The Orphans | Book 8 | Retaliation

by Evans, Mike

  Shaun looked at the mass of people standing at the gate watching. He didn’t think that there were half that he recognized of them, and that was a cocky estimate. There was one person for sure that he knew, one that he couldn’t forget even if he wanted to and that was Ellie. When Shaun met Ellie’s eyes, he could see a mixture of emotions: good, bad, questions, anger, and he prayed that one of them might still be love.

  Joey leaned over near Greg but he held up a hand. Greg looked to the others from their camp and confusion was the common denominator amongst all of them. Shaun walked forward slowly; whatever happened, happened, and there was little he could do or say about it. Clary let go of Joey’s coat and he stood still. There was no saving what needed to be done and it was apparent that Shaun was very safe at this point. Clary walked out front but Ellie ran past him. She surprised him on quite a few levels because he didn’t have the slightest clue what to expect. Ellie ran up and gave him the tightest hug that anyone anywhere could give another. It had so much love behind it that Shaun felt a tension on his shoulder get lifted, which was a feeling he’d not felt in quite some time.

  After almost a minute, Ellie stepped back a foot, her shoulders were shaking and her lip was trembling. Shaun tried to say sorry and her hand came out of nowhere. His first instinct was not to let her slap him across the face. The fact that she probably needed to do this to forgive him, to move on, to deal with what was at hand was why he took everything she threw at him. Shaun wasn’t sure if he felt or heard the slap. Joey sucked in a breath and whispered to Greg, “He should have moved. That’s going to leave a mark, I think.”

  “He got off lucky if it doesn’t,” Greg replied.

  Ellie brought up her hand a second time, and Shaun didn’t so much as flinch. If taking the beating was what it took to get back in her good graces, that was going to be just fine by him. She tried to make herself slap him again but she stared too deep into his eyes and couldn’t. She reached forward with her hand but gripped onto his shirt instead of slapping or punching him. Ellie finally broke down and her emotions were tearing her apart at the moment. She buried herself on Shaun’s shoulder, and after a minute, he could feel the warm tears beginning to soak through. Shaun wrapped his arms around her, lightly at first, and he could feel her squeeze him harder and start to relax.

  Earl whistled from behind them; he’d missed the subtle hints that this was a quite intense reuniting of friends and loved ones or one. Ellie let go of Shaun, wiping her tears as she attempted to gain her composure. Earl said, “I’m glad you got your pretty little lady back and all but what the hell are we gonna do now that we got us back to good ol’ Iowa where all this shit started?”

  Shaun sighed looking at Ellie, “Yeah, that’s Earl, he is from Iowa somewhere; I never really got a real clear answer. He always went back to talk about some truck and the ladies that he’s been with.”

  “I don’t understand?”

  “You probably never will, Ellie. Just try to keep your chats short with him. He is hell bent on trying to reach one of his friends and his son.”

  “Where are they?”

  “I don’t know, exactly, but it is someplace in Canada. Again, he just keeps talking about one thing and it leads him to something completely different.”

  “You understand that I thought you were dead...we thought you were dead...not even a radio message to tell us you were alive! You can’t do that to people. You can’t do that to people that care about you, and that you said you cared about!”

  “It wasn’t like that; it wasn’t because I didn’t care. It was because I did. I couldn’t stand to see anyone else die because of some decision I made, something wrong that I did.”

  “Did you ever think that those things would have happened regardless of what decisions you made, or if you were here or not? We are stronger or were stronger with you here by our side, one more person pulling triggers, watching our backs. It was just Greg and I left from our group. Everyone was gone, and we thought you were too.”

  “I don’t know what to say, Ellie. I’m sorry, it wasn’t on purpose, I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. I just didn’t know how to deal with what I was feeling, and for the first time it seemed like the only decision I could grasp was the idea of leaving.”

  “Well, next time, don’t be a dick, and stick around. Girls like me are going to be a hot commodity once people start dating again, when all of the Turned are dead. Your blood bag trick was pretty awesome. It just is a slow collection process; you know on account of us having to continually get more.”

  “Yeah, well I’m glad that was working.”

  Clary cleared his throat. Patience wasn’t his forte and he had already used more of it than most people would be afforded. Clary walked over, holding up a finger to Earl, who looked like he was going to lose his patience pretty quickly. Clary pulled Shaun over holding him up straight in front of him and assessing the boy who was very much on his way to becoming a man. He’d lost weight, gained muscle and grown a few inches, he thought. Other than some light scarring that he’d picked up, he appeared to be in good health. “You okay, Shaun? I didn’t think we were ever going to see you again.”

  Shaun was going to say something but Clary brought up his arms a second time, moving pretty quick for a one-eyed Navy Seal, and gave him a bear hug that he would not soon forget the feeling of.

  “I hadn’t planned on coming back, to be honest, but I knew that this was a game changer and I didn’t know anywhere else to start from. I wanted you guys to be set up. Enough has been lost.”

  “You aren’t making any sense, Shaun. Are you sure that you are alright?”

  “I’ll explain everything…if we can stay?”

  Clary pulled Shaun off balance towards him and held him by both shoulders. He whispered, “Shaun, no one asked you to leave, we didn’t want you to leave. We just wanted to know you were alright. Of course you can stay, son.”

  Shaun’s shoulders dropped a few inches. His stress was almost melting away. Shaun noticed people missing, and he was too scared at the moment to ask where they were, for he was confident he already knew the answer. “It’s good to be back, Clary, I am really glad you guys are still here.”

  “We aren’t all here, but we can go over all that later. I appreciate you not asking right away. It doesn’t ever get any easier.”

  “Never will, Clary.”

  Clary let go of his shoulders and took a step back. He was going to ask Shaun about his travels and how in the hell he ended up in a CDC airplane and with a group of strangers, but a very impatient Joey stepped forward and wrapped his massive arms around Shaun, squeezing him until it hurt. When he let go, Shaun gave him a hug that wasn’t going to leave him thinking he needed a chiropractor after it.

  Greg was the last to step up; he smiled, walking forward, arms out. Shaun was wondering if he’d hit his head and was hallucinating or if something had happened to Greg over the time that he’d been gone. The idea that Greg could have matured in that long of a time was probable, but the likelihood of it was small. Shaun opened his arms slowly trying not to be mistrusting. Greg got within a foot and used the back of his hand to slap Shaun hard in the balls.

  Shaun let out an oomph of air as he swallowed puke back down, keeping himself from losing it. However, if he was going to lose it on anyone right now, it would most definitely be Greg. Shaun took a step back practicing his breathing that Mr. Li had taught him, but it hadn’t helped or done anything to make this horrific pain feel any better or to dissipate. Shaun finally fell to a knee, Greg ruffled his hair and said, “Glad you’re home, asshole, don’t leave again. Ellie went off on a four-wheeler looking for your ignorant ass, and well, things didn’t go great for anyone from there.”

  Shaun coughed once more and pushed back up to his feet, a little wary now of Greg and what he’d do. He said, “Good to see you, Greg. I don’t always pick the best choices, but I’m sure you know we all make some bad mistakes.”

  Greg put his hand out, pulling
Shaun up. He gave him a long hug and when he let go, each of them took a deep breath. The awkwardness of the moment was slowly fading but the tension could still be cut with a knife. Greg pointed to the guys and boy standing behind them still near the plane and said, “So, are you going to spill it or not?”

  “Clary, can we get them squared away please? This was a short flight but a long time getting there. Maybe we can go over this in the morning? One more day isn’t going to hurt anything.”

  “A lot can happen in a day, Shaun. Let’s get the kids set up and we can talk to who we need to about this and then they can get some rest. There’s no reason to waste the day,” Clary said.

  Shaun motioned for everyone from the plane to come over. Joey said, “Hey Shaun, when did you become a ninja? You looked like Jet Li or Bruce Lee. You cut those things into shish ka zombies,” Joey gave it a three count before he started laughing hysterically.

  Shaun smiled and everyone headed to the confines of the base. Shaun pointed to Scott and yelled, “Lock the plane door back up. We don’t want any surprises when we go to get back in it.”

  Clary said, “I’m confused. I thought you said that you guys were coming to stay, that you had something big.”

  Mark started to laugh, which Clary didn’t understand and didn’t take well immediately. When Mark saw the look on Clary’s face, and the fact that even from a few feet away the man still looked ginormous, immediately coughed on his laugh thinking that he could easily bend him like a pretzel. He pulled out a vial from his pocket. He tossed it over to Clary, who tried to catch it, but with the loss of most of the vision in his eye, it was not simple. It hit his chest and he was able to put a boot beneath it. Clary bent down to get it and delivered a stern eye fucking to Mark. Clary was a pretty good judge of character and thought that if someone was going to get eaten, he’d be okay with it being the new guy. Clary held it up, shaking it back and forth, not a clue what it was. He wasn’t stupid when it came to things like this. If you didn’t know what it was, you didn’t take the vial cap off for anything...anything at all. He looked up to Shaun and could see a small smile on the boy’s face starting to break out and Shaun said, “That’s the cure in that bottle.”

  Clary said, “Bullshit, we’ve seen one of these things opened up. There is no cure for not having a fucking heart. You should see these things heal almost overnight. How much experience do you have with these?”

  Mark shrugged, “Not very much at all, really. I started on the day of the outbreak stuck in a building at the CDC. I didn’t leave until we went to fetch Joe and Earl, which is when we acquired the teenagers here and then Mr. Li and the boy. But in that time, I spent almost every waking hour trying to figure out what you are holding in your hand.”

  “Look, I’m not really big about beating around the bush. What is it? How does it cure them?”

  Mark was going to give an answer when Scott cut in because he could tell by the look on Clary’s face that he did not appreciate how the delivery of this information was going. He said, “Look, Mr. Clary is it?”

  “Just Clary is fine.”

  “Fine, Clary, my name is Scott. Mark and myself work at or worked at The Center for Disease Control. We typically do try to solve issues with outbreaks, it is really all we focus on besides support for those infected to try and keep them out of pain while they wait for their end to come. He stays in the lab; I go in the field. Everyone has a purpose.”

  “Yet you still aren’t answering anything.”

  “To the point, right. Okay, we take this vial and when they take in the chemical it kills them, again. Not sure if they are dead already or not but it takes them out, they don’t get back up. The cure isn’t really a cure. It kills them and cures us from having to worry about them,” Scott explained.

  Clary went from disrespectfully playing with the vial to treating it as precious as the cure for cancer, which coincidentally was what started all of this hell unleashed on Earth in the first place. He could honestly say that he never truly thought he’d find a way that wasn’t fueled by gunpowder to deal with these mutated freaks. He knew there was no way to handle them as of now that didn’t mean putting their own lives in danger to kill them.

  “You’ve tested this?”

  Earl walked up, pulling his jeans up by his belt buckle. Clary was sure that if he strutted any harder that he might turn into a rooster. Earl said, “Did I test this? Did I test this? Does a duck walk on water?”

  “I’m not quite sure how to answer that question,” Clary replied, confused on how to take Earl at the moment and wondering if there was going to be anyone out of this group that he didn’t want to impale with a large, wide pipe.

  “Look, I don’t like to flaunt my pewter laced tongue amongst the simple people. I got a gun that we use, it is made to do just one thing. Now, do you know what that is?”

  “To shoot shit?” Greg intervened.

  Earl opened his mouth to stay something, almost looking offended that someone, anyone, could predict accurately what it was that he was going to say. “Does this kid got the espn? How the hell did this lil’ pecker know that?”

  Shaun said, “Earl, it’s been a long trip. Let’s speed this up, please.”

  “Shoot, you ain’t no fun. It works like you couldn’t believe. We had some problems with it early on but we got her pretty figured out now…so long as they got some bricks or shit around.”

  “Earl, is it? Can you do me a favor?” Clary questioned.

  “You gonna let me stay here and maybe let me take one of them there tanks out?”

  “You got half of that right,” Clary said, having absolutely no intentions of ever if possible, letting this man be behind the driver’s seat of a machine so capable of destruction and causing incalculable havoc. “Greg, take your new buddy Earl and show him where he and the others are going to be staying until we get to know everyone.”

  Greg pointed to himself, “Seriously, I can’t even think of the last time that you had to yell at me…don’t look at me like that, you knew bringing this many girls here wasn’t going to leave me with any options but to full bore try and find a girlfriend. It isn’t my fault that the ladies like what I got. I meant as far as anything not related to me having to blow something up or leaving or Ellie getting a bump on the head. Come on, there are fifty people, okay maybe not that many, but many that can do this.”

  Clary didn’t change his poker face. He held Greg’s stare until his shoulders sank a little. He motioned for Earl, and Scott motioned to the boys to follow them. When they were out of earshot, Scott said, “Thank you, it has been a long day. Just a pre-warning he probably won’t let that tank thing go. He is usually pretty hell bent on pursuing ideas.”

  “Can he drive it?”

  “No way in hell. He has two friends who went to Canada on a fishing trip. Earl is the most optimistic man I’ve ever met. He also ranks up with the most annoying at times…at most times. He’ll grow on you if he’s here long enough though, Clary.”

  “I’m not really looking for a new friend...that’s a redneck, who is also old. I want to know more about this cure, what's it actually doing?”

  Mark held up a hand. Clary nodded and Mark cleared his throat. “They ingest it, now I don’t know why they breathe but we think that they do. The science behind these things is not what I expected, when we realized they do not have a heart, or at least one which is intact. I am confident you won’t drown one, but that they probably aren’t able to swim.”

  Ellie shivered at this, thinking about her time in the river. “If they get moving fast enough, they can get pretty close to doing it with the current helping them out.”

  “Did you see some of them trying to swim, Ellie?” Shaun asked, always curious to learn more about the dead and what they were capable of.

  “Yeah, you could say that.” She didn’t want to bring up how she’d gone off halfcocked trying to find him and losing her mind. When she had, there’d been a horde and the only reason she was still
alive today was because of her quick thinking and jumping off the bridge. If it had been a dried-up sand bank beneath her, she would not be doing anything now but hunting for meat, given they’d left enough of her to make the turn.

  Shaun didn’t continue with further questioning. He knew damn well that too many questions inevitably would guarantee him to only be met with answers which he might not actually want to have to deal with thinking about.

  Clary felt like he was holding the winning lotto ticket. He asked impatiently, “Okay, so I don’t care if they can swim or about their abilities in the water. I want to know about this. Is it really going to take them out? Is there no coming back from this? I’ve seen some pretty horrible things that they’ve been able to regenerate from. Did you know that they could do that?”