“Someone did, but not these guys specifically. If they were, I would have shot first and not bothered with questions later.” Mathias was honest again. Alec liked that quality in him. “I’ve never met these guys. They probably worked in a different branch. A lot of people from branches all over the world have been flooding in over the past week or so.”
Danny thought it over. “Okay, we’ll go with them.”
Mathias nodded and turned to the soldiers. “We’ve decided to hitch a ride.” He spoke loud enough for them to hear.
The apparent leader of the group nodded and walked to the back of the truck. “You’ll have to ride in back with me. There’s not enough room up front. Also, it’s safer back here.”
The back of the truck was opened. Inside, the walls were thick, white metal, and the floor grey steel. It was well-lit, and there were benches running along both sides. Some cargo crates were piled up against the front end, but there was more than enough room for everyone and their stuff.
Mathias climbed in first, and Riley handed him all of their bags and Alec’s wheelchair. He then hopped back out and helped Alec over. The soldier offered to help as well, but Alec refused. He got into the back of the truck and sat on a bench. There were no seat belts, but there were straps on the wall he could hold onto if he wanted. After the experiences Alec had been having with vehicles lately, he wished there were seatbelts.
Everyone climbed in and found seats along the benches. The soldier they had been talking to climbed in behind them while another shut the door. There were two bangs from the outside, and the soldier banged back. They were ready to go.
“So, what are your names?” the solider asked.
“I’m Mathias Cole, this is my brother, Danny.” Mathias handled the introductions. “That’s Bishop and that’s McGregor. And the hairy one is Shoes.”
Mathias gave Alec a look. He had introduced them by their last names on purpose. He was letting them know that he was uncomfortable with these people.
“Good to meet you.” The soldier nodded to each of them. “I’m James Brenner.”
The engine roared to life, the vibrations of it easily felt through the benches. Alec wondered if they were heading in the direction of Riley’s place, or if they were heading away from it. Either way he felt like a fish in a fish bowl. Trapped.
38:
Walker
Abby picked up a revolver off the floor and turned it over in her hands. Tobias had told her and Cender about what he had seen, and Abby guessed that this was the room that the individual had been dragged out of. It looked like there was one bullet missing from the revolver. The shot Tobias had heard must have come from it. She looked around the room but saw no blood. The shooter had missed. She then found the bullet hole high up in a wall.
“Find anything?” Cender asked as he showed up in the doorway.
Abby held up the gun so that he could see it. “I think this is where he was taken from. He fired off a shot but missed.”
“Why do you think they grabbed him?” Cender came into the room and looked around as well.
They hadn’t waited long after the truck had left to explore the small cottage. The room, like the rest of the place, wasn’t much. The main feature was an old bed under a window. Its quilts were now spilled across the room like the bed’s gutted entrails. Abby didn’t like that metaphor but that’s how she saw it. Next to the bed was a nightstand painted a faded green. The green matched all the trim in the room. On the nightstand was a lamp that had somehow managed to keep upright. The green shade was knocked askew, and a third of the base was over the edge of the table. Across the room from the bed was a dresser, again green. Abby mentally referred to this room as the green room. She imagined the owners of the place would have referred to it that way too. There was also a blue room and a red room. The kitchen had yellow accents while the bathroom was white. Over all, the place was rather cosy.
“I don’t know.” Abby shook her head, answering Cender’s question. She had been asking herself that same question ever since Tobias had told them what he had seen. She couldn’t think of any reason that made any real sense. One of her ideas was that he had something to do with the outbreak, but this didn’t seem like the kind of place where someone like that would end up. Another was that he was infected and they wanted him for study, but how could they have known he was infected if he hadn’t turned? And of course, if he had turned, then the dog made no sense and neither did the gunshot or the shouting in a foreign language. Tobias had shown them a little bit of what he had recorded, but neither Abby nor Cender could even identify what language it was, let alone understand it. Cender was guessing Russian though, and it seemed right, but they had no way of knowing for sure. Likewise, they had no real way of knowing for sure why those uniformed men had grabbed him.
“Find anything?” Tobias asked the same question Cender had, as he entered the room.
“Just the gun that was fired.” Abby showed it to him, then placed it on the nightstand. They already had enough guns. “Looks like they grabbed him from here while he was sleeping.”
Cender poked around the quilts with his crutches. “What’s this?” He lifted one of the blankets off something small and oddly coloured.
Abby walked over and picked up the object. It was a glove. A firefighter’s glove. She remembered that Cillian had a pair.
“Holy shit.” Tobias walked over and took the glove from her. “You don’t think…” He let his question trail off.
Abby shrugged. “We don’t really know what happened to him.” She knew what his question was despite the fact he hadn’t finished it. She knew because she wanted to ask the same thing.
“He didn’t know Russian, did he?” Cender asked.
“I have no idea.” Tobias kept turning the glove over in his hands as if it would tell him something new. “I didn’t know that much about him, not really.”
“Maybe there’s something we missed on the tape,” Abby suggested.
“Yeah.” Tobias walked out of the room and back to the kitchen.
Abby and Cender followed after him, the rubber tips on Cender’s crutches making a slightly squeaky sound on the hardwood floor. They sat at the table and clustered up in front of the video camera. On the table sat all of their bags, which they had decided to take off while they explored the cabin. They were heavy, and it was nice to take a break from lugging them around.
Tobias took the camera from around his neck and held it out to where they could all see it. He opened up the viewport on the side and turned the camera on. He had to rewind the footage somewhat because he had filmed parts of the house but, soon enough, they were watching the man, or boy be dragged out of the cabin. They couldn’t even tell his age. The tiny screen offered only tiny detail. As it ran through the images of soldiers manhandling him into the back of the truck, they didn’t see much. The soldiers blocked just about everything.
“Run through it again,” Abby said.
Tobias rewound the film and played it once more.
“One more time.” Abby thought she had seen something, but she wasn’t sure.
Once again, the film was played.
“Okay, one last time, but pause it when I tell you to,” Abby asked.
Tobias played the film a final time, finger poised on the pause button.
“Now!” Abby saw what she had been looking for.
Tobias’s reaction time was spot on and he managed to pause the camera on one of the few frames Abby had wanted.
“See, right there.” Abby pointed to a tiny section of the screen.
Tobias squinted and looked closer. He then used the zoom on the camera to make that section larger. There was a fairly clear shot where you could just see between two of the soldiers. They could all see that the person they were hustling along was wearing a dirty, yellow firefighter’s jacket.
Tobias sighed. “What do you think? You think it could be him?”
“I don’t know,” Cender shook his head. “That guy
seems pretty lively for someone who got stabbed.”
“He may not have been stabbed very deeply,” Tobias pointed out. “And terror does a really good job of making you forget your injuries.” As if for emphasis, he placed his hand on his own wounded shoulder.
“And what would we do if we knew for sure it was him?” Cender asked the most important question.
“I’d want to go after him,” Tobias told him. “It may be stupid, but the guy saved my life. More than once.”
“He saved my life too,” Abby nodded in agreement. Cillian had saved her from Jessica. No matter what Tobias or Cender said, his being stabbed still rested partly on Abby’s shoulders. If he had lived, she needed to thank him somehow.
“And how do you intend to go after him, huh?” Cender raised an eyebrow. “We have no mode of transportation other than our own feet. And he could be miles away by now.”
“Well, they went the same way we plan on going,” Tobias reminded them. “I think that if we happen to see them on the way, we should stop to investigate.”
“I think that’s a stupid plan.” Cender frowned and looked at Abby. “But I have a feeling I’m out-numbered here.”
Abby nodded. She was on Tobias’s side on this one. Even if it wasn’t Cillian, she still wanted to know what was going on.
“All right then,” Cender sighed. “I guess we’ll stop.”
Tobias closed the camera and turned it off, slinging the strap back around his neck. “Speaking of wheels, let’s see if there’s any around here. If not, then we better get to walking again.”
They all rose from the table and picked up their bags. Abby, once again, helped Cender to get his on.
“How’s your leg?” she asked as she clipped up the buckles for him.
“Hurts like a son-of-a-bitch, but it could be worse,” he shrugged a shoulder.
“Why don’t you take a pain killer then?” Abby knew they had some.
Cender shook his head. “I don’t want to waste any. Also, I don’t want my mind compromised at all right now. I want to be completely clear-headed.”
“I don’t think being in pain makes you clear-headed, but if that’s what you want.” Abby wasn’t going to fight him. He was also a doctor after all.
They all headed outside. It hadn’t been hard for them to get into the cabin because the front door had been smashed open. It probably hadn’t taken much smashing, either.
“So do we split up or stick together?” Abby asked. They had split inside, but she hoped they opted for sticking together out here.
“Umm.” Tobias thought for a moment. “We’ll work it like the parking garage. We don’t have to be joined at the hip, but keep within easy visual and communication distance.”
“Okay.” Abby could accept that plan.
They headed around the left side of the cabin first, the side they had approached it from. Tobias went the deepest into the woods, while Cender stuck to the tree line. It was hard for him to manoeuvre among the trees with his crutches. Abby took up the space between the boys, making sure she could see both of them with ease. They walked in a slow circle around the cabin, searching for… really anything. A few times, Abby had to tell Tobias that he was wandering a little too far away.
Tobias was the first to find the dirt road, but Abby was the one to find the motorcycle. She called out excitedly and they gathered around. The excitement died off fairly quickly though. They realized that there was no way for all of them to ride on it. The motorcycle’s seat could hold only one person, same with the sidecar, and that wasn’t including all the gear they were lugging.
“I think I saw another dirt road to the right of the cabin,” Cender said once they agreed the bike was useless to them. “Maybe there will be something else there?”
No one had high hopes for that as they headed over. The dirt road he saw was more like a pair of ruts. They followed it a short way and found a shed nestled in between some close-growing trees. The shed had a padlock on the front and no windows.
“Do you think the key’s inside the cabin?” Tobias wondered aloud as he walked around the perimeter. It was a lot deeper than it was wide.
“I’m sure it is.” Abby turned the padlock sideways and slid the pair of doors as far apart as it would allow. She pressed her eye to the gap and looked inside, but it was too dark to see anything. “Can someone hand me their flashlight?” She knew everyone’s bag had one, but hers was buried under a bunch of stuff.
“Yeah, I’ll get mine.” Cender let go of a crutch and reached around behind him. He tried to reach a particular pocket, but couldn’t.
“I’ll get it,” Abby smiled.
She opened the pocket he was trying to reach and pulled out the light. It was the small kind that straps onto the head. She went back over to the doors, flicked the light on, and peered inside.
The light revealed shapes but the narrow field of view still made it difficult to tell what they were. Finally though, it clicked. Abby laughed.
“What? What is it?” Cender wondered.
“There’s a four wheeler in here.” Abby turned to him, grinning. “Even if it can’t hold all of us, it, plus the bike, will.”
“Nice!” Tobias grinned widely. “Too bad we lost the crowbar.”
During the pig fight, Cillian had grabbed the crowbar out of the SUV. At some point, he must have lost it in the cornfields, and they hadn’t been able to find it.
“You guys wait here, I’m pretty sure I know where the keys are inside.” Abby flicked the light’s strap, plunking it down on Tobias’s head, and jogged off toward the front of the house.
She was excited that they had a ride again. She had been fit her whole life, but even she got weary of constantly walking with her heavy bag on her back. The idea of having a ride made her bag seem much lighter. Maybe God was looking out for her after all.
* * *
Abby had grown up in a religious household on a farm out west. There, her belief in God was harshly tested. She and her mother were the only girls in the household. While her father and five brothers worked the farm, she had to help her mother with the cooking and the cleaning. Of course, she and her mother also had to work the farm from time to time. The test came when she realized she was a lesbian. She realized it when she had no interest in the boys at high school but always felt really funny in the girls’ change room. There was nothing in particular that made her the way she was, it was just who she was. She feared telling her parents or any one of her brothers. She wouldn’t even dare tell anyone at school. Not only was she afraid of them ostracizing her, but also everybody knew everybody in that school, and her family was sure to find out.
She couldn’t keep it in forever, though. One day, she finally decided to tell her mother. It was summer, and they were cooking dinner for the men. Abby had convinced her mother to take a break from cutting up the vegetables and had her sit at the table with her. After she had told her mother, the woman had gone as white as a sheet. She wouldn’t talk to Abby the rest of the night.
The next few days, nothing happened, other than that, her mother would only speak to her when necessary. It was when they went to church that things went downhill. Her mother told her to stay in the car. Of course, all the boys were confused about this. How was a good Christian supposed to be a good Christian if they didn’t go into the church? Her mother then explained to them that Abigail Walker wasn’t a good Christian. She had forsaken God and decided to become a heathen. Abby, of course, protested this, but her mother would have none of it. She told everyone what Abby had confided to her about herself.
Her father had been furious. He spanked her, a girl of sixteen, in the parking lot of the church. Much of the town went to church, and some of them saw this. The news spread like wildfire. Abby was then forced to sit in the car and think about what she had done, as if she had done anything. Her father had always been the spanking type, but he hadn’t laid a hand on her since she was eleven, when she had broken her mother’s favourite vase. Abby cri
ed the whole time.
Her family never treated her the same after that, and they pressed their religion on her even harder. She was allowed to go into the church, but everyone watched her carefully when she did. It was as if they expected her to burst into flames or something. Her mother kept wailing about how it was her fault, how she should have known, how she should have saved her child. That’s how she saw what she was doing: saving her child. Abby saw it as being permanently grounded. She was never allowed to go anywhere except to school and church. If her homework and house chores were done, she had to stay in her room and read the bible. No one talked to her at school, and they all gave her strange looks. She could hear them whispering behind her back sometimes. The worst was changing for gym class. The girls would pick on her and scream if she looked at them in any way. They called her a pervert. She started changing in one of the toilet stalls after that.
Only one of her brothers treated her like she wasn’t carrying an infectious disease, but he also didn’t treat her the same way he used to. He thought it was something she would just get over one day, like a phase. Whenever he had his male friends over, he would make sure to introduce them, probably hoping Abby would suddenly fall for one of them. Needless to say, it never worked. At least he didn’t cram the word of God down her throat. How could Abby believe in God if he had made her this way and then punished her for it?
Abby got good grades and was able to go to a school of her choosing. She picked one in Toronto for media studies and fled from her family. Sometimes she wrote to her one brother, but otherwise, they never kept in touch. She hadn’t seen them since she had left.
She wondered if their bibles and their prejudices would protect them from the zombies. Probably not.
* * *
Abby found some keys hanging on hooks in a cupboard. The cupboard was small and opposite the door, which was why she had assumed it held the keys. She had been right. None of the keys was labelled so she just took all of them. First, she had instinctively tried to stick them in her pocket but then remembered she was wearing her nice pants. Her nice pants were the pants she wore to interviews, meetings with important people, or in this case, a doctor’s visit. They had pockets, but they were tiny and wouldn’t be able to hold all the keys without the risk of them popping out. Shrugging out of her bag, she opened a side pocket and jammed them in next to the water bottle that was already in it. She then zipped it back up, put the bag back on her back, and headed for the door.
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