'Til Death Do Us Part

CHAPTER THIRTY

Eliza and Tomas

Kong was underneath the hood of yet another truck trying his best to hold up his end of the bargain with Eliza, when one of his men tapped him on the shoulder.

“Fucking what?” Kong asked heatedly.

“She’s back,” his helper answered nervously.

Kong turned, the black tinted window, late model Chevy Camaro idled on the far side of the lot. The car was pointed directly at him; he knew better than to wave her over to him. He jumped off his work bench and walked over. He wiped the grease and now-forming sweat off his hands as he did so. Her window lowered as he approached. He could not fathom how someone so beautiful could be so cruel, and on top of that, she seemed particularly pissed off. He noted that his end of the conversation was going to consist of a bunch of head nods and yesses at all the appropriate times.

“We will leave within the hour,” she told him, never even looking over at his face as he bent over to look in.

He had ten great reasons why that couldn’t happen. “As you wish, mistress,” was his reply.

Her window rolled up.

Now he had the unenviable task of figuring out how to make it happen. “Wrench!” Tank shouted for his helper. “Are all the trucks topped off with fuel?”

“You know the answer to that,” Wrench told him, getting back to switching out the water pump in the truck they had been working on.

“Shit,” Kong said. Eliza was a day earlier than she had told him she was going to be. They had completely sucked the diesel tanks dry at the truck stop. He was going to send a fair number of trucks to a nearby station to top off, now he had no time. “Wrench, stop what you’re doing.” Wrench looked up. “Any truck not making the journey or has less than half a tank of fuel needs to have its fuel siphoned.”

“Kong that is NOT going to go over well with those truckers.”

“Not much of a choice. Get an armed escort if you have to. She wants to leave in less than hour.”

Kong was happy when Wrench didn’t say the traditional ‘Ain’t gonna happen’; there was no sense to it. They had all thrown the dice when they opted to work for Eliza. Although ‘work for’ might be somewhat liberal, ‘indentured servant’ was probably a better fit.

The smell of diesel wafted across the parking lot as men in a hurry took diesel from one truck to place in others—more than a fair amount landing on the ground—and still Eliza sat in her car. Kong doubted she was watching any of the activity going on around her.

***

Exactly fifty-eight minutes later, the last of the trucks pulled out of the parking lot, seventeen trucks stood as lone sentinels.

Kong pulled up alongside Eliza’s car. “Five of the drivers of the seventeen trucks sitting are not going,” Kong said as he pointed back to a small group of men standing in a loose circle.

Eliza rolled her window back up. Kong hurriedly put his truck in gear, wishing to get as far away from what he expected to happen as soon as possible. He had made sure to double check with the men, strongly urging them to rethink their stance, they hadn’t yielded. He saw Eliza’s car rolling towards the men in his rearview mirror before he turned and lost sight.

***

Eliza stepped out, her black leather high heeled boot cracking into the gravel of the parking lot. “I will require my vials back,” Eliza stated as she approached the men.

Detrick, one of the first drivers to come on with Kong spoke up. “See. Mistress,” he said, taking his Mack Trucks hat off and wringing it in his hands, “we sort of felt like maybe we had earned them with all the hard work we’ve done for you.”

“Is Michael Talbot and his family dead?” Eliza asked arching an eyebrow.

“Well, and that’s another thing, this Talbot family and his kin…they haven’t done anything to us. Isn’t that right?” he asked the other four men who looked like they would all rather be receiving hot lava enemas at the moment than being under the scrutiny of Eliza’s gaze.

“Is it not enough that they have wronged me?” she asked almost sweetly.

“We don’t have to take this shit from an itty bitty little girl,” one of the newer drivers, Lonnie, stated. “My rig is a fucking paperweight now just because I didn’t have a full tank of gas. I’ve given all I’m going to give, and if this stupid vial does half of what all you scared fucks says it does, I will consider it payment for my fuel. Now you’re all bowing to this?” he asked pointing to Eliza.

Tommy was shaking his head back and forth as he watched the exchange. Eliza was wearing a bemused smile.

“Mistress, he’s new. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about and doesn’t speak for all of us,” Detrick replied.

“Fuck you, man,” Lonnie said. “We were just having this conversation before she came over, and if I remember correctly, you said something about how you’d like to bend her over your fender.” Detrick looked like he’d swallowed a living fish, his body was quivering. “In fact, I’m not so sure this vial is adequate payment.” Lonnie approached Eliza and broke into her personal space. He was looking down at her threateningly. “Look, even her pussy brother’s not coming to her aid.” He pointed to the Chevy.

“Don’t, Lonnie,” Detrick said, at first stepping closer, but then stepping back when Eliza looked over to him.

“Why? She’s so fine, maybe Lonnie junior can put a smile on that frozen face,” Lonnie said with a leer.

“Would men be able to think at all if they didn’t have their manhood?” Eliza asked Detrick. “You pull that scrawny little worm out that you call ‘Lonnie Jr.’ and I will tear it from your body.”

Lonnie faltered for a moment. “Come on, guys, we can all have her,” he said, all of a sudden feeling like he needed back up.

“Mistress, we just want to go on our way, your fight is not ours,” Detrick said, handing her his vial back.

The three other men who had been hanging back followed suit with Detrick.

“Fine, you bunch of women!” Lonnie yelled at the group. “It’s your lucky day,” he said, pointing to Eliza, “but I’m keeping the damned vial.” He turned and began to walk away.

“I get the vial back, Detrick, or none of you leave this parking lot alive,” Eliza told him coolly.

Detrick had seen enough of her work to know that this was no idle threat. “Stop him,” he told the other three.

It was a minor scuffle, but within a minute, Lonnie’s vial was sitting in the palm of Eliza’s hand.

“We’re free to go now?” Detrick asked.

Eliza didn’t answer as she headed back to the car.

“You’re truly letting them go?” Tomas asked incredulously. His question was answered before the reverberations in the air flow stopped. A group of a dozen or so speeders came through a row of hedges some fifty yards away from the departing men.

It was Detrick who noticed them first. He alerted the rest of the group and then looked back to Eliza’s car before he started running in the opposite direction.

“Let’s go,” Eliza told Tomas.

“You could have let them live,” Tomas said to her as he watched three zombies drag down Lonnie.

The rest of the zombies stopped until they were gently urged to keep chasing down their victims by Eliza.

“You do know at some point you will need humans to repopulate so that you can feed, right?” Tomas asked Eliza.

“Yes, but this is so much more fun than merely letting them go,” Eliza replied.

Tomas sped up to catch the convoy as they were heading down the highway.