Induction

Nancy answered for the both of them. “We’re both okay, thanks to Meg’s legs of death.” She smiled brightly and gave Meg a pat on the back. I saw Dave wincing out of the corner of my eye. He forgot to keep his hands on his head and attempted to hold his family jewels. Seth knocked him on the side of the head with his rifle as a not so subtle reminder.

“Arms up, you piece of shit. I’m just itching for a reason to put a hole in your head.” Frankly, so was I. He was lucky my head was pounding so much or else I’d have launched myself at him and ripped him apart with my bare hands. The look on my companion’s faces told me they were thinking of doing just that.

The pain in my head made me woozy and I wavered on my feet. Jake set me down carefully in one of the chairs and walked toward the men. He sneered at them, baring his teeth. Dave held his head high in indignation while Mel whimpered like a puppy about to be scolded. And scolded he was.

“It’s time for a little game. You boys are going to tell us where you got all the supplies in that boat of yours, and where you’ve been for the past month?” Jake’s hands were clenched in fists so tight his knuckles cracked. “I’m not gonna lie. This is going to hurt. A lot. I should also warn you, there is very little chance you will be leaving this boat breathing. I’m not heartless though. I’ll let you choose. I can shoot you in the head, or I can feed you to them.” He pointed to the moaning group that still lined the shore.

Mel was full out crying now, blubbering like the village idiot. Dave lost his indignation and he looked to each of us, probably seeking mercy.

“Mercy left the building when you tried to rape my sister-in-law, douchebag.” I stood up and gave Jake a quick kiss, at the same time reaching for his carbine. His grip tightened briefly but loosened when he saw the resolve on my face. “Here’s how I see it, Dave. We only need one of you to give us information, and frankly I never want to hear the sound of your voice again.”

I raised the rifle and put the muzzle to his head. He dissolved into sobs and begged for his life. “Please. Don’t do this,” he cried.

I hadn’t fully committed to the act until he uttered those words. A fury unlike nothing I’d felt before whooshed through my body and I swear I saw red. “I seem to remember saying those same words to you once.” I pulled the trigger, and this time I really did see red. The deck behind him was coated in a fine mist of blood. Dave’s eyes rolled back and his head made a wet, spongy, sound when it hit the deck.

“Oh Jesus, oh Jesus. I’m sorry,” Mel was sputtering. He put his head between his knees and covered it with his hands like they would somehow protect him from the same fate bestowed on Dave just moments before.

This time Meg came forward. Pressing her gun to the back of his head, she barked out commands. “Talk, asshole, or I’ll shoot you myself.”

“Please don’t shoot me. I’ll do whatever you want. It was all Dave’s idea. It’s his fault they kicked us out.” His words brought us all up short. We weren’t expecting him to say anything about other survivors.

“Who are they and where can we find them?” Meg punctuated her question with a hard knock to the back of his head with the carbine. Mel let out a strangled whimper.

“The camp we were at. It’s on Sanibel Island. They blew the bridges to Fort Myers and Captiva early on and managed to keep the infected off the island. Since it wasn’t season yet, most of the island’s residents were still up north. They ran into some problems initially because it spread so fast, but they exterminated them all. Every once in a while they get floaters drifting onto the beach, but they always keep guards on duty, and they moved everyone to a fenced in area just in case.”

“So, why did they kick you out?”

“I met up with Dave a day or two after shit went down. It took us a week to find the others. We had the boat and just kept moving from place to place hoping to find people. Dave got a little too friendly with one of the women in camp, beat her up real good, and they voted for us to leave. I was guilty by association, and was exiled along with him.” Given what went down below deck earlier, I didn’t buy his innocence for a second.

“Bullshit,” I said. “Where did you get all the food and water?” I had taken a moment to lean over the deck behind me and saw a blue tarp pulled to one side revealing boxes of MRE’s and bottled water. It was obvious they’d been feigning starvation just to have a reason to board the ship and take advantage of us.

“The soldiers brought in trucks of food before they took out the bridges. They knew exiling us was pretty much a death sentence without any food, so they gave it to us and sent us away.”

“How many of them are on the island?”

“Christ, I don’t know. Three, maybe four hundred? Almost half of them are soldiers. I’ve told you everything I know. I cooperated. Please just let me go. I’ll never bother you again, I swear.”