A family was kind enough to take us into their home, once we threatened to kill them if they didn’t.
We chose a suburb as close to town as we could find, figuring that’s where they would start making their rounds. Gerald, three baldies whose names I hadn’t bothered to learn, and I peaked out of the windows of the Jerichos’ house. They were scared shitless of us at first — I guess that’s what usually happens when you knock on someone’s door and threaten their lives — but once they realized we hardly gave a shit if they were there or not, they relaxed a little bit. It was a pair of dads — Bruce and Marv — a little boy, barely out of his pants-shitting days, named Austin, and an old lady that just said her name was “Mee Maw”.
Mee Maw Jericho was the first to come out of hiding, saying “I’ve lived eighty-somethin’ years. If you wanna take me tonight, it’s all part of God’s plan.” The rest of them trickled into the den with us after we didn’t senselessly butcher Mee Maw.
“So, you guys are gonna save us from… whatever’s going on?” Bruce said. Or maybe it was Marv. They both looked so similar — short, brown hair, lined-up beards, a little under six-foot tall, athletic builds — that I had a hard time telling them apart at first. The only thing that set them apart were their voices; Bruce’s voice was deep and smooth like a radio DJ’s, and Marv’s was higher pitched with a pronounced Tennessee twang.
“I know y’all ain’t got no goddamn superpowers. Prolly just wanted a warm place t’hide like the rest of us,” Marv said. It was definitely Marv that time.
“Would you like a demonstration?” Gerald said and side-eyed me and uncoiled a devilish smile. The smile was creepy enough to shut the Jerichos up by itself, but I didn’t want to leave any doubts in their minds, in case they considered trying some slick shit while our backs were turned.
“Baldy,” I said and pointed to one of the baldies, who had a head full of bouncy blond curls, much to the confusion of the two Jerichos. The baldy straightened his back like he was at his first day of Boot Camp. He even started to bring his arm up to salute before I grabbed it and put it back at his side.
“What can you do?” I asked.
He turned around to face the two men, who already looked like they deeply regretted their skepticism. The blonde baldy rolled up his pants leg to reveal his calf, covered in tattoos that were marred by hideous scars. He took out a pocket knife, flipped it open, and ran the blade up his leg. Marv and Bruce both winced at the sight. Mee Maw was distracting the toddler with a game of patty cake, but couldn’t contain her curiosity any longer and stared at the bleeding blonde baldy. After a couple of seconds, the deep gash in his leg sprouted black threads that knitted together over the wound and quickly formed a new ugly scar on his leg.
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“So you can heal?” I said. “Great person to have in the one squad with a fuckin’ healer in it, huh?” I glared at Gerald, even though he had nothing to do with organizing these squads. He replied with an awkward shrug. “More time to fix up the rest of you, I guess.”
“If it even comes to that tonight,” I countered. We’d been in the house for several hours with no sign of any street patrols.
“Maybe we should go searching for them,” I continued. “I don’t want to waste the entire night sitting here and they don’t show up.”
“That might happen,” said Gerald, “but we need to be patient, just as you said before we left the bunker. Giving up our defensive position and the element of surprise because we couldn’t sit still for a few hours would be idiotic, don’t you think?”
I grimaced, but nodded in agreement. Gerald closed his eyes and savored the moment I conceded something to him. It really made me not want to do it again, but he was right. I wasn’t Sun Tzu; I was a bum. Strategy was going to have to be a collaborative effort if we wanted to get out of this alive. Which is why I also let Anita devise the plan we were getting ready to execute. Everyone was in position — all we needed were some marked men to fall into our trap.
For hours, there was nothing. The boredom was interrupted by a stray cat chasing down a rabbit, but other than that, it was nothing but a dark, empty street. The Jerichos all went to bed, except for Mee Maw, who said that she only sleeps about three hours a night these days because “the diabetes keeps her up all night pissin’,” so she sat in the living room and rocked back and forth in a recliner watching reruns of Murder She Wrote. Gerald and the baldies started to doze off too, and I let them. There was no point in keeping them awake when I could keep watch. I reckoned they’d be better in a fight if they weren’t sleep deprived, too.
They didn’t get much sleep though; a gang of black squares came bobbing down the road at high speeds. Even without the headlights on, I could see the cars coming from about a half-mile away, and they were coming closer quickly.
“Wake up, motherfuckers!” I said. All of the sleepy devil-worshippers sprang to attention. Call me crazy, but all of the fear washed out of me in that moment; I felt like a kid on the way to Chuck-E-Cheese. If I died, I died — but I was gonna make sure I took a few dozen of those sons of bitches with me.
“They’re coming!”