The Orphans (Book 3): Strangers

by Evans, Mike

  Greg went to say something but it was then that the truck finished its forward moving path and smashed into the wall. The turned who were glued to the windshield were now gone. They smashed into the brick wall in front of them. Greg looked over the dash trying to see them but between the seatbelt and the smoke coming from the radiator there was very little to be seen. Clary wiped at a cut on his forhead and said, “You alright Greg?”

  “Greg rolled his shoulder feeling tense and tight and said, “I don’t know yet, define alright.”

  “Can you walk?”

  Greg nodded and they slipped out of the truck slowly both getting out Clary’s side. Clary swung his rifle in the direction of where the turned should have been. He saw nothing when he went to the front of the truck. He saw the bloody imprints of their bodies on the wall and followed the fresh flow of blood on the ground seeing beneath the truck is where it ended. Clary got back to a safe distance where he saw three turned. None of them were able to stand he guessed that they had broken their spines when they crashed. Greg said, “Why aren’t they attacking us?”

  “Because they can’t stand kid. They must have broken something when we hit.”

  “What are you gonna do?”

  “Oh that is a much easier question.”

  Clary fired the rifle three times ensuring that there would be no further victims taken by the three turned. Greg said, “You realize we are gonna need another truck rigt? do you want to start walking back now, or do we want to see if there is anything inside this place before we have something to worry about?”

  Clary said, “See now you’re starting to think smarter not harder. You might just have a chance kid. We need to get inside first which could be tricky, these things are usually secure as all hell. Greg went to the front door and pulled on it but no give came. He hit the intercom next to the door waiting for a voice to come back telling him that he was trespassing but none did. Clary said, “Well it looks like that door is going to have to be removed, what do you think?”

  Greg said, “Well if we had a truck we could totally pull it off of there, but since someone crashed it into a big brick wall we won’t be able to do that. Let me guess you have something that will turn that door into many, many little pieces?”

  Clary nodded, “You know it Greg. My supplies getting pretty pathetic though I gotta admit.”

  “I think we need to try and get in another way still. These things are like flies on shit when it comes to any kind of noise, if those rifle shots aren’t going to draw them in then there is a good chance blowing a giant door off is going to.”

  “I’m listening, what do you want to do?”

  “I say we walk the building and see if we can find another door, or maybe some way to get up on the roof.”

  “That’s actually a pretty good idea kid. I have to say that i’m more than ok if we don’t run into anymore of those things today. God knows its a matter of time before they get the jump on us and - well we don’t want to have to worry about that anymore than we need to.”

  The two walked the perimeter of the building slowly guns up and ready but found nothing that they needed to use them on. As they walked around Clary hit his throat mic once and said, “Hey Aslin, we are going to need another truck before this is all said and done.”

  Aslin said, “Wait there is enough stuff for two trucks, that is awesome.”

  “No you misunderstood, there is a huge armory yes. But I don’t have a clue what is inside of it. We had to crash the truck to get rid of some of the turned taht were on the windshield. So we need a new truck. We are still trying to get inside of the armory. Greg here seems to have a good head on his shoulder at least.”

  Aslin said, “YEah well I guess it’s good that one of you do. We will do double time here getting the food but I need you to not try and break any more toys Clary. We only have so many things here that we can steal and it’d be nice if we can make the trip back to Adel as well. You do want to drive back don’t you?”

  “Blow me. Just get here when you can. We should be able to at the least find the inventory list and get stuff ready to load by the time you guys get here. Just get here as soon as you can though. We don’t have the time to waste.”

  “Says the man who crashed the truck we need to put stuff in. No worries we can bust ass here and be on our way there asap. Just don’t do anything stupid until I get there.”

  Greg was trying not to laugh but the inner smartass was to dominant. He said, “Oh wow, it’s like I heard my dad. Actually wait, no are you sure you aren’t married because that sounded all too familiar.”

  Clary just shrugged, “When you’ve been in a unit like mine for this long you are pretty much family. We had one new kid with us but other than thta we’d all been together for as long as I can remember. If you needed something done, we were the ones who got to go do it. We might not always do it pretty but you can be dead to rights that it would get done and we wouldn’t quit trying until we got it done. Who would have thought that all my team would have been lost in one days time. You don’t have any idea the shit that we’ve seen over the years. We don’t get sent in to happy place, we don’t go to war zones where there are already ten thousand pairs of boots on the ground. We go in first, we do our thing and we get out. They might as well give us covert status because we go in and don’t come back until its done. I just hope it wasn’t all for nothing. There were a lot of good men lost yesterday.”

  Greg said, “Yeah they were great to us man.”

  “That isn’t fair to them Greg. We were told t go to Iowa find research papers and get out of there. They told us that there could be infected everywhere and that because of the spread of the virus as it was that we couldn’t bring anyone back. If you went somewhere like that and were told you couldn't bring anyone back would you be trying very hard to make best friends with anyone? Hell no you wouldn’t, and on top of it, it isn’t like it was adults we were going to leave behind, it’s a bunch of damn kids who have or should have nothing but a long fulfilling life left to live. But in the latter it seems like everyday that we live through is one that we should thank god himself for daily because with all the shit we are seeing so quick i fear it’s only going to get uglier and until we know if there is a cure we don’t really have a reason to go around killing these things if we don’t need to. The end goal here is to stay alive, stay away from these things and keep everyone safe.”

  “Yeah I can see not wanting to become bff’s with any of us if that is the case. It’s crazy to think that the government could handle doing that to its citizens though.”

  “It takes some serious shit for something like that to be decided on but if you think about it the lives of a group of teenagers versus the entire country having to worry about you being infected and spreading the worst thing ever to touch American soil - well then it kind of seems like a small price to pay to have our homeland still safe.”

  Greg nodded looking at the wall and staring at the ladder. He said, “You know we could climb this and go in through the roof if we wanted to. You up for that?”

  Clary looked at the ladder and took in the long flat piece of metal that protected the first ten steps on the ladder. How the hell do you expect to get up there it’s gotta be five feet up.”

  Greg said, “Put your hands together and give me a boost.”

  “Right but how the hell do you expect me to get up there?”

  “I’ll come around and let you in, just give me a few minutes up there.”

  Clary said, “Yeah right, i’ll just sit out here and hope that i’m good to go waiting on my own. How about instead we think outside that box.”

  Clary stripped off his backpack and cut the straps off of it and fastened tem together he did the same with Gregs and by the time they were done had a three foot makeshift handle to pull himself up with. He snapped it together checking its strength and clasped his hands together as Greg ran towards him landing a foot in his hands and Clary threw him up to reaching distance of the
first rung on the ladder past the piece of steel. Greg grasped at it with everything he had pulling himself up with everything that he had. The weight of the rifle and the magazines in his side pack each felt like an additional twenty pounds. Gregs arms quivered as he pulled himself up to the next followed again and again until he made it far enough to where he could put his feet on the ladder and rest for a minute regaining his strength. Clary threw up the makeshift strap to him and Greg connected it so that he could put all of his weight on it that he needed to. Clary tossed his rifle and magazine pack up to Greg and wrapped his hands around the strap and started pulling himself up pushing his feet against the wall to help keep his balance.

  Clary looked up to Greg realizing how much he was trusting in someone he barely knew that was just a kid himself. He wanted to tell him he was doing a great job and to keep it up but what he saw about made him fill his pants. Greg said very calmly, “I want you to get really close to the ladder and do not move.”

  Clary said, “Expand on why there is a rifle pointing at my head.”

  Greg said, “Simple there are Turned and they came from around the building, they arne’t sure if they want to approach us right now and I am ready to split their skulls open if they end up making the bad choice of coming over here this way. In the meantime you can either get you ass moving, or you can dangle there and see if we are going to get attacked by the. Its your choice but I don’t think that we have a lot of time to be killing here.”

  Clary not being a big fan of being bait started pulling himself with everything that he had in him up until he could reach the ladder. Once he started moving quickly the sweat poured even further from his scalp and the Turned crouched and then stretching to its full height up on its tip toes for a second its tongue out and its nose sniffing wildly like a animal. Greg yelled, “It smells your sweat, you need to -”

  “Greg if you are going to tell me to quit sweating let me be the first to go ahead and tell you to shut up and how stupid that is. Do me a favor will ya and shoot those fuckers before they come here. Cure or no cure we aren’t going to wait around for these things to come after us just because we think that there might be a way to fix them. There has to be a degree of common sense to everything before we just go ahead and give in and let them do whatever we want.”

  Greg didn’t even reply he shoulder the rifle again taking sharp aim and fired off dropping the five of them as they started their forward rush on the two. Clary watched as they fell to the ground thankful to have Greg. He felt a tight grip around his ankle and didn’t even look down. He unholstered his pistol and aimed it just off of his foot and started firing the pistol. The turned took two to the face and fell backwards looking like death falling to the ground both of its arms outstretched in the air until it hit the ground. The only thing hitting first were the droplets of brain matter.

  Clary slid it back in after making sure that they were clear and pulled himself up to safety. “We need to get moving, there is no way in hell we are going to stick around here and wait for dark to come.”

  Greg said, “I don’t know so far they don’t look like they see all that well.”

  Clary said, “Well I don’t know about you Greg but unless I have some nightvision going for me - which at the moment I most certainly don’t then i’m not going to stick around. I can’t see worth a shit without it either.”

  Greg realized that the idea of having something that could hear, hunts in a pack, and can smell trying to find him in the black of night didn’t actually seem so smart. “Got it, lets just get what we need and get outta here. I’d very much just like to go back to Andy’s place and try and forget about this place. How do you think they turned out here already?”

  Clary climbed up and started taking the ladder two at a time double time. “I don’t know bud, but I do know they aren’t soldiers anymore. Maybe they were deployed to try and control them and got overrun? Maybe they were trying to set up a camp and when they did they got bit and things went to shit. These might have been the only ones who made it back to the base. I can only imagine this place to have a few hundred or a few thousand soldiers available at any time.”

  “So how the hell do we survive when a entire army can’t take these on?”

  “We don’t have someone telling us what to do with them who doesn’t have the first clue how to kill them or what they are capable of. They probably have fifty or hundreds or whatever number of the zombies walking around Des Moines who have got the perfect chest shots going through them. These boys were doing what they were trained aim center mass, shoot them in the heart, but how the hell would they know what to do, besides think about these things running at you full blown speed jumping in the air, my god they were probably shitting themselvesl. One of the things about rifles that is almost a constant factor with it, is that if you are pointing one alongside a entire team of men in a direction those coming from that way usually turn and get the hell out of there.”

  Greg said, “But these things would just smile and keep on coming. They wouldn’t be fearful, they wouldn’t care, they’d just be thinking about the meal beneath. God I hate this.”

  “If you didn’t kid there’d be something just a little wrong with you.”

  Greg laughed, “Are you kidding me, if anyone is excited about the whole zombie apocalypse thing they are seriously messed up in the head. My dad didn’t drag me to a bunch of church services but from what I did go to it sure seems like this is the exact description of hell on Earth. The only exception is that we’ve got a couple of people looking out for us that don’t have any reason to.”

  “Are you kidding me, you guys are not useless to me and Aslin We don’t last a few weeks if we don’t have someone else watching our backs. It’s only a matter of time if me and him were cruising the city trying to find a place to stay put. It’s just a waiting game right now, the further we stay from them the better we are. If we got what we need then there’s no purpose going anywhere.”

  Greg looked at the hatch that kept the door shut. Greg said, “See I told you that we’d grow on you.”

  Clary punched him in the shoulder laughing, “Yeah like a rash kid. Lets get moving.”

  “Wait there isn’t a lock on that roof, or anything to keep people from going in there? What’s up with that.”

  “Greg we are on a secured military base. This isn’t really a entrance so much as a escape hatch. If there is a fire and someone is on the top floor, that last damn place they are going to want to be is inside a military armory. You only think you’ve seen shitty conditions until you are on the inside of somewhere that is on fire with bullets heating up. We aren’t talking about a couple thousand rounds we are probably talking hundreds of hundreds of thousands of rounds. They got enough for a effing war in here I can almost guarantee you.”

  “You don’t think that they took it with them?”

  “I doubt it, even if they left their reserve we should still have enough to get us through what we need to. Again this all falls under the idea of us staying put and not having to run into thousands of these things. If that happens then - well we can hope that the rest of the group turns out to be as good of shots as you and Shaun are.”

  Clary opened the door swinging it upwards and listened. “Alright, give me a minute and let me -”

  “No we go together, or we don’t go at all. You just said you wouldn’t last a minute if you didn’t have someone behind you watching out for your guys. Well how’s that different if you just go down there by yourself and it is filled with those things. God knows what could happen because of it.”

  They went down the ladder and into the dark. Clary put a foot down and tapped it left and right until he figured out that they were going onto a scaffolding. “Watch it kid there ain’t a lot of room here so take it easy. They walked across in the dark, the building was silent and cool for the weapons sake. Greg pulled out his flashlight, you got any problems if I turn this thing on?”

  “No i’d like to know what is goi
ng on beneath us. There could be fifty guns pointing at us right now and we wouldn’t know. It’s probably a fifty foot plus drop down. Go ahead and flick it on, we ought to be safe up here”

  Greg flicked the switch on and illuminated the long catwalk that they were on. There were no bells or whistles to it, it was suspended from the ceiling and didn’t look like it needed to hold very much weight before it would go crashing down. Greg said, “You feel better now? They didn’t waste any money on making sure this place was safe did they?”

  Clary shook his head and said, “You know I don’t feel any better, i’m actually a bit nervous about the idea that both of us are on this thing at once. More my weight than yours. Just take it slow and if we start hearing any buckling you get ahead of me and get to the end of this thing.”

  Greg shone the light around the rooms ceiling seeing that there was a set of stairs that led to the catwalk as well as a ladder that came straight up off of the floor on both sides of it. Greg shone it on the floor and wished he hadn’t done so. Clary said, “Oh my god!”

  Greg said, “What the hell, what do you think happened?”

  They were both staring in awe knowing what they’d done was to late to be taken back. The Turned were everywhere and covered the floor. The death spread across the room as far as the light illuminated. The death that came back as the devil disguised as the Turned. “I don’t know they probably thought that they’d be ok and raced back here. There was probably a infected among their unit and they thought what better place to get into than a military armory. The guys assumed that they’d be safe in here, and if anything made its way in here that they’d have all the bullets needed to take out any potential attackers or threats.”

  “Instead they ended up probably not knowing what was going on by the time it was to late. There is no way these things would have let up either can you imagine them moving through the dark? By the time they were done it was to late, they’d just devour the shit out of those guys.”