by Sarra Cannon
Crash swallowed. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve never seen a group act like that before,” he said. “One second they were walking toward us, and the next they were stopped, like someone had flipped a switch and simply turned them off.”
Crash shrugged and tried to laugh it off. “Maybe they forgot where they were heading,” he said. “They heard the siren, started walking, and when it shut off, they stopped. Who knows what makes those things tick?”
“That’s never happened before, though,” Tank said. “And I’ve been on this roof cranking that siren every day for weeks. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Nothing makes sense anymore,” Crash said. “I can’t explain it.”
Tank shook his head and turned toward Crash. “Sorry, I guess I just let it get to me. I’ve been watching them, you know? Trying to come up with patterns of behavior. But something like this happens and it throws all my theories to the wind. It’s like we can’t get ahead. Do you think they’re changing again? Evolving or something?”
“Who knows, man. Anything is possible,” he said, thinking of the super-zombies. He really hoped his friend and their group never had to see those things in action.
“Anyway, don’t mind me,” Tank said. “What’s up? Did you need me for something?”
“I just wanted to ask you about the job you mentioned earlier,” he said. After what Parrish had told him about her dream, they’d come up with a plan to find out once and for all. It was risky, but they had both agreed it was necessary. “I talked to some of my crew, and I wanted to let you know we’re ready when you are.”
“You sure about that?” Tank said. “You guys just got here. I don’t want to send you out so soon if you’re not up to it.”
“We’ve been through a lot the past few weeks,” he said, and left it at that. “But we’re grateful to be here. We want to do our part since you’ve welcomed us in like this.”
“I have to admit, I do have something in mind, but it’s dangerous.”
“What is it?”
“I told you that a few of our guys were injured the other day, right?”
Crash nodded.
“Well, one of them has a serious infection,” Tank said. “We tried some natural remedies hoping it would get better, but so far, it’s only gotten worse. Our nurse says if we don’t get some antibiotics soon, he might not make it.”
“Damn,” Crash said. “Where can we find antibiotics?”
“I sent a team out yesterday looking in all the places I thought might be easiest to get to. Nursing homes. Vet offices,” he said. “But they didn’t have any luck. The places around here had either been cleaned out or destroyed.”
“Got any other ideas?” Crash asked, even though he knew Tank must have an idea or he wouldn’t be talking to him right now.
“This guy that’s sick, his name is Stephen,” Tank said. He scanned the area and shook his head. “He’s one of my best men, so I sent him on that run thinking they’d be okay. If he dies, I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to forgive myself.”
Crash touched his friend’s shoulder. “Look, we’re all doing the best we can. You aren’t responsible for what’s happened to the world.”
Tank looked at him. “Stephen’s wife is pregnant.”
“Shit,” Crash said.
“Shit’s right,” Tank said. “I feel terrible for even sending him out there, but he’d insisted on running that group. And like I said, he was my best man. He’d been on tons of missions and always come back. Cheryl begged him not to go. Said she had a bad feeling about it. But I sent him anyway, and now... well, now he’s dying and I can’t help him.”
“What can we do?”
Tank breathed in. “There’s a hospital not far from here,” he said. “It’s possible there are meds inside.”
“A hospital?” Crash asked. “That’s going to be one of the worst places for rotters right now.”
“I know,” Tank said. “Which is exactly why I think it’s our best chance. Looters got to the easier places because they were easy. Less risky. But the hospital is a last resort. Most people wouldn’t go near it unless they had to, and the chances of them cleaning out an entire hospital without dying first is low.”
“Which means our chances aren’t great, either,” Crash said. “What about driving further out? Checking some of the surrounding towns?”
Tank shook his head. “We’ve done that,” he said. “Over the past few weeks, we’ve been sending people out on a daily basis, driving to all the surrounding towns in a sixty mile radius. We’ve already gotten everything there is to get from those places. Anything much farther and it could take days to get back here. I’m not sure Stephen has days to spare.”
Crash ran a hand through his hair. He was willing to go on a mission, but damn. This was going to be rough.
“I know it’s a lot to ask with you guys just getting here and all, but the way you proved yourselves earlier with the guns has me thinking that you’re my best option of getting over there and getting back in one piece. I was thinking maybe Karmen and that other girl could stay here. I could send a couple of my other boys out with you, instead.”
Crash shook his head. “No can do,” he said. “We’ll do this for you, no problem, but on our terms. I’m not trying to be difficult or anything, but we’ve been together for a while. We know how to fight and how to communicate with each other. We go as a group or we don’t go at all.”
Tank’s eyebrows tensed and he ran a hand across several days’ worth of stubble on his chin. “I really don’t like the idea of sending those girls out with you when I have no idea what you might find out there,” he said. “Now, Parrish, she seems to know what she’s doing. She’s a real spit-fire, if you ask me, but Karmen? She’s fragile, I think. Lily, too. She couldn’t hit one of those Z’s with a shotgun if it was standing right in front of her.”
“I know it sounds odd, but we’ve got our own system out there,” he said. He needed to convince Tank to let them stick together, or the whole thing was off. “Karmen might seem fragile, but she’s good under pressure. And she’s a lot stronger than she looks. Lily too. And look, this way you don’t have to put any more of your men in danger.”
“Why are you so eager to take this on right now?” Tank asked.
“Hey, it’s the least we can do,” Crash said. “This is the only safe place we’ve heard of, and we’re just thankful to be here. If we can help you save one of your friends, we’ll do everything we can.”
Tank took in a deep breath and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Finally, he nodded and shrugged his shoulders. “If you think you guys are up to it, I’ll pull out the map tonight and show you exactly where you need to go,” he said. “You’ll need to get up pretty early and plan to set out at first light. It’s a bit of a trek over there, and you can’t take the Humvee the whole way. There’s a bridge about two miles to the east, but it’s completely blocked. You can drive up to it, but you’ll have to go on foot the rest of the way unless you can find a vehicle once you get over to the other side. I wouldn’t count on it though.”
“How many miles on foot?” he asked.
“About three.”
Crash let out a nervous sigh and rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, that’s quite a trek. Depending on conditions, that could take us an hour or two by itself.”
“Exactly. And once you get to the hospital, I have no idea what you might find. It could very well be overrun,” Tank said.
“We’ll manage,” he said, wondering if this was really worth it. Saving a man’s life was important, but if they were just willing to use their powers, Noah might be able fix him up in no time. The problem was they had no idea if Noah’s powers worked on infections, or if it would be enough to save this man’s life
Besides, there was more to this mission than helping this guy out. They needed to test Lily. They had to know if she was really one of them or not.
Of course, he knew they’d have on
e heck of a time convincing Karmen that this was something they needed to do. She wouldn’t want to leave the compound, but they were going as a group or they weren’t going at all.
If Parrish was right about her hunch, they’d be meeting some pretty heavy firepower once they got there, too.
He really hoped she wasn’t right.
“If you’re sure, then I’ll go start getting some things together for you,” Tank said. He put a hand on Crash’s shoulder. “Cheryl and Stephen are really going to appreciate this. We’ll all owe you guys.”
“We’re happy to help,” he said.
“Thank you, brother,” Tank said, opening the door to the main floor. “Have your group stick around for awhile after dinner. I’ll take you through the route and tell you what I know.”
“Sounds good,” Crash said. “I’ll go tell the others.”
He stepped into the main part of the armory and searched for his friends, a sense of doom planting itself in his stomach for the remainder of the afternoon.
“Why are we doing this again?” She was sitting on her bed and wanted to keep it that way. She felt terrible about the way she’d acted up on the roof earlier, and she just wanted to be alone with her music for a little while. Now they were going on some kind of new mission?
“We owe them,” Crash said. “They made room for us and are letting us stay as long as we want. Most of the people here don’t have any kind of training or skill. They’re just regular people trying to survive. We have a better chance of making it back than any of them.” Crash sighed. “Look, one of their men is hurt. Dying. He has a pregnant wife here in the compound and she’s very worried about him.”
“Why don’t we let Noah take care of it?” she asked. Even though the news about the pregnant wife tugged at her heart, she didn’t want to risk their lives for someone she didn’t even know. She didn’t mean to be crass, but it was the truth. It was just too dangerous.
“We’ve been through that already,” Noah said. “I’m not even sure I can heal an infection, but even if I could, they would know something was up.”
“Yeah, but you would have saved his life,” she said. “There’s nothing scary about that.”
“You have to just trust us on this,” Crash said.
“Why us?” she asked.
“Because we’re the best ones for the job and you know it,” Parrish said. She shut the door after a quick glance into the hallway and lowered her voice. “If we don’t go, they’ll send another group of their own men, and you know what that means. We can help, and everyone in this room knows that.”
Karmen sighed and wrapped her earbuds around her phone. “I don’t like this at all,” she said. “We just got here. It’s the first time I’ve felt safe since this whole mess started. I don’t want to leave.”
“Then we need to prove to them we truly deserve to be here,” Crash said. “If we do this for them, just think what that will mean. They’ll let us stay as long as we want.”
She sat up on the edge of the cot. “No, what will happen is they’ll realize we’re good at this. Too good. They’ll send us out on all the tough missions from now on, can’t you see that? We won’t be any safer than we were when we were on the road.”
“That’s not true,” Crash said. “I think if we do this, it clears us to hang out here for a long time before they would ask anything more of us. Especially if we can help save someone’s life. We’ll be heroes.”
“You’ll be heroes,” she said, laying back down and grabbing her headphones. “I’m not going.”
“You are not about to pull this on us right now,” Parrish shouted. “Not after your little stunt on the roof. If you want to stay, you’re—”
“Hey, there’s no reason to get upset,” Crash said, putting a hand on Parrish’s arm.
He met Karmen’s eyes and she looked away, embarrassed. She knew she was acting like a child, but she wasn’t ready to go back out there. She’d had enough.
“You guys go on to dinner,” he said. “Karmen and I will meet you out there.”
“Fine,” Parrish said. “We’ll see you out there.”
Parrish shot a dirty look at Karmen as she left and once the door was closed, Karmen sat up and stuck her tongue out at the door.
“That girl really knows how to drive someone insane,” she said.
Crash laughed. “You’re one to talk,” he mumbled, sitting next to her on her cot.
Karmen rolled her eyes. “You’re not going to start in on me, too, are you?”
“I understand why you don’t want to go, but there’s more to this than you know,” he said. “It’s really important that we go on this mission.”
She studied him. His voice was so serious, which wasn’t typical Crash. What was he talking about?
“Tell me why,” she said. “Why now? Why this mission?”
He sighed. There was something he didn’t want to tell her. Or wasn’t supposed to tell her. But if he wanted her to go along with this, he better start talking.
“Crash, whatever it is, you need to tell me,” she said. “I’m a part of this group, too, and you guys can’t just go around making all the decisions, treating me like I’m just some tagalong who’s incapable of making the tough calls. What’s really going on?”
He stood up and went to the door, opening it just a crack and looking into the hallway. When he shut the door and sat back down, Karmen’s heart started racing a bit faster. What the heck was happening?
“Parrish didn’t want me to tell anyone else just yet, but I think you’re right. You’re a part of this group and you have a right to know what’s going on,” he said.
She swallowed hard. Whatever it was sounded more serious than just going out to find some antibiotics.
“Parrish had a dream the other night. Something about a boat and a small island in the middle of nowhere,” he said. “In the dream, we were all there, but we were different. Older, maybe. Kind of like what you and I saw the other day with the red ocean.”
Karmen closed her eyes and breathed in. She’d had a similar dream about an island, too. She pulled her legs under her body and fiddled with the end of her shirt. Talking about the visions and the dreams made her uncomfortable, like she wasn’t in control at all of what was going on in her own life. Like she didn’t even know who she really was.
“In her dream, we were all there. You, me, Noah, Parrish. But Lily wasn’t there,” he said. “There was someone else with us in the dream. Someone younger. A guy with dark skin.”
“What does it mean?” She thought of the strange vision she and Crash had the other day in the farmhouse. It had felt so real, as if it actually happened. Chills ran up her arms.
“I don’t know exactly, but Parrish thinks it might mean this girl isn’t who we thought she was. That maybe she’s not actually the fifth,” he said. “And there’s a part of me that thinks she might be right.”
“Because of one dream?” she asked.
“I’ve been having dreams, too,” he said. “Dreams about New York City. I’ve had this feeling there’s someone there we need to get to, but I can never see them clearly. And the thing is, that’s the way I always felt about the fifth when I first started dreaming about you guys. For some reason, I could see your faces and sense that you were close by, but with the fifth, I was never sure.”
“But you knew she was hiding in that closet,” she said. “You told us that. How else would you have known she was there?”
“I never saw the fifth’s face,” he said. “What if the fifth is still out there? What if that’s why we still don’t have any answers about what’s going on with us?”
“And it was just some random other person with powers hiding in a closet?” she asked. “I’m not buying it.”
“I know it sounds crazy, but I think there’s more to this. From the beginning I’ve had a feeling that once the five of us came together, we’d know what we were supposed to do. I thought it would all fall together like the pieces of a puzzle
fitting perfectly into place,” he said. “But that hasn’t happened. Something’s off. Now Parrish has this dream and sees five of us together, but the fifth is someone different? I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”
“What does any of this have to do with this mission?” she asked, kind of wishing she had just agreed to go and not asked for an explanation in the first place.
“What if the attack in D.C. wasn’t started by some random assassin?” he asked.
Karmen’s breath caught in her throat. “What are you saying?”
“When I first noticed them on top of that building, there was a human up there with them. Creating them. Or at least that’s what we think might have happened,” he said. “Is it really a coincidence that it was the same building where we found Lily?”
“You’re saying you think she’s the assassin?” she said. “You can’t be serious.”
But there was a part of her that wasn’t so sure. When Lily had touched her hand in the Humvee back in Baltimore, hadn’t she felt something strange? Dark?
And what about the fact that she couldn’t remember her own name or tell them anything about her past?
Chills ran through her veins.
“That’s what we’re hoping to find out,” he said. “I know it’s risky, but it’s the only thing we could think of to be sure. If we go out there tomorrow morning and it’s just a normal mission, then we rethink this and come at the dream from another angle. But if the super-zombies are there waiting for us?”
She stood up. “Wait a second, you’re saying we’re going to intentionally go out there knowing there’s the danger that we’ll have to face those things all over again?”
“I know it’s a huge risk—”
“It’s insanity,” she said. “Last time we fought them, we barely made it out alive. What if we don’t make it out this time?”
“We will,” he said. “Karmen, we have to know. And we can’t just ask her. If it’s true, she’ll deny it.”
Karmen’s hands began to tremble and she pressed them tight against her arms. “This can’t be happening,” she said. “She’s our friend. She’s a part of this group just like the rest of us. She has powers just like we do.”
