Survive (Sundown Series Book 2)

by Courtney Konstantin

  "We're going to sleep here?" Jack asked in a small voice from the backseat.

  "Well I guess we could just sleep in the SUV, but that will be uncomfortable. I figure we should sleep indoors when we have the chance," Max explained. She pulled the SUV into the garage. After getting out and checking the space she maneuvered for it to barely fit. The garage door pulled down, shutting them in.

  "Being inside the garage will make it easier for us to get in and out of the vehicle when we leave," Max said as she got out of the truck.

  The three got into the house and started checking all of the rooms. A small family had lived there. Husband, wife and two kids from what they could tell in photos on the walls. There was no blood in the house. However, dresser drawers were dropped and clothing was strewn. Cabinets seemed to be partially emptied with some food still gathered on the kitchen table. The family had evacuated. Max hoped they had actually made it somewhere safe and had not fallen prey to the dead.

  Once it was confirmed they were alone in the house, Max checked every door and window. She pulled the shades on windows that were open and locked everything tight. Somehow the house still had power, the Raleigh grid not falling in that area yet. Going into the kitchen, Max opened the freezer and found a quart of cookie dough ice cream.

  "Score!" She called to Jack and Blair.

  Both came running into the kitchen. After dropping their bags in the living room, the three grabbed spoons and dug into the ice cream container together. Without speaking, they all realized how long it would be before they tasted something like ice cream again. Max let the bites melt in her mouth, savoring each taste. Jack seemed to be eating with her eyes closed. As usual, Blair seemed to not care about anything on the outside. But when she made sure to scoop every last bit from the container, Max knew it affected her more than she let on.

  "With the power on, we could cook a nice meal from whatever is left. I think I saw some meat in the freezer. When the family left, they obviously couldn't take all that with them," Max said, going back to the fridge to evaluate the contents.

  While Max decided on dinner, Jack pulled out the sofa bed and put the mattress on the ground. She then used the sofa cushions to make herself a makeshift bed. Blair insisted she could sleep on the ground on a sleeping bag. However, Jack raided the linen closet and piled blankets under the sleeping bag so she wasn't directly on the hard surface. Jack hummed a little under her breath as she handled the domestic tasks, feeling a little lighter being back in an actual house.

  Max wasn't a master chef, but she could whip up Hamburger Helper and she was glad when she found the meat and the box meal in the house. She was also surprised to find fresh strawberries and apples in the fridge. They left in a hurry Max figured to herself. Fruit could have been packed and taken. Maybe the family didn't expect to be traveling far. Max hoped for their sake their plans worked out.

  Sitting down at a kitchen table for dinner felt oddly normal. They ate in silence, each absorbing the events of the night before and the day that led them to the house they were in. Max knew Blair's mind was probably back on her boyfriend and the man she killed in the mall. She felt sad for the girl, being so young and having to handle such an emotional burden. Not that Max had any advice for her on how to make that better. But she had expected more emotions from Blair during the day they traveled. All the girl did was stare out the passenger window unless someone spoke to her.

  When they laid down to sleep, Max could feel the exhaustion of the events weighing down her body. Visions of Griffin were on her mind as she fell asleep. Her dreams were fitful. She first dreamed that she found Griffin, but he was an infected dead trying to eat Jack, his own daughter. The next dream she had, Griffin was alive, but he was trying to kill her when he found out about Jack being his daughter.

  "Momma," Jack's voice came through the haze of sleep. Max could feel her shoulder being shaken. Opening her eyes, she rolled to face Jack on her couch cushion bed.

  "You were dreaming. Kept saying my name," Jack whispered. Max tucked a piece of her long black curly hair behind her ear.

  "Just dreams, honey. Go back to sleep, I'm sorry I woke you."

  "Was it bad dreams?" Jack asked. She grabbed Max's hand and held it to her cheek. It was an odd sentimental gesture for the two of them. Max typically didn't show her love in physically affectionate ways.

  "Partially. But it's ok. We've seen enough nightmares the last few days to last my lifetime. I hope you aren't dreaming," Max whispered in answer.

  "No. I mean it's hard to fall asleep. I keep thinking they're gonna find us, ya know?" Jack asked. Max nodded her head in understanding.

  "Well from what we've seen, they can't open doors. So we are safe here. Sleep ok? Tomorrow will probably prove to be another long day," Max said. She patted Jack's cheek before pulling her hand away. Jack nodded and then yawned widely.

  It took Max some time to fall asleep after that. She thought about her dreams, wondering if they were telling her something. Telling her to give up the foolish search for Griffin. Or telling her she was wrong to keep this secret for so long. Watching Jack sleep, it was hard for Max to not see Griffin right there in their daughter. No, she wouldn't give up the search. Even if Griffin found out and was furious with her, finding him was more about Jack than it was about him.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  "This is the third location we've come to. None of them have living people, maybe none of them will," Blair said, sitting in the front seat of the SUV. She held the roadmap of Raleigh that Max found at a local gas station. She sat and found the locations listed during the emergency broadcast. Once they had them all labeled, they started with the nearest one to them and started searching.

  Max got out of the SUV, leaving the engine running. There would be no need to stay long. The so-called shelter was a ghost town, similar to the two before. As she walked into a nearby tent that had been erected, Max gasped at the amount of blood she found. The copper smell of blood tinged the air, but she could tell there was something else. The smell of gun smoke hit her nose and she would know it anywhere. There was a fight, but there were living fighting back with a lot of firepower.

  Coming out of the tent, Max squinted in the sun. A single infected had spotted her and was making its way to her. It was sad to see old people, already frail and declining in health, changed to the infected. Their old bodies could barely handle the intense hunt that their minds seemed to demand. Instead of waiting for the old man to reach her, Max strode forward, knife in hand. She felt it was putting the poor man out of misery by sliding the blade into his skull and ending his dead walking life.

  She stood in the center of what was called an emergency shelter. It was really just a large area, where chain link fences had been erected. Concrete jersey barriers were pushed to either side, to prevent the fence from easily being pushed down. Inside the fence were military tents in two lines. Those two lines were separated by another fence. Max found that set up strange and decided to investigate further.

  The side she was on, with the drenched tent, seemed to have its own entrance. She circled back to the entrance where the SUV was waiting. On the ground, she found a large piece of cloth that was partially attached to the outside fence. It had seen better days and was now ripped and bloody. Carefully she pulled the cloth open and read the words that were hastily painted on it. "Sick on Left. Healthy on Right." Dropping the cloth Max turned to look at the camp as a whole. They separated the sick and healthy. That was smart. But the story told was one of overwhelming sick.

  Max had seen enough. Chain link fences between the healthy and the sick weren't going to stop the infected dead from getting to their meals. The smell of gun smoke had been so strong in the bloody tent, Max was sure the infected had gotten out of hand and the military had to intervene. But where did the bodies go? Where did the living that were fighting go?

  She sat in the SUV, contemplating, letting the events unfold in her mind. The military was nearby and when the plague broke out
they set up multiple shelters for the residents of the nearby cities. What bothered Max about that was they didn't seem to realize how the illness worked, or what the dead did. Or they wouldn't have had the healthy separated by only a fence. Many would be looking to the military and the government to solve this for them, heal them, inoculate against whatever the illness was.

  "Momma?" Jack said from the backseat.

  "Hmm?" Max answered absently, completely lost in her own thoughts.

  "What are we doing?" Jack asked.

  Max sighed. That was the question. She didn't see enough bodies in the shelter to make up for the number of people that had to come through. That meant someone alive had cleaned up and moved what was here. They didn't take the time to take down the shelter. That told Max they had shelter somewhere else to flee to. One of the other emergency shelters in town.

  "I think we keep looking. There have to be people alive still somewhere in town," Max responded. The likelihood of those people knowing Griffin or him being there was slim. Her belief was he would be associated with the military in some way. She just needed someone to tell her he was gone, and she could move on.

  The fifth shelter proved to be something more than an empty shell. As they pulled the SUV onto the street the shelter was on, military men stood in front of the car pointing automatic rifles at them through the windshield. Max flashed her empty hands immediately and Blair copied her. The men started yelling at them through the window and Max indicated she wanted to roll the window down. One of the men approached her door and pointed to the locks.

  "Jack, no matter what, you stay in this car until I tell you otherwise," Max said. She unlocked the door and as she suspected the man pulled it open and yanked her from the car. He immediately pushed her up against the hood of the truck and started searching her.

  "You're going to find a gun, a tomahawk, and a knife. None of which I planned on using here," Max said as he roughly grabbed her hips, checking her belt.

  "Are you sick?" The man asked. Max changed her perception of him though, he was much closer to a boy than a man.

  "No. And none of us are bit," Max replied.

  "Why are you here?"

  "I thought this was an emergency shelter? We heard about it on the radio," Max said. The boy stepped back and allowed her to turn. The other men approached slowly, keeping their weapons at the ready.

  "It is. We are just being careful."

  "Yeah, I would guess it's time for that. We saw the other shelters. The infected took over I guess," Max said. She let her hands hang loosely at her sides. She couldn't take men with automatic rifles. But if she had to defend herself, she was ready. None of the men said anything, just watched her. Max's felt her patience slipping.

  "Listen, can we come in or what? We're looking for someone," she asked.

  "Why do you think this person is here?" One of the men asked.

  "He was in the Army. I was thinking he would stick with the military. I may be wrong," Max replied shrugging. "I figured being around some living people would be a good change of pace."

  "Name?"

  "Max."

  "Who's in the car?" The man continued.

  "My daughter Jack and friend Blair."

  "The car stays outside. You can park it somewhere nearby. Then you three can come in. Come through the healthy side," the man said, motioning toward the shelter area.

  "You seriously have sick people here?" Max demanded, taking a step toward the driver's door. Griffin or not, she wasn't taking Jack into an infected shelter.

  "No, not anymore," the man replied quietly. Max left it alone. She wasn't sure she wanted to know what happened.

  She climbed back into the SUV. Without waiting for direction, she put the vehicle in reverse and moved away from the shelter entrance. She found a parking spot one block away. She turned to Blair and Jack.

  "I'm not so sure about this place. They are really jumpy. We need to stay close," she said. Jack nodded, but Blair looked incredulous.

  "It's the military. The government. They know what they're doing," Blair argued.

  "The government doesn't always know what it's doing," Max countered.

  "That's easy for you to say. You have somewhere to go. For people like me, they take care of us," Blair replied. Max thought for a moment. She could imagine what it would feel like to not have her family compound to go to. But with her childhood, she knew deep down, she would survive on her own with Jack. She would do whatever was necessary.

  "Blair, you could come with us," Max quietly said. Knowing Alex was a bleeding heart, Max knew it wouldn't be a problem for her to bring someone to Montana with them. Hell, she knew Alex would gladly open the doors to everyone if she could.

  "I don't think....no....I'd like to see what the government is planning on doing to fix this," Blair replied.

  "Well let's get into the shelter first and you can see for yourself. It seems chaotic."

  "Of course, it's chaos. There are dead people walking around," Blair replied, sarcasm tinting her words.

  Max wasn't going to argue with the girl. She couldn't make the decision for Blair. If she chose to trust the government and stay in the shelter, that was her business. Jack was Max's only priority, the only person she was attached to and needed to provide for. She could only express her concern and offer Blair a different option.

  The three got out of the SUV, slinging their packs over their backs. Max locked the vehicle and packed the keys away. She wanted to know the truck would be there if they needed a quick escape. The one block walk seemed to take forever. Max felt like her heart would explode out of her chest before she was able to ask about Griffin. As they walked, she heard an all familiar growling.

  They were within sight of the shelter, but Max didn't want to leave the infected to try and attack someone else. Motioning Jack and Blair to go ahead of her, she pulled her tomahawk and turned toward the noise. Two infected came from a small alley behind a nearby business building. They must have heard the girls talking as they walked. They were focused on Max, looking for a warm meal. While waiting for them to get closer and in the open Max found herself wondering what they saw when looking at a living person.

  She heard one of the military guys call out to her, but she just waved her tomahawk at him. Stepping forward toward the infected, she lifted her tomahawk and bent low to strike the first at the knee, causing it to fall to the side. While that infected struggled on the ground, Max pivoted and spun to the side of the second infected. It wasn't quite fast enough to follow her movements and it couldn't turn as fast as it needed to catch her. Its arm snaked out and tried to claw at her, close enough that Max felt the air from the movement. She stepped back to allow swinging room and her tomahawk came down with a crunch into the infected's skull.

  As the second infected fell to its real death, Max turned toward the shelter opening. The hiss from behind her reminded her that the first infected was still alive. She held up her finger in a "just a second" gesture and walked backward smiling ironically at Jack. Max wanted to claim this wasn't easy for her, but she would be lying. Fighting the infected felt like second nature to her. The indiscriminate ending of their dead lives felt as if she were releasing them from a walking hell. Her tomahawk easily sliced into the skull of the infected on the ground, hissing, and growling coming to an end.

  She turned back toward the shelter entrance. Jack and Blair were already at the fence just waiting for Max to catch up. As she reached the military men, she noticed a wary look in their eyes as they watched her walk. When she got to the fence entrance a man stopped the three of them from entering.

  "We'll need your weapons," a large man in fatigues said.

  "Yeah, don't think so, bud," Max replied, laughing out loud. Then she sobered when the seriousness of the man's face hit her.

  "You're serious?" She demanded.

  "Momma," Jack's voice sounded like a warning to Max, and she brushed her off.

  "You have lost your damn marbles if you think I'm go
ing to wander into this shelter without a way to defend myself and these girls," Max said, her voice rising angrily.

  "No one comes in with weapons," the man replied calmly. His calm grated on Max's nerves and raised her blood pressure just a little further.

  "Really? And what are all these children doing with automatic weapons then?" Max demanded. She raised her hand and waved in the direction of the party that had stopped their car.

  "Those are soldiers, ma'am, and are here for your protection."

  Max was sure she heard one of the boys behind her snort and say something about them needing to protect themselves against her. Max shot the dirtiest looks she could muster over her shoulder and the soldiers seemed to straighten up and wipe the grins off their faces. What they didn't realize was they weren't far from the truth. As young as the group looked, Max had been training for survival long before they had held a gun.

  "We are coming in. And I'm not giving up my weapons," Max said. With that she moved forward, to move past the man. His arm shot out and grabbed her by the arm. Max stopped and looked at his hand on her arm, and then looked up at him, challenging.

  "You sure you want to do this?" Max asked, venom in her tone.

  "Ma'am, there are no weapons in the shelter area," the man repeated.

  "I'm not deaf, bud, I heard you. And I don't care. I don't need weapons to kick your ass, so you should remove your hand from my being," she replied. She attempted to pull away, causing the solider to squeeze harder. Hell no.

  Grabbing his hand on her arm with her free hand, she locked it in place. At the same time, she rotated the arm he held and gripped the arm he used to hold her. With a quick twist, she had his wrist and he was falling to his knees with a grunt. The pressure she had on his wrist had him gasping in pain. In the frenzy, Max could hear the soldiers behind her panic and move their weapons. She tightened the grip she had that twisted his wrist and grabbed her gun out of its holster at the same time.

  "Listen, boys, do we really want this to go down like this? We have other things to be fighting, not each other," she said calmly, continuing pressure on the wrist she held.