by mike Evans
“We still hope that we hear from the government, but after this long I’d think, at the very least, that they are doing supply drops or giving out information somehow. We found a few emergency radios, but we haven’t gotten any type of signal by a live broadcasting channel in forever. Even the emergency broadcast channel died,” Frank said.
“There’s no cure for these things. Like, at all. The government confirmed it not too far into things going to hell. They said they tried, but that there’s nothing that can be done. We were heartbroken. I'm sorry if you’ve been holding out for hope that something to save these things was going to come, or that they could be stopped by some miracle drug,” Ellie explained.
It didn’t look like the news sat well with Al. “How the hell do you know so much, Ellie? How do we know that you aren’t just full of shit? And how do we know that we won’t have to worry about you coming back here with your people once you get hooked back up with them to try to take all our stuff? Huh, how?”
Ellie shrugged to them, trying to not come off as threatening. Mike leaned over, patting his shoulder. “Why don’t you take a walk for a few, Al? Maybe try to catch your breath, brother.”
“I don’t need to go for a damn walk, I just want some answers. I want to know the answers to everything I just asked. That’ll make me feel better, Mike!”
“You won’t know,” Ellie said.
“You won’t know what?” Al asked.
“If me and my people would come back; if we would take all your stuff, as you put it. As far as me being full of shit, well you really won’t know that. But I can tell you that we were smart enough on day one to figure out if you shoot them in the head and only the head, you can kill them. Unless you can decapitate them, but that is an entirely new challenge, one that I don’t think you will want to worry about. So, there’s going to have to be a fair amount of trust in you letting me go. Not that I have any clue where I am. All I know is I fell off the bridge—or more jumped off it—and I ended up here.”
“Yeah, you never mentioned how you hurt your arm on a bridge, and why you were jumping off the damn thing in the first place, Ellie,” Mike said.
“Because I’d lost my radio after I found out some good news. I tried to find an alternate route out of where I was, but there was nowhere to go and if I didn’t jump into the water, I’d have wound up fresh meat. There were just too many of them.”
“How did you know whether those freaks could swim?” Tony asked.
“We had some fall through the ice last winter—well, a couple months ago. I guess that once they went under, they couldn’t come back up. I had to shoot a few that were moving their arms fast enough to swim, but it looked more like a toddler swim class... given they wanted to tear me apart, literally.”
“That’s a hell of a gamble, Ellie,” Frank said.
“Yeah, well, it was either that, or I was royally screwed. I can’t out run those things. I couldn’t break through the chain of them without getting bit. You guys all know what happens with the spread of the disease, right?”
They all shrugged. Mike wasn’t shy and had gone to school long enough to be more than confident that, if there was something you could learn from someone, it was best to do so when the opportunity presented itself.
“I know we don’t want to be bitten, but that’s really about it. We know they like the smell of meat; it’s one of the reasons that we quit cooking it so often. If we don’t have a way to filter the smell, we don’t cook it. If we get fresh meat, we also don’t work with it above water. We’ll use a pan of water to cut up whatever we are going for and then dump the blood downstream, or off in the woods, and bury it two foot deep. I guess so far that has worked pretty well for us,” Mike explained.
“Okay, well, if you get bit, scratched, you get saliva mixed with yours… then that is all it is going to take to get infected. I’ve seen people last over an hour once bitten or scratched, but that has always been a low wound—ankle, leg, hip maybe. If more than one bites you, given there’s anything left of you, then it won’t matter where you got bit, you’re screwed. You'll turn before you know what’s happening, hence why we call them The Turned. Seemed less silly to call them that, than to refer to them as zombies, or the walking dead, or something stupid like that. If they have the time, they can heal as well.”
“We haven’t had to see enough of them since we left to come up with a name. I guess we just call them, well them, or freaks. If you name them, I think that it just gives you one more thing to fear, Ellie,” Frank said.
Mike, who was trying to be patient, asked, “So, do you know anything else about them? Anything at all that we might use to our advantage? We don’t run into new people often, and we don’t usually get to have a Q and A on these freaks.”
“Just that they seem to hunt in packs. We recently found that they have an alpha in their group. Typically, if you take one out, then you are safe for a while. They’ll go back to being a little comatose, and if that happens, that’s either when you take them out or you get the hell out of dodge. Oh, and they love blood. It's like a crack rock to them.”
“Yes, we know about the blood, that’s why we don’t do anything with it.”
Ellie smiled, knowing that unfortunately, they were probably one of the few people who knew that there was a trick to be had with the blood. “You know, probably one of the best things about them being so thirsty is, even when they are walking on thin ice and are aware of it, they don’t care if it means they’ll get one drip of it in their mouths. We don’t waste ours. When we had the numbers we would bag it, like blood drive-”
“You are insane, Ellie. Sounds like the lot of you. How many of the dead have you taken out? And what did you use the blood for anyways?” Al snapped.
“We’ve killed hundreds, if not thousands. We hang the blood as bait. When they come out, that is when we use silenced rifles to shoot them. But you really might have something going for you when the idea of bows comes up; I mean if you are able to collect your arrows, then that isn’t a horrible idea.”
“I can’t tell you what your approval means to me, Ellie,” Al said with a noticeably sarcasm-filled tone.
Ellie didn’t take the bait, but did realize something very important. “Look, I have two guys who may or may not be coming for me. They are pretty smart, and when they see my four-wheeler, I'm hoping they can piece together where I went.”
“Right, and what does that mean to us?” Al questioned.
“That we could have—or you could have—some strangers coming through. I don’t want anyone on your end to do anything stupid.”
“Because?” Al inquired.
“Because, if they do something stupid, they probably won’t ever have another chance to repeat their mistake. They are going to be a lil’ edgy after all that has gone on today, I can assure you. If you shoot an arrow past the two of them, they are going to lose their shit and let you know just about how little they like that.”
“Meaning what? Just spit it out,” Al said.
“It means that they’ll kill anyone that they think stands between them and getting me back. If they think that you have done something to me… well, I don’t want to go down that road.”
Frank held up his hands trying to ease the situation. “We don’t invite many strangers into camp. Is there an easy way here that we will know that they are here for you? I’d think just seeing anyone carrying what you are is going to fit the bill, but I try not to assume anything.”
“Yeah, you could either let me go sit on the bank, use a radio if you have one, or tell whoever would be sitting alone waiting and watching to keep an eye out for the biggest guy they’ve ever seen. There’ll be a teenage boy with him also who is just your regular build—not a lot of fat on him, though. He’ll probably make you think I am a nun if you end up talking to him.”
“This is why we don’t bring people in, Frank,” Al said. “Because stupid shit like this seems to always happen.”
“There is
no ‘always’, this is a one-time thing, and hopefully will stay that way. But how about the next time we see a girl floating in the river, you have my blessing not to let the boys throw out a rope to them. I think that seems fair, right, Al?” Frank questioned.
The two boys snickered and felt like mom and dad were fighting, except in this case it was dad and dad and neither wanted to be around this. Apparently, this would be a lot like Aslin and Clary, Ellie thought.
“Look, just trust me—the quicker I get with my people, the quicker I’m gone and out of your hair. I really didn’t mean to waste so much of your time, but I'm thankful you pulled me out and were able to get me help. My arm’s already feeling much better. I could probably just hike back out and be on my way.”
“We aren’t sending you back out into this crap with a bummed hand. That rifle isn’t going to be too handy for you until your wrist is better. I see you have a bipod on it but if you need to run, it isn’t going to do a hell of a lot of good for you,” Frank stated more than questioned.
Ellie sat back down, not liking that she didn’t seem to have a choice whether she could leave or not. “So, do you have a radio, or do you guys have any working cars still?”
“We had the semi, but we aren’t going to be driving that. We actually had quite a few cars, but when we were required to get out of town quick, we left them behind, just barely getting away from a horde of those things. It wasn’t one of our prettier days, to tell you the truth,” Frank said.
“You don’t need to tell me. We’ve had plenty of bad days where I'm from, and you don’t need me sharing those with you, so I don’t expect you to share them with me. I think our mistakes teach us a lot once we do it. The group I'm with, we have an underlying rule: don’t bring up each other’s heartache; there’s plenty there, and we don’t need to make it worse.”
“We do have a radio. You can try calling your friends on it, if you think they’ll be available,” Al said, happy with the idea of getting her out of there and back to their normal way of living off the grid.
Allen ran off and came back a minute later with a radio, handing it over. She went to the channel they worked off from. “Clary? Clary, are you there? It’s Ellie.”
She sat for a minute before a chirping came back. “It’s Aliyah, where the hell are you? Clary and Greg left to go find you.”
“I don’t really know where I am. Are you at the control center?”
“Yeah, I’ve got a radio. I'm close to it at least.”
“Are you even at the base?” Ellie asked.
“Yeah, but only because Joey gave a guilt trip to Kya and talked her down off of leaving to go look for a farm or something where we could move to,” Aliyah said.
“I don’t even want to know any of this yet, I have bigger things going on,” Ellie said.
“Right, where are you? Did someone let you know Shaun is fine, or at least he wasn’t part of what took Aslin and McQuaig? The minute you took off, Clary dropped everything and went after you with Greg in tow on the big gun.”
“Can you radio him and let him know I need to be picked up?”
“They thought you were going to Johnston to find what you hoped was left of Shaun. Are you still there?”
Frank and the others were standing around, listening. Ellie looked to him for some idea of where they were. He shook his head no. “You aren’t real close to there. You must’ve been in that water for a while. You’re close to Clive. You from around here at all?”
“Born and raised, I know where we are. You guys are in, like, money town, and you are out living in the woods. It’s almost funny.”
“Yeah, if it wasn’t for all the death and pain, we’d be laughing our asses off,” Al said.
Aliyah came back. “Just get us directions and we’ll figure it out. If Clary can’t come get you, we will load up and go. I'm still dying to get out of here. I just don’t know if we’ll be able to get across some of the intersections. I doubt the interstate and highways are cleared off any better with no one to move the cars. Last time I saw them they were, like, a freaking mess.”
“Don’t come yet. I’ll hang out and see if Clary and Greg show up. It won’t take much for them to figure out that I probably went down stream. There should be enough of The Turned floating on the sides of the banks that will hopefully tell them what I did. I’ll get back with you if I don’t see Clary and Greg in a while. Can you guys try radioing them and let them know what channel I'm running off? We won’t go anywhere, I promise.”
“Who are you with? You said ‘we’. Are you with Shaun—did you find him?” Kya had taken the handset from Aliyah.
It wasn’t hard to hear Joey yelling, “We aren’t leaving her behind. Are you guys crazy? What happened, did you hit your head on something? It’s Ellie, we are gonna go get her and that’s it. If you aren’t going to do it, then I'm going to walk and get her! You can’t stop me! I’ll go right now!”
Ellie responded, “I found a group of people. There aren’t too many of them, but they saw me floating past in the river and tossed me a rope. They have a doctor here, Mike, who is super weird, and he fixed up my arm. We weren’t sure if I broke it or not. I might have Lou give me an x-ray if he can.”
“Are you safe though? What did you do to your arm?” Kya asked with more than a little concern in her voice.
“I jumped off the bridge in Johnston and hit my arm when I did it. I might have a fracture. These guys are nice though.” She looked up at their kind faces—with the exception of Al—and said, “Well, almost all of them are kind looking. They haven’t had it any easier, it seems, than anyone else has.”
“Okay, I really don’t like leaving you there, but I’ll get right on Clary if I can, and let you know what I hear. They’re probably frantically looking for you, but aren’t on whatever radio station you’re using. Alright, just sit tight. I am sure they are already on their way there,” Kya said.
A man shouted from the edge of camp. “Hey, we see some people coming! What do you want us to do?”
Chapter 7
Neither Greg nor Clary was doing an impressive job of staying calm. Greg helped send this fact home when he began punching the dashboard with his free hand.
“Is that making you feel any better, Greg, or are you just making sure that hand won’t be worth a shit when we, or she, needs you to have it work?”
Greg stopped, thinking of not being able to do what he needed to because of his temper. He rubbed his hand, looking at it and seeing redness running down the pinky until it met the wrist. “I’ll be fine; I’ve probably done something stupider before.”
Clary smiled, not hiding the worry for Ellie in his expression. He wasn’t doing much better, but had the years under him that Greg did not to keep some control over the rage that was pouring through his veins right now.
“Why don’t you pull over Greg?”
“I'm not driving that bad.”
“I didn’t say that you were, and it’d be stupid to crash when we are just a few blocks away. I don’t want to think it, but I wanted you to get something ready on top of the truck for me, will you? If we need to take out a horde to make our way through, that is what we are going to do. I will not lose another.”
Greg did as directed with no further obligations. He nodded, climbing into the rear seat and prepping a fifty-caliber gun for the mount atop of the Humvee. Clary took the Humvee around a corner, and the two of them were shocked when they saw the sheer numbers. Greg reached down without saying anything, picking up more ammunition and resting it, ready to go, next to him on the Humvee. He looked around at the surrounding area, and just through a small glimpse between their legs, he could see where there was a four-wheeler that had been decimated. He pulled back the handle, getting one loaded to shoot, and took aim. Clary started punching the steering wheel wondering if there was any point to even go check.
He knew as well as anyone that if you saw this number of the dead and you were on the ground with them, that there was not
a chance in hell you’d still be alive. He tried to say something, but choked on his emotions. Clary couldn’t believe the day they were having, and truly just wanted to say fuck it all and bury his problems in a bottle of whiskey. But he knew how little that would do to benefit anyone, including himself or Ellie.
“Greg, clear them out!”
He waited for a millisecond before he was ready to scream and ask if he was deaf. When he decided to try to use some of his composure, remembering Greg’s hearing issues, that was when a deafening blast of firepower erupted from above him. Clary watched out his driver’s window as a waterfall of bullets made their way over the side of the truck, quickly filling the street.