Chapter 39
THREE WEEKS AFTER FIRST INFECTION...
Samantha wrapped her arms around herself tightly, but she could not stop herself from shivering
uncontrol ably. The situation was grim. They had no supplies, no weapons, no shelter, and had lost
Markus and Jacob in the events that had transpired on the fishing vessel. Fortunately, the shore that
they had ended up on harboured no Infected, for the moment at least.
Corvo looked to the east to see the sun beginning to rise. His teeth chattered with the cold.
"Hopeful y w-w-with the light, we'll be able to f-find the other two easier."
"They c-c-can't be far," Samantha agreed grimly.
With that, they set off down the beach in search for the others. They could not afford to cal out in
their defenceless state, in case danger lurked nearby. The two clung to each other for warmth, their
clothes soaking wet. Fortunately, the hypothermia was mild. However, Samantha knew that if they
did not find a way to warm up soon, it could get dangerous.
She looked down at the red bruising around her wrists and sighed. "I stil c-can't believe those
Slaters… They d-did a-all of that… for weapons? "
Corvo simply growled dangerously. The mental image of John holding a gun to Samantha's head
made his blood boil. The war veteran knew that if they ever crossed paths again, he would not
hesitate to kil the man who had used her as a human shield.
"I m-mean, they must be p-p-pretty desperate," she continued. "Pretty d-damn desperate for them to steal al our stuff and then leave us t-t-to die!"
"The world is truly lost, when we are forsaken by our fellow man," he muttered.
The young woman shot him a strange look. "What's with the social commentary, Corvo?"
"J-Just havin' a bit of an epiphany, k-kid. If this is w-w-what mankind has come to, then I d-don't want anything to do with it."
She gave him a hard squeeze playful y. "Just don't give up on people, okay? A f-few rotten apples
doesn't mean the whole b-batch is bad."
At that moment, Corvo noticed two dark figures on the beach further up ahead in the dim light of the
early morning. "Hold up," he hissed warningly.
However, one of the shadows turned to face them. "Corvo? Samantha?" a familiar voice cal ed.
"Markus!" she cried out in relief, running forward. She flung her arms around him in tight hug. "Thank god you're both okay!"
"You too!" he exclaimed.
"When I saw Jacob get shot – " Her words caught in her throat when she looked down to see the main in question sitting on the sand, with a hand to his right shoulder. He was obviously in pain.
"Let's have a look, son," Corvo grunted, kneeling down beside him.
"It hurts like a motherfucker," Jacob growled.
"Just be glad that Amanda only managed to hit you in the shoulder."
"I swear, when I catch up to that bitch…"
Corvo grimaced when he saw the bul et-hole in the muscle. "We have to get that bul et out."
"How, though?" Markus asked. "We have no med-kits, no tweezers, no bandages…"
"Wrong," Samantha said dryly, pul ing out a pair of medical tweezers from her pocket. "It's the one thing those assholes were nice enough to leave us with."
"Okay, but we're not going to go digging around in Jacob' shoulder for the bul et in the dark." Corvo looked westward to see a highway running away into the distance, littered with abandoned cars,
several of which were on fire. "Jacob, do you stil have that pistol?"
The biker grimaced and handed over the group's only remaining firearm. "The barrel has to be
drained if you don't want it rupturing on you."
"I fought a war in a damn jungle – no need to warn me about wet guns," the former military man said over his shoulder as he led them toward the road.
The sky brightened as the survivors slowly made their way to the broken highway, happy to be
reunited again. The dark thoughts of their current predicament were pushed to the backs of their
minds as they concerned themselves with the immediate tasks of getting warm, and then tending to
Jacob' gunshot wound. Fortunately, the first issue was resolved almost immediately, when the four
soon came across a wrecked car lying by the side of the road, still burning furiously.
"Yes!" Markus cried out, running forward.
"Wait, you moron!" Jacob exclaimed. "What if the fuel Thug explodes?"
"The fuel Thug has already exploded, Jacob," Corvo cut in, walking toward the car. "That's why the fire has engulfed the entire car. There's no more danger here."
The four shivering survivors gathered around the flames grateful y, warming themselves and drying
their clothes. As the core temperatures in their bodies gradually returned to normal, the old man
scavenged a crowbar, along with a forgotten t-shirt, lying by the roadside. Samantha checked herself
over as she dried. Perhaps the only upside to her unwil ing swim in the river was that it had washed
away most of the dirt and grime on her skin and clothes.
"How are you feeling?" she asked Jacob in concern.
"I've felt worse," he replied with a shrug. However, it was obvious that he was in pain.
"It's time we got that bul et out," Corvo spoke up, motioning for Samantha to hand him the tweezers while he gave the pistol to Markus. "Drain the barrel, and then keep watch and make sure nothing
sneaks up on us."
With that, Jacob sat down near the burning car and Samantha held him still, while Corvo slowly and
surgical y inserted the tweezers into the bloody hole in his shoulder. The biker gave a sharp intake of
breath, but he put on a genuinely impressive act of not showing his pain during the ordeal. Corvo
pushed the instrument further into the soft flesh, until they came up against something hard and
metal ic.
Bingo...
He carefully eased the bul et forward and squeezed the tip of the tweezers together, getting a hold of
the projectile.
"Easy..." he muttered, more to himself than anyone else.
The throbbing sensation radiating throughout Jacob' shoulder was intensified by periodic sharp stabs
of pain, and his face tJaguared. Son of a bitch , get it out already...
"There!" Corvo said triumphantly, careful y extracting the tweezers from burly man's shoulder. A
metal ic ping could be heard as the bul et fel to the roadside, but no one paid it any mind. The
wound in Jacob' shoulder held their attention as it gushed blood.
"Shit, that's a lot of blood..." Markus said nervously.
The biker grasped his shoulder as the warm liquid flowed freely through his fingers. Samantha
moved forward to make a tourniquet, only to be waved off by Corvo. He gave the tweezers to
Markus and used the discarded shirt to pick up the crowbar he had found earlier.
"We're going to have to cauterise that wound, son," he said to the biker, thrusting the end of the
metal member into the fire.
Samantha stared wide-eyed at the crowbar. "You're going to cauterize Jacob' shoulder with that? "
Markus looked equal y horrified. "Uh, maybe we should try and find a medical clinic or something – "
"Oh, a medical clinic! " Corvo snarled, gesturing at the emptiness around them. "There's nothing around for miles Markus! If we let that wound bleed, or get infected, it's gonna get a whole lot worse
for him."
"Corvo – "
"Samantha... you're going to have to trust me on this."
After a moment of hesitation, she final y nodded gingerly. Corvo let the crowbar heat up for several
minutes, being sure to remove it from the fire before it sta
rted to glow red.
"Hold him steady," he instructed the others. "Markus, take off your belt."
The other man gave him a bewildered look. "What?"
"Do it!" he snapped. His tone of voice brooked no argument.
Markus quickly unbuckled his belt, handing it to Jacob when he was done. The stocky biker watched
nervously as Corvo knelt down next to him.
"Bite down on it," the veteran ordered, to which his unwil ing patient complied. "If you have a place where you are at peace, I suggest you go there."
"Just do it, old man," Jacob growled through gritted teeth.
His cry of pain was muffled by the belt as Corvo thrust burning-hot metal member to his shoulder,
searing his skin with indescribable agony. Sweat poured down the older man's face, which was
crinkled in concentration as he manoeuvred the crowbar onto the bul et wound careful y. Samantha
and Markus held their companion in place as he writhed in agony, their faces contorted in horror at
the ordeal. The searing hiss of sizzling skin was awful.
Jacob knew pain, but this was just fucking terrible. Amidst the fiery burning on his shoulder, he felt sharper stabs as Corvo moved the rod around, being sure to seal the hole properly. Hissing, burning,
stinging.
It felt like an eternity before the crowbar was finally removed from his joint, but he knew that the
burning pain in his shoulder would last a lot longer than that. Corvo tore off a strip from the
scavenged t-shirt and wrapped it around the newly-sealed wound just in case.
"There," he said, satisfied that Jacob was no longer in danger of bleeding to death. He looked over at Markus with a trace of sympathy. "I know that Samantha got those tweezers to pul out the
shrapnel in your arm, but they're covered in Jacob' blood now. You're gonna have to wait until we
can sterilise them before they can be used again."
"That's okay," the younger man replied, handing the group's only gun back to him. "Hel , these are only shallow wounds anyway."
Corvo opened his mouth to say something else, but was interrupted by a low rumbling in the
distance. The group looked over to see bright flashes behind some hills far off in the distance to the
west, moments before the shrieks of jet engines could be heard from somewhere overhead.
Chapter 40
Though jets could be heard roaring overhead, it was impossible to see them. Perhaps they were
flying too high up? The group looked in silence toward the flashing behind the hil s, which Samantha
knew was being caused by bombs. Holy shit, stuff was blowing up!
"Can we chalk this up as a good sign?" Markus ventured. "It means that the army in the area is stil kicking. Maybe it's the same platoon from Riverside."
Corvo did not answer – though it was a good sign that the military was stil active in Pennsylvania, he was hardly excited at the prospect of walking into a battlefield. And if the US military was
deploying the damn air force, then it must mean that there was a serious infestation problem in the
area.
"There's gotta be a city over there," Jacob said. "No way they'd be usin' their precious bombs to waste Infected out in the middle of nowhere." He pointed down the road. "And this highway looks like it'l bring us straight to it."
The conversation was again interrupted by a low rumbling, but this time it was coming from a
turboprop transport plane to the south, flying directly toward the ominous flashing in the distance.
Upon closer inspection, Corvo identified it as a C-130 Hercules.
"A plane!" Markus exclaimed.
"Don't bother yel ing," Corvo said. "They're too far away to see us." The whole situation stil looked sour to him, but their other prospects involved starving out in the middle of nowhere. "Let's fol ow this highway and see where it goes. But if things start to look fishy, we bug the hel out."
The group walked for an hour along the broken highway, skirting cars that were crashed, or had
been abandoned there for whatever reason. There was also the occasional human corpse scattered
around. The Infected had been out here at some point.
Corvo led the way along the road with the pistol, while Jacob was wielding the crowbar that had
been used to sear his flesh recently. That was pretty much cal ing dibs, right? Markus had managed
to scavenge a discarded tyre-iron lying on the road, which made him feel much less naked out here.
"There's a road sign," Samantha cal ed, pointing ahead.
The team surged ahead, eager to get some idea of where they were, and where they were headed.
The sign plainly stated:
NEWBURG
12.5 MILES
"Newburg!" Samantha exclaimed. "I remember coming here to visit my aunt when I was younger.
The city was pretty crappy and ugly."
"Do you think she got out of the city in time?" Markus asked gingerly, noticing yet another emaciated and pale body nearby.
"She died a few years ago… Markus, what are you doing?"
The others looked to see him kneeling down next to the body and picking up a small flip-knife lying
next to it. "Eyes of a hawk," he joked, handing the knife to Samantha.
"Thanks." She seriously doubted she would be able to do much damage to an infected person with the tiny blade if it came to it, but she appreciated the gesture nonetheless.
"That cargo plane we saw earlier must have been headed for Newburg," Jacob said. "Working plane means working airport – I say we head there."
Corvo nodded. It all made sense – if the city of Newburg had not yet lost its fight against the
infection, there could be other survivors there.
The group marched onward for another hour as the sun beat down over the highway. There were
very few Common Infected lurking near cars, and they were quickly taken care of – courtesy of
Jacob' crowbar or Markus' tyre-iron, in an effort to conserve ammunition for Corvo's pistol. No more
planes or activity were seen, and he was not sure what to make of the situation.
Samantha shouldered the team's only bag; a Hello Kitty backpack they had recently found inside a
car, after emptying out an assortment of crayons and colouring books from it. Thankful y, they had
not found the body a little girl nearby, and so Samantha took some cold comfort in the fact that the
previous owner of the bag might stil be alive.
She had been tempted to milk her watery near-death experience that morning and make one of the
others to wear the girly purple backpack, but changed her mind.
Nobody likes a smartass, she told herself.
As the team pushed on, Jacob' mood grew increasingly sour in direct proportion to his hunger. No
one had eaten since they had been on board the fishing vessel of those two people who would
remain unnamed.
After ten more minutes, he saw a rest-stop off to the side of the road. "Think we should stop there for
a bit?" he asked.
Corvo frowned as he surveyed the scene in front of him. There were a number of dead bodies
strewn around the area, some of which were badly decayed. "I don't like it."
"It wouldn't hurt to check it out," Markus quipped. "There might be food in there. God knows, we need some after those Slater assholes stole al of ours."
After a moment of quiet deliberation, Corvo took point, holding the pistol out in front of him and
approaching the door slowly. It was a ramshackle old building – the rotting wooden shutters had
been ripped clear in favour of corrugated iron sheets, nailed haphazardly over al the windows. The
others fol owed closely behind, brandishing their various melee weapons. The grizzled old man
scowled
deeply as he caught a horrible stench that lingered in the air. As he came closer to the
building, he could see that the doorway had been ripped off its hinges. A hastily-assembled
barricade of shelves blocked the way just inside.
I've got a bad feeling about this.
The smel only worsened as they approached the doorway. Despite the sunlight, it was very dark
inside the store, due to the iron sheets nailed across the windows preventing much light from getting
in. Corvo carefully pushed the barricade blocking the entrance aside, and then held the pistol and flashlight out in front of him as he stood in the doorway. The dark outlines of shelves could be seen
throughout the store, and he noticed quite a lot of dark blood congealed al over the floor and wal s.
Some of it was even sprayed on the ceiling.
"It's a goddamn abattoir in here," he said over his shoulder, al owing the others to fol ow him inside.
He flicked the light-sJaguar but nothing happened. Power's out.
"But where are the bodies?" Markus pointed out. He crinkled his nose in disgust – the smell was
overpowering in here, and it was not wafting in from the bodies outside. Somewhere inside the
building, there were more rotting corpses.
The war veteran cast a wary look around. "Markus, you and I wil check the place out – make sure
there are no hostiles inside. Samantha, you and Jacob keep guard out front; make sure nothing can
sneak in behind us."
The young woman kept her reservations to herself. She flipped open her newly-found little knife as
she and Jacob left the store to keep watch outside.
"Stay frosty," Corvo said, pointing the pistol forward and motioning for Markus to fol ow him further into the dark store.
The younger man held the tyre-iron high up with both hands, ready to swing down at a moment's
notice. The darkness unnerved him, not to mention the aftermath of the goddamn bloodbath they
had walked into. Sweet Jesus, what had happened in here?
His attention was momentarily diverted when something crunched underfoot. He looked down and
saw pretzels lying al over the floor. Well, finding an unspoiled bag would be an opportunity he would
certainly not turn down. By the scarce light shining in through the door, he quickly searched the
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