“They’re not going to,” the man said quietly, shaking his head and shrugging almost apologetically. “They won’t stay away.”
Figuring that continuing the conversation would be pointless, Sam pulled Trevor back inside the house.
“I’m going to get your friend,” Sam said again. “And you’re going to go.”
“Fuck it,” the man replied uneasily. “He ain’t my friend. I don’t even know that dude.”
Turning, the man fled into the dreary afternoon without another word. Sam watched him go, deeply perplexed.
Austin had come further into the house than Laura and Melissa, and had heard the exchange with the man outside. “I can help you drag the other man out,” Austin offered. “It’ll be hard to do by yourself with Trevor attached to you.”
“Thanks, Austin,” Sam said, but his tone was one of distraction rather than gratitude. Things around the Walker home were getting stranger by the minute.
With Trevor holding his non-dominant hand, Sam used his other to take most of the first intruder’s weight. Austin used both arms to support the rest, and they moved clumsily through the house. When they reached the door, the man began to come to.
“You’re lucky all I’m doing is dumping your ass outside,” Sam declared. Movement caught his eye before he began his second statement, which he’d fully intended to do. There was a vehicle coming down the road.
“Someone’s alive,” Austin said, and the excitement in his voice was the first positive change in tone Sam had heard since he’d found the teen.
“We have to be careful, Austin,” Sam warned, and Austin nodded. He knew the new way already. Assume all were enemies first. It was the only way to stay safe.
“I can’t leave,” the man on the ground growled. “The thing inside, it’s too strong. It wants that boy and I can’t go until I have him.”
“Then let it claim you fully,” Sam offered. “You failed to get my son. Let’s see if that beast inside can take him.”
The man laughed, and it sounded wet. He had blood in his throat from the broken nose gifted to him by Sam.
“You think I’m stupid,” he said.
“Well, you broke into my house and got your ass beat, so I kind of do,” Sam retorted easily. The van was slowing down, approaching the Walker home.
“I’ve seen them burn. The day isn’t theirs. If I let it take me over, it dies and I die with it.”
“Not quite as stupid as you look, then,” Sam agreed. The van had slowed to a stop. Whoever it was either knew them or was so happy to see other people that they planned to interact with them even if they were strangers.
The doors open, and Sam was distracted by the people disembarking the van. His attention was barely on the man at his feet at all.
“Sam!” Amy shrieked as she stumbled around the front of the van and pointed a warning toward her cousin’s husband.
Sam flinched back, taking Trevor with him, and the knife aimed somewhere higher took him in the hip. The blade didn’t bury itself very deep, but the wound burned and bled immediately. He screamed in agony and jerked back, taking the knife with him as the man on the ground fell forward, his balance compromised by Sam’s movement.
“Sam, here!” Amy shouted. She tossed him the tire iron she had in hand, the one Ray had taken for her to use from the first car they drove together.
The throw was good, and Sam caught it easily. He swung it hard, and it cracked down on the head of his opponent hard enough to send the other man’s face slamming down on the pavement. Beneath his hair, brain matter exploded from beneath the broken skull. Blood gushed and gobs of grey matter came away on the tire iron as Sam raised it for another blow. He wanted to be sure.
When the man was dead on the pavement, the creature beneath became exposed to the light. It suffered a quick death, burning with fire and hatred. It squealed in a caliber so high the next step up would allow only dogs to hear it. As it was, Sam and the others winced at the unnatural voice.
“Sam,” Austin breathed out the older man’s name in a tone that sounded partly full of wonder and partly full of terror.
“Bastard stabbed me,” Sam said as a way of justifying his action, gesturing to the knife as he spoke.
“I wasn’t judging,” Austin assured him quickly. “We have to get that looked at. Sam, you’ve lost too much blood today…”
Flapping his hand disinterestedly toward the wound, he turned to Amy, who was crying unabashedly as she rushed toward him.
“Oh, God, Sam. I’m so sorry! I shouldn’t have distracted you! I can’t believe he did that. What can I do? Can I help?” She stopped a few feet away from him, wanting to hug him and at the same time not wanting to touch him for fear of injuring him further. She avoided looking at the burned remains of the dead man on the pavement, but part of her mind working without her permission documented the experience. The thing she’d seen on the sidewalk near her college had been in the same condition. She filed it as what happened when the human shell died in daylight, exposing the cancerous shadow-beast beneath to the sun.
“I’m fine, Ames. Calm down. Get inside and reassure Laura that you’re okay.” He smiled at her. “You know, kiddo, I was just about to come get you.”
Amy smiled back, but her eyes were still filling and spilling over with tears. “I had your fine influence to help me get here, Sam.” She gestured to the bag she still had slung around her shoulder. “And Ray,” she gestured the tall young man, whom Sam assumed was a friend of hers, over from where he stood near the parked vehicle.
“Nice to meet you, sir,” Ray said respectfully, holding out a hand for a shake as he approached. Sam wasn’t surprised a friend of Amy’s was well-mannered. She was a girl with standards.
“Thanks for your help,” Sam said. “And nice to meet you.”
Sam found the final man with his eyes. He was the driver of the van. The clothes he wore were slightly big on him, and didn’t quite look like the man’s personal style. His skin was so dark that the whites of his very clean teeth and equally well-maintained fingernails stood out very prominently. His eyes were warm brown, open and friendly. Sam immediately liked the man, if for no other reason than that he radiated ‘good guy’ charm. On top of that, Shane was uninfected. The blight wasn’t obvious beneath his dark skin, and that made Sam feel even more positive about him.
Holding a baby in a car seat in one hand and a baby bag in the other, the man gave Sam a respectful nod and said, “I’m Shane and this is Leila. We’ve only been with Ray and Amy for a while, but we’ve heard a lot about you and your family, Sam. It’s good to meet you.”
Sam’s eyes flicked downwards to Leila, back up to Shane. He decided to be blunt. “She’s not yours. Neither are the clothes. No offense, but why should I trust you?”
“Sam!” Amy said in a chastising, disbelieving way. Shane simply smiled.
“It’s understandable,” Shane said easily. “You have no reason to trust me or what I say but I jumped into frozen water to save this baby after she was thrown in. the clothes belonged to her father. He’s dead.”
Sam sensed nothing but truth from Shane’s story. He asked, “Who threw her in?”
“Her mother,” Shane answered. “She’s dead, too.” As he started toward the house, he gestured toward the knife sticking out of Sam’s hip with the car seat. “You really should get that taken care of,” he suggested calmly.
Looking down at it, Sam winced. He hadn’t exactly forgotten about it, but he had been ignoring it. The wound throbbed like a son of a bitch.
“Have any experience with this kind of thing?” Sam asked Austin, who hesitated before responding.
“Kind of. I guess,” the teen said as he followed Sam back toward the front door, where Laura and Melissa waited. The girl was huddled behind her mother. Laura was both horrified by the dead man on the ground and fiercely happy to see her cousin and to know her husband wasn’t going to die from the knife injury. She couldn’t decide between tears or a smile, so he
r face was unnaturally neutral.
“Mel, go to the living room, sweetheart,” Laura told her daughter, giving her a gentle push toward the inside of the house. “I’m going to help bring some of this stuff in.”
Melissa obeyed immediately, and Sam, Austin and Trevor followed the girl inside. After hugging Laura, Amy went with her cousin to unload, trailed by Ray. Shane, carrying Leila, made his way into the house after the rest of them.
“I have something to ask you,” Sam said, pointing at Shane, but Austin pushed him none-too-gently toward a worn wicker chair in the corner and ordered, “Sit.”
Sam sat and when he opened his mouth to continue, Austin covered it with his hand. “Sam, I want you to be quiet and let me figure this out. I had a puncture wound sophomore year so I know the basics of what needs to be done, but first I have to figure out the best way to remove the knife, okay?”
Shane smiled down at Austin, who knelt near Sam. The firefighter had turned an ashy white with the pain of sitting. Sam nodded. Shane wondered if Trevor’s hand was going numb from how hard Sam was squeezing it. Shane sat Leila’s car seat down and clapped his hands together.
“I’m an EMT,” he said. “What can I do to help?”
“Do you have any first aid supplies with you?” Austin asked.
“Only what Ray and Amy found.”
“Bring them. They may have something we don’t.”
“Penicillin, I think.”
“That’s better than I could have hoped for. Definitely bring it. If there’s enough, Sam, you should take one a day for at least a week.”
Content that Leila was safe where she was, Shane left in order to procure the pills. He thought there had also been bandages and other useful items. He’d offer them all to Austin.
“You training to be a doctor, kid?” Shane asked upon his return as he handed the bottle of pills over to Austin. The teen smelled strongly of soap and the upper parts of his forearms were still damp. Shane assumed he’d washed up while he’d been outside grabbing the supplies.
“Mom’s a nurse,” Austin explained distractedly. Sam was now shirtless, and the waistband of his pants had been cut away around the knife. It was lodged in the flesh about half-way up the blade. The blade was slim and short, so only about two inches of metal was inside of Sam. He was lucky the man hadn’t been carrying a larger or longer blade.
“I want to be one, too,” Austin continued. “She’s given me some pretty good first aid training so far. Can never start too early.”
“Can’t argue with you there,” Shane said as he knelt beside Austin. Sam stared determinedly away from the both of them.
“Do you have experience with knife wounds?” Austin asked the older man, and no matter how confident he’d seemed, his inexperience, which he was well-aware of, made him hesitant to continue.
“I’ve seen some, but I leave treatment to the docs most of the time,” Shane admitted. “And I haven’t had too much experience with lodged items. I’ve never pulled one out, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“That’s what I’m asking,” Austin concurred.
“If you don’t pull it out soon, I’m going to,” Sam warned, though he was still focusing hard somewhere away from the situation.
“It’s not that deep,” Shane began his evaluation of the wound, both to calm Austin and to distract Sam further. He intended to pull the blade out midway through the assessment. “Obviously no major organs were hit. We can’t leave it in for a doctor to take out later because, frankly, if there are doctors left, they aren’t at the hospital.”
He paused, took hold of the blade, and jerked it out. Sam lost all color, even the gray in his cheeks, and bit down hard. The clink of his teeth together sounded painful to Shane.
“Sorry, big guy,” Shane said. “I’ll let you owe me a free hit later, all right?”
“Sounds good,” Sam agreed as Austin immediately moved in with a folded bandage and pressed it hard against the injury.
“Do we have any pain pills?” Austin asked.
“Motrin,” Shane responded. “Blood thinner. Probably not a good idea.” Austin pensively nodded and pressed harder. Sam gained a little color, but it was green; not a good color.
“Sam, you’re out of commission for the night,” Austin ordered. “Lay down in here or in your room and Trevor can sit near you. One of us will make sure he’s always touching you. You need rest. You’ve lost blood and we can’t exactly go to the E.R. for them to replace it.”
“I have to ask Shane something first,” Sam said stubbornly, and his voice was wheezy with pain.
“Ask away,” Shane offered. “I kind of owe you.”
“Laura’s dad,” Sam began. “Name’s Bill. Lives over on Willard Avenue. He’s our only family here. I can tell you the way, but if you’re going to stay here, I need you to do this for me. I can’t leave my family alone to go get him myself, but I promised Laura he’d be with us if something like this ever happened.”
Shane looked surprised. “You thought something like this would ever happen?” he asked incredulously.
“Well, not this,” Sam admitted as Austin dressed his newest wound. “Never something like this. But we planned for several world-shaking events. The movies have been preparing us mentally for it for years. We just got a little more physical about our preparation.”
“Survivalists,” Shane guessed and Sam shrugged.
“You could call us that. But if I was a true survivalist, we wouldn’t be near any city. We’re too close to enemy forces here.”
“You think we’re in a war?” Shane asked.
“I think we’re behind enemy lines,” Sam responded grimly.
Chapter Twelve
Sam was asleep on the couch, lying on his uninjured hip. Trevor sat beside him in a comfortable chair pulled up beside the couch for that purpose. He had his right hand on his father’s lower leg and held a book with his left. A single lamp was on near him. As with every room, they were trying to keep the lighting to a minimum. If possible, they wanted to appear as deserted as they could.
“You don’t have to go tonight,” Laura said under her breath to Shane as he studied the directions Sam had written out for him before he dropped off into his exhausted slumber. The words were shaky, but easy to follow. Shane would do it, because he thought Sam was a good man who needed this done for him. He didn’t have to say it out loud, but Shane knew Sam took it as a personal failure that Bill wasn’t with them yet.
“Sam needs me to go tonight,” Shane told Laura. He appreciated that her bright brown eyes–an exotic color that almost looked metallic–burned with agitated concern for him.
“You don’t even know him,” Laura said sharply. “You don’t know any of us. Why would you risk yourself for an old man you’ve never met, related to people you’ve just seen for the first time today?”
“We’re all each other has anymore, Laura,” Shane explained quietly. “If that’s not enough reason for us to do for each other, nothing is.”
“I’m going with you,” Ray said, already pulling on his jacket. Amy was behind him. They had obviously been arguing, and continued to do so as Ray moved to stand near Shane.
“You don’t have to go!” Amy nearly shouted, and it was clear that it was not the first time she’d said those words. “There are more people around now. You’re safe to be near me, Ray. No one’s going to let you hurt me!”
“It’s not because of that,” Ray said, quietly to match her volume, calm to match her fury.
“Bullshit!” Amy yelled, and Laura hushed her. Sam was still sleeping. Amy lowered her voice and repeated, “Bullshit,” with tears in her eyes.
“He’s uncorrupted,” Ray explained insistently. “None of you can leave here, but he can’t go alone. I can go. The uncorrupted have to be protected at all costs, Amy.”
“And you’re expendable enough to be that protection,” Amy said, pointing out what Ray was dancing around.
“I’m the only one here who can be
dependable protection, expendable or otherwise,” he declared.
“Fine,” Amy said, and her formerly enraged voice was now empty. She crossed her arms and turned away. “Go before the night gets too dark.”
“Any part of the night is too dark now,” Shane complained bleakly as he opened the door. It was barely twilight, but the encroaching shadows made up a great and terrible army.
“Be careful,” Laura said, but the sentiment was hollow.
“Amy,” Ray said invitingly, holding his arms out for a hug. She embraced him, not mad enough to ignore the offer.
“Don’t be stupid, and don’t be brave. Come back,” Amy whispered against his neck as she hugged him tightly.
“No promises,” Ray said. “But I’ll try.”
Having no choice but to take that meager sentiment, Amy nodded and backed away.
“I don’t need a babysitter, bud,” Shane told Ray as he walked out the door. Ray followed, the recently cleaned tire iron in his hand.
“I don’t need any more argument,” Ray responded quietly as he shut the door behind him. “And don’t call me ‘bud’.”
Shane nodded. They got in the van. Ray buckled his seatbelt, Shane complained momentarily about the lack of music choices, and then silence reigned inside the vehicle. They left with Shane driving.
The drive took less than twenty minutes, even driving cautiously and more slowly than usual. Midway through, Shane broke the silence. He wanted to know more about Ray Barrett.
“You and Amy, are you…” he let the question trail off, knowing Ray would pick up on what he was asking.
“Not currently, not previously,” Ray responded, staring out the window.
“And in a future sense?” Shane pressed.
“Only time will tell, I suppose.”
Shane had known pretty much from the get-go how Ray had felt about Amy. She was the typical gorgeous friend who considered herself one of the guys but never really was. Sure, maybe she could kick ass in Call of Duty, maybe she could bluff you in poker and curse you out over the course of a night-long Euchre tournament, but Amy was a girl. A pretty girl, a desirable girl and even if she thought she was, none of the men around her had ever seen her as one of the guys. Shane knew a couple of those kinds, had yearned for some and simply been friends with others. He knew Ray had never been interested in being just friends with Amy.
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