“Get out! Now! We have to move.” Colin breathed a sigh of relief as the man cut his seatbelt and toppled out of the vehicle.
The camp was in utter chaos. The men who had stepped forward to protect the camp were quickly falling back under the tidal wave of freaks. As Colin watched, one man was tackled to the ground and quickly lost under a pile of freaks as they all vied for a piece of flesh.
Colin hauled Ervin up. “Can you walk?”
Ervin nodded groggily. “I think so.”
A cry made Colin whip around and bring up his rifle. A woman with a long auburn ponytail lashed out at one of the freaks with a knife, slashing a long gash across its face. In her left hand, the woman held a small boy no older than three in a dirty neon green shirt. The child’s face was red, tears streaming down as he clutched his mother’s shirt tightly in his tiny fists. He let out another cry of pure terror that only children could manage. More freaks turned towards the woman at the child’s cry.
Colin’s heart twisted. How easily they could have been his own family. Fighting for their lives. He fired and hit the freak closest to her, its head spinning as it toppled over. He turned and fired a three-round burst, knocking down the others that approached.
The woman spun, but her face fell as she laid eyes on Colin. She took an apprehensive step back from the stranger and the vehicle that had brought this nightmare upon them.
“Come on!” Colin bellowed, motioning for her to follow them. Instead, the woman turned and ran, the toddler in her arms screaming.
Colin heart twisted as he pulled open the back door of the car. A man Colin had seen around Thies sat slumped in the passenger seat. Blood covered his lips and bloomed from a wound in the center of his chest.
Colin turned back to Ervin, pulling him to his feet and ducking underneath his arm. With that, they spun, running back towards the others.
Colin leaned heavily against the car. Around him, the people of Thies were celebrating their victory over the Sovereigns. Their freedom from their threat. It made Colin sick.
“What the hell was that?” Samuel’s voice was quiet and tight.
“What do you mean?” Colin knew exactly what Samuel meant, but he wanted to hear the accusation outright.
“You could have gotten yourself killed. What the hell were you thinking running into the horde like that?” Samuel’s nostrils flared. He had been silent the whole ride back to Thies.
“I was thinking about protecting our people. People who have repeatedly put their lives on the line for all of us and making sure they made it home tonight. What were you thinking?” Colin spat back accusatorily.
Samuel ground his teeth for a minute before responding. “Don’t you dare accuse me of not caring for these people.”
“You were ready to abandon them,” Colin pushed. “Not just anyone but Ervin. Out of all the people here, we need him the most. We probably wouldn’t even be here now without him. We owe it to him to try.”
“I will not put others in danger for the sake of one person.”
“You made it perfectly clear that we are all expendable.”
Before Colin could react, Samuel lashed out, landing a punch directly to his jaw. Colin’s head snapped around and spots bloomed in his vision. A fire lit across his face as pain radiated out from the impact.
Colin swung back around, slamming his fist into Samuel’s face in return. Samuel staggered back.
“I’m going back to look for survivors,” Colin stated flatly. It wasn’t a question. He wasn’t asking for permission. He would do it whether Samuel approved or not.
Samuel laughed, some of the anger leaving his face, replaced with disbelief. “What? Now you care about them? They sure as hell didn’t care about us when they set the horde on us. You sure as hell didn’t care about them when we were taking the horde right back to them.”
“I was wrong,” Colin said coldly. “We shouldn’t have done that. No one deserves to die like that. Not even the Sovereigns.”
“There aren’t going to be any survivors. It’s a waste of time and resources. The Sovereigns are gone,” Samuel said coldly.
“I’m going,” Colin snarled. “It is the least we can do.”
Samuel shrugged nonchalantly. “Fine. I’ll be here celebrating when you return.” Samuel turned to walk away from Colin. “If you return.”
They had decided to park away from the Sovereigns camp and walk the rest of the way. Hopefully, the horde had continued marching on. If it hadn’t, though, they didn’t want to alert the freaks to their presence.
Colin gently shut his door and sighed. The car rocked a bit as Eric shut his own door and Rotna climbed out of the back.
Colin let a breath out slowly. “Thank you for coming, guys.”
Eric nodded curtly. “I think this is the right thing to do.”
Rotna nodded in agreement. “We couldn’t let you go alone. We need to stick together.” She looked pale.
They crept forward through the trees. It was still some ways to where the camp had been, but if the horde was still in the area they needed to be as quiet as possible.
The vegetation near the campsite was bent and broken. Saplings had been snapped, the grass churned into the earth by thousands of unheeding feet. A freak lay on the ground, its body twisted and broken. Its head had been ground to mush as others had mercilessly trod over it. As Colin looked around the undergrowth, he could see more bodies scattered among the churned leaves.
Through the trees, Colin could see a bit of movement in the camp. With one final deep breath, they stepped into the campsite. Though a few of the freaks lingered, the horde was gone. The tents had been torn down, and pieces of the colorful fabric fluttered from where they were caught on tree branches and shrubs. More of the dead were littered around the camp. Fallen freaks or the Sovereigns, Colin couldn’t be sure.
“I…I…” Rotna abruptly spun around a vomited into some bushes. A few of the closest freaks took notice of the sounds and turned toward them. Colin hefted his crowbar and rushed towards the first freak. With one swing, he buried the crowbar into the side of the freak’s head.
Wrenching the claws free, he turned and set his sights on another one. This one was fresh. He was less dirty than the others, though just as bloody. The man’s right arm was missing, stringy ligaments dangling beneath his shoulder. The monster growled at him, and Colin returned with a snarl of his own.
When he swung, the crowbar connected with the man’s neck with a gut-wrenching crunch. The freak’s head lulled painfully to the side, his teeth still snapping. Colin pulled a small hatchet from his waistband and slammed it into the man’s temple. The freak collapsed lifelessly to the ground in a heap. Planting his foot in the center of the man’s chest, Colin wrenched the hatchet free.
Another freak approached, its arms outstretched, the few fingers left on its hands grasping for Colin. Colin jabbed the crowbar into the freak’s neck. It crumpled to the ground, its spinal cord severed. The freak’s eye twisted in its skull to look up at Colin. Its teeth gnashed hungrily, though its body no longer responded. Colin brought the crowbar down again, ending the creature’s existence.
Colin took a deep breath, trying to still his heavy breathing. Eric had begun to work his way across the camp as well. Rotna was picking through the remains of the tents behind him.
They weren’t going to find any survivors here. Only the dead and walking corpses. If by chance anyone had survived the massacre, they were long gone.
Colin picked his way through the debris and made his way towards the others. Pots and silverware, clothes, sleeping bags, pictures, and a few toys were scattered among the debris. Colin stooped and retrieved a picture from the ground. It was a group photo with dozens of people squeezed in together. Young and old, they smiled at the camera with their arms around each other. Colin released the picture and let it flutter to the ground.
Colin stepped around a bush and immediately halted in his tracks. A child sat on the ground. His bright-green shirt was
dirty and speckled with blood.
“Jesus,” Colin muttered.
The child whipped around at the single word, and Colin let out a strangled whimper. A ragged hole in the left side of the toddler’s face was all that remained of his ear. His chubby cheek had been eaten away, revealing his tiny white teeth. In place of his nose were two gaping holes in the center of his face. Where the boy’s left eye should have been was only an empty socket. The child, the freak, reached for Colin, crying out with a high-pitched growl. When he tried to move, the toddler fumbled and fell. His right pant leg was empty, the jeans stained all the way through with red.
Colin knelt down in front of the child. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. He knew it didn’t do any good. I’m sorry wouldn’t bring him back. It didn’t take away the pain the child had suffered. It didn’t erase the fear he had felt. It didn’t give back the short little life that had been stolen from him. But Colin felt compelled to say it nonetheless.
“Oh my god!” Rotna gasped. She turned her back to the child.
“Shit.” Eric rubbed his hands over his face. “Just…dammit!”
Colin drew in a shuddering breath and laid his crowbar on the ground. The weapons felt like too violent an end for such a small creature. Instead, he withdrew a knife from his belt. He inched forward, the child snarling and snapping as it reached for him as well.
“Shhhh,” he crooned compulsively. He took the child’s head in his head as it wrapped its tiny fingers around his forearm, pressing little pockets into his flesh. The child’s mouth worked as it desperately tried to bring his arm closer.
How easily this pitiable creature could be his own daughter? Mutilated and broken. More sad than vicious. A testament to everything that had gone wrong with the world.
Before he could think further about what he was doing, Colin pressed the knife to the side of its head and pushed. It took such little effort. The toddler immediately went slack, the hungry gurgles ceasing.
A sob escaped Colin’s lip that he hadn’t realized he had been holding in. He felt the tears running down his cheeks.
Colin stood up, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “Let’s go. I think we’ve seen all we need to.”
Day 27
“I’m sorry.” Colin looked down at his feet as he walked along side Eric.
“For what?” Eric asked, feigning ignorance.
“Really?” Colin glanced up at Eric, who gave him a wry smile. Colin sighed. “For being an ass. For not listening to you. For being a shitty friend. For being an all-around shitty human being.”
“You have been a pretty shitty friend,” Eric said thoughtfully. When Colin only nodded in agreement, he continued. “You have been a shitty friend, but this is totally uncharted territory. It’s not like there’s a textbook for how to act in the zombie apocalypse. Well…I’m sure there is, but it’s not like anybody took that shit seriously before.”
“I don’t know how this all happened.” Colin glanced up at his friend. “I mean I look back and I know how we ended up here. But when everything was happening, the decisions seemed right. I mean we were fighting for our lives when so many had died.”
Now it was Eric’s turn to sigh. “I…I don’t know.”
“But you do,” Colin said, pleading with Eric. “You knew then. You always knew. You knew the decisions were wrong. We just didn’t listen.”
Eric’s mouth opened and closed as he tried to latch on to what to say next. “I guess I always assumed the rules still applied,” he finally managed to say. “It sounds stupid to say it out loud. But it always felt like if we abandoned those rules we wouldn’t be much more than the freaks. Just bodies that were still moving, still working.”
“We lost ourselves,” Colin murmured.
“You found yourself again, though,” Eric said firmly. “That’s the important part.”
Colin shook his head. “At the expense of the lives of others.”
There was no denying the fact of it. People died, a lot of people, before Colin realized he had lost his way.
For a while, Colin and Eric walked in silence.
“So,” Eric finally said, “what do we do now? Where do we go from here?”
“I need to go find Liv and Elli.” His chest constricted as he spoke their names. His heart thundered in his ears, and it was hard to breath. “I have to find out what happened to them.”
Eric nodded. “I figured that’s what you’d want to do.”
Colin sighed heavily. “I don’t know why I’ve waited this long to go find my family. What is wrong with me?”
“Colin, there are obstacles that have kept you here. Some of it was unavoidable.” Eric shrugged. “But regardless, it happened. All we can do is move forward and do what we feel is right.”
Colin nodded. “I really don’t know if I’ll be able to find them. It’s been so long now. If they didn’t make it to the farm, if they ended up somewhere else, if they…” Colin trailed off as he thought of the endless possibilities of what could have happened to his family in the last four weeks.
“You’re skipping too far ahead there, man.” Eric slapped Colin on the shoulder. “We’ll head for the farm. If they aren’t there, we’ll figure out what to do next. One step at a time.”
“We?”
“Yeah, we. I’m coming with you.”
Colin smiled. “Thank you.” The words weren’t enough. He didn’t feel he deserved to have anyone at his side anymore. He didn’t deserve a friend like Eric.
Eric nodded. “We’ll find your family.”
“One way or another,” Colin agreed grimly.
“Do you think we should see if others want to come with us? Ya know, start over?” Eric asked.
Colin thought for a moment before nodding. “I don’t know how many others will want to come, but we can see.”
Day 29
“Colin!” Colin immediately tensed at the sound of Samuel’s voice. They hadn’t spoken since just after they had overrun the Sovereign’s camp. Colin hadn’t told Samuel about their plans to leave yet. By the tone in Samuel’s voice, he already knew.
Colin looked up from the corn he had been shucking.
“Is there something you forgot to tell me?” Samuel sneered.
“No,” Colin said simply.
“What the hell do you mean no?”
“You asked if there was anything I forgot to tell you. The answer is no. I haven’t forgotten to tell you anything,” Colin clarified, continuing to strip the corn of its leafy green outside.
“Then you aren’t planning on leaving?”
“I am.” Colin tossed away another handful of corn silk and leaves and set the cleaned cob to the side in a basket. “In a few days.”
“And when were you going to tell me this?” Samuel bristled.
“I don’t know.” Colin shrugged. “Maybe never.”
“Are you kidding?” Samuel sneered. “What the hell are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking it’s time to find my family.”
“You have got to be joking.” Samuel stared blankly at Colin. “How are you even going to find them? You can just call Liv up. Send her a message. She could be anywhere and that’s if she is even still alive.”
“Well, I’ll never know if I don’t try to find out what has happened to my wife and child.” Colin bristled.
“They’re dead, Colin. More than likely they’re dead. The only thing that you’re going to get accomplished by looking for them is getting yourself and whoever goes with you killed.”
“This is not up for discussion, Samuel,” Colin growled. “I’m leaving. I’m going to go look for Liv and Elli. End of discussion.”
“And what about us?” Samuel asked.
“What about you?” Colin spat.
“Not me. Us. Thies. The people here.” Samuel gestured around them. “You’ve helped build this place. Shape it into the safe haven that it is. You’ve given these people something they had lost, and now you’re just going to abandon them.
”
“My family needs me,” Colin persisted.
“We need you,” Samuel insisted. “You can’t just leave us behind to go on some wild goose chase!”
“They aren’t dead!” Colin growled. “I know where Liv was headed. I’m going to find her like I should have done a long time ago.”
“You’re just going to get yourself killed. You’re not leaving. I won’t let you. I have lost too many people already. I’m not going to lose you.”
“What are you going to do to stop me, Samuel?” Colin could feel his heart racing.
For a moment, the two stood in silence, eye locked, each waiting for the other to make the first move.
“I’m leaving. Now.” Colin turned to go.
“Like hell you are!” Samuel roared.
Colin was suddenly pushed to the ground as Samuel tackled him from behind. Colin coughed and sputtered as the air was knocked out of his lungs. His face pressed into the ground, he inhaled dust and dirt as he tried to draw in a breath.
“I won’t let you leave. I won’t let you die!” Samuel snarled as he wrapped his arms around Colin’s chest.
Colin threw his head back, slamming the back of his head into Samuel’s face. Samuel’s grip loosened as he grunted in surprise. Colin began to wiggle away before Samuel grabbed ahold of him again. As Colin twisted around, Samuel’s fist came down hard on his jaw. Spots bloomed in Colin’s vision, and he furiously tried to blink them away. Colin kicked out hard, catching Samuel in the knee. Samuel cried out, releasing Colin and clutching his wounded knee.
Colin scrambled up, pulling out his pistol. “I’m leaving now and you aren’t going to stop me.”
Samuel laughed—a throaty, unpleasant sound. He looked up to Colin. Blood coated his face, dribbling down from where Colin had broken his nose, over his lips, and down the front of his shirt. For a moment, he looked like every other freak Colin had seen. Wild. Crazed. No longer human.
Death & Decay (Book 2): Divided Page 17