The Orphans | Book 8 | Retaliation

by Evans, Mike

  “What do you mean, almost everyone?”

  “Shaun, he’s the kid that just keeps going. It doesn’t matter, he’s the most hard headed person I’ve ever met and he doesn’t give up. He doesn’t let up; he doesn’t know how to fail.”

  “I’m glad that we ran into him then.”

  “Not everyone on his team makes it. But then again, anyone who has made it this long is still lucky to have been alive.”

  Joe was going down his list. He said, “I hope that this trick does it. I mean, those guys better be as smart as they need to be. If I find out that we did all this for nothing then I’m going to rip that little nerd a new one.”

  She laughed and said, “Why don’t we go and find the others. Let’s try not to get ourselves murdered in the meantime.”

  By the time they headed down they had two duffle bags that were packed to the brim. Each of them realized if they needed to try and go back across the ladders, they would more than likely die because of their want to save the world, or at least save their own lives. They didn’t skimp and got as many doubles and triples of things as they could.

  ******

  Ellie’s group made their way down to the second floor. After the gun fight, they were trying to deal with the after effects of the adrenaline rush which had been racing through their bodies. Ellie could feel her heart pounding in her head and she was thinking, if she didn’t settle down soon, that puking was in her very near future. They had barely made it down to the middle of the second floor before the halls echoed with gunfire.

  The hallway, which had been almost peacefully quiet, quickly changed. Ellie had already been ready with her rifle shouldered. Clary had told them more times than she could remember that if the barrel isn’t pointing in the direction of what you would like to shoot then you might as well be carrying a paperweight. The Turned seemed to materialize out of nowhere.

  Ellie could feel the adrenaline racing through her veins for a second dose. She knew if tonight actually happened and she lived that she was going to feel about as good as dog shit.

  She walked by the closed doors, not making the same mistake as the first group. The issue at hand was just that as the glass that said professor Bryant on it exploded out through the words stenciled on the glass. A bloodied blackened hand protruded from the glass gripping on to the side of Ellie's hair.

  Ellie immediately tried to pull away, but the hand was motivated and the Turned behind it was hungry. She could only assume the longer this Hell on Earth went on, that the longer these things would go in between eating. If only they would starve to death, then possibly the world could get a second chance at life.

  Unfortunately for Ellie, the hand was not letting go and even as hard as she tried to pull away from it, she was easily losing the fight. Joey felt his heart in his throat knowing how he felt when his sister and brother had been lost so long ago and so early in the zombie apocalypse that he sure as hell was not going to lose Ellie. Ellie was the one that made sure if he had bad dreams that he was told everything was okay, that life would go on, and that if anyone was going to survive it was going to be them. Joey had promised her on more than one occasion that she would not become one of those things. Joey would not let such a thing happen.

  Joey let out a warrior's cry, not using any hesitation to save her. He swung the bat with precise accuracy. Ellie could feel the wind being split in two above her light hair. She knew that that wind she was feeling was going to save her life. She couldn't think of anyone more suited than Joey that she would trust more than him to accomplish what he was going for. When people made promises to keep you safe, to keep you alive, to look out for you, Joey meant every single thing he said up and until his dying breath.

  The crack of the bat connecting with its hardened skull echoed its way down the hallway. Its head snapped back, and if it had been a regular human, Joey would have just put it in the hospital if not the morgue. But, unfortunately for them, this wasn’t a human, it was a monster. Ellie turned her head to see the dead staring directly at her, black drool coming down in a thin disgusting line from its face. A single line of black sludge that must have been its brain at one point, she could only quickly assume, made its way down its forehead, dribbling and mixing into the saliva. Ellie definitely would be content with puking right now but right now was about survival, and the weak would not be victorious.

  Ellie didn't waste any time, there wasn't any to be wasted. The Dead almost never roamed alone, and unfortunately this case was not different in any way. A second hand came out, but this time she was very well prepared. When it reached out she gripped down to it sliding to the side and pulling the Dead up against the shattered glass. She leaned to the side, hoping she was on the same page as everyone else and thankfully for her they were. Yassa had a pistol already pointing at the Turned’s skull. He squeezed off two shots simultaneously, ignoring the kick and recoil from the shot and put the Turned to rest.

  The doors at the end of the hallway exploded outward. Yassa pulled Pete behind him, not wanting to lose anyone especially someone educated, and that could very well be helpful. Pete screamed, thinking that it could be the dead pulling him backwards, but alas luckily for him, that was not the case. When Pete saw Yassa and not one of the Turned looking like he was going to try and eat Pete, he rested a bit easier. He was definitely not used to gunshots, and the ringing in his ears was making it hard for him to follow directions. Pete was pretty confident though the word ‘fuck’ was being used repeatedly and the word ’down’ so Pete knelt down, not on his knees but looking like he was doing an awkward duck walk, and stayed behind the group, hoping his luck had not ran out.

  Yassa and Ellie fired at the Turned as they made their way towards them, quite literally bouncing off the walls as they raced towards them. The Turned seem to only know one speed and right now they were using every ounce of it. Ellie knew if she didn't shoot the ones coming that they wouldn't have to worry about finding the formula ingredients because they’d either be what they were fighting against or not have enough to turn.

  Ellie sent rounds as quickly as they could pull or squeeze the trigger at the Turned. Hitting moving targets was hard enough, but going after headshots made it that much more difficult. Ellie was doing her best to not necessarily aim for their head but something even more difficult, she was trying to aim for where their head was going to be. She wanted to just toss a grenade down the hallway, but it wasn't going to do any good because doing that would just guarantee that any of the Turned who didn't know they were there would sure as hell know it then.

  A second reason why that was a bad idea was that the entire point of coming in this building was to get precious scarce supplies that were probably only available in so many places. The last thing she wanted to do was find out that there was an answer to this Hell and that she had taken any chance of a large amount of the cure to kill and blown it up because she was being selfish and putting herself before the rest of the world. She couldn't really justify such a thing.

  Ellie screamed, “We need to get the hell out of here! We need to get to Joe’s group and get moving!”

  Yassa replied, “No fucking shit, Ellie. We need to leave this place; it has zombies coming out of its ass.”

  Joey yelled, “You’re not supposed to talk like that, Yassa, Mr. Clary told you, I'm going to let him know that you're being mean. Ellie's telling you the truth!”

  Yassa didn't say anything further; he knew this kid had a heart of gold and if any of it rubbed off on him it would not do his heart bad.

  Within a few more shots, they had the hallway cleared. Everyone felt hyper aware about everything. They just wanted to get the shit and to get out of there. Ellie always wished if she could have one wish it would be that she'd at least know if this thing would end. She didn't want to fight this hard to end up falling or becoming one of the Dead. The idea of it turned her stomach and as little as she believed in it. Ellie checked that all of them had been shot in the head at least once. She did
n’t want to worry about walking by them and having one bite her ankle. She had pledged and promised to herself that if that happened that she would save her last bullet for herself. She would never allow herself, if it was in her control, to be one of those.

  Ellie didn’t flinch to Yassa’s words. Until these things were dead, there would be nothing she was going to focus on except the Turned coming her way. When the last one fell to the ground in a bloody skid, she realized she hadn’t taken a breath in quite a while, or at least what had seemed to feel like a very long time.

  Ellie looked behind her, making sure that Joey was alright. Pete was shaking on the ground, looking like he was in the fetal position. His body was covered with spent bullet casings speckled all around his body. She made sure that he wasn’t shot somehow because, so far, that would be the kind of luck she’d had today, she thought. She kept rethinking her decisions today and at the same time was trying to decide if she really was trying to help or if she just wanted to be able to say in twenty years that she was one of the ones who had helped set the wheels in motion to take the Earth, or at least Iowa in the small picture of things, back under the living’s control.

  Ellie brought the gun up when her head game became interrupted. She saw lips moving but it took a second for her brain to catch up with everything. Ellie had to shake her head to try and get her senses back. She had definitely felt better than today. When she did, that a ringing in her ears was still in full force, but she heard Joey feeling her back and sides saying, “Did you get hit? Ellie, are you okay, is everything alright? You didn’t have a heart attack did you? please say something Ellie.”

  Ellie walked forward and gave Joey a hug. She said, “I’m alright, Joey...I just get sick of having to fight these things. I want them gone, but I don’t think that we need to be the ones doing the shooting. Like for all of them...there has to be an easier way.”

  Joey smiled saying, “There is, and we are getting what we need so that we don’t have to shoot all of them. We won’t have to do anything but get them to breathe it in or whatever it is that it does. I can’t wait until they are gone. It’ll be great.”

  “Yeah, can you imagine all the things we will be able to do?”

  They were definitely thinking of different things. Joey whispered, “We can go into all them closed grocery stores. If we get lucky some of the freezers might still be working. We could get pizzas, ice cream, chicken nuggets...I think I’m getting dizzy.”

  Yassa was going to ask him if he needed meds and realized he was being a dick because the kid didn’t take meds. He did get a little too excited about food, and he knew that there was a good chance that his adrenaline going back to normal levels might be the reason he was starting to come down. “Just take it easy for a minute and get your shit back together,” Yassa instructed.

  The group listened, wondering if there’d be any more to deal with. The Turned running full bore typically wasn’t a big issue, because when it came down to it, so long as they had a lead on them, then it meant as loud as they were that they would give a little hint they were on the way. Being destructive in their path was one of the only ways they ever knew they were coming unless they were growling and screaming as they moved.

  Joey looked at the door, trying to decide what he was looking at. It didn’t take the young man long to figure out that what he saw at first seemed to be the mecca of bottles. Joey said, “Ellie...Ellie, I think that we found something. I think we found something.”

  “Yeah, we found a bunch of effing…”

  Joey spun her around, which for Joey to interrupt someone or even be rude was unheard of. He picked up Ellie, which in turn shut her up and set her in front of the door, putting his hands on each side of her head. He said, for a second time, “I think we found something...something good, really good.”

  When she saw hundreds of bottles inside of the room, she opened the door, walking in, feeling like she was in a trance. It was all that she could do to not start crying. Things going well was not something which she could say happened regularly. She wasn’t complaining, she’d made it further and been more successful, which basically meant not dying, not becoming one of the Turned which of course was exactly the absolute last thing anyone wanted to have happen. A million times over she’d thought about it and never once thought she’d be interested in knowing what the other side was like. Ellie whispered, “It has got to be here...there’s no way that there is this much stuff here and there isn’t what we need.”

  Yassa said, “Well maybe we should go in there and see what it has to offer. I mean, maybe he can make what he needs out of this stuff if it isn’t here. I don’t know if we can leave any of it behind.”

  Ellie said, “We know where it is, right? I mean, we can come back with a damn tank and get everyone and everything that we need. I don’t know how smart it would be for us to get weighed down.”

  “Yeah but we do have these things called…”

  “Yassa, you should get it, right, they run out of bullets. I’m aware of guns, and…”

  Joey cut Ellie off saying, “Mr. Yassa, Ellie, I think maybe we should go in and start looking and then maybe you guys could fight with each other once we get back to the Humvee and are safe? I feel like we are wasting time...that is precious.”

  Joey smiled awkwardly holding up the list and trying to divert attention away from himself. Ellie nodded, not saying anything else before pulling her own list and within minutes unknowingly would have the remaining items that they needed. Kya and Joe stood in the doorway both of them looking like they’d been through Hell...because they had. Kya didn’t know how to say anything not awkward and said, “Don’t shoot, we're humans. We found almost everything upstairs.”

  Ellie saw just the two of them and with the gunshots going off upstairs knew her answer. “You lost the other three?”

  Kya, who understandably wasn’t having the greatest day, replied, “I don’t know that we lost anyone so much as a zombie pulled Jon and Henry into a room. His reaction to that was firing off an entire magazine. Brett caught a bullet to the skull and Henry had his ripped off...then we almost found everything.”

  Ellie asked, “What things do you need? There are hundreds of options here.”

  Kya pointed to them; they weren’t ignorant in anyway but these were words that needed to be explained to be spoken. Ellie marked the two on her list. The thought they’d done it, they’d done it on their own was amazing. Ellie didn’t waste any time and she and Joey within a few minutes had found them. Pete said, “So, it is like a powder that they shoot?”

  Ellie shrugged, “We haven’t seen it in action yet, at least none of us but Joe have. We are kind of going on blind faith here.”

  Joe said, “It’s a powder that is in little vials. We were shooting them out of a gun that was probably ten times larger than it needed to be. But he’d worked so long on it and well it worked...kind of, once we figured out shooting them directly didn’t work.”

  Pete’s engineering brain was racing a mile a minute. Having something he could do to do more than just keep them out of the buildings with magnets felt invigorating. The idea of killing these things with something he had a part to do with brought immediate joy to his heart. Pete didn’t want to sound cocky but said, “There’s definitely something that I can do to help. I'll just need some time and a place to do it.”

  Joey put his arm around Pete, patting his shoulder. He said, “We got the perfect place, Petey, trust me. An entire military base with all kinds of cool stuff. I bet you could do something amazing with all of it. I mean if we got what you need.”

  “I’m sure that I can figure something out. But there are so many different applications that I am thinking of that I’m getting goosebumps.”

  Yassa said, “So, this is fun that we found everything. Like I’m really happy about the idea of killing these things but I kind of think that we need to leave. I mean, what are we going to do; sit here all day? I think getting back before Clary does would be
great. I imagine he’s going to be pissed that we left.”

  Ellie nudged him with a playful elbow. She teased, “You aren’t trying to tell me that you are scared of Clary, are you?”

  “No, not so much scared but smart enough to know from the past that when that big son of a bitch swings those ape fists at you that they feel like a damn brick being slammed into your face. If I can avoid being the brunt of that anger, that would be just fine by me.”

  Joey, not needing to add anything, did. He said, “Mr. Clary angry, you won’t like the Hulk when he is angry.”

  “Agreed,” Yassa replied.

  The group made their way down, slowly checking each door that they passed. They weren’t stupid and they didn’t want to worry about another hand coming from nowhere and removing their life or lives as they knew it. When they made it to the first floor any and all questions of if their gunshots had been heard were immediately answered.

  Ellie had been at the front of the group and slid to a stop when they came around the corner, which unfortunately was supposed to lead to the exit, however if they pursued this path any further, it would most definitely lead to their death. An entire horde of Turned were finishing off the doors, fighting their way into the building.