I rolled away from her as she slapped me. As I rolled onto my left arm I let out a small gasp of pain.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“James,” she said in a serious tone.
“Ever since falling on that shovel my shoulder hurts when I over work it. The digging today, it was a little too much, that’s all. It’s nothing to worry about.”
“Sit up.”
“What?”
“Sit. Up.”
“Ok, ok,” I said following her directions.
“Move forward.” I did so and she moved to kneel behind me. I felt her small hands on my shoulders and groaned as she started to knead the taut muscle.
“Sarah,” I said as I let my neck droop.
“Yeah.”
“That feels really good.”
“I know.”
“So I guess you were paying attention all those times I rubbed your back.” She pinched me. “Hey, I didn’t teach you that.”
“Oh well, I guess I’m a poor student then.”
She pushed hard around at the knotted muscle of my hurt shoulder and I groaned loudly, “No, you’re good.”
She laughed and kept rubbing the shoulder. Five minutes later she stopped and said, “Ow, my hands are cramping.”
I chuckled “Well here’s your next lesson,” I said taking her hands, “You have to be strong to be able to do this right.” I started to rub them.
“Hey, I am strong,” she said defensively.
I slid my hand up her arm and grasped her bicep. “I don’t know. I can’t feel much,” I said smiling. She glared at me. I kissed the back of her hand “I’m teasing. You’re the strongest person I know, in more ways than one.” She smiled. I spent the next ten minutes rubbing her hands and then asked, “Better?”
She nodded, “Thanks.”
“Of course. Come on, we need to go to bed. We have a big day planned tomorrow.”
“Yes, we do.”
“I know this is a dumb question but, do you still want to go?”
“You’re right. That was a dumb question. Of course, I’m coming, you’re not getting rid of me that easily.”
I put my arm around her, “Sarah, the very last thing that I want to do is get rid of you.” She smiled and rested her head on my chest. I grabbed the flashlight on my nightstand, our only source of light, and turned it off. In the darkness, I felt Sarah’s breath slow and become even. She was either asleep or very close to it. “I love you, Sarah,” I whispered.
“I love you too, James,” she said softly. I could have died right then and been ok with it. I closed my eyes and drifted off into blissful slumber.
The next morning I woke early, Sarah still in my arms, and I remained still so as to not wake her. It was close to ten when she finally woke and we got up to get ready. We ate a quick breakfast of canned fruit and cereal and left. Even though yesterday’s meeting had gone well I didn’t feel comfortable trusting these people completely, not yet. I wanted to get there early and keep a lookout until they showed up. We took my bike and raced off, Sarah’s grip was still tight around my waist, but out of necessity, not fear. She would tighten her hold when we took a corner but it was obvious that she was already quite a bit more comfortable than before. It didn’t take long for us to get to the Home Depot and to climb the roof. Sarah sat and I pulled a pair of binoculars out of my pack and took a quick sweep of the parking lot and surrounding area. Once I decided it was clear I sat next to Sarah. We talked for a little while, mostly going over what could go wrong and how we could either avoid or fix any problems that might arise. “Remember, we don’t want to give any indication of how many there are of us. Don’t reveal our strengths or our weaknesses.”
“Strengths?”
“Don’t let them know our house is well guarded, that we have a large supply of weapons and supplies or that most of us are trained to fight.”
“Or that we have a crack sniper?” she said sarcastically.
“Yeah, things like… Oh, shut up,” I smiled. “That was necessary.”
“Well if it was so necessary why didn’t you bring Thomas today?”
“Because we won’t need him.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because Ben and Adam are sure to tell everyone of the magical exploding paint can. They won’t try anything if they know we have someone with a bead on them.”
“But we don’t.”
“But they don’t know that, do they?”
“Very clever.”
“I have my moments.”
“They are rare.”
“Very funny. Now I know you’re not going to like what I’m going to say next but you should know that it’s important that you listen.” She crossed her arms and frowned. “When we meet with them I’m going to need you to let me do the talking, I might need to lie and I don’t want our stories to get confusing. I also need you to stay by my side.” She opened her mouth to argue but I stopped her. “This has nothing to do with me protecting you, I know you can handle yourself and I know you don’t need me. But even though I know that I won’t be able to stay focused if I have to worry about you, even if the concern is misplaced. Please?”
“Fine, as long as you aren’t trying to protect me.”
“I’ll always try to protect you, but I’m trying to make a compromise.”
“Alright, I’ll stay close.”
“Thank you.” I pulled out my cleaning kit and my pistol. I ejected the magazine and began to take the gun apart.
“What are you doing?”
“Cleaning my gun.”
“Well, I can see that but why are you doing it now.”
“It’s something that helps pass the time and helps me focus.”
“Oh am I boring you?” she said sarcastically.
“Maybe a little,” I said looking up from my gun and winking. She frowned. I smiled and said, “Come on, we’ve still got forty minutes or so and this won’t take long, get out your gun.”
I walked her through the entire process as I quickly finished with my own gun. By the time we had her pistol cleaned and back together we only had ten minutes before noon. I put everything away and we settled down to watch the meeting place. Unlike last time the two people who showed up were right on time, there small pickup speeding down the highway and pulling into the parking lot right at noon. We backed away from the ledge and stood. “Come on, let’s go say hello.”
I got off the bike and walked up to Ben and shook his hand. “Glad you could make it.”
“Me too,” he said, “This here is Zacharias.”
Zacharias was a tall black man with long hair and a short beard. “Good to meet you, Zacharias. I’m James.”
“Good to meet you too. You can call me Z.”
“Excuse me, where are my manners? This is Sarah. Sarah this is Ben and Z.” Sarah stepped forward and shook their hands. “Well Ben, what’s the plan?”
“We’re gonna take you to see Luke.”
“Great, we’ll follow you.”
“’Fraid not,” he said shaking his head, “We’re gonna have to blindfold you and take you in our truck.”
“That’s not ideal,” I said seriously.
“It’s the best we can do.”
I looked to Sarah and raised my eyebrow. I received the tiniest of nods and turned back to the pair “Ok, but we’re keeping our weapons.”
“That’s fair,” said Ben.
“You sure about that?” asked Z.
“I’m sure.”
“But Luke said.”
“You let me deal with Luke,” he said calmly.
“If you’re sure,” said Z.
I looked between the two, “Great, let us grab our packs and we can go,” I said walking back to the bike with Sarah. I spoke quietly to her, “When we’re in the truck try to keep count of the minutes.” She nodded. We climbed into the back of the truck, blindfolds on and we drove away. While Sarah attempted to keep track of the time I was
trying to figure out where we were headed. We took a left out of the parking lot, heading away from Astoria. The windows were rolled down and I could feel the breeze on my face. After driving for a while the smell of the air changed, we were getting closer to the ocean, we were headed towards Seaside. I felt the truck slow and swerve off the road for just a second before moving back onto the highway and speeding up. We drove for a while longer before obviously getting off the highway. We went down several streets, making so many rights and lefts that I couldn’t keep track. Once we stopped making what seemed like random turns I was pretty sure we were back on the highway. I smiled when I felt is swerve off the road and then back on. A short while later we turned off the highway again and parked. We were pulled out of the truck and walked, still blindfolded, inside of some building. We were sat down and our blindfolds removed. I blinked in the sudden brightness and glanced around the room before my eyes settled on the older man sitting across from us. He had a gray beard and was balding. His eyes were blue and his mouth held back a smile. He sat unarmed with his fingers steepled.
He spoke calmly and welcomingly, “Well good afternoon. You must be James. I’m Luke. Welcome to my home. I have just one question for you.” He eyed both of us, “Are you hungry?”
CHAPTER 23
All I could do was stare in silence. He kept smiling until I shook my head and asked “W…what?”
“I was wondering if you two were hungry, we’ll be serving lunch pretty soon.”
I looked at Sarah and she shrugged, “Sure, I guess.”
“Great,” he said clapping his hands together and standing, “What are we having Z?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s hot dogs, Luke.”
“Fantastic.”
“Excuse me,” I said interrupting, “You have a working fridge?”
“And a freezer,” he said smiling, “But we’ll talk about that over lunch.”
We walked towards the doors leading outside and I said, “You could have saved yourself the trouble with those blindfold.”
“Oh?”
“I knew exactly where we were when you took them off.”
“And so where are we?”
“Camp Rilea.”
“So that’s how you pronounce it,” he smiled, “You are correct of course, but you’ll have to forgive the security measures. I do have people to keep safe.”
“How many people do you have?”
“Just be patient young man. I’ll tell you everything you want to know over lunch.”
We walked until we reached a series of picnic benches circling a large outdoor grill. Camp Rilea was a small military facility that was used for training purposes and a campground for military families. There was a small woman standing behind the large grill, turning hot dogs and toasting buns. I could smell them and, even though I never liked hot dogs, my mouth was starting to water. I was excited to have something other than soup and canned fruit. We sat at a picnic table and waited while the hot dogs were finished being cooked. I looked around and saw dozens of people walking around, working and turning up for lunch. My curiosity got the better of me and I asked, “Just how many people do you have here?”
He smiled at me, “I think the last count was around fifty-seven, but I can’t be completely sure.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Straight to the point then,” he said still smiling.
“To tell you the truth the last survivors we met were a little less…honest with us and I would like to avoid the games.”
“Ah, but games make life interesting”
“Walkers make life interesting, games make life complicated.”
“True but who enjoys an easy game?”
“I wouldn’t mind one.”
“I suppose not. To answer your previous question, we’ve only been here about a week.”
“You’ve only been here a week?” I said surprised, “But you’re already so organized.”
“Like I said, we have quite a few people and when they decide to do something it gets done quickly. They like it here and wanted to stay, at least for a little while, so they made sure things were secure and that they had a place to stay and eat.”
“I take it that you have patrols.”
“We do. How did you know?”
“You don’t have fences. If you wanted to make sure the base was secure you would either build a fence or have patrols.”
“I can see why you’ve survived,” he said nodding, “you’ve got a military mind. You wouldn’t come from a military family, would you? Maybe that’s why you knew of our location so quickly?”
“Me? No, I just read a lot. I was a history major in college and since most of America’s history is forged from war I ended up learning a lot about military history and tactics. Never thought it would come in handy outside a classroom.”
“I see. Well, maybe it is fate.”
“Fate?”
“Yes, fate. Fate that you would be the one to survive this apocalypse, fate that you would learn the very skills you needed to do so.”
“No, it wasn’t fate, it was luck. I was lucky that I read what I did and know what I know. Fate had nothing to do with it.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” he said still giving me a smile that was beginning to get on my nerves. It wasn’t that the smile was malicious or fake, but it was a smile that made you think he had a secret or that he knew something that he was waiting for you to figure out for yourself. I knew that I would either grow to like this man or hate him.
“Lunch is ready,” said the small woman behind the grill, “Go on and serve yourself, but no more than two dogs to start. You hear me, Lucas?”
“I hear you Annie I swear I don’t know who took that last piece of pie yesterday,” he said winking at Sarah.
“Sure you don’t old man,” Annie said smiling.
We got up and got our food, my plate was piled high with two hot dogs, baked beans potato salad and a bag of chips. We were silent while we ate, each enjoying the warm food. Like I said, I never liked hot dogs but at that moment they were nothing I’d rather eat. Stomach full I watched as others gathered food and ate in small groups. I saw that while many of them were armed, not all were and not all of them were adults or teens, there were several children and elderly. “How did you do it?” I asked incredulously, “How did you manage to keep this many people alive, and with so many young and old?”
“You would be surprised how great the desire to survive can be. How it can drive someone to do whatever it takes to keep on living.”
My voice grew hard, “I’ve seen that desire, but it wasn’t like this. They truly did whatever they had to, and more and they paid for it.”
“You’re talking of the less than truthful survivors you met.”
“Yes.”
“What did they do?”
“They were military, or ex-military, and gang members. They teamed up to ensure their survival and were led by a man named Sergeant Cole Shepard. We met them not too long ago and our relationship turned sour when he decided to kidnap a couple of my friends.”
“You said they used to be led by the Sergeant. What happened?”
I looked directly into Luke’s eyes. I wanted him to know that I had no regret for what I had done, that I did what needed to be done. “I killed him. I killed him, his men and I rescued my friends.”
He was silent for a long minute before speaking, his eyes never leaving mine. “Did they deserve what happened them?”
“No, they deserved worse, but I did what I could.”
He smiled a small sad smile, “As long as the punishment fit the crime.”
I nodded, “So I guess it was your handiwork hanging from the bridge?”
“It was. They were punished justly for their crimes.”
“Well if they committed the crimes their signs indicated then I couldn’t agree more.”
He nodded and then smiled, “Well James, you and I have spoken at length but I’m afraid that I haven’t
heard this beautiful woman next to you utter a single word, why is that my dear? Am I too intimidating?” he said puffing up his chest and trying to look serious. He didn’t do a very good job as his face was once again split by a smile.
“No, I’m not intimidated, I’m just listening, taking it all in. It’s all very impressive.”
“Well, thank you but it wouldn’t be nearly half of what it is without the help of everyone. We wouldn’t have fresh bread without the several women who bake all day. We wouldn’t have the beginnings of a farm or any livestock if it weren’t for the men who were farmers in their past lives. And we wouldn’t be safe if it weren’t for the men and women brave enough to watch out for us and keep the, what did you call them, Walkers, at bay.”
Survivors Series (Book 1): Heroes Aren't Born Page 35
