The Orphans (Book 6): Divided

by mike Evans

  The other two could not stand to see that their brethren had been taken out. They started rocking the small tanker until they rocked it enough to flip it over.

  Shaun hadn’t expected this at all, and when they flipped it over, they landed with such force that they ripped their own arms out of their sockets, leaving a mesh-y mess of tendons and black sludge dripping from where their arms had once been. He did not wait for them to get up.

  One tried to get off its ass, but had no motor skills to do so. Shaun front snap kicked it in the jaw, catching it low and extending all the way out. Its head made a horrible noise as it contacted with the concrete behind it. When the other came at him, he brought down the wrench like he hated it, which wasn’t a very strong stretch from the truth because he hated all the dead. The lights in its eyes began to dim until it fell back to the ground, head slumped and a blackened tongue hanging from its mouth. Shaun smiled, looking up and seeing Brady motioning frantically for him to get back in the RV.

  Shaun could see nothing from his angle and knew the chances of Brady looking nervous being a good thing was definitely slim. He hustled around after pulling the wrench and hammer back out of their resting place. He tried wiping it on their clothes, but they were stiff and stunk of blood, flesh, and whatever fluids had gotten on it.

  Shaun could see that there was a horde, and it was not a small one. He looked at his rifle and at their escape route. The tank that held the gas was hundreds of pounds. He was able to get it off the RV, but knew there was shit for chances that they could get it out of the way and still have time to try to maneuver it back to safety, or as close to safe as something could be nowadays.

  The door was open to the RV and Shaun tossed in the sludge covered tools in exchange for his rifle, then leapt back out, slamming the door shut in Ben’s face. He ran back to the rear of the RV and climbed up the ladder. The rest watched in confusion, trying to see what it was exactly that he was doing.

  Shaun disappeared over the top and footsteps could be heard before a loud thud hit. He took a deep breath, trying to keep his composure. He had four magazines on him and stuck them beneath his stomach to keep them from moving.

  Brady cracked the window, yelling up top. “What the fuck are you doing, Fox?”

  “Just tell Talon to start driving, to go slow; give us some time. We need to get off this bridge and be alive when we do it!”

  “So, you want us to just sit in here while you go and save everyone? Is that what you are saying?” Brady asked.

  Shaun checked his magazine, putting it back in and letting the safety flick off. “I got a lot going on, Brady. Can we talk about this when we are done?”

  “You can kiss my ass, Fox,” Brady replied. He slammed the window shut and brought his fist down into the fold down table, making everything on it bounce a few inches in the air.

  Talon yelled, “What are we doing? What the hell is he doing? What did he say?”

  “He said that we need to get out of here and to take it slow. He plans on taking on all of them himself. He’s absolutely crazy!” Brady said.

  Brandy looked to the other boys in the RV, unsure what to say. Brady walked to where their ammunition was sitting and took a small bag of pre-loaded magazines.

  “You going to give those to Shaun?” Ben asked.

  “Nope, sure as shit not. He better hope he has all the bullets he needs. We said we wanted to go on this crazy ass ride, for better or worse. We thought that he’d be good for everyone. Well, how much helping are we doing if we are sitting in here like a bunch of bitches?” Brady yelled.

  Jay wanted to say something, but he had never agreed more with his best friend. He watched as Brady threw the door open to the outside and disappeared as he pushed it shut behind him. Jay ran to the back, getting a rifle and bag as well. He yelled to Talon, “Talon, you take this thing nice and easy. There probably isn’t much room with the three of us laying down on top of the roof. Can you handle that?”

  “I can handle a lot, Jay. Brandy, why don’t you drive and get us through this mess of cars. I’m not sitting here just to be baby sat by strangers.”

  When Talon tried to get up out of the captain’s chair she slapped him with all she had across the rear of the head. “You will do no such thing, you moron! What are you talking about, have me drive it? I’m sixteen and you know how interested my dad was about teaching me how to drive. All I’m going to do is drive the damn thing into a wall and break it. Is that what you want? Or do you want to do your part and get us safely out of here? Unfortunately, I'm sure there’s going to be a helluva lot of those things to take out in the future. You can do your part by giving us one.”

  Timmy sprinted to the back, coming back with his .22 rifle. Brandy took him by the back of the neck, lifting him half a foot off the ground and removing the rifle from his tiny grip. “I’m really aware that you are Billy badass, but you aren’t going anywhere. You are too young, damn it. Would you listen to me? Sit down, Timmy, now!”

  She leaned over on the table, not sure if she was going to be sick. Talon started a foot at a time, inching the RV forward.

  Ben looked around and got his own rifle and a can of ammunition. He placed it in between his legs in the front seat, alongside with placing four pistols on the dashboard. “They get too close and we are going to need something to do about it. I’ll shoot through the windshield if need be. We are getting off this bridge.” Ben looked behind him, waiting to make sure Brandy wasn’t listening before leaning over conspiratorially to Talon. “Hey, Talon, am I a pussy for not going out there? I mean, do you think they are going to think less of me for not going out?”

  “If they do, it won’t be until after they are done saving our asses. Is there a reason you aren’t going out there?” Talon asked.

  “I’m not that good of a shot and I’m scared. Like, really scared of those things. I thought some gun powder courage would come with that training, but it doesn’t seem like it did. I still feel scared all the time, but now it is an entirely new kind. I don't know if I’m cut out for this shit.”

  “You picked a fucking stupid path, then.”

  ☣ ☣ ☣

  Brady was already disappearing up over the ladder. Jay looked up at it and thought of how fast those things could go. The imagination he had was not helping the situation at hand. He shook his head. He was thinking of how great an idea they thought that they'd had when they were sneaking into Shaun’s now toasted Humvee, and how happy they thought that he’d be when they told him they were there to help him and watch his back.

  Brady ran up to Shaun, practically sliding and laying out with his rifle in front of him. “They make it up here and there isn’t shit I can do to protect you. No judgement if you get up and go back in the RV,” Shaun told him.

  Jay answered for Brady as he lay down on Shaun’s other side. Flashbacks of Aslin and McQuaig raced through his mind. “You can go in the RV if you want to, Shaun. We can drive this thing out and pray that they don’t rip it apart. We snuck in that Humvee to help you. We weren’t trying to give you one more thing to worry about.”

  Shaun was going to answer, but the screams of the horde echoed and he nodded, smiling and melting behind his rifle. He waited until he could see them and flicked his rifle to auto. The Turned looked thinner than usual, and he wondered if at some point, they could literally starve to death. He figured whatever food source in the city was left for them had, much like themselves, learned how to avoid the dead and to live.

  Shaun began firing off shots and the sound echoed across the bridge. The dead began climbing the suspension cables, looking like circus performers as they disappeared up high. Shaun looked at the other two; they were focusing on the dead coming for them.

  He got up on his knees, taking aim at the dead ascending to heights that would have made his stomach turn. He fired single shots, clipping some of them, sending them falling down one hundred feet and greater, landing on cars and sides of the bridge. Had it not been for the sounds of t
he rifles, he was quite sure the sound of their bones cracking would be more than satisfying. Shaun smiled lightly when he shot one in the shoulder and watched it flip end over end, crashing its face into the concrete barrier in the middle of the road.

  Jay and Brady both clicked empty. They wasted no time switching out their magazines for another. The seconds they spent were enough to let through more of the dead, without anything taking them out. Shaun gauged the distance, thinking they were fucked.

  Shots rang out from beneath them and Shaun realized they were firing through the window when glass peppered the street in front of them. Shaun also figured out that driving forward might not be the greatest idea, but figured if they stopped, it was getting them no closer to the end of the bridge. The fact that all options sucked in this impossible set of circumstances was making his head spin.

  He went back to his position, firing as quickly as he could. He yelled over the fire power that they don’t have to all be head shots, they just need to go down. “We can worry about everything else once we get off this fucking bridge.”

  The two shooters nodded, trying to not slow down. When they clicked empty a second time, they were much quicker about reloading the rifles. The fact that a lot of the dead could make their way through in that wasted time was more than evident.

  Talon hit a Prius, sending the tiny car to the side, and sent Shaun forward from his kneeling position. He screamed as he rolled past Jay and Brady, thinking for sure that he was going to get himself shot. He went straight forward, trying to grab onto something but to no avail. He saw the barbed wire at the top of the RV and leapt up in the air and over it. Shaun saw the horrific face that Ben had when he went over the hood. His rifle got stuck on one of the windshield wipers, and he clung to the grill of the RV as his feet scraped along the ground.

  Talon watched in shock before Brandy slapped him upside the back of the head. “Would you stop, you idiot? What are you waiting for, him to fall off so you can run him over?”

  When the pain subsided and her words made their way through to his thought process, he slammed on the brakes. The RV’s tires and brakes squealed. Shaun, who was pulling himself up, slammed his face on the hood, and when it seemed to magically stop, he went flying backwards, sliding across the ground and disappearing. The Turned had taken advantage of the time and closed the gap to within twenty yards.

  Shaun opened his eyes, feeling blood running down his face. He looked up, his world upside down with how he was on the ground and saw the dead coming for him, snarling and growling as they made their way. He shook his head, trying to get his world to quit spinning and grabbed his rifle off the hood.

  “Get off that roof and in the RV! Come on, we need to go. Hurry up, those things are going to be here, now!”

  Neither of the boys needed convincing, and they swung down off of the roof. Jay screamed as he hit the ground and immediately held his foot up, trying to avoid any pressure on it. Shaun prayed for his sake that he was okay. When he saw the look on his face, the question of him being okay was answered.

  “Get in the RV,” Brady yelled, opening the door and shoving him inside of it. Brandy picked him up dragging him into the RV with Timmy doing what he could.

  Brady was on his tail and Shaun screamed as he leapt in. “Run those bastards over, Talon!”

  “What if we get stuck?”

  “Punch the gas, Talon!” Brandy screamed. “What happens if they catch us sitting still?”

  Talon did as asked and the dead leapt into the air and onto the hood. Ben, who had been reloading, immediately began firing again. The dead screamed as he took perfect aim, not wanting to miss, for he knew their very lives depended on it. “Die you pieces of shit!”

  Shaun ran up to the front, shouldering his rifle, and tossed his bag of ammunition to Timmy. “You go fill this up with as many as you can. Can you do that for me, Timmy? It’s very important, we have lots of bullets for these two guns. Can you please go do that for me, buddy?”

  Timmy held out his hands to catch it, giving a thumbs up, and turned around, sprinting to the back. Shaun watched, making sure he was taking from the correct box of ammo. He pulled his pistol and sat alongside Brady, firing up into the dead jumping onto the RV. The glass was almost non-existent at this point and they were unable to see anything.

  Shaun watched Talon. The veins in his ropey arms already looked wild normally, and right now, if he got any tighter of a squeeze on them, he thought they might explode out of his skin.

  Jay, who wasn’t thinking, screamed, “You need to drive straight!”

  “Straight into what, asshole? Cars? Done. I can’t see a damn thing! It’s impossible to see anything. All I have in front of me are the dead!” Talon yelled back.

  Shaun looked through the very small cracks he could see and said, “If you feel any bumps, you need to go the other way. We have to be close to the end of this bridge.”

  “Yeah, well, it feels like we’ve been on it for an hour as it is,” Talon answered.

  “You’re doing great, Talon,” Brandy said.

  “No, he isn’t, he’s hitting everything in the way,” Timmy answered.

  Shaun took his gun, walking to the door, and put it on full auto. He ran a magazine across it until there was a two inch strip of daylight showing through. He’d gotten a small amount of pleasure as the Turned that were on there growled in protest as the bullets riddled through their body.

  “Shaun, what are you doing?” Brandy asked.

  “Giving you a spot to stand. You let him know if we are close to those cables on the bridge. When we run out of them, we are off the bridge, and if we get too close, you tell him which way to go. Hurry up, now, and sit here. You tell him which way to go.”

  Talon let off the gas, and the RV started bucking up and down as any Turned that couldn’t fit on the windshield fell off. Shaun imagined the worst and could see hundreds of them piled atop of it. “You need to get over to the right, Talon!” Shaun ordered.

  Talon couldn’t handle much more stress and went left instead. The sound of scraping metal was almost deafening. “Your other left! God damn it, Talon!” Brandy screamed.

  “You want to drive, Brandy?” Talon hollered back over his shoulder as he gave her a very aggressive middle finger.

  “Just do better! Get over a little and keep going, would you?” Brandy said.

  “She’s right, Talon, don’t slow down,” Ben pleaded. “There’s no more room. If you don’t move over we will go off the side of the bridge.”

  Talon took long, deep breaths. He wasn’t sure what he could say and could think of nothing useful, so he just listened to her weak guidance until the lines disappeared.

  Shaun came back up, giving each of the two boys ear protection before unloading magazine after magazine on the dead on the windshield. He ran to the back, finding a mop, and started pushing them off with everything he had, grunting and yelling, letting everyone know with no question that he was the one who hated these things the most with absolutely no doubt. Shaun pushed at them until he could get a hole for Talon to see.

  The dead began to grow so heavy that they were getting too much weight atop of the long RV. Shaun thought about firing up at them, but did not want to get a shower of death from whatever it was coursing through their bodies. He looked at everyone, trying to be brave, and knew that it was just an act, and they were probably as scared or more than he was. He wanted all The Turned dead, and the fact that he was useless was absolutely infuriating to him.

  Talon had never let off the speed, just as he had been directed to, and the swerving grew more wild until, by the time the teens realized what was happening, it was already too late. Talon hit the brakes, trying his best to correct the situation, but the giant RV flipped on its side. The dead that were on top did not leave for long. Within a second, they were back and pounding on the sides, the scalding hot pipes of the RV below, and on the back.

  The small group slowly started getting up, looking around. A small amo
unt of light had started to come through. Shaun got up first. He, like the others from what he could see, were feeling that fall. Blood was dripping down his forehead, and he knew they were fucked.

  “What are we going to do?” Ben stammered.

  “I don’t know… Die, I guess,” Talon whispered.

  Ben punched him in the arm, forgetting for a minute that he was almost twice his size.

  “You hit me again, and I’ll throw you out for bait, Ben.”

  “Relax, Talon, we’ll think of something. I want the two of you to keep your heads. Can you do that for me? Please, can you do that?” Shaun asked.

  “I guess. Timmy, Brandy, are you two okay?” Talon asked.

  Timmy was sitting in the corner, holding his wrist and crying. He had a cut that went from his temple to cheekbone that he seemed to be unaware was there. Brandy saw it, ignoring what was wrong with her, and immediately took hold of her shirt and ripped a long piece off it. His cut was so long and awkward, she was unsure what to do with it. She wrapped it around his jaw and made it tight, not leaving a lot of room for him to do much more than to grunt.