by Evans, Mike
Shaun gunned the gas and instead of heading towards the base he went in the opposite direction into a part of Des Moines that he did not know what inhabited it. Shaun stood on the four wheeler, trying to put everything he had into the engine as it screamed across the area. Bowers was helped into the backseat of one of the brand new trucks and they peeled off behind him. They had heard the shots but the idea of catching him was all that they could think of. They were not thinking in the least that maybe they should take their time and think things out.
Shaun looked over his shoulder as he gunned it up the large hill weaving in and out of cars that had either crashed or had their drivers ripped from their seats and slaughtered. He had barely made it to the top before he could see the Turned coming out of the trees and buildings that lined the large four lane street. When he got to the top of the hill he idled for a moment and watched what was going on. He hit his radio and asked, “Clary, Aslin, Greg, anyone, is anyone fucking there?”
Clary came back over, obviously ignorant to what had happened and said, “Oh my God am I going to kick your little, tiny, scrawny ass the next time I see you. What in the hell were you thinking? You just barely lived the last time that you went out now you went out on your own and had absolutely no one to look over your shoulder. You trying to get yourself killed? Because if you are, Ellie’s going to be extra pissed when she sees you.”
Shaun stopped and everything went fuzzy before him. “What do you mean when I see her? Spit it out, don't screw with me!”
“Lou radioed us on the way there, saying that we better find you because she was awake. She is still pretty loopy from being asleep for so long but said that she is looking good and that she is having a conversation with Joey. So if you aren’t so busy do you think that you could tell us where in the hell you are and what you are doing so that we can come for you and bring your ass home now?!”
Shaun said, “Yes,” forgetting what it was that he was doing, “I am being chased actually, and I could use your help. I'm being chased right now.”
Aslin cut in and said, “What do you mean you are being chased, chased by who, the Turned?”
“No, well yes, but not just the Turned.”
Aslin immediately went to the worse thing he could think of and said, “Is there something new? Did they mutate into something else for God sakes?”
Shaun said, “How the hell would I…..you are making me lose focus damn it, not I don’t know about that, what I am saying is these assholes came out of nowhere. They wanted to take my guns, and from what I could tell, me too, to wherever it is they have a camp. They seemed ok but when I told them that I didn't want to go with them they told me that it wasn’t a choice. They weren’t going to let me leave with my gun for sure.”
Aslin came back, already getting pissed about it. “Those sons of bitches out stealing from the living, that’s effing ridiculous, what a bunch of assholes.”
“Can’t say that I can complain with that assessment, but I really could use some help or a plan because what I wanted to do got done and then these guys showed up and screwed everything up that I had planned.”
Aslin said, “Oh hell, I quit relying on plans years ago. It’s just God telling you how little control that you have over what you want to happen Shaun. Where are you though?”
“I’m on the same road that we were on when the Humvee crashed. You just keep going south on that road and well you probably won’t see me, but you are going to see a shit ton of the Turned and probably a handful of trucks with a bunch of guys trying to decide if they want to try and fight their way through the horde or if they want to cut their losses.”
Clary came over the speaker he said, “Oh let’s hope that they run into us. If they were willing to take you out without a minutes notice, I'm not going to worry about leaving them for scrap for the Turned.”
Shaun said, “So we aren’t going to take them prisoner Clary?”
Clary said, “No, I don’t think there’s a reason for that. We have enough food, but you know something my drill sergeant in the Navy told me from day one?”
Shaun said, “We really need to get moving here Clary.”
Clary said, “He told us that you can’t fix stupid. But we aren’t giving up on Greg just yet.”
Shaun could hear Greg saying something to the effect of ‘asshole’. Clary said, “If you have something that you can hide behind that looks safe I’d highly suggest that you get behind it. There's no reason to lose you after all this work to keep you alive.”
*****
Bowers was in the backseat screaming at his men. They were doing the best that they could to apply pressure to his wound and make sure that the bleeding stopped as good as possible. The driver turned around and said, “Hey Bowers, uh, there is a horde of those fuckers clogging the street. Do you want to turn around or what are you thinking of?”
“I’m thinking that we go get that little son of a bitch and if we can’t then we find some other way to get over there. If anyone has a problem with that I'm sure that you know damn well how to use the door handles.”
The men knew better than to try and talk sense into him. The driver John said, “You know if we have the option sir, I'd say that we turn it around and we head back and try and circle around. There’s plenty of cross roads that we can take if we go back by the grocery store, then we can cut across and back up.”
Bowers sat back, pulled out a bottle of whiskey to numb the pain and took a large pull off of it, “Well, what the hell are we still sitting here for then?” he asked.
John turned it around and started to head back down the long hill and to the street the grocery store sat on. The men were hoping that they weren’t going to be driving right back into another horde of the Turned.
*****
Clary and Aslin’s hearts, much like everyone in the Humvee, had hearts racing. Clary said, “Why is it that we have to go fifty fifty? The first group of people we’ve seen in months couldn’t be better. The second set of them turns out to be complete psychos that are out to kill the innocent. I mean its Shaun for God sakes. Why would anyone want to hurt him? It’s just a couple of rifles; I can’t see why someone would go through that much if they already have gear. It seems like such an easy way to get yourself hurt doing something that way.”
“Didn’t you say something earlier about how you can’t fix stupid?” asked Aslin.
They slowed down as they approached the corner where the grocery store was and where Shaun had been stacking the Turned in piles. Clary said, “Holy shit, would you look at that? Those guys must have been out hunting the Turned or something. This is insane, would you look at all of them?”
Greg looked up at the top of the street lights and saw the bags of blood, much like the ones that Ellie had gotten when they first had gotten back. He used binoculars to look at them and saw in red thick letters that they said Camp Dodge on them. “Holy shit, I don’t think this was those guys, I think that this was Shaun. Those bags have the base’s name on them. Shit, it was Shaun that came here to do this. Holy hell, he was on his game today,” Greg exclaimed.
Everyone in the Humvee looked around the street. When they thought they couldn’t be any more impressed, Hammond pointed to the end of the road at the next stop light down. “Christ, there is another group of them down here. Jesus, how long has he been here doing this, like, all day?”
Greg said, “No, I started getting hate messages from Clary about an hour ago, before I came to get you guys. He must have been working quickly then.”
Hammond said, “I've never seen so many of them dead. I’ve seen ours like this…..until they started to rise back up that is.”
Clary cut into their conversation and said, “Well as beautiful as this is, we need to get to Shaun. We can see this later when we have Shaun safe and sound and are on our way back to the base where we belong damn it.”
They drove the rest of the way up the long street, doing their best to swerve in and out of the cars. The winter h
ad washed most of the blood from the car doors but there were still signs of struggle and pain within them. They stopped when they saw a row of trucks coming their way driving like a bat out of hell. When the truck saw them it slammed on the brakes, skidding to a stop. John held up a hand to them from their small motorcade. Clary said, “Do you think they’ve put together where Shaun got his machine gun and sniper rifle, and well all of his gear, at yet?”
Aslin said, “I don’t know, I'd have to say they’ve probably been looting much longer than a zombie apocalypse. Typically, once a piece of shit, always a piece of shit.”
Clary climbed through the back seat and slid the panel overhead open, bringing up a chain of ammunition to put in the machine gun mounted to the roof.
John looked into the backseat seeing Bowers was on the verge of trying to not pass out and screamed, “I’d say pretty damn confidently that those guys are with that kid, and from the machine gun mounted on that roof I gots a real good idea what he’s planning to use it for. Damn you Bowers! You couldn’t just let the kid go; we couldn’t just pass on stealing one thing. What the hell do we want to do guys?”
The other men worried about looking like they were weak. One said, “We got guns too, there ain't nothing saying that we are going to lose.”
John slammed the wheel and said, “It’s a machine gun you moron. We could all fire at once, and we still couldn’t keep up with that thing. You have seen Rambo right? He’ll cut through all of our shit and do it without breaking a sweat. He probably won’t even finish off an ammo can or box, whatever the hell he is using.”
The other men pushed out of the vehicles with shotguns and rifles raised and taking aim on their truck. Clary said, “So it seems like we don’t need to talk anymore huh? I almost feel guilty.”
Aslin said, “Well why don’t you get shooting, unless you feel too guilty, before one of those idiots starts firing and kills you.”
Clary pulled back and chambered a round. He said, “I didn’t say anything about that.”
Clary thought there was a good chance that even what the men thought was coming their way was going to be much worse than what was expected. He did the math and knew that this minigun, firing on all six barrels, would send two to six thousand rounds per minute down there. One minute, he knew it would be overkill at this point. He aimed for the group of men standing with their rifles raised and took them out in less than ten seconds. John, who might have been the only intelligent one, turned on his heel and ran back up and into the truck. He pulled it around, not caring that he was driving over the men in his group.
Clary started firing on the truck that was heading straight for the horde in front of them. He mowed down the first twenty in his path before he got the attention of the dead. They gripped onto the truck as if their lives depended on it and started smashing their fists and faces into the bullet ridden glass. John tried pulling the truck off into a parking lot but simply only sped up the process by crashing into the side of a building. He, of course, hadn’t taken the time to put on his seat belt before speeding away from the strangers unleashing hell’s fire worth of bullets upon them. John screamed as the truck’s front end folded in like a pop can, sending him into and through the windshield which had already been severely damaged. He screamed as he went through the glass, it tore into his face, ripping it backwards and peeling his facial skin down to the bone. He tried to scream again but the Turned jumped on him, muffling his screams. Their weight pushed the air from his lungs leaving him nothing to plead to God with. They ripped into his neck and licked the fresh blood coming from his face. They had not eaten like this in a very long time and fought amongst each other for the prize. Each one of them was trying to rip pieces from him and succeeding.
When the screams ended, Bowers pushed up from his place half dazed from the crash and the blood loss. He said, “What in the hell are you doing up there you dumb son of a……”
The Turned, who were busy working on his friend, peered into the truck, Bowers’ lower lip began to quiver. He knew that there was absolutely nothing that he could do to save himself, even if he was in a state of health that he could try to run. The Turned piled into the car, ripping the front seats out of their way. Bowers started to scream at the top of his lungs but one of the Turned gripped his face top and bottom. It slammed his head against the window until he started to lose consciousness. The Turned leaned down, sniffed the fresh blood and used its brutal strength to break his jaw, pulling it down until Bower’s head split in half leaving a bloody, fleshy meal to dine on.
Clary and the others just watched, slack jawed and shaking their heads. He said, “Well that was one of the worst things I've ever seen. Given the fact they could change their mind, you think that maybe they might have left Fox alone now? Those Turned are hungry and they don’t look like they are remotely full.”
Greg hit his radio. “Shaun do you have a way to get back over here brother?”
Shaun said, “If I do it sure isn’t going to be the way that I came up here from. There’s still more Turned than I want to try and drive through.
Clary was looking at the truck and thinking this wasn’t what he was going to try and drive through either. He had the rounds on him to spend on the gun but it wasn’t a sure thing. He also wasn’t ignorant to the fact that the few thousand rounds he just spent on the men in the truck would surely bring more people. He looked into the backseat and asked, “Greg, where do you think we could cut across and meet him at, there has to be a crossroad that we can get him right?”
Greg said, “Yeah just head back down Douglas and take a right on Seventy Second Street. We can meet him by a gas station and he can ride with us back.”
Greg took the radio from Clary and said, “Shaun its Greg, man are you gonna get your ass kicked by these guys.”
“They can try. I did some good today before things went to shit.”
Greg said, “Head east Shaun and don’t worry, we all saw your handy work, you always gotta show me up with how damn crafty and smart you are. Anyways, if you head down Hickman Road there should be a place you can cut back. Meet us by the gas station and the pharmacy store. I think there used to be a gun shop across the street named Mike’s.”
Shaun gunned the ATV and said, “Okay, you got it Greg. I’ll be there as quickly as possible. You guys just make sure that you are all there.”
Shaun drove through the streets again trying his best to avoid any of the cars. There was no way of knowing if they were empty and because of that, if they were safe to travel by. Once he made it to a side street he drove the rest of the way through residential areas with his hand down on the throttle pushing the vehicle to its limits. He wanted to be back with others as quickly as possible. He thought of Bowser and the other men and wondered if he would be ok, or if there was a chance that he would run into more of them.
When Shaun pulled up to the gas station, Aslin was sitting on top of the hood holding a rifle and going back and forth with it trying to make sure there were no surprises between Greg, Clary with the minigun, and Hammond. They had a perimeter that was quite solid as long as there wasn’t any massive attack on them.
When Shaun pulled up to the men, Clary wasted no time, he slid out from the machine gun and approached Shaun quickly. Shaun thought for the quickest of moments that there was pain coming his way or something because Clary had never done such thing before. When Clary got within feet of him, Shaun held up his hands in a guard stance. Clary, who moved much quicker than the kids did, and was because of that, he caught Shaun off guard. He pulled the boy in, giving him a hug and it was one that Shaun had not received from another man in quite some time. Clary lifted him off of the ground and said, “Don’t do anything stupid like that ever again you little shit. We can only worry about losing you guys so many damn times. We need you to be careful and watch your asses. If you don’t think that that is a good deal, then too God damn bad.”
Greg asked, “Why the hell does he get a hug when he did the exact sam
e thing that I did?”
Clary turned around and said, “Well because he might have set us up with an initial way to try and take out the Turned. I was thinking of just blowing the damn things up, but if we get enough blood gathered on base, and maybe a few other things that the young zombie scholar hadn’t quite yet thought of, then there was just a chance that if we planned and organized that we could do our best to attempt to try and reverse numbers on who was the one in charge.”
“So you aren’t mad at all Clary?” Shaun asked.
Clary shook his head no and squeezed the kid's shoulder and let him enjoy the moment for a second. “I can’t promise if this becomes a habit that I'll be too happy, but the way that I look at it, you did some good today, no one got killed…...at least no one that we care about sticking around.”
“I hope that the rest of the survivors are a bit more receptive to seeing new people. I don’t know what these guys wanted to do with me if I came back with them. I really am glad that I was able to get out. I can’t imagine how many people they might have at their camp who would not have the resources that I did and were forced to go with them.”
Clary and Aslin hadn’t thought of this and it weighed heavy on their shoulders. “Did they say where they lived?” Clary asked.
“No they didn’t, just that they were in a housing development which for saying that in central Iowa, could narrow it down as well as saying that they live on Earth. But maybe one of their trucks had something in it that we could use to figure out where they were staying?”
Clary said, “Maybe, but I'm not driving back into that horde just to be wrong. People are going to come and look for them. There’s going to be a group that wants to know where they went, if not for the people, then for the guns that they took with them. Every possession is like gold now. There’s probably thousands or millions of unclaimed guns in the states, but one in the hand is better than anything.”
“So what do you want to do Clary?” Aslin asked.