by mike Evans
Greg was screaming at the top of his lungs at the dead. The massive rounds tore through them. Those that did not get headshots had chunks the size of softballs torn from them. Once The Turned figured out there was a threat, they tried to run. Those that had not been tearing into the four-wheeler had been almost comatose, not knowing what to do without the tease of food at their fingertips.
The bullets went through spines, knees, and skulls. Those who were not taken out would be very soon. But Greg knew time was of the essence and still had hopes—however small they might be—that she was still alive. The last thing he wanted to do was break the news to Shaun on the off chance the stubborn son of a bitch came back.
He let off, admiring his work. He reloaded the gun, watching the smoke from it disappear into the clouds above. He knew the sniper rifle was much better, but for time’s sake, this was perfect. Greg tapped on the roof, and Clary shook out of his funk enough that he began to drive.
Greg looked over the bridge. There were too many dead to drive over. It would be safer if they got out to survey the land and put anything left still squirming out of its misery. Greg got out first, attaching a makeshift bayonet to the end of his rifle that Clary had modified to fit it. Anything that was looking like it could still twitch got a bayonet through the skull. He looked at Ellie’s four-wheeler and got a moment of hope when he saw that there was a radio on the ground. “Clary, I don’t think she’s definitely alive, but her radio is down on the ground smashed to shit. That could at least be a reason why she hadn’t checked back in.”
“Right, and there’s enough of these things here that they might not have left any of her remains behind,” Clary said.
“So, you think that they tore her apart and ate every last bite? That was pretty damn nice of her, huh?”
“What was pretty nice of her, Greg? Quit being weird.”
“Been trying for years. I’m not very good at it. But I was saying that it was pretty nice of her not to bleed. Like, at all. You see any fresh blood? And no I am not talking about the blood from the dead,” Greg explained, knowing Clary should be able to tell the difference between blood from The Turned, and fresh blood from a living person.
Clary looked at the scene, and with the exception of those that had their bodies massacred by Greg, it really was fairly clean. “I wonder where the hell she went, then?”
Greg looked around, seeing the water below, and walked back to the other side of the bridge. The dead were on the ground everywhere. One reached up, growling, and images of Frank Fox ran through his mind. He kicked it in the face hard enough to twist its neck. When The Turned came back around, Greg buried the bayonet up to the hilt through its eyeball.
He stuck a boot on top of its face, breaking its nose and ripping the blade back out. He went to the opposite side of the bridge, because the only thing he thought was that this would have been her only way out and she sure as hell wouldn’t be going up stream. Greg looked down, seeing Turned lying on the sides of the riverbank, most of them with half of their heads missing, their legs still floating freely in the water, almost making it look like they were swimming.
“Clary, I think she’s alive. Or at least she made it to the water.”
“Why’s that, Greg?”
“Because these things come at you with their last breath, until you put them down. So, I find it hard to believe they decided to jump in the river on their own accord to try to get away from the bullets. I don’t think that they care about pain; you know as well as I do they have one thing on their mind.”
Clary nodded. “Yeah, they have a lot in common with teenage boys, just you're both out for something different.”
Clary walked to the edge, looking down he could see bullet casings shining in the water, both small and large, and the dead who had gotten stuck along the bank. He smiled, looking at Greg. “Looks like we need to go out and find her. I’d bet you a half dollar coin that she went that way. You have any idea where that river goes to? It is pretty thick; I’d imagine you could pick up some speed using it. I just hope that it didn’t take her under, with the current running beneath the water.”
“How do we find her if she went under, then?”
“We don’t find her if she got taken under, Greg.”
“That makes me feel better, Clary. And don’t say it wasn’t supposed to, because I’ve known you long enough to know you don’t cushion shit.”
Greg left Clary standing there, looking around and trying to gather a plan. “Don’t get all pissy with me, Greg. Soldiers don’t do this shit.”
“I’m not a fucking soldier. I’m a kid put in a shit position, trying to stay alive and keep the others that way too. And I’m not pissy. I’m getting my go bag. God knows how far she went down the river, and my thoughts are to walk down there with all the bullets that I can. There’s no way those things gave up on her floating just out of reach!”
Clary nodded and followed, getting his own gear, and the two started the hike down the riverbed’s side. Clary thought of all the crap they had on the base, and boats weren’t something that he could think that they had anywhere. He didn’t want to waste the time, and other than Lou, couldn’t think of anyone that would have known how to pull one out here anyways. Or, for that matter, where they would have put it in the water in the first place.
The thought kept hitting him hard that they were dealing with two adults, probably ten kids, maybe half that he knew. The rest were practically strangers to him, about whom he knew nothing. He thought of the original kids from day two of everything starting. Their faces began ticking off in his head. It was a very sobering thought to think of how he had Shaun missing, Ellie missing, his best friend Aslin dead, Patrick dead, McQuaig dead… and then he began thinking of how many people they lost over the last year. By the time that he got his bag on, he was in the mindset that he would die, himself, before he would let another person be lost, if he could help it.
“Greg, if we are going to walk it, we might as well get going. God knows where she is.”
“She’s a survivor. At least she wouldn’t give up, not after finding out Shaun was alive,” Greg reassured.
“We’ll find her, we just need to get moving. I really hate going on foot though. We aren’t going to have much option but to shoot those things if we see them, and we better hope that there isn’t some stupid fucking horde somewhere, because we won’t have anywhere to run with the water at our backs. I don’t want to think about jumping in with this full pack either. We’d drown with it on, and we become vulnerable without it. Ellie probably lost everything to stay afloat.”
“You know, I really miss my old life. I mean it too; I used to think almost daily how living in a small town, not being too popular, being a cop’s kid, totally sucked. My biggest worry was when I was going to get laid.”
Clary, who’d have not said it normally, wanted to pull the words back as they left his tongue. “How’s that going for you?”
Greg, who typically wasn’t very serious, surprised Clary. “Every girl I start caring about keeps dying. From the second day of this shit starting, I’ve been losing people. My dad, Frank, Tina… I don't even want to think of everyone. The list just keeps on going.”
“We’ll figure out something one day, Greg. I mean it. There’s no way that these things can’t ever be killed with anything but bullets and bombs. They aren’t invincible, we just don’t know the right people to get it done.”
“What people? Like doctors?”
“Actually, I was thinking scientists. Honestly, there’s something to these things, something that will keep them from ending everything. I just don’t know if we'll ever be lucky enough to find any. I like the idea of surviving, but if we can take it all back, and I mean all of it, I say we go for it. I’d rather live in a free world where these things are gone, than worrying about these fuckers coming after us for the rest of our lives. If they are that smart, then I bet the scientists are still alive. We just need to find them.”
&nbs
p; “You do remember how the government said that there wasn’t any cure right?”
“Not a cure Greg, some mass way that we can kill them... all of them! I don’t care about making them human again. They’ve explained that in detail, and I, for one, am a firm believer that it isn’t going to happen. I’m ready to move past that now. There’s sadly more of them than bullets. I fear we need to be smarter than them, and we need to do it soon, while we still can.”
“I don’t know how we’d do it, but there’s plenty of them out there for testing on, right? I bet if we built a cage strong enough, we could catch some.”
“I’m not too worried about catching one until we find someone crazy enough to try it. It isn’t like there’s anything for them to lose, right?” Clary said.
“Nope, other than one of them getting loose and ripping the scientist’s heart from their chest if they get too close,” Greg said.
“Always the optimist, Greg,” Clary quipped before changing the subject. “There’s a lot of traffic on this riverbed. You see all these footprints? You think the Turned were following Ellie down the river?”
“You really think that they would have stopped their pursuit on her? I’ve very rarely seen them give up. Usually, they keep going after what they want until they get it.”
Clary’s radio chirped. “Hey, hey, Clary, Greg, are you guys there?”
“This is Clary. Kya, is that you?”
“Yup. Hey—I just spoke to Ellie. She hurt her arm, but said that she’s okay; she got it fixed up. You able to go pick her up?”
“We are on foot. We thought maybe she fell or jumped into the water.”
“She did, actually. A group found her and took her in; they have a doctor,” Aliyah cut in.
“Aliyah, is that you?” Clary asked. “I thought you were watching the entrance with Jon? God knows he needs all the help that he can get.”
Joey—who didn’t know enough to keep his mouth shut, as he wasn’t your typical teenager, and thought that there was nothing but goodness that came from honesty—yelled. “Oh, we are in trouble now. You gonna get us in all kinds of trouble, Kya. None of us are watching the gate.”
Clary didn’t let him down. “What the hell is Joey talking about? Is there a reason that no one is at the gate’s entrance? You know what? I don’t care, where is Ellie? Did she say where she was?”
Silence came from the other end. Greg looked around nervously when Clary shot daggers at him. “Hey, Clary, I didn’t do shit. I’ve been with you. It isn’t my fault. You could have left me there, but then you’d be all by your lonesome.”
“Just shut up, Greg. Kya, get Jon back on guard, and I want you guys ready to go locked and stocked if I need some help. You don’t leave other than that, I’ll lose my shit if you do.”
“She said that she was in Clive, Clary,” Kya said.
Clary, who hadn’t taken the time to learn the cities surrounding Camp Dodge due to the fact that they’d not left far enough to need to go and explore, looked to Greg. “It’s about fifteen minutes from Camp Dodge.”
“Oh, thank god. At least we have something going for-”
“Yeah, fifteen if you are in a truck, don’t have roadways covered with cars, the dead, and who knows what else. We, of course, do have all of those things. By foot, I have no idea. It’d probably take us, like, an hour by foot, at the pace we are going at. I don’t even know. I’ve never been a big riverbank walker, Clary.”
“Kya, you guys just be ready and stay there, don’t do anything dumb. Actually, have someone go fill Lou in on what is happening. God knows he’s going to be pissed if he doesn’t feel like he’s in the loop and something else bad happens. Last thing I want is to put any more stress on that man that he doesn’t need.”
Joey ripped the walkie-talkie from her. “Hey, Mr. Clary, I’ll go tell Lou that Ellie is hurt. If you need us, you call; we’ll come right away, we’ll come save you.”
Clary thought of what he used to call for backup when he was deep in the shit, and what he needed to rely on now, and cringed a little. He knew that these kids were doing their best, but it still did little to make him feel much better. “Thanks, Joey, I’ll make sure to radio if I need something. You run off and let Lou know. You can tell him I’m on my normal channel if he needs anything.”
Clary had not thought whatsoever about Lou not knowing about the others, or anything else that happened. He snapped back, “Kya! Kya, stop Joey from going to talk to Lou.”
“You’re kidding, right? He’s gone. He threw the radio to me and went off like a bat out of hell.”
“Fantastic, this day is just getting better and better. Keep ready; I’ll be in touch as soon as I know what is going on. Oh, and you tell Jon to get his ass back to the damn gates.”
“Yep, I’m on it. Talk to you soon, Clary.”
Greg smiled nervously. “You know; it is rare that I’m not the one who screws the pooch.”
Clary started walking past him. “No worries, Greg, I have all the confidence in the world that you are going to redeem yourself. Besides, we haven’t seen much lately. I doubt the guard duty is a priority twenty-four seven.”
Greg jogged to catch up. “I’m glad to know that you haven’t counted me out. I’ll do my damndest to redeem myself in your eyes.”
“Take your time, Greg.”
Chapter 8
Kya cut in the radio. “Hey, it’s Kya. Clary and Greg are on their way. He’s pretty pissed off, I’m not going to lie. But he said that he would get you. They are on their way.”
“I owe you, thanks. I already figured he’d be pissed off. He’ll get over it. Look at all the crap that Greg has done; they haven’t killed him for it yet. Look, I want to get to the river’s edge, if he’s coming for me. I assume they are coming down the river, right?” Ellie responded.
“Yep, they are. He’ll be the giant of a man that looks like he might like to rip your head off. Try not to get within reaching distance. You know, it’s sad when Greg is like the least in trouble out of all of us; it almost screams that we’ve gone downhill at that point.”
“Don’t remind me. I feel justified in why I left, as stupid as it might have been. Love is blind, and well, I’m really in love with that moron.”
“But if he comes back, you are going to kill him, right?”
“When, Kya. Not if, when. Look, I need to go, I want to know if that’s Clary. He must have been running if he made it all the way down here already.”
“All right, be safe and sound please. Seriously, I mean it, check back in!”
“Yes, Kya. You guys too; try not to do anything stupid.”
“Right, sorry, and you were the ones who left during a freaking horrible snow storm, right? Crashed a Humvee, got stuck, you got a really bad head injury, Shaun about got pneumonia, you almost all got eaten… Nothing stupid like that, right?”
Ellie smiled at the faces looking at her with questions. “Fantastic timing, Kya. Leave your radio on in case I need anything, will you?”
“Yep, stay safe.”
“Always my intention.”
Chapter 9
Al said, “Anything additional that we need to know about you going forward, Ellie?”
“Nope, nothing that is going to be any of your business. We got through it, just like we always do. We aren’t quitters, and we don’t stop until we get what we want.”
“You guys hurt a lot of people in your path living like that?”
“We’ve never gone after another group intentionally until after we’d been attacked ourselves. We felt that those were more than just kills, and we didn’t want to leave that unanswered, to tell you the truth. We also knew that there’d be a very small chance that they wouldn’t try to come back to kill the rest of us. We are a sitting target for what people might need. I don’t want to say that we’ve had it easy the last year, but if we had to worry about food on a daily basis, we would have to make even more difficult decisions than we did,” Ellie explained.
&
nbsp; Al whispered to Frank, who gave him the look that was a most definite no answer. Frank said, “Look, I think it’s time you leave, while the option is still available. You tell your people we didn’t do anything to hurt you, and that we took good care of you. You do that.”
“Look, you won’t have any issues from us, Frank, Al… We are good to go, and I really do appreciate it.”
A man came from out of the woods, sprinting the fastest that he could, carrying a bow and a radio. Al yelled, “Dean? Dean, what is it?”
“We radioed a minute ago,” Dean said.
“Yeah, how many people are there?”
“Not people, it’s the dead, and a helluva a lot of them at that. They’re following the riverbed.”