The Effacing (Book 1.5): Valley's End by T. Anwar Clark Page A

up with a tremor that would cause her to pull the trigger, let off a shot due to a self-made diagnostic case of discriminating arthritis. Her self-diagnosis never – for the most part – had an outbreak on fellow human beings, but if something was to go down, she would be pre pared for it, just in case.
       “This isn’t good.” Baker stated.
       Ann asked, “What’s that smell?”
       Nobody answered.
       Maria looked to Baker. Baker’s head lowered. He was surly embarrassed.
       Jim and Girder held their awakening silence. They had a feeling they knew what the lumberjack biker and his roommates were gabbing about. After all, Jim and Girder were a part of Trivo’s crew, Rain’s posse. They all dressed alike, and they were all responsible for what happened to Valley’s End in the eyes of the Valley’s End survivors. If that was the lumberjack biker’s topic of discussion, then Jim and Girder were in trouble and already expected it.
       That explained why Jim stood at the door, quailed when it suddenly opened seconds before the dust launched an attack. That was the reason Girder was comfortable enough to burn a bag of that good shit – as he would say it – in the apartment, kick back and light a candle; because they’d run the neighborhood out of the neighborhood. After one look to each other, they put on their NFL Gameday faces, gripped their weapons, finger on the triggers, and stood on guard awaiting their long thought of blaze of glory.
      What Jim and Girder did not know, Rebekah and Ann already knew of Centre City’s little run-in with The End. Trivo told them of it before sticking his hand in that grocery bag booby-trap.
       The lumberjack biker emerged from the crowd, eyebrows low.
       “You must put your differences behind you.” Rebekah said, once again adding a stripe on the sleeve for her honesty, revealing her byline of what had taken place and who was involved, stepping ahead of the Six, tucking her twin XDM in her lower-rear holster. “Our main objective is getting to the docks… and the cavalry should be here any minute. What do you say?”
       The lumberjack biker looked over to Jim and Girder. Then he looked to Baker, and back to Rebekah. “Agreed…” he said. “But… then what?”
       Jim and Girder let go of their triggers.
       “Only you can resolve your quarrels.” Rebekah answered. “But we need to come together for now. What happened here is over… and we must move on before it’s too late.”
       Maria stepped forward, gun in hand, and looked upon the survivors. “Gather all your equipment, all the necessities… and arm yourselves with anything you can find. If you have a gun, don’t pull the trigger unless you have to. Once a shot is fired, it’ll summon anything within the area to our location.”
       Rebekah added, “We stay together, we stay alive. We move out at once.”
       The lumberjack biker raised his right arm, extended his blubbery index and middle fingers beyond the Six, and flagged his two fingers up and down toward the men by the door that shoved the China cabinet in its place.
       The slim character on the right of the China wore a quarter-length black leather jacket over a ruffled Hawaiian button up and blue jeans; the tad-bit bigger young man, opposite him, dressed in a white raincoat with the Red Cross Blue Shield emblem in large print across his back – their shoes probably the same as the lumberjack biker’s. Both of them stared to Jim and Girder as if they couldn’t wait until the event was over and done with, so they could finally extract their revenge while the thought was still fresh on the brain. Similar to how Baker felt about avenging his birth mother’s death, and Girder felt about Jim leaving him to rot – even though they were still together – mentally staging the perfect time to abandon their hostility in a rampaging fit of self-righteous anger.  
       After the intense stare-down, that lasted