by mike Evans
Shaun aimed at the last of them and squeezed off three times, covering the street with their brains. “I have a feeling that whoever came up with whatever it is that made them this way probably felt horrible. But it would be hard to say, wouldn’t it?” Ben asked.
Shaun didn’t say anything else as he walked back to the Humvee, getting in. The other three stared around, nervous and wondering if any of the dead were going to come. They knew what noise did, and it had been about the only thing they’d had to keep the dead off center to allow them to go between buildings. None of them were big enough to sleep in, and they had to move around and be with other people so that they did not drive themselves insane from the captivity.
Chapter 2
3 days later
Shaun spent the next three days with them, clearing out the few remaining dead, and by the third day, they had gone through the five blocks worth of homes and every gun, bullet, and knife had been collected. They’d cleaned out all the pantries as well, and had a stockpile that they felt would help them last through the summer until their crops they’d talked about planting would be ready for harvest.
Shaun looked around for Ben to say goodbye as the town lined up in front of the junior high. They’d decided that it was okay to stay together and that, in the long run, the more eyes they could have looking out the window or walking the halls, the better. Shaun and them had found yards that they could plant in that had tall fences. The idea of going into the farms wasn’t something that made them feel safe from the dead, even if they were cleaned out.
Shaun had some supplies for his drive that he tossed into the truck. He looked, hoping that if he ever came back through that there would be people here alive. Marshall sat at the door of his Humvee. “You filled up on your water jugs, right? You got enough food to get you through for a few days if the next town isn’t as in need of saving as us, right?”
“Yeah and you wrote down Clary’s name and information. I don’t want you going in there with the wrong information and getting yourselves shot—that’d suck. Probably send bad karma my way as well.”
“Yeah, we wrote it down; I just don’t know that it is going to be something we do anytime soon. Maybe we will take a chance to do it next year. We want to try to get that food going as soon as we can. The last thing that we want to do is worry about starving, or not having the options available to us and having to do something stupid.”
“Yeah, try to do nothing stupid, gets my best friend Greg in all kinds of trouble all the time. You don’t need to worry about that though. I’m heading out, and I’ll be out of your hair. Just do your best to keep safe. You stay here and safe.”
“You sure you don’t want someone, anyone, to keep an eye out for you? I’m sure there are some volunteers out there, if you’d just ask. You can pick your copilot, and I don’t think it’d be too hard to try to find a volunteer. Half these boys think you are a superhero.”
“I’m not anyone’s hero, and I don’t want to be. Thank you for the supplies and for giving me a little hope that I can do some good. I honestly don’t think it hurt my heart any.”
Bill stepped forward, shaking his hand. He said, “You make sure and stop by once you’ve shown everyone else what to do. I just hope for your sake that you end up finding yourself some peace. I know you’ve got some demons in your closet. You try to rid them; the world doesn't have to be on your shoulder.” He put the final dagger in his heart. “It isn’t your fault this thing started. I really hope we do get to see you again. You always have a bed here if you want it.”
He smiled, laughing the slightest at the view in front of him. “Something funny, Shaun?”
“Nothing personal, but you all looked like a bunch of scared kids when I showed up, and you got your first chance to get daylight for a solid amount of time. Now every able-bodied person in your group has got a gun. Now you just need to make sure to not run out of the bullets. It’ll be a tough trip, but if you need to, you go see Clary. I’m always on channel four if you need me. I can’t promise I’ll hear it, or that I can get back here quick but-”
Bill cut him off. “You’ve already done more than we deserve. We’ll figure it out, son. Drive safe. Where are you going next?”
“I can’t say, somewhere else though that can use help.”
☣ ☣ ☣
Shaun put the Humvee in gear, thinking that if there could be more small towns in an area, they’d eventually have the slightest chance at having somewhere that could be considered safe. The prospect of having somewhere so far away from a major city that the dead would never find their way there gave him hope. If they did, there could be something in place to send people; those not infected and looking for some type of sanctuary.
Shaun went back the way he had come from. If they did go to Clary, he did not want to leave any trail for them to try to come find him. The last thing he wanted to do was have someone coming looking for him, and to lose someone else because of it.
He drove for a few hours, flipping through his channels on the radio. He figured there was no reason why others might not be using radios to communicate, praying that they might find help or like-minded folk. He thought of the other group, and how they had infiltrated their camp, and had already decided that, if he found someone that was threatening a group, he would see it as no waste of bullets at all to murder every one of them, if it meant those who were trying to survive peacefully were not allowed to.
Shaun stopped scanning when he heard a girl’s voice. He slowed the truck down to a roll when the familiarity hit home. Ellie was just barely able to be heard. “I don’t know if you can hear me, Shaun… Shit, I don’t know if these things are long enough to reach wherever the hell you are. I’m not mad. Actually, I am mad, I am fucking furious, and if you come back, I am going to kill you. YOU LEFT ME BEHIND! YOU LEFT ME BEHIND!! You were the one that said we’d be together! Together forever. You went off without even giving me a choice but to stay. I have Greg and a few others, but we lost more people. I just wanted to let you know. I went after you when I thought you were dead. I just couldn’t stand to think of you gone, and I lost my mind. I’m not going to wait for you, either. I’m moving on. I guess I can survive this entire horrible thing alone and on my own, without you to count on. I hope whatever reason it was that you left is worthwhile. I hope it isn’t you just being selfish.”
Shaun stopped the truck and started pounding on the dash until the cheap plastic broke on the dash. “Fuck!”
He tossed the radio on the seat and his shoulders started to buck. He let himself cry like he hadn’t in a very long time. He reached over, feeling for the radio like a blind man, and switched it off. He couldn’t handle hearing her cry on the other end. Each tear that he could see rolling down her perfect cheek was a dagger to his heart.
Shaun looked around realizing he was more alone now than he’d ever thought he had been. He sank in his seat for a minute, taking long, deep breaths. He looked in his rearview mirror, watching blankets in the back just barely beginning to move. He blinked his eyes before running his arm across them. He coughed, getting a voice that wouldn’t sound like he’d been losing his shit.
Shaun hit the buckle on his seat, letting it wind itself back to its resting spot. He turned around, getting on his knees and grabbed his handgun, pulling back the hammer with his thumb. “You can come out now, or I can find out who you are when you are dead... your choice, asshole. I’m not going to ask a second time.”
Three sets of hands shot out from beneath the blanket, unsure if Shaun would ask a second time. Luckily, for the intruders they did not wait, because he had no intentions of asking a second time whatsoever. Ben lifted the tarp, letting it fall over their heads. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I just, oh shit, this was a bad idea. Can you, like, stop pointing that gun at us... please, I don’t like guns pointing at my… at my anything.”
“You realize you seriously fucked up, right?”
“I couldn’t stop listening to dad one night after I
’d gone to bed. You realize it is because of you that all of us get to go to a bed now? We aren’t sleeping on stupid linoleum floors or counters anymore.”
“And what reason is it that you are in the back of my truck? And who the hell are these guys? Why are you here when the three of you have a warm bed?”
“This is Brady, and that is Jay. We are best friends. I told them what I was going to do, and they wanted to help you too.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. Get out of my truck, now!” Shaun walked around, letting the tailgate drop down and ushering them out, still holding the pistol.
Brady looked to Jay, who shrugged and finally said, “Aren’t you listening? We are going to help you. We are going to watch your back.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, first time an issue comes up,” Shaun snapped.
“But you don’t understand! We are here to help you, Shaun,” Jay said.
“I don’t think that you three understand. I hope you like walking, because you’ve got a hell of one in front of you. Head back west. I’m sure that you’ll be there in a few days.”
“Do you have a gun, at least? Something we can carry?” Jay asked looking like he was going to lose whatever he’d eaten that day.
“Yeah, I’ve got a lot of them. But last time I checked, none of you know what you are doing or how to use them. So, I’ll keep what I have. You fire it off, you’ll just bring them quicker. If you aren’t able to hit them, then what do you expect to do?” Shaun didn’t wait for them to answer. He climbed into the truck, hitting the gas and driving away, shaking his head.
Brady looked to Ben in absolute shock. “You said that he was going to be down to get some help. That we could do something to make things better, then we could learn to be bad asses.”
“What are we going to do now?” Jay yelled. “We can’t walk that far. We’re going to get eaten or made into one of them—what does Shaun call them, The Turned? You want to be one of those fuckers? I sure as shit don’t. I’m sixteen! Is that what you want?”
Ben went to say something, and his heart almost leapt from his throat when he saw the brake lights. “He... he changed his mind. He isn’t going to leave us!”
The other two spun to look at the truck. Shaun braked for only a minute, dropping three water bottles out the window, and then stepped on the gas again and going up and over another one of the hills that were stretching the state. Their shoulders sunk as the top of the Humvee disappeared.
Ben sat there staring, unsure what he should do. Brady and Jay both turned around, not offering for him to walk with them. “Our dads are going to kick our asses when we get back,” Jay said.
“You mean if we get back, Jay. Ben if you are coming with us, then get moving. I’m not going to sit out here forever, the quicker we get back, the better for us. Maybe we can find some old farmhouse that has a truck or car or something that we can hotwire,” Brady said with the slightest bit of hope.
Ben ran to catch up to them. “You guys weren’t really going to leave me behind, were you?”
“No, but you would have deserved it, asshat. What the hell were you thinking? I can’t believe that we listened to you, that was a horrible idea. We’ll never hear the end of this either. We will be the only kids stupid enough to be grounded during a zombie apocalypse. Isn’t that the slightest bit embarrassing, Ben?” Jay asked.
They walked for two miles, saying little. The outline of a farmhouse that they’d been ignorant to due to a tarp over their heads came into view. “Hey, look! There’s a farm across that field. We can go over there; there’s a ton of cars outside. Maybe one of them has gas. They always have that kind of stuff when they are on a farm. They have to be, like, self-reliant and stuff,” Brady said.
“We will find out, won't we?” Ben said as he marched.
The three of them ran when they saw the outline of people on the property standing around. Jay said, “I can’t believe that we found people. Hey! Hey over here! We need a ride, hey!”
Ben tried to pull him back, but the boy was yelling with a purpose. They kept walking, but stopped when they realized not one of them was yelling back. They said nothing, and there was no movement. They all seemed to crane their heads up into the air sniffing.
“Oh shit, guys, those aren’t farmers. Or at least they aren’t anymore. Something happened out here!” Jay yelled.
The heads went back down to normal. The boys stopped walking forward and waited, watching. Brady said, “I think that we should turn around. What do you guys think? Worst idea ever with everything that we’ve had to make decisions about today.”
“It had the makings of a good idea you guys. Next time, come up with your own plan to try to help save the world. It seemed like a helluva idea at the time. I’m sorry it didn’t work out, but it’s better than sitting in town doing nothing forever and never leaving. You know we aren’t leaving if we go back, and we aren’t going to get a second chance to either!” Ben yelled.
They watched the group and their hearts raced as they saw them take off like a bat out of hell, sprinting in their direction. They covered the five hundred yards faster than they could have believed was possible. The dead in their town never had much of a reason to run quickly, but there was a good enough chance to get a fresh meal there that they had no reason good enough to leave the small town.
“We aren’t going to be able to outrun those things,” Jay said.
“So, what do you want to do, Jay, just stay here and die? Come on, Ben, what are we going to do? Seriously, you need to think of-”
Bam, bam, bam! The earth sounded like there was a string of thunder echoing across the land. The three boys all lowered themselves, thinking that something was descending from heaven and was going to hit the three of them. When Ben opened his eyes, he yelled excitedly and nervously, “Where’d they go? There was five of them. What happened? Shit, where are they?”
The last two never stopped in their pursuit, sprinting towards the trio. The boys sprinted back the way they came. The growling from the dead was getting louder. When Ben looked over his shoulder, he saw what had to have been a farmer with ratty old overalls that had been worn through a hard Iowa winter and ruined by the snow. It looked like it had been some time since its last meal. It was closing the gap quickly—sixty, fifty, forty… thirty yards.
Ben pulled out a pocket knife with no clue what he was going to do against two of them besides more than likely die. “You two keep going! Get home! Tell my dad I’m sorry, I never meant for this to happen.”
Jay and Brady both stopped, taking a few deep breathes. “We aren’t leaving you,” Jay said.
Bam! Bam!
The boys watched this time as the heads of the farmer and a helper or family member practically disappeared from the top of their shoulders. They fell to the ground, never to get up again. The three looked all around. The sun covered the hill that stretched in the distance. They didn’t know what else to do, so they started walking in that direction, arms raised and shaking. When they got closer, they finally saw a shadow stand up, looking eight feet tall as they squinted to see the stranger getting their gear off the ground.
Ben pleaded, “Please don’t shoot… Please don’t shoot us! We were on our way back home to our camp. We are going to our-”
“Christ, you guys didn’t make it three miles before you almost got killed.” The shadow disappeared as he got closer, and they saw it was Shaun.
Ben let his emotions get ahead of him. “You fucking left us in the middle of nowhere!”
“You weren’t my responsibility the minute that I walked out. Get in the truck. I’m taking you three back. Last thing I need is anything else on my damn mind; my conscience is already heavy enough. I’m not sure I like you anymore, Ben. Is there a reason that you needed to come with me and you couldn’t just stay safe where you were?”
“It’s just that my Dad said that you were alone… that you would only last so long if you were on your own. I couldn’t stand to think of the gu
y that saved our asses getting his ripped apart. You’d need to teach me some stuff, but over time you’ll be able to survive and have someone to look out for you. If you didn’t care about making it through this, you would have put one in your temple a long time ago. I saw it when you and I were driving around; you hate these things, like I have since about the first or second night I had to stay in that damn store. But you really hate them, like, a lot. If you try to say you don’t then you are full of shit. Don’t say that you don't.”
“I never said that I wanted to die. I just said I don’t want to have to worry about others. I want you guys to stay there and stay alive. I’m taking you back. Your dads are probably losing their shit by now.”
