The Orphans (Book 3): Strangers

by Evans, Mike

  Clary thought about a nice island off the coast of Mexico but figured it wasn’t worth mentioning it to anyone else. “Lets take is really slow Tina I want to make sure we can hear those things coming from a mile away if there are boots running for us.”

  They drove through the base and they could tell by the parking lots that at one point they’d been called in to duty most likely. They kept a eye on the streets and the carnage that had happened out by the gates seemed to follow them everywhere they went. There were Turned and soldiers on the ground. The Turned looked as if they’d been cut to pieces leaving nothing to move and the soldiers had nothing left to turn. The boys saw the bodies but while Clary and Aslin were thinking of fallen brothers, Shaun said, “Hey did you want to pass every one of those machine guns or do you want to bring them with?”

  Clary said, “who knows what condition they are in after today, if there isn’t something better we will grab them on our way back. I’d prefer to make sure the ones we get are pretty much guaranteed ready to shoot.”

  When they pulled up to the motorcade pool there were lines of trucks that looked brand new and ready to go. Tina said, “Hey where do we need to go to get the keys?”

  Aslin said without thinking. “There aren’t any keys we just need to pick out a truck that’s a automatic.”

  Greg said, “Are you going to hotwire it if you don’t need them?”

  Clary said, “Greg they don’t have keys because in combat if the guy leading the way is your driver and gets blown up, or lost behind enemy lines you don’t want to have to worry about not having keys if you need to leave in a haste.”

  Greg nodded thinking immediately of a man losing his bottom half from a roadside bomb and it was very clear they probably had to learn that the hard way at one point. They pulled in driving down the long row of vehicles passing tanks, humvees, regular trucks, until they came to transport trucks already set up with shaded tops. Tina looked at one of those shaking her head, “Am I going to have t drive one of those big ass things? How much stuff were you planning on taking?”

  Clary replied, “Well I’d say that i’m down to take anything and everything that isn’t bolted down. As mentioned many, many times before who knows how long we are going to be held down at Andy’s place. Wouldn’t you rather have too much than too little?”

  “Yeah but can’t we just come back?”

  Aslin laughed and said, “Tina as genius as the two of us are, there are going to be plenty of other people worried about their survival and they are going to be arriving here in hoards eventually and stripping the place clean.”

  Clary said, “So yeah we can come back, but if we don’t need to than do you want to do so?”

  “Nope i’m cool staying at Andy’s and waiting it out.”

  “Vacations over honey, you are going to start training on how to use all of this lovely stuff I hope is still there bright and early. Day four is training if all of you know how to use this stuff we are hopefully going to have a chance.”

  Greg said, “Yeah but don’t you think…..you know the soldiers here kind of knew how to shoot one of those?”

  CLary said, “Yes smartass i’m confident the professional fucking soldiers knew how to use their weapons, but they aren’t trained to shoot people in the head, they are trained that a heart chest shot s the best you can do, and we both know that that’s just going to severely piss them off. We know that if you shoot them in the head that we are going to have one less of those things running the street. I don’t care who they are or abou that cure well i do care about the cure but if one of those is in between me and where i’m going i won’t be passing up a chance to make sure there is one lesser of them running around.”

  Aslin said, “Imagine what they probably could have done if they’d have had the simple facts like shoot them in the damn head. Or hey don’t get bit, or by the way these things can literally rip your arms from their sockets. So if you want to keep that from happening maybe you ought to keep some distance from them, that your riot gear shields will not be much help.”

  Shaun said, “We need to have our own army, I think we need more people over time, people that we can trust.”

  Tina parked the truck in front of the massive trucks and they made their way slowly walking down the line making sure there was nothing roaming around looking to eat them. When they were confident that they were at least safe for a few minutes Clary began jumping up in the trucks looking for keys and when he’d find one he’d hit the starter on it and let the giant diesel engine come to life. It roared across the quiet base echoing into the distance. Shaun and Greg looked at each other neither of them liking the extra noise but knowing it was impossible to avoid. When they’d found five of them they moved everything from the little truck to each of their own. Shaun said, “Tina you want me to ride with you? I can keep my eyes open?”

  “No, why don’t you ride with Jordan he looks like a lost puppy. Besides he doesn’t even have a gun…..Jordan why the hell don’t you have a gun?”

  He shrugged, “MY dad wasn’t into guns, I never had a chance to learn.”

  Greg walked by patting him on the back, “Those football skills are gonna come in useful man.”

  “I’m aware of their usefulness Greg, thanks man.”

  Clary yelled, “Quit wasting time and pick a truck. He laid the map down on the truck they’d been riding in hood and pointed to the base. Aslin you, Shaun, Jordan and Tina go over to the mess hall and get food and supplies. I’ll take Greg and run through the armory.”

  Aslin said, “You don’t want to keep together? You sure you want to split up?”

  “If I wasn’t I wouldn’t have mentioned it Aslin, I want to get out of here, and I think even working separately it’s going to take a few hours to go through everything and find what we want to. Besides you owe me, i’m offering purposely to take Greg with me.”

  Greg smiled coughing into his hand and saying something that may or may not have sounded like blow me. Shaun walked by him whispering, “Hey be safe man, oh and don’t do anything stupid.”

  Greg patted him on the back. “Hey now its me what do you have to worry about.”

  Shaun looked him up and down smiling. “Alot I think. Yeah a lot.”

  Clary was already in his truck and yelled Greg get your ass movin lets do this and get out of here. Aslin keep you radio on, if you need anything you click twice and Greg and I will come back you up.”

  The rest climbed into the truck and they headed in opposite directions. Each of them secretly wondering if they were making good decisions. Knowing that if they were going to run into locked doors with soldiers in them that they might be shooting first and asking questions later. Neither of them were really hoping that would be the case. They knew tha there was just as good of a chance that they were taking refuge there hoping for the best and not knowing about the Turn or what caused it and that they might be opening doors to potential hoards of the monsters who were looking for food and ready to get out. Clary took it slow happy and at the same time nervous about the fact that there were dead bodies but nothing to show why they were that way. He didn’t want to see the Turned but wanted a answer as to why there weren’t any roaming the yards. As they drove down the streets the Turned started to peer over the roofs of the buildings.

  *******

  Chapter XX Day 1 Tim’s Pub

  Tim sat lazily behind the counter wiping at the old oak, knowing there wasn’t a damn thing to clean off of it but hoped that if he looked busy that the rowdy men would leave him out of the conversation. There were only four of them but he knew that Sunday was the start to their four on four off schedule and that by the end of their weekend he wouldn’t care how much they’d spent at the bar that he would be sick of them and ready to send them back to work. Tim knew he couldn’t complain to much about them being here today as they were the only occupants of the bar. He watched out the window as cars were going past in a convoy on their wa to the school. He knew that in a few hours
or less the bar would be packed to the brim with people coming back from the welcome home party at the school. He was worried that the rowdy bunch would scare them away though.

  He laughed though looking at one of the men dressed in blue jeans a cowboy shirt and a black cowboy hat. This was not your ordinary cowboy though no this was Eric Shelman and the veins in his neck looked as if they were going to explode as he belted out Sweet Home Alabama while spilling half his beer playing air guitar on the karaoke stage. His friends who were not listening to him whatsoever would occasionally turn around while he was singing and scream freebird even though Eric hadn’t sung that song all damn day. Tim was pretty sure Eric was in his own world of bliss right now though and did not care what it was that the other men were screaming.

  Cedric and Charles were in each others face playing pool. Charles had been giving Cedric shit about his bald head for about twenty minutes and Cedric who could bench press the man was just about his wits end with him. Charles knew this and was trying to calm him down but just had to good a time busting his balls. Tim yelled, “Hey don’t start any shit you two, its to fucking early for this!”

  Cedric and Charles both looked over at the bartender. Cedric screamed, “You wanna mind your own business there chief?”

  Tim held his ground because the violent one Cedric hadn’t yet started shooting boiler makers and Jagermeister. “You gonna spend your weekend here getting shit faced like usual or you want to be the guy who spends his weekend in the drunk tank for a few times. You know Thompson or one of the other cops will roll up here and throw your ass in jail.”

  Cedric flexed his massive arms smiling, “What do you think they are gonna do when I resist arrest?”

  Charles laughed and said, “Well that’ll probably be when they decide that after the last time that they’d be better off with tasering you first.”

  Cedric put his arms down remembering the warm piss running down his legs when he got tasered and not recalling it as a fond memory. He nodded his head thinking about it and said, “Just quit bustin my balls Charlie.”

  “Damn it, you call me Charles you know I ain’t charlie god damn it!”

  You want me to start calling you Cedric the Entertainer?”

  The fourth man in the group Thomas stared at his two friend shaking his head at the bantering going on back and forth with them but as always knew it would come to an end eventually. They would either pass out in a day or so or they’d get to busy hitting on a unsuspecting girl at the bar to keep fighting with each other. Unless of course there was only one woman in the bar and in that case would be a end all battle for until she made her intentions of only wanting to drink known in which case they’d happily leave her alone.

  Thomas looked at his glass mug and yelled, “Tim why the hell’s my cup empty, get us another round will ya. Christ how the hell are we going to get wasted if we don’t have beer in front of us, come on man.”

  Tim got another five beers filled up and walked them over at his own sweet pace keeping one on the bar for himself. Thomas saw it and yelled, “Hey you want me telling the owner about you drinking on the job?”

  Tim set the beer down on the table pointing at his own dingy black shirt that in faded white said Tim’s Place on the breast pocket where he kept his smokes that he desperately wanted but didn’t trust any of these guys in here by themselves with a fully stocked bar. “You go ahead and take a complaint number for me and let me know how that goes as he pointed to the complaint department screwed to the wall.”

  Thoms saw what he was talking about seeing a dummy grenade on the wall and smiled, “Now that’s some funny shit man.”

  Tim gave a un-enthusiastic thumbs up and went back to his stool where he could watch his nascar race in peace and quiet. He looked out the window seeing the buses go by and smiled as they swerved in the road back and forth. He gave two shits about volleyball but he did love money and he also loved the prospect of someone coming into the bar besides these guys.

  He watched as Earnhardt Jr won the race doing a silent fist pump knowing that the men were Stewart fans and would protest until their faces were red about how he hand’t earned his way into nascar that he was family royalty or something like that. He checked that the men had full beers he saw that even while screaming his lungs out Eric was still able to keep up beer for beer with his friends. He was the easiest of the group to keep track of drinking since he was fully being sent out over the large speakers and the more his speech slurred the better it was to make sure the refills came slower. Tim propped the heavy metal door open there was no way thta he was going to start a full on rush hour without at least one or two smokes fresh in his system. He said, “We gonna get damn busy I think, you guys better smoke them if you got them, you don’t want to wory about losing your table do you?”

  Eric never heard them but the other three came out resting against the old brick building and lighting up. They could hear the screams in the distance. Cedric laughed as he shot smoke out of his nose, “Jesus christ would ya listen to those people, you’d have thought that it was us coming home with the highschool football championship of 99. Hey you know how many yards I threw for taht day?”

  The three men all said, “Three hundred and sixty four setting a new record that has to this day not been challenged.”

  Cedric pumped himself up, “You guys can all kiss my chocolate starfish dickheads. You ain’t done nothing that damn cool before.”

  Charles who was always happy to piss off his friend said, “So you are saying the last cool thing I did was a football game that happened like 15 years ago?”

  Cedric pinched the bridge of his nose doing his best to not explode, “No I thought it was pretty cool doing your mom that night.”

  “Oh screw you Cedric, damn it.” He took one last long drag off his smoke and tossed it in the street ignoring the basin to put the smokes in and stormed back inside. Eric had moved on Guns and Roses singing Welcome to the Jungle which little did any of them know would be horribly fitting in a matter of minutes.

  Cedric yelled after him, “Oh Charlie don’t be like that cupcake, come on back out and have another smoke, i’m only bustin your balls.” Cedric whispered, his mom was somewhat frivolous in her younger days and I think Charles is still a little touch about the subject.”

  The rest of the men nodded trying not to laugh all but Tim. Tim was standing a few feet up trying to ignore the two men. Thomas said, “Dude if you want to go down to the wecome home thing, we can watch the bar for ya.”

  Tim ignored his pleas to leave them alone with his liveliehood realziing that the screaming and yelling ws not subsiding but that they were only growing. He raised a hand trying to get the men to shut up but it was useless. He screamed at them, “Shut the fuck up will ya, I think there’s something going on.”

  Cedric said, “Don’t tell me to shut up damn it, there ain’t nothing going on over there but a bunch of kids all hyped up over some dumb shit welcome home thing. They’ll settle down it’s probably jus the kids getting off the bus. You just don’t understand what it is like to get a heros welcome home.”

  Tim didn’t see a point in mentioning the welcome home he’d gotten at the airport when he was in his twenties and had just returned home from war.”

  The fifth man of the group Phillip came out patting his chest looking for a pack of smokes that he’d already know weren’t there before he had came out. Tim had forgotten he’d been at the bar in the first place he had been in there for so long. He smiled and walked up to Thomas pulling his pack of smokes from his shirt pocket and took two out of there. “After sex and after shits you gotta have a double smoke man.”

  Thomas snatched at his hand but Phillip already placed one behind his ear and was lighting the other one. “You ass you know they sell those things at the gas station right, they come in nice little neatly bound packages of twenty at a time. If you ask nice they’ll give ya a pack of matches to.”

  Philip drew on the smoke hard looking as if he w
as thinking of the way to cure problems in the world. “But Thomas, I mean Thomas Reed would you have feel so good about yourself if i’d have stopped and bought smokes and you couldn’t have been such a valuable friend?”

  Cedric said, “Dude shut up and look over there, what the hell is that?”

  Philip who hadn’t been inundated with the high school football talk was still fresh and completely in a good mood. He put a hand over his eyes as if to study the horizon he said, “Now Cedric i’m not you know one hundred percent sure, so please forgive me if i’m wrong, but it would seem, now help me boys if you have a better description, but the black stuff going up in the air, may or may not be smoke.”

  “Well thank you very effing much captain obvious god your useful as a hooker that wants to cuddle. I meant why is their black smoke rolling up, you guys think we ought to roll up there and see what’s going on?”

  Thomas rose a hand to inject. “You really want to head over there and see what’s going on? If we do and the sheriff sees us he’s going to pick us up for dwi you know and we’ll piss our entire weekend away in the Adel jail. That sound like something you want to do?”

  Cedric thought about this as did Philip and they concluded that no they did not have any interest in going to jail this fresh into their weekend. Cedric did not, did not want to have to call his wife Lana to come and pick him up, and Philip knew well that if he called his wife Lori that she would come down with a box and a pair of scissors with which to put her newly cut trophies in. Tim said, “So what you just want to go back in the bar and mind your own? You don’t care about any sense of civic duty.”

  Philip pointed to his nose indicating he was perfectly correct as he puffed sloppy smoke rings into the air. Tim knew that regardless of what was happening, he sure as hell wasn’t going to go out of his way to trust any of these guys who were usually responsible for at least one epic bar fight per month. They bickered like little bitches most of the time, but when it came down to it each of them would sit anothers throat for each other. This was the group in town that you weren’t to screw with and if someone did make such a mistake they were typically out of towners and had no idea what they were about to get themselves into. Tim pulled out his cell phone and dialed 911 and hit send waiting for it to connect but it never did. He looked at his phone and saw that yes it definitely was trying to make a call out but there was no connection. He tried it a second time and when it failed he looked at the holster that Charles was carrying his in and said, “Let me try and use your phone will ya? Mine isn’t working for some reason, I can’t get a call to go through at all.”