{ON HOLD} Where My Loyalties Lie (Vanoss Crew Fanfic)

Chapter 27

We got there too late. Brian had pulled up the car into a screeching halt and we all hopped out, armed to the teeth and anticipating an attack. But there was no attack. Tire marks leading out of the camp indicated that those responsible for the attack had left in a rush and were most likely not coming back. All that was left was the smoke billowing from the arching fires littering the parking lot, spent bullet casings, and countless bullet-riddled bodies that lay in collapsed heaps. I noticed the dead bodies of Zachary's guards lying in the burned grass with their weapons by their sides. As our little band of warriors picked our way through the carnage, avoiding the bodies, I felt a sudden burst of anguish that was quickly replaced by hot, burning anger. As far as I could tell, nobody had been spared – men, women, and children. Their mutilated bodies and sightless eyes stared up at us as we searched for survivors in vain through the clouds of ash and burning embers.

Brian muttered incredulously upon seeing how brutally one person had been killed, his voice shaking, "Jesus..." The person in question's head had been crushed like a watermelon, blood and brains splattering the ground in front of them. "What the fuck happened here?" He nervously scanned the lot, his eyes skittering from place to place.

"It's a fucking massacre." Jonathan spoke up from across the lot. His blue eyes were burning with red hot fury as he knelt down beside the body of a large figure. I stepped over to him and my breath caught in my throat. Jonathan was kneeling next to the Rich's corpse who was clutching the dead body of pretty woman with chestnut colored hair to his chest. He had three bullet holes in his chest, dried blood crusting the edges his shirt and the rifle he had taken when searching for Alice with her parents was lying next to him. Jonathan shook his head angrily before gently closing Rich's eyes shut and standing up. He walked away, picking his way through the bodies, while I stayed behind staring at Rich's closed eyes.

I whispered, "You were a good man, Rich. You didn't deserve to die." I said a silent goodbye as I left his body, Rest in peace buddy. My gaze fell on Marcel who was standing guard by the armored tuner with a distraught and disgusted look on his face. His hands were tightly gripping the stock of his carbine rifle and when his eyes met mine, he sadly shook his head before turning away. I myself turned around towards the Ammu-Nation store and as I made my way to the double doors, I steeled myself for anything that I might see. Zachary had told me that they had set up shop in the store and that they held all their equipment in there – including their radio.

That meant that Zachary's body was in there as well.

Reaching the double doors whose red paint was peeling, I noted that it was riddled with bullet holes and that in a few places I could see through them into the building. Slowly, I opened the door while poking the barrel of my AK47 through the doorway as it squealed open. The scene beyond it was not a pretty one. The first thing my eyes were attracted to was the large "X" that was drawn in blood on the wall, the crimson liquid barely dried and still dripping in some spots. Shoving down my revulsion, I stepped into the trashed room. The doors closed behind me with a painful squeak, closing me off from the outside world.

The next thing I saw corpses littering the floor of the shop, their blood pooling beneath their bodies and branching out like mini rivers. Some of them just had simple bullet holes to the head, signifying a quick death; others were horribly mutilated and were barely recognizable as people. Some of them were pushed aside into piles by the sides of the room and more were sprawled out on the floor. I swallowed hard, keeping my Ak47 cradled in my arms as I picked my way through the destruction and searching for the radio. I rounded the corner of what used to be the display case for all the guns, the broken glass from the display crunching under my feet, and found what was left of Zachary.

He was lying down on his side, his face turned slightly upward, and there was a bullet hole in his chest and another one in his forehead. The radio had been shot and smashed, and it was resting by his feet just at the edge of the puddle of Zachary's blood. His sightless eyes stared blankly up at me as I stepped closer towards his body, and after a few steps I noticed something horribly wrong. Both of Zachary's arms had been chopped off and his head had been severed from his neck leaving a bloody stump. Multiple veins and arties were splaying out of the stumps, tiny bits of deathly white bone poking up through the dead flesh. I spotted his arms a few feet away where a couple cockroaches and flies were skittering over them, digging into their meal.