We watch as Jake jumps back into the truck and the other two guys disappear inside. The truck backs up and then whips around toward us. Jake leans out the passenger-side window and yells at us to get inside our Hummer. We do and, shortly after, we hear heavy footsteps on the roof of our truck. Jake leans his head down into the hole and tells Will to hand him the grenades when he asks for them. Jake tells me to get ready to drive. He yells out instructions to Dad and then I see Dad motioning me back. I move back and Dad pulls forward and then turns his wheels and backs up so that he is now facing out of town like I am. Jake hits the roof and about makes me shit myself. He yells for me to go and I do.
Dad falls in behind me, Sam (driving Jake's truck) falls in behind them. As I drive, I try not to go too fast even though every instinct is telling me to put the pedal to the metal. I know the grenades are going to go off but it still takes me off-guard. Seeing the dead in front of my headlights burst without knowing when it's going to happen is a horrifying sight. Body parts and liquids rained down on us. I know Jake had to be getting covered in the crap. We were constantly running over different body parts and mostly whole corpses. Finally, the zombies are few and we can speed up. Jake comes inside our truck and Will hands him a towel that he had hung outside the window and soaked with a gallon jug of water. Jake gratefully takes it and cleans off the best he can. Jake and Will replace the back seat and move Ash and Grace onto it. Will makes Ash comfortable with his pillow and covers him with his blanket while Jake gets the baby buckled in. Will throws a couple sleeping bags on the very back seat and informs us he's taking a nap. He climbs over Ash and and the middle seat and disappears.
Jake has settled into the front seat and has taken the wet towel, scrubbing more of the gunk off him. I look at Jake and ask him what we're going to do now. We need weapons, especially if we are going to get my ma out safely. Darling isn't a huge town but it isn't a small one like Mesa, either. And look what happened there!
"We're going to stop in Lymon. It's on the way and there's an armory there." He says distractedly, as he scrubs at his arm. He looks at me and his hand freezes mid-motion. I turn and look his way and notice he's staring hard at my face.
"Whats wrong?" I ask him, starting to panic.
He makes a sound like a low growl then asks me in a slow drawn out way, "What the hell happened to your face?"
Honestly, I'd forgotten about my face. I mean, the injuries anyway. Too tired to feel the pain, well, I was until he was sweet enough to bring it up. I tell him everything that happened between my stepping inside the pharmacy up to when I stepped back out. He swears under his breath. He looks angry as hell, though, and I wonder if he's angry at me. So I ask him.
He scoots closer to me and tells me no, he's not angry at me.
"Sit forward a little. Let me look at the back of your head." He moves his hand through my thick hair, trying to get to the scalp. His hand catches on a tangle which just happens to be connected to the painful part of my head. I jerk away instinctively, and am rewarded with that same tangle catching on his hand once again. I cry out in pain and Jake carefully removes his hand. He tells me to pull over and when I do he switches seats with me. Of course, us stopping has Mom calling but I can't answer the phone, as each ring has me grabbing at my head. Jake answers and tells her we just switched drivers and that everything is fine. Finally, he hangs up and sits back, looking at me. I lean forward in my seat and hold my throbbing head in my hands. My whole body starts to shake with the pain.
I feel Jake's arms come around me and he gently holds me for a few moments. He leans away and I hear velcro ripping as he opens one of his pockets. Pulling out a prescription bottle, he hands me a couple pills. I take them and he hands me a bottle of water. After I get the pills down, I drink about half the bottle without stopping. It tastes so good! Realizing Jake has to be thirsty, too, I hand the rest to him.
"No. Go ahead and finish it." He says, pushing it back at me.
"Drink it. You need it, too, and I'm ok now." I push it back to him. He sighs and takes it reluctantly, but the look of enjoyment after he finishes it, gives him away. I smile, thinking how silly men can be. I sit back in my seat and Jake pulls back on the road.
Chapter 21
Finally back on the highway, we head straight to Lymon. Taking the exit, we enter the city. It's bigger than I thought it would be. Jake tells me a little about the city when I mention I have never been here. Driven by, but never been. He tells me how far it is to the armory as he makes his way through zombies, abandoned vehicles, wrecked vehicles, and the living, who are hell-bent on getting out. We make it to the armory and he pulls up to a large gate much like the one at the armory in Springfield. Will leans over the front seat, scaring the hell out of us, and asks the question I'm wondering.
"How do you plan to get in this one?" He had keys for the last one but surely not for this one, too. Jake pulls out a set of keys from his pocket and holds them up. Ok. Apparently, I'm wrong.
"I have a set of keys for four different armories. One in Springfield, one in Nebraska, and two in Missouri. This time it's going to be a lot different. Just like in Springfield, we keep twenty-five on duty at all times. But, all these men should be here. With most of our ammo gone, this could be fun." He tells Will to climb over the seat and get ready to drive us through the gate. After Jake is out and running to the gate, Will slides behind the wheel and puts it in drive, ready to move when Jake tells him to.
He looks at me and says, "I'm not sure I like his idea of fun." Nah. Me neither. I sigh and lean back. I am so tired and now I'm guaranteed to have to fight again. Damn.
Will drives through the gate when Jake waves us forward. We clear the gate and move to the side, letting the others have room to move in. Once they're clear, Jake closes the gate. I scoot over toward Will as I see Jake running to the passenger-side of our truck. He jumps in just as bullets sweep the side of the truck where he stood not two seconds ago. In confusion, I look at Jake, who is looking for the shooter. Yelling at Will to go, Will floors it and goes around the left side of the building as Jake instructs him to. Jake tells Will to drive to the large building in the back like the one we had stayed in before. Will does and Jake jumps out of the truck again.
At the smaller normal sized door next to the larger door, he unlocks it and throws the door open, then flattens himself against the outer wall. He leans his head in a few times and quickly pulls it back. He pulls the knife from his fatigues and waits. Soon, we see an undead silhouetted in the doorway. Jake swings his arm up and plants the knife deep in the zombies head. No sooner does he rip the knife back out, another fills the doorway. Jake takes that one down and two more are at the door. My breath catches, knowing he can't do this alone. Apparently, I'm not the only one who thinks so as Will flings his door open and jumps out, knife in hand. Then a blur of movement in my peripheral vision catches my attention and I turn back to see dad with his handgun. I wonder how many bullets he has left but I'm grateful for even just one.
Will takes down one of them while Dad shoots the second one, which was just about on top of Jake as he struggles to remove the knife from his last kill. Ash leans over the seat next to me and watches. Two days ago, I never would have allowed him to watch something like this. Now, it's kind of hard not to. Besides, maybe watching how to kill them will save his life at some point. Mother Of The Year, I am not. But whose kids are still alive? I stick my tongue out at all those judgmental idiots and Ash leans over even more and looks at me with a 'what the hell is wrong with you' expression. I just give him a smile/grimace and turn back to the men who are still fighting off the undead. Berating myself for the mental conversations I always seem to have that end with spoken words or actions that have me looking really crazy.
Finally, the zombies stop coming out and the guys go inside. The large door opens and, after I move to the driver's seat, the rest of us drive through. The men drag the corpses outside. Once the men are back inside, Jake closes both doors and engages the secu
rity bolts. He, Will, and my dad search the rest of the building. We wait until they give the all-clear, and then the rest of us get out. Stretching feels so good, yet, oh-so-painful!
I get Grace out of her carseat and walk around holding her for awhile. She's such a good baby. Rarely crying at all and usually when she does, guns are blasting around her. Who wouldn't? I see Kaleb running around the big room with Ash, and Bo is following the men around. For the first time, I really think about Grace and Kaleb's situation. Are their parents still alive? And if so, they must be devastated thinking their babies are dead. I know how I would feel, but, what am I supposed to do? I don't have a cell number for them that I can try. I don't even know their names!
Sighing, I hold the baby a little tighter and kiss her soft cheek. She gurgles at me and I smile. I take her back to the truck, change her diaper, and feed her. She falls asleep before I can even burp her, but remembering the belly aches my boys always got if I didn't burp them, I burp her anyway. She lets out a huge belch right in my ear. I laugh at her, then rock her until she falls back asleep. Placing her back in her carseat, I leave all the doors open so we can hear her and she can get some air.
The men start walking toward me. Dad, Will, Jake, and Sam. I look around for Greg, and Jake knows what I'm thinking.
"He's upstairs in a room. He's really tired. I gave him his meds and, hopefully, he'll sleep soon." I nod at him. It pains me to see the hurt in his eyes. He coughs and turns his head for a moment, obviously trying to keep his emotions in check. Finally, he turns back to me.
"You and I are going to clear the armory like we did at the last one. You ok with that?" Not really, but he doesn’t seem to be giving me a choice. So I just gulp and nod. "When we get it cleared, we are going to load the guns like last time, then come back and get everyone ready. We will go get your grandmother and then come back here to get some sleep. Sound good?" All the men wait for my answer. What the hell? They never cared what I thought before! So I just nod.
He then tells us we need to go through each vehicle and look for weapons that have ammo in them and get all the other ammo we can find. We do and bring what we've found back. What we have isn't much for our group, but for Jake and I, we should be ok. We have plenty of handgun ammo which is the weapon Jake wants me to use. I'm happy with that. He takes the automatic, which doesn’t have a lot of ammo but he also has his handgun and can use his knife if he needs to. We leave everyone with a full clip in their handguns, just in case.
I race up the stairs to find a bathroom before we leave. When I finish, I flush the toilet and as I'm washing my hands, I glance in the mirror. I suck in a sharp breath and lean toward the mirror. Unbelievable. My face is a mess! I grab a soft washcloth folded on a shelf, soak it in warm water, and gently wash off the caked-on blood, dirt, and god only knows what else. I have serious dried blood on, and in, my nose. That hurt like hell to remove. (The blood. Not my nose.) After all the blood is gone, I inspect the damage. Black eye? Check. Bruising on my neck? Check. Scrapes and scratches on my forehead? Check. Huge bruise in the shape of a hand on my cheek? Check. Swollen, bruised nose? Check. Check. I sigh and throw the rag in the trash. Lifting my shirt and turning around, I look at my back as best I can. One huge bruise. Nice. Dropping my shirt and turning back to the mirror, I bring my hand up to my head and softly touch the huge knot. Even though I was gentle and barely even touching it, every time I did, my eyes wanted to roll back in my head and I felt like I was going to pass out. I turn the faucet back on and cup my hand under the cold water. Filling my mouth, I swish it around and spit. Blood. Big surprise. I keep doing it until the metallic taste and the red and pink spit is gone. Finally, I open the door.
Standing in the hall, I hear strange noises from one of the upstairs rooms. Pulling my gun out, I follow the sounds. I stop at one of the doors and press my ear against it, listening. It sounds like it's on the other side of the room, so I ease the door open. Looking in, all I see is a large table. I move slowly toward it and can see something on the floor on the other side of the table. I kneel down to try to see the other side better, but chairs are blocking my view on that side. I can see the fabric of clothes and movement, but that's it. I get on my hands and knees and crawl down the left side of the table, keeping my eyes on whatever it is. Finally, I reach the corner of the table and peek around the leg.
I let out my breath in a big sigh of relief which quickly turns to concern as Jake's brother heaves a few more times into the trashcan. He's half laying, half-sitting on the floor. He looks horrible. Poor guy. I crawl over to him and ask him if there is anything I can do. He asks for water. I stand and go to the mini-fridge on the right side of the room. Opening it, I find a bottle of water and take it out. I see a box of straws sitting on a small counter above the fridge and grab one of those, too. Taking them back to Greg, I hold the bottle as he sips the water. Noticing these rooms have their own private showers and toilets, I go and wet a washrag for him. Coming back, I sit behind him and gently pull him back so he can relax against me while I wash his face. Then I fold the rag, so the clean side is on the outside, and hold it on his forehead.
Greg starts talking and I just listen. He tells me about when he and Jake where younger and how great a big brother Jake always was. How his having cancer almost destroyed Jake. He starts crying and I hold him a little tighter. Even though it was really barely tight at all, I was still afraid I would crush his ribs. He's so thin. So delicate. My heart aches for him. For Jake.
Soon I feel his body start to relax and grow heavier against me. I try and figure out how I'm going to get him up off the floor without hurting him and how I'm going to get up at all with him against me and the couch at my back. I hear the door open and watch as black military boots make their way around the table. Finally, Jake's head comes into view and his face softens when he sees us. He comes over and sinks to the floor next to us. He looks so tired. I smile at him and he smiles back. He asks me if his brother's ok and I tell him what happened. He nods and leans over, picking his brother up and placing him on the couch. I cover him with a blanket and then Jake and I just stand there and watch the blanket move as his chest expands. Not a lot of movement, but it's there. I grab Jake's hand and give it a tight squeeze then turn and leave the room to let him have some time alone with his brother.
In the hall, I see my boys and Will, who's carrying Grace, checking out rooms. I follow them and finally they choose a room big enough for us, with a bathroom attached just like Greg's room. I pull Will aside and ask him to please have the boys shower. He laughs and says he will because they stink. I hate to tell Will this, but he doesn’t smell any better. I doubt any of us do. I go back downstairs and search through our truck, looking for the soap, shampoo, and conditioner I had packed so long ago. Really? Was it only a day ago? Seems like we've been on the road for months. I also grab the bag with our toothbrushes and paste. As I turn to head back to the stairs, I see my mom leaning inside the back of her Hummer, and I walk over.
"Hey, Mom."
She whips around and screams. I jump ten feet and scream. And then we look at each other and laugh.
"Don't sneak up on me, Canada. Bout gave me a heart attack."
"I'm sorry, Mom. Thought you heard me. Need any help?"
"No. I think I’ve got it all. Just want to get a shower. I believe I'm going to enjoy it." She says. She grabs an outfit for Kaleb and I mentally slap my forehead. DUH! I run back to our truck and grab an outfit for Grace, her shampoo and baby soap, lotion, and baby powder. Finally, I return upstairs and place everything on a table that's been pushed against a wall. I show Will where everything is and I help lay out the bedding. Will places Grace on the makeshift bed and she seems to love that. She kicks her legs and waves her arms, giggling. We smile at her and then Will pulls me into his arms. Kissing me, he holds me tighter.
"Promise you'll come back safe?" He asks me.
"I promise I will do everything I can to come back safe." I tell him.
He gives me
a look. "That's not what I asked. Promise me."
So what can I do but give him a possible empty promise? He and I both know it may not happen. Not that I will just lay down and let myself get killed. But it's not just the undead I have to worry about now. Unless they've figured out how to shoot, we've got at least one still alive, and with a loose trigger finger. Am I scared? Uh, YEAH! Frikken' terrified! But at the same time, a weary calm is burrowing inside of me. Maybe I'm more confident in myself, or, maybe knowing Jake will be there is the cause. Or, maybe I'm just too damn tired. Or, all three.
I see Jake standing in the doorway, so I give Will one more kiss and squeeze him tightly to me. I gently push him away, then walk over to the boys. Giving each one a hug and kiss, I tell them I love them. Stooping, I wiggle Grace's raised fist and smile at her. Turning toward the door, I walk silently to Jake. I don't look back. If I do, the dam that is holding back the tears will break and then I won't be able to do this. Instead, I focus on what we are about to do and I feel the calmness come back over me like a warm blanket on a cold night. Comforting.
Jake leads me down the stairs and we walk to his Hummer. I get in the driver's seat (not going to screw around playing musical chairs this time) while he walks over to unlock and open the door. My dad suddenly appears beside the truck, walking toward Jake. He says a few words to Jake, then shakes Jake's hand and salutes me. (Little backwards, eh, Dad?) He's going to lock up after we leave. So, door's opening, Jake's looking around, Jake's running to the truck, and then we are off. I stop outside the door, keeping watch until Dad gets the doors shut and locked. Jake nods at me and tells me he didn't even think of that. Shocking! I hope he gets his shit together before we go inside the armory. He turns his head back to me.
"I'm good." he tells me.
Holy shit! Did I say that out loud? I give him a slight laugh, turn my head, and roll my eyes. Well, this is it. I let off the brake and push the gas. I back the Hummer up to the back armory door. From this position, I can see the building my family is in. I see nothing and no one moving around the outside of the building, thank God! I look at the door in my side mirror nervously. Ah hell! I think Jake is, too! I stare at him with an expression of 'are you kidding me'.He looks over at me, turns back, and then whips his head back to me.
Dying To Live & Fighting To Live-Book One and Book Two (Zombie Overload Series) Page 13