Manson was hesitant but Julia ran to the window, “Do it Castle!”
The lunkhead shook his head and turned off the engine. Miles closed his eyes and listened intently as everyone just watched him confused.
“You can’t be--” Manson started but Julia shushed him.
“Two of you come with me!” Miles took off running into the trees.
Torrez saw him go and threw on his backpack as he raced after him. Julia looked inside the van and saw no one moving. “Hurry up! One of you go with them! He said he needed two of you!” Julia was livid.
Burrows reluctantly got out of the van and went after Torrez and Miles. They ran through the trees and deeper into the woods as a faint cry for help could be heard. Burrows raised his gun and Miles pulled his knife free. Torrez crossed himself and took a knife from under his sweatshirt. The three of them came up on a group of shambling lurker type infected, crowding around a tree and reaching up for someone stuck higher up. The cries for help were louder and more desperate as they got closer and Miles started veering off to the right side.
“I’ll lead them away, y’all go help. Go help!” Miles started waving his arms over his head and calling out to the monsters around the tree. “Hey, hey! Come get me ugly! Come get me!”
The infected creeps slowly turned their attention to Miles and half the group started moaning after him. Two creatures stayed behind and continued their dull attempts at trying to climb the tree. Torrez sprinted to the tree and kicked one of the monsters aside and shoved the other away. Burrows kept his distance and aimed his gun at the infected.
“Don’t shoot!” Torrez shouted at his comrade.
“What the fuck man?!” Burrows shook his head and lowered his weapon.
Torrez turned and jammed his knife into the eye of the snarling bastard with a beat up face. The slow moving creature didn’t go down right away however and Torrez kicked it away before it finally dropped. Burrows, still keeping a safe distance, watched the other infected man drag his feet through the fallen leaves with its mouth hanging open. Burrows had to cover his mouth to keep from throwing up as the lurker bared its broken and green teeth. The army man raised his weapon and fired a spray into the freak’s abdomen.
“No!” Miles shouted from where he was.
Then the infected goons chasing after him, turned to go after the noise from the gun. Their intensity increased and they ran towards Burrows in a mad dash. Miles managed to jump on one of the snapping maniacs and brought his knife down hard into its skull. The boy moved quickly to chase after the next one and tripped the middle-aged monster that hiccupped when it hit the ground. Miles slammed his knife into the creature’s temple. Burrows raised his weapon on the last approaching freak, but before he could pull the trigger, the monster dropped to the ground with Miles’ knife sticking out the back of its head.
“Wow. Did you throw that?” Torrez asked, impressed.
“Shhh!” Miles put a finger over his lips and dropped down low as he creeped over and snatched his knife from the dead monster’s head. The boy held his knife in a reverse grip and surveyed the area, whipping his head back and forth. “We have to go! I told you no guns! No guns!” He whispered and crawled around the ground trying to stay low. “We have to go! We have to go now!”
Torrez dropped down and looked around too. Burrows looked at the both of them and turned left and right. “Nothing’s coming. We killed them all.” Burrows said in a normal tone of voice.
Miles shushed him. “We have to go! Get her down from there and we have to get back to the van.”
“Her?” Torrez looked up in the tree and saw a teenage girl hanging from a branch who he recognized.
When Miles and the others finally made their way back to the van, Julia was relieved to see them but surprised to see they were accompanied by a young girl.
“Alana?!” Julia’s face was scrunched up in confusion as she stood in the middle of the street.
“We heard gunfire, is y’all ok?” Clint was hanging out of the van looking around with his one good eye.
“We have to go! Mr. Burrows shot his gun and we have to go before more infected come around.” Miles was rushing everyone onto the van.
Manson, still sitting in the front seat, asked “What happened?”
Burrows shook his head and sat next to Clint in the middle row. “I killed a freak and this kid is losing his shit.”
“Aye! He told you not to use your gun stupid!” Torrez was chewing Burrows out in both Spanish and English as he sat next to Lance in the first row.
“What the hell Alana? Where the hell did you come from?” Julia grabbed the teenage girl wearing a leather jacket and backpack. “What are you doing out here?”
Alana was hanging her head in shame and keeping quiet.
“We have to go Ms. Julia. We have to go now. It’s not safe here.” Miles was trying to push Julia and Alana on the van.
“Ok. Castle, get out of the driver seat.” Julia shouted.
“There’s no time. Just get in.” Castle shifted gears and looked at her.
“You bast--”
“Hurry! We have to go!” Miles kept pushing and Alana just rushed to the back of the van.
“He said hurry doctor.” Manson looked through the rearview mirror at Julia with flat eyes behind his glasses.
“Damn it.” Julia said through gritted teeth. Then closed the door behind her and moved to the backseat.
***
“Don’t let her in here.” Antonio said, leaning in to look at the monitor screen on the table. He put a hand on Nadine’s chair, and she moved slightly to let him get a better view.
Carver looked down at the boy and scoffed at him. “How the hell did she even get back here?” The major watched the woman on the screen wave her arms and constantly looking around to see how close the infected were.
“She found it the first time on her own, why wouldn’t she be able to do it again?” Ben took a deep breath, trying to slow his heart rate down.
“We took her thirteen miles out, blindfolded, and left her.”
“Left her to die?” Antonio looked up at the major with an eyebrow raised.
The major turned up his lip at the boy’s question. “We gave her what food we could spare and sent her out.”
“And now she’s back! And this time we have to help her and let her stay.” Ben turned from the monitor and looked at Antonio, “Even Miles and Antonio. We have to take them in and they have to stay.”
“We can’t keep letting everyone into the store, who just happens to stumble on it!” Carver roared.
“Yeah, you let that lady back in and she gon kill one of y’all.” Antonio stepped back and shoved his hands in his pockets.
“Take him into that fucking office!” Carver shouted and went into a fit of coughing as he pointed at the office door.
Baker sighed and tilted his head and Antonio went with no argument. The captain went to shut the office door and when he turned around, Carver tossed him the keys.
“Lock the door.” The major said once he was able to stop coughing.
Baker sighed again and again did what the major ordered.
“I’m going to the front of the store and I’m letting her in.” Ben turned to leave but didn’t get more than two feet before Carver grabbed him.
“We can’t let her in here!” Carver said.
“We can’t leave her out there!”
The two men stood in the middle of the room, staring each other down for what felt like ages. The silence did nothing to hide their intensity and made Nadine uncomfortable enough to turn around at her table. Baker let out a long sigh and shook his head. Without a word, the captain started to leave the security room and Carver watched with a raised eyebrow.
“Captain… where are you going?” Carver spoke through his teeth.
“Forgive me for saying so sir, but this is bullshit.” Baker turned to the major, “We keep getting people who find their way to the store and we turn our back on them. We l
eave them out there to die or we send them away to die. I’m making a judgement call and I’m letting Karen back in here with her son.”
“What the hell are you--” Carver was blind with fury and biting at the air. Then his eyes rolled in the back of his head and he collapsed to one knee.
“Major.” One of the men who accompanied Carver went to help him up.
Carver shoved him aside and hacked even harder, now down on all floors. Baker turned to leave again and with one last hard cough, Carver shouted, “I said, NO!”
The boom of his voice shook the room and for a solid five seconds, no one even moved. Then the major collapsed to the floor, coughing and holding his chest. Baker told the two men with guns to go find Dr. Chakrabarti and the men took off.
“Nadine, keep an eye on the major until Chakrabarti gets here!” Baker barked and the woman at the monitors spun around in her chair, flustered but obedient. “Ben, come with me.”
Ben was equally surprised by the captain’s commanding presence and just went along with it. The two left and not soon after, the doctor came running in.
Chakrabarti looked down at Carver and put two fingers to his neck. “His pulse is weak.”
“What do we do? Is he going to be ok?” Nadine asked. “Is he dying?”
“I don’t know. Without any medical equipment I can’t do much to check his status and there’s little we could do anyway. His condition has just gotten worse and worse the longer we’ve been in this store and there’s not much we can do about it. But the way he works himself, Carver’s gonna kill himself from just stress.”
“So what can we do?”
Chakrabarti thought for a minute. “That bastard Manson might have something in that makeshift lab of his. Get him up and follow me.”
The two, soldiers, went to help Carver up but fumbled with trying to hold their guns and lift the major. Chakrabarti sighed as he watched them and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“What should we do about the lady at the front door?” Nadine asked, backing away from the table in her rolling chair.
Chakrabarti hadn’t even looked at the security monitors until they were mentioned. “What’s going on?”
“Captain Baker and Ben went to talk to her, but that lady Karen and her kid came back. Are you going to with them? Should I call Lesly? Should I go?” Nadine stood up from her chair.
“No, just… just stay here Nadine. I’ll stabilize the major and go see what’s going on with Ben and Captain Baker.” The doctor left and the two men carrying Major Carver went with Chakrabarti.
Nadine plopped back down in her chair with a deep sigh. “I can do more than just stare at computer screens you know.” She turned around in her chair and started typing on the keyboard in front of her. She was muttering something and moving the mouse to open new windows on the screen. She could see Karen jumping around outside, trying to get someone’s attention. Then a soft moan could be heard from the office where Antonio was.
“I need water. Can I get some water?” Antonio groaned from behind the door.
Nadine stood up from her seat, trying to peak through the papers plastered to the window. “Water? You don’t have any?”
“No. They didn’t give me any before I came in here. Can I get some?”
Nadine looked at the case of water bottles on the table where Antonio’s confiscated things were. “I, uh…” She shook her head and sighed, standing up from her chair and going to grab a bottle and the keys. “Yeah, ok. Sure.”
She went to open the door to the office and Antonio rushed her with his sharpened pens pressed against her neck. Nadine let out a sudden yelp, but Antonio shushed her and backed her up to sit back in her chair. He dropped his bag, pulled out duct tape and began taping the woman’s hands.
“So, Major Carver was right. You’re gonna take me hostage and--”
“Shut up!” Antonio bit the tape and tore off the last band going around Nadine’s wrists. “This just so you don’t tell yo people and they come chasin’ me down or some shit!” He pulled out a long strip and began wrapping it around the woman’s waist. “I never even wanted to come here. It was Miles’ idea and it was only so we could get some supplies if we found it. I’m tryna get back home lady.”
Nadine stared at him with her lips pursed, not even trying to fight her captor. “But… you’ll die out there. The infected are dangerous! They’re monsters! They’ll kill you out there. You were lucky we let you in that day.”
Antonio shrugged his shoulders, “Everybody monsters. When y’all let us in y’all almost killed us too. But we still here. I’ma keep survivin’ no matter what.”
Everybody dies, except us. The old man’s words rang in the boy’s ears and he pushed Nadine’s chair into the far corner. She was harmless but kept trying to convince him to stay. To let her go and how she knew he wasn’t a bad person. Antonio just shook his head and walked to the table with his stolen property. He took back his hunting knife, his three glock pistols and put them in his backpack; along with his clips of ammo. He picked up the AR-15 and threw on the strap, hanging the weapon over his shoulder. Then he took up his gold Beretta and cheesed, ecstatic to be holding the weapon in his hands again.
Back in the store, Ben and Baker were speed walking, nearly jogging as they made their way through the store. Family members and people from the community greeted the two of them but the two men just pushed on and didn’t respond.
“How do you think this will play out?” Ben whispered to the captain.
“I don’t know. But why the hell do you want to get involved?” Baker kept looking forward as he spoke.
Ben let out a deep sigh, “I want to know Karen is alright and I want to apologize for everything that happened before.”
“I don’t know why you stepped down from being a committee member, maybe it was your conscious or the pressure of everything got to you, but Julia was right. All this started because of you and things keep escalating because of you.”
Ben looked at the captain and lowered his head. “I just want to help… if I can.”
Baker scoffed at him, “Don’t we all.”
When they reached the front door of the store, two of the guards posted there were looking at each other dumbfounded by the banging outside the shutters. When they saw the captain approaching both the men lit up and ran to meet him halfway.
“Captain Baker, there’s somebody outside banging on the door.” Bryant was a nervous wreck, shaking in his boots.
“I think it’s a lady.” Rico’s eyes were paranoid, zipping back and forth from the shutter doors to the captain.
Baker just walked past them and walked through the stores entrance to the steel doors. He looked through the opening and saw Karen hammering away with her fist, clutching her son close. “Karen?” He said.
The banging stopped and the woman looked around, “Hello? Can you hear me?”
“Karen, what’s wrong? How’d you end up back here?” Baker’s voice was low and he made sure to not let his face be seen through the opening.
“You have to let me in! I was in the woods and I heard a gunshot! Those things probably heard it too. Please, you have to let us in!”
“Ok, Karen… I’m going to let you in but I just want to make sure everything is ok. Are you hurt? Did something happen?”
“Is that you Captain Baker? Please captain, you have to let us in! Please! We weren’t trying to come back here! But there are dozens of those monsters in the woods! We had nowhere to go!” She found the hole Baker was talking out of and put her face up to the opening, “Please! I’m begging you! I know what Major Carver thought but my son’s not infected!” The distraught mother ran a hand through the mess of strings on her head that one would call hair. “He was bit a long time ago and still hasn’t changed! He won’t change! Joshua tried to tell you that!”
Baker looked at his two men and pointed to the chains for the shutters. “Open the door.”
Chapter 9
Julia leaned forward an
d stared daggers at Alana who tried her best to avoid looking back at the woman. “What the hell are you doing out here Alana?”
Alana looked down at the floor.
“I mean… you could’ve been killed! What would you have done if they didn’t show up to save you? What the hell was your plan?”
Alana’s eyes stayed on her feet.
“How’d you even get out of the store? How’d you make it out here?”
“You were smart to climb that tree,” Miles was looking back and forth between Alana and Julia. “It was smart to do that. Lurkers can’t climb and strikers would’ve just ran away after a while.” The boy looked down at his phone and lit up with glee when he remembered it was working again. “Do you like Drake? I got his newest album! Views! Views from the six! I got the whole album!”
Alana looked in Miles’ direction but turned away when she saw Julia’s sharp stare.
“If You’re Reading This… Its Too Late.” Miles was double tapping his phone and bouncing in his seat. “10 Bands, 50 bands, 100 bands, F it man!”
The song started playing from his phone and Julia reached out to hit pause on the screen. “Miles, please. This isn’t the time for music.”
“It never really was.” Manson was talking over his shoulder towards the back of the van.
Julia ignored him and kept on with Alana. “Why did you come out here?!”
Alana squeezed her eyes shut, “I wanted to come out and help find our people!”
“And I told you that it’s too dangerous out here! Does your dad even know you’re out here?”
Alana didn’t respond.
“Of course he doesn’t know! Why would he! He told you you couldn’t go!” Julia was nearly yelling in the backseat of the van.
“We should’ve left all the children.” Manson said, looking over his shoulder and pushing up his glasses.
“Manson! This isn’t the time! Castle turn the van around, we’re taking Alana back!”
“No!” Alana yelled. She turned her whole body to Julia and rubbed her legs against Miles’ who took a breath from the sudden contact.
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