“A dead infected? How’d it get in here? What the hell is going on?” She turned to Ben and Carver expecting an explanation.
“Julia.” Ben was surprised to see her, but not entirely. They had been making enough noise now in this back room that eventually someone would’ve heard them. There was only a wall between the monitor room and the interior of the store. Ben sighed and nodded to Carver for the answer to her question. “Why don’t you ask the major.”
Carver scowled at Ben, irritated, and then turned his gaze back to Julia and sighed. “We captured two individuals after they brought a shit ton of infected to our front door. They’re locked up now and we’re dealing with the--”
“Two kids,” Ben broke in. “He locked up two kids.”
“Who were carrying guns that our search party had,” Carver finished with a fit of coughing.
Julia rolled her eyes at the two men as they began to argue and walked to the table to stand over Nadine. “What kind of shit ton are we…” She stopped and watched the hordes racing around the platform outside on the dock. Her mouth hung open and her eyes grew wide as she took in the scene on the monitor. Then a loud bang could be heard coming from the dock room. “What the hell…”
“Those infected fiends were chasing two boys who fought them off for as long as they could, all the way to our door,” Ben explained.
“Fiends?” Julia spoke out the side of her mouth, continuing to watch what looked like a teeming chaos of ants going in all directions.
“That’s what the boys called them. When we saw them trapped with nowhere to go, we opened the door and let them in.”
“And I knew we shouldn’t have.” Carver’s cold eyes fell on Ben. “We put this whole community at risk doing that. And we’re still putting things at risk every second we let these kids stay here. We don’t know if they have more people out there waiting for us to open our doors and let them come in and take everything we have. Not to mention all the infected they just brought on us.”
“But we couldn’t just--”
“He’s right, Benjamin.” Julia finally looked away from the monitor. “Whatever the circumstances, it might not have been the best idea to let random people in here, again.”
“Julia, c’mon! They’re just kids!”
“Doesn’t matter Ben. You know that. A decision like this should’ve been made by all of us. And it doesn’t sound like you even had Eric on your side.”
“He didn’t,” The major added.
“But I shared Ben’s sentiment.” Manson was standing at the doorway of the office with Burrows and Castle holding the corpse next to him.
Julia frowned and gestured at the body, “Make sure no one sees that thing.”
“Oh of course. Of course.”
Julia sighed then rubbed at her eyes. “Where are these kids you’re talking about?”
Carver coughed and pointed a thumb at the closet. Julia shook her head at the major and went to the closet door. Anderson was standing there, looking nervously between the woman and his commanding officer.
“Give me the damn key,” Julia said.
“Just give it to her, Anderson.” Carver followed up with an exasperated sigh.
Anderson gave her the key and she went to open the door. As soon as she unlocked it and turned the knob, the door burst open and Julia was bum-rushed by a teenaged boy who put a small knife to her neck. The boy looked just as surprised to see Julia as she was to see him.
“Holy shit!” Nadine said from across the room.
Carver pulled his pistol free and aimed it at the boy. “Drop the knife!”
It wasn’t until Carver gave the order that Anderson trained his own weapon on the kid.
“Fuck you! Let us go!” Antonio looked around.
“Just give us some supplies and let us go. We’ll just leave,” Miles said as he came out behind his brother.
“Miles, Antonio, please! Don’t do this. Just, everyone calm down.” Ben stepped forward with his hands raised. “Carver, lower your gun. Antonio, put the knife down.
“Fuck you!” Antonio replied.
“No, fuck you!” A voice shouted, and a girl came charging in from the doorway, tackling Antonio.
The knife went sliding across the floor and before Carver could step in to break up the two children wrestling, Ben separated them. Miles watched the girl being pulled off Antonio, kicking and screaming at his brother, and for a moment he saw her green eyes flicker in the ceiling lights. She was beautiful, with auburn hair and a dust of freckles across her cheeks. Miles was smitten.
“Alana, calm down. Calm down,” Ben said, pushing the girl back. He kept a hand on Antonio’s chest and urged him to stay down.
“Maybe now you can see why I was so hesitant about these kids.” Carver put his gun back in his waistband.
“I sure as hell can.” Julia was back on her feet and the expression on her face was nearly as garish as the major’s.
“Who the fuck are they anyway?” Alana looked at Ben, “Dad, what’s going on?”
“Everything’s fine, sweetheart.” Ben’s eyes were darting between the major and Julia. “Look, I did tell them to open the doors and it’s on me that these two boys were let in. But we can’t fault them for wanting to survive. Since they got in here we haven’t exactly been welcoming.”
“And who says that we should be!” Carver was nearly screaming, and a vein could be seen pulsing on his neck. He went into a fit of coughing and put a fist over his mouth.
“Calm down, Eric.” Julia sighed and shook her head at Ben, “I don’t know anything more than what you’ve already told me and I already find it hard to trust a kid who put a knife to my throat.”
Antonio was on the floor, his chest rising and falling with each fevered breath. He caught eyes with Julia, saw the hardline expression on Carver’s face, and also saw the desperation in Ben’s pleading. Miles was lost in the moment and could only keep his eyes on Alana. He wasn’t listening to anything the adults were saying.
“Should we kick them out?” Captain Baker had been quiet in the room up to this point, until now.
“Wait a minute, just wait!” Ben pointed at Baker, “This doesn’t have to end the same way as before. It doesn’t!”
Even on the floor, Antonio still recognized the soldier who had hit him with the butt of his gun earlier. Captain Baker was white, six-two, solid build with a square jaw. Antonio was still sure he could take the brute.
“Please… just let us go. We only came looking for food. We’ll just leave. We promise.” Miles started rocking where he stood.
Carver looked the two boys over again and saw the blank expressions on Antonio and Miles’ faces. Not because they were worried about how things would turn out but because they seemed to not care. Antonio’s eyes were roaming the room. He was looking for an opportunity to change their current situation. Miles was just trying to negotiate to keep from getting killed and still wanted to come out of this with food. But these boys weren’t just kids. If it came down to it, they would kill everyone in this room if it meant staying alive. Carver knew the type because he himself was that type.
“This is all fucked up.” Anderson shook his head, lowering his gun.
“And while we’re in here trying to talk about all this shit, their people are probably surrounding the building.” Carver spat on the floor.
“We don’t have people.” Miles looked around at everyone. “We don’t… we don’t have a group. Or people. We… we’re by ourselves. We were just looking for food. We thought we’d find food here. We were just looking for food.”
“And you thought to come here?” Carver asked, his eyes regarding the boy.
“Who wouldn’t try goin’ to a Costco for food?” Antonio replied from the floor.
Carver eyed Antonio, “It’s not like you could just walk down the street to find this place. We haven’t seen survivors in a while. Where were you coming from?”
“We just been on the road.” Miles spoke louder. “We
came from Oakland. We were in Oakland. We tried to go to San Francisco. But the cities all fell apart. We had to run. We had to move on. We’ve just been moving ever since. We’ve been on the road ever since.”
Carver looked at the boy and blinked slowly. “No one else? Just you two? Just you two kids on the road by yourself?”
“Naw, we had a whole circus wit us. We went around doin’ circus acts and jumpin’ on trampolines and shit,” Antonio said through clenched teeth.
Nadine chuckled at the comment but quickly wiped the smile off her face when the major gave her an icy glare.
Carver turned back to the boy. “Look, I don’t care if you traveled with the three little pigs or the seven dwarves. Do you have anyone else out there either waiting on you or looking to try and get in here?”
“Noooo!” Miles moaned. “It’s just us. We travel alone.”
Carver stroked his beard, letting the silence fill the room and settle. After a sigh he started, “I don’t feel comfortable sending them back out there. They could tell their group where we are.”
Antonio was allowed to get to his feet. “We don’t got no group!” he shouted at the major.
“Bullshit. No way two punk kids just travel the road out there and make it this far. You’ve got a hideout, people waiting or whatever the fuck out there. And I’m not going to let you get reinforcements to come back and kill us.”
“Then just give us some food and we’ll leave with no problem.” Miles chimed in, “We’ll just leave. We’ll just leave.”
“We don’t have food to just give to strangers,” Carver muttered.
Julia looked at Miles and then at Antonio. She sighed and wiped her face with her hand. “Dios mio. Baker, check them again for any weapons and put them back in the closet.”
Miles and Antonio both were visibly displeased by this decision but didn’t put up a fight when Captain Baker went to pat them down and Anderson helped.
“Could this evening get any crazier?” Julia looked back at Nadine and the monitors in front of her.
Alana looked at Julia and her father, “Everyone in the store can hear the banging from outside. Is it the infected?”
Ben remembered the screens on the table and stepped between Alana and her view of the display. “Don’t worry about it Alana. Just go back and tell everyone it’s being taken care of.”
“No!” Miles held his hand over his pocket when the soldier searching him tried to take out his phone.
“Just hand it over kid.” Baker snatched the cell phone and pulled it free from the boy’s earphone cord.
“Give him back his phone!” Antonio shouted.
“Does that thing even still work?” Anderson asked. In his distraction, Antonio tried rushing past him at Baker.
But before the young man could get to the soldier, Carver stepped in and grabbed Antonio by the collar, throwing him into the closet. “I swear, the next fuck up and I’ll toss you outside with the freaks!” Carver’s icy glare fell on Anderson who just tried his best to avoid eye contact.
Baker shoved the pleading Miles inside the closet with Antonio and closed the door on their crying and cursing and threats to get out.
The major turned and started towards the inner store. “Nadine, watch the cameras and come get me if anything changes. Right now, we have to go calm down our people.”
***
The interior of the Costco store was aisles and aisles of shelves with oversized tubs of kitty litter and dry dog food, as well as hundred packs of toilet paper and five-liter jugs of detergent. There were pallets of canned foods, multiple family packs of kilo sized peanut butter and acres of boxed granola bars. The small community of forty survivors had gone through their full rations of perishable goods, but beyond that they still had enough food to last them for the foreseeable future. It was the combined efforts of Major Eric Carver’s military training, Dr. Manson’s calculations, and Dr. Martyn’s knowledge of the health index, that not only kept everyone fed but kept them from consuming their provisions too quickly.
It was Carver who worked with Lesly, the superstore’s former general manager, to get the generators running and maintaining refrigeration and electricity for the compound; during regulated hours throughout the day and night. Carver wasn’t the leader of the military crew that was positioned to keep this facility safe, but the soldiers respected the old army major and Captain Baker appreciated his help in issuing orders to protect the store and the survivors. Carver even worked with Julia, a trained psychologist, to keep up the overall morale of the store. Carver had a pivotal hand in every aspect of sustaining the lives of those living in the once, Costco safe zone. He was also one of the leaders who presided over all the decision-making.
As a figurehead, he stepped out in front of the gathered families and amassed groups, all murmuring about what was going on outside. The major would be lying to himself if he didn’t feel some rush of pride that came from watching mothers and fathers hush their children when the major stepped out. Husbands and wives regarded him with esteem and couples who formed in the store were beholden to the major; he was the reason they were together and safe. Those who had no one, saw Carver as a surrogate father, an older brother, or an exalted leader who they would trust with their lives. The major would be lying if the feeling of all their eyes on him, waiting for him to reassure them wasn’t intoxicating.
“Everyone please, remain calm.” Carver said, his hands raised for their attention.
“Major Carver, what’s going on outside?” a voice cried out.
“We heard banging. Is someone trying to get in?” someone else asked.
The crowd started up again and the murmuring turned to a low chatter going on and on about different theories. The army had arrived. People were trying to break in. A storm had hit. Then someone shouted some nonsense about aliens.
Carver sucked at his back teeth and bellowed out, “There are infected outside of the docking area.” His words put an end to the rabblerousing, but now the gathering was silenced by a slow growing fear. Carver went straight to the point without revealing the full situation. “There is a large number of infected freaks outside but there’s nothing to worry about. The situation is being taken care of.”
“Infected? Oh my god.” A woman clutched her child and held him close.
“How did this even happen?”
“Did they find us? Do they know we’re in here?”
Carver looked over his shoulder at Ben, standing awkwardly behind him and against the wall. “Well…” the major started.
“Two people went running through the parking lot and led them here.” Ben stepped forward to cut Carver short mid-sentence. “The people kept running and got away but the infected are still outside our doors. They can’t get inside here but in order to avoid attention we’ll have to take some precautions. We’ll have to turn the generators down. Only for a little while, to make sure those people outside don’t come back thinking the store is still working. And so the infected will leave on their own.”
The audience sneered at his finishing statements. “C’mon Ben,” a man called out. “We were gonna show Star Wars tonight on the big screen.”
“Ben’s right.” Carver started to cough but during his convulsions, the people still waited for him to continue. “This is something that Ben and I, and even Julia, agree must be done. We can’t let anyone know we’re here. Not just the freaks… and especially not the living. Trust me, those freaks outside will eventually wander off on their own once they realize they can’t get in.”
The crowd was pleased and the gamut of emotions they had felt finally settled on relief. As they slowly dispersed, a small number of people stayed behind and approached Major Carver and Ben.
“Have you heard any news from Franklin and the others?” The woman with her son moved in front of the major, still clutching the boy as he clung to her leg. She was a mess with unkempt brown curls and a distraught expression on her flushed face.
“Do you think tho
se freaks got ‘em?” An old man with an eye patch and gray beard was behind the woman. He was hunched over and slack-jawed, wearing a long Raiders jersey, fresh off the rack.
When the others started up, Carver just sighed and put a hand up to quiet them. “We haven’t heard anything from Franklin and the others but believe me when I say we’ll find them.” The major coughed a rough and wet cough.
“But how do you know?” The woman picked up her six-year-old. “Are they still calling in on the radio?”
“Who were those people outside? Did you get a look at them?” The eye-patched man chimed in again.
“No. We couldn’t see them in the cameras. We don’t know where they went, Clint.” Carver continued with the lie that there were people outside rather than two boys locked in a closet in the security room. The major addressed the old man with the patch, Clint, then went to the woman and her child. “And we’re trying the radios every few hours to see if we can get in contact with them, Kayla. There is nothing to worry about. We’re taking the utmost precautions.”
“Will you send someone out to look for them?” An apathetic man, standing behind the small group, eyed the major with what could be slight disdain. He had shaggy blonde hair and dark bags under his eyes. With a scrawny build he didn’t look imposing but the contempt on his face made him look disturbing.
Carver returned a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Well I would, Lance, but with current circumstances… I’m not sure that’s an option right now.”
“We’ll send someone out to look for the other group as soon as the infected move on.” Julia tried stepping in to settle the matter.
“We should’ve sent someone out to look as soon as we lost contact with them,” Lance snapped back.
Carver wasn’t entirely pleased by Julia’s interjection or Lance’s countering tone, but the major continued to play nice. “For all we know, Franklin and the others are on their way back now. Hopefully those freaks are gone by the time they get here. But there’s no reason to leave the compound. We just have to deal with that hive outside.”
“A hive?” Clint asked. “What, the freaks outside?”
Two Alive Page 6
