Death & Decay (Book 2): Divided

by R. L. Blalock

  The gunfire drowned out the beating of Colin’s heart. Two other men fell as they threw open the doors to the cars. The engines roared to life. Colin took aim at another man as he climbed into the backseat and fired. He slumped to the ground as the driver mashed down on the gas, grinding the fallen man under the wheels. The other two cars followed closely behind.

  They continued shooting as the vehicles sped away. One of the cars rocked unsteadily as one of the rear wheels exploded into shreds of rubber.

  When the cars finally disappeared around a corner, they finally stopped shooting. Colin looked over the fresh bodies on the ground. Six in total.

  “Everyone alright?” he asked.

  Samuel and Ervin wore expressions of wildness mixed with fear and desperation. A look that Colin was sure he wore as well. But they nodded. Slowly, they turned towards Emily. Half her face had been blown away by a shotgun blast, leaving the rest of her face a grisly mess. Brenda knelt down next to her friend once again, her cries ringing out through the stillness.

  “We’ve got some unwanted attention.” Ervin nodded towards some freaks that had been drawn out of the nearby buildings and into the street by the gunfire. “Let’s get movin’.” Colin ushered Eric and the woman down the street.

  Then they ran.

  Sprinted to the car. Stealth forgotten. The doors to the car were unlocked. They threw open the doors, slinging their backpacks in and leaping in as Eric started the car, driving off before the doors were fully closed.

  Colin watched the freaks swipe uselessly at the car as Eric wove around them.

  He had killed dozens of them since the outbreak. More than he could remember. They were sick. They would kill him if they got the chance. Devour him down to the bone and turn him into one of them.

  He had never killed another human, though. He had never even thought about it.

  He wasn’t sorry.

  Not even a little.

  They hadn’t been any different that the freaks.

  They were just as dangerous.

  Just as deadly.

  “You guys did great!” Rotna looked over the new AR-7 that lay across her lap. The weapon had been specifically chosen with her in mind. Lightweight and collapsible, it was perfect to use until she could build up her strength more. The gun itself was reliable and accurate.

  “Maybe I can go with you guys next time, instead being the bait.” Rotna looked around Thies’s large main grocery store, which had become their new residence. The baskets and stands had been taken to another building. Now the room stood open and relatively bare. Blankets that people had thrown on the floor for beds made the room hard to navigate during the day and almost impossible to navigate at night without stepping on a hand or a foot.

  “God knows, this place is boring.” Rotna, like many of the others, had mostly stayed near the airport and Thies. They had been kept busy fortifying against the freaks, but the work was monotonous.

  “You can take my place any day.” Eric had stretched himself out on his blanket. “After today, I’m done with the outside world.”

  Colin nodded. “I had really hoped it wouldn’t come to this. Fighting other people. It’s bad enough having to worry about the freaks, but having to worry about each other…”

  The excitement slipped off Rotna’s face. “As if we aren’t all in the same boat.”

  “We’ll just have to make sure to range in a different direction from now on,” Eric said simply.

  “Where to?” Colin asked. “We’ve got the Missouri River to the west. There’s not much to the south besides the mall, and I don’t know about you but I’m not ready for that yet. That place has to be swarming with freaks. It would be a fucking suicide mission. Not much to the north. Then to the west is theirs.”

  “Theirs?” Rotna scoffed. “How can they claim this entire area?”

  Colin shrugged. “I suppose they can claim anything they want. I’d rather not find out if they’ll actually back up their claims, though.”

  “It’s not like we really want to stay here long anyway,” Rotna chimed in. “It’s just a matter of time before we get across the river. Then they can have this area.” She shrugged.

  “If only we could find a damn boat,” Colin muttered.

  The river had been disappointingly bare of the watercrafts. Most were wrecked at the docks. Too many people had tried to get out too soon, crashing into one another, in the process destroying the docks with the ships still tied to it. The memory surfaced in Colin’s mind of the small, tin fishing boat drifting aimlessly down the river, the freak within growling and reaching out for them. He suppressed a shudder, pushing the memory away.

  “They can’t all be gone.” Eric’s eyes had drifted closed as they talked. “We’ll find one eventually.” His words slurred as he yawned.

  They sat in silence, lost in their own thoughts. Eric began to snore quietly.

  “Well,” Rotna said, returning to the present and jumping up. “Do either of you want to go for a walk?”

  “Hell no.” Eric opened one eyes to look at her. “I’m all set to go to bed. Today wore me out. Besides, it’s dark.”

  “I know. But it’s too hot to go to sleep in here.” The room was stifling. Without air conditioning, all the bodies in the room heated it up fast. The ceiling fans did nothing but move the hot air around, and it was too risky to leave the windows open. Not that the humid air outside would help much anyway.

  “I’ll go.” Colin stood up, stretching out muscles that had grown sore from sitting on the ground.

  “Y’all are crazy,” Eric muttered. “Don’t get eaten. If you do, at least scream and warn the rest of us.”

  “You’re terrible!” Rotna laughed and slapped him on the shoulder. Eric only smiled and rolled over.

  The air outside wasn’t much better than it had been inside as Colin and Rotna stepped out the door. They slung their rifles over their shoulders. This close to home, it was better to use other weapons so as not to draw attention to themselves.

  The Midwest was known for its hot and humid summers dotted with warm rain that only made things worse. But outside it wasn’t so noisy, crowded, or claustrophobic.

  “It’s weird,” Rotna said suddenly.

  “What is?”

  In the dark, he could barely see her shaking her head. “Everything. Nine days ago, if you had told me I’d be living on a farm in a store with thirty people I didn’t even know, I would have laughed. If you had told me I’d be excited about getting a rifle, I wouldn’t have believed you. Things have just changed so much.”

  Colin nodded, chewing on his lip. “This is the longest I’ve been away from my family.”

  “You’ll see them again,” Rotna said hurriedly.

  “I don’t know,” Colin cut her off. “Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t. Right now, it’s kind of hard to imagine that anything more exists outside of what we know.”

  “Listen,” Rotna stopped Colin, forcing him to look at her. “If Liv is half the fighter you are, your family is fine. They’re out there just waiting for you to find them.”

  “Liv’s twice the fighter I am.” Colin chuckled to himself. “If you give her something to fight for—or about—she won’t let it go.”

  “You guys fought a lot?” Rotna asked quietly.

  “No.” Colin shook his head. “I mean we fought on occasion like everyone does. Liv is just…” He searched for the right word. “Liv is a crusader. She needs a cause. Something to do. She can’t sit still. Once you give her something to do, she’ll get it done. She’s a doer.”

  “See, I’m right.” Rotna smiled and strutted a little. “She’ll be fine.”

  Colin sighed. “I don’t know.” He kicked a rock and listened to it skitter off into the dark. The words roiled around in his head. The same words that kept him from sleeping. “Sometimes…” he started slowly. “Sometimes I hope they are dead.” Though Rotna didn’t quite gasp, he could hear her suck in a quick breath through her teeth. “I hope it happened
quick. That they weren’t out there fighting and afraid for long. If they’re dead, they don’t have to deal with all of this.” He gestured to the quiet, dark land ahead of them. “The freaks. The fighting. Starving. Hurting. Being afraid. I hope they’re past all of that. Nothing can hurt them anymore. Sometimes I think we’re stupid for trying so damned hard to stay alive. We’re putting ourselves through this hell.”

  Rotna slowly nodded. “I do wish Charles was here with me, but I hope he is someplace better.”

  “Any place has got to be better than here,” Colin muttered.

  Rotna sighed. “We’ll just have to make it better then.” The sudden hard edge in her voice made Colin turn to look at her. “Kill every last one of them.” She looked him in the eye. “This is our world. Not theirs. We can’t just let them have it. We’ll kill every last one we come across until they’re wiped clean from the planet. We can raise a new society, a better one, out of the ashes. What else are we going to do now?”

  Colin let her words roll around in his head. Finally, he nodded. “Every last one.” He extended his hand to her.

  She took it and shook it firmly. “Every last one.”

  Pop. Pop. Pop.

  Colin froze, not daring to breathe. The sound had come from the main part of Thies.

  “That was gunfire, right?” Rotna’s voice was barely a whisper. It couldn’t have been a single freak. Probably no less than a handful. They wouldn’t have used the guns for that.

  Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.

  Colin started sprinting back to Thies, Rotna close behind him. As the buildings loomed on the horizon, Colin forced himself to slow down and move at a crouch. The buildings weren’t lit. They hadn’t had electricity for days. He couldn’t see anything moving.

  Pop. Pop. Pop.

  He saw the muzzle flash out of the corner of his eye. It had been close to the store. Was it their people? What did they see? Where was the threat?

  Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.

  The return fire came from a building across from the large store. Colin threw himself against a decorative stack of hay bales. Rotna peered around the opposite side, laying her rifle across one of the bales to steady it.

  Finally, he saw it. Movement as a dark figure darted between the buildings.

  “Are those the same guys from earlier?” Rotna whispered.

  “I can’t tell.” Colin shook his head. It was impossible to make out their faces in the dark. “But it’s got to be. What are the odds that we’d get attacked by two separate groups in the same day?”

  Rotna nodded beside him. “How many of them are there? What do we do?”

  “We met nine earlier today. Only four of them got away.” Only four. As long as one had gotten away, it didn’t make a difference how many after that. The men had gotten away. Now they were going to pay for it. All of Thies was going to pay for it. They wouldn’t make the same mistake again. “I think they were only a portion of their group.”

  “We need to keep them from getting back then.” Rotna’s voice was low. “All of them.”

  “Every last one.” Colin looked over at Rotna, repeating their words from earlier. She flashed him a quick smile before her lips fell back into a grim line.

  Rotna swung her rifle up, resting it on top of the hay bale as she looked down the sights.

  “Wait! Let’s go find their car first. If they try to run, that’s where they’ll go. If their car can’t go anywhere, they won’t be able to run. The others have guns. Ervin and Samuel are with them. They’ll be fine.”

  “Let’s go.” She nodded.

  They skirted wide around the buildings, not wanting to attract the attention of the men. Collin was torn between moving quickly or quietly. At any moment things could change. If they didn’t act quickly, they might be too late. If they gave up their stealth entirely and were discovered, then their plan wouldn’t matter anyway.

  The long dirt drive was empty as they approached it. Colin stopped, looking back and forth. They had planned for this. They had hidden their vehicle. But where? There weren’t exactly many places to conceal something so large.

  Across the road, the wide empty fields stretched far off into the distance. Colin couldn’t see them through the dark, but he knew that trees marked the far edges of the field. The landscape was flat and unbroken. Not a single hiding spot for something as large as a car.

  Pop. Pop. Pop.

  The shots set his nerves on edge. They were wasting time. Time the others might not have.

  “There!” Rotna was pointing behind them. Through the trees, Colin could barely make out the outline of a small square building. A house. The home was a dirty white that stood out among the black silhouettes of the trees around it. Its shape resembled more of a shoebox than anything else. Halfway up the drive sat one of the large Suburbans that Colin had seen earlier in the day.

  “Do you think they left anyone behind with it?” Rotna’s voice was barely audible.

  Colin’s eyes roved over the dark shapes around the house. There were plenty of shadows for a person to hide in.

  Colin finally shook his head. “I can’t tell. Let’s just do this and get back to the others.” He hadn’t heard the pop of gunfire for a few minutes. The silence unnerved him more than continuing gunfire would have. “Cover me.” Rotna nodded and brought her gun up into the ready position.

  Colin darted from the cover of the trees, running in a crouching position and trying to keep himself as low to the ground as possible. When he reached the car, he pressed himself against it, looking around for movement.

  Nothing.

  With a sigh of relief, Colin pulled out his knife. He didn’t know anything about cars. He was sure there was an easy way to keep the car from starting, but he didn’t know it. He didn’t want to destroy a perfectly good vehicle, one that they could use, but he wouldn’t let them get away again.

  He plunged the knife into the thick rubber of the back tire and was greeted by a whoosh of air, and he wrenched the knife out. Colin repeated the move with the other three tires. If the bandits did make it back to the vehicle, they wouldn’t make it far.

  He ran back to where Rotna was dutifully keeping watch in the trees. “Let’s go.”

  Another volley of gunfire cut through the night. It was both reassuring and terrifying. They tromped through the leaves and thick brush. Colin’s heart thudded in his chest. Maybe they shouldn’t have worried about the car. Maybe they should have just rushed to help the others. Maybe they would be too late now.

  At the bright spark of gunfire ahead, Colin dropped to the ground. Rotna dropped down next to him. They were behind the bandits now. From just inside the trees, they could see the dark figures huddled close to building corners.

  “I see seven,” Rotna whispered. Another volley of gunfire cut through the air, and one of the bandits fell back in a crumpled heap. “Make that six.” Rotna placed her rifle across a fallen log to steady it.

  “You hit them on the left. I’ll take the right.” Colin settled in with his own rifle, trying not to think about the insects that were settling in with him. “Ready?”

  “One…” Rotna looked down the sights, her rifle drifting back and forth as she decided on a target.

  “Two…” Colin selected his own target, a man to the far right that was looking towards Thies around the corner of a shed. He peeked around the corner before quickly ducking back behind the safety of the shed, oblivious to the danger behind him.

  “Three.” Rotna’s voice was barely a whisper as she slowly exhaled.

  Crack! Crack!

  The man’s head snapped back, smashing into the shed before crumpling to the ground. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw another shadow collapse to the ground as Rotna hit her mark. The remaining four were startled. One man stood up from behind a planter, only to be knocked down by a barrage form Thies. The figure fell to the ground shrieking. He could hear Rotna breathing heavy beside him.

  “Shit,” she whispered, her voice shaky,
keeping her eye on her sight, tracking the movements of another as he tried to find cover from either side.

  Crack! Colin caught another in his crosshairs as the figure tried to move from the cover of one building to the next.

  Crack!

  “I think…I think that was the last one.” Rotna’s breathing was ragged. Moisture on her cheeks glistened in the starlight. She quickly wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands.

  “That was…That was not what I expected.” She shook her head. “It sounds stupid. I kind of figured since we’ve been fighting for our lives against the freaks, it would be the same…”

  “It is the same,” Colin said, holding her gaze. “They would have killed us without a second thought. Just like the freaks. It is no different.”

  Rotna nodded. “You’re right. I know you’re right.”

  “We’re just making things better,” Colin said kindly, mirroring their conversation from earlier.

  “We need to make things better.” Rotna sniffed and straightened as she collected herself once again.

  Colin turned back towards Thies. They hadn’t heard any more gunfire. Bodies littered the ground around the buildings. None of them had moved. In a world full of freaks, that was reassuring.

  He could see others slowly fanning out from the large store, sticking to cover as they carefully moved forward.

  “Let’s go. We’d better announce ourselves, though.”

  Colin stood up, brushing the dead leaves and dirt from his clothes, and picked up his rifle.

  “Samuel!” he belted out, his voice carrying in the darkness.

  “Colin?”

  “Rotna and I are coming in. Don’t let anyone get too trigger happy.”

  They strode up to the buildings to find Samuel, Ervin, and four others standing out in the open.

  “Jesus Christ!” Samuel clapped Colin on the back. “What the hell are you guys doing out here?”