Eaters (Book 2): The Resistance

by Michelle DePaepe

  I went to the poker game, just like I told you." He gestured with stiff hands, emphasizing his words. "Apparently, Carmen had lots of boyfriends. She was there with a couple of the other guys. Late that night, when we heard the first gunshots, everyone took off. She begged me not to leave her alone and followed me as I ran to find the others. When I saw there were Eaters everywhere and then came down a hall and saw men firing on our guys, I went looking for a safe place to regroup. Then, I remembered that Jake had told me to head to the roof if the shit ever hit the fan. I figured that was some pretty big shit. Carmen was still shadowing me. What could I tell her? Not to follow me? Stay here and die while I try to escape?"

  "How'd she get bit?"

  "There was an Eater under one of the stairwells, a little kid short enough to tuck underneath the third step. As we started up, he grabbed her hand through the rails."

  "That's too bad," Cheryl said, feeling a small pang of remorse. If the woman's bite had been an accident and she had only been with Mark by chance, it was a tragedy. But, was that how it had really gone down? He'd had plenty of time to concoct a story, so she wasn't one hundred percent convinced. "I want to believe you…"

  He shrugged. "I'm telling you the truth. Take it or leave it." .

  That was it? No 'I love you'? No better reassurances? And, he was pissed because she doubted him…after hearing that flirtatious conversation at the barbershop?

  "Do you still love me?"

  Flat on his back again, he folded his arms across his chest, staring up, and sighed out a long breath. "It's not smart to love anymore. It's just a set up for pain."

  As she fought for some way to defend their love—the need for all love to continue—a sharper edge crept into his voice. "How do you know him?"

  "Aidan?" she asked, startled by the one-eighty turn in the conversation. "I told you…I met him in Colorado. He drove me down to Tucson to check on my aunt and my dad."

  "You first told me you hitched a ride with an Army caravan."

  "Okay," she admitted sheepishly. "I did lie about that, but it was because he'd left the fort by the time I found you there. I didn't think he mattered anymore and I didn't want you to be suspicious…like you're being right now."

  "Funny thing that we ran into him in the middle of nowhere. Almost as if you two planned it." Mark sat up. His cheeks were fiery red, making his pockmarked skin look like some Martian landscape. "You sleep with him?"

  "No," she said, meeting his gaze with unblinking eyes. Technically, it was the truth. There had been a few minutes of passion between her and Aidan…but the passion had been interrupted by a fort patrolman rolling up with a spotlight. "We were just road buddies...just trying to stay alive."

  "It was mighty kind of him to drive you hundreds of miles down here. He wouldn't have done that if he wasn't expecting more from you."

  Cheryl thought back to last summer, remembering waking up next to the fountain in an outdoor mall in Golden, Colorado with Aidan's gun pointed at her. He'd been a bit of an ass at first, but he'd given her a ride on his motorcycle when a large group of Eaters approached. He'd taken her and another couple in at his cabin and accompanied her all the way down to Arizona. There was just that one night in the desert when they'd been nearly naked together, but then…she'd thought Mark was dead. How could she be blamed for that?

  "Maybe. I don't know. He was hurting too. He'd just lost his girlfriend. Found her and her kid dead. And he had nowhere else to go…"

  "I don't trust him or the rest of these Vultures." He said their name as if it caused a foul taste in his mouth and he had to spit it out.

  "Why are you being this way?" she said, as her exasperation leaked out in a huff. "We've got to band together…to maintain hope if we're going to—"

  "There's no hope if we stay around here. Jake says we gotta get out of these mountains or we're toast. I believe him. This isn't a safe area."

  "Jake? What does he know? It's stupid to think we're going to make it all the way to Omaha on foot. It might make better sense to dig in here…build some kind of underground bunker." Actually, she was already envisioning a town with a spider web of tree houses and traps to keep it safe.

  "Well…that's where I'm going. If you want to stay here and play house with Aidan, be my guest."

  Shocked by his venom, Cheryl looked away, feeling the sting in her heart.

  Their conversation went downhill from there, both of them remaining defensive. It was obvious that Mark had withdrawn into the safety of a soldier mindset—a place where he could focus on his own survival and not care about her or anyone else. She wanted to tell him that he was wrong—that love was all they had left. Instead, she jumped up and ran out of the tent before he could see the tears forming in her eyes.

  She stomped around the camp for a while, not wanting to talk to anyone. Then, after spending some time in isolation under a clump of shrubs, she began to calm down. Just because Mark was going off the deep end, that didn't mean she had to as well. If she wanted to survive, she was going to have to keep a cool head. Staring out at the darkness, she wondered how anyone could hope to make their way in the chaos of this world on their own. She started to feel pity for Mark's failure to see that.

  Hoping to find Jasmine, or someone else she could talk to, she began to meander again. She spotted Aidan on the ground whispering up to Diego in his tree top bunk where he was perched with a rifle. Not wanting Mark to catch her talking to him, she turned and started to go back the way she came.

  "Cheryl!" Aidan called, after spotting her.

  She froze as he came running up.

  He motioned for her to follow him to a more secluded area.

  What the hell? Mark couldn't tell her who talk to, and she really wanted to know how he'd been wounded.

  When they were behind one of the teepees, she pointed to his eye patch. "What happened?"

  "This?" he asked, pointing to his bad eye. He lifted the patch up, revealing an eyelid collapsed in over a sunken pit.

  Cheryl shuddered.

  "I got in a scuffle with a guard at the fort. He wasn't too happy about me trying to check my bike out of Impound."

  "But, it was your motorcycle."

  "Not…technically."

  She remembered now, the memory slamming into her like a fist to the cheek. The Harley-Davidson Electric Glide Classic had belonged to the guy who'd tried to assault her at Big Todd's. Since Aidan's bike had broken down and they had to bail out of a bad situation real quick, they figured they needed his bike more than his corpse ever would.

  "The guard had a poker like the ones they use at the Baiting Stations. He rammed it into my face before I saw it coming. At the time, I was too pissed to realize how bad it was. After a couple more rounds with him, I managed to kick the poker out of his hand and smashed his head with my helmet."

  "You…"

  "No. I didn't kill him. I just knocked him out. But, I'm pretty sure that he spent at least a week in the infirmary after that. Maybe that's where I should have gone, but I figured my freedom was worth losing an eye. By the next day, it was oozing pus, infected and hurting like a mother. When I ran into the evacuees from Black Todd's, I looked so bad they didn't think I was going to make it, but Jade's father had been a horse veterinarian, so he said he knew a thing or two. He told me I had the choice of giving up the eye, or chancing the infection spreading and losing my life. He did the operation himself after giving me a couple shots of the moonshine he had left in his pack. You know…it's the weirdest thing to see your own eyeball staring back up at you. I gave the damn thing a funeral there, buried it under a rock."

  Cheryl couldn't help but think how odd it was that the two men she cared about both had physical scars of some sort. Then, she remembered her leg. They were all part of the mutilated survivors club.

  "I was so worried about you. Seriously didn't ever think I'd see you again, at least not alive. I had nightmares that I'd be on patrol duty and have to shoot you when you came back as an Eater."
>
  He chuckled. "Came pretty close to being bitten lots of times, so I can't say that would never have happened."

  She winced, trying not to envision that scenario.

  "There were some pretty rough days out here when I wished going back to the fort was an option, but I couldn't. I was an outlaw. And I'm pretty sure if I had returned, the welcoming committee wouldn't have come bearing a plate of cookies."

  "Not likely," she said. "Even if you'd been allowed in, you'd have gone batty going through quarantine again and probably would have ended up in the brink anyway."

  He laughed. "That's truer than I'd like to admit."

  There was a moment of awkward silence between them. Then, their eyes met.

  "Cheryl…" he said.

  She interrupted whatever thought he intended to finish. "You know…Mark isn't too happy about the time we spent together. He's kind of being an ass. I wish he'd just get over it, but I think he's got a pretty doom and gloom mindset these days."

  "You can't really blame him, can you? Things do look pretty dire."

  "Yeah, but it's either just put bullets in our own heads or go on. To go on, I've got to have some kind of optimism."

  "That what? That we'll take the world back?"

  "I'm not living in that kind of fantasy land. I'd just like to find somewhere relatively safe, get back to some kind of normalcy…whatever flavor that happens to be."

  He agreed. "Whatever that looks like…I'm all for it."

  They talked for a few more minutes, keeping the conversation lighter. He told her about more of the defensive tactics they'd taken to secure the camp. There were bear traps set in an arc around the camp, tens of yards out; their locations were marked with flags made out of strips of red cloth and sticks. He also told her they had dozens of Molotov cocktails prepared, only for use in a worst case scenario, explaining that turning the mountainside into a flaming hell wasn't something he'd do on a whim.

  As conversation wound down, he tried to offer her his airborne bunk again, but she refused. "You know I can handle a gun just fine. I'll stay down here and help out with the 3 a.m. shift as I promised."

  Then, he walked off mumbling, "You always were a bit stubborn…haven't changed."

  Before she could decide whether to go back to her tent or stay awake and wait for her shift, a figure jumped out of the shadows. It was Deanna, who'd obviously been eavesdropping. Her face was scrunched up in a wicked snarl.

  She twisted a knife in front of Cheryl's face.

  "Don't mess with my man…or…I swear I'll rip you!"

  Cheryl held her hands up. "Whoa…I don't know what you're talking about. Aidan's just an old friend."

  "Bullshit," she said. "He's talked about you for months like you was some kind of holy goddess…and I've seen the way he looks at you…when you don't know he's looking."

  Cheryl was dumbstruck as Deanna took off. As if there wasn't enough to worry about…

  Chapter 12

  Since Kai had insomnia and was wandering around the camp, Cheryl hung out with him until it was time for her shift. Then, her guard time was spent pacing, marking time with Jade, as they listened for anyone encroaching on the camp. A couple of Eaters ventured nearby, but their louds moans and clumsy gait gave them away long before they were a serious threat. Jade took both of them out with his crossbow, keeping it quiet to avoid rousing those who were sleeping.

  When her shift was over, she crawled back into the tent. Mark wasn't there. She supposed he did his earlier shift on the other side of the camp and hadn't returned. Figuring she could squeeze in a little sleep, she lay down and curled into a ball, immediately drifting off into a dreamless sleep.

  Shortly after dawn, she woke and found that she was still in the tent alone. She could hear the camp already buzzing with activity. After unzipping the tent, she stepped out and followed her nose towards the center where a group of people were sitting next to the newly lit fire. She couldn't believe her eyes when she saw eggs frying in pans over the fire pit.

  Earl patted the stump next to him when he saw her. "Sleeping in, hunh?"

  Cheryl sat. "I had a late watch shift." She salivated at the fried egg and deer sausage on his plate. "Eggs? I haven't had them in months!"

  "We got a few hens a few weeks ago. Rescued them from a pen where they were down to pecking nothing but dirt. We keep them about a quarter mile from here, though, so they don't attract trouble. They didn't have chickens at that fort you were at?"

  "They had some for a while, but they disappeared. Rumor was someone stole them out of the coop for a meal."

  "That's a shame. Then again, what I would give for some fried drumsticks like my momma used to make!"

  After filling her plate with a meager ration of the breakfast, she ate voraciously, unable to slow herself down. When she was done, she helped wash dishes and wandered around until she found Mark. Eventually, she spotted him around the back side of some tents with Jake and several of the other guys from her group who were getting a lesson from Jade on how to work a crossbow.

  She waved and passed on by, continuing to visit here and there, hoping to find some useful task to do. Kai was tending minor wounds around the camp. Zach and Diego seemed to be working on their own personal fitness routines—on opposite sides of the camp. Jasmine was learning how to sew deer hides to use to make the tents and teepees more element-proof. And Edmond was sweeping and tidying up his sleeping area.

  She was thankful that she didn't see Deanna anywhere. Cheryl figured that after making her threat, she'd been all over Aidan last night, leaving her scent like a tomcat marking its territory.

  When she spotted him, he was sitting next to a large flat stone that served as a table to hold an array of guns. He and another one of his men were starting to clean them.

  "Morning," she said as she walked up.

  "Hey," Aidan said, continuing to clean the barrel of an AR-15 with a makeshift brush made out of some sort of plant fibers.

  "Everyone seems pretty busy. What can I do to help?"

  "Well," he said, after thinking for a moment. "We need someone to scout by the road today. How about you and…"

  "Chip," the young man said as he walked up, seeing Aidan pointing at him.

  "You and Chip can take a couple of guns and grab some binoculars from the supply tent. When you see the road, stay hidden. Any movement, any vehicle, anything…you boogie back here and report.

  Cheryl agreed, thankful that she was assigned a task, so she could feel useful. She and Chip headed out a few minutes later after getting some water and strips of deer jerky to take with them.

  When they reached an overlook a half hour later, they found a perch with a good view of the road below. A nearby oak tree gave them shade, and the scrub around it provided cover, so they wouldn't be seen by anyone driving by.

  The next few hours were uneventful. They saw nothing but a jackrabbit hopping across the road and a snake slithering out to the middle to sun itself before deciding to mosey on to the other side.

  By the time the sun was directly overhead and they were sweating through their shirts, her resolve to do something useful began to wane along with her ability to keep her eyelids open. They decided to take turns napping. Cheryl went first after explaining how little sleep she'd had the night before.

  She had no idea how much time had passed when Chip nudged her awake. "Cheryl!"

  Instantly alert, she sprang up from her curled position and peered through the binoculars after he handed them to her.

  There was a caravan of white trucks. She counted…eight, nine, ten, eleven. When they got closer, she could see the ominous triangle symbol on their roofs.

  O.N.E.

  A chill rippled down her spine, a swirl of both curiosity and fear. Who were they? Why were they here?

  She soon got an answer, but certainly not one she wanted.

  The trucks stopped in the road and men hopped out. There were in full tactical gear including helmets and gloves that seemed to be
made out of some sort of chainmail or shark-proof fabric that gleamed in the sunlight. Automatic weapons in hand, they ran to the back of the trucks and rolled up the doors. Then, they ran back and got inside the cab.

  A second later, she saw hands fumbling around the corners of the truck walls. Then, faces appeared—horrible, gnarled, decayed faces with dead, filmy eyes. They began to tumble out. One by one they came, landing on the road then picking themselves up and shambling around. At first their movements seemed random and aimless, but it didn't take long for them to orient themselves like compasses, pointing towards the very spot where she and Chip were sitting.

  As the trucks pulled away, heading further down the road, the discarded Eaters started moving uphill towards them.

  "Oh man," Chip said, scrambling to his feet. "How many?"

  "Looks ten, twelve dozen at least."

  "Get back to camp!"

  They ran as fast as their legs would carry them, leaping over rocks, jumping gullies, and ignoring the scrapes from tree limbs and prickles from cactus needles that reached out to grab them as they passed.

  Minutes later, they arrived back at the camp, so breathless and exhausted that neither could speak for a few seconds. Then, finally they blurted it out.

  "Trucks…there were trucks. They let them out!"

  "…coming this way…hundred…maybe more…"

  Aidan didn't waste time pressing them for more details. "Get to the trees!"

  His command started a chain reaction. Their method of sounding the alarm was a fast-spreading whisper, one man or woman to the next. Seconds later, they were all sky high, some in the raised bunks, others clinging to the trunks of trees. They looked down, waiting with guns at the ready.

  Cheryl asked one of the Vultures who was perched next to her why they didn't just bug out on their motorcycles and he replied, "We did that once. Camp was nearly destroyed. They came through like a bunch of marauding bears. They smelled our scent on the teepees and tents and tore them to shreds. It took us a couple of weeks to put things back together. So…if it's no more than a few dozen of them…we decided we can handle it. We'll just take to the trees, take them out, and haul the bodies away, so they don't stink up the place or attract more."