CHAPTER 26
Breath in, Hold, Breath out, Pause, Breath in, Hold, Breath out, Pause, Breath in, I thought.
I did this ten times before I even opened my eyes. When I did open them I grinned in the dark “Still alive,” I said to myself. I stood and checked the time. It was five-thirty in the morning. I made my way to the door, arms outstretched so I wouldn’t run into it. I tried the handle and while it would turn I couldn’t pull the door open, they had locked me in. I knocked on the door lightly. When I received no answer I knocked a little louder each time until I heard rustling on the other side of the door. I hadn’t told them to set a guard but they did anyways. Good job guys, I thought. “Hey who’s out there?” I asked quietly.
“James? Hey man, it's Justin. It’s good to hear that you’re still you.”
“You’re telling me. You mind letting me out?”
“Yeah no problem,” I heard him struggling with the knots. He opened the door and I squinted at the early morning light. “You feeling ok?”
“Other than a stiff back from sleeping on the ground I feel fine,” I said as I wiped my eyes trying to clear my eyes. I walked into the kitchen and snagged a bottle of water. Justin came over to talk but I could tell that he was tired and that guarding me wasn’t the greatest of jobs. “Hey man, if you’re tired then go ahead and go to bed. You don’t have to worry about me.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, you look tired.”
“Thanks, man.”
“No problem.”
I cracked my neck loudly and smiled. If Sarah was around she would probably have smacked me for doing that. I popped the rest of my back and headed to my room. It was still very early and I didn’t want to wake Sarah so I snuck into my room and grabbed a pair of running shoes and my holster with its pistol. I felt like I needed to burn off some nervous energy, the relief of still being human coursed through me. I eased the door shut and went to the living room. I put on my shoes and buckled on my holster. I climbed the ladder and went to say good morning to Carrie who was on guard duty. “Morning.”
“Morning James,” she said hugging me, “Glad you’re ok.”
“Me too. How’s guard duty?”
“Boring.”
“Good. Let’s hope it stays that way.”
“Good point. What are you doing up so early?”
“Couldn’t sleep. I’m going to go for a walk. I’ll be back in a little while.”
“Ok, be careful.”
“I always am,” I said smiling at her before heading down the ladder and jogging down the driveway. I turned out onto the highway and started down the middle of the. It was a weird feeling to be running down the middle of the highway. I felt like I should get to the side of the road before a car comes. It was kind of like the feeling where you look both ways before crossing a one-way street. You know that a car can only come from one direction but looking both ways has been drilled into you so much that you’re compelled to do it. I knew no cars or trucks would be coming but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was in danger. While I walked I thought about something that had been bothering me. Why the hell the Walkers were so fast? It didn’t make sense. They should all have been piles of muck, but they were the most mobile ones I had seen since the day we left school. The one outside the door had been all but a puddle but the ones on the other side were able to chase us, chase us and damn near catch us. What was different? We were in a basement. It was dark, away from most of the elements and it was… cold. That had to be it. It was colder the deeper you got so the Walkers behind the door must have been preserved better. Mr. Puddle must have been bitten and attacked one of the kids. They must have fled, led by the librarian, to a safe place. The infected kid would have turned and gone after all the others. They would have been in that dark cold room just waiting until someone was dumb enough to come knocking. I hit a mile and a half and turned around. Now that I had figured out that mystery I turned my attention to another phenomenon, how fucking lucky I was. I don’t know how I was able to make it through that literal wave of Walkers to reach Liz but I should have been bitten, scratch or hurt in some way. Granted that I had almost died when the librarian came at me from behind but then luck, or rather Liz intervened and took her out. I wouldn’t have been so surprised if she had used a rifle but she had used a weapon that she had just started using and it had been a fantastic shot. Someone was watching over me because there was no way I should still be alive.
I walked inside and went straight to my room. Sarah was still sleeping peacefully but I decided to wake her anyways. I walked over to the bed and sat on the edge. I smiled when I saw that she was holding my pillow. I put my hand on her shoulder and leaned in close to whisper in her ear, “Time to get up beautiful,” I shook her gently. Her eyes opened and widened when she realized who was waking her.
“James!” she said throwing her arms around me. She let go with a grimace, “Are you feeling ok? Do you have a fever? Oh God!” The panic was rising in her voice.
“Sarah. Sarah, I’m fine. I just went for a walk. I’m ok.”
“You scared me,” she said putting her hands back around me.
“Sorry,” I smiled.
“I’m just glad you’re ok.”
“Me too. Should we get some breakfast?”
“Sounds good.”
Stepping out of the bedroom I saw that most were up. It was still pretty early but I guess they were eager to see that I was ok. I got a couple more hugs from the girls and sat down to eat a bowl of cereal. As I spooned the food into my mouth I saw a few people giving me curious glances. “You guys, I’m fine.”
“You sure?” asked Matt.
“Yeah. I’m fine,” I said before sneezing. They all stared wide-eyed. “Now that was just bad timing,” I said grinning, “I’m fine, really.” My confidence seemed to put them back at ease and they went about their regular routines. We finished breakfast and went to work on the storage. We were making a lot of progress and I figured, or at least I hoped, that we would finish ahead of schedule. After digging for several hours I noticed that Sarah had disappeared. She had helped dig or even brought water. Where are you? I thought. “Hey guys, I’ll be right back.” They didn’t even say anything, they just grunted in confirmation that they heard me. I wiped my hands on my pants and went inside. After a quick look around most of the house, I headed to the most logical place, the girls room. I knocked on the door and after receiving no answer I turned the knob and walked in. My jaw hit the floor. There was shit everywhere. Clothes, wrappers, books, cans, bottles, blankets, and pillows were all piled high. “Wow,” I said to myself. Even though you couldn’t see the floor you could tell where each girl had claimed an area and made it her own. Each section was as different as the individual. Take for example the area that obviously belonged to Liz. It was a fortress of books. They surrounded her sleeping area and were stacked high enough that if she was to lie down she wouldn’t be visible. Michelle’s area was filled with oversized pillows, coloring books and stuffed animals, her bear at the forefront. There was a relatively clear space on the floor, just a sleeping back, pillows, blankets and a few pieces of clothing. Must have been Sarah’s, I thought. “Hello?” I called out. No answer. I left and went back outside. Where could she be? I wondered as I checked the roof. “Hey, Christina. Have you seen Sarah?”
“Yeah she went towards the Pole Barn about forty-five minutes ago.”
“Why would she go there?”
“I don’t know.”
“Alright, thanks.”
“Sure, no problem.”
I climbed down the ladder and walked over to the Pole Barn. I laid my hand on the knob but before I turned it I heard something coming from behind the building, I heard singing. I followed the sweet melody that was filling my ears behind the Pole Barn and saw that Sarah had started her own little project. She was on her knees weeding a small personal garden and singing. I smiled as I listened. I knew that she sang, not that she would ever let me liste
n, but I never knew she sounded so… beautiful. I stood hidden just behind the corner of the building and listened. I know, I know, it sounds like I was creeping on her but I couldn’t help it. I was enchanted by her voice, it was haunting and beautiful and I could feel it settle gently in my chest, in my soul. I had never heard the song that she was singing but I knew that I would remember every word that I could hear until the day I died. She finished her song and I decided to make my presence known so I did the only thing I could think of, I started clapping as I rounded the corner. I don’t think I had ever seen her jump so high in my life. I was proud as I saw her hand fly to her hip where her pistol sat. I stopped clapping and put my hands up. “Don’t shoot, it’s just me,” I said with a smile. The smile faded when she didn’t take her hand away from her gun.
“How long have you been standing there?” she asked seriously.
“A little while, why?”
“I don’t like it when people hear me sing.”
“Why? You have a beautiful voice,” I said closing the distance.
“No, I don’t.”
“Sarah. Would I lie to you?”
“No,” she said looking down.
“What were you singing?”
“Something I came up with,” she said softly.
My eyebrows shot up, “You wrote that?” She nodded. “It was great.”
“No.”
I smiled and gave her a hug, “Will you sing it again?”
“No.”
“Please?”
“Nope.”
“Alright, I won’t push. I’ll let you get back to your garden,” I said letting her go, “I’ll see you later.”
“Ok,” she said kneeling back down. I rounded the corner and stopped. I stood stock still in hopes that she might start singing again. “I know you’re still there James. Go away.” I smiled to myself and left. She knew me too well.
I spent the majority of the rest of the day working on the storage. We were making some serious progress now that people were starting to get used to the labor. You could fit a few people inside the hole and they could stand up comfortably. I figured that we were quickly approaching the time when we would need to start building a wooden frame to help support the surrounding clay. It was getting close to four when I called off work for the day and we all headed inside. We washed up and ate an early dinner.
As we sat in the living room just relaxing Thomas came to me and said, “James we have a small problem.”
“Yeah and what’s that?”
“Where the hell are we going to put all the books we got from the library? We don’t have any room.”
“Let’s see how many we have,” I said getting out of my chair with a groan. We walked out to the trucks and I opened the tailgate of one of them. The back was filled with books of every size. “Hmmm,” I mused, “I see your point. And we don’t have anywhere we can put them inside?”
“Not unless we want to sleep on top of them.”
“Well I guess we’ll just have to make room in the Pole Barn,” I said walking towards the building
“Yeah but where?”
“I’ll show you.”
We opened the door to the Pole Barn and I walked up the narrow flight of stairs to the second floor. It was only half as big as the bottom floor but it had fewer boxes since we had cleaned everything out. “We can build some shelves in here later but stacking them will have to do for now. We’re going to need the trucks soon. I can put Liz in charge of organizing them since she wanted them so bad.”
“What are we going to need the trucks for?” Thomas asked curiously.
“A few things, one of which is picking up lumber for not only the shelves but to make braces for the storage, we don’t want dirt to crush us while we dig.”
“Good plan.”
“Yeah. Thought you’d like that,” I said heading down the stairs.
“Where are you going?”
“I guess there’s no better time to unload those books. Liz would kill us of any of them got damaged so we better get them out of the trucks.”
“Very true. Alright, I’ll get the others,” he said passing me and heading inside.
I grabbed an armload of books and started hauling them to the building. After dropping them off upstairs I headed back for another load. By the time I was done with the second stack the others were outside and unloading. We were nearly done with one truck when Sarah said, “Wait a minute.”
“What, why?” I asked putting down my stack of books.
“We’re doing this wrong.”
“How are we doing this wrong?” asked Jason.
“We’re unloading trucks. Trucks. That means they can move.”
“Wow. Aren’t we genius’,” Muttered Matt.
Sarah climbed into the truck and backed it up until it was as close to the door as she could get it. She got out and began unloading again. Now it was my turn to have the bright idea “Let’s try this,” I said, “Let’s have one person in the back of the truck to hand books out and the rest of us will form a bucket line up the stairs. We can pass books along the line and stack them at the top.”
“Sounds good to me,” said Justin rubbing his arms.
We formed a line up the stairs and passed books one by one down the line until the truck was empty. We parked the empty truck and brought in another one and repeated the progress. You might think it would take longer to do it this way but we didn’t care. It felt better and so we kept going. Once we finished unloading the trucks everyone had had a long day and they were ready to hit the sack.
I was sitting in the living room drinking a beer when some of it went down the wrong pipe. Those present looked up at me with wide eyes and tensed muscles. It appears, I thought, that they still think you might be infected. I tried to brush it off but even after I finished coughing they didn’t relax. “You guys still think I might be sick huh?” I asked them. They didn’t want to say anything and some refused to look at me. “It’s ok. I’ll spend another night in quarantine if it’ll make you feel better, but someone better bring me soup if I do get sick,” I said good-naturedly, trying to ease their fears.
As it got darker and I got even more tired I decided to go to sleep and went to my room to change. Sarah was in my room changing. “Oh, sorry,” I said backing out.
“It’s fine,” she said as she slipped one of my t-shirts on, “You ready for bed?”
“I’m going to spend another night in quarantine.”
“What? Why? Are you feeling ok?”
“I feel fine but some of the others are still worried I might be sick.”
“Ugh. That’s so stupid,” she said pouting.
“I know but it’s a small price to pay if it’ll make them more comfortable.”
“What about me? You’re not making me more comfortable.”
I smiled, “I’m sure you’ll be fine. You’ve been fine without me so far. One more night won’t kill you.”
“You don’t know that.”
I laughed and changed into a pair of basketball shorts. “Good night beautiful,” I said slipping out of the room.
I went to my self-imposed prison and got into my sleeping bag. I was dead tired and even the hard ground felt like I was lying on a cloud. I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep.
I didn’t know how long I had been asleep but it couldn’t have been long. My eyes shot open and I heard someone opening the door to my cell. I wondered who it was until my nostrils were filled with mint. “What are you doing here Sarah?” I whispered in the dark.
“I didn’t feel like sleeping alone again,” she said making her way slowly to where I was on the ground.
I clicked on my flashlight and pointed it toward the ceiling. The small room was bathed in diffused light and shadows were cast upon every surface. “You shouldn’t be in here.”
“And why not?”
“I might be infected.”
“Do you think you’re infected?” she asked sitting next to me,
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br /> “I think that if I was sick then I would have had symptoms by now, so no.”
“Me neither,” she said before kissing me.
I felt her shiver and while I knew I was an adequate kisser I knew the floor was as cold as ice and the more likely source of her involuntary movement. “You’re cold. Take my sleeping bag.”
“No, we can share.”
“It might be a tight fit.”
Survivors Series (Book 1): Heroes Aren't Born Page 40