by mike Evans
Chapter 7
After Li Clears Horde.
End of Vol V.
Shaun stepped into the large shop. He looked around, never before being this tired, hungry, or weak in his entire life. He set down his pack—all that he had left of his supplies.
Li said, “You can sit down if you like. You look like you need it.”
“I’m fine. Thank you for saving me. I don’t usually do stupid things like that but-”
Li stood back, still holding his sword in his hand. He checked the youth, making sure he saw no blood from bite wounds or any other signs that the infected had touched him. Shaun saw him sizing him up as he wobbled on his feet. “I wasn’t bitten, I’m just-”
Shaun collapsed, falling towards the hard, worn, jade green floor tiles. Li ran, swooping under the boy. Shaun was amazed that he made it to him so quickly. When he’d first seen him, he thought he would be of no help and that the dead were going to take him. The elderly looking man had been as quick or quicker than he was himself.
Li laid his sword down as he approached, catching the boy in both arms and laying him on the floor. Li patted him on the chest. “You can go to sleep now, boy, you are safe.”
“Shaun… my name is Shaun.”
Li set him the rest of the way on the floor. When the boy’s eyes slid into the rear of his head, he took the sword, sliding it back where it belonged. He found two blankets to cover the boy with and a worn pillow that was okay to touch the floor. He removed Shaun’s boots, noticing that the boy was dressed like a civilian, but he was confident that he was wearing military boots. When he pulled his boots off, he could feel the muscles in his calves and thought that if he was truly serious about learning the art of his ways, he would be one fine candidate for it.
He felt something on each of his ankles and pulled up his pants to see a pistol holster strapped to his leg. When he checked the other, he saw that he had a hunting knife that had seen blood before. He shook out the blanket covering Shaun, seeing pistols on each side of his waist and two additional knives. The boy had stuck extra loaded magazines in every pocket that he had, top, bottom, and on his shoulder harness as well. He was confident that this boy would have an interesting story to tell when and if he woke.
He took all of the weapons, putting them in a milk crate, and lifted the boy, stumbling at first until he had his balance. He took Shaun to the back where he laid him in one of the cots he had set up.
Shaun whispered, “Don’t give her the cure dad… I don’t think that it is going to turn out how you want it to.”
Li shook his head, walking out, flicking off the light, and shutting and locking the door behind him. He had a steel reinforced door with high-grade hinges and knobs, along with the door strikers. He had already had it in place, not because of the dead, but because of the thieves that roamed the streets.
He heard a small voice coming from somewhere, throwing him for a loop. Li walked around the store until he looked under a shelf at a radio squawking. He reached his skinny arm underneath it and clicked the button. “Hello?”
“Hi, uh… is this… Shaun’s radio?” a female voice asked.
“I guess it is. He passed out, what do you want?”
“I want him to tell us it’s safe, so we can stop sitting in this stupid alley and not get eaten.”
Li walked to the front of his shop, removing a board hinge mounted to the glass in front of his store. He saw an SUV sitting in the alley across the way and two young people sitting in it. He was really beginning to question whether he’d have been smarter to just leave the door shut and let the mentality of “only the strong survive” take precedence. The last thing he wanted to do was bring in one more mouth to feed, let alone three more. He looked at the pile of Shaun’s equipment and shook his head, discouraged.
Li pressed the button down. “My name is Li. I’ll come out and get you. There are lots of the dead out there. You need to be careful. Your friend almost got eaten because he was too weak to think. You young people have this wonderful thing between your ears and none of you use it. I wish you knew how to.”
“It’s hard to think when you are starving, Mr. Li, was it?”
“Yes, then you need food. Can we stop talking now and let me come get you?”
Brandy nodded, realizing he couldn’t see that and responded affirmative. Timmy got all of the gear that he could hand to her up through to the front seat. She took the last few bottles of water they had and saw they didn’t have a hell of a lot more to offer in the way of rations. Bullets and rumbling stomachs was about all that they had.
An Asian man came out of the door, setting a board in the door to keep it from shutting. Hope ran through her body at the very idea that there could be more people in there; that they could have a place to rest, heal, and get over the starvation that they were suffering from.
Mr. Li had no guns. She saw only a few knives and what looked like some sort of hatchet on his belt. She was getting quite nervous for him, thinking that she’d not really seen anyone try to best the dead without guns with maybe the exception of Shaun. She had never really been anti-gun, but she was most definitely pro-gun now.
When he got halfway across the street, he waved for her to exit the truck. She looked at all the gear and took their rifles and the waters. She tried to go back for more but Mr. Li yelled, “Would you leave that junk alone? I haven’t seen another human on these streets for a very long time. I doubt very much that anyone is going to steal it.”
They made their way into the shop and hope filled her soul. Brandy looked at the bags of rice packed to the roof. “Holy crap, how much food do you have?”
“Enough to be able to stay in here for a very long time. The dead leave me alone and I leave them alone. I can stay here for as long as I’d like.”
“Where is my friend Shaun? What’d you do to him?” Brandy demanded.
“What did I do to him? I caught him when he passed out. He dropped his radio. I wouldn’t have known the two of you existed if it wasn’t for you speaking on it. Where are you going, and why are you here?”
“We are trying to show people how to survive. We started in Iowa. Shaun is very skilled in it, but we’ve run out of supplies and are weak.”
“You look like feathers in the wind, girl,” Li said.
“Ugh, yeah, so, it’s actually Brandy. Very nice to meet you. And this young man is my baby brother, Timmy.”
Timmy held out a scrawny hand to Mr. Li, who shook it, squeezing the boy’s arms, and said, “You could definitely go for a meal.”
Timmy, who had spent way too much time with his grandpa Pete, said, “I'm so hungry I could eat the asshole out of a dead cow.”
Brandy clasped both hands over his mouth holding him tight until he had to bite her palms. Li chuckled, shaking his head, and said, “How about some canned chicken and rice? You look like some rest would not hurt either of you. I’ll show you where your friend is and you can tell him we are somewhere safe and that there will be food. You give me an hour and I’ll give you the biggest meal you’ve had in a very long time. How does that sound?”
They followed Mr. Li into the backroom where Shaun was sleeping and he rolled out another cot, which they both climbed into. “It sounds amazing, Mr. Li, and like you are an angel in disguise,” Brandy praised.
“I'm no angel, but I have more than I need. I haven’t seen too many living in a while, and I won’t lie, it is nice to know that an old sick man like me isn’t the last one living.”
“What are you sick from? Are you dying?” She asked.
He laughed as he walked out. “I'm dying from old age; dying each day I have to sit here. Don’t worry about what else is trying to take me.”
He pulled the door shut behind him, not locking it this time, and they could hear pots and pans being moved around. Both of them were unsure if it would be easier to sleep or to wait it out and eat. They rested on the bed and ten minutes later, the two of them were snoring lightly. They’d not gotten a
rest where they didn’t need to worry in quite some time.
Shaun woke before the other two. He jumped with a panic, looking around trying to remember what in the hell he’d done. He went to race out the door when he saw the two sleeping on the cot. His heart was racing as the dream of the two of them being ripped apart in the alley where he had left them faded away, and he realized it was only a dream. He collapsed back on the cot for a second, letting himself wake a little more and holding his heart.
After he calmed his heartbeat, he got back up, smiling and looking at the room. It was old and the concrete walls looked thick. He wondered if there were other buildings in the city fortified enough to handle the dead. It would be hard going door to door, trying to round up those still alive. He debated trying to convince someone who’d survived a year with walls like this that it would be a safer play to leave.
He covered up Timmy, who was shaking a little and had clasped onto his sister like he might lose her if he let go. He could smell food and the gurgling in his stomach was finally making it cramp to the point that he knew he’d need to eat slow or forfeit keeping any of it down. He tried to be quiet, following the smell of the food to a small kitchen area in the rear of the store. Li was reading a book, and Shaun cleared his throat to announce he was in the room.
“How have you lived so long, boy? Were you in a prison? Because as loud as you are, I find it hard to believe that you’ve encountered any of these things before.”
Shaun puffed his chest up a little, realizing that he sounded like an idiot before he could even say anything, but was unable to keep the words from coming out of his mouth. “I’ve killed thousands of the dead. More than most people, I bet.”
Li patted his chest, looking around confused. “We need to find you a medal. You are a hero.”
“I’m not a hero; that wasn’t what I meant. But I want to learn. I want to know how to do what you do. Are you able to teach me; to teach us?”
“You just want to spend a day or two learning? You think that that would be enough time? Maybe a whole week to learn everything I know? It is very simple to learn, you know.”
“I am young. I wasn't implying that it would be easy, that I could learn quickly. I just want to. I just want options.”
“Options for what?” Li asked.
“To show others; to kill these things. I fear at some point, we are going to be reduced to not using weapons and aren’t going to have anything to use but what we can gather. We need to be quieter. We need to kill them.”
Li stretched out, looking at the boy. He saw the veins in his arms bulging and knew that he was either starved or he had, at the very least, a great start to someone that might be capable of learning—given he had the strength and determination to do so. “You want to show others how to kill these things? Do you really think that you’ll be able to do that?”
“I’ll have a lot better of a chance if we do train than if we don’t.”
“How old are you?”
“Old enough to die because I’ve done something wrong. Are you going to train me or not?” Shaun pressed.
“Have you ever had a bad feeling about deciding to do something, Shaun, was it? Well, I have one of those feelings like I have never had one before.”
“Yeah, it is going to be hard to say until you’ve put the time into teaching me. I’m down to learn if you will teach me.”
“Get a bowl of rice and chicken, put some meat back on your bones, would you? If you want to attempt to train, we will, and you will probably end up regretting it. But you will have every opportunity to learn everything that I can show you. I promise that you’ll regret it before you enjoy it.”
Shaun got a bowl, filling it with as much as he could stuff into it. His stomach was roaring at this point. He took three or four bites before Li finally said, “I don’t like picking up puke. You take your time and you might be able to keep some of it down. There’s no shortage of food and you are going to need a lot of it to keep up your strength.”
Shaun chewed slower. “How long have you been here?”
“The sirens went off one day; it was a Sunday and it was near evening, I think. I was cleaning up outside, and I saw men running through the streets, screaming like insane men. They were leaping higher and further than I’ve ever seen before. At first, I thought they were on drugs. Then I saw them take out another shop owner. One leapt into the air, smashing them to the ground. It began clawing and ripping at their face and neck. It was disgusting. Those people’s screams have haunted me.”
“How did you survive the attack?”
“I shut the door and locked it. They tried to force their way in, but I got my sword in time. I don’t have any guns, but I’ve always sold blades out of my shop. You don’t have to reload them either.”
“You also can’t get them if they are that far away, can you?”
“If they are that far away, then they aren’t going to hurt you anyways. You learn to be quiet and you can go just about anywhere you want to. I’ve gone around and they moved through, and they seem to look like a pack of dogs.”
“They are vicious.”
“You keep your distance; you learn how to do something besides pull a trigger,” Li explained.
“You say that like it is easy.”
“Not easy, but I assure you that the blade will be better.”
“What heritage are you from?” Shaun asked.
“I’m American. I was born here, and I’ve lived here my entire life. My parents were from two different parts of the world. It gave me a whole new perspective, learning weapons and martial arts.”
“Why didn’t you open a dojo, or a studio, or something?”
“Because selling food is easy and provides a service. I wasn’t trying to show others my way. The others around here shunned me when I was young. They called me a mutt.”
“What’d you do? I mean, did you fight a lot as a kid?”
“I protected myself a lot as a kid,” Li said.
“What do you mean by that?”
“I don’t go looking for fights, Shaun. But when it comes to me, it’s a lot easier to handle someone looking for trouble than someone ready for it.”
Shaun thought of the bullies that had made all of this begin. He nodded, taking slow bites of the food. After he had eaten two bowls of the fried chicken and rice, he had realized anymore would make him puke. He washed his bowl, setting it in the drying rack, and said, “All right, when do we train?”
“We don’t.”
“You said that you’d train me! I mean, you let me come inside. I thought that was because you were going to show me what to do. I thought that…”
“You would fall over right now if I tried to show you something. I want you to spend the next two days drinking water, eating food, and sleeping. You are running on empty. You’ll have plenty of time to do that in the future, I am sure of it.”
Shaun nodded, looking around the shop. “You sure that there’s enough food here that we can all stay here?”
“There’s enough food here that we could have more people come and still eat well for another two years. I’ve always had more than enough food to handle the people coming through. I had a shipment come in on a Saturday. Well, you know what happened on Sunday. There wasn’t much time for anyone to come and do their shopping.”
Brandy and Timmy knocked lightly on the door. “Is some of that food for us, by chance?” Timmy questioned hopefully.
Li got up, showing them to the pot, and filled both bowls with food that they very much needed. “My name is Li, or Mr. Li. You can call me one of those. You eat slow so you don’t get sick. I’m not the best cook, but you will not starve if you can get a bowl or two in you. Do you have any questions?”
Brandy shrugged, taking the bowl happily. Timmy smiled ear to ear. “I haven’t seen this much food in... in... I don’t know, when I saw this. We pretty much ate jams and canned veggies for a year.”
“You must really enjoy vegetables,” Li
said.
“I hate vegetables, Li, but when it is that or eat nothing… well, after a few weeks, I decided it was time to eat vegetables. Brandy told me I was going to starve if I didn’t eat, so I started learning to eat them.”
Li looked the two of them up and down and could tell that they had either been lazy or they had been staying somewhere different than Shaun, by the looks of him. “You two going to be learning how to kill these things too?”
They both stared, and he realized they’d not seen what had happened in the alley. Brandy said, “I think we already know how to kill them. We shoot them in the head, and then repeat the process, right?
Shaun jumped and then wished he hadn’t when his legs looked like rubber beneath him. “He sliced their head off with a sword. An effing sword! I’d seen Clary kill some with his bare hands, but he’s a freaking monster, and well, Li looks like he’d fall over if you pushed him.”