While he couldn’t see where it was aimed, he squeezed the trigger of his firearm anyway, hoping that he might somehow scare the biter off him.
It didn’t work.
The boys inside the boiler continued to scream, Andrew trying to kick at the biter who was now head-and-shoulders inside the boiler with them, reaching with an outstretched arm.
Suddenly, another flashlight illuminated the room.
“Chris!” Charla yelled. “Push the biter up so I can take a shot!”
“Can’t!” Chris cried, trying to keep the vicious biter away from where it had now turned its attention to his bare hands. “Wait! Now!” he yelled, letting go of his flashlight to grab the female biter by her hair and yank her head back and away from him.
Charla crouched for a better shot, aimed at the biter’s face, and squeezed the trigger, but nothing happened. She pulled the trigger again, and again, nothing happened. The trigger seemed stuck, almost like it was jammed. Then she mentally kicked herself, remembering that the weapon’s safety was on. She still wasn’t totally used to using a gun. She fumbled in the darkness, feeling for the safety button with a bare finger. She knew that every second she wasted in the process was crucial and could mean the difference between life and death for Chris.
Just as she found the gun’s safety and clicked it to the ‘off’ position, another biter lurched from the blackness, ramming into her and making a grab for her weapon. He was a big biter, and he pushed Charla back until he had her pinned up against the wall, a forearm against her neck. In the process, Charla dropped her gun, hearing it clatter to the floor. In the darkness, she prepared to feel the biter’s teeth sink into her flesh at any instant.
But suddenly, a light appeared in the doorway. As Charla struggled with the biter, she heard Wendell’s shocked voice, “Charla! Hold on!”
There was a flash and an explosion. And suddenly the biter pulled back from Charla but did not fully release his hold on her. Wendell fired his weapon again, and the big biter holding Charla dropped to the ground.
Charla hurried over to where Wendell stood in the doorway, gasping for breath. “Chris!” she cried to Wendell. “Help Chris!”
Wendell focused his flashlight on where Chris was still on the floor struggling with the female biter. Chris finally seemed to be getting the upper hand, but the way in which the biter was entangled with him made it difficult for Wendell to get a clear shot.
Wendell paused, unsure of whether to fire his weapon.
“Wendell! Hurry! There…now! Do it now!” Charla urged.
Still Wendell hesitated.
“She’s gonna bite him! Here, give me the gun!” Charla cried, looking on in horror as she saw that the biter atop Chris now had a clear path to his neck.
But Wendell remained motionless, his weapon in one hand, flashlight in the other, both trained on the two struggling combatants. But he didn’t fire.
“Wendell! SHOOT!” Charla screamed.
By the time she finished the words, it was too late. The female biter had torn into the side of Chris’ neck. Blood spewed everywhere.
As soon as the biter pulled her head away from Chris’, rearing back as it chewed the supple flesh it’d torn away, Wendell fired, striking the female biter in the face and killing her instantly.
Charla ran to Chris and knelt beside him as the biter rolled over onto the floor. “Keep the light on him!” she instructed Wendell harshly as she covered Chris’ gushing neck wound with her hands. But her aid was to no avail. Blood seeped between her fingers, and it seemed that the more pressure she applied, the more blood spurted from Chris.
Their eyes met for a brief instant, locking in wordless understanding. Then Chris’s eyes rolled back in his head and he was gone.
Behind her, the boys climbed from their hiding spot inside the boiler.
“Oh my god,” Andrew breathed when he saw Chris.
Justin just cried.
Charla rose as Wendell stood, fixed in place, flashlight and smoking weapon both still out, both still trained on Chris where he lay. His face was frozen with no sign of emotion, just shock, pure shock.
A minute later, the room was filled with other Blenders, comforting kids who were rattling off their explanation of what had happened, consoling the now-crying Charla, and relaying their own shock and disbelief regarding the situation that had just befallen them
Through it all, Wendell remained quiet. Having holstered his weapon and turned off his flashlight, he stood in the darkness absorbing the entirety of what had just transpired, trying to process how he had responded – or not responded – to it.
CHAPTER 19
“I don’t care what the reasons are! We can’t stay here…not after what has happened,” Christine Franko argued. Her boys were snuggled up on either side of her where they sat on the third floor in the circle of Blenders now discussing their group’s future.
They’d had a memorial service for Chris the morning after his passing. Not wanting to put his body outside where it might attract biters that would come to desecrate it, they wrapped it in a sheet and placed it atop the tower’s roof where the continued cold temperatures would preserve it until the spring thaw.
“But what are we supposed to do? Just pack up and venture out into the unknown…into god knows what…to god knows where?” Josh asked.
“I don’t know, but the unknown can’t be much worse than this,” Christine shook her head. “Look at the last week. We’ve lost three of our group, and we all almost met our end with the biter infiltration of the tower. Their numbers appear to be growing while ours are shrinking. Come spring, maybe sooner, I just think we’re going to be screwed. Somehow, some way, we’re going to be screwed,” she threw up her hands in front of her.
“Plus, how much longer are we going to be able to hold out here without more supplies?” she went on. “We lost one of our fishermen, which even with that extra food source, wasn’t enough to supplement the supplies we’re consuming. And as soon as it starts to warm up and those biter bodies down there around the tower start to thaw…well…” she shook her head at the thought, “…I think everyone is going to wake up to the realization of the world of shit we’ll be living in. Sorry for the language,” she nodded at Justin Justak across from her and then glanced at her own two boys.
“I think Christine certainly makes some very valid points,” Michael agreed. “And they’re points we’ve been discussing on and off for some time. Yesterday, after the incident in the basement, and once we got Chris up to the rooftop, Patrick and I stayed up there, fiddling with the radio,” he glanced over at his son. “We didn’t want to say anything right away, but we picked up a signal.”
“What?!” his wife Caroline cried. “And you didn’t tell us?”
“We didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up until we knew it was legit,” Patrick explained.
“And how do you know if it’s legit?” Wendell asked.
“Well, that’s the thing,” Michael said. “We don’t for sure. All we know is that we were able to pick it up again today, so whoever is sending it out has the ability to continue doing so over time. I guess that’s about the only thing that points us toward legitimacy.”
“So what did the message say?” Christine Franko asked.
“It was a recorded message, which is one of the factors that concerns me, since it could be dated,” Michael explained. “But it’s said there is a safe haven for Carchar survivors based in St. Louis.”
“St. Louis!” Ms. Mary cried. “Might as well be in Japan! How in the heck are we ever going to get to St. Louis? We could barely make it two suburbs before we hit trouble and had to take shelter here.”
“True,” Michael agreed. “But that was at a different time in the Carchar Syndrome. Things seemed to have calmed down a bit now.”
“Huh,” Charla scoffed. “I don’t know about that considering the week we’ve had.”
“I meant as far as the surrounding population and the armed forces’ response t
o what is happening. Sure, the biters are still a problem, maybe even more of a problem than they were at the outset of this. But I don’t know if we have to be as worried about being harassed by other survivors along our travels.”
“Why would you think that?” Wendell scoffed. “I’d think that we would have to be even more worried about survivors. The people who are left now are the ones willing to do whatever it takes to survive…the cutthroat type. They can be the most dangerous.”
“That isn’t necessarily true,” Ms. Mary countered. “We’re still alive. And we’re not cutthroat types.”
“But we can’t venture out in this weather,” Patrick said. “And our vehicles are likely all dead after sitting outside for so long in the cold. We’ll either have to work on them to get them running, or find new ones. And that could be tough, because any unclaimed vehicles will also probably have sat unused all winter. And claimed ones…well, they could be dangerous to try to take.”
“These are the same issues we’ve been debating all winter,” Christine huffed, shaking her head. “And we never seem to come to any conclusions. I think it’s time to make a decision. Personally, I think we make a try for St. Louis. It seems like it’s our only hope. We might find that there is a huge community of survivors there.”
“Or we might find that it’s a trap,” Wendell played devil’s advocate. “They might just be trying to lure people there. Or maybe the place has already been overrun by biters and they just left their pre-recorded message going.”
“But why would they try to lure people there? What would the purpose of that be?” Christine frowned.
“People travel with supplies. It could be the easiest way for a group to get the things they need to survive. Offer help, and when the unsuspecting people are lured in, kill them and take their stuff.”
Christine shook her head. “I don’t buy it. And at this point, what choice do we have? In a month or two, maybe less, we’ll be out of supplies. The biter bodies and the raw sewage we’ve dumped outside will be decomposing, stinking, drawing flies, and potentially contaminating our water supply. And with warmer weather, more biters could be out hunting. We barely made it through the last attack, and we’ve burned through a lot of our ammunition. I think that one way or the other, and whether you want to admit it or not, our hands are being forced here.”
“I tend to agree with Christine,” Ms. Mary said. “As much as I enjoy the security our tower typically provides, and as much as I don’t really want to go venturing off into the unknown, I don’t see that we are going to have much of a choice in a few weeks or a month or whenever the weather breaks. The only thing I’d add to what Christine has said is that I think it would be best to try to hold out until it’s slightly warmer. Not so warm that the decomposition outside gets the better of us. But decomposition will take a while to begin, a least a few days after the biter bodies start to thaw. That way, if we get caught outside or in a situation where we don’t have heat, we won’t freeze to death.”
Michael took a deep breath, nodding and taking it all in.
“We could try to remove all the biter bodies,” Jack Franko suggested meekly.
“And do what with them?” Wendell shot back. “Bury them? Carry them across the street, imperiling ourselves further so that we end up biters ourselves or biter Big Macs?”
Jack shrugged uncomfortably. “It was just an idea,” he said quietly.
His mother hugged him close and shot a scathing look over at Wendell. But Wendell seemed unperturbed.
“I don’t think that would work, buddy,” Josh smiled at the boy encouragingly. “But good thought.”
“Well, I think we should leave too,” Andrew Franko added his two cents. “After the whole basement thing…well, I’m ready to get the heck outta here.”
“Not to put too fine a point on it,” Wendell interjected, “but it’s not just the biter bodies, but the loads of shit you all have buried us in that pose just as great a threat,” he referenced the raw waste that had been dumped outside the tower perimeter. “That seeps into our river water supply, and we start eating contaminated fish or whatever, and we could all be up shit creek.”
“Up shit creek,” Michael said softly to himself, nodding thoughtfully. Then he seemed to gather himself from his thoughts and said, “Let’s have a vote on it then. We’ll see where we all stand on this issue. Do we stay or do we go? All those in favor of vacating the tower come spring and making a try for St. Louis?”
He paused, looking around the remaining group of Blenders. Everyone but Wendell raised their hand.
“All those opposed,” Michael said.
No one raised their hand.
“Wendell, you don’t have a preference?” Michael asked.
“Not particularly,” Wendell sulked.
“Okay,” Michael took a deep breath, “Wendell abstains.”
He looked around at the others. “Well then, I guess the questions become, exactly when do we leave, and how do we get there?
* * *
Thank you for reading! Please be on the lookout for book four in The Last Bastion series, due out in July of 2018.
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The Last Bastion (Book 3): The Last Bastion Page 20
