They skirted certain towns as they journeyed along, doing their best to avoid active Turner populations, but since most of the population was infected, it was hard to avoid them completely. Any Turner that still had an intact brain was animated and hungry. Every day the travelers ran into skirmishes with the rotting population.
Turners came at them in various stages of dress, from nothing at all to full uniforms and evening attire, and they were in every conceivable condition. Periodically, they still saw Turners with white-and-red clown makeup.
Fortunately for the Turners, they felt nothing except the driving force to find living flesh. Often, huge chunks were missing from their faces and torsos. With limbs missing or hanging only by sinew, they trudged and crawled, following any scent or commotion that had promise, aware only of the craving that was never satisfied.
27 Leandra
Leandra woke up with that awful emotional heaviness on her. She was so tired of her life, but people depended on her.
“How are you this morning?” her Aunt Milly inquired as she entered the room. Leandra had been living with her aunt since the death of her parents.
“Still a little dizzy, and I’m not sleeping very well,” Leandra replied.
“Go see Doc later. Maybe he can give you a good vitamin injection. We all go through it. You’ll feel better before you know it.”
“I don’t know about that. Even the smells are really starting to get to me.”
“Sweetheart, you know what you have to do. It’s your duty. Just put some menthol on your top lip. That always seems to help me. Now, hurry up and get dressed. The sheriff said Old Joe saw a car out a way, coming in this direction. They’ll be here shortly.” With that, Milly left the room.
Leandra slowly rose to her feet. She had lived with the dizziness for over a year, and she was definitely becoming weaker. The people she had once loved and cared about were now the very ones that repulsed her.
But, with no choices available to her that were any better, she dutifully dressed, had a very small breakfast, and headed over to Main Street and do what was expected of her.
28 90°
Joshua had been driving at a leisurely pace when they drove into a small town that appeared to be deserted. The main street that ran through the center of town was the only one that was paved. It was a wide street, so Joshua felt comfortable taking it, but he drove slowly in case there were humans around and cautiously in case there were Turners.
They all kept noticing graffiti that read “90° turns,” but they thought it was just that—graffiti.
Then, up ahead, they saw the first one, tall and thin, with long, dark hair. She was walking away from them, so they couldn’t tell which side of the “fence” she belonged on. With heightened alertness, Joshua drove closer and they noticed that the girl walked with a slight swagger, but not the same way Turners usually did. Cautiously, Joshua pulled alongside of her. The girl slowly turned her head toward him. Her face looked drawn, with vacant eyes and skin that was unusually pale. But then again, not in a Turner way. Joshua rolled down the window enough for the girl to be able to hear him.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She just stared.
“Are you alone?”
Again, just a stare. Joshua had stopped at this point, but the girl kept walking.
“I’m going to get out. Something’s not right, but I don’t think it’s the virus,” Austin said, surprising them all.
“Not a good idea, Austin,” Joshua told him. “Something’s going on, and I feel safer with us all in here, where we can make a fast exit if we need to.” Even though Joshua’s reasoning was on target, Sydney knew him well enough by now to know that he didn’t want to leave the girl alone.
Turning the situation over in his mind, he suddenly said, “Since it’s a girl, Sydney, you should be the one to go. Take the safety off your gun.” Joshua was working out a plan. “I’ll stay at the wheel and Austin will stand outside, covering you. Mason, get in the back to make sure we don’t get ambushed from behind, and Christian, you take the front seat. Sydney, if anything starts getting weird, run back to the car and we’ll get out of here.”
“Okay,” Christian said. “Hey, Mason, hand me one of my kits.” Mason knew what he was talking about and passed him a cloth bag.
Austin and Sydney got out and Sydney started walking toward the girl, who turned and stood silently as Sydney approached.
When Sydney was about ten feet away, the girl quietly said, “You need to leave. This is a trap.” That certainly wasn’t what Sydney was expecting to hear. The girl sounded perfectly sane, and her eyes were clear. There wasn’t another soul in sight.
“Do you want us to come with us?” Sydney asked just as quietly.
“They won’t let me go.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~
This was a weird turn of events, and the situation required an executive decision. Sydney was the executive best able to make that decision since no one else had heard what the girl had said, nor could they tell if she was “tainted” so Sydney decided she would not leave her behind.
“I didn’t ask you that. I asked you if you wanted to come with us.” Sydney was uncomfortable having a conversation in the middle of the street in an unknown area.
The vacant look in the girl’s large brown eyes disappeared and with a quick look behind her, she replied “Yes,” with a resignation and desperation that baffled Sydney.
“Fine. Just start walking to the car with me,” Sydney told her. With a second glance over her shoulder, the girl started walking with Sydney.
They had taken only a few steps toward the Suburban when they were assaulted with shouts. The town wasn’t so empty after all, and its occupants did not sound as though they were going to let this girl go. Rushing toward them was a crowd of Turners in various stages of early decomposition, along with a handful of humans. Humans!
They obviously did not intend to let the travelers go anywhere.
Just then a Molotov cocktail went sailing past Sydney and into the advancing crowd. Sydney silently blessed Christian for always thinking what if? It was diversion time!
The fluid splashed out when it hit the ground and several of the closest Turners were ignited. Those standing nearby immediately started helping to douse the flames.
Sydney couldn’t figure out what was going on. Since when did Turners help each other? With no time to ponder their strange behavior, she grabbed hold of the strange girl’s hand and ran. Joshua was driving toward them. He swung around, wedging the car between them and the Turners. Austin opened the door, and Sydney shoved the girl in and scrambled in behind her. They were off, with a complete stranger along for the ride!
The crowd ran after them and, as Joshua drove on, more came from around corners and tried to block them. This was organized behavior, not Turner behavior! Who was this girl that they wanted so badly, and what was up with these people—or whatever they were? They looked like Turners, but they acted like humans. The girl sat quietly as Joshua veered through the maze of bodies, her large eyes a little bigger than before. It took ten minutes of intense driving and dodging before they were on the open road again. Joshua drove another twenty minutes before pulling over.
“Are you all right?” he asked the girl.
“Yes.” This girl was not a conversationalist. Sydney and the boys had kept a sharp eye on her all this time, not knowing exactly what she was. Not once had she offered an explanation or even tried to communicate with them.
“Then I want to know right now what went on back there,” Joshua demanded. “Those people looked like they were turned, but they acted as though they were still human. You seem to be untainted, but you were with them.”
“What do you want to know?” she replied.
“Answers to all the above.” Joshua was getting angry now, and Sydney could see that he was fed up with the game of cat and mouse that was going on. He began glaring at the girl, something Sydney hadn’t seen him do often.
; The girl took a long breath and started in.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
“My name is Leandra. Leandra McCullen. Those people back there were still mostly human. You saw those signs that read ‘90° turns’?”
Everyone nodded.
“The military spray painted those messages as a warning.”
“Why?” Sydney asked.
“About three years ago, when I was sixteen, the CDC thought they had found a cure for Turners called AT48. With permission from the Walters community, they “dusted” our town with it. What it wound up doing was stalling the infection less than halfway through the transition process. 90°, instead of 360°. That’s also why those people looked like Turners but still had the capacity to think, and act in unison. The other thing is that they still feel pain. Those who hadn’t come into contact with the ‘cure’ stayed to help those who had. We referred to those who had absorbed the AT48 as ‘twilights’ because they were in between worlds. They were only human in their minds but not their bodies. They never developed the craving for flesh the way Turners do.”
Now that is heavy, Sydney thought. What a horrible limbo state to be left in—not to mention that we had seriously burned some of them.
Leandra continued. “The people who were back there, some of them doctors, worked day and night to find a way to reverse the process. Through what some believed was divine intervention, they discovered that regular transfusions of untainted blood slowed the virus and kept the victim more comfortable, but obviously there’s a limited supply in a small town like that.”
The light was coming on in their minds. They didn’t like what it was revealing but they all knew what a strong force the survival instinct was.
“I grew up there, and some of my friends were among the infected. They asked me to bait travelers because they were desperate. They aren’t bad people,” she quickly added. “They’re just trying to survive a terrible situation. Travelers who seemed like good people—and they would vote on that, by the way—would be compelled to ‘donate’ as much blood as they could without injuring themselves, and then the town would then let them go. If the community found a passerby to be up to no good, with the intent of raping or pillaging or whatever, that person would be sent to prison and would become a regular donor. They only used guns as a last resort. They did not want to hurt anyone, but if attacked, they would defend themselves. Prisoners donating blood to them, figured that although terrifying, it was so much better than the alternative of becoming one of them, which is the threat that was used on prisoners. It was impossible to become a twilight unless the AT48 was in them, but the detainees didn’t know that.”
They sat for a few minutes trying to digest what Leandra had told them. They were always hearing tales of weird situations, but after a while they stopped paying much attention. There were just too many stories to try to figure out which ones were real, and the tales tended to grow a little more horrific each time they were repeated. Apparently, the ones about people living off human blood had a ring of truth to them.
Mason asked, “Then why did you come with us?”
“I guess I was just too tired not to. The only person I could really talk to left early on with her husband, who knew what was coming. They had been away when the town was dusted, so they were clean. After she left, I had no one I could really talk to.
I’m lonely and weak from donating so much. Everything in that town is an endless cycle of survival in its rawest form. There’s nothing to live for. There’s no hope.” She paused, and then said, “And I’m so tired.”
In Sydney’s mind, that explained the resignation. What did Leandra have to lose by taking off with strangers?
“We had better get back on the road,” Austin said, shaking them from their somber thoughts.
There was nothing else to do but continue on and hope they didn’t run into the same kind of situation again.
29 A Surprise in the Night
As evening came, they hadn’t seen any Turners on the open desert for over an hour, so they pulled over to make a camp because camping was easier than trying to find a structure. Joshua dropped them off to start setting up and then left to scout the perimeter. Christian put up his “early warning” traps and everyone settled into their routines. By the time Joshua got back, everything was done, and dinner was on. It had been a long and emotional day for all of them, so after they ate, they cleaned up and turned in early.
They had been asleep for about four hours when Sydney woke to a soft rustling sound. There was only a half moon out, so she had to strain to see what was making the noise. Best not to guess in the dark, she reminded herself. Grabbing her flashlight, she woke Joshua and then Mason, since his eyes were the best.
Joshua led the way, and as they got closer, they heard a faint groaning sound along with the rustling. Mason touched Sydney’s arm as he moved in front of her. They all jumped back when his flashlight landed on movement in the grass. Joshua aimed and walked closer. Then he fired.
That got everyone else up and running toward the commotion with guns and flashlights. When they got to the spot, they just stared at what Joshua had shot.
It was an infected wolf with only two usable legs to pull itself around with. A wild animal that had been infected was a rare sight. Usually their senses and agility made it nearly impossible for a Turner to catch them. Seeing the infected wolf was as sad as seeing an infected human. At least now it was out of its misery, but the incident raised an alarm that previously had been almost non-existent. The group hunted regularly for fresh meat and killing something only to pick it up and find out it was already dead was not a thrilling prospect. They were clearly going to have to be more cautious around wildlife.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Everyone rose early the next morning. It had been hard to go back to sleep after their late-night discovery and the possibilities it presented. They cleaned up their campsite and headed out. New people in Aftertown had spoken of coming through a place about a three-day drive southeast of the group’s current position that was trying to rebuild. It was that town that they were going to check out.
As they drove, Joshua seemed a bit distracted, but Sydney knew he would open to her when he was ready to talk about whatever was on his mind.
The day’s journey was uneventful, and Leandra started talking more about her life and her family. Most everyone that was still human had horrific stories, but some did top the list, as impossible as that would seem at times.
While it was a horrible thing to be turned completely, at least the full-fledged Turners didn’t know what they were. In the case of the infected people in 90°, though, they knew exactly what they were becoming. The fact that they used a quasi-jury to decide who would be responsible for their survival was a decidedly civilized action.
Leandra described the agonizing pain her townspeople had suffered when the virus took hold. The searing, burning sensation throughout their bodies as their blood carried the virus was unbearable. Screams from men, women, and children went on night and day until one of the doctors thought of transfusing his wife. When it was obvious that this gave her significant relief, the uninfected residents lined up to donate what they could.
Fortunately, those who had been infected didn’t acquire the taste for flesh that “true” Turners craved. Consequently, the uninfected did not have to worry about being bitten and everyone, in time, eventually got used to the situation.
They knew blood supplies eventually would run out, even with the healthy citizens being so generous. That’s when their plan to “persuade” passersby was put into action. They never required another to do anything they had not done and would not do themselves. The good blood was replenished, and justice was served. In their eyes, they were doing others a favor by confining people who were bent on harming others.
Freed from the ever-present pressure of being not only a donor but also the town bait, Leandra started relaxing and talking more. Reading had been Leandra’s refuge, so Sydney and the boys hit it o
ff with her on that common ground.
As Leandra became more optimistic, her sense of humor started shining through. She had a quick wit, and the others began to appreciate her company.
No one knew what lay ahead but right now, life was good.
Turners | Book 1 | The Beginning Page 9
