NOBODY ever gets BEYOND backpack survival
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Name one time in recorded history JD, a nation fragmented and folks all went off as individuals and hunted each other for food JD, name just one.
You can't, your survival theories are just the plots of third rate novels.
Teuf,
You can't, your survival theories are just the plots of third rate novels.
Teuf,
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but you constantly post about needing to conceal your rifle in towns, etc. by definition this means that there will be help, will be advantages to being in one spot, etc.
you need to maybe spend some time and describe the scenarios that you envision so that people can follow your seemingly disjointed thoughts…
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Oh man I'm imagining a blend of Mars Attacks & The Survivors mixed together by the producers of MADDTV.
If that makes no sense whatsoever then I've made my point.
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Being gimped up temporarily as I have been, I actually re-watched “Mars attacks“ a few weeks ago. I forgot how funny a movie that really was.
{edit- I didn’t jump in this thread initially, but the first thing I thought of when I read the title was simply that almost everyone in that kind of situation gets past the backpack lone-wolf stage, or they die. First example that comes to mind was the group portrayed in the movie “defiance“ with Liev Schreiber and Daniel Craig.}
{edit- I didn’t jump in this thread initially, but the first thing I thought of when I read the title was simply that almost everyone in that kind of situation gets past the backpack lone-wolf stage, or they die. First example that comes to mind was the group portrayed in the movie “defiance“ with Liev Schreiber and Daniel Craig.}
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John,I'm not sure if they spent anytime in a Soviet Gulag but I had family go through a literal Red Dawn experience in Poland in 1939.
They managed to get to the Middle East and link up with the British military there.
I wish I had been old enough to learn more about what they went through.
But, they didn't survive by loan wolf gaming it like someone else dreams about.🙄
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Yet you constantly talk about shooting sentries, needing to conceal your rifle to pass through towns, using things for barter...all of which imply people banding together, helping each other, and gasp!, rules.
You need to pick a scenario, explain it in detail, and then lay out why you post the conflicting things you do.
The recommended reading suggestions are a gold mine of old posts and weird things posted in the past...
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At one point several years ago I was tempted to write a few short stories about a character whom I would have created as a wondering human(using the term very loosely) Wyli E. Coyote of the Apocalypse.
And also toss in a couple other characters.
But, I lost interest.
Melvin does a pretty good job of writing his own script.
In fact so much so that a few people here are elsewhere thought it was an act.
And also toss in a couple other characters.
But, I lost interest.
Melvin does a pretty good job of writing his own script.
In fact so much so that a few people here are elsewhere thought it was an act.
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from 2005, mrostov author
The Many Deaths of JD: Chapter 3 - The Kid
The Many Deaths of JD
by Mike Rostov
[email protected]
copyright 2004
Chapter 3 - The Kid
JD had spotted the small farm yesterday and had been scoping it out with great interest.
Before the collapse, the place would have been what people called a 'hobby' farm, but now the farming was no hobby, but a matter of life versus death by starvation.
What was at one time a 'hobby' farm for some skilled yuppie with a bit of extra money and a longing for cleaner air than what the city had to offer, was now, through necessity, aspiring to be a full blown farm and homestead in the new world the collapse had left.
JD grinned and thought to himself, "This is going to be more fun than I've had in a while." He grinned with a smile that would have made a rabid wolf cringe. "These stupid fucks spent all of this time surviving and staying healthy, just waiting here for me to show up and harvest them. How thoughtful, much appreciated."
He glanced through his binoculars at the small farmstead taking it all in. He had grown a bit more careful in the seasons since the collapse. When he could, he always spent some extra time stalking his prey nowadays.
He had come to consider the binoculars his primary stalking tool for when he hunted his prey. For years he had openly scorned binos as being just an extra, unnecessary weight. In order to save weight, when the collapse happened and he was just starting out, he tried to just get by with only his rifle scope, but that quickly turned into a real pain in the ass. His one eye on the scope tired quickly and he just couldn't observe the wide areas long enough to be as effective as he needed.
But, as circumstances would have it, he took a nice pair of binoculars off of the gear of those teenagers he had harvested about a week into the collapse. After using them for a while he began to finally see their value. He liked the way he could scan the area and his prey for a long time without his eyes becoming unnecessarily tired.
As he scanned the small farmstead through the binoculars, he thought about long ago when he first acquired his much valued optics.
Accidentally stumbling upon the camp of those teenagers was a stoke of luck on his behalf. Preferring to pack light, he had only brought a week's worth of food with him when the collapse happened. Not only did he harvest his first prey for food that night, but the fools had brought plenty with them also, expensive dehydrated backpacker stuff to boot.
He had seen their campfire and had snuck up upon them. The idiots never saw it coming. There was an older kid, probably about 17 or 18, a younger girl, he guessed about 15 or 16, and a younger boy, probably around 13 or 14. They all had sandy blonde hair and looked related. The fools actually had a visible campfire and were playing music. The older boy had a guitar, the girl a harmonica, and the younger boy was singing what he guessed was some sort of religious type folk song.
From the darkness that they couldn't see into, their night vision ruined by the campfire light, he snuck right up to their camp, concealed behind a large tree. He pulled out his little Beretta Bobcat .22 pistol with the small homemade silencer on it, and then, from a distance of about 15 feet, he shot the singing younger boy right in the forehead. The kid immediately stopped singing and collapsed forward.
The others, their minds didn't immediately register what had just happened. As the boy collapsed forward, the girl pulled the harmonica away from her mouth, looked at him in surprise, and said in a concerned tone, "Tommy?"
Tommy had barely hit the dirt with his face when JD immediately fired again but this time at the older boy. The older boy had turned his head a tad just then and the .22 bullet blew out his right eye, exiting the side of the socket. He grabbed his face and began to scream as JD stepped into the light and fired two more hollowpoint bullets into the boy's head. The older boy spasmed, jerked, and fell backwards, his guitar landing in the dirt by his feet.
The girl screamed in horror, frozen for a fraction of a second at what she had just witnessed. She then immediately sprang up and started running for it. JD swung the diminutive little Beretta towards the fleeing girl and fired three rounds. One hollowpoint round hit her in the back of the left knee and she collapsed into the dirt with a scream.
The girl, sobbing and crying, freckled face streaked with tears, tried to get up. She got up on her hands and her one good knee as JD, walking towards her, fired two more rounds from the Beretta Bobcat. One hollowpoint bullet went into her left hip and the other went into her lower back, tearing a frightening hole in her left kidney. She let out a blood curdling, wailing scream, and collapsed into the dirt.
JD continued to walk towards the girl, changing magazines in the Beretta Bobcat. She was laying on her right side, arms clutched to her chest in primal fear, looking towards JD as he approached. She was crying hard and babbling words like, "Please", "No", "Why?"
JD didn't give a rat's ass what she was saying. He walked up to her and pointed the reloaded Beretta Bobcat at her head. She closed her eyes and as she cried and between sobs she began uttering what sounded to JD a lot like a prayer.
At that point, JD had one of those moments of clarity that help define one's life. As he stood over the crying, sobbing, badly wounded girl, his power over her was total. He truly understood, at this moment, just how much he loved killing.
The exhilaration of the hunt was overwhelming. It was better than any drug he had ever tried, and he had tried then all. It was like an orgasm from sex, but a hundred times stronger and it didn't just peak and go away, but instead surged stronger and stronger. It was like a flow of pure euphoria coursing through every fiber of his body.
That sobbing girl laying before him, babbling her silly prayers, wasn't really a person, at least not a real person like him. She was prey, like a sheep or a deer, and he was a true predator, like a wolf, or better yet, a tiger. In his view of the universe, that made him an inherently better person. Far more worthy of life by a large margin.
As he looked down upon her, her eyes still closed while she shuddering in pain and cried. He listened and savored the fear he heard amongst the sobbing, "Oh, lord! .... Please! Oh, it hurts so bad! ... Jesus, help me!...."
He was motionless for a brief moment, absorbing the scene. As he listened to her pathetic babbling, the power of total control and the euphoria of the hunt surged through him.
He then had a slight change in plan.
He put the little Beretta pistol with the silencer in his pocket of his coat. He got out his multi-tool and walked behind the girl. With his boot he kicked her over onto her stomach and she let out a mournful wail of pain. He then knelt down upon her and leaned his knee into her back to pin her down. With an abrupt scream of fear and pain, the wind went out of her as his knee quickly pressed into her back with his full weight.
He opened his multi-tool's serrated knife blade, and then, with his free hand, he abruptly, violently grabbed a handful of her sandy blonde hair, yanking her head back, and exposing her throat. She let out one last terrified shriek of, "NO! Please! N...!" which ended in a choked gurgle as her sliced her throat wide open from ear to ear.
He felt her uninjured leg give a brief kick when he did that. He let go of her hair and just let her head, eyes still wide with fear, lips still with a trace of movement in them, to fall forward in the growing pond of blood in the dirt.
"Hey," JD said calmly to himself, "Saved some ammo and had some fun with the bitch to boot. Killed two birds with one stone, or shall I say three with one magazine." He chuckled at his own little joke.
Without a second glance at the body of his freshly killed prey in the dirt, JD got up, and went to look the camp over to inspect his new gear and supplies.
The first thing he eyes was something silver on the ground. He picked it up and looked the harmonica over. There was an inscription on one side that read, 'To my beloved Jennifer, Love Grandpa'.
JD looked the harmonica over and said, "Who in the fuck would ever want to play one these pieces of shit? Give me real music any day." With that he tossed the harmonica into the searing coals of the still burning campfire.
That successful early hunt so long ago always made him happy when he thought about it. It's like he evolved into a better person that night, a truly unstoppable predator.
He scanned the prey in the small, isolated valley below, surrounded by low, rolling hills. Between the small, wooded hill he was on and the prey's nest was an old abandoned field, gone wild with weeds now that some farmer no longer had the fuel to farm all of his fields. A tree lined road ran alongside the field and then crossed a decent sized creek with a small wooden bridge, about wide enough for a single automobile to safely use it. The tree lined road then led on into the small farm.
As near as he could tell, there was one man, looked mid-forties maybe, a woman maybe a tad younger, maybe not, and a small child, a very young girl, maybe six years old. Dogs? Just some yapping piece of shit little terrier. Might be big enough to attack his toenail but that was about it.
JD put down the binos to get a drink from his water bottle. He shook his head. He'd had some easy prey before, but he couldn't believe how easy this one was going to be. Talk about ripe fruit ready for the picking.
He saw some movement below. As he looked back at the farmstead he laughed at what he saw. "Oh, those corny, simpleton fucks! Idiots like this have it coming!" JD said to himself.
He saw the man and the small girl coming down the road with what looked like old fashioned cane type fishing poles. The man was also carrying what looked like a kid's lunch box and the girl was also carrying a small pail of some sort.
"Those STUPES!" thought JD. Here we are in the middle of the fucking Apocalypse and they are out in broad daylight, let alone fishing! JD laughed out loud to himself, "THIS is just TOO fucking easy!"
As he watched them approach through the binoculars, JD suddenly had an idea.
He opened his small backpack and fished around a bit till he produced a small bag. Opening it up he pulled out three pairs of genuine police handcuffs taken off of genuine dead cops. He always kept at least three pairs because three pairs was perfect for hog-tying someone totally helpless.
He had learned that total hog-tying trick from none other than the police themselves during one of the times he had gotten busted, back before the world became HIS world, a world he liked a LOT better.
It was the woman he was thinking about. The woman he had seen through the binos back at the farmhouse. She was probably the mother of the child he saw coming down the road and the wife of the man accompanying that child. Typical yuppie family, prey on the hoof.
He occasionally kept a female prey alive, at least for a while, to have a bit of fun. It was a lot easier and way more fun than having to put up with a regular bitch the old fashioned way.
First he usually handcuffed them. He'd handcuff their hands behind their backs, then he'd handcuff their feet together, and then he'd use the third pair of handcuffs to shackle the two sets of handcuffs together. This bent the prey backwards into something of a 'U' shape. They often yelled a lot when he did this, usually out of fear, but they really howled a whole lot if they were wounded. Their screams, yells, and moans only added to the fun and it made his world just feel right and complete.
He usually liked to make them wait till he was done with his after-hunt chores. He especially got a thrill out of their insane screaming whenever there was young prey around and he harvested the veal right in front of the shackled female.
Often they threatened to kill him, and one day some bitch got loose and actually tried.
He had turned his back for a minute just after he had finished dressing out some veal, after making her watch him. The bitch got loose and then got her hands on his Old Hickory butcher knife that he had been doing his after-hunt chores with. She got close, too close, and she had almost got him.
He still remembers how long his ears were ringing after he shot the bitch in the stomach with his chopped down, custom 9mm pistol, and immediately, before she even had time to double over, he shot her second time, this one in the face, blowing a cloud of brain tissue and skull fragments out the back of her head.
After that, he figured that prey needed to be reminded a bit harder that they were indeed prey and that he was the predator, he was in charge, he was in control.
Nowadays, when he kept a bitch alive for a small amount of amusement, right after he had her handcuffed and after he had butchered any veal to be had (making them watch was just too much fun), he took his Old Hickory butcher knife and sliced the bitch's eyes and the hamstrings in her ankles. Then he would take out his odd shaped little hatchet tool he called a 'skatchet', and using the hammer end of the little hatchet head on the opposite side of the chopping blade, broke her wrists. This made things a lot easier and even added to the fun. It also allowed him to take the handcuffs off and from that point on, the fun really became memorable.
As JD looked at his much used handcuffs, he smiled at the memories they brought back and the feeling of anticipation they gave him. "Better than fucking Disneyland," he said softly to himself, as he felt himself start to get sexually aroused.
As the prey got closer to the bridge, he got a better look at them.
The young girl was wearing a small pair of bib overalls, a t-shirt, sneakers, and a straw sun hat. It struck JD that she looked like a little toy doll from this distance. As she carried that cane fishing pole and her little pail, probably with bait worms in it, she looked like something out of an old Norman Rockwell painting or a cover from some country living style magazine that yuppies used to buy, back before the world improved more to JD's liking.
As far as he was concerned, the small prey was just veal to be harvested and of no other concern. It was the bigger prey that he wanted to check out, specifically for any weapons the prey might be carrying.
Not that the stupe could even use anything he might be carrying even a tenth or a hundredth as good as JD could. JD knew in his heart that he was the best there ever was. It was the cornerstone of his view on just about everything.
The man was wearing jeans, boots, a flannel shirt, and yes, JD spotted a pistol in an old style leather holster on the belt of the man's pant's, on his right side. As he looked closely, he saw that it was probably a revolver of some sort.
The closest thing JD had to a religion was his love of guns. One of the key tenets to this little, private, pseudo-religion was that JD vociferously despised revolvers and considered them worthless. In his opinion, which he considered the ultimate authority on most matters, anyone who carried one was also worthless and too stupid to deserve the privilege of life.
JD chuckled at the thought of prey wasting time to arm themselves, like it would do them any good.
Normally, he preferred to harvest prey at night, but this was going to be just too easy. It was a nice spring day and what better for a nice spring day than a good hunt and some fresh prey. With prey this lame, he didn't need the cover of night time. He could take these people at anytime, day or night. Besides, he was hungry for the hunt and he didn't feel like waiting.
Spry as a tiger on the hunt, JD went down the backside of the hill. He then worked his way around through the trees alongside the curving road back towards the creek. It was the bridge at the creek where the fresh prey were evidently planning on doing a bit of fishing and probably some ridiculously sentimental father/daughter bonding.
Just the thought of such assinine sentimentality amongst his prey caused a spark of hatred within JD. Now, more than ever, they would deserve whatever he dealt out.
It took about half an hour for him to work his way back down to the creek without causing attention. Now he was in position in the trees alongside the road, stalking his prey, and preparing to strike.
The prey had made it to the bridge and had set themselves up in the business of recreational fishing. He kept about seventy five yards away to avoid detection by their dog, which, fortunately, was busy begging some of the little girl's sandwich she was eating while she sat there on the side of the small, wooden bridge.
JD was observing them through the four power scope on his CAR-15 carbine. He had pulled out the bolt carrier and had put in the .22 conversion unit. The low noise level of the .22 long rifle cartridges, combined with the homemade silencer on the end of the rifle, meant that the prey back at the house, the woman he had been thinking about, tonight's entertainment venue, wouldn't hear anything that sounded like a rifle report, and hence, probably wouldn't be alerted.
The prey were sitting next to each other on the side of the bridge chatting. Their poles were standing by themselves, lines in the water, poles braced between gaps in the boards on the side of the aging wooden bridge.
The sides of the creek were shaded by trees, but the bridge and the center of the creek were lit by the warm spring sun. He couldn't make out words at this distance, just some voices and the sounds of birds chirping in the trees.
As he looked down the road towards the bridge, he could see the prey sitting nice and oblivious to his presence.
Between bites of her sandwich, the girl was animately point towards various things JD couldn't make out, obviously asking questions, and her father would respond back saying something, giving the girl his full attention.
JD sneered and thought to himself, "Too busy talking to the little bitch to notice me. That's the way I like it."
JD had decided it was about time to strike. Just as he was drawing a sight bead for a head shot on the girl's father, JD shifted a bit of weight forward onto his left foot, causing a twig beneath his boot to snap.
The instant the twig snapped, the noise caused JD to hesitate for a moment. The prey, of course, didn't hear anything, but at that moment the damn dog looked towards his direction and started barking. This caused the man to turn his head to look around and then move just as JD pulled the trigger.
JD saw the man lurch and grab his face. The prey then lost his balance and fell off the bridge into the creek. JD heard the little girl scream, "Daddy!"
The little terrier was barking like mad in his direction and jumping around. JD became pissed off at the dog and fired at it, the bullet grazing it's rump as the spastic thing jumped around barking. The dog began screaming it's wounded dog yell and began frantically running around in circles trying to lick it's wounded rump. JD fired another two rounds at the dog which had tried to ruin his hunt. They hit the dog's chest. The mutt then collapsed in the middle of the bridge, it's rear legs still kicking.
JD then stepped out of the bushes and began to run towards the little girl. He wanted that piece of veal alive, at least for a while.
The kid saw him emerge from the bushes and immediately screamed and began to run. He saw her run across the bridge towards the house, and then she cut off into the wooded tree line that ran alongside the road.
JD made it to the bridge, stopped and looked into the water where the man had fallen in. He didn't see anything in the muddy water. "Body must have sunk," he thought.
He saw the little Mickey Mouse lunch box and the small bait pail that still sat peacefully next to one of the old fashioned style cane fishing poles. In a gesture of contempt, he angrily kicked them both into the creek.
He got a grin on his face and yelled in the direction the little girl was heading and shouted, "Come back kid! I have your daddy!"
She didn't appear, so he headed down the road to where she cut into the wooded area. He found what was probably the spot she entered the brambles because her little straw hat had gotten caught in some tangled branches.
He looked into where she went and it was a small path into really thick growth. It was big enough for a child, but way too small for him. He saw that it headed towards the house, the same place the road led.
He smiled. The hunt had kind of a rough start, but it was starting to go good. The veal was panicked and running for the house. Prey were so predictable, especially when they were scared.
He yelled loudly down the road towards direction the kid was probably heading, "I'm gonna eat you and your little dog, Toto, too!" He laughed out loud good at that one. As he ran down the road towards the house, he wondered what the writer of the 'Wizard of Oz' would have thought of his dialog being applied to a grisly scene in the real world.
He wanted to make the house before the kid did. Though he could easily see both the house and the bridge from the hill, the house couldn't see anything at the bridge from it's own ground level location.
As he got to the house he saw the crying, out of breath little girl at the open door yelling a frantic warning at her startled mother.
The mother saw JD approaching across the lawn and with a look of horror she yanked the little girl inside and slammed the door shut.
JD hit the door like a charging bulldozer. Not even slowing down, he hit the door with the side of his body and it gave easily, tearing off of it's hinges.
Just as he entered the main room of the little farm house through the shattered door, still moving with his full momentum, a shotgun blast roared and it felt like someone had set the side of his head on fire.
The woman had fired a shotgun at close range, but in her panic she missed hitting his head dead on and the charge of #4 shot shredded his left ear, tearing most of it off, utterly deafened him on that side. It had also blown out the eardrum while leaving some shot in his cheek.
A split second after she pulled the trigger he crashed into her and they both staggered back, crashing into, and destroying, an old, antique grandfather clock on the opposite wall, knocking over it's broken remains.
He had dropped the CAR-15 he was carrying in his hands when he collided with her, and now they both struggled over the large, bird hunter style over/under double barrel shotgun which she had fired at him with.
Right after they hit the grandfather clock, the other barrel of the twelve gauge bird gun fired into the ceiling, severely damaging what hearing he had left in his previously undamaged right side.
His larger weight and size won out and he pushed her violently away, tearing the shotgun out of her hands. She staggered back a step and a fraction of a second later he hit her across the face hard with the buttstock of the shotgun, swinging the gun from the end of the barrel like a baseball bat.
The blow knocked out several of her teeth and broke her nose. She fell into a small display cabinet that was against the wall. It was full of large collection of tiny glass figurines. The cabinet fell over and both she and the cabinet hit the floor at the same time. The cabinet's glass front, along with most of it's contents, shattered as it slammed into the floor.
The woman had landed face down, blood from her badly broken nose creating a small pool of blood on the floor. JD immediately pounced upon her.
In a well practiced move, he punched her hard in both kidneys with all of the strength he could muster, further disabling her with pain.
He then grabbed her arm and painfully yanked her arm around behind her back and expertly slapped a police issue handcuff around her wrist. He then immediately grabbed her other arm, yanking it around and handcuffed her other wrist. He then quickly turned around, sat on the back of her legs near her knees, and handcuffed her feet together.
Then JD locked a handcuff around the center of the handcuffs on her ankles and pulled her painfully into a 'U' shape and locked the other end of the third pair of handcuffs around the center of the handcuffs on her wrists. That last move got a large moan out of her as she started to come too.
JD stood there for a second, observing his handywork. He then kneeled down, grabbed her drooping head by the hair and yanked it up hard with a vengeance.
She opened her blackening eyes as he shouted into her face, "I'm gonna catch that little brat and then I'm gonna cut her up and eat her heart right in front of you! Then you and me are gonna have some real fun! You hear me bitch?"
She looked back up to him and faintly said, "Please .... no.. do what you want to me, just please...."
JD stood up and kicked her hard in the face. "That was for shooting at me you fucking cunt!" he screamed.
It was then that he started to feel some throbbing pain. He also realized that he wasn't hearing much at the moment. Nothing at all on the left and not much on the right.
The display cabinet full of collectable glass figurines had been built with a mirrored back on the inside and pieces of that glass mirror backing now lay on the floor. He picked a piece up from amongst the wreckage and took a look at the damage to the side of his head.
He already had a terrible scar on his face from before the collapse. He'd gotten it when a pistol slide had broken off after firing a really hot handload he had cooked up. There were other scars too. As good as he figured he was, another scar or two only meant more experience. He also figured that it more scars would just made him look meaner, which he liked.
THIS wound, however, took him a step closer into the Freddie Kruger category of just plain frightening, at least on the left side of his head. Pretty much his entire left ear was totally frigging gone! He also had shot and indelible gunpowder marks all along the side of his face!
Now he was really pissed and before he realized it, he was violently kicking the helpless, handcuffed woman who was now screaming and sobbing for him to stop.
He stopped after a bit, figuring that he wanted her to be alive for the festivities later, starting with when he caught that little fucking brat. Yeah, the fun tonight would be real special and he would make damn good and sure that it lasted quite a while. "Yeah," he said out loud to the sobbing, hog-tied woman, "I'm gonna make you last a long time you fucking cunt. You and that fucking brat of your's too."
He found his CAR-15 on the floor and picked it up. Now to go hunt himself some veal.
The house wasn't very big but JD took great pleasure in trashing and breaking as much of anything and everything that he could as he searched every nook and cranny looking for the kid.
The formerly neat, prim little home looked just like a grenade had gone off in every room and then was hit by a tornado to help finish off the wreckage.
"The little bitch ain't here," he said to himself.
He though for a minute... the barn. Yeah, hundred bucks said the brat was in the barn.
As he strode out of the house, heading towards the shattered door, he passed the hog tied woman on the floor who was crying and pleading with him as he walked by, "Please, mister, I'm begging you, please...." He gave her another kick in the side of the gut as he walked by, just for good measure. That knocked the wind out of her again and the subdued prey shut her bitch mouth.
JD stepped outside and looked around.
Yeah, here was yet another domain he was absolute lord of. Life was good and had gotten better and better the longer the chaos of the collapse lasted.
He headed towards the barn.
Like a lot of barns on small hobby farms, this barn was overly big, the size you'd see on a real, old time farm. In size and design it was built as a reproduction of something you'd see out of the 'Grapes of Wrath' or some similar old movie or postcard, and, of course, the fools had painted it bright red with white trim.
When he first stumbled upon this place, it that huge red barn that had first caught his eye from quite a ways off. In the binoculars the damn thing stuck out like a sore thumb amongst all of the spring green. He spotted it as he was doing a recon of the general countryside he was moving into as part of his never ending search for fresh prey.
He picked up and carried the woman's shotgun with him out of the house.
He'd always considered such guns it to be practically worthless, and damage to his ear not withstanding, he still considered it to be so. He was glad she didn't have a 9mm handgun or some similar semi-auto where she could have fired half a dozen shots at him. But he dismissed that line of thinking as the woman and all like her were just prey and he was destined to win over them all anyway.
He normally got rid of weapons he didn't carry, usually by breaking them, but in this case he was saving the bird gun to teach that bitch a lesson.
He figured as payback for the ear, when he was ready to harvest her, after the festivities wound down a bit, he'd scrounge a couple more shells for the bird gun and then do her by shoving the muzzle of the shotgun up her cunt and giving her both barrels. He was only carrying the weapon now to prevent any weird, oddball surprises when he got back to the house.
As he got to the door of the barn, he tossed the bird gun aside into the dirt. He unslung the CAR-15 and made sure the safety was off. He took note that it was still rigged with the drop in adapter to fire the small .22 long rifle rimfire rounds instead of the larger, much more powerful .223 caliber centerfire ammunition.
He left it in .22 long rifle mode, since he was, after all, only hunting a girl that couldn't be more than six. Besides, he wanted the little bitch alive anyway for the reaction it would get out of her mother. Tonight, yeah, tonight was going to be one for his fondest memories.
He opened the barn door a small way and then kicked it open wide and then waited, crouched down low against the outside wall next to the door.
He yelled out, "I have your mommy, little girl! Come on out and I won't hurt her!" He had to suppress a snickering laugh when he said the last part.
He hear nothing but that didn't mean much since most of his hearing was still out of commission.
He took of the small pack he was still wearing and set it on the ground next to the barn's outside wall. With his CAR-15 at the ready, he went into the barn.
The half minute that it took for his eyes to adjust seemed like a lot longer than it was. During that time he couldn't see much in the barn.
As his eyes adjusted, he looked around. He stood perfectly still and just looked around looked around quietly. It was his experience than most prey have a hard time being perfectly still for any length of time, especially when they are scared. It was the natural human instinct to panic and run. They almost always moved around somewhat and all too often that was what gave then away.
Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he caught movement up in the hay loft above. Yeah, he knew he'd find her.
Confident now in the knowledge he had cornered his prey, he yelled up at the girl, "Hey kid! Guess what? The boogie man's here!" At that last remark he began a snickering that turned into a full blown laugh.
Up from the loft he heard the little girl yell back, "Go away, you monster, and leave me and my family alone!"
"Aw, come on, kid," JD said, "We're gonna have some fun! At least I am." JD, grinning from ear to ear now, was getting the real pleasure high of the hunt. THIS was what he lived for. He felt as if his inner self was feeding on the nourishing nectar of life coming off of the fear the little girl up in the hay loft was emitting.
As JD walked over to the vertical wooden ladder that led up to the hay loft, he slung his silenced CAR-15 over his back. As he got to the ladder, he yelled up, still grinning, "Here comes the boogie man!"
Just then the little girl appeared at the top of the ladder. Much to his amazement, she was holding, with what must have been all of her strength, an old fashioned style pitchfork.
She had both hands on the pitch fork, holding it up like a flag pole, the sharp, pointed tines of the fork pointed down - right at JD's head.
The audacity of such a move really angered JD, especially from such a small prey, a prey that by all rights he should have gotten his hands on already. He snarled up the ladder at her, "You're gonna wish you hadn't done that, you little shit!"
JD immediately started up the ladder at her, knowing that she didn't really have the strength to actually hurt him with the pitchfork.
He was 3 rungs up the ladder when she let go of the pitchfork.
In that flash of an instant it occurred to him that she didn't need much strength, only gravity. He instinctively moved his right arm in front of his face and head.
JD's instinctive move saved his life. The pitchfork slammed into JD's right arm, one tine of the fork going through the back of his right hand, exiting out the palm. The other three tines of the fork did a similar number on his right forearm.
When the pitchfork went through the flesh of JD's arm and hand, the shock and the pain caused him to lose balance and he fell off the ladder, landing hard, right on the flat of his back.
The kid looked over the edge of the hay loft platform upon JD's motionless body sprawled out on the floor.
After she saw no movements for a couple of minutes, she went over to the spot in the loft where she had her Chipmunk laying.
The Chipmunk was a simple, .22 rimfire caliber, single shot, bolt action rifle that weighed a bit over two pounds. It had a short sixteen inch barrel, nice peep sights, and a stock sized specifically to fit a small child. Her daddy had gotten it just before the collapse in hopes of using it to teach his daughter the basics of shooting, and over the last year when she had started getting big enough, he had been doing just that.
She picked up her rifle and slung it over her back with it's simple nylon sling, just like she did whenever her daddy would take her rabbit hunting. She then began to climb down the ladder.
When she got down to the bottom of the ladder she looked at the monster. Much to her horror, she saw he was still breathing as his chest went up and down.
Scared, she unslung her little Chipmunk off of her back. She had earlier loaded it with a single .22 long rifle shell, but she had not cocked the striker of the rifle. Her daddy had always said never to cock the striker till she was ready to fire the rifle.
JD hurt like hell, but as his vision cleared he regained consciousness. He suddenly remembered where he was and what he was doing here. In pain, he groaned and began to sit up.
The kid saw JD start moving around and became really frightened.
In her childish innocence, she had though the monster was dead when he fell, and the good guys had finally won, just like in 'Jack and the Beanstalk' and all of the other stories her mommy and daddy had read to her. She let out a small whimper as her worst nightmare was waking up. She began backing up towards the empty horse stall behind her.
JD was pissed. He was still lying down as he lifted his right arm that still had the pitchfork in it.
He knew it would hurt, but it had to be done. He grabbed the pitchfork where the tines came out of the end of the handle and then yanked as hard as he could. He let out an animal-like scream as the pitchfork came out of his arm.
The kid saw the monster come alive and then scream as he removed the pitchfork. She was now truly terrified.
JD looked at his arm and hand. They were swollen and he couldn't move his hand that well, let along grip anything worth a crap, like a pistol. He looked over at the kid, standing nearby and backing up. No, he couldn't grip a pistol so good with his gun hand, at least not right now, but he sure could strangle the shit out of that fucking kid.
JD began to rise and the kid let out a short squeal of fright. JD looked over at her, anger spewing from his face. She was standing in front of an open horse stall, staring at him in fear, some piss ant little rifle in her hand that looked like a BB gun.
JD rose to his full height, towering over the kid. He looked at her with pure hatred, his face betraying his best demonic grin as he savored the thought of joyfully choking the life out of her till she went limp in death. This was one piece of veal he'd really enjoy feasting on.
He stood and realized his back was hurting terribly. As the kid stood petrified in fear not twenty feet from him, he unslung the CAR-15 and found it bend beyond use. He had landed on it hard. The silencer had built by hand just before the collapse was bent and distorted. Much to his astonished horror, the heart of his cherished carbine was trashed also. The aluminum receiver itself was bent where the recoil buffer tube attached to the lower half of the weapon's receiver. The gun was trashed and he was pissed off like he had never been since the collapse had happened.
He felt for his cherished, custom 9mm semi-auto pistol, a Spanish built Star. It had fallen out of his quick draw, pants pocket holster, and it now lay somewhere in the shadows of the poorly lit barn. "I'll find it later," he mumbled to himself, "I'm almost done here."
He felt the cargo pocket of his military style BDU trousers and felt that the little Beretta Bobcat with it's silencer was still there. That was more than he needed for that fucking kid. Not even that. He was just going to need his bare hands.
In pure anger he tossed aside his beloved and now hopelessly bent CAR-15. His much loved instrument of wrath with which he had harvested countless prey over the seasons.
As he approached the cowering child, left arm and hand arm numb, throbbing, and dripping blood; the rest of him still stiff from the pain and bruises of the fall and landing on the hard ground with the CAR-15 strapped to his back. He steadily walked towards the kid with a gaze of raw, murderous hatred.
As the kid looked up at his approach, shaking with fear, she pressed the buttplate of the stock of her little Chipmunk into her hip and using a great deal of her strength she grabbed the cocking knob on the back of the bolt with her little right hand and pulled back the striker of the Chipmunk. With an audible, "CLICK", the striker was cocked. The diminutive little rifle was now ready to fire.
JD took another couple of slow, deliberate steps towards her, still grinning his demonic grin.
The kid backing up further into the horse stall, shaking in fear, brought the Chipmunk up to her shoulder, aimed it at JD's chest, and said, "You're a bad man you monster! Go away! Now! Or I'll hurt you!"
JD looked right into her eyes and said, "Hurt me all you want you little shit, I'm gonna eat your beating fucking heart in front of your dying eyes you little bitch!" and with his demonic grin fully intact, JD lunged at the kid.
She squealed in fear as JD reached her. JD knocked the muzzle of the Chipmunk down, and his hands grabbed her by the throat.
Just as his hands made contact with her throat, out of pure fear reaction, she pulled the trigger on the Chipmunk.
Just as he grabbed her throat, the muzzle of the Chipmunk was inches from his crotch. When the weapon fired, the thirty two grain hollowpoint bullet punched through his military BDU style pants and his underwear, hitting his left testicle at a velocity of over sixteen hundred feet per second, blowing it to shreds.
The hydrostatic shock from the bullet and it's impact traveled through the scrotum slamming it's energy into the right testicle, imparting a level of shock to it equivalent to good punch with a fist. The bullet exited the rear of the scrotum, now mushroomed out to a bit past thirty two caliber. It then left a bloody crease down the sensitive, though horribly un-bathed, skin of JD's crotch. It then tore a bloody crease out of the inward side of the lower section of his left buttocks before exiting out the back of his pants.
The moment the Chipmunk fired, JD suddenly let loose a fierce, high pitched scream, released his grip of the kid, and dropped into a fetal crouch, landing in the straw and manure on the floor of the front part of the horse stall.
The kid backed up and she felt the rear of the horse stall contact her back.
She was cornered. Between her and the beckoning ecstasy of escape was the crouched figure of the screaming boogie-man before her.
As he was bent over with his hands over his crotch. The feeling was like being kicked in the balls by King Kong but the waves of pain and stomach turning revulsion just wouldn't stop after a short while like it did when you were normally kicked in the balls. With blood running between his fingers, JD vomited into the straw and horse dung mixture at the bottom of the stall.
The kid, still shaking bad from fear and adrenaline, worked the bolt on the Chipmunk, ejecting the empty shell casing. She fished desperately into the right front pocket of her little denim overalls for one of the .22 long rifle rounds she had put in there while up in the hay loft.
She found a .22 shell and moved to put it into the Chipmunk's receiver. She was shaking so bad she almost dropped the shell, but she got it in.
Through waves of pain, JD realized he had just been shot in the nuts. He couldn't believe it, the little bitch had shot him in the nuts!
Still clutching his bleeding crotch JD looked over at the kid. She was just closing home the bolt an that fucking pint sized .22 of hers. JD wanted to kill her bad now, really bad, and he wasn't about to let the little bitch shoot him again.
She saw the monster get up on his knees, one hand propping him up on the ground, the other still clutching his crotch.
She saw the monster look her right in the eyes with pure hatred. It scared her so much she let out a small squeal of fright. Her first instincts were to run, but she had nowhere to run to. The monster was between her and freedom.
She knew the Chipmunk was her only hope against the monster. She braced the end of the buttstock into her hip, grabbed the striker knob, and with and an audible, "CLICK", once again, the little Chipmunk was cocked and ready to fire.
JD had his fill of this shit. He was going to grab the little bitch, alive, and really teach her what pain was.
The kid aimed the Chipmunk at JD just a few feet away. She yelled, "Go away monster or I'll hurt you again."
Suddenly JD lunged at her and grabbed the end of the Chipmunk's barrel with his uninjured left hand. Still on his knees he braced himself against the side of the horse stall with his bloody right hand. He got a firm grip on the barrel and yanked hard to tear the rifle from her grasp.
As the monster grabbed her rifle, in fear she held on tighter. Suddenly he yanked the Chipmunk hard. She let out a squeal and her right finger squeezed the trigger.
Once again the Chipmunk fired, except this time the muzzle of the little rifle had been pressed right up against the large knuckle joint of JD's left thumb.
JD screamed, let go of the muzzle, and fell backwards into the manure and straw, trying to clutch one wounded hand with another.
She saw that the monster was still between her and escape. Still shaking badly with fear, she worked the bolt as hard and as fast as she could, ejecting the spent rimfire cartridge casing. She began fumbling again in the right front pocket of her denim overalls for another cartridge.
JD looked at his hand, forgetting about the kid for a moment. He was in a state of disbelief as to how bad his hand was hurt.
The thumb was hanging on by connective tissue on either side, but the big knuckle joint was blown to shreds and there were even small fragments of bone and cartilage protruding from the gaping exit hole on the back of his hand.
It then dawned on him that the function of the hand would be permanently impaired and he might even have to amputate his own thumb in the next day or so.
As he was bemoaning the mangling of his hand, he faintly heard an audible, "CLICK", that came from the far end of the horse stall.
JD looked away from his hand and turned his head towards the kid he still had trapped, it was the direction that the mechanical 'click' had come from.
JD looked at her as she raised the little rifle to her shoulder again, aimed right at him.
With great effort and with no small amount of pain he stood up. He stood there, blocking the end of the horse stall, in agonizing pain from his crotch to the top of his head.
JD and the kid stood there, facing each other, each trying to decide what to do next.
The kid, looking as serious as a six year girl old with freckles, pigtails, and a rifle could look, yelled at JD, "Get out of here you monster or I'll really hurt you bad this time!"
JD, not one to listen to anyone about anything, wasn't about to back down from this pint sized little cunt and her piece of shit, single shot toy.
JD said to her in a sinister tone, "So kid, you want to play big people games, fine, now it's time for you to fuckin' die just like a big person."
With that, JD stuck his pitchfork injured right hand into the side cargo pocket of the Army style camouflage pants he was wearing and pulled out his little Beretta Bobcat with the small silencer on it.
In his well practiced move to quickly point the pistol at the kid and kill her in her tracks, he had surprisingly a hard time grasping the pistol with his badly injured hand, and, much his horrified astonishment, he fumbled and dropped the pistol into the manure and straw. He quickly moved to reach down and pick it up.
When she saw the pistol come out, she knew what she had to do. She drew a bead on his chest and pulled the Chipmunk's trigger, just as he unexpectedly bent down.
JD heard the crack of the Chipmunk firing and he felt himself hit the floor of the stall like a wet sack of cement.
The little .22 bullet had hit JD in the neck, punched through his windpipe, miraculously missed all of the major arteries and veins, and then lodged in his spine, badly damaging his spinal cord.
JD lay there sprawled in the hay and manure of the horse stall. He was laying chest down, his head turned and laying it's left side.
His feeling below his neck was strange and sporadic. He tried to move his arms and legs but the most he got out of them was a few twitches. He was having trouble breathing too. He heard his breath come and go in ragged gurgles. He tried to say something but it only caused him choke out a strange noise.
As he lay there, struggling in his predicament, he heard a noise that caused his mind to release a sudden, involuntary reaction of fear.
"CLICK"
JD, for the first time since the collapse, felt the cold fear of utter helplessness. As he lay there, a small pair of dirty, scuffed up white and pink sneakers with the image of Winnie the Pooh emblazoned on the sides came within his limited field of view.
As JD moved his eyes upwards he saw the kid standing there, looking down upon him with the barrel of the Chipmunk aimed right at his face. He knew she was just a small little runt and the rifle was only a .22 the size of a BB gun, but from his current viewpoint she looked twenty feet tall and the muzzle of the Chipmunk looked like business end of a howitzer.
He noticed, oddly enough, that she was no longer shaking with fear.
She said to him, "Monster, you hurt my Mommy and you hurt my Daddy and you hurt my puppy. I'm gonna make sure you never hurt anyone else ever again."
JD tried to say something, tried to talk to the kid, get her to calm down, but all that came out was a gurgle.
JD watched in terror as the muzzle of the Chipmunk moved upwards, out of his line of sight. For a split second, the predator in him morbidly wondered where she was moving the muzzle of the rifle to. The answer came when he felt the steel of the barrel's small muzzle enter the outer part of his remaining good ear.
The last thing he ever heard was a sharp "BANG!" that to him was as loud as all of the thunder in the world.
The girl looked upon JD's body. One of his legs was still twitching, just like when her daddy shot a rabbit. She took one Winnie the Pooh shod foot and gave JD's head a couple of hard shoves. By the limp way it moved, and the growing pool of blood beneath the head, she knew that the monster was finally dead.
She reloaded the Chipmunk and then cocked it with it's tell tale "CLICK". This time though, she put the safety on.
She then walked around JD's body, still clutching the Chipmunk in her hands. As she calmly and confidently headed towards the much brighter light of the day pouring in through the open barn door, she knew now that she could, and would, slay any monster, and she would never be afraid again.
**
JD came back to where he was, at the reckoning with Peter, spooked and chilled to the core. Violently dying once was shock enough, doing it twice was almost too much even for him to bare. He remembered, everything about that life, it was now an indelible part of him.
Peter looked at JD and said, "Well, JD, I guess the one positive thing you did in that life is that you really helped shape the personality of that little girl. She grew into an exceptional woman."
"Oh yeah?" said JD, who suddenly gave his best demonic grin, "Well, at least I got the little bitch's parents."
Peter, shaking his head sadly, said to JD, "My goodness, you are so incorrigible and stubborn."
Peter waved to one side and suddenly, like before, a scene opened up before JD, just like it had while looking at the wreckage of the end of his first death.
In the window, JD felt as if he was there but he couldn't interact with anything. He was only an observer, the ultimate voyeur.
He was shocked as he watched the girl heading back to the house from the barn suddenly squeal in delight and break out into a run as she saw her father come out of the house.
The girl's daddy was soaking wet from falling into the creek and he had a really nasty looking wound where JD's .22 bullet had hit his cheek from the front and had exited out the side of the cheek further back. He'd recover but the scar would be nasty.
The man went back into the barn, and searched JD's body for the handcuff keys which he then used to un-shackle his suffering, badly injured wife.
When the wife was laid down in her bed, the man and his daughter went back into the barn.
The man drug JD out and then he and his kid went over JD's body, stripping every bit of gear and clothing off except for his bloody underwear.
The man looked at his daughter and said, "Waste not, want not. Even in death, this man will still serve a useful purpose."
The man went over to a large garage and in there JD heard a diesel engine roar to life.
"Wow," thought JD, the man actually had some diesel left. That place would have been such a haul.
Out of the gaping darkness of the garage door, a small Kubota tractor with a skip loader on the front and a backhoe on the rear headed towards JD's body.
"Hey," JD thought in a sentimentally odd sort of way, "At least I get a decent burial this time."
The man got JD's almost naked body into the front of the skip loader and then the tractor started moving around towards the back of the barn.
JD was aghast, "You sonofabitch!" he yelled, though no one but Peter could hear him.
The man drove the tractor up to the wooden fence and then, with the flick of a lever, dropped JD's body out of the bucket of the raised skip loader and into the mass of hungry hogs in the pig pen.
The hogs smelled the blood and the fresh meat and became extremely excited at the prospect of the surprise feast. They tore into JD's corpse like a small pack of two hundred pound land piranhas.
The image disappeared and JD, obviously shaken but trying to hide it, looked at Peter and said, "So, you did your bullshit, not that I'm impressed, you old fuck."
Peter, suddenly a lot closer, reached towards JD's forehead with his hand and said, "But JD, for you this ride has just begun." As his hand touched JD's forehead, the avalanche of thought began again as he and yet another shade of himself merged into one.
The Many Deaths of JD: Chapter 3 - The Kid
The Many Deaths of JD
by Mike Rostov
[email protected]
copyright 2004
Chapter 3 - The Kid
JD had spotted the small farm yesterday and had been scoping it out with great interest.
Before the collapse, the place would have been what people called a 'hobby' farm, but now the farming was no hobby, but a matter of life versus death by starvation.
What was at one time a 'hobby' farm for some skilled yuppie with a bit of extra money and a longing for cleaner air than what the city had to offer, was now, through necessity, aspiring to be a full blown farm and homestead in the new world the collapse had left.
JD grinned and thought to himself, "This is going to be more fun than I've had in a while." He grinned with a smile that would have made a rabid wolf cringe. "These stupid fucks spent all of this time surviving and staying healthy, just waiting here for me to show up and harvest them. How thoughtful, much appreciated."
He glanced through his binoculars at the small farmstead taking it all in. He had grown a bit more careful in the seasons since the collapse. When he could, he always spent some extra time stalking his prey nowadays.
He had come to consider the binoculars his primary stalking tool for when he hunted his prey. For years he had openly scorned binos as being just an extra, unnecessary weight. In order to save weight, when the collapse happened and he was just starting out, he tried to just get by with only his rifle scope, but that quickly turned into a real pain in the ass. His one eye on the scope tired quickly and he just couldn't observe the wide areas long enough to be as effective as he needed.
But, as circumstances would have it, he took a nice pair of binoculars off of the gear of those teenagers he had harvested about a week into the collapse. After using them for a while he began to finally see their value. He liked the way he could scan the area and his prey for a long time without his eyes becoming unnecessarily tired.
As he scanned the small farmstead through the binoculars, he thought about long ago when he first acquired his much valued optics.
Accidentally stumbling upon the camp of those teenagers was a stoke of luck on his behalf. Preferring to pack light, he had only brought a week's worth of food with him when the collapse happened. Not only did he harvest his first prey for food that night, but the fools had brought plenty with them also, expensive dehydrated backpacker stuff to boot.
He had seen their campfire and had snuck up upon them. The idiots never saw it coming. There was an older kid, probably about 17 or 18, a younger girl, he guessed about 15 or 16, and a younger boy, probably around 13 or 14. They all had sandy blonde hair and looked related. The fools actually had a visible campfire and were playing music. The older boy had a guitar, the girl a harmonica, and the younger boy was singing what he guessed was some sort of religious type folk song.
From the darkness that they couldn't see into, their night vision ruined by the campfire light, he snuck right up to their camp, concealed behind a large tree. He pulled out his little Beretta Bobcat .22 pistol with the small homemade silencer on it, and then, from a distance of about 15 feet, he shot the singing younger boy right in the forehead. The kid immediately stopped singing and collapsed forward.
The others, their minds didn't immediately register what had just happened. As the boy collapsed forward, the girl pulled the harmonica away from her mouth, looked at him in surprise, and said in a concerned tone, "Tommy?"
Tommy had barely hit the dirt with his face when JD immediately fired again but this time at the older boy. The older boy had turned his head a tad just then and the .22 bullet blew out his right eye, exiting the side of the socket. He grabbed his face and began to scream as JD stepped into the light and fired two more hollowpoint bullets into the boy's head. The older boy spasmed, jerked, and fell backwards, his guitar landing in the dirt by his feet.
The girl screamed in horror, frozen for a fraction of a second at what she had just witnessed. She then immediately sprang up and started running for it. JD swung the diminutive little Beretta towards the fleeing girl and fired three rounds. One hollowpoint round hit her in the back of the left knee and she collapsed into the dirt with a scream.
The girl, sobbing and crying, freckled face streaked with tears, tried to get up. She got up on her hands and her one good knee as JD, walking towards her, fired two more rounds from the Beretta Bobcat. One hollowpoint bullet went into her left hip and the other went into her lower back, tearing a frightening hole in her left kidney. She let out a blood curdling, wailing scream, and collapsed into the dirt.
JD continued to walk towards the girl, changing magazines in the Beretta Bobcat. She was laying on her right side, arms clutched to her chest in primal fear, looking towards JD as he approached. She was crying hard and babbling words like, "Please", "No", "Why?"
JD didn't give a rat's ass what she was saying. He walked up to her and pointed the reloaded Beretta Bobcat at her head. She closed her eyes and as she cried and between sobs she began uttering what sounded to JD a lot like a prayer.
At that point, JD had one of those moments of clarity that help define one's life. As he stood over the crying, sobbing, badly wounded girl, his power over her was total. He truly understood, at this moment, just how much he loved killing.
The exhilaration of the hunt was overwhelming. It was better than any drug he had ever tried, and he had tried then all. It was like an orgasm from sex, but a hundred times stronger and it didn't just peak and go away, but instead surged stronger and stronger. It was like a flow of pure euphoria coursing through every fiber of his body.
That sobbing girl laying before him, babbling her silly prayers, wasn't really a person, at least not a real person like him. She was prey, like a sheep or a deer, and he was a true predator, like a wolf, or better yet, a tiger. In his view of the universe, that made him an inherently better person. Far more worthy of life by a large margin.
As he looked down upon her, her eyes still closed while she shuddering in pain and cried. He listened and savored the fear he heard amongst the sobbing, "Oh, lord! .... Please! Oh, it hurts so bad! ... Jesus, help me!...."
He was motionless for a brief moment, absorbing the scene. As he listened to her pathetic babbling, the power of total control and the euphoria of the hunt surged through him.
He then had a slight change in plan.
He put the little Beretta pistol with the silencer in his pocket of his coat. He got out his multi-tool and walked behind the girl. With his boot he kicked her over onto her stomach and she let out a mournful wail of pain. He then knelt down upon her and leaned his knee into her back to pin her down. With an abrupt scream of fear and pain, the wind went out of her as his knee quickly pressed into her back with his full weight.
He opened his multi-tool's serrated knife blade, and then, with his free hand, he abruptly, violently grabbed a handful of her sandy blonde hair, yanking her head back, and exposing her throat. She let out one last terrified shriek of, "NO! Please! N...!" which ended in a choked gurgle as her sliced her throat wide open from ear to ear.
He felt her uninjured leg give a brief kick when he did that. He let go of her hair and just let her head, eyes still wide with fear, lips still with a trace of movement in them, to fall forward in the growing pond of blood in the dirt.
"Hey," JD said calmly to himself, "Saved some ammo and had some fun with the bitch to boot. Killed two birds with one stone, or shall I say three with one magazine." He chuckled at his own little joke.
Without a second glance at the body of his freshly killed prey in the dirt, JD got up, and went to look the camp over to inspect his new gear and supplies.
The first thing he eyes was something silver on the ground. He picked it up and looked the harmonica over. There was an inscription on one side that read, 'To my beloved Jennifer, Love Grandpa'.
JD looked the harmonica over and said, "Who in the fuck would ever want to play one these pieces of shit? Give me real music any day." With that he tossed the harmonica into the searing coals of the still burning campfire.
That successful early hunt so long ago always made him happy when he thought about it. It's like he evolved into a better person that night, a truly unstoppable predator.
He scanned the prey in the small, isolated valley below, surrounded by low, rolling hills. Between the small, wooded hill he was on and the prey's nest was an old abandoned field, gone wild with weeds now that some farmer no longer had the fuel to farm all of his fields. A tree lined road ran alongside the field and then crossed a decent sized creek with a small wooden bridge, about wide enough for a single automobile to safely use it. The tree lined road then led on into the small farm.
As near as he could tell, there was one man, looked mid-forties maybe, a woman maybe a tad younger, maybe not, and a small child, a very young girl, maybe six years old. Dogs? Just some yapping piece of shit little terrier. Might be big enough to attack his toenail but that was about it.
JD put down the binos to get a drink from his water bottle. He shook his head. He'd had some easy prey before, but he couldn't believe how easy this one was going to be. Talk about ripe fruit ready for the picking.
He saw some movement below. As he looked back at the farmstead he laughed at what he saw. "Oh, those corny, simpleton fucks! Idiots like this have it coming!" JD said to himself.
He saw the man and the small girl coming down the road with what looked like old fashioned cane type fishing poles. The man was also carrying what looked like a kid's lunch box and the girl was also carrying a small pail of some sort.
"Those STUPES!" thought JD. Here we are in the middle of the fucking Apocalypse and they are out in broad daylight, let alone fishing! JD laughed out loud to himself, "THIS is just TOO fucking easy!"
As he watched them approach through the binoculars, JD suddenly had an idea.
He opened his small backpack and fished around a bit till he produced a small bag. Opening it up he pulled out three pairs of genuine police handcuffs taken off of genuine dead cops. He always kept at least three pairs because three pairs was perfect for hog-tying someone totally helpless.
He had learned that total hog-tying trick from none other than the police themselves during one of the times he had gotten busted, back before the world became HIS world, a world he liked a LOT better.
It was the woman he was thinking about. The woman he had seen through the binos back at the farmhouse. She was probably the mother of the child he saw coming down the road and the wife of the man accompanying that child. Typical yuppie family, prey on the hoof.
He occasionally kept a female prey alive, at least for a while, to have a bit of fun. It was a lot easier and way more fun than having to put up with a regular bitch the old fashioned way.
First he usually handcuffed them. He'd handcuff their hands behind their backs, then he'd handcuff their feet together, and then he'd use the third pair of handcuffs to shackle the two sets of handcuffs together. This bent the prey backwards into something of a 'U' shape. They often yelled a lot when he did this, usually out of fear, but they really howled a whole lot if they were wounded. Their screams, yells, and moans only added to the fun and it made his world just feel right and complete.
He usually liked to make them wait till he was done with his after-hunt chores. He especially got a thrill out of their insane screaming whenever there was young prey around and he harvested the veal right in front of the shackled female.
Often they threatened to kill him, and one day some bitch got loose and actually tried.
He had turned his back for a minute just after he had finished dressing out some veal, after making her watch him. The bitch got loose and then got her hands on his Old Hickory butcher knife that he had been doing his after-hunt chores with. She got close, too close, and she had almost got him.
He still remembers how long his ears were ringing after he shot the bitch in the stomach with his chopped down, custom 9mm pistol, and immediately, before she even had time to double over, he shot her second time, this one in the face, blowing a cloud of brain tissue and skull fragments out the back of her head.
After that, he figured that prey needed to be reminded a bit harder that they were indeed prey and that he was the predator, he was in charge, he was in control.
Nowadays, when he kept a bitch alive for a small amount of amusement, right after he had her handcuffed and after he had butchered any veal to be had (making them watch was just too much fun), he took his Old Hickory butcher knife and sliced the bitch's eyes and the hamstrings in her ankles. Then he would take out his odd shaped little hatchet tool he called a 'skatchet', and using the hammer end of the little hatchet head on the opposite side of the chopping blade, broke her wrists. This made things a lot easier and even added to the fun. It also allowed him to take the handcuffs off and from that point on, the fun really became memorable.
As JD looked at his much used handcuffs, he smiled at the memories they brought back and the feeling of anticipation they gave him. "Better than fucking Disneyland," he said softly to himself, as he felt himself start to get sexually aroused.
As the prey got closer to the bridge, he got a better look at them.
The young girl was wearing a small pair of bib overalls, a t-shirt, sneakers, and a straw sun hat. It struck JD that she looked like a little toy doll from this distance. As she carried that cane fishing pole and her little pail, probably with bait worms in it, she looked like something out of an old Norman Rockwell painting or a cover from some country living style magazine that yuppies used to buy, back before the world improved more to JD's liking.
As far as he was concerned, the small prey was just veal to be harvested and of no other concern. It was the bigger prey that he wanted to check out, specifically for any weapons the prey might be carrying.
Not that the stupe could even use anything he might be carrying even a tenth or a hundredth as good as JD could. JD knew in his heart that he was the best there ever was. It was the cornerstone of his view on just about everything.
The man was wearing jeans, boots, a flannel shirt, and yes, JD spotted a pistol in an old style leather holster on the belt of the man's pant's, on his right side. As he looked closely, he saw that it was probably a revolver of some sort.
The closest thing JD had to a religion was his love of guns. One of the key tenets to this little, private, pseudo-religion was that JD vociferously despised revolvers and considered them worthless. In his opinion, which he considered the ultimate authority on most matters, anyone who carried one was also worthless and too stupid to deserve the privilege of life.
JD chuckled at the thought of prey wasting time to arm themselves, like it would do them any good.
Normally, he preferred to harvest prey at night, but this was going to be just too easy. It was a nice spring day and what better for a nice spring day than a good hunt and some fresh prey. With prey this lame, he didn't need the cover of night time. He could take these people at anytime, day or night. Besides, he was hungry for the hunt and he didn't feel like waiting.
Spry as a tiger on the hunt, JD went down the backside of the hill. He then worked his way around through the trees alongside the curving road back towards the creek. It was the bridge at the creek where the fresh prey were evidently planning on doing a bit of fishing and probably some ridiculously sentimental father/daughter bonding.
Just the thought of such assinine sentimentality amongst his prey caused a spark of hatred within JD. Now, more than ever, they would deserve whatever he dealt out.
It took about half an hour for him to work his way back down to the creek without causing attention. Now he was in position in the trees alongside the road, stalking his prey, and preparing to strike.
The prey had made it to the bridge and had set themselves up in the business of recreational fishing. He kept about seventy five yards away to avoid detection by their dog, which, fortunately, was busy begging some of the little girl's sandwich she was eating while she sat there on the side of the small, wooden bridge.
JD was observing them through the four power scope on his CAR-15 carbine. He had pulled out the bolt carrier and had put in the .22 conversion unit. The low noise level of the .22 long rifle cartridges, combined with the homemade silencer on the end of the rifle, meant that the prey back at the house, the woman he had been thinking about, tonight's entertainment venue, wouldn't hear anything that sounded like a rifle report, and hence, probably wouldn't be alerted.
The prey were sitting next to each other on the side of the bridge chatting. Their poles were standing by themselves, lines in the water, poles braced between gaps in the boards on the side of the aging wooden bridge.
The sides of the creek were shaded by trees, but the bridge and the center of the creek were lit by the warm spring sun. He couldn't make out words at this distance, just some voices and the sounds of birds chirping in the trees.
As he looked down the road towards the bridge, he could see the prey sitting nice and oblivious to his presence.
Between bites of her sandwich, the girl was animately point towards various things JD couldn't make out, obviously asking questions, and her father would respond back saying something, giving the girl his full attention.
JD sneered and thought to himself, "Too busy talking to the little bitch to notice me. That's the way I like it."
JD had decided it was about time to strike. Just as he was drawing a sight bead for a head shot on the girl's father, JD shifted a bit of weight forward onto his left foot, causing a twig beneath his boot to snap.
The instant the twig snapped, the noise caused JD to hesitate for a moment. The prey, of course, didn't hear anything, but at that moment the damn dog looked towards his direction and started barking. This caused the man to turn his head to look around and then move just as JD pulled the trigger.
JD saw the man lurch and grab his face. The prey then lost his balance and fell off the bridge into the creek. JD heard the little girl scream, "Daddy!"
The little terrier was barking like mad in his direction and jumping around. JD became pissed off at the dog and fired at it, the bullet grazing it's rump as the spastic thing jumped around barking. The dog began screaming it's wounded dog yell and began frantically running around in circles trying to lick it's wounded rump. JD fired another two rounds at the dog which had tried to ruin his hunt. They hit the dog's chest. The mutt then collapsed in the middle of the bridge, it's rear legs still kicking.
JD then stepped out of the bushes and began to run towards the little girl. He wanted that piece of veal alive, at least for a while.
The kid saw him emerge from the bushes and immediately screamed and began to run. He saw her run across the bridge towards the house, and then she cut off into the wooded tree line that ran alongside the road.
JD made it to the bridge, stopped and looked into the water where the man had fallen in. He didn't see anything in the muddy water. "Body must have sunk," he thought.
He saw the little Mickey Mouse lunch box and the small bait pail that still sat peacefully next to one of the old fashioned style cane fishing poles. In a gesture of contempt, he angrily kicked them both into the creek.
He got a grin on his face and yelled in the direction the little girl was heading and shouted, "Come back kid! I have your daddy!"
She didn't appear, so he headed down the road to where she cut into the wooded area. He found what was probably the spot she entered the brambles because her little straw hat had gotten caught in some tangled branches.
He looked into where she went and it was a small path into really thick growth. It was big enough for a child, but way too small for him. He saw that it headed towards the house, the same place the road led.
He smiled. The hunt had kind of a rough start, but it was starting to go good. The veal was panicked and running for the house. Prey were so predictable, especially when they were scared.
He yelled loudly down the road towards direction the kid was probably heading, "I'm gonna eat you and your little dog, Toto, too!" He laughed out loud good at that one. As he ran down the road towards the house, he wondered what the writer of the 'Wizard of Oz' would have thought of his dialog being applied to a grisly scene in the real world.
He wanted to make the house before the kid did. Though he could easily see both the house and the bridge from the hill, the house couldn't see anything at the bridge from it's own ground level location.
As he got to the house he saw the crying, out of breath little girl at the open door yelling a frantic warning at her startled mother.
The mother saw JD approaching across the lawn and with a look of horror she yanked the little girl inside and slammed the door shut.
JD hit the door like a charging bulldozer. Not even slowing down, he hit the door with the side of his body and it gave easily, tearing off of it's hinges.
Just as he entered the main room of the little farm house through the shattered door, still moving with his full momentum, a shotgun blast roared and it felt like someone had set the side of his head on fire.
The woman had fired a shotgun at close range, but in her panic she missed hitting his head dead on and the charge of #4 shot shredded his left ear, tearing most of it off, utterly deafened him on that side. It had also blown out the eardrum while leaving some shot in his cheek.
A split second after she pulled the trigger he crashed into her and they both staggered back, crashing into, and destroying, an old, antique grandfather clock on the opposite wall, knocking over it's broken remains.
He had dropped the CAR-15 he was carrying in his hands when he collided with her, and now they both struggled over the large, bird hunter style over/under double barrel shotgun which she had fired at him with.
Right after they hit the grandfather clock, the other barrel of the twelve gauge bird gun fired into the ceiling, severely damaging what hearing he had left in his previously undamaged right side.
His larger weight and size won out and he pushed her violently away, tearing the shotgun out of her hands. She staggered back a step and a fraction of a second later he hit her across the face hard with the buttstock of the shotgun, swinging the gun from the end of the barrel like a baseball bat.
The blow knocked out several of her teeth and broke her nose. She fell into a small display cabinet that was against the wall. It was full of large collection of tiny glass figurines. The cabinet fell over and both she and the cabinet hit the floor at the same time. The cabinet's glass front, along with most of it's contents, shattered as it slammed into the floor.
The woman had landed face down, blood from her badly broken nose creating a small pool of blood on the floor. JD immediately pounced upon her.
In a well practiced move, he punched her hard in both kidneys with all of the strength he could muster, further disabling her with pain.
He then grabbed her arm and painfully yanked her arm around behind her back and expertly slapped a police issue handcuff around her wrist. He then immediately grabbed her other arm, yanking it around and handcuffed her other wrist. He then quickly turned around, sat on the back of her legs near her knees, and handcuffed her feet together.
Then JD locked a handcuff around the center of the handcuffs on her ankles and pulled her painfully into a 'U' shape and locked the other end of the third pair of handcuffs around the center of the handcuffs on her wrists. That last move got a large moan out of her as she started to come too.
JD stood there for a second, observing his handywork. He then kneeled down, grabbed her drooping head by the hair and yanked it up hard with a vengeance.
She opened her blackening eyes as he shouted into her face, "I'm gonna catch that little brat and then I'm gonna cut her up and eat her heart right in front of you! Then you and me are gonna have some real fun! You hear me bitch?"
She looked back up to him and faintly said, "Please .... no.. do what you want to me, just please...."
JD stood up and kicked her hard in the face. "That was for shooting at me you fucking cunt!" he screamed.
It was then that he started to feel some throbbing pain. He also realized that he wasn't hearing much at the moment. Nothing at all on the left and not much on the right.
The display cabinet full of collectable glass figurines had been built with a mirrored back on the inside and pieces of that glass mirror backing now lay on the floor. He picked a piece up from amongst the wreckage and took a look at the damage to the side of his head.
He already had a terrible scar on his face from before the collapse. He'd gotten it when a pistol slide had broken off after firing a really hot handload he had cooked up. There were other scars too. As good as he figured he was, another scar or two only meant more experience. He also figured that it more scars would just made him look meaner, which he liked.
THIS wound, however, took him a step closer into the Freddie Kruger category of just plain frightening, at least on the left side of his head. Pretty much his entire left ear was totally frigging gone! He also had shot and indelible gunpowder marks all along the side of his face!
Now he was really pissed and before he realized it, he was violently kicking the helpless, handcuffed woman who was now screaming and sobbing for him to stop.
He stopped after a bit, figuring that he wanted her to be alive for the festivities later, starting with when he caught that little fucking brat. Yeah, the fun tonight would be real special and he would make damn good and sure that it lasted quite a while. "Yeah," he said out loud to the sobbing, hog-tied woman, "I'm gonna make you last a long time you fucking cunt. You and that fucking brat of your's too."
He found his CAR-15 on the floor and picked it up. Now to go hunt himself some veal.
The house wasn't very big but JD took great pleasure in trashing and breaking as much of anything and everything that he could as he searched every nook and cranny looking for the kid.
The formerly neat, prim little home looked just like a grenade had gone off in every room and then was hit by a tornado to help finish off the wreckage.
"The little bitch ain't here," he said to himself.
He though for a minute... the barn. Yeah, hundred bucks said the brat was in the barn.
As he strode out of the house, heading towards the shattered door, he passed the hog tied woman on the floor who was crying and pleading with him as he walked by, "Please, mister, I'm begging you, please...." He gave her another kick in the side of the gut as he walked by, just for good measure. That knocked the wind out of her again and the subdued prey shut her bitch mouth.
JD stepped outside and looked around.
Yeah, here was yet another domain he was absolute lord of. Life was good and had gotten better and better the longer the chaos of the collapse lasted.
He headed towards the barn.
Like a lot of barns on small hobby farms, this barn was overly big, the size you'd see on a real, old time farm. In size and design it was built as a reproduction of something you'd see out of the 'Grapes of Wrath' or some similar old movie or postcard, and, of course, the fools had painted it bright red with white trim.
When he first stumbled upon this place, it that huge red barn that had first caught his eye from quite a ways off. In the binoculars the damn thing stuck out like a sore thumb amongst all of the spring green. He spotted it as he was doing a recon of the general countryside he was moving into as part of his never ending search for fresh prey.
He picked up and carried the woman's shotgun with him out of the house.
He'd always considered such guns it to be practically worthless, and damage to his ear not withstanding, he still considered it to be so. He was glad she didn't have a 9mm handgun or some similar semi-auto where she could have fired half a dozen shots at him. But he dismissed that line of thinking as the woman and all like her were just prey and he was destined to win over them all anyway.
He normally got rid of weapons he didn't carry, usually by breaking them, but in this case he was saving the bird gun to teach that bitch a lesson.
He figured as payback for the ear, when he was ready to harvest her, after the festivities wound down a bit, he'd scrounge a couple more shells for the bird gun and then do her by shoving the muzzle of the shotgun up her cunt and giving her both barrels. He was only carrying the weapon now to prevent any weird, oddball surprises when he got back to the house.
As he got to the door of the barn, he tossed the bird gun aside into the dirt. He unslung the CAR-15 and made sure the safety was off. He took note that it was still rigged with the drop in adapter to fire the small .22 long rifle rimfire rounds instead of the larger, much more powerful .223 caliber centerfire ammunition.
He left it in .22 long rifle mode, since he was, after all, only hunting a girl that couldn't be more than six. Besides, he wanted the little bitch alive anyway for the reaction it would get out of her mother. Tonight, yeah, tonight was going to be one for his fondest memories.
He opened the barn door a small way and then kicked it open wide and then waited, crouched down low against the outside wall next to the door.
He yelled out, "I have your mommy, little girl! Come on out and I won't hurt her!" He had to suppress a snickering laugh when he said the last part.
He hear nothing but that didn't mean much since most of his hearing was still out of commission.
He took of the small pack he was still wearing and set it on the ground next to the barn's outside wall. With his CAR-15 at the ready, he went into the barn.
The half minute that it took for his eyes to adjust seemed like a lot longer than it was. During that time he couldn't see much in the barn.
As his eyes adjusted, he looked around. He stood perfectly still and just looked around looked around quietly. It was his experience than most prey have a hard time being perfectly still for any length of time, especially when they are scared. It was the natural human instinct to panic and run. They almost always moved around somewhat and all too often that was what gave then away.
Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he caught movement up in the hay loft above. Yeah, he knew he'd find her.
Confident now in the knowledge he had cornered his prey, he yelled up at the girl, "Hey kid! Guess what? The boogie man's here!" At that last remark he began a snickering that turned into a full blown laugh.
Up from the loft he heard the little girl yell back, "Go away, you monster, and leave me and my family alone!"
"Aw, come on, kid," JD said, "We're gonna have some fun! At least I am." JD, grinning from ear to ear now, was getting the real pleasure high of the hunt. THIS was what he lived for. He felt as if his inner self was feeding on the nourishing nectar of life coming off of the fear the little girl up in the hay loft was emitting.
As JD walked over to the vertical wooden ladder that led up to the hay loft, he slung his silenced CAR-15 over his back. As he got to the ladder, he yelled up, still grinning, "Here comes the boogie man!"
Just then the little girl appeared at the top of the ladder. Much to his amazement, she was holding, with what must have been all of her strength, an old fashioned style pitchfork.
She had both hands on the pitch fork, holding it up like a flag pole, the sharp, pointed tines of the fork pointed down - right at JD's head.
The audacity of such a move really angered JD, especially from such a small prey, a prey that by all rights he should have gotten his hands on already. He snarled up the ladder at her, "You're gonna wish you hadn't done that, you little shit!"
JD immediately started up the ladder at her, knowing that she didn't really have the strength to actually hurt him with the pitchfork.
He was 3 rungs up the ladder when she let go of the pitchfork.
In that flash of an instant it occurred to him that she didn't need much strength, only gravity. He instinctively moved his right arm in front of his face and head.
JD's instinctive move saved his life. The pitchfork slammed into JD's right arm, one tine of the fork going through the back of his right hand, exiting out the palm. The other three tines of the fork did a similar number on his right forearm.
When the pitchfork went through the flesh of JD's arm and hand, the shock and the pain caused him to lose balance and he fell off the ladder, landing hard, right on the flat of his back.
The kid looked over the edge of the hay loft platform upon JD's motionless body sprawled out on the floor.
After she saw no movements for a couple of minutes, she went over to the spot in the loft where she had her Chipmunk laying.
The Chipmunk was a simple, .22 rimfire caliber, single shot, bolt action rifle that weighed a bit over two pounds. It had a short sixteen inch barrel, nice peep sights, and a stock sized specifically to fit a small child. Her daddy had gotten it just before the collapse in hopes of using it to teach his daughter the basics of shooting, and over the last year when she had started getting big enough, he had been doing just that.
She picked up her rifle and slung it over her back with it's simple nylon sling, just like she did whenever her daddy would take her rabbit hunting. She then began to climb down the ladder.
When she got down to the bottom of the ladder she looked at the monster. Much to her horror, she saw he was still breathing as his chest went up and down.
Scared, she unslung her little Chipmunk off of her back. She had earlier loaded it with a single .22 long rifle shell, but she had not cocked the striker of the rifle. Her daddy had always said never to cock the striker till she was ready to fire the rifle.
JD hurt like hell, but as his vision cleared he regained consciousness. He suddenly remembered where he was and what he was doing here. In pain, he groaned and began to sit up.
The kid saw JD start moving around and became really frightened.
In her childish innocence, she had though the monster was dead when he fell, and the good guys had finally won, just like in 'Jack and the Beanstalk' and all of the other stories her mommy and daddy had read to her. She let out a small whimper as her worst nightmare was waking up. She began backing up towards the empty horse stall behind her.
JD was pissed. He was still lying down as he lifted his right arm that still had the pitchfork in it.
He knew it would hurt, but it had to be done. He grabbed the pitchfork where the tines came out of the end of the handle and then yanked as hard as he could. He let out an animal-like scream as the pitchfork came out of his arm.
The kid saw the monster come alive and then scream as he removed the pitchfork. She was now truly terrified.
JD looked at his arm and hand. They were swollen and he couldn't move his hand that well, let along grip anything worth a crap, like a pistol. He looked over at the kid, standing nearby and backing up. No, he couldn't grip a pistol so good with his gun hand, at least not right now, but he sure could strangle the shit out of that fucking kid.
JD began to rise and the kid let out a short squeal of fright. JD looked over at her, anger spewing from his face. She was standing in front of an open horse stall, staring at him in fear, some piss ant little rifle in her hand that looked like a BB gun.
JD rose to his full height, towering over the kid. He looked at her with pure hatred, his face betraying his best demonic grin as he savored the thought of joyfully choking the life out of her till she went limp in death. This was one piece of veal he'd really enjoy feasting on.
He stood and realized his back was hurting terribly. As the kid stood petrified in fear not twenty feet from him, he unslung the CAR-15 and found it bend beyond use. He had landed on it hard. The silencer had built by hand just before the collapse was bent and distorted. Much to his astonished horror, the heart of his cherished carbine was trashed also. The aluminum receiver itself was bent where the recoil buffer tube attached to the lower half of the weapon's receiver. The gun was trashed and he was pissed off like he had never been since the collapse had happened.
He felt for his cherished, custom 9mm semi-auto pistol, a Spanish built Star. It had fallen out of his quick draw, pants pocket holster, and it now lay somewhere in the shadows of the poorly lit barn. "I'll find it later," he mumbled to himself, "I'm almost done here."
He felt the cargo pocket of his military style BDU trousers and felt that the little Beretta Bobcat with it's silencer was still there. That was more than he needed for that fucking kid. Not even that. He was just going to need his bare hands.
In pure anger he tossed aside his beloved and now hopelessly bent CAR-15. His much loved instrument of wrath with which he had harvested countless prey over the seasons.
As he approached the cowering child, left arm and hand arm numb, throbbing, and dripping blood; the rest of him still stiff from the pain and bruises of the fall and landing on the hard ground with the CAR-15 strapped to his back. He steadily walked towards the kid with a gaze of raw, murderous hatred.
As the kid looked up at his approach, shaking with fear, she pressed the buttplate of the stock of her little Chipmunk into her hip and using a great deal of her strength she grabbed the cocking knob on the back of the bolt with her little right hand and pulled back the striker of the Chipmunk. With an audible, "CLICK", the striker was cocked. The diminutive little rifle was now ready to fire.
JD took another couple of slow, deliberate steps towards her, still grinning his demonic grin.
The kid backing up further into the horse stall, shaking in fear, brought the Chipmunk up to her shoulder, aimed it at JD's chest, and said, "You're a bad man you monster! Go away! Now! Or I'll hurt you!"
JD looked right into her eyes and said, "Hurt me all you want you little shit, I'm gonna eat your beating fucking heart in front of your dying eyes you little bitch!" and with his demonic grin fully intact, JD lunged at the kid.
She squealed in fear as JD reached her. JD knocked the muzzle of the Chipmunk down, and his hands grabbed her by the throat.
Just as his hands made contact with her throat, out of pure fear reaction, she pulled the trigger on the Chipmunk.
Just as he grabbed her throat, the muzzle of the Chipmunk was inches from his crotch. When the weapon fired, the thirty two grain hollowpoint bullet punched through his military BDU style pants and his underwear, hitting his left testicle at a velocity of over sixteen hundred feet per second, blowing it to shreds.
The hydrostatic shock from the bullet and it's impact traveled through the scrotum slamming it's energy into the right testicle, imparting a level of shock to it equivalent to good punch with a fist. The bullet exited the rear of the scrotum, now mushroomed out to a bit past thirty two caliber. It then left a bloody crease down the sensitive, though horribly un-bathed, skin of JD's crotch. It then tore a bloody crease out of the inward side of the lower section of his left buttocks before exiting out the back of his pants.
The moment the Chipmunk fired, JD suddenly let loose a fierce, high pitched scream, released his grip of the kid, and dropped into a fetal crouch, landing in the straw and manure on the floor of the front part of the horse stall.
The kid backed up and she felt the rear of the horse stall contact her back.
She was cornered. Between her and the beckoning ecstasy of escape was the crouched figure of the screaming boogie-man before her.
As he was bent over with his hands over his crotch. The feeling was like being kicked in the balls by King Kong but the waves of pain and stomach turning revulsion just wouldn't stop after a short while like it did when you were normally kicked in the balls. With blood running between his fingers, JD vomited into the straw and horse dung mixture at the bottom of the stall.
The kid, still shaking bad from fear and adrenaline, worked the bolt on the Chipmunk, ejecting the empty shell casing. She fished desperately into the right front pocket of her little denim overalls for one of the .22 long rifle rounds she had put in there while up in the hay loft.
She found a .22 shell and moved to put it into the Chipmunk's receiver. She was shaking so bad she almost dropped the shell, but she got it in.
Through waves of pain, JD realized he had just been shot in the nuts. He couldn't believe it, the little bitch had shot him in the nuts!
Still clutching his bleeding crotch JD looked over at the kid. She was just closing home the bolt an that fucking pint sized .22 of hers. JD wanted to kill her bad now, really bad, and he wasn't about to let the little bitch shoot him again.
She saw the monster get up on his knees, one hand propping him up on the ground, the other still clutching his crotch.
She saw the monster look her right in the eyes with pure hatred. It scared her so much she let out a small squeal of fright. Her first instincts were to run, but she had nowhere to run to. The monster was between her and freedom.
She knew the Chipmunk was her only hope against the monster. She braced the end of the buttstock into her hip, grabbed the striker knob, and with and an audible, "CLICK", once again, the little Chipmunk was cocked and ready to fire.
JD had his fill of this shit. He was going to grab the little bitch, alive, and really teach her what pain was.
The kid aimed the Chipmunk at JD just a few feet away. She yelled, "Go away monster or I'll hurt you again."
Suddenly JD lunged at her and grabbed the end of the Chipmunk's barrel with his uninjured left hand. Still on his knees he braced himself against the side of the horse stall with his bloody right hand. He got a firm grip on the barrel and yanked hard to tear the rifle from her grasp.
As the monster grabbed her rifle, in fear she held on tighter. Suddenly he yanked the Chipmunk hard. She let out a squeal and her right finger squeezed the trigger.
Once again the Chipmunk fired, except this time the muzzle of the little rifle had been pressed right up against the large knuckle joint of JD's left thumb.
JD screamed, let go of the muzzle, and fell backwards into the manure and straw, trying to clutch one wounded hand with another.
She saw that the monster was still between her and escape. Still shaking badly with fear, she worked the bolt as hard and as fast as she could, ejecting the spent rimfire cartridge casing. She began fumbling again in the right front pocket of her denim overalls for another cartridge.
JD looked at his hand, forgetting about the kid for a moment. He was in a state of disbelief as to how bad his hand was hurt.
The thumb was hanging on by connective tissue on either side, but the big knuckle joint was blown to shreds and there were even small fragments of bone and cartilage protruding from the gaping exit hole on the back of his hand.
It then dawned on him that the function of the hand would be permanently impaired and he might even have to amputate his own thumb in the next day or so.
As he was bemoaning the mangling of his hand, he faintly heard an audible, "CLICK", that came from the far end of the horse stall.
JD looked away from his hand and turned his head towards the kid he still had trapped, it was the direction that the mechanical 'click' had come from.
JD looked at her as she raised the little rifle to her shoulder again, aimed right at him.
With great effort and with no small amount of pain he stood up. He stood there, blocking the end of the horse stall, in agonizing pain from his crotch to the top of his head.
JD and the kid stood there, facing each other, each trying to decide what to do next.
The kid, looking as serious as a six year girl old with freckles, pigtails, and a rifle could look, yelled at JD, "Get out of here you monster or I'll really hurt you bad this time!"
JD, not one to listen to anyone about anything, wasn't about to back down from this pint sized little cunt and her piece of shit, single shot toy.
JD said to her in a sinister tone, "So kid, you want to play big people games, fine, now it's time for you to fuckin' die just like a big person."
With that, JD stuck his pitchfork injured right hand into the side cargo pocket of the Army style camouflage pants he was wearing and pulled out his little Beretta Bobcat with the small silencer on it.
In his well practiced move to quickly point the pistol at the kid and kill her in her tracks, he had surprisingly a hard time grasping the pistol with his badly injured hand, and, much his horrified astonishment, he fumbled and dropped the pistol into the manure and straw. He quickly moved to reach down and pick it up.
When she saw the pistol come out, she knew what she had to do. She drew a bead on his chest and pulled the Chipmunk's trigger, just as he unexpectedly bent down.
JD heard the crack of the Chipmunk firing and he felt himself hit the floor of the stall like a wet sack of cement.
The little .22 bullet had hit JD in the neck, punched through his windpipe, miraculously missed all of the major arteries and veins, and then lodged in his spine, badly damaging his spinal cord.
JD lay there sprawled in the hay and manure of the horse stall. He was laying chest down, his head turned and laying it's left side.
His feeling below his neck was strange and sporadic. He tried to move his arms and legs but the most he got out of them was a few twitches. He was having trouble breathing too. He heard his breath come and go in ragged gurgles. He tried to say something but it only caused him choke out a strange noise.
As he lay there, struggling in his predicament, he heard a noise that caused his mind to release a sudden, involuntary reaction of fear.
"CLICK"
JD, for the first time since the collapse, felt the cold fear of utter helplessness. As he lay there, a small pair of dirty, scuffed up white and pink sneakers with the image of Winnie the Pooh emblazoned on the sides came within his limited field of view.
As JD moved his eyes upwards he saw the kid standing there, looking down upon him with the barrel of the Chipmunk aimed right at his face. He knew she was just a small little runt and the rifle was only a .22 the size of a BB gun, but from his current viewpoint she looked twenty feet tall and the muzzle of the Chipmunk looked like business end of a howitzer.
He noticed, oddly enough, that she was no longer shaking with fear.
She said to him, "Monster, you hurt my Mommy and you hurt my Daddy and you hurt my puppy. I'm gonna make sure you never hurt anyone else ever again."
JD tried to say something, tried to talk to the kid, get her to calm down, but all that came out was a gurgle.
JD watched in terror as the muzzle of the Chipmunk moved upwards, out of his line of sight. For a split second, the predator in him morbidly wondered where she was moving the muzzle of the rifle to. The answer came when he felt the steel of the barrel's small muzzle enter the outer part of his remaining good ear.
The last thing he ever heard was a sharp "BANG!" that to him was as loud as all of the thunder in the world.
The girl looked upon JD's body. One of his legs was still twitching, just like when her daddy shot a rabbit. She took one Winnie the Pooh shod foot and gave JD's head a couple of hard shoves. By the limp way it moved, and the growing pool of blood beneath the head, she knew that the monster was finally dead.
She reloaded the Chipmunk and then cocked it with it's tell tale "CLICK". This time though, she put the safety on.
She then walked around JD's body, still clutching the Chipmunk in her hands. As she calmly and confidently headed towards the much brighter light of the day pouring in through the open barn door, she knew now that she could, and would, slay any monster, and she would never be afraid again.
**
JD came back to where he was, at the reckoning with Peter, spooked and chilled to the core. Violently dying once was shock enough, doing it twice was almost too much even for him to bare. He remembered, everything about that life, it was now an indelible part of him.
Peter looked at JD and said, "Well, JD, I guess the one positive thing you did in that life is that you really helped shape the personality of that little girl. She grew into an exceptional woman."
"Oh yeah?" said JD, who suddenly gave his best demonic grin, "Well, at least I got the little bitch's parents."
Peter, shaking his head sadly, said to JD, "My goodness, you are so incorrigible and stubborn."
Peter waved to one side and suddenly, like before, a scene opened up before JD, just like it had while looking at the wreckage of the end of his first death.
In the window, JD felt as if he was there but he couldn't interact with anything. He was only an observer, the ultimate voyeur.
He was shocked as he watched the girl heading back to the house from the barn suddenly squeal in delight and break out into a run as she saw her father come out of the house.
The girl's daddy was soaking wet from falling into the creek and he had a really nasty looking wound where JD's .22 bullet had hit his cheek from the front and had exited out the side of the cheek further back. He'd recover but the scar would be nasty.
The man went back into the barn, and searched JD's body for the handcuff keys which he then used to un-shackle his suffering, badly injured wife.
When the wife was laid down in her bed, the man and his daughter went back into the barn.
The man drug JD out and then he and his kid went over JD's body, stripping every bit of gear and clothing off except for his bloody underwear.
The man looked at his daughter and said, "Waste not, want not. Even in death, this man will still serve a useful purpose."
The man went over to a large garage and in there JD heard a diesel engine roar to life.
"Wow," thought JD, the man actually had some diesel left. That place would have been such a haul.
Out of the gaping darkness of the garage door, a small Kubota tractor with a skip loader on the front and a backhoe on the rear headed towards JD's body.
"Hey," JD thought in a sentimentally odd sort of way, "At least I get a decent burial this time."
The man got JD's almost naked body into the front of the skip loader and then the tractor started moving around towards the back of the barn.
JD was aghast, "You sonofabitch!" he yelled, though no one but Peter could hear him.
The man drove the tractor up to the wooden fence and then, with the flick of a lever, dropped JD's body out of the bucket of the raised skip loader and into the mass of hungry hogs in the pig pen.
The hogs smelled the blood and the fresh meat and became extremely excited at the prospect of the surprise feast. They tore into JD's corpse like a small pack of two hundred pound land piranhas.
The image disappeared and JD, obviously shaken but trying to hide it, looked at Peter and said, "So, you did your bullshit, not that I'm impressed, you old fuck."
Peter, suddenly a lot closer, reached towards JD's forehead with his hand and said, "But JD, for you this ride has just begun." As his hand touched JD's forehead, the avalanche of thought began again as he and yet another shade of himself merged into one.
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10,989 Posts
For years Melvin has declined to demonstrate any type of proof that any preparations he has made are real. What he doesn't comprehend is that there is a very wide gap between his earning ability and and our earning ability. This has limited Melvin's fantasy to living out of someone else's back pack, rather than delving into all potential aspects.
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7,684 Posts
I'll simply ask the same basic question I've asked on numerous of occasions regarding your prognostications of "it absolutely WILL be this way in shtf".
The question is simple and direct - in all of human history, since the dawn of recorded civilization, can you point out a single example of a shtf or teotwawki situation where everyone who survived did so by being a lone drifter?
I contend that you can't. (Even Noah's ark had four families and a bunch of stored provisions...) And if you can't find ONE example of it happening in all of human history, to dogmatically insist that it "MUST" happen "this time" is nothing more than mental masturbation.
I love Warren Buffet's line: "The most dangerous - and most stupid - statement people make about the market is that it's different this time". I don't think I'm smarter than Warren Buffet, and I don't think you are either.
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