I peered through them and caught the site of several of enslaved beasts standing up to her. That wasn’t something I’d ever thought I’d see. Some of them defended her as others charged. “They’re fighting each other,” I declared excitedly.
We watched on in excitement as an all-out brawl unfolded before our very eyes.
Chapter Thirty-SIX
At some point, Charlie had managed to drift off during the chaos of the fighting that took place in the distance. He lay in Kaia’s lap as she gently stroked his hair as she yawned.
We were all exhausted. I wished we had more than one set of binoculars between the six of us. It wasn’t fun having to wait your turn to know what was happening and the play by play just wasn’t the same.
By the time three-thirty in the morning rolled around, there were hardly and beasts still around…at least functioning ones. There were cries of pain that sounded from the ground, but those left lying there were injured beyond leaving. It appeared the battle was over, yet there really wasn’t a winner.
The side that turned against Michelle still had a couple dozen functional members. After a lot of shrieking back and forth, they ran off, leaving Michelle with only four of the beasts willing to stand by her side.
I thought maybe she’d try to get them to cross the water again, but as she glared at me, I saw the defeat in her eyes. Well not necessarily defeat, but it appeared that she was ready to call it a day. Sunrise was still hours off, but they would need to find adequate shelter before that point, and I assumed the larger group would take the old shelter they’d used.
Panic rose in my chest as I watched her turn from us. “She’s leaving,” I cried.
“That’s a good thing…isn’t it?” Kaia asked.
“Billy, shoot her?” I shouted. I turned to see Michelle look back over her shoulder, watching to see if Billy would launch his last arrow. He’d tried three other times through the night to see whether he could get her, but she was always too focused on us.
“It won’t work,” Billy replied solemnly. I watched through the binoculars as Michelle sneered towards me and started to walk away again.
This couldn’t happen. If she walked away, she’d just try again. She’d taken over at least one hive, probably more than one, judging by the size of the group she’d led to attack us. It would take her time, but she’d do it again, and I couldn’t put my family in danger again. This had to end today and there was only one way I could think of to make that happen.
Without giving it another thought, I stood and dove into the water before a panicked Jack could grab a hold of me. To say the water was freezing, would be a gross understatement. I tried desperately to focus past the pain of the stabbing needle like sensation as I swam a safe distance from the boat, trying to make sure my husband couldn’t drag me back in.
“Summer!” Jack shouted in panic. “Come back inside the boat.”
“Get back here now,” April screamed.
I looked towards Michelle. I had her attention now. She was pacing the beach as her cronies watched on, not sure what to do.
“That’s right you filthy mutt,” I yelled out through chattering teeth as I swam a little further from the boat. “You didn’t do all this just to walk away did you.”
Damn. I wished I’d thought to take my shoes off. They were really pulling me down, as were my frozen, water-logged jeans.
Michelle Shrieked as she headed into the water before backing out and biting at her fur. She looked like she was trying to rip the wet fur off her body. Michelle grunted from the shoreline.
“You really going to walk away when I’m right here…come on you crazy bitch. Come and get me.”
She leapt into the air, and I was sure she was going to swim through the pain to get me. But as she was in midair, Billy’s last flaming arrow connected with her chest, and she was flung back to the shoreline where she lay limp on the ground.
I tread in the frozen water, my lip trembling, both from cold and fear, as I watched to see if she’d get back up. I expected her to come back at me like so many villains from the old horror movies Noah used to secretly let me watch.
From behind me I could hear Jack and April frantically calling my name. I finally turned to see Jack was just getting ready to untie his boat from April’s and was in the process of trying to get April and the kids to transfer to his anchored boat so he could come for me.
After watching Michelle’s flaming corpse for a minute, I finally let out the breath I didn’t even know I was holing in. Slowly, I doggy paddled my shaking body towards the boat before Jack could successfully release the knots.
“I’m coming,” I cried out through chattering teeth. As I reached the boat that now only had Jack in it, he desperately fought to get my water-logged body on board.
“That was so stupid,” he shouted at me as he wrapped his arms around me. I tried to pull away so I wouldn’t drench his clothes as well. No use in us both freezing.
“I knew I could distract her. She can’t come after us anymore. I won’t lose anymore family,” I stuttered through my chattering teeth.
“He’s right,” April said as she handed a backpack our way. Jack pulled out a fresh hoodie and some sweatpants. “It was stupid, reckless, and downright dangerous…and” she said with a smile, “it’s exactly what I would have done…if I didn’t have this little twerp on board,” she said pointing to her belly.
Jack rolled his eyes at April as he rushed to strip me of my soaked clothes. The icy air froze my wet skin even more, taking away any feelings of self-consciousness at being stripped in front of an audience. I wished I’d had a towel to dry off, but I was just grateful that April had thought to grab fresh clothes from the shop.
Jack placed my shoes on the end of the boat to try and dry out as he dug through Billy’s pack and pulled out a pair of warm winter socks for my feet. He wrapped up my hair in a t-shirt from my bag and stuffed my now slightly frozen hair into my hoody. He pulled me in, and I felt how badly he was shaking too.
“I’m sorry Jack. I just didn’t know what else to do,” I cried into his shoulder.
“Shhh. It’s over now.”
“Is it really?” Charlie asked from the other boat.
Billy nodded. “The others left after I shot Michelle. I don’t think they’ll be in a hurry to tangle with us again. Not now that we’ve killed their queen.
We waited until well past the sun rising, to make sure no beasts were left alive. It was a good thing we waited too. When the sun crested over the hill and landed on the casualties, several bodies began to twitch and let out an ungodly screeching sound beyond anything we’d heard so far. We covered our ears, as we watched them flail…all except for Billy. He was too curious.
When the beasts crying finally faded out, he said, that it appeared that not only were their eyes sensitive to the sun, so was their skin. The few that had still been alive, didn’t last long, as they used their own claws to end their suffering. One had even gouged its eyes out before raking its claws across its throat.
The smell that reached us as we approached the shore caused poor April to lose her protein bar breakfast to the lake. There were several charred bodies, including that of Michelle’s. We tried to breathe through our mouths as we walked through the rest of the town to escape the scene behind us.
My shoes were still soaked through…and slightly frosty, so I was forced to walk along the road in nothing but the socks I borrowed from Billy. We decided that given the long night we had, we wouldn’t be walking too far today…for which I was grateful.
By the time another town popped into view, my poor feet were blistered and bleeding. Thankfully, there didn’t appear to be any signs of hive or survivor activity, but we weren’t taking any chances.
Billy and Jack decided to scout ahead for a safe place for us to rest up for a couple of days. I cautiously sat down next to April as I attempted to pull the socks off my feet to check the damage.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Apri
l cried as she looked at my blood crusted feet. I was sure I’d pulled off a layer of skin with the socks.
“There was nothing to do about it. We couldn’t stay in the town, and I wasn’t going to ask Jack to piggy-back me the whole way. I’ll be fine.”
“You could get an infection,” April whispered as a tear fell down her cheek.
“April I’m fine…this isn’t the same as my leg.”
“Damn straight,” she replied wiping her tears as she searched her pack, coming out with a package of fresh cause and rubbing alcohol.
I cried out as April started dabbing the alcohol on my poor bloody feet. “Serves you right for being stupid.”
“I thought you were brave,” Charlie piped up.
“Thank you, Charlie,” I beamed and then shot my sister a smirk.
“I wasn’t talking about this morning’s heroics, though if you ever do something like that again, I will have to chain you up, to ensure you never do something so reckless, ever again.”
“I thought you said it was exactly what you would have done.”
“That doesn’t mean you should have done it.”
“But you know why I had to right?”
April only sighed in response as she finished bandaging my feet. Kaia came around handing out packages of barbeque flavoured peanuts to all of us. They were a little stale tasting, but the flavour reminded me of chips. It was funny how I still missed the little things.
“What happened to your feet?” Jack asked as he rounded the corner.
“She was too stubborn to ask for a lift,” April muttered, with a mouth full of peanuts. “Any lucky finding us a place to rest?” April asked Billy as she rubbed her stomach. “This baby could use a rest, and those feet ain’t going anywhere for the time being.”
“Actually, we found a place I think you’ll all enjoy. There’s even food on the shelves still, and fresh clothing for us to change into.”
I tried to stand up but cringed as my feet dug into the frozen grass beneath my feet. Before I could make a second attempt, Jack had swung me up to his arms.
“You can’t carry me?”
“Why not?” he asked as he started heading off into the centre of town.
“Because you’ll burn yourself out.”
“You do know you weigh next to nothing…” the sad look in his eyes told me he held some of the blame for that. Since we’d left the village, I’d lost all the weight I’d managed to put back on. My ribs were visible beneath my skin when I lay on my back, and I knew that upset Jack, so I rarely took my shirt off in front of him anymore.
Exhausted, we all walked in silence until a small little mall came into view. Kaia’s eyes lit up. “Please tell me we can go shopping?” she jumped up excitedly.
“Can it really be called shopping when we won’t be paying for anything?” I questioned.
“We can still call it shopping,” Jack chimed in. “And yes. But please make sure one of us is always with you. While we’ve made sure the place is secure, I’d just feel safer.”
Kaia gave him a thumbs up as she hurried to catch up to the rest of our group. Jack was walking behind the group, at a serious distance and I felt bad for slowing him down. “I’m sure I can walk now…”
“I’m not letting you go.” He looked so serious.
“Jack…”
“Summer, I thought I was going to lose you last night.”
“You weren’t.” I gently stroked his stubbled face. I missed his clean-shaven skin, but it was miracle he could manage to shave at all on the road. I knew he only attempted it for me. I didn’t like kissing the beard, he’d begun to grow.
“I could have. Either to Michelle, or the lake, or to sickness after that reckless decision…”
“It wasn’t reckless,” I interrupted. “It wasn’t Jack. I knew what I was doing. I knew that if we let her just walk away, she wouldn’t stop, and next time she might succeed. Next time she might kill one of us. She might kill you.” A sob escaped my lips. “Jack I couldn’t live with myself, if anyone died because she came for me, and I let her walk away. And I trusted your brother. I knew that I could distract her.”
“You know Michelle…she wasn’t your fault?”
“She wasn’t yours’ either. She was mentally unhinged as a human, and even worse as a beast. That was why I couldn’t let her get away. I couldn’t live with waiting for her to come after us again. So, if you’re waiting for me to apologize for scaring you, it isn’t going to happen.”
Jack huffed but let out low chuckle at the same time. “You are more like April than you realize.”
Smacking his shoulder I shouted, “Take that back.” He just laughed as we caught up to the others.
By the time we arrived at the mall, Jack and Billy had located, April was already getting cozy on a cot that Billy had set up for her in the old grocery store that sat at the front of the mall. It was clear that this place had been used by previous survivors. Not only was the row of large windows at the front of the store, sealed with the metal gate that had been a part of the store from before the pandemic, but the interior was also sealed up tightly with wood planks, only allowing one small section to open to look at the outside.
I was surprised by just how much was still left on the shelves of the store, given this had housed survivors. Normally survivors made quick work of looting the remaining supplies. While most of the non-perishables were past their recommended date, we certainly weren’t going to let that stop us.
Jack set up another cot for me beside my sister while he raided the shelves with Charlie, to provide us with a meal that wasn’t peanuts, or protein bars. Billy had been kind enough to take Kaia ‘shopping’ and April was already softly snoring.
Even though my feet were killing me, and I should have been exhausted by our long night, I had so much energy running through me, that I couldn’t sit still. Easing myself up onto my aching feet, I waddled across the filthy floor in the new socks I’d managed to dig out of my pack. The store seemed to be like a mini version of Walmart or what passed for a Walmart in a small town anyways.
It pretty much had everything. I found the baby supply aisle, and my eyes lit up. While most of the baby food was gone and even if it weren’t, there’s no way I’d risk expired product on a little one, the rest of the shelves still had plenty on it.
I grabbed a couple of onesies, some soothers, a rattle. I would have grabbed diapers but that wasn’t something we could exactly carry with us, and disposable diapers in this world probably weren’t a practical thing. Maybe we could find one of those novelty stores that carried expensive cloth diapers.
I grabbed a diaper bag and stuffed it full, with all the things I could possibly spoil my nephew or niece with. I was just grabbing a fuzzy blue and green blanket off the shelf when a small book landed on the floor…just narrowly missing my toes.
I bent down to pick it up and realized it was a journal of some sort. The book looked like it had survived quite a bit. A part of me felt sad for the unknown owner. Why had they left it behind? Were they in a hurry to escape? Were they even still alive?
I flipped through the book from back to front. The entire book was full. Not a single page left empty. There was writing on most pages but also a few drawings. When I came to the front of the book, my heart suddenly started pounding thoroughly in my chest.
I slid slowly to the ground, crossing my feet underneath me, I read the name on the journal. Property of Seth. No last name. Sure, Seth was an old school name, one I hadn’t heard very often, but there had to be plenty of them…right?
I began to read the journal, Seth wrote about the beginning of the pandemic, being separated from his stepbrothers and stepfather…now that couldn’t be a coincidence. I kept reading. I couldn’t go and give this to Jack without knowing for sure. As I read on, I read about the attack on his refugee camp and how he’d lost both his mother and little brother.
The beginning of the journal nearly broke me. I could feel the pain in his words and
the anger in his drawings, but as the journal continued, it became more content. He was with a good group of survivors and this man he only referred to as Doc, had helped him overcome his grief and see the joy in life again and he’d given him hope. And then Seth talked about meeting a woman who called herself Amber. I had to laugh when he said he knew that wasn’t her name, but he’d let her keep her secret…for the moment.
I saw Jack’s sense of humour in his writing. I skipped ahead and found out how he and his group ended up in this place. They’d survived an even worse attack than the one we had. It was a miracle, he attributed to the woman he was going to make his wife, ‘Amber’ or her name was Paige.
I was just opening the last page of his book, when any doubt I might have had about whether this book was the property of Jack and Billy’s brother was finally put to rest.
“What did you find?” Jack caused me to jump.
“Easy there. I don’t bite…unless you’re into that kind of thing,” he teased until he saw the tears rolling down my cheeks.
“Whoa, what’s the matter?” He sat down next to me, and I showed him the tattered up black journal. “What is that?” He asked again.
With great effort, I mustered through the happy sob, “Seth…we found Seth.”
Chapter Thirty-SEVEN
Jack crumpled on the floor beside me, as I carefully showed him what Seth had written. I’m not sure how long we sat there. After awhile, Jack took the journal from me and began skimming through it himself. When he came to the part about his youngest brother’s death, tears streamed down his face. I leaned my head on his shoulder.
“It’s been so long. And he was young, and I knew…I knew there was a strong possibility that he wasn’t still here…but…”
“You hoped he was,” I replied softly as I wiped my own tears. Jack nodded as more tears slowly ran down his chin.
“He was alone this whole time. I had Billy and he…”
“He wasn’t alone Jack. He had friends…has friends…that became family. And you haven’t even gotten to the good part yet.”
Seeking Hope: Book 2 in the Seeking Saga Page 34