by Raymond Lee
“If we have to,” Richards answered, starting the vehicle. “From what Hal and Damian told me about the place, they have a real good set-up but they’re hurting some people. The military can use the property and stop the abuse. I don’t think it’ll be hard at all getting a unit to take it over. No worries, I’ll make sure you’re secure at the base. You’re going to like it there. You can sleep at night without worrying about anything creeping up on you.”
“There’s nowhere like that.”
Richards cut her a glance as he pulled away from the side of the interstate and traveled toward the base. “I promise you you’re gonna be OK, kid.”
They traveled on in silence for another twenty or so minutes before he spoke again. “So back there when we were still looking for Raven… You told that zombie to leave and it did.”
“What are you talking about?” Sky asked, staring out the window at the abandoned cars, litter, and occasional infected people or parts of infected people they passed.
“The zombie in the woods. It listened to you.”
Sky forced a laugh. “I think you’re losing your marbles. Zombies don’t listen to people. The dog scared it off.”
“The ghost dog.”
“It wasn’t a ghost dog. It was real.”
“Then where did it disappear to?”
Sky shrugged, suddenly sad. “She comes when I need her and then she goes away.”
She reclined her seat and rolled over on her side, adjusting her seatbelt to allow the movement. She could feel Richards’s gaze on her back but chose to ignore him as she closed her eyes and settled in to sleep, effectively cutting off the line of questioning. She instinctually knew to keep it a secret that she seemed to have a little control over the infected and knew better than to command one in front of anyone else, but the thing had seen Richards and moved toward him. He would have shot it, thinking it was going for her, and he would have drawn a dozen more. One zombie she could control. A group of them meant trouble. So far, she thought to herself, and grinned.
“We’re here.”
Sky sat up and stretched as Richards drove them through an open gate and pulled to a stop as a group of armed men walked out from another tall gate to meet them. “Whoa.”
“Just stay calm. They’re here to protect you, not hurt you. We’re going to step out and they’re just going to check us out to make sure we’re not infected. It’ll be all right.”
They opened their doors and stepped out. Hal, Cruz, and the man whose name she hadn’t bothered to ask did the same thing from their truck. The men who’d come out to greet them were a mixture of soldiers in fatigues and others dressed in non-military clothes. She couldn’t tell if they were military or not, but they were armed and looked like they held authority. A group of the men split off to check out Hal and the two men with him, intrigued that they were bound.
“Pequenuela?!”
Sky’s head jerked toward the direction of the familiar voice and her heart slammed against her chest as she saw a bearded man dressed all in black shoving his gun into the holster at his hip. His eyes sparkled with joy as a smile grew across his face. “Pequenuela?!”
“Torres!” She ran to him, evading Richards’s grasp as he reached out for her. She didn’t stop until Torres scooped her from the ground and turned with her, laughing with glee. He dropped to his knees and set her down to kiss her cheeks before holding her face in his hands and just looking at her. “Pequenuela, I have been so worried about you. I looked for you everywhere! How could you leave like that, and don’t say you left with Raven because I know that didn’t happen.” He glared at Richards over her shoulder. “Who is this man? Did he bruise your face?”
“No,” she said. “His name is Richards. He’s that soldier my sister hated, I told you about him. We found Raven but she can’t come here yet.”
“PFC Richards?” Another man in military uniform approached a very confused-looking Richards and spoke with him privately.
“Sky, don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not lying,” Sky insisted. “We found Raven. She’s alive.”
“What happened to you? How did you get these bruises?”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m fine. I’m really fine.”
“Why did you leave the house that morning? Do you have any idea how scared I was?”
She looked down at her feet. “I’m sorry. I’ll tell you everything, but not now. I’m so happy to see you again. I missed you, and I’m really—” She broke down crying, unable to finish her sentence.
“Hush, pequenuela. It’s all right.” Torres picked her up and rose to his feet to address Richards. “I appreciate you getting her here safely. I’ll take care of her from here.”
“The hell you will,” she heard Richards say. “I don’t even know who you are.”
“Likewise,” Torres said. “This little girl stays with me and if anyone has issue with that we can handle this the hard way. As far as anyone is concerned this child is mine until I see her sister show up here to claim her.”
“Wait just a—”
“Everyone, shut up,” someone else growled. Sky turned to see it was an older black man with gray hair and a scar down his right cheek. He was also dressed in military clothes but his were different and he appeared to be more important than the other men around him. “Little girl, do you know these men?”
She nodded.
“Who do you belong to here?”
“Torres,” she said, burrowing deeper into his chest as he tightened his hold on her.
“What the hell?” Richards threw his hands up in the air. “Who is this guy?”
“This is Torres,” the man said. “One of our newly trained soldiers. He’s been with us a while and so far he seems all right. I’ve known you long enough to know you don’t have a daughter, Richards, so if the little girl says she belongs to him and obviously doesn’t appear to be in any danger from him, she’ll stay with him. Now talk to me about these guys over here with their wrists tied. That one looks familiar.”
Richards opened his mouth like he wanted to protest but looked at her and shook his head, muttering about her being ungrateful as he and the man who’d declared she’d stay with Torres walked over to where Hal, Cruz, and the man from the farm stood.
“Raven is very special to us,” Hal yelled over to Torres. “If Sky trusts you, we’ll allow this, but Raven is family and that means she is too. Hurt her and there will be consequences.”
“You really found Raven?” Torres asked, looking down at her.
“I told you I did.”
“Torres, she needs to be checked over and then you can talk to Blake about different housing. She can’t stay with you in the barracks.”
“Yeah, all right,” Torres said to the blond uniformed man waving him over to the gate that would allow them entrance onto the base. “OK, honey, you’re going to go in this little mobile unit where you’ll just be checked for fever and bite wounds, pretty simple.”
Sky thought about her scar and started crying. “No! No! I don’t want anyone looking at me!”
“Hey, it’s all right. We have women soldiers and nurses. We’ll have a woman check you.”
“No!” Sky dug her fingernails into Torres’s arms and held onto him as tight as she could. “I’ll run away! Nobody’s looking at me!”
“Sky…”
“No!” She threw her head back and screamed as loud as she could while she kicked her feet and pummeled Torres with her fists until he had no choice but to lower her to the ground.
“Jesus, Torres, get that girl under control!” The man who’d waved them over said.
“I’m trying!” he said, his tone exasperated as he squeezed her arms and forced her to stand still. “Sky, stop it!”
“What the hell is going on?” The man who’d said she could stay with Torres yelled over. “She’s going to draw every zombie in three counties to our gates!”
“She’s having a tantrum because she doesn’t want to get check
ed out,” the blond man yelled back.
Sky kicked the blond man in the shin as hard as she could and Torres scooped her up before she could do anything else.
“That little—”
“Cool it, Simpson,” Torres told the man. “She’s just a kid.”
“She has to be checked if you want her to stay here!”
“He’s right,” the scar-faced man who appeared to be the man in charge said, walking over to them.
“She’s scared and doesn’t want anyone looking at her, Sergeant,” Torres explained. “I don’t know what she’s been through since we were separated and I don’t want to put her through any trauma. Can she just stay in quarantine like we’d do with her if she did show any signs? I’ll stay with her.”
The man studied her for a moment, eyes narrowed, then slowly smiled as he felt her forehead. “You’re lucky I got kids, Torres. Yeah, stay with her in quarantine. She doesn’t feel feverish and if she’s been bitten it’ll show up in a day or two anyway. I have bigger shit to deal with. Let ‘em through and put ‘em in a quarantine cell,” he told the blond man before walking back over to Richards and the other men.
The blond motioned to have the gates opened. “Good luck,” he told Torres, stepping aside as they were allowed entrance onto the base.
“This is where we’ll be staying,” Torres announced as they stepped into a small cell and the door was locked behind them by a short woman in army fatigues. He flipped a switch on the wall flooding the room with light.
“There’s electricity?”
“Yup,” he answered, “and horrible beds.” He pointed to the two cots, one lining each wall. There was also a stack of books in one corner of the room, a deck of cards, and a couple of boxed puzzles. “There’s usually only one but they brought in an extra since I’m staying in here with you. After a few days when it’s clear you aren’t infected they’ll allow you to leave here and then we will be given housing. I was staying in the barracks with a bunch of other guys but that’s no place for little girls so we’ll probably be given one of the mobile homes they have for families. You weren’t able to see much but the base is pretty big and it has a lot. There’s a dining hall, a garden, and a laundromat. There’s a medical facility and a research facility where the rumor is they’re studying the virus, looking for a cure.”
“That’s nice,” Sky said, her mind occupied by the single toilet and small sink in the corner. There was a door with a little window at the back of the cell but it appeared to lead outside. “There’s a toilet sitting out in the open.”
Torres laughed. “Yeah, these cells are usually for just one person at a time,” he reminded her. “No worries, pequenuela. If one of us needs to use the bathroom the other will go outside. Come see.”
He walked over to the door and opened it, stepping out into a small fenced yard. Sky followed him out and noted that each cell on the block had its own private fenced area outside.
“Quarantine isn’t as awful as it sounds. The beds suck and it can be boring but they feed you and you’re free to come outside as much as you want. We’ll be out of here in a few days.” He looked at her. “Right? You weren’t bitten or scratched or anything like that?”
“I’m fine,” she answered, looking away. Lying was harder when you had to look at the person you were lying to.
“Why didn’t you want to be checked?” He squatted down and turned her face by her chin so she had to look at him. “Why did you have such a fit?”
“Because I didn’t want to do it.” Sky chewed her bottom lip as she watched Torres study her, knowing he had questions, questions she couldn’t give him honest answers to yet, maybe never. She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him tight. “I missed you so much and thought I’d never see you again. Don’t let the people here take me away!”
“Aww, pequenuela, I never would allow that.” He wrapped his arms around her and lifted her from the ground. “And never run away like that again. You don’t know how scared I was, how many times I worried whether you were dead or alive. Don’t ever do that to me again.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.” He carried her back inside the cell and sat her on one of the cots before sitting on the one across from her. “Now, tell me why you left that day and I want the truth.”
“Sky.”
“Hey, sis. About time you came back to life.”
Raven opened her eyes and blinked until the blur above her came into focus. “Damian?”
“In the hot and succulent flesh.”
She rolled her eyes and struggled to sit up. Damian helped her, wrinkling his nose in the process. “You’ve been out of it all damn day. I’m bored to tears just watching you toss and turn and mumble gibberish. How are you feeling?”
“Terrible,” she answered, looking around the room with burning eyes. “You’re really here. You and Hal were here and …”
“And we really saw Hal exorcise a demon out of Cruz. It all really happened. All of it.”
Raven looked at him, blinking, as she gathered all the memories she’d had of the day and tried to separate them from the crazy dreams that had plagued her fevered sleep. Cruz had been possessed. He’d violated her and chased her through the night. Spirit had led her to the cabin, or a dog that looked like Spirit.
“There was a dog here, a white German shepherd with a black spot on her tongue.”
“Holy shit. There really was a dog?”
“What?”
“Richards said there was a white shepherd that led him to the cabin.”
Richards. The entire cabin seemed to sway as Raven suddenly became very dizzy. She lowered her head into her hands and took deep breaths as she tried to process exactly what had happened that day.
“Raven, you all right? You’re scaring me.”
“He was really here.” She lifted her head. “And Sky? Sky was really here?”
Damian nodded, hesitant. “Please don’t freak out and scream. It’s just you and me now and it really wouldn’t be good if you attracted a whole bunch of infected people to this cabin while we’re all stranded with our asses hanging out in the woods like this, all right?”
She nodded very slowly, recalling her sister walking into the cabin. “It was too much. Everything happened so quickly, it was all so crazy. Cruz killed the vulture and he caught me in the window and he chased me and the zombies didn’t care about me, then Spirit brought me here and then Cruz was here and you and Hal and the black smoke and the eyes, and Richards and then Sky and—”
“Slow down, sis, you are losing the hell out of me.” Damian brushed a lock of hair away from her face. “You were bitten and you’ve been fighting through this virus. Lord only knows how you made it to this cabin just from suffering that alone, then there was the whole demon thing and the sister thing. It was a lot, I know, but baby, your sister is alive and she is just fine.”
“Where is she?” Raven scanned the cabin. “You said we were alone. Where is Sky?”
“Richards knew where a base was. The one we were headed to was blown up not that long after the outbreak. A new camp for survivors was built off of a secret base close to it. Richards took Sky there so she would be safe while you get through this virus, and Hal took Cruz there so he can get the treatment he needs.”
“For the demon?” She frowned, confused.
“No, honey, I don’t think we’re gonna tell anyone he had a demon in him. He tried to kill himself, remember? He’s really upset about what happened and Hal thinks he needs psychiatric care to get through it. Also, Hal thinks the military might be able to help us save Leah.”
“What happened to Leah?” Raven became alert, suddenly realizing she hadn’t even questioned where the rest of her friends were. “Where is she? The twins? Elijah?”
“I have a lot to tell you, but first, there’s running water in this cabin and a big bathtub. Hal brought some clean shirts and socks, and some soap from the other cabin before he left. Can we please get you in the bathtub and
get these soaked sheets changed because honey, I hate to break it to you but you smell like sweaty, unwashed asscrack and I just can’t take anymore.”
She lowered her eyes as heat flooded her cheeks. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh, no use feeling bad about it. You’re sick and can’t help it. I’m gonna go run this water.” He stood and walked to the bathroom, leaving Raven alone with her thoughts.
It had all been real. She thought back to everything that had happened after she’d fallen out of the truck and gotten bit. She remembered her parents’ message to her so clearly. She needed to get better so she could find her sister.
“All right.” Damian stepped out of the bathroom. “Do you need me to help you?”
“Something’s wrong,” Raven said as her heart started racing. She grabbed her cross necklace and twisted it in her hand as she replayed the time spent with her parents in that strange white place where she’d gone as she hovered between life and death. “I’m supposed to find her.”
“Find who?”
“Sky! My parents came to me after I was bitten. I was dying, Damian. I was dying and I saw them and they told me Sky was alive and I had to find her. I have to find her.”
“Honey, she already found you. She was here with that Richards guy who said you came to him in his dreams and led him to her, then he said that same white dog led them to you. It’s already happened.”
“No!” Raven swung her legs over the side of the bed and gripped the edge of the mattress to avoid falling forward as dizziness engulfed her. “You don’t understand. She wasn’t supposed to find me. Richards wasn’t supposed to find her. I was supposed to find her. My parents told me I had to get better and find her. She shouldn’t have left. That’s why I have to find her. Something is wrong.”
“What could possibly be … Oh shit.”
Raven looked up to see the color had drained from Damian’s face. “What is it?”
“Well, I don’t know if it has anything to do with anything. She seemed just fine.”
“Damian! What is it?”
