by mike Evans
Jon hit his radio. “Let’s keep our eyes open this time, guys. Please, let’s keep our eyes open. We get to Clary and Greg, and we are good to go.”
Kya hit her mic button to respond. “Just follow Lou, would you, and keep your mouth shut. Keep focused and let’s get there. We are only a few miles away.”
Joey kept his eyes peeled as Kya and the others swerved slowly in and out of cars. The thought that was running through all of their heads was: what would happen if the dead came for them? There was no good way to try to leave, and there would be nothing quick that they could do. Joey said a short prayer that they would get there safely.
Kya patted his shoulder, trying to smile, but not having much more positivity running through her. “Look, Joey, there’s some people up there.” Joey squinted and then grabbed a pair of field glasses. “What are you doin’, Joey?”
“Making sure that they are people and that they aren’t dead. I don’t want to drive up there if there’s anymore dead there.”
He watched them for a few minutes, and when they started jumping up and down, waving for them, he knew that it was okay.
Joey yelled as he bounced up and down in his seat. “There’s Ellie, she’s right there in the back—do you see her? She’s alive, and she didn’t let one of them make her a zombie. Floor it, Kya! Come on, go get her! Get Ellie!”
Kya needed no help with motivation or directions. She hit the gas, happily racing up in front of Lou and Jon to Ellie. The idea that they’d lost Aliyah would have been completely unjustified in even the smallest way if something had happened to Ellie or the others. Kya skidded to a stop, rushing out to hug Ellie. Ellie had never been so happy to see a familiar face in her life. The idea that in an hour, they’d all be back at the base and somewhat safe did good for her heart.
“Kya, I am so happy to see you!”
Joey was only a step behind her, not stopping as he rushed them. He put his arms around both girls, forgetting about his injured hand—at least until he’d picked them up. “Ow, my damn hand.” Joey dropped both of them, covering his mouth. “Don’t tell no one that I cursed.”
Ellie saw Lou’s expression as he passed by. Only after the cold-blooded murder of his daughters had she ever seen him look so empty and dead on the inside. She then took in the front of the ambulance, Jon’s Humvee with a missing door, and not seeing Aliyah as a passenger in either of the vehicles. The smile of hope seeing her friends slowly went away. She didn’t want to ask, but had to know, because the guilt was going to tear yet another layer from her heart. “Kya, Joey… what happened? Where’s Aliyah? Joey what’s wrong with your hand?” Ellie barely whispered.
“I think that I broke it on one of the dead’s faces that I punched.”
“Holy shit, Joey, you punched one of them? Why?! What… Sorry, Kya explain.”
“We were on our way to pick you up and Jon went under this big ass bridge. A bunch of dead had been on top of it and they leapt off. He floored it, getting away, but Aliyah hadn’t seen them and… just to put it as lightly as we can, we lost her. Lou had to take her out with the ambulance,” Kya explained.
“Is that why the front end is bloody?”
“Yeah, pretty much. Jon ended up saving Joey and I. How many people here are going to need a ride? Are we going to have enough room here to get everyone back?”
Ellie thought of how many people there were there and nodded. “I think that we will have enough room. We just won’t have a lot of wiggle room. But it’s better than having to make trips back and forth. I don’t think we want to be out here much longer. It’s hard to tell if those we shot have friends coming.”
“I think that they’d be here by now if they were coming.”
Chapter 11
Yassa and Clary were going through the supplies. Greg was standing around with the other kids. He’d taken a big brother approach to Allen. He could tell the kid needed it and remembered how he’d felt on day one when his dad had fallen to the dead as well. He knew that he’d probably gotten off a little easy, knowing that as the son of a cop, his dad might not come home from his shift, but that any regular kid just expected their parents to live forever. “You doing all right there, Allen? I know it sucks. I wish I had something that might make you feel better, but I don’t. I know there isn’t anything that is gonna bring back your dad,” Greg said.
“I just want to kill those things. Any chance I can get one of those rifles or pistols? I want to kill them. If you guys show me how to use those guns, I’ll learn as quick as I can, I promise. We can take them out. You guys aren’t like regular people; we run and hide, you guys go straight in. Ellie ran right for them; she didn’t worry about anything but killing them.”
“Yeah, well, Ellie is a special sort, not that I wouldn’t have done the same thing. We refuse to be scared of those things. There’s only one problem with shooting them.”
“What, missing?”
“Well yes, but no. There’s more of them than there are bullets at the base. We have a better stock than probably anywhere else in the entire state, but we don’t have enough, probably not by far. They are everywhere. I wouldn’t know how to ever say that we ever got them all. Even if we did, we’d have to only assume we did, and look over our shoulder for the rest of our lives.”
“I’d rather look over my shoulder, than to live in fear forever. I don’t like being the minority. We are young. You wanna live the rest of your damn life like this, Greg?” Allen asked.
“No, not really, but we need bodies to fight them. We had a hell of a growing army. We called it The Orphans Brigade—more as a joke than anything, because there were so many people that were alone. I think someone somewhere is going to figure out something though. They have to.”
“What if those people are thinking about the same thing? Helping hands are over. If you want to see things happen, Greg, we need to do it ourselves.”
“Did you feel that way this morning?”
“This morning, I still had my dad, and my best friend wasn’t sitting over under a tent shade convulsing. I’ve seen doctor’s faces when they have bad news and there’s no way that Mike feels like he has a chance of surviving. Look at his face. He doesn’t think he has a chance in hell. I don't know what his dad is going to do if he loses his kid. He’s already the most uptight guy here.”
“What about that Yassa guy? He kind of strikes me as crazy. Do we need to be worried about him? There’s not too many people that I’ve seen go after Clary on purpose. Of course, the same thing happened that always does when they do.”
“They end up regretting it?”
“Pretty much. So, what’s up with him? Is he crazy?” Greg wondered.
“No, I don’t think that he’s crazy, but he isn’t up for being told what to do. If he thinks an idea is stupid, he’s going to tell you. But he’s handy to have around. I know we got a few more good meals than we probably deserved to have because he was here. None of us could hunt for shit, but I guess he grew up doing it. He was the one that rigged a bunch of lights off some batteries so we had some silent alarms.”
“So, you’d put it on you that he’s not going to be a risk taking him to our base with the rest of you?”
Allen shrugged. “Not any bigger threat than taking me back with you. He just wants the dead gone and a place that he can call his own. I don’t think he really cares about the dead as much as some of us, though. Pretty sure that he could go live up in the woods somewhere far enough away from them that he could survive and not worry about being on his own. I think there’s only one thing that keeps him around us. Well, maybe a couple things.”
“What are those?”
“Well one, I think he feels bad for us; pity might be a better term. We had all this shit from a Wal-Mart, but none of us really had any experience camping out—not that living in a semi probably counts. We took a wood burner stove with us and that was about what saved our butts. We met him there. He’d been getting supplies to go and make a go of it on his own
, but when he saw us, he decided to keep us around. There were some small kids around; he felt bad for them and the moms. Didn’t want to have that itching away at his conscience. Or maybe he wanted a getaway plan.”
“A getaway plan?” Greg questioned.
“Yeah, they eat us, and while we are screaming our heads off, then they give him all the notice he needs to take a walk. He usually sleeps away from us. All the people who cry themselves to sleep make it hard for him to get some shut eye.”
“Not filling me with a ton of confidence there, Allen.”
“Wasn’t trying to, Greg. What’s your guy’s, deal? Why you haven’t come around to try to find other survivors before?”
“Honestly, we spent most of the first year training the people that we’d found. I FUBARed a lot last winter. We went out on our own without really telling anyone what we were doing first. Shit hit the fan, and a couple of our people got hurt pretty badly, including my best friend and Ellie. He left though, and I don’t know if or when he’s coming back. I’m going to kill him when I see him again,” he said with anger growing in his voice.
“So, you guys had intentions of finding others? You weren’t just being dicks, keeping all that to yourselves?”
“Allen, I understand that you’ve had a shit day, but two of my good friends got shot in the head today. My friend Ellie, whom you’ve met, left like an idiot because she is in love with my best friend, who left town on us without even saying goodbye. We did have intentions of bringing others into camp. We had already started, actually.”
“So, you were going to get some more people is what you are saying? What stopped you?”
“We went out for supplies. Someone had a great idea that maybe we should try to set up our base to be sustainable, and to be able to get new food when our supplies ran out. While we were out that day, one of the people who we were trying to help decided that it was time to let her friends or family, whatever they were, onto the base. They killed almost everyone there. What’s left now is on its way here. We have so much more now than we’ll ever need. There’s plenty of space out there now, and we could do a lot with some more people. If you really want to go out of your way to kill the dead, then you can stay with us. Your dad is gone, but you can learn, you can kill, and you can see if it cures the demons that are eating at your insides,” Greg said.
“Has it cured yours?”
“No, and it hasn’t cured my friends’, but maybe you can be the first.”
Allen nodded his head, staring at Greg’s machine gun. “I guess we can hope. If not, at least there will be less of those dead, if they don’t take me out first, I guess.”
A hand came down on Allen’s shoulder. “You two okay here?” Yassa asked. “You need anything?”
“Probably nothing that you can supply, Yassa. I want to go with these guys, I think.”
“Good, because we are all going there. Between Al and me, there’s no way I’m babysitting you guys. Now that your dad is gone, I have been reassessing the fact that we stay so quiet, which is smart, but that we don’t use guns, which is stupid. God bless my bow, but if I could have had thirty-round magazines today, they’d never had made it up that tree.”
Clary said, “There’s plenty of space there, kid. But I’m not promising anyone anything. There’s just as good a chance that some of the dead will roll through and kill us all, but just like when I was fighting in the military—the enemy could beat me to death with my gun, but it’s going to be an empty one that they are doing it with.”
Yassa said, “Wait, I thought you said you guys had ammo there?”
Clary shook his head. “It’s probably gonna take me some time to grow to like you, isn’t it, Yassa?”
“There’s a chance, yes. You know, believe it or not, sometimes I just don’t ever grow on anyone.”
☣ ☣ ☣
Lou drove through slowly. He saw what he assumed was the other half of the kids or teenagers that they’d been talking about sitting around in lawn chairs, each of them with a small pile in front of them. It didn’t take much to see the fear and grieving on their young faces. Lou thought of all the people they’d buried, and it didn't hurt his heart to fill those bunks with someone that needed it. He also thought of how he hopefully wouldn’t have to keep one eye open because of them.
With the exception of Aliyah and Jon, there weren’t any new people left on base from when they’d began searching out the living to give refuge and shelter to. He stopped thinking when the picture of Aliyah and her two halves flashed in his head. Lou took a deep breath, fighting back the tears that he knew would not stop, but that could be put aside until they made it back to the camp. They would find him when he laid his head on a pillow tonight.
Clary saw the ambulance and knew damn well that it had been pristine this morning, and hadn’t looked like a prop from a horror movie. Clary waved him over, pointing to Al and Tony, who’d been covered with a sheet and given a few pillows.
Mike saw the ambulance and sprinted over to him. “I’m Mike, nice to meet you. The kid is Tony. He’s fourteen, normal, healthy… One of those bastards was on top of him. Your guy Clary said that one of them had him by the head. Instead of putting him out of his misery, it was smashing his skull into the ground.”
“Call me Lou. So, concussion, first thought?”
“Yeah, but I want to run an MRI on him. Do you have that available on your base?”
“Yeah, we have that and a lot more, Mike. Nice to meet you. I haven’t met anyone else in the field since this started. Glad to know that I wasn’t the last one. There’s a lot you’ll be able to teach me.”
“Yeah, pull on over and we can run over everything with the kid once we get to the base.”
Lou did as he was directed. Clary came over. “What’s up with the ambulance, Lou?”
“Don’t really want to get into it right now, Clary, but the short and not so sweet of it is: there were Turned in our path to get here. We didn’t see them until they were coming into Aliyah’s windshield.”
“Christ, is she all right? Is she okay?” he asked
“She is now; she’s gone. We lost her... I lost her,” he said putting his head down sadly.
“Lou, it isn't your fault.”
“You tell yourself that. I’ve been doing it for twenty minutes and I still can’t make myself believe it. We don’t have time for this. I haven’t been around that kid for two minutes and I can tell he looks like shit.” He sighed. “Look, I don’t want to be around anyone right now. Get that kid loaded up, stick his dad in back, and let’s roll out of here. You and the others can catch up.”
“Catch up, my ass. We don’t go anywhere by ourselves. Tell me that you need one more reminder why, Lou.”
“Then get these kids moving. You and Mike stay up front. I don’t want to lose you. He’s going to be in charge once we get there. Last thing I'm going to do is try to figure out that fucking thing on my own. The way the lights have been flickering lately, I'm not too confident we won’t be in the dark soon anyways.”
“Fine. Pull on over there. I’ll help you get loaded up.”
Al saw them coming and looked like a parent that had been going through their own personal hell. “Is that the man who’s going to save Tony? Is he going to be the one to help?”
“He’s the one who’s going to take him to get the test that Mike thinks is going to help. We aren’t making any promises other than we have better equipment than the local Wal-Mart first aid section did. How’s Tony doing?” Clary asked.
“He stopped convulsing, and his breathing got real light. Other than that, your guess is just as good as mine.”
Lou slid out of the truck. Jon pulled up his Humvee behind him and they got the gurney out of the back and carefully slid Tony onto it. Jon saw the sweat on the boy’s face and didn’t feel very confident about him. “He is going to be okay, right Lou?” he asked.
Al looked up at the two of them and Jon instantly knew that it was his father. “Sor
ry, Lou won’t know anything till they get them back,” Mike said.
“What are you, some kind of a fucking doctor, kid?” Al asked.
“I'm just gonna go over here and get out of your way. Lou, if you need anything just let me know, okay?” Jon said as he walked quickly away.
“Yeah, probably a good idea, Jon. Just see if you can’t round these kids up. We need to leave in two minutes.”
Yassa heard this and yelled, “There’s no way in hell we’ll get all this shit loaded up in two minutes.”
Al said, “Then forget about it, Yassa. There’s a base we are going to that probably has better equipment than we do anyways.”
Clary said, “Look, we got plenty of shit at our place. If you two want to fight about it, we can do it after we get everyone situated. We can always come back for it. I know I’ve got a few trucks that’ll pull that semi-trailer with flat tires or full, makes no difference to those big son of a bitches. The best thing we can do now is take care of this kid and do what we can for him. Life is precious; no reason to waste it because of a few items. If there’s something you absolutely have to have, Yassa, then go get it.”
