The Orphans (Book 4): White Lie

by Evans, Mike

  Greg was still flipping through channels and said, “We have an Army hospital and it is set up for a war. You’ll have everything that you need there and probably more. It’s going to be nice having someone who has a clue about medicine there.”

  Lou looked to the girls and said, “Sounds like you best get your stuff going and make sure there isn’t anything else not packed that you care if we leave behind, or that you want to take with us. Greg, you know you two could ride with us, there’s no reason we need to wait for your friends if you don’t even know if they are coming or not.”

  Greg hadn’t thought about this but started to seriously consider the prospect of it. “Yeah we could I guess, but we couldn’t leave without knowing where Shaun is. There could be something just as bad going on with him and I wouldn’t want to leave him sitting out somewhere by himself. If you guys want to keep doing the radio, then I'll go out and look for him. I’m sure that I can pick up his trail if I go back to where he left at the grocery store down the road.”

  Lou looked across the open field that stretched to the road. The wind was blowing again and the snow with it. There would be no way that the kid would find any trace of his friend, especially after being here for over an hour. Lou said, “You could try kid but I think that you’d be fooling yourself. There is a foot of snow out there and you don’t stand a chance if you go out there on your own.”

  Greg kept flicking the radio hoping to either hear from Aslin or Clary. A voice finally came back on the other end of the radio, “Hello, Greg, Shaun, is that you?”

  Greg looked up to the sky wondering if maybe there was a God. He replied, “Oh thank God, yeah it’s Greg, who is this?”

  Hammond came back over, “It’s Hammond, man are you in deep-”

  Aslin slammed on the brakes of the truck sliding to a stop. He held out his good hand, wincing at making motion happen in his bad arm because of it. He yelled, “Give me that God damned radio now.”

  Hammond fumbled with it; he’d heard Aslin mad but was confident that this was an entirely new level of being pissed off. Aslin hit the transmit button and asked, “Greg, is everyone okay?”

  Greg said, “Uh, no.”

  “Expand on that would you, where the hell are you?”

  “We are in Urbandale, it’s not far from the base, you shouldn't have much issues getting here, you’ll see our truck on the bridge, we are just east of there in an apartment complex.”

  “So everyone is safe and alive Greg?”

  “No, not everyone.”

  Aslin started punching the dash of the truck, cursing more than the kids had heard in a while. He punched the truck’s radio so hard that they were worried the airbags were going to deploy. “God damn it Greg, who did we lose?” Aslin asked.

  Greg wasn’t speaking on the same terms as him. “We lost Shaun and Ellie is hurt pretty bad.”

  Aslin said, “I can’t believe this shit Greg. Just to confirm, it was you who talked them into leaving?”

  “I didn’t have to talk them into anything, I flat out lied that you guys said it was ok. I thought that we could get off base for a while and that we could find some survivors to bring back, you know, make some sort of a difference.”

  Aslin said, “And because of your lies Shaun is dead and Ellie is hurt, and you still don’t know where any one is?”

  Greg said, “No, no, no…..I don't know if Shaun is alive or not, when Ellie got hurt we had to carry her on a sled, we found an apartment complex not far away from the truck. If you swing by the grocery store, that is where I'd look for him at. He told us to head this way but we haven’t seen him anywhere. That was about an hour ago.”

  Aslin just looked at the radio trying his best not to lose his shit until they all made it back to the base safe and sound. Aslin looked at the kids in the rearview mirror and wondered what opposite world he was living in where his backup were kids that had probably not even gotten laid yet. He asked Greg, “Do you think you can stay there? I mean if it’s going to be that easy for us to find you, just stay put, don’t do anything else stupid. I want the three of you ready to go once we pull up. Is there anything out by the apartments that we need to worry about running into?”

  Greg said, “Yeah there are Turned, but we took out most of what was on the first floor. As long as none of them come out from the second floor I think that we will be ok getting down to you. We have plenty of help getting Ellie down the stairs and to your Humvee.”

  Aslin, not wanting to get into this conversation until they were back, said to Greg, “We are now driving a large black dually pickup truck; you won’t be able to miss us. You keep an eye out for me so we don’t have to honk. We both know what kind of unwanted attention that is going to get us. We are going to swing by the store first to try and find Shaun; we need to get him out of this weather if he’s outside.”

  “Hey, Aslin…..I'm sorry about all of this. I don’t want to ask any favors but there is an entire floor of people here that need to come back with us. One of them is even a nurse, something that you have to agree would come in handy having on the base right?”

  Aslin figured anyone who wasn’t completely locked down had been dead for months. “Wait, you mean- you mean there are still people around. You found some survivors?” he asked.

  “Yeah I didn’t find a few, did you hear me? I found a floor of them, there has to be at least twenty five or thirty people here. The one’s that I've spoken to so far have been helpful and brave. They fixed up Ellie so that she wouldn’t keep bleeding but said she has a pretty intense head wound. He had a long explanation that I didn’t understand but the gist of it was that she is in some sort of a coma because of a concussion.”

  Aslin started driving again. “You hang tight, tell the people that we can make trips if need be to get everyone that is willing to go back with us, ok?”

  “No, they have cars, there are garage units attached to the apartment, they all have their shit...I mean stuff ready to go, they aren’t stupid Aslin. Probably smarter than me, to tell you the damn truth.”

  “Like I said, just stay there. And Greg, you and I are going to have a very long and in depth come to Jesus meeting. I can only assume that Clary is going to want in on this and we are going to have to fight over who comes up with the shit duty that you are going to be in charge of doing until we cool off from this.”

  Greg, assuming and obviously not knowing that there had been any loss today, said, “Geez man it isn’t like we lost anyone. I admit Ellie getting hurt sucks but this Lou guy seems pretty optimistic that she is ok. It wasn’t like I did it on purpose. I had nothing but good intentions when we left today.”

  Aslin snapped and couldn’t pull the words back in. He yelled, “Well your good fucking intentions got Shelman killed today. We had gotten into a collision on our way to find you and someone fired their rifle on accident as a result. They would have never been in that goddamn truck if you would have just done what you were fucking told to do Greg. Sometimes you do such good work and make such good leadership decisions, then other times you just fuck up to no end. You need to learn to think. There isn’t a reason to go out on all these missions you always ask about if all you are doing is bringing back people to die. We need to take this seriously, you need to step up or step out because you aren’t going to stay this lucky forever. You took three people with you today and from what it sounds like all you have is Joey who isn’t damaged. You don’t know where Shaun, your best fucking friend, is and Ellie is in a coma now. Can you tell me one good thing that has happened besides finding those people?”

  Greg looked at Karen and Theresa thinking that definitely wasn’t the upside to the day that he had been looking for and said, “No, no sir there isn’t anything that I can think of that is going to put a good spin on today other than there might be a lot abler bodied smart people out there that we can bring back with us than we thought that there were.”

  “Just make sure that you stay where you are, and don’t leave. Unless th
at place is on fire, I want you to stay in Lou’s apartment or condo or whatever the hell you are in until we get there. You make damn sure that you do your best to not do anything ignorant until we arrive, or you’ll never see the outside of a base again as long as I am in charge of you and your actions.”

  Greg, being a teenager, was already running through his head where he could stay if things went bad. He was confident that he could handle this apocalypse with what he knew and could stay far enough away and off the grid that it wouldn’t make any difference. He just needed somewhere safe to sleep and something warm to eat and he would be fine.

  He was sure that if worse came to worse that he could get a few like-minded individuals to leave with him and they would be just fine on their own. They didn’t need any adults to tell them what to do. They weren’t ignorant and knew to eat when they were hungry and to sleep when they were tired. He knew there wouldn’t be any parties to worry about going to, they were all straight edge, it had been put into their heads that drugs and booze were bad and now more than ever most of the teens were pretty hardcore thinking that was correct. The idea of trying to run away from one of those things and thinking on their feet wasn’t something that they wished to pursue while under the influence.

  Greg said, “Yeah I hear you, maybe it will be a good idea if we sit down and have a talk about you being in charge of me and what I do.”

  Aslin started to reply but knew that getting into a screaming match with a teenager over the radio wasn’t going to do any good. He set the radio down and started to race towards Urbandale, doing his best to keep control of the truck. Ice was ice and it didn’t matter what you were driving, it always sucked. He took his time after a few awkward patches were hit and slowed it down. Hammond looked over the side of the seat at how hard he was gripping the wheel and asked, “So are you gripping that because of the pain in your arm, or because of what Greg had said?”

  Aslin looked in the rearview mirror, trying to determine how he wanted to answer that. “You know I can’t really say for sure, between the conversation, losing Shelman, hearing Ellie is hurt and that Shaun is lost, there’s not much more that would ruin my fucking day. I can’t say that having to think of the answer to this question is really helping with a hell of a lot Hammond. Did you have anything else that would piss me off even further that you would like to ask me, or did you want to go back to being able to enjoy this beautiful ride through the snowy damn tundra?”

  Hammond patted him on the shoulder. He wasn’t stupid and knew he hadn’t done anything to help with the pure rage that Aslin was currently feeling about the circumstance presented to him. The rest of the ride was quiet and somewhat uncomfortable. When Aslin pulled onto Eighty- Sixth Street they saw the faintest hint of tracks from Greg’s truck and started to see the Turned coming out of the ditches. The large truck was not easy on the ears and the muffler and engine echoed across the wide streets. When Aslin saw this he started shaking his head. He said, “You guys check your safety and you make sure you are ready. I don’t want one of those fuckers getting within twenty yards of this truck. The last thing that we need to do is get stranded. We won’t be doing a damn bit of good if that is the case. Clary already wants to come out here the last thing we need to do is give him a valid reason to do so. If they start making their move, you make sure that you split their damn heads open!”

  Aslin hit the windows for the front and back and killed the heat, knowing that it wasn’t going to be doing any good for the time to come. He figured at the same time that he was going to be doing even more use by having them down because it was going to be next to impossible seeing Shaun dressed in what he would assumed would be his white fatigues to match the environment. The Turned did not waste their time watching the large truck leave them behind, they started sprinting for it, and Aslin saw this and asked why no one was firing their rifles. The three teens answered by unleashing a reign of hell on the dead. When Aslin saw that none of them were falling he screamed, “Christ are any of you guys going for something that will put them down?”

  Hammond yelled, “Hey it isn’t easy hitting these things in the head. Between their jumping and leaping it’s impossible to hit them. I don’t know what else you expect us to do.”

  Aslin screamed, “Shoot the fuckers in the gut, shoot them in the leg, shoot them in anything that is going to keep them from standing upright, take them down damn it. Just because shooting them in the head kills them doesn’t mean you can’t take them down if they are after you. You just want to take them out of the equation right now. Later we can come back and put every one of them down, and make sure that one goes into their brain.”

  The kids stopped looking for the small impossible moving target and started leaving crippled zombies sitting in the street unable to move or crawling wounded after them. Aslin slowed down just enough so that Patrick and Maryann could jump out of the truck. They got into the rear end, rested their guns over the edge of the tailgate and were ready to go. Hammond tapped him on the shoulder yelling, “They are in place, let’s get going.”

  Aslin drove slowly now having control over the situation and the teens were systematically putting them down. When Aslin drove over the hill, he saw nothing but Turned in his path. He pulled to a stop and the rest of the teens got out of the truck then aimed down the hill and putting what Turned were there down before they had a chance to come for them.

  Aslin sat back in the truck thinking there wasn't one bullet spent training that was a waste. The piles of dead in the streets gave him a creepy good feeling that made him content with their actions, knowing that they weren’t going to have the opportunity to cause any further harm to anyone else.

  When they were cleared, Aslin drove up to Meredith Drive and saw more Turned but these were down and staying that way. When he pulled into the parking lot of the store he could tell some serious blasts had taken place there. The dead started in the middle and the rest that seemed scattered across the driveway had serious parts of their skulls removed. From his decades of experience behind a scope, he didn’t need anyone to tell him where the shooter had been perched. He looked up to the roof of the store but didn’t see anyone there, yet knew that at some point there had been someone.

  He slowly drove along all sides of the store and only saw one exit. Aslin saw a Turned lying by the side of the door and it definitely looked like a small one on one battle had taken place. The damages to the Turned looked gruesome. He could see something sparkling in the snow and since he saw none of the dead around, he yelled for Hammond to run down and check it out. When he came back he opened a snow covered glove showing off a handful of rifle casings. Aslin took one, smelled it and knew that it had not been sitting out here for long. He hefted his scoped rifle and rested it on the door and peering around but didn’t see anything that looked human. He saw Turned spread down the distance and knew that Shaun had headed in that direction.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Shaun opened his eyes as the growling was getting closer that much he knew. It sounded like it was coming through a tunnel though, he wasn’t sure if he was dreaming this or if it was real. He knew something was wrong and when he tried to open his eyes fully it felt like someone had attached weights to them. What he could see looked as blurry as anything he’d ever seen out of focus. When he tried to use his arms to push up, he fell back down into the snow, no longer feeling cold so much but not remembering why he felt this way.

  Shaun finally was able to open his eyes and he saw a Turned crawling towards him with its mouth open. It was also having issues moving itself. Shaun knew that they could heal but didn’t know to what extent or what time it took to do so. It wasn’t something that they could exactly test on a daily basis; their run-ins over the last few months with the Turned had been all but nonexistent as none of them had ventured that far out of the city quite yet in search of food.

  Shaun shook his head the best that he could then stared at the Turned. He wanted to push away from it but was having no
way of doing so. He knew that this was the end. He would not even be able to take out the one who was going to finally get him. The Turned was leaving a slosh of wet, bloody snow in its trail as it slowly pulled itself forward but was going as quickly as its body would enable it to do so. When it was finally within a foot, it reached for Shaun grabbing him by the coat and that was when Shaun could feel his body begin to slide through the cold, wet ice. Shaun winced at the movement. His body felt rigid like never before. He tried to reach for anything that could save him but it was too late and it was over.

  He thought of his dad and Ellie in his last seconds on earth as a human and the only thing that he could think of was the number of people that he would hurt. Shaun thought of the base before the first snows had fallen and the temperatures were near unbearable to be outside unless guard duty was the reason for it. He remembered brushing the hair from Ellie’s ear while they sat on the tanks watching the sunset going down and pretending if only for a short time they weren’t in the middle of hell on earth. When his mind travelled to the gross images of him ripping flesh from his own arm and then from the bodies of as many as he could, it made him want to puke right there on the ice.

  Shaun was screaming no, to little avail and when he stopped sliding he closed his eyes, waiting for the bite. The only thing that he felt was warm fluids hitting the top of his skull and forehead. A single shot echoed across the small valley that he was in and then everything went quiet. He couldn’t judge time in his current state and it felt like he sat there for hours waiting for the bites to come but they never did. The warm fluids started to become cold and he could feel ice forming from them. He wished for something warm but knew that if he wasn’t going to be Turned on this ice that he would freeze to death on it. Shaun heard the echoes of gunfire and screaming and then he watched, feeling like he was floating. He looked up to the overcast gray sky, waiting for himself to feel something new, to raise higher into Heaven, wondering if his parents would be there, curious if his father was invited to partake in the pleasantry of afterlife knowing how much pain he had helped to be responsible for. What he did hear sounded still like it was impossible, there was definitely noises but they didn’t sound like the Turned and they sure as hell weren’t angels from the amount of cursing that was being screamed into his ears.