To my relief, no one was standing in the doorway or hall watching us when I circled around behind her and took hold of the handles of the chair. I didn’t want to spend the whole of the expedition with them questioning or making assumptions about Samantha and I. There wasn’t a Samantha and I, not while there was a possibility, no matter how small, that she was a married woman.
I wheeled her out of the room and to where the other three were still waiting. Kayla wouldn’t look at us. Tera was talking to Jasper over the intercom, giving him a list of the weapons and supplies we had on us and double-checking our directions. Russ was making sure he and Tera were strapped down tightly. That was at least the third time he’d checked them.
“Keep the radio charged at all times if at all possible,” Jasper was saying. “That’ll be our only form of communication. You shouldn’t be gone any longer than a week. I’ll give you ten days. After that, I’ll send Kayla and Samantha after you.”
“No you won’t,” Tera said before I could. “If we’re gone that long, presume we’re dead and forget about us.”
“I…” Jasper started to say, but Russ cut him off.
“She’s right, man. If we’re gone that long something’s happened. Don’t risk anyone’s life for us.”
“Jason?” Jasper asked, sounding resigned.
“I agree with them,” I said, not looking at Kayla or Samantha. “It won’t be worth the risk. Samantha will still be healing and won’t be much help to Kayla, and Kayla can’t do that alone.”
An audible sigh came over the intercom before Jasper said, “All right. Please be safe.”
“We will,” I said and glanced down at Samantha as I did. She was looking at her hands. I turned my attention to Kayla who also wasn’t staring at me. I’d already said my goodbye to Samantha in private, so I reached out and pulled a stubborn Kayla to me for a long hug. She took a minute to respond, but finally, she hugged me back.
Once we let go, she hugged Tera and Russ. They in turn awkwardly shook hands with Samantha. No one knew her well enough to want to hug her, but they didn’t want to ignore her either. My goodbye came in the form of lightly brushing my hand across her arm as I passed her.
For a long moment, we stood at the entrance, not knowing what to say.
Russ broke the silence by saying, “Let’s get this party started,” then hit the door lock.
One at a time, we exited, ready for an attack. Jasper didn’t see a zombie in our vicinity, but we weren’t taking any chances.
“What’s up with you and Samantha?” Russ asked through our comlinks the second we were out of earshot of the building. He said it low so that any persons or zombies in the area wouldn’t hear him, but his voice came in loud and clear in my ear.
“Seriously?” I demanded, looking behind me to be sure the main door was shut and that Kayla hadn’t tried to do anything stupid like follow us. “We literally just left the safety of Shore Haven and could be attacked by a mob at any second, and you want to start that shit. There isn’t a ‘me and Samantha’.”
“Defensive much,” Russ said, chuckling but keeping a close watch on our surroundings.
“Ignore him,” Tera said, stepping between us and guiding us in the direction of the bridge. “Russ is just using your care for Samantha to distract you from asking about him and Kayla now that you can without Kayla knowing it.”
“There had better not be a ‘him and Kayla’,” I said, glaring at the boy before quickly turning my attention to a dark alley we were approaching. “She’s too young for you, and the zombie apocalypse doesn’t change that.”
“I know there isn’t anything going on between us,” he said with a bit of bitterness in his voice. “Just when I thought we were at least becoming friends, Samantha came along, and now she all but ignores me in her jealousy.”
“Jealousy?” I asked, now worried that the child didn’t see me as a father figure and had some kind of schoolgirl crush on me. I didn’t want to have to have that talk with her when we returned.
“Yeah,” Tera said, giving Russ a dirty look for bringing up the subject. “Since we found Samantha, you’ve given the woman all of your attention. I know she needed help, needed someone to take care of her right now with her leg, but you were all Kayla had before we came along, you’ve known her most of her life, so you are the only family she has. She sees Samantha as taking you away from her.”
“No one is taking me away from…” I started.
“I’ve seen the way you look at Samantha,” Tera said, cutting me off and nodding for me to keep an eye on the darkened department store with busted out windows that we were passing. “You’ll follow that woman to the ends of the world without a second’s thought, but where does that leave Kayla? No, it isn’t fair of Kayla to feel that way, for her to want to keep you to herself without any thought of what you might want, especially not in the world we live in, and especially not when one day she’ll figure out she loves Russ or finds someone else and leaves you. That doesn’t change the fact that despite how badass she can be, Kayla’s still a child. She’s fragile. However you move forward with Samantha, you’ll have to be careful of what you do and don’t leave Kayla behind.”
“Kayla nor any of you have to worry about anything. Samantha is married. When she’s well enough, she wants to find her family.”
“I’m sorry, man,” Russ said, sounding sad and sincere.
“Don’t apologize,” Tera said, looking at me intently. “He’s going with her. And chances are her husband is dead.”
I gave her an annoyed look but didn’t argue with her statement.
“Will you, really?” Russ asked.
“I told her I would accompany her, yes. If her family is alive, we’ll try to bring them back to Shore Haven. Even her husband.”
I didn’t tell them that either way, Samantha wasn’t staying with the man. I wanted them to drop the subject and focus on the mission. The bridge was in sight. We needed to worry about what was on the other side, not about my feelings for Samantha.
Chapter 18
~~~Jason~~~
Tera, Russ, and I stopped at the entrance of the bridge to take in our surroundings. Once we started across the bridge, there was no turning back. I didn’t know about the others, but I was seriously contemplating giving up on the plan. The one thing that stopped me was thinking that the only way I’d let Samantha go after her parents or even out of Shore Haven was if we had a vaccine.
That was caveman logic and something she’d probably laugh in my face at before storming out of my life for if I ever said as much, but it was what made me take that step forward onto the bridge. Tera and Russ followed.
“It’s weird to see the bridge so empty. Before the outbreak, it was teeming with vehicles, then once someone lowered it, it was covered in zombies. I think it’s creepier now than it was with the zombies. Why do you think that’s so?” Russ asked.
“Because the emptiness is more of a sign of the apocalypse than the other. The zombies were once human, and, even though they were out to kill us, they were a sign of life, an indication that there were still people out there to save if we can find a cure. This,” I answered with a wave of my hand, “is a sign that the human race, in this country at least, is nearly extinct.”
My statement quieted us for a long time. We crossed the bridge without incident. The other side was just as Tera had said it would be. We explored the small farming community turned commune, that had been her home for a short time, at length to be sure no one had survived and was planning to pick up where her captor had left off once they were able. I made a mental note that at some point in the future, we’d need to clean up the town, especially the debris at the mouth of the bridge.
There were no signs of life in Edge Borrow or in Concord, the two largest towns on the other side of the bridge.
To our amazement, we went the entire day without seeing a single zombie or living being. The fact that we were traveling through farmland was the biggest reason for that.
Vast areas with no people meant that most of the zombies had probably moved on or died. I prayed that the rest of the journey would be just as uneventful.
We stayed that first night in the basement of a bed and breakfast.
The next morning, we started out early, hoping to cover as much ground as possible. The first hour or so was quiet, but as we neared the next bridge we’d have to cross, we started seeing the random straggler eating a captured animal or a fallen friend. We picked off the zombies easily enough with knives, daggers, swords, and anything else that didn’t make a loud noise. We would need to save our guns and bullets for when we were out of options.
The bridge we would have to cross was in a town called Rawly. The closer we got, the more zombies we saw. We killed as many as we could, but hid and escaped from more. Their numbers weren’t horde capacity, but near it. Oddly enough, though, the bridge was empty, and the small city on the other side was as well.
“Is this how it is everywhere?” Russ asked Tera. “Zombie’s staying close to the major cities.”
“Yes and no. The number of zombies seems to be decreasing. I didn’t go this long between sightings on my way to the island. I did see more in the larger cities, but that was to be expected, as they have the highest populations. The turned don’t have an incentive to leave the cities if they can’t sense a food source outside of them.”
“I don’t know if their lack of numbers is a good thing or bad thing,” I said, as we rested and had a bite to eat.
“Good for us as our chances of getting attacked are low, and it’s probably a sign that they are dying out, but it means that by the time someone finds a cure, there won’t be anyone in which to give it. The same applies to a vaccine for the non-infected. I haven’t seen any indications of human life since we left,” Tera said, taking in our surroundings.
“We can’t be the last survivors,” Russ said.
“I don’t think we are, but there are probably so few of us that we might have a hard time finding them. We’d be better off with Jasper broadcasting our location than trying to search for them on our own,” Tera said pointedly at me.
“I’ve told him that,” I replied. “He’s afraid of leading dangerous people, like the man who captured you, to Shore Haven. He thinks that if we meet them out here, we can get a better idea of who they are before bringing up Shore Haven.”
“I see the point, but out here is more dangerous, and eventually word is going to spread about the place, and people are going to start coming to us regardless. What’s he going to do then? More importantly, what does he expect us to do?”
“We’ll just have to make him see reason. I was bringing Samantha inside whether he liked it or not. If he wants to stop us from bringing people in, he’s going to have to show himself. Eventually, he’ll have to leave that floor. The likelihood of people obeying orders from someone they can only see on a computer screen is slim.”
“He also needs to understand that people are good at hiding their true nature. Just because we meet them out here and they seem okay, doesn’t mean they are.”
“I’ve told him that also.”
We finished our meal in silence, cleaned our mess, and started walking again, as I contemplated the world’s fate and considered how we would run Shore Haven when the time came when we would need a government.
About an hour or so before we needed to seek shelter for the night, we stumbled into a small town overrun with zombies. Why there were so many concentrated in one spot, I didn’t know.
“Holy shit,” Russ said as we turned a corner and all but ran into the horde.
We backtracked swiftly and prayed we could circle the perimeter of the city without them noticing us.
“What’re they all doing there?” Tera asked once we were out of hearing distance.
“I have no idea. There are too many zombies for the size of the city. Someone must have lured them there,” I said, looking toward the center of town with curiosity.
“Are you thinking there’s another outfit like Dominic’s out here?” Tera asked.
“I’m not sure. Maybe.”
“Are we going to investigate or walk on by?” Russ asked.
“I want to walk on by, but we can’t,” I said with a long sigh.
“Do we separate or stick together?” Tera asked, checking her weapons.
“Stay together. We could probably do this quicker if we separated, but we don’t separate no matter what.”
Both of them nodded at me, and we made our way toward the other end of town. We circled the horde but didn’t see any living beings or signs of anyone leading them.
“Do we want to go further into town to see what’s going on?” Russ asked.
“Not if we don’t have to. I don’t think we’d make it back out again,” I said, examining our surroundings and looking for the tallest building that would give us the best view of the town center.
“That one,” Tera said, figuring out what I was thinking.
She pointed to a tall bank building with a bell tower.
I nodded, and the three of us made our way to it. We met a few zombies. One nearly took me down, and one did its best to chase Tera toward the most prominent part of the horde, but somehow we managed to kill them without drawing the attention of the others.
The front door of the bank was busted open, and we slipped inside quickly. The interior was trashed, causing us to waste daylight moving furniture and debris out of our way as we climbed the stairs.
We barely fit inside the bell tower, but comfort wasn’t what we were going for at that moment. The tower didn’t allow us to see the entire town, but we were able to see enough.
“Son-of-a…” Russ started.
Son-of-a-bitch was right. In the center of town was a four-way red light. Along the wires on which the lights hung, bodies dangled just out of reach of the zombies below. The bodies weren’t alive, but they had been within the last few days.
Someone had killed them and strung them up. Why? We didn’t know. It appeared to lure the zombies to the center of town. For what purpose, I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t tell from the low lighting, the distance, and the decay how the people had died.
With our night-vision binoculars, we scanned as much of the town as possible but saw no one and nothing that could tell us what had happened.
“Let’s get out of here,” Tera said, putting away her binoculars and pulling out her weapons. “That’s giving me the creeps.”
I agreed.
We made it out of town just as night fully settled over the land. That evening we set up camp in the stock room of an auto parts store a good hour’s walk from the town we’d just passed. Each of us had a theory or two about what had happened, and each story was just as likely as the other was, and each was horrifying to contemplate.
Not one of us slept well that night, causing us to have a slow start the next morning. After breakfast, we tried to pick up our pace to make up for lost time, but a group of sick survivors further halted our progress.
We’d just took down a group of twenty zombies hovering outside a dollar store that was all alone on a long stretch of road when we crested a hill and saw the rows of tents that filled a nearby field. There had to be at least fifty tents and more fires than that burning, presumably cooking the noon meal.
Quickly, before anyone from the field could see us, we ducked behind an old house to discuss how we wanted to proceed.
“They look civil enough,” Tera said from behind the binoculars. “No one looks as if they are being held captive. I don’t see any one person barking orders or people abusing anyone else in any way. From all outward appearances, they look like regular survivors. I see a few coughing and the area that appears to be where they’ve dug their latrines has more than a few people squatting over it.”
“They’re sick then, or at least some of them are,” Russ said, sounding like he was going to refuse to go near them.
“Probably, but we can’t know for sure until we go down there,�
� Tera said.
“Do we go dressed like this or should we try to approach them in our regular clothes?” I asked, not wanting to remove the suit, but not wanting the people from the makeshift tent city to go on the defensive when they saw us.
“I’m going like this,” Russ announced, pointing to his suit. “If they’re sick, I don’t want to catch what they have.”
He was right. We didn’t need anything else slowing us down, but if there was something we could do to help them, we should do it.
“Okay. We’ll leave the suits on. Lower the face masks, though. We’ll appear more inviting that way. Just keep your mouths covered.”
We adjusted ourselves and cautiously left the cover of the house. No one spotted us until we were about halfway across the field. The sight of a tall woman sprinting toward us, waving her hands halted us. Freezing in place, we braced ourselves for an attack.
“Don’t come any closer. Stay right there,” the woman was saying in a loud voice. She wouldn’t yell for fear of attracting any nearby zombies. Her words and tone suggested that she was trying to protect us.
We didn’t let our guard down, though, until she came to a stop a few feet in front of me, as I was at the head of the group. She collapsed at the waist, panting for breath. Between lungfuls, she attempted to speak, but I couldn’t make out what she was trying to say.
Patiently, or not so much in Russ’s case, we waited for her to catch her breath. Our weapons stayed fixated on her and the area around us the entire time, but they didn’t seem to faze her.
Eventually, she straightened, and said, “Sorry, but you can’t come any closer.”
“Why not?” I asked, though, the reason was apparent.
“The entire camp is sick,” she said, pointing behind her. “It started about two days ago. We were heading west, trying to find someone who knew what was going on, someone who might help. We’d just escaped a massive storm. I think a hurricane hit the east coast. Anyway, we’d been moving non-stop for days and were exhausted. When we came upon the field, we set up camp to rest. The next morning half of our group was sick. Yesterday, even more started showing signs, and today…I don’t think there is but a handful or two of us who aren’t. It’s just getting worse because we can’t get people to leave their tents to vomit or have diarrhea or even wash themselves or their clothes. They know that lying in their own filth is just making things worse, but they’re too sick to care. Those of us who are well are trying to take care of things the best we can, but there are too many sick.”
Shore Haven Page 16
