Jordan Rose Duology (Book 2): Homecoming Read online

  Homecoming

  Book Two of the Jordan Rose Duology

  By Jeff Favreau

  For Megan and Lily.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 1

  The faux-leather was hot and sticky, her breath only adding to the sheen of sweat she was covered in. Jamie peeled her face off the bench seat of the Chevrolet Suburban, her arms bound behind her back. Rocking back and forth, she jerked herself into a seated position with a resigned sigh. Jamie was in the furthest back of two rows in the rat’s nest of a vehicle. Trash was scattered everywhere adding to the musty stench to which she’d become accustomed. The inside of the windows were grimy, the outside splashed with brown mud, but she could still see out of them. The vehicle was one of about five or six in a wide circle around a bonfire burning with a bright flame despite the afternoon sun. There were people milling about around the fire, everyone heavily armed except for one man.

  Seth. That’s what he called himself but Jamie wasn’t so sure it was his real name. He didn’t look like a Seth, with his long dark hair and dark olive complexion. He’d always pretended to be nice, going out of his way to be pleasant; the guy who could get Jamie anything she wanted. But it was what he wanted that she denied him. Her only possessions were the marks and bruises from the punches and slaps of Seth’s men. Seth always claimed he was shielding her from the rapes that would have undoubtedly already been happening should he turn her over to his men, but Jamie knew he was just preserving her for himself. It was a game to Seth, getting her consent. He could have easily raped her a hundred times over, but he always played the gentleman. Jamie had never given in, never consented, and she’d paid the price for each refusal. Seth was always careful to not be present when she was being “punished,” that was part of the game, but she knew her beatings and the withholding of food were always a direct result of Jamie’s refusal to sleep with him.

  Today was different, though. Everyone was milling around the circle, fully armed. This was unusual, as many people chose to drink the days away when they weren’t preparing for another “hunt.” There were always games. Unless they could create some psychotic game, it didn’t appear to be worth doing. By Seth’s logic, without the games and hunts, they were just as bad as the infected, mindlessly killing to survive. Despite his failings being anything close to a respectable human being, it was hard to deny that Seth was smart...and cunning. Seth had not started out as the leader of this Hell’s Angel’s gang, but if his stories could be believed, it didn’t take him long to become it.

  Jamie chuckled to herself. A prisoner in his SUV and all she could do was gaze out at Seth and think about how smart and cunning a person he was. She’d always been so much stronger than this, how did she get herself into this situation? “A series of bad decisions, dummy,” Jamie said to herself aloud. She often talked to herself while locked in the Suburban. No one could hear her and it was nice to hear another voice besides Seth’s.

  “You never realized how good you had it in Boston. Med School sucked, but you made a ton of money modeling,” said Jamie, subconsciously rubbing a dove tattoo on the underside of her left forearm.

  “You know why you left Boston, it’s not like I had a fucking choice, okay?” Jamie replied to herself, suddenly heated.

  “Okay fine,” she sighed after a pause. “I get it, he was an asshole. But Montreal? Did you really have to go that far away?” she questioned.

  Jamie laughed. “Was it that far? It was only like an hour north of Burlington. Plus it was good timing, Boston got quarantined right after that,” she said.

  “Hmm,” Jamie mumbled. “Yeah that all worked out real well.” She adjusted her restrained arms behind her back. She looked over to the window at Seth who was standing near the bonfire. “Fucker,” she said softly in his direction.

  Jamie sighed, leaned over in the seat and rested the right side of her head against the window. It was sometimes hours or even a day between when they’d dump Jamie in the Suburban and when they’d get her out again. Jamie had become so bored while being held captive in the van that she’d taken to making up names for all of the men in the camp. Seth had never bothered to tell her any names besides his own and it never came up when it was their turn to give her a beating.

  Most of the names were uninspired and usually based on appearance. For example, there was tall shaved head guy, fat shaved head guy, guy with the silver eagle jacket, guy with the American flag bandana on his head, or white bearded guy with yellow teeth. There were a few women as well, all of whom answered directly to Seth but were clearly “shared” around the camp. Jamie was equally unoriginal with their monikers: crazy red-haired bitch or crazy green-haired bitch. Jamie didn’t currently see crazy black-haired bitch (Jamie called her BHB for short), but that was not unusual. BHB was their scout, possibly ex-military, and she would go off for days at a time before reporting back to Seth with their next target. She was the worst of the women. BHB knew that Seth was trying to recruit Jamie to be part of “the team” and BHB was the jealous type. Luckily, she had nothing to worry about, Jamie wasn’t interested.

  Peripherally, Jamie made note that only about half of her nick-named captors were present. Probably off scouting someplace or another, maybe with BHB. Not that she really cared. It wasn’t like they kept her in the loop or anything. She was just the captive girl in the SUV.

  At some point, Jamie must have dozed off as she woke up with start, a line of drool stretching down the window below her mouth. She’d been awoken by a shout outside of the Suburban. Sitting up and wiping the drool from her lip with her shoulder, Jamie could see increased activity in the camp. Everyone seemed tense. In the distance, Jamie noticed BHB walking into the camp. She appeared much worse for wear, with large sweat stains on her shirt and injuries to her face that Jamie could see, even from far away.

  BHB walked in between two trucks parked on the far side of the circle and right up to Seth who was standing by the bonfire. The fire was still large but had died down a bit. As BHB reached Seth, she threw her arms around his neck and began to give him a full-on, deep mouth kiss. “Jeez we get it, you like him,” mumbled Jamie to herself. Everyone else seemed to be thinking the same thing, as they were moving away from the center of camp to different locations all around the ring of trucks.

  BHB broke her kiss with Seth, turned and pointed to a large cluster of trees up a small hillside from the camp. Immediately, gunfire erupted from all over the camp, converging on that location. Jamie, shocked by the sudden cacophony, instinctively threw herself down on the bench seat.

  The gunfire seemed to last forever but then stopped almost at once, leaving a long silence. Jamie was tempted to sit up and see what was going on, but before she could move, another series of shots erupted, still loud but further away. These were quickly joined by more, closer and louder shots.

  As the gun battle raged on, Jamie knew that she couldn’t just continue to lay on the seat. She needed to try and take this opportunity to escape. Sitting up and peeking out the window against which she’d been sleeping only a short time before, Jamie could see several dead bodies scattered around the camp including the body of Seth whose head seemed to be about half the size it’d been previously. Jamie could also see BHB’s legs sticking out of the central bonfire, her body
slowly being consumed by the flames. Despite the death around her, Jamie couldn’t help but smile. Soothing satisfaction mingled with a sense of weight being lifted from her shoulders was undeniable, but Jamie didn’t have any time to savor the feeling. A large blast on the hillside shook the Suburban so much that she thought it was going to flip over. “What the fuck was that!?” yelled Jamie as she dove for cover on the floor between the seats. The gunfire from the camp seemed to pick up, as if answering the blast.

  It was time to go. Seth was dead and there was no way she would be spared from rape and death if the other half of the gang returned before she could get away. Jamie wrenched herself up off of the floor and heaved her body over the back of the next bench seat, flopping down on the other side, one row closer to the driver’s seat. In front of her were the two captain’s chairs for the driver and front passenger. Before she could get out though, she needed to get out of her restraints.

  The battle seemed to have died down slightly outside. There didn’t appear to be as much gunfire. Glancing out the window, she could see a few of the bikers firing on another truck in the circle. One of them, possibly tall head-shaved guy, stood and reached back to throw something in the direction in which they’d been shooting. Before he could let go, his bald head exploded in a burst of red mist and gore. Whatever he was going to throw dribbled slowly out of his dead hand. There was a blinding flash of white, red and orange and the truck he’d been hiding behind was thrown into the air, landing on its roof a short distance away. The blast shattered the windows on the passenger side of the Suburban, pieces of glass flying in every direction inside. Thrown to the floor, Jamie continued to lay in the silence that followed.

  Several minutes passed, possibly longer, until she was sure there would be no more gunshots. Ignoring the sting of numerous cuts on her face and arms from the glass, Jamie rolled over, grabbed the largest piece she could find and got to work sawing away at the bindings on her wrists behind her back. It wasn’t easy and it took some time before she finally heard a snap and her wrists separated from each other. Shaking blood back into her arms and rubbing her wrists worn raw, Jamie slowly peaked out of the shattered windows of the Suburban. She could see two figures, likely a man and a woman, in a charred area on the hillside. They appeared to be standing over another figure lying on the ground in the blackened clearing. Jamie thought about calling for help but then decided against it. These people had just eliminated half of the biker gang from which she’d been unable to escape for months. While grateful, she couldn’t be sure she could trust them. Jamie sat, watching and waiting for them to leave, willing them to move quickly. The other half of the gang could return at any time.

  As she watched, Jamie was startled by a loud scream somewhere off to her left in the woods beyond where the woman and man were standing. Infected. Those screams had haunted her dreams ever since she’d first heard them. The man and woman immediately took off at a run away from Jamie and the camp. Finding herself now alone, Jamie kicked open the Suburban’s front passenger door and hopped out. Looking around the camp quickly, she could see that most of the vehicles were damaged in the fight, some more so than others. Jamie ran over to a beat-up, almost broken-down green truck and yanked open the driver’s side door. The familiar chime of the keys in the ignition was exactly what Jamie wanted to hear.

  Jumping inside, closing and locking both doors and rolling up the windows, Jamie was about to start the truck when she heard more screams, all of which were very close. They were here. Likely drawn by the gunfight and explosions, the infected had found their camp. It was too late to hide anywhere else. She was going to have to hide in the truck.

  Looking behind the seat of the truck, Jamie found an old red blanket, ratty and oil stained. Pulling it out, she wedged herself into the passenger side footwell. As she was covering herself with the blanket, Jamie looked up at the driver’s side window. She could no longer see what was going on outside in the camp, but she could tell that the infected were close. Their screams and howls were louder than ever. Before Jamie could pull the blanket up over her head, a face appeared in the driver’s side window. Heart in her throat, Jamie realized it wasn’t an infected. It was the green-haired bitch (GHB). She tried the door and found it locked. Looking in, GHB saw Jamie and began to pound on the window, screaming at her, pleading for her to open the door. Jamie couldn’t help but smile at GHB, her pleas turning to obscenities. Jamie only had to endure a few seconds of verbal abuse before GHB disappeared out of sight amid flashes of bare skin and nappy hair. Jamie pulled the blanket over her head and prepared for a long night.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Wave after wave of infected seemed to pour by as the night dragged on. Jamie’s truck was like an island in a raging torrent of water pouring in the direction in which the camp’s attackers had fled. While most of the infected that made their way by the truck squeezed around it, some decided to go up and over it. Jamie hoped that the windows held. If they broke, she was done for.

  Swaying back and forth, Jamie pictured herself on a boat rocking in the waves as body after infected body slammed by. Their screams were like a howling, storming wind accompanying the battering waves. Whether because of poor night vision or they just didn’t care, the impacts continued through the night. Jamie was frozen, refusing to move, blanket over her head. In the darkness, Jamie probably no longer needed it over her, but she wasn’t taking any chances. The infected had never been something she’d ever underestimated from the start. Better to be extra cautious than wind up as one of them.

  Jamie’s legs were cramping and her back was aching from being wedged into the footwell as the night dragged on. Every time she’d move just a little bit to stretch out her legs, another infected would slam into the car, freezing her in place. It was torture and she wanted nothing more than to stand and stretch. On and on in the darkness, the pain became more and more intense until she mercifully reached a point where she just started to go numb. That was good, numb was better than painful, but she knew when she eventually did stand, it was going to be excruciating.

  Well past midnight, the stream of bodies seemed to slow. The bumps into the truck became more random and and with less frequency. As the inky blackness started to wane and dawn approached, Jamie realized she hadn’t heard or felt any infected in quite some time.

  Her movements glacial, Jamie lowered the blanket off her head just enough to expose one of her eyes. She didn’t have much of a view of her surroundings, just the windows and the overcast sky beyond. The fact that she could even differentiate the truck’s roof from the slate-colored sky told her she’d made it through the night. The driver’s side window was smeared with blood but the widow and the rest of the truck did not appear severely damaged, at least from the inside.

  Taking a deep breath and bracing herself for the inevitable pain of her blood flowing back into her numb body, Jamie forced herself, very slowly, up on to the bench seat of the truck. Being careful not to rise above the bottom of the windows, Jamie laid on the seat for some time, all her joints tingling and aching as feeling returned to them.

  Jamie didn’t know what to expect. What would the world outside of the truck look like? Would there be infected still milling around? Jamie didn’t know but she did know she couldn’t sit in the truck forever. Pulling herself into a slouching, sitting position in the passenger seat, Jamie was afforded a panoramic view of the camp around the truck.

  She was surprised how similar the camp looked to the last time she’d seen it. All the vehicles were still in a circle with the exception of the one that had been thrown onto it’s roof. The fire in the center was now a mound of smoldering wood, BHB’s legs were mostly charred but still visible. The other dead of the camp were generally where they’d been when they died. Seth was still lying near the fire. His body had been trampled pretty heavily, but otherwise was still in tact. It appeared as though the infected were just interested in living prey not the dead-unless they’d made them that way.

  The
re also appeared to be no movement. Everything was still. Reaching over, Jamie grabbed the lever for the window and rolled it down slightly. The quiet seemed unearthly. There were no birds, no animals, no wind, just silence.

  Jamie sat there for some time observing and listening. The last thing she needed was to be mauled right when she opened the door after surviving the night. Reaching over, Jamie unlocked the door, opened the passenger side door, and slowly at first but then faster, hopped out. Quickly moving from the door, she moved to the rear of the truck and squatted down making herself small. If she was going to be a target, she was going to be a small one, difficult to focus in on and ready to spring away from danger. A coiled spring ready to let go, Jamie waited and waited but an attack never came.

  Relaxing, Jamie stood up and leaned her back against the truck. Now able to get in a good stretch, she again surveyed the camp. Bodies, weapons, canned food and water were scattered about haphazardly. Every other vehicle in the circle seemed to have either broken or open windows so there were likely no survivors left...except the scouting party that was still away. Jamie realized that they probably should’ve been back by now and if they hadn’t already come, they’d be due any time.

  Jamie ran over to Seth, the closest dead body, looking for weapons. He was a bloody mess, unrecognizable aside from his clothing. Kicking his body aside, Jamie picked up Seth’s AK-47 which he’d been lying upon. Jamie slung it over her shoulder and collected several more weapons from other bodies before depositing them near the truck. She then gathered food and water from several piles around the camp. Grabbing a cardboard pallet of canned food, she ran over to her truck and hefted the pallet up onto the side. Peeking into the bed of the truck for a spot to drop the pallet, Jamie came face to face with a nappy-haired blond man with a matted, thick beard. He was looking right back at her, eyes wide, inches from her face.