by mike Evans
Theresa looked at her and yelled, “Karen, if you get shot, dad is going to be so pissed.”
Karen shook her head still trying to fight it out. She was stuck on the idea that there was going to be something her dad was going to be able to do for her during the firefight. Kya looked up at the occupants that were in the bunkhouse and saw them laid out everywhere. She counted twenty before losing count that had taken gunfire and were lying bleeding on the floor or on their beds. “I don’t know what to do, they…they’re dead.” Kya said.
Theresa turned around screaming when she saw the carnage. She said, “Okay, now we do need dad. They need dad. He’s the only one that is going to have a chance of saving them!”
A blast went off shaking the building and almost knocking them down. They knelt down looking more like surfers than teens in an apocalypse. Kya waited until she heard a slew of gunfire and ran to the front of the building. There had been no more fire coming in through the walls. She knew that the armory was close to the building and that there was a strong chance that Clary was waging his own battle against the intruders.
She ran to the front wishing there was a window to see out from. She kicked the door open with the rifle already raised and ready to fire. She saw four men shooting towards Clary and shot the first one in the back of the head. His blood sprayed onto the others and the third man back turned around sending gunfire right back at her. Kya leapt back into the building taking any cover she could.
The bullets pinged on the metal tearing through them and she heard the screams of pain. She looked up to see Lou’s daughter, Theresa, holding her stomach. A crimson red was flowing freely through it regardless of how much pressure she was placing on it.
Karen saw this and lost her mind. She hit her radio calling for her dad but there was no answer. Tears streamed down her face as she screamed to Kya, “What the hell were you doing? Why did you open that door?”
Kya tried to say something in her defense and knew nothing would bring her sister back. Theresa’s knees buckled and she fell to the ground. Karen caught her, cradling her little sister in her arms and hushing her as Theresa began to sob uncontrollably. She said it because it was the only thing to say, “You are going to be okay, Theresa. Daddy’s going to come and he’s going to save you,” she wiped at tears laughing not because she thought it was funny but because her emotions were so screwed up right then that she didn’t know what else to do. “He’s going to save you I promise, because that is what he does Theresa…he saves people.”
Theresa smiled and blood started to pour out of her mouth. Karen had seen enough shows to know that if you bled from the mouth it was because something horrible had taken place. She squeezed her sister even harder.
Theresa began to shake violently and then her eyes went cold and the blood that was coming from her mouth and wounds no longer seemed to matter. Karen knelt down as far as she could with her head on her sisters squeezing her tightly. She looked up uncaring that her sister’s blood was covering her face. She yelled to Kya, “What am I supposed to tell my dad? What am I supposed to say?”
Kya opened her mouth but was speechless. She wanted to say something, anything to make her feel better but knew it was impossible. The only thing that she could think of was how the pain that they had already felt for losing people on day one would only grow as the living became more and more precious with what lives were left. The door opened and the man that had fired was standing there and fired twice into Karen’s chest sending her and her sister into a bloody pretzel of limbs.
The man smiled looking accomplished and when he looked down to Kya she was already pulling the trigger. The bullet struck him just above the eye and exploded out the back of it, the hollow point round decimated his skull at the short distance away. The man’s eyes never had the ability to figure out what he was looking at. When the man fell to the ground, not getting up, his legs shook and then he was dead.
Kya turned around slowly not wanting to see the display of horror behind her. There were streams of light pouring in from the holes that were spread through the bunkhouse. She walked quickly to Karen checking her pulse but she was already gone. There were moans and crying coming from the back. She saw that there were countless victims most of whom had already faded away into the dark. She, to this day, had never seen so much blood spilled from the living to another person whom still had a heartbeat. It was something she never wanted to have to experience again.
Chapter 14
Ellie sprinted across as soon as she pushed out the door. Lou was running behind her, pistol in hand and a heavily loaded medic bag in the other. They watched in shock as the men on ATV’s began shooting at the building they lived in. Bullet holes followed by screams took place and she sprinted directly for it. She watched as Clary went around the side of the building firing into the men with no regard for his own safety. After he had shot one she saw the others shoot and then watched Kya come out of nowhere firing on one of the men only to have one go after her. A second later that man’s skull was blown off. Ellie’s heart sank when she saw Clary fall to the ground with blood gushing down the front of his face. The absolute worst-case scenario she could think of was him getting shot and from the blood covering his face she was pretty damn sure that had just happened. When he looked up an instant later confused and blind, relief spilled through.
The man took a step forward placing the rifle next to his head and Ellie screamed nooo as she sprinted towards Clary. She could feel the spins were not far off. Her PT had not started back up, and that had been something put in stone by Lou. If she wanted to get out she needed to try and take it easy whether she liked it or not. Ellie dropped to a knee as one of the men was raising his rifle. Lou was going to fire but knew that he would have just as strong of a chance at hitting Clary as the two men. Ellie started to get the spins so she aimed high squeezing off four shots in a row. The men’s blood covered the back of Clary’s back and neck.
Ellie pointed to him and Lou didn’t need to be told further. He raced across the open ground keeping down for fear of the unknown shooter. The building in front of him exploded and he looked to see the two men left from the trucks Clary had shot up coming his way. When the first stopped to aim, he thought that he was surely dead. The man looked like he was hit by the invisible man with a bat. When Lou had a moment to put two and two together he realized the baseball bat was a rifle round.
The man flew to the side and the only thing reaching the ground first was a chunky pink mist. The shot of the gun erupted filling the small area. The second man sprinted when he spotted Scott on the roof of the building nearby ejecting a spent casing. The man headed straight for Lou firing but unable to aim with the hunting rifle while he did so. Lou fired back praying by God’s good grace that he would somehow hit the man but failed at it.
The stranger who was not a small man was nothing near Lou’s massive frame. When the man tried knocking Lou over with his weight gripping him to tackle, Lou bent down gripping the man around the waist and lifting turned him upside down. Lou brought him up as high as he could and threw him down on the ground head first.
There was a distinct cracking sound beneath him when the man’s head connected with the ground. Lou looked down at the man kicking him over and could tell from the way that his neck was twisted that he was no longer of this Earth. Lou bent over to the side, puking and wiping at it with his arm. He had never killed anything in his entire life. He had seen plenty of people not make it when working in the emergency room at his hospital but that was not of his doing. He had never officially pulled the trigger, or in this case dropped a man with ill intentions towards him.
He bent down checking out Clary, and felt for a pulse never happier to have one found on someone. He looked at his eyes quickly pulling a bottle of wash out from his bag. He looked quickly, noting what he would need to do once they made it back and felt sick to his stomach when he saw the rock shard in his left eye. He knew that unless a miracle came Clary’s way that he wou
ld for sure be blind out of one eye.
He assumed that there was a really good chance that the other eye could be just as bad. He cleaned out both eyes as thoroughly as he could. The back of Clary’s head did not look any better where the rifle had hit him and he hoped as well that the man had a thick enough head to take that type of blow. Trauma to the skull was just as bad as a gunshot could be if his brain started to swell.
Ellie was standing behind them watching Lou. Her ears finally stopped ringing from the gunfire and she looked slowly to the bunkhouse seeing the bullet holes and remembering where they were going originally. She could hear screams of the injured, almost as loud as those of the ones trying to help them, screaming for help.
He pulled out medical tape and something he could quickly bandage Clary’s wounds with. When Clary came around and was still unable to see, he freaked. He gripped onto Lou, the last thing he could remember came back to him and he pulled his knife from his belt. Lou did everything he could to stop the man but where he knew medicine Clary knew death, and was very good at his job. He rolled over taking Lou’s weight in stride and pinned him to the ground knife to his throat. Ellie screamed, “Clary, it is Lou don’t, don’t do it, he’s saving you, dumbshit.”
When Clary heard her voice he said, “Ellie?”
“Yeah, would you get off of Lou, he’s like the only one alive that is going to be able to help these people.”
Clary had everything come back in a flash and felt at his eyes tenderly, but only could feel the bandages Lou had placed there. “Fuck, am I blind, am I blind, Lou?”
Lou didn’t believe in giving false hopes. “I don’t know, Clary. There is a very good chance your left eye is fucked. It might have been salvageable with laser surgery but there’s no way you are going to get that now. There’s just nowhere to get that and if there was then there isn’t anyone who is going to know how to do the procedure. I think your other eye has a good chance, seventy percent or maybe better.”
Clary was already imagining trying to survive in this world blind and was already thinking that he’d much rather just take a round to the head than be someone’s problem for the end of his days. He nodded slowly and said, “Okay, thanks for giving it to me straight, Lou.”
Lou helped him up slowly, Clary’s head wound was no joking matter and the blood was coming at a healthy pace from it. He knew that once it stopped he should be okay but of all the wounds to a human being, the head always bled like a stuck pig. Lou bandaged it knowing he’d have to put staples into it later as well. When the screams poured from the bunkhouse followed by teens slowly staggering out holding wounds, Lou thought he’d seen war footage that didn’t look this real. “Stay here, Clary. There’s injured over there and I need to go help them. Can you do that for me?”
Clary pushed him to go. He stumbled to the ground feeling around finding the building and resting up against it. He patted at his pockets bringing out a cigar case and moved them aside pulling out an emergency cigarette for the weak moments and lit it settling back alongside the building trying to keep his hands from quivering.
“You want me to stay here with you, Clary?”
He shook his head no drawing hard on the smoke. He said, “No, see if there is anything you can do to help Lou. He shouldn’t have to go through this on his own.”
Ellie rubbed Clary’s shoulder. “I’ll be back to get you. You have Scott up on a rooftop he’s going to make sure that you stay safe, Clary, so think of him as your angel.”
He smiled thinking of the irony of his angel being a sniper with a high-powered rifle and thought it was almost poetic given his life. He said, “All right, Ellie, thank you, now go help Lou. He’s only able to handle so much. A bunch of bloodied teens isn’t something anyone can get used to.”
She smiled watching, sitting there for a moment. She couldn’t think of many that were as brave as this man. When he sensed her still standing there the old Clary that she had grown to love came back. “Damn it, girl, go now!”
Ellie sprinted off to help Lou. The first boy was one of the many Kya screamed at to drop. Lou looked at his wounds and wasn’t sure how the boy was still standing. He helped him down to the ground and watched the blood slowly coming from his mouth. He made him as comfortable as he could giving him a shot of pain killers and looked to Kya, “Kya, Kya where are Theresa and Karen? Where are my girls at?”
Chapter 15
The Others
The men sat patiently in the woods waiting for the radio call to come through. Jr looked to Cade and said, “Hey, Cade, how long are we going to fucking wait? We’ve been sitting here for hours.”
Cade lifted the hat from his eyes. He wanted to make sure that Jr knew that he was interrupting the short stint of slumber he was allowing himself. “The fact that we’ve been out here all night Jr is because of me not because of her. Now, I know that your little mind can’t grasp this but I want you to think real fucking hard about what I'm saying right now, okay?”
Jr nodded slowly and Cade continued making his point. “The idea of driving a shit ton of ATV’s and SUV’s through the countryside in the middle of the morning is pretty much like just painting asshole on the side of your truck. Are you calling me an asshole, Jr?”
Jr shook his head no almost hard enough to give himself whiplash. He said, “Hell no, I wouldn’t do that to you, Cade. Do you think that I have a death wish?”
Cade shrugged, “I don’t really give a shit what you think Jr, just so long as you don’t go out of your way to do anything stupid. You and I have an understanding?”
Jr nodded slowly, “You know I think that I'm going to go do one more round of duty out here and make sure all is well before the shit hits the fan.”
Cade stretched realizing he would not be going back to sleep after the interruption. The radio began to chatter before he had time to think about it. It was Bella, he smiled knowing that she had made one of the largest sacrifices and taken the biggest chance of probably anyone including himself in the group. He whistled and the men gathered around.
He did hand signals telling them to head to the fence. They left the ATV’s near Cade’s truck and headed in the direction of the fence. Cade heard gunfire just a minute later and his heart went up in his throat. He yelled over his walkie-talkie, “What the hell is happening, what happened?”
One of the men came back but choked on the answer. Another stepped in his place to speak. “I got bad news, Cade.”
“What, what happened?”
“You better get up here and see for yourself.”
“The man had not even finished saying that when Cade sprinted through the woods. He made it there seconds before Joey was out of sight with Patrick in tow. The man at the fence cut the last of the links no longer keeping the facility safe from intruders. When Cade made it up to the fence a few of the men had their hats off and were staring at the ground. When he saw Bella in a crumpled pile on the ground his heart sank. He said, “What, what happened, who did this to her?”
The men all shrugged and said, “We don’t know, sir, by the time we got up to the fencing they were already gone. She was like this when we got here. I don’t know what it was, Cade.”
Cade walked through ignoring the sounds of the grenade launcher in the distance. Cade walked to his daughter kneeling down scared to try and lift her with the damaged skull. The thought that a piece of her collapsed head could very well fall off, was the worst thing he’d ever had to consider in his life. He felt for her pulse and didn’t have any questions after that. He walked past the men that were trying to hide from the damaging grenades coming in and said, “I don’t want you to keep anyone. I want every bullet you have fired and everyone dead. You leave no one, no prisoners and no witnesses to what we did, the young, the old, and everything in between. If anyone has any questions let me know, I’ll happily help you spend a few of your bullets.”
Jr started to run off but Cade gripped his shoulder. He said, “Jr, you come with me. We’re taking Bella
back home. She deserves a burial.”
Jr wished that he could have grabbed the words back as they slipped off of his tongue. “Sir, we got more important shit to do then throwing dirt over your damn daughter.”
Cade did it without thinking or regret. The damage that could be permanent to Jr was of no concern to him at the moment. He made sure that he had Bella supported in his left hand and sent a blinding speed punch into Jr’s throat hitting it just hard enough but not enough to break his windpipe. He went cross eyed and his hands immediately wrapped around his throat tightly. He tried to say something and Cade pulled his pistol with his right hand. He said, “Do you want to live to see another day Jr or did you want today to be your last?”
Jr quickly shook his head no still coughing and trying to speak but failing miserably. Cade motioned for him to follow and the two men with Bella situated themselves in the rear of the truck. Jr collapsed into the back of it trying to do his best to not touch Bella. Cade had her in his arms unconcerned about the blood loss from her head and his clothes. Tears were slowly coming from him but not a sound. As they got near the outer edge of the woods the dead were there. The driver, Travis, yelled through the window. “Hey, Cade, if we don’t give them something to chew on they’re going to pick us. This rumbling old truck ain’t doing anything to help me out here neither.”
Cade looked down at his daughter. Jr said, “It would have been how she wanted things, Cade. You are doing the right thing. Here, why don’t you let me lift her over the side of the truck.”
Cade nodded and when Jr bent down to pick up her feet a knee was coming up out of nowhere. Unfortunately, there was a lot of rage in Cade and it needed to leave his body. His knee caught Jr square in the face snapping his head up and when he went to say something the blade of Cade’s knife was already coming across towards his neck. Jr tried to block the blade but it did little good and sliced through both hands. When he held them to his chest trying to help slow his bleeding Cade brought it back over the same way slicing through all the layers as deep as he could in Jr’s neck. He gripped at it with his blood filled hands and Cade stabbed him ten times in the stomach before finally kicking a confused and dying Jr. over the side of the truck. The dead that had been running for the truck smelled the blood in the air and ran for Jr. who was bleeding out on the ground.