUCKING CHANGING, RORY. CHANGE WITH IT, OR STAY BACK HERE AND FUCKING
DIE.” Jack exploded.

  “Now keep walking.” He added harshly.

  It was evident that the shooting of the guards, even more so than anyone else, particularly shook Rory. Charlie looked over to his best friend. He knew why this was so horrifying to Rory. Before the apocalypse, Rory had been a policeman. Even after nearly 5 months of apocalyptic circumstances, Rory still couldn’t bear to see a human killed. It was touching, in a way. However, Jack viewed it as a weakness that could potentially get them killed.

  The survivors (A term that felt bitterly ironic now) ambled slowly down the highway. The hot sun was beating down on them, and James wasn’t exactly thoughtful enough to offer them some water for their trip.

  Charlie wondered how James was going to react when he found out that two of his guards had been killed. A guilty though started to tug at Charlie’s subconscious. What if James took it out on Penny? It would be their entire fault.

  All of a sudden, the most wonderful sight the survivors had ever seen interrupted Charlie’s thoughts of Penny.

  That beautiful, battered, life saving armoured van.

  ***

  While the sight of the van filled everyone else with phenomenal joy, the look of cold fury was still etched on Jacks face.

  However, there was one slight hitch in the plan.

  They now had to figure out how in the hell they were going to get this overturned van upright.

  Thankfully, when the van had crashed into the other car on the highway, the van had actually come to a rest on top of the car. This made it much easier to get all four people to haul the van onto its four wheels. After Charlie had surveyed the van and pronounced that it was both mechanically and structurally sound, based off of one episode of ‘Pimp My Ride’ he saw once, he opened the door and they climbed in. When Vanessa saw the interior of the van, including the impressive collection if weapons, her jaw dropped.

  “Oh my God.” She said. “Did you guys raid an army or something?”

  Rory spoke with unnatural coldness in his voice.

  “No. A gun store. We nearly cleaned it out. Actually, considering we know these guys exist, I’m thinking we should go back to it and take the rest of the guns. The less weapons these dickheads have, the better. What do you think, Jack?”

  Rory spun around to get Jacks opinion on the matter.

  But he wasn’t in the van.

  Charlie swore loudly.

  “He’s gone off to get Penny.” He said.

  “He can’t!” Vanessa said. “James will kill him if he gets back. That is a promise. I guarantee you, no matter how good Jack is, he CANNOT beat all those guards, and James himself. You have seen firsthand how good he is.”

  Rory opened the door and went to get out, presumably too go after Jack. Charlie, however, blocked the way out of the van.

  “Let me go.” He said. “Stay here. If I don’t come back within 2 hours, then I want you to DRIVE. I don’t care where, just make sure you get out, as far away as you possibly can.”

  Charlie walked over to a cabinet that Vanessa had thought held more guns, but she was wrong. Charlie opened the cabinet, to reveal a startlingly pretty sword, its long silver blade glinting in the sunlight now streaming into the van. He took out a secret box hidden under one of the seats. He opened it and grabbed out his holster, some extra bullets and his beautiful 6-inch silver Colt Diamondback. With that, he jumped out the door, said ‘I’ll be back as SOON as possible’ and shut the door behind him.

  ***

  Charlie ran through the untamed highway. It wasn’t difficult to find where Jack was going, owing to the trail of recently executed zombies lining the road. Charlie started to notice, as he followed the trail of zombies, that the deaths of these zombies were getting more and more gruesome. First, it started off as long cuts in the arms and legs, as well as a knife wound to the head. Then, things started to look worse. Soon, Charlie was finding dead zombies with whole limbs missing. He then started to find zombies whose heads had been crushed with what looked like a rock. The worst was when Charlie found zombies whose heads were gone. Not smashed or stabbed at, but completely gone.

  It wasn’t long before Charlie found Jack ambling down the highway. Charlie started sprinting after Jack and caught up to him. Jack stopped and slowly turned around, looking at Charlie with crazed, tortured eyes that were so alien, they didn’t belong to him, nor any human.

  “What are you doing, Jack?” Charlie asked him, treading very lightly around the potentially dangerous man.

  “WHAT DO YOU THINK I WAS DOING?” Jack responded, tears starting to stream out of his eyes. “I was looking for my wife.”

  Charlie looked into his friend’s eyes. He had never seen Jack this upset before. Besides, she was Penny. How could they leave her behind?

  “Listen.” He said. “Come back to the van. We will formulate a plan. We will figure out what we are going to do there. We will go back and get her. OK? Just come on back to the van. You can’t just go running off back there with one gun, by yourself. That guy will DESTROY you.”

  Jack knew that Charlie was right. As much as he hated to admit it, as much as he couldn’t bear to leave Penny in the clutches of James, he knew Charlie was right. If they could get back to the van, they could actually form an intelligent plan, not just some pell-mell reckless suicide mission.

  Charlie extended his hand towards Jack. Jack took it. As Jack took his hand, Charlie looked down and realised what had happened to those heads of the zombies that had disappeared. Jack had evidently sliced off the heads in his rage and kept them with him.

  ***

  Meanwhile, back inside the van, Rory (whose thoughts were still jumbled and racing after the killing of the guards) was giving Vanessa a very hard time.

  “How are we supposed to believe you when you say you ‘just want to leave that horrible place’? He said. “How can you prove that you aren’t some spy that is going to sell us out and get us all killed?”

  Vanessa stood up, her hair flying as she did. She was pissed.

  “A couple of points,” she snarled. “First off, you saw that place. It was an absolute shithole. Who the fuck would want to stay there? The fun and happy memories? Secondly, you want PROOF that I am not going to go back there? If I do, he is going to kill me, and you KNOW that. But that’s not all! Let me show you something, maybe that will answer your question.”

  She rolled up one of her sleeves and shoved her arm right under Rory’s nose. Rory could instantly and easily make out the thin jagged scars that ran over her arm. There were at least 40 of them, some tangling over each other, some faint, some looking very recent.

  “He cut you.” Rory said, with barely a whisper.

  “Yes. Once a week. It was a form of dominance over us. All of us. Every prisoner that was ever behind those doors could look forward to at least one cut a week. It was his way of telling us that we were his. He owned us; he could do whatever he liked with us. I hope that one day, someone puts a bullet in his brain.” Vanessa said, blinking back tears the whole time.

  “You lied to Penny, earlier.” Rory said, remembering the conversation in the warehouse that had taken place between Penny and Vanessa. “You told her that this guy didn’t do anything to you.”

  “Yes, I lied.” Vanessa said, tears now flowing fast. “I couldn’t bear to tell her she was in for all of that horrible torture. How am I going to tell Jack?”

  Now it was Rory’s turn to stand up.

  “You CAN’T. You can’t EVER say anything to him about those scars. He will lose his mind thinking about that. You have to promise me that you won’t EVER tell him the truth about those scars.” Rory yelled.

  “I promise.” Vanessa whispered.

  “As far as he is concerned, you did that to yourself, got it?” Rory said.

  ***

  Charlie and Jack walked to the van in total silence. It was this silence that cooled Jacks jets, so to speak, and by the time they got back to the van, Jack wasn’t quite back to the way he normal
ly was, this was one blow to many for that to happen so quickly, but he was cool and calculating, instead of psychopathic and deranged.

  “Right.” He said, as soon as the van door closed. “We need to think of something, now. Vanessa.” He said, pointing to Vanessa. “How could we possibly get back in there without him killing us?”

  “It doesn’t look good.” She admitted. “But, I do know enough about him to try and utilize his weaknesses against him. First of all, we need to distract him. He loves anarchy. Absolute chaos. The son of a bitch feeds off it.”

  “So we need a war, then.” Jack said. The van went completely silent. Everyone turned to stare at Jack.