by mike Evans
Joey nodded slowing down and then tested his voice a second time. He cleared it and said, “What, what happened, Kya? Why am I in this bed, where am I, is this the hospital?”
Her heart broke as she thought of it. “I’m sorry, but you don’t remember anything? You don’t remember what happened?”
Joey shook his head no for a second and then looked down the long room seeing that they were the only ones in there. When he saw part of Patrick’s pack laying on the bed it brought everything rushing back to him, hitting him like a semi-truck. Joey tried pushing himself up and felt the pain rushing through his side and abdomen. “Was Patrick okay? Did Mr. Lou save him, did he make it, is he okay, what else happened?” The questions poured out of him now that he remembered.
Kya wiped at new tears. She shook her head no slowly giving Joey a hug that the two of them both needed. She held him until he no longer was trying to get up. “Lou is going to take care of you while we’re gone. We’re taking who is left and going to go to the bad people’s base.”
Joey said, “What are you going to do that for? What if they win?”
Kya kissed his forehead again and handed him a fresh cup of water. She said, “I’m going to go tell Lou that you are awake. We can talk about everything else that happened later if Lou doesn’t fill you in on the details. It’s best if you just relax and try not to move. I don’t know too much about what he did for you but they always say you need to sit back and relax. It won’t hurt anything. But Ellie said that you tried your best to save Patrick. I can’t tell you how much that means to me, Joey.”
“He was, or is, well, he is my best friend. I’d do anything for Patrick, Kya. When I saw Bella run that knife across his neck, all I could think about was saving him. She shot me while I was running and I hit her with my baseball bat that Mr. Clary made for me.”
Kya nodded her head just barely able to speak, “We will be back before too long, Joey, I promise.”
When she grabbed her gear and turned around she saw Ellie sitting in the doorway, wiping at a few tears of her own. Ellie came in giving Joey a hug. “Hey, I’ll be back, Joey, we all will. And I’ll try and bring something good to eat for you when I come back. I’m sure there’s something lying around that is horrible for you.”
Joey smiled wiping the tears from his face. He pulled her in close and whispered, “Look on the top left shelf in the kitchen in the far back behind the extra plates. There might be some candy bars and cookies back there. Don’t tell anyone that it is there. Cookies are almost gone; I’m going to miss cookies, Ellie.”
“Joey, as long as we can have an oven there will be cookies, I can promise you that.”
“Yeah, but there’s a lot of good stuff at Keebler that isn’t ever going to get delivered.”
“We have bad guys to go take care of, Joey, we will be back in a few hours.”
Joey nodded and the two girls left. Kya said, “So, I assume that they’re ready to leave?”
Lou saw them walking and Ellie said, “Hey, Lou, it’s time to head out. Clary wanted me to give you these.”
He said, “You’ve seen the basics before, right, so he sent a care package. If any of the dead or those asshats try getting in here you’ve got more bullets than you should ever need in this bag. You have any questions about how anything works before I go?”
Lou took the bag staring at a hundred magazines in it. He took both rifles from her and a pistol and said, “You girls be safe. I know how to use these for the most part. Just aim it at the assholes and pull the trigger, right? I can handle it. You get going, the sooner those guys are gone the better. It’ll be nice to have one less thing to worry about. My biggest fear has already been brought into existence. It won’t be easy for anything to get worse. I guess if I had to worry about you kids that I’ve grown to know and love over the last few months I would, but do me a favor, Ellie, Kya, try not to do anything stupid. Can you do your best to be safe, please?”
“The stupid, yes, the safe, we will do our best. We’re purposely going to a group of people who are obviously insane, given the fact they sent a fifteen-year-old girl in as a freaking spy, I mean, talk about father of the year material,” Ellie said.
Lou asked, “I saw Clary messing with a tank, is he really going to do something with that?”
A small grin stretched across her face as she thought about what the destruction was going to look like when he unleashed hell on the housing community. Ellie chuckled and said, “He and Greg are taking it in…don’t worry Greg isn’t driving. They’re going to decimate that effing place and whoever is left is going to get picked off one by one. We hope very much to have the dead in tow behind us so we can use the bastards that came to the base as bait. It is going to be one hell of a party for the men who are clueless that we’re coming.”
“Even as bad as it sounds, honestly, it could still be worse and I don’t think that I would feel like we’re getting the justice that I’m seeking,” Lou responded.
Kya said, “There isn’t much else we could do, Lou, with the amount of firepower and the limited resources that we have going on right now. I promise if we had the resources we would wage a war on those men that would leave them running for days on end. Unfortunately, since the asshats took out so many of us it’s difficult to do anything about it at the moment. They won’t have to worry about us coming for days on end and we won’t have to worry about them taking the time to regroup and get new men to replace the old.”
Lou gave them both a hug, saying, “I just hope very much that I get to see you later. I can’t handle anymore loss today. In all honesty, there isn’t much more to lose besides you kids. I guess I’d miss Aslin and Clary, Christ the idea of running this place with all of you and no other adults would drive me crazy.”
Ellie pulled him down and gave him a kiss on the cheek. She said, “You are the closest thing to a dad that I’ve had in a long time, Lou.”
Kya did the same thing and by the time they left he felt hope and a reason to live instead of taking the easy way out in life.
Lou walked around the corner knocking on the side of the door frame. Joey sat staring around unsure what he was supposed to be doing. Lou stopped by the office section of the building grabbing a few odds and ends. He held up a Snickers bar and a Marvel Comics magazine. “Are you interested in either of these, Joey?”
Joey looked like he wasn’t going to say anything but then motioned with his hands for both of them. He said, “You’ve been hiding candy, Lou?”
Lou patted his belly, chuckling. “You think I keep this thing up just eating salads and meat? It isn’t easy keeping this much good looking going at once.”
Joey patted his belly which, unlike Lou’s, had a layer of solid muscle beneath it. He said, “Yeah, I have to, like, fight the girls off of me.”
Lou tossed him the Snicker’s bar, “Dig in, buddy, I don’t want you leaving a pound lighter than you are now, lots of that water too. I’ll see if the gym has any Gatorade in it tomorrow when we start trying to recollect what is going on here. There’s going to be a bit of weirdness for a few days until we get things back in order. We are going to need you to get better quick because we won’t be able to handle having a man down for that long. You are important around here, Joey.”
Joey ripped the wrapper down the middle of the candy bar and went to take a bite off of it before thinking. He ripped it in half and threw it to Lou. He said, “You are important too, Lou. You aren’t getting rid of me anytime soon, you can count on that! I got cookies if you want to trade sometime, Lou.”
Lou popped the rest of what he had into his mouth and winked. “You need anything before I do a walk around? I want to make sure and lock down the windows and doors. If the worst case scenario happens I want to make this place impossible to get into, or at least hard enough that by the time they do try and get in I’ll be close enough to make them regret it. I’m going to shut all the lights down; are you going to be okay with that, Joey?”
Joey
looked at the long dark room. He looked down at his side gripping his baseball bat with one hand and brought it up setting it next to him with a flashlight on the other side. “I’ll be okay, Lou, don’t worry about me. But you are coming back, aren’t you? You aren't going to go sit somewhere on your own in the dark, right?”
Lou shook his head, “No, buddy, I’ll be back real soon, give me about twenty minutes. I’m going to be quick.”
Joey who didn’t know, asked, “Are you going to get Karen and Teresa before you lock it down? Are they okay, Lou?”
Lou tried to smile but grief flooded back over him; the visions of his daughters, both bloodied by bullets, in his arms brought him back to a personal hell. It was one that he was sure he would be able to revisit on a regular basis. Lou tried to keep a straight face until he turned around, the gut wrenching agony of the losses he had pouring out of him were more than he could handle at the moment. He went to a nearby room and buried his face in a pillow to muffle the cries and screams. He, for a moment, actually wished that there would be someone trying to get in because he was confident that he would leave nothing of them to be Turned.
Chapter 25
Greg secured the chains to the feet of the men that had fallen to the tank. There were three Humvees lined up, and enough bullets and gear that it dropped the trucks suspension by a foot. McQuaig, Aslin, and Shaun each had a set of keys and were ready to roll out. Ellie and Kya came up to it as the last two the group had been waiting for. Clary said, “Hey, Kya, you two ready to go?”
She smiled and everyone piled into the Humvees. Greg whispered to Clary as they climbed into the tank. “You are going to let me pull the trigger on one of those shots, right? I want to stick one of those shells right up their asses.”
Clary smiled patting him on the shoulder. “You be my guest. I only hope that by the time that we’re in there we still have some people to use the forty cal. gun on. When those bombs go off they’ll be getting off easy. The blast for that is going to decimate them.”
The Humvees went ahead driving with lights off in the dusk of day. They took their time keeping the engines from screaming like they were capable of. They each took a separate route communicating while setting up with radios around the base. The dead that were near were taken out with the silenced high-power rifles. The Humvees parked at surrounding houses and the teens took turns climbing atop of the roofs. The guns would be near their limits for firing distances but more than likely the teens would be safe where they were. The sniper rifles were set on bipods and Shaun knew without fear that his and the others with those guns would be just stretching its legs at the distance he was at.
Shaun, McQuaig, and Aslin all hit their radios one after another. There would be sunlight up for another hour but the direction that Shaun was sitting in they would have a hell of a time seeing him. Ellie looked at the sunset and said, “You know it’s a shame we have to ruin this beautiful evening with more bloodshed.”
Shaun stared at her for a moment before she winked. “You know I had you…for a minute, maybe two, but I did have you.”
Shaun said, “You aren’t ever getting rid of me, Ellie. Aliyah, are you ready to rock?”
She held up the machine gun set to full auto and showed a full blanket laid out on the roof with fifteen magazines sitting on it. “Yeah, I'm ready. I just hope that this plan works. There’s so much going on, I don’t want to get shot because we aren’t prepared like we should be.”
Ellie said, “We’ll be okay, Aliyah, you just need to have a little faith. Do you know why we’re on the roof instead of the ground?”
She shook her head no, and said “Why?”
“Because think about the three groups firing, what direction are we firing at besides at each other?”
“Down, I guess.”
Shaun cut in, “We can’t shoot each other if we aren’t firing directly across from each other. These guys won’t ever know what hit them.”
Aslin squawked over the radio. “Christ, are you guys ready or aren’t you? Clary is only going to be able to sit still for so long before he gets antsy and just starts bombing the absolute shit out of them.”
McQuaig said, “We’re ready and able.”
Shaun said, “You better be ready, Aslin, because we are also.”
Aslin said, “Yeah, I'm a go, let's get some retribution for our loved ones.”
Clary said, “So, it sounds like you guys have your little pea shooters ready to go? Is it okay if Greg and I head in? The dead are all over the men on the back and they look like drunks at happy hour with the blood. They’re fighting one another to see who can get the small amounts of dribble that are coming out of it. The only way they’re leaving is if they get shot, or see something more appetizing to go after. The meals they ate weren’t something that took very long. The only upside of that truck would have been if we could have had a bit more speed, not that this thing is slow, but I think we could have sped up a lot easier.”
Greg hit his radio, “Shaun, make sure you don’t blink, brother, because I'm going to send these things at them just as quick as Clary is going to let me pull the trigger. There’s going to be some serious shit going down here in a few minutes.”
Clary held straight on his path going through backyards and straight for the small housing compound. He broke through backyard fences until he came out and he had a straight line towards the houses. When he saw the men sprinting for the gates armed with everything they had he knew that it was time. Clary sent the first shot towards them with a smile like he hadn’t had since his mother had placed a fresh apple pie in front of him and advised it was all his.
Chapter 26
Cade hated his men every so often. When he couldn’t get answers for something that seemed so obvious he was more than willing to put them out of their misery, to save himself some. He ran to the armory they had put together, it looked like an outhouse compared to what Clary had on base. He ran to the fence when he saw the tank and the dead and the blood trailing from behind it. He looked to his men as they were all taking their places ready to stand and fight a war he knew they wouldn’t have an opportunity to win.
Cade jumped down off the makeshift scaffolding tower they were using for anything or anyone they didn’t want to come their way. He looked over his shoulder as he sprinted, pumping his arms for everything he had. Cade was not ex-military but had seen more than enough movies to get the general idea of what horrible things that tank was capable of.
He ducked behind a house and looked back at the fence line. Travis was sitting there looking through a scope and ignorant to the fact that Cade had left them there on their own. The men started firing one after another at the tank. It would have done just as much damage as a slingshot firing pieces of bread.
Clary brought the long gun into view aiming it directly for the fence, and when the men went to jump down everything that they knew was jumbled together in a collage of blood, steel fencing, and guts. Travis was screaming to the others. He tried to get up but could not. He tried to listen for the other men but this was impossible because all he could hear was the after effects of ringing that was worse than every rock concert he’d ever been to in his life put together.
Travis looked around, dismayed at what happened, blinded by debris and dust still hanging in the air. When it finally settled he looked up seeing a section of the metal fence pinning him to the ground. It had turned into what resembled more of a pitch fork stuck through his gut and pinning him to the ground. When he tried to move his legs he couldn’t feel them and he began to panic. The shock was more than he could handle and he wasn’t coming to terms with it as he screamed for help which fell upon deaf ears of those too busy shooting or scared to look away.
As the first parts of dust faded he saw the hole that was now in place of where he had been standing. The giant tank jumped a second and third time. The fence that was what kept the dead out, was no longer. Clary drove the tank full speed ahead towards the property. Greg was on the insid
e aiming as he’d been shown and sending a rain of hellfire towards the men's bunks, kitchens, and anything he could get in his sights. Greg said, “Holy hell in a hand basket, this is awesome. There isn’t going to be anything left!”
Clary stopped just short of entering the fence giving him a chance to continue the destruction. “Don’t let off on that gun. You fire until there ain’t nothing to fire at. We aren’t losing anyone else today…those fuckers all fry!”
Greg didn’t need to be told and never slowed down. He thought that he had found himself a new love at this point. Shaun watched the men trying to make a break for it towards the opposite end of the fence line and began picking them off one by one. Each time he took too long sliding the bolt back to eject, he would see two more bodies fall. He knew that Aslin and McQuaig could not have been better back up on the job. Ellie and Aliyah were going through bursts of massive amounts of their ammo. He thought for a moment he would have felt sorry for these guys had they not been so deserving of what they were getting.
He had only seen one man escape and knew not who he was. He tried to get him back in his sights but it was too late. They watched, not letting up, as the dead made their way into the compound. Travis screamed for mercy reaching for his gun ready to take himself out but it was a foot out of reach. He had tears streaming steadily as the dead made their way to him. The cooked flesh from the multiple blasts was more than enough to get their mouths salivating with temptation. They ran to Travis ripping the metal fencing from its place and tearing him into pieces. His cries for help became a bloody muffled scream as his head separated from his torso. The fear in his eyes followed him into death as one of the Turned sprinted off with their prizes while still looking for more.