We stayed with the kids until Billy was finally able to transport Sophia to the clinic on a handmade stretcher, he had put together with one of the other soldiers. Sofia looked so pale. I’d seen someone turn before, and it looked very different than this. The longer the virus was in the system, the stronger the person became. Sofia was struggling to keep her eyes open. The wound on her arm was still bleeding, though not heavily, through the bandage that had been wrapped around it. It looked like maybe Sofia had done it herself…to give her more time.
Jack helped Billy get Sophia onto one of the beds. We left the kids alone with their grandmother while we stood outside the clinic with the door open.
The paths were bathed in drying blood. The drawbridge was broken and lay in pieces across the moat. It was so much worse outside than I could have imagined. There were several bodies piled up on a mountain of wood, ready to be burned. I looked at Jack. “They took their own lives after being bitten.”
“Not all of them,” April said angrily. “We only found five bodies. The old guy from a few cabins over…what was his name?”
“Dale,” I supplied.
“Dale and Sophia are the only two who were bitten that aren’t going to turn. Apparently, Dale had Parkinson’s…did you know that?” She asked me. I nodded. His symptoms hadn’t been too obvious yet, but he had confided in me, when we’d visited while working together in the kitchen one day.
“But I don’t understand Sophia. She’d older yes, but she’s healthy.”
Billy shook his head. “She wasn’t. She didn’t want me to say anything to anyone until she was ready, but she found a lump in her breast a couple months back. We were planning on gathering some equipment so we could perform the necessary surgery on her to buy her some more time with the kids…but…” April moved to Billy and pulled him into her arms.
“You did everything you could for her. I promised her we’d take the kids with us,” he told April. The way he was looking into her eyes it was like he was hoping she’d say he’d done the right thing.
“Of course, we will. We’ll be okay,” she reassured as she tried to smooth some of Billy’s tangled curls. “Summer and I have survived out there for years. And Summer was younger than Charlie when we had to leave our home. They’ll be safe with us.”
Billy pulled April in closer. It was so intimate. I looked over at Jack, who just shrugged his shoulders in confusion.
“Grandma would like to speak to you and Jack, Summer,” Kaia said weakly from the door. I nodded and reached out for Jack’s hand. His fingers intertwined with mine as we walked back into the clinic with Kaia.
Sofia looked even worse than she had before. Her lips were nearly as white as her skin, and she was having trouble keeping her eyes open. She motioned weakly with her finger for us to come forward. Poor Charlie was sobbing silently on the floor, having found a fresh supply of tears.
I sat down in the chair at the head of the bed as Jack stood behind me. Kaia stood at the foot of the bed as she gently rubbed her grandmother’s feet.
“Billy said you’d…take them…with you,” she said through rattled breath.
“You don’t have to worry. They’ll be safe with us. I promise,” I replied, barely keeping the tears at bay. Over the past several months, Sofia had grown to be a grandmother figure for myself. I thought I’d gotten used to losing people, but maybe it was a good thing that I hadn’t. Feeling this way, meant I was still human.
“I know they…will,” she said softly as a tear flowed down her cheek. “Jack…do you mind…taking them outside for a…moment?” She said nodding in the direction of her grandchildren. It was becoming harder for her to speak. Each word took so much out of her. Even when she wasn’t speaking, she could barely breathe.
“No Grandma. I’m staying,” Kaia responded defiantly.
Her grandmother shook her head. “No…you’re not,” she said as forcefully as she could muster. “We’ve said…our goodbyes. I need…” she trailed off coughing. When her hand came away from her mouth, it had several droplets of blood. I found a small towel and wiped the blood from her hand and mouth.
“She needs a moment alone with me Kaia,” I finished for Sofia.
Kaia moved over to my ear and whispered. “Please don’t let her be alone.”
I pulled Kaia into a tight hug as I whispered back, “I promise.”
Kaia moved over to grab Charlie, who immediately began fighting her and screaming. Jack came over to assist and helped carry the boy out for Kaia. I waited until I heard the door to the clinic close.
“Are you sure you don’t want them here?” I asked as I took up a seat beside Sofia.
She shook her head. “No. They saw…their mother…”
I nodded in reply. I knew what Kaia had witnessed. Her mother had been ill, and the virus killed her as well. Kaia was old enough to remember it, Charlie thankfully wasn’t.
“Do you mind me asking…why me?” I liked Sofia well enough. She was generous, kind. We never argued. While I respected her and looked up to her, we weren’t close…not really family. There were few in my life that I let get that close. Really, I was only close with Jack and April. Everyone else I kept at arms length. I wouldn’t have been the first person I’d choose to stay with me in the end.
“Because…you’re strong…enough.” She coughed again. This time she had the cloth in her hand, and she managed to catch the blood. There was so much more of it now. And I could see that her eyes were beginning to leak blood too. She was in the final stage. Soon she’d haemorrhage out.
“Don’t talk Sofia. You don’t need to say anything else.”
“Yes…I…do. I was…not…what they…needed.”
“Shhh.”
“Don’t shhh a dying…woman.” I smiled. “This is hard…enough…as is.”
“Okay,” I whispered as tears slowly ran down my face.
“They are not…strong enough…for this world…yet. You can make…them strong…like you…like April.” Her coughing fit took over again and she was now choking on her blood. I rolled her onto her side to ease her pain.
“They will be strong,” I replied firmly, wiping away my tears aggressively. “I promise you; I will teach them to survive.”
She didn’t respond, she couldn’t. Blood poured out of her nose and eyes as she took her last ragged breaths and then she was gone. I gently laid her back down on the bed and closed her eyes. I took a clean blanket and pulled it up over her head as I whispered, “Rest now Sofia.”
As I stumbled out of Sofia’s cubicle, I was suddenly pulled out of the fog I’d been in, by the sound of shouting. A lot of shouting. Shouting that sounded an awful lot like my sister. “Seriously April. You couldn’t give us just a couple of hours without the drama,” I sighed through the exhaustion of it all.
I shoved the door to the clinic open to find a crowd of survivors had gathered near the broken drawbridge. When I’d first seen the village in the aftermath of the attack, I hadn’t been able to focus on much detail but now I saw it clearly. hanging just outside the drawbridge was the commander’s body. He’d been hung and his eyes had been gouged out. That wasn’t the work of the beasts. They lived to infect, not torture. Only one person would have done that.
“Michelle,” Jack said startling me.
“Did she…is she…”
“Still alive,” he sighed. “As far as we know. Which is what your sister is trying to get the others to see.”
“She’s not done with us you idiot,” April yelled at one of the surviving soldiers. He was holding himself tall, like he was in charge. I had no idea who he was, but he wasn’t one of the commander’s top guys, that was for sure.
“That there,” the soldier said, pointing towards the commander’s corpse. “Is her getting her revenge. She won’t be back and even if she does come back, we have plenty of time to…”
“To what,” April blurted out. “To fix the bridge, the crops that she tore apart. Or how about the food stores that she had her
hoard of beasts nearly devour. We can’t survive here any longer,” my sister turned to address the crowd. “It’s time we moved on. Found a new safe place.”
“And where would that be,” one of the other survivors spoke up, a woman in her early forties who was holding on tight to her eleven-year-old-son. “If there was another safe place, wouldn’t you still be there?”
“I’m not claiming that this will be easy. But it beats the alternative. Waiting here for another attack.”
“If you want to leave, you should…and you should take them with you,” the soldier said pointing towards Jack and me. “It’s their fault that this happened. All you had to do was…”
“What,” Jack shouted. “Be her husband, pretend to love her…or maybe just let her infect my wife. Is that really what you’re saying?”
“Look man,” the soldier sighed. “You’re a good person, but good people don’t get to survive this world without there being a cost. This is the cost. You leave and you take your wife with you. You do this, then Michelle will have no further use for us.”
“Bull-shit,” Jack shouted. I stared at him stunned. He so rarely swore. “You all sided with her father, in fact you wanted worse for her. You wanted her dead. We will be leaving. We’re not foolish enough to stick around. But you’re insane if you think this is over.”
“Well, if you’re leaving, I think you should get on with it, and leave us to what we need to do,” the soldier replied coldly.
“Fine, with us,” April huffed. “We’ll just be gathering our things and we’ll be out of your hair in the next thirty minutes.” April moved towards her cabin but was blocked by the soldier.
“I don’t think so. We have so little supplies left. We need all we have. If you leave, you go with what you have on you now,” the soldier replied motioning for several other armed soldiers to join them.
Billy hurried to block my sister before she dared antagonise the men with the guns. “You can’t be serious Brent. You’d seriously send us out with nothing?”
“We’re entitled to leave with what we came with,” April blurted out, moving to stand beside Billy. “We signed a contract to that point.”
“She’s right,” Pastor Lewis said as he limped into view. He looked terrible, though thankfully not bitten. “Come now, Brent.”
Brent shook his head. “Your agreement was with the old commander,” he said pointing to Commander Tate’s corpse. “He’s not in charge anymore. I am the new commander. New rules. You leave with the clothes on your backs and nothing else.”
April readied herself for an attack and I watched in horror as Brent lifted a gun, he’d been holding behind his back and aimed it right at my sister. Billy pulled April aside and I heard the bang, closing my eyes. A scream from beside me, forced them back open. I looked up to see what I was sure would be Billy’s body with a bullet whole in it, but instead it was Pastor Lewis’s.
I rushed towards the Pastor and threw myself on the ground beside him as he fought for breath. Hadn’t I witnessed enough death today. “Why did you do it?” I asked.
April was beside me in a second holding the pastor’s other hand. Tears streaming down her cheeks. “I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault,” he replied. “But I couldn’t let us lose one more person.”
“What about you?”
“I’m too old to make it out in the world…but you aren’t. You’re right. This village is broken.”
“Are you proud of yourself?” I shouted at Brent. He had the decency to look guilty.
“He shouldn’t have gotten in the way,” he said trying to rationalize to the group. They were looking a little wearier of Brent’s leadership, but I doubted they were worried enough to leave with us.
With his last breath, Pastor Lewis told us to go find them. Both April and I knew what he was talking about. Apparently, he did believe in my vision.
When he was gone, Jack helped me off the ground and Billy helped pull April up.
April glared one final time at Brent before addressing the crowd. “Fine, we’re leaving now. Last chance for any of the smart ones to join us,” April called out as Jack, myself and the kids moved closer to her and Billy. April shook her head. “Well, I’d say it’s been fun, but you know I’d be lying. Good luck to you all, you’re going to need it when the beasts come back to tear you apart.” Several members of the village visibly shook at that. April lifted her hands up in the air and gave the village a one fingered solute on both hands as she turned and headed towards the exit.
We quickly followed her. The only people that would meet our eyes were the soldiers. The rest of the villagers at least had the decency to look away in their guilt. “How are we going to survive with no supplies,” Charlie whispered next to Jack.
“Your grandmother trusted us,” I told Charlie. “Do you trust us.”
He nodded and I smiled the most reassuring smile I could muster. We’d be okay. I wanted so desperately to look back at our village, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It was supposed to be our second chance. It was supposed to be a fresh start. And while the village had brought me to Jack, it was never meant to be. Maybe there was no such thing as a safe place. But I knew I wouldn’t stop trying to find it until I breathed my last breath.
Chapter Thirty-Four
One month had passed since we’d left the village. It had been one of the hardest months of my whole life. All the fear I’d felt over my years on the road, had been nothing compared to this. Because we knew Michelle was still out there, we kept moving. I was constantly looking over my shoulder, fearing we were being stocked. Never staying anywhere for longer than a night. We didn’t hear any sounds of hive activity or see anything for that matter. Even though we were sticking to the smaller towns and villages, this was still something that didn’t feel right.
After a couple of days, we were forced to abandon our truck. It had barely managed to hold all of us and our supplies anyways, but we all grieved the loss. It at least had gotten us far enough away that we had a decent head start ahead of Michelle’s hive, should they pursue us. If it weren’t for the scarcity of gas, we never would have left it behind.
In all the time we were on the road together, before our not so safe sanctuary, April and I had never come across a town that did not have a single hive. The villages were understandable. The beasts were driven towards bigger cities and towns. But for us to have no signs in nearly a month, something wasn’t right. I could feel it in my bones. April knew it too, though we did our best to keep it from the others. Billy and Jack knew we were holding back from them, but we saw no point in needlessly worrying them. We couldn’t do anything about what we couldn’t see and hear.
We kept pushing forward. Not that we were able to make much progress. Kaia was pretty good at keeping up with us, but Charlie was still young, and he’d lived most of his life in the safety of the village. He didn’t have the same level of endurance as the rest of us. I had to admit that even April and I were out of shape from our time in the village. And my leg, that had almost fully recovered, bugged me almost constantly. By the end of every day, I’d nearly collapse wherever we were staying that night.
Jack was amazing. He’d always attempt to massage away the pain. It brought some relief and allowed me to prepare myself for the next day. I wanted to believe that Michelle was too far gone to remember us now, and wouldn’t be trailing us, but it was impossible to know how much of her demented psyche survived in her new body.
There was no getting warm. Despite it being spring now, the nights were still extremely cold. We couldn’t risk lighting a fire during the night, so we all huddled together for warmth.
April and I had lived through all this before, but this was all new to Jack, Billy, and the kids. They didn’t know what it meant to have to ration out supplies or take turns on night watch. By the time spring had finally arrived, wherever it was we were (I trusted Billy was leading us towards D.C), it was no surprise that illness had found our little group.
“You’re not okay,” Billy said as he soothed her back. Billy and April had become extremely close since the attack on the village, and their purely physical relationship seemed to have blossomed into something more. He was almost as affectionate with April as Jack was with me.
“We could try to locate a pharmacy,” Kaia said optimistically.
“Top three places to be looted…” April started before heaving again.
“Guns shops, grocery stores, and pharmacies,” I finished off, trying not to get queasy as I watched my sister dry heave for the third time.
“I just need to rest a minute,” April said sitting down on the ground.
Billy put his hand to her head. “You’re clammy, and pale, we should at least try to find something.”
“Way to flatter a girl,” April tried to laugh but I could tell the action only made her more nauseous.
Jack and Billy both looked to me for the answers. Normally they looked to April first, which I wasn’t insulted by. I’d only really gotten my stuff together after Andy died. Normally I trusted her advice over mine, but in this situation, we needed to decide. We couldn’t continue like this.
“We scout out a new location in this neighbourhood,” I said, rolling my shoulders back and taking the lead. “The four of you hunker down, while Jack and I follow the signs for the downtown core and see if we can find a pharmacy.”
“There’s no point,” April argued. “There won’t be anything there.”
“Maybe there’ll at least be some Gravol or Pepto. It’s worth a try. At any rate we could use some more supplies and you’re in no position to do a supply run yourself.” April finally nodded an acknowledgment.
Seeking Hope: Book 2 in the Seeking Saga Page 31