by mike Evans
Shaun had heard his dad say it more times than he could remember. He was actually saying it to himself more than to anyone else. Shaun whispered, “Plans are just God’s way of letting us know just how little we’re in control Aslin.”
Aslin said, “Well, then we are pretty fucking out of control, aren’t we?”
Shaun nodded and said, “You think anyone’s still alive?”
“We won’t know if we don’t get down there. I don’t see anyone moving around though…anyone living at least. Shaun rested the scope on the truck’s hood staring into the distance at the base. He saw that there were Turned but had to dial the scope into its maximum reach. Shaun said, “Hey, I think we’re good to get down there. They look funny though, what the hell is wrong with them?”
Aslin said, “Besides holes in them and the fact that they’re walking around eating people?”
Shaun took one last look but Greg had a pair of field glasses that reached further and said, “I cannot tell you guys how good I feel that you are the snipers of our little group. I mean that really deep down, but blind as shit and don’t know what is going on for anything.”
Aslin wanted to say something in regards to why he didn’t want to have children in his life but Shaun said, “We need to get down there but tell us what the hell you see, stop being an asshole and wastin’ time, Greg.”
“Okay, smart guy, fine. They don’t have arms.”
“What do you mean they don’t have arms?” Aslin asked.
Greg rubbed at his face; his patience had never been amazing unless he was on the range and teaching. “The shit below their elbows is gone. Look closer, they look like they were chopped off clean, like with a machete or some type of a blade.”
Shaun said, “You got that machine gun ready to rock?”
Greg checked the feed and nodded. He said, “It’s just a paperweight without it, right?”
“I know it is a lot of fun sitting up here and watching all of this go down but it’d probably be a good idea if we went and got down there,” McQuaig said. “There might still be some people that need help. I can only assume that there are since I’ve yet to see any prior to today that had arms cut off. I guess I’ve seen them ripped off but that was under totally different circumstances.”
Aslin said, “Shaun, you ride up top, here you can take my extra, high powered ammo with you. We are going to stop short and get as many of them as you can, as quickly as you can. They don’t have to be all head shots just get them down. When we can make our way in there then Greg can mow the bastards down. It won’t matter about noise so much once the immediate threat is taken care of.”
Shaun, who sometimes surprised Aslin and Clary with the old soul he had said, “Noise always matters, Aslin. There are cities in every which direction and they can come from anywhere. We can’t waste the preciousness of noise and quiet. If we can keep things on the down low we should. If they don’t have arms they aren’t nearly as dangerous as they usually are. I’m not saying that we should underestimate them. I’m sure that their teeth and their jumping is no worse off than it was before they lost their arms. Hell, if anything they’re probably pissed as hell if they can get that way. I don’t know if they feel any emotions or just hunger for blood which makes them crazy.”
Aslin climbed into the truck and the two of them took front lead on the drive down. When they were within two hundred yards, Shaun pounded on the top of the truck startling Aslin. , “Not much reason to waste any more of that precious distance, is there?”
Aslin put the truck in park letting it idle and Shaun sat for a moment waiting for the wind to die down. He said that it wasn’t a requirement to hit them in the head but could not for the life of him think of why he would waste one of his bullets and then have to waste the ones that Greg had as well. He dialed in as well as he could and started sending lead down to the dead. The bullets seemed to come out of nowhere. The Turned looked pissed watching their brother’s and sister’s heads explode in a blackish pink bloody mist.
When the front third of the base was as clear as he could get it from where they were Greg said, “You think that maybe we could let someone else do some of the work? I know it is great that you have all that scary quiet power but for God sakes I send hundreds of rounds a minute. What are you doing like three?”
Shaun was giving the leaders answer and not thinking with his heart or he’d have answered differently. “It isn’t about speed, Greg.”
“Well, it is when the girl that I know you love is down in one of those bunkers or in an attic or pinned down by one of those dead. We can sit here all day for all I care. But I have a feeling that you want Ellie alive and well even more than me.”
Shaun said, “You take them out, then. We can clean out whatever is left after we get done. Just make sure that they’re done. Take out their legs, and cripple them.”
A gleam of pure joy spread across Greg’s face. Shaun knew that he hated these things almost as much as he did and never had less reason to. Much like himself he knew Greg had lost everyone. He was aware of Greg having a bigger heart than he did. As much as he tried to forgive his dad for his mistakes, it was something that plagued him every day of his life.
Greg didn’t so much as hold blame against Shaun or his dad. Anytime he had ever heard anyone coming after Shaun or telling him that he didn’t deserve to be here those people usually were the ones who ended up on the flat of their backs.
Greg said, “Yeah, I think that I’ll be able to handle that. You guys let us ride in front the rest of the way in. If there’s anything up on the roofs then we need you to take care of those for me.”
Shaun nodded and tapped the roof again. He looked at the truck filled to the brim with odds and ends that Aslin thought were going to give them longevity in the world, and they pulled forward. He questioned what might have gone differently had they been here when it happened, or if he would have been alive. He already knew that they would have fought and that if it was intruders that had caused the problems today that there would be retaliation. He assumed right off the bat that those guys had come from the place in Johnston. The dead on the ground were all adults, and with everyone that was on the base they still didn’t have that many people.
McQuaig drove up towards the base where the two trucks that Clary had nailed with the grenades were now smoldering, The Turned that had been standing around it dead and Greg looked back over his shoulder to Shaun. He said, “Kind of deja vu isn’t it, Shaun?”
“How’s that?”
“You know from day two when we came to this place for supplies. Except the Turned that were out front that day were the soldiers who had tried to make it back after the dead had taken Des Moines.”
Fox thought about that and then thought of Joey’s brother and sister, and Tina. “Yeah, that doesn’t bring back the greatest of memories, Greg. We lost a lot of good people that day.”
Greg said, “Better to be able to count those horrible days on one hand then think of struggling for a year, right?”
Shaun gave a thumbs up and Greg leveled the machine gun, ready to go. As they made their way inside the Turned that had been left were given quick bursts of gunfire decimating their legs and kneecaps and leaving them handicapped on the ground. As they drove by McQuaig shot them in the head with a pistol, not wanting to have to come back to do cleanup.
They stopped in the middle of the base staring at the damage and looking at the fence line immediately seeing the large hole in it. The four wheelers that were still idling that had been crashed into the side of the bunkhouse that they saw had been pegged with hundreds of bullets. They went over seeing Bryan on the ground and Shaun switched from his high powered rifle to a machine gun, stepping down slowly. The idea of Ellie in there made him sick to his stomach.
A whistle came from behind them that he was just barely able to hear. When Shaun looked around, rifle at the ready, he saw Scott still atop of the building and waiting for something good to happen. He’d watched the dead
coming away from the bunkhouse without arms and decided it was safe to just stay up there and out of their radar. Scott was dangerously low on bullets as he had only gone up with so many to start with. He was well aware that he was not a strong enough shot to be able to take out an attacking horde if they were on the move towards him. Shaun hit his radio and said, “Just stay up there, if you see anything do me a favor and be my angel.”
“I don’t think angels have sniper rifles, Fox?”
“The ones that are watching over me need to be,” Shaun said.
He went to open the door but it swung open quickly with Ricky on the other end of Ellie’s borrowed rifle. Ricky could not have looked happier to see someone. “I’m glad you are back. It didn’t go well, Shaun. Things weren’t good at all.”
Shaun stepped in slowly and the others fell in behind him machine guns ready. Ellie was on the bunk not moving and Shaun actually started to wonder if only for a second. He’d taken in the beds all covered with bodies that had white sheets stained in blood pulled up over them. There had to have been thirty of them lying there. The number of people left alive were drastically lessened.
He ran to Ellie’s bedside and startled her. He laid a hand on her shoulder thanking a God on most days he wasn’t sure existed, that she was still alive. “Ellie, are you okay? Damn it, you scared me.”
“Remember, I was supposed to take it easy per Doc Lou? Well, that hasn’t really been possible today and I’m sure that I over did it. I don’t know what hit me but I got tired as hell all of a sudden and had to lie down.”
Shaun looked at the blood on her hands and said, “You didn’t get hurt did you?”
She assessed her hands realizing she had the blood of the dead on them, and of her friends. She said, “No, that isn't mine. When the dead were trying to stick their arms in through the holes in the windows we chopped them off. I’m sure you noticed one or two of them walking around without arms.”
Shaun tried to smile but the death that was everywhere around him, most were people that he cared about made it difficult to try and be pleasant. Ellie lifted up his chin smiling lightly, “Hey, at least we’re still alive. I hate the idea of anything happening to you and we’re lucky every day we make it another, Shaun.”
He nodded looking back at Greg who was standing in front of a set of beds looking left then right and shaking his head. When Shaun moved so that he could see what he was looking at, he saw Karen and Theresa. He thought about Christy and could imagine what was going through him. He put a hand on Greg’s shoulder but he shook it off. He said, “Am I fucking cursed or what? God hates me maybe? Zombies with the first, assholes with second, what in the hell is it? Are we not meant to try and have people around us that we can afford to care about anymore?”
Shaun said, “You know that people care about you. We’re family at this point, man.”
“That is probably really hard for you to say knowing that you have Ellie sitting not more than a few feet from you ready to give you caring love anytime you need it. Someone who is going to hold you and tell you things might be okay even on the shittiest and bloodiest of days.”
Shaun looked at Ellie thinking that she very well had done such a thing and said, “Well, just remember a few months ago I was pretty sure multiple times that day that I was never going to see her again, and that was a fire in my heart I can’t say I ever want to feel again. But I don’t want to lose her at the same time. I guess I don’t have the answer, Greg. I'm sorry, man.”
“I wasn’t looking for apologies, or answers for that matter, it just seems like a long run of shit. These things or complete strangers out there that have nothing but bad intentions are what is going to ruin this world.”
Clary felt his way over and said, “Greg, we’re going to see this through and we’re going to go kill those fuckers. I can promise you that, son. The only thing that was keeping us in here was waiting for you guys to come help clear those things out. Oh, and the fact that I'm blind right now.”
Greg who had not yet seen or spoken to Clary said, “What in the hell happened to you?”
“I’d say that someone shooting at me didn’t know how to shoot worth a damn but it seems that wouldn’t be real accurate since I can’t see anything. I threw a grenade at them though and took most of them out. I'm going to be able to use one of my eyes; at least that’s what Lou said. But that might have been before he told me he was going to leave. If I need any type of real medical help I'm going to be screwed. I think he’s going to head out on his own once the mess is cleaned up. He wants to go off and bury his daughters and find a place that he can survive on his own. He brought up that he only came here with us because he had been looking for somewhere safe for his family and this seemed as good of a sanctuary as any. Unfortunately, that wasn’t how it played out of course and he’s alone, or at least he thinks he’s alone. But from listening to you and Shaun you seem like you are in the same boat.”
Greg said, “I don’t know much about me being alone but I would say lonely is definitely an accurate statement that you can make. I sure as hell appreciate the people that we do have here and the friends I got but having someone else is just as important. Don’t tell me what you would do for some fifty-year old your age to have as a girlfriend, or wife, or whatever you old dudes do for love.”
“You realize if I wasn’t blind and that I’ll need your help that I’d totally snap my foot off in your ass, right? I'm not fifty for god sakes. Christ, I'm barely forty-five years old. I still have the best years of my life ahead of me.”
Greg laughed a little wiping at a tear that was fighting its way out. “You know who says things like that?”
Clary bit and said, “Who, people who are still trying to hold on to something good?”
“Nah, old dudes say that, so you’re old.”
Clary said, “You know what, Greg?”
“Yeah, don’t even say it. I already know. It’s times like this that you couldn’t be happier to have never had kids,” Greg said.
Clary patted him on the shoulder and then pulled him in for a hug. He said, “Nah, if I had kids, Greg, I think I’d probably be pretty fucking lucky if they ended up like you. Come on. Let's go over to the medic then we need to tell those kids that it's okay to get out of that bunker, and we also need to make sure that there isn’t any of the Turned in there having a feast on our blood bags.”
Aslin was staring at Clary and praying that the only other member from his Seal team wasn’t going to be blind forever. He would take care of the guy until his dying breath but he seriously worried about how long he would be able to survive, or how he would be able to handle the handicap. Aslin whispered to Clary, “Hey, are you okay, man? You look like shit.”
“Well good, because I feel like shit. I’d hate to be having a great looking day and feel like shit. Get us over to the medic building and then we need to swing by the armory and figure out what it is we’re going to do.”
“What are you thinking that you want to do? Don’t you want to wait to see how your eye is doing?”
“I want to do a clean out of my eye and see how it is doing. I may be able to see, it’s hard to tell with bandages over my eyes, definitely not as easy as it could be to see if that was the case, if you know what I mean?”
The small group walked over, Clary yelled to Aslin. “Hey, you going to go with us, Lou? I’d like to know what you think Joey is looking like after that quick patch job you had to do on him.”
Lou said, “No, I think I'm going to stay here for a while with my girls. I have some serious thinking to do.”
Ellie who usually was as respectful as she could be to most adults snapped. She said, “You told me that Joey was going to be okay, that it wasn’t that bad of a wound. Now get off your ass and go over there and check on him. He’s going to get an infection or something that is stupidly easy to fix but that we don’t know what to look for. You daughters are gone, your heart is broken, and you feel like you have been let down. I can underst
and that, really I can. You have a job to do and you have been doing it probably longer than you have had kids or a wife. You help people; that is what you do. You do it on good days and bad and you are going to keep doing it today. If you want to get everyone taken care of then we are going to reorganize and we’re going to go rain hell on those bastards’ doorstep. We won’t leave any of them, not one still alive. If they want to fight, they’re messing with the wrong goddamn group!”
Aslin just stared in awe. He had always thought that if anything happened to the two of them that he would be having Shaun groomed to take control. He already knew most people looked up to him on the base regardless of the history of the dead and what made it start. He said, “Christ, girl, with speeches like that you might have to be the one in charge. That was some motivating shit.”
Lou bent down giving each of his daughters a kiss on the head and nodded. “Alright, let's go take a look at how bad it is. If you guys can’t live without me then I can stay until Joey is better at the least. I want retaliation though and I want blood for it. Those bastards came here to kill and there’s no reason why they deserve to keep on going.”
Greg said, “We’re going to get those guys back. We just need to figure out something smart to do it. They got their asses kicked coming here because we knew the layout and we had our supplies. We need to figure that out before we go after them, or have something crazy enough to keep them busy while we pick them off.”
Shaun was staring at the dead strewn across the yard out the door. He looked up seeing Scott holding position with the sniper rifle and realized for the first time that they had never had this few people on the base. He turned to Aslin and Clary and said, “You realize if we have less than twenty people left on this base that clearing and moving would not be that hard, right?”
Aslin said, “What are you talking about, Shaun?”
“I’m saying if the blood bag idea works that we could clear out Des Moines and start working our way east.”
