by Taja Kartio
I stopped that thought immediately. Help him do what? We didn’t even know what he was doing and even if we did try to help in some way, shape, or form, who would save us when the rescue mission went downhill? How would we be able to do anything on this end? Why do anything at all? Maybe we should just worry about ourselves. Of course it would suck watching another human being become a zombie chew toy but better him than us, right?
"On second thought," I bit the inside of my cheek, "Maybe we should just leave him."
"What's with the change of heart so quick?" Kale asked, staring down at me in surprise.
I shrugged softly but didn't answer that question out loud, 'Sorry, I hate to be a buzzkill but I think I like the idea of us living through another day, but props to him for making it this long anyway.'
"She's just a little girl," Beckett said, "We could handle it."
"Oh, she's just a kid? Well... then, by all means, let's go risk our lives. What the hell, right?"
"We'll be okay,” Kale released my shoulders and turned away, heading for the bedroom door.
"That's what they all say before the shit hits the fan!" I followed both brothers downstairs, "Do you guys even have a plan?”
Kale peeked through the living room window and Beckett went to the kitchen to grab a couple of the big heaving cooking knives but neither answered my question.
"Hello?" I waved my hands in the air. Both of them then wordlessly headed through the dining room to the back sliding door like they read each other's minds. I was completely out of this loop, "You're not just improvising this, right?"
Kale looked back at me, "We're kind of going along with it right now, we'll be fine."
I couldn't believe this, "That's the same thing!"
"Stay here Dani," Kale said quickly, giving a look that said not to argue.
Except that's exactly what I wanted to do, to argue. I wanted to pull him by the arm and tell him this was a mistake because I somehow knew it wasn't going to end well. Both brothers stepped into the backyard, shutting the glass door behind them and leaving me alone.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Alex wasn't our priority and at this moment, he didn't even need "help". That little girl was an Infected but I'd never seen an Infected child do anything but stand about and eat those already dead. All the clips and videos and even the first day of the outbreak was all the action of people older than like...sixteen? Older Infected went after kids but Infected kids never seemed to go after anyone. Alex could have been just fine. He didn't need my brothers manpower to do who knows what. What would Kale and Beckett do anyway? Wave him back inside his house?
I rolled my eyes to myself in utter annoyance and paced myself back to the front entryway. My fingers interlocked and fumbled nervously as the minutes went by. I traveled into the living room and surveyed the mess I'd only glanced at the past week. It was an area I barely recognized anymore and I didn't think it was because of how disastrous it was. In an odd way, there was a new sensation that wrapped around my mind. Maybe it was because of how empty it seemed without any light, sound, or people slouching on the now miserable looking coaches. This didn’t look or feel like the place I’d grown up in for so long.
I was tempted to peek out the window and see what progress had been made but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to watch my brother’s stupidity. Maybe I should have stayed by the back door in case they needed help getting in? No... there was a door handle. They could get in by themselves. I just needed to do someth-
There was a scream. High pitched in a cry much different from the older Infected. It rented the air as well as a siren, raw and sounded like a bursted lung. It was loud. Loud enough to make my blood run cold. Even inside the walls of my home, the sound rung.
Beckett bursted through the back door a moment later in a frightened torrent of heavy breaths.
"What is that?" I asked, almost yelling.
"That girl. Alex stepped off the porch and she started screaming her damn head off," He then sped past me and used his fingers to open the curtains enough to peek an eye. "You need to go upstairs and stay there."
"What about you and Kale?" The sound still hurt but I tried to play it off as I rose to my feet, "What is Kale even doing?"
"We were trying to get Alex to go back in his house and then Kale went all commando and… I-” Beckett threw his hands in the hair frustratedly, “I don't know."
What?
"Does he know what he's doing?" I took a step toward the window.
"Does he ever?"
"So what was the point of this then?"
He didn't get to answer my question as a choir of howls cracked the air. Beckett turned pale.
"Crap,” He dropped the curtain and sprinted past me to the back door, opening the door and shutting it the moment Kale and another figure crashed through the frame.
Alex was in our house. Why was Alex in our house?
Then there was banging. Like the entire neighborhood was hammering away at the back door. The noise drowned out the girls screaming with a new chorus of screeches and ear-splitting shrieks. I didn't know how many of the Infected were standing on the other side of the door, but I knew they had enough force and pressure to break in. It was just a matter of time.
"We're so screwed," Alex muttered, getting to his feet.
"What the hell did you think you were doing?" Beckett's voice was rough but not enough near to the fire I knew the eldest had conjured.
"We wouldn't be so screwed if you hadn't walked outside with a big neon sign that blinked 'Here I Am! Come And Get Me!'. You rang the fucking dinner bell!" Kale's voice thundered and as much as I knew he wanted to yell and let loose of all the emotions he'd been bottling up the couple weeks, right now was quite possibly the worst time.
Alex drew himself up. Even though he was the same height as Kale, I was surprised with how well he intimidated his own self-being, "I didn't ask for your help! I didn't even need help! I knew what I was doing!"
"And what exactly were you doing?" Kale almost spit.
The pounding became more fierce and the screams started to become unbearable. I couldn't even tell Kale and Alex to shut up because my voice was caught in my throat. Terror rose up in my stomach.
"That door isn't going to hold them." Beckett murmured, interrupting the unneeded argument.
Kale stepped away from Alex, "Then what do you think we should do?"
Beckett didn't have an answer but we all knew the two choices. We could stay where we were and hope the door would just magically stayed intact on it's hinges so we didn’t get limbs ripped off inside our own house or we could leave and hope we didn't get our limbs ripped off out in the open?
Both ideas sounded so freakin’ great, it was hard to choose which we’d like more.
"Go to the car," Kale nudged me forward.
"Then what?" Beckett stared at Kale like he'd completely lost his mind. "Where the hell do you think we should go? Those things will just follow us!"
"I don't see you coming up with any ideas! If you think you have something better, I'm all ears!"
Beckett fumed, "No, but I don't know where you think we're going to go! This is the only place we have!"
My mouth quirked in annoyance. Just figure it out already.
"We'll come up with something but we're sitting ducks in here."
"We'll be sitting ducks out there too!"
The door cracked. A splintering snap that made my insides lurch.
"To the car it is," Beckett mumbled quickly.
Kale nudged me forward again and had me follow Beckett's lead out of the living room and into the hallway toward the door to the garage. While there were two cars, I knew that without a doubt we would be taking Kale's large suburban. I scooted myself in the backseat and to my surprise, Kale made Alex sit in the passenger seat as he took the wheel. Beckett took the seat beside me.
"So how do we do this?" Alex asked quickly.
"As quickly as possible," Kale tapped his fingers on the steering wheel impatiently as the garag
e door behind us slowly lifted.
A ghastly face slammed against the window closest to me. I jumped at it's snarling teeth. Thankfully, I only had to stare for a moment. Kale punched the gas pedal and the suburban jerked backwards.
In seconds, we were speeding away from the Infected and from our home.
Four
The dark clouds had begun to disperse, being replaced with a lively mush of oranges, reds and pinks. I tried to concentrate on the pretty colors rather than what the sunlight was beginning to shine around me. Cars sat stationary, some overturned, some broken and smashed against buildings and other cars were as black as charcoal. The streets that had once thrived with life now stood still. Any strip mall, convenient store or neighborhood was as quiet as the last. Some buildings had burned down to a crisp. It was all one big mess.
Kale had had the radio on for some time now. Overseas, Italy, Spain, and France were in their own stages of panic. Just like the first few nights here, riots and acts of pure violence were beginning to spread overseas like wildfire. The Infected were mainly within Europe and Asia but now there were sightings in Africa. In America, the entire east coast was now battling Infected and in the Midwest, Chicago was nearly overrun. So far there wasn't much news on the far west but I was sure that they too would soon be on the Infected radar.
Beckett nudged me, "You're bleeding again."
I turned away from the window to see him motioning to my arm. The white bandaging was spotting a little red, "Oh."
I could see my brothers eyes on me for a long moment, "Want me to check it out?"
I slowly nodded, "Thanks."
Kale glanced in the rearview mirror, "You okay Dani?"
"Peachy," I muttered, earning a solemn frown. If I hadn't been feeling so tired, I probably would have replied with a more smart remark.
Beckett gently set the back of his hand on my forehead, "You're warm."
I pulled away with the tiniest of glares. I didn't need to be sick now, I was already a bright and shiny gold star with my injury. I really didn't need to be more of a burden that I already was, "No, I'm not."
My brother ignored my automatic denial. He didn't pull the bandage that was wrapped from my wrist to my elbow off but his mellow hands inspected by softly pushing down around the tender area. I cringed the entire time. It stung.
"Kale, we're going to have to stop somewhere to look for medical supplies," Beckett rubbed a portion of my forearm that felt more dainty, "I think this cut is starting to get infected."
"I thought you cleaned it all up?" Kale asked.
"I tried but we weren't exactly stocked up on antibiotics. I washed it out as best I could and managed to pry out any glass that was stuck in the skin but at some point, the bandages needed to be replaced again. It hasn’t been done for a few days now and I’m guessing it’s starting to fester," Beckett had me shift so he could inspect my other arm more up close.
Kale nodded slowly, "We'll stop somewhere soon."
"So what exactly happened?" Alex asked, turning sound in his seat. He watched as I winced from a more sensitive touch by Beckett's thumb.
"Sorry." My brother mumbled sincerely.
"Got glass in my arm," I answered Alex's question vaguely. I didn't know the guy very well and I still wasn't exactly comfortable with him in the car.
"How do you get glass in your arm?"
"An Infected."
Alex scrunched his brows, "You guys call them Infected?"
I nodded conspicuously.
Alex stared at me in a dead-panned manner, ignoring the annoyed look I traded with Beckett, "Soooo... How does an Infected get glass in your arm?"
"You seem to be a man with many questions, why don't you answer some of mine?" Kale interjected. His sore tone slipped out clearly.
Alex turned back around in his seat uncomfortably, "Uh, sure. I guess."
"Why the hell were you standing out in the open like that?" Kale paused and Alex began to answer but just as he did, Kale cut him off again, "Did it occur to you at all that we're kind of in the middle of some kind of freaking zombie apocalypse?"
"Well I..." Alex tried once again to answer but Kale stopped him.
"Did you think that Infected girl wouldn't see you?"
"I..."
"I guess we didn't have to help you, all we were trying to do was get some sense into your head before you brought the whole goddamn neighborhood to our backdoor!"
"But I..."
"Were you even around when this whole mess started? You live under a freaking rock or something?"
I had to say that I almost felt a pang of sympathy for Alex. Kale was a hard guy to argue with and sometimes it was best to let him go until he finally let you answer his questions. It was normal. I was used to it, really because Kale picked petty arguments with Beckett and I all the time.
Alex didn't wait, as he didn't know how to argue with Kale and just blurted in between a fractionated pause, "I knew her!"
Kale stopped at that, "What?"
"The girl. I knew her."
At Alex's sudden gloomy appearance, I wanted to punch Kale for being such an asshole and I wanted to punch myself for acting like such a stingy brat.
"She's my niece, Katie. She lived down the street with my sister Jo and the day that everything turned upside down, I went over to her house and found that Jo had turned but I had no idea where Katie was. Not until I saw her walking down the street earlier. I wasn't sure that if by some miracle, Jo or some other zombie-thing hadn't gotten to her, I wasn't sure if she was one of them, or if she was off in her own little world," Alex paused, a smile twitching on his lips as he recalled his niece, "She had always had such a unique imagination and was sometimes so oblivious to everything going on around her. I don't think anybody could have been a deeper daydreamer than her."
Alex chuckled at himself bleakly and Kale held a short guilty gaze on him, "I'm sorry."
"It's okay," Alex sniffed and tried to pull a somewhat cheery grin before changing the subject completely, "So where are we going?"
"Hopefully that CVS right there." Beckett pointed and Kale immediately pulled off of the main road.
"Okay, what about after? What's the destination?"
Kale shrugged, "Right now, I don't really know. We weren't really planning on being run out of our home anytime soon so there really wasn't much of a plan B."
The underlying accusation didn't slip past Alex. He winced, "So we're just gonna... drive until we find a place?"
Kale put the car in park and snapped an irritated look at the passenger, "You always ask this many questions?"
Alex shrugged, "I like to know what's going on."
"Well stop. It's too much." Kale opened the car door and promptly ended the conversation.
The parking lot was mainly empty other than a few unoccupied vehicles. The store looked deserted but I wasn't at all excited to go inside. With the exception of Kale, none of us even had a weapon. And Kales gun wasn't exactly the most resourceful weapon to be using. A gunshot would probably bring the whole state population on us.
"Do you want me to come with or stay in the car?" I asked.
"I would rather you're not out here by yourself." He raised a brow and kept stride for the front doors of the building.
Beckett came beside me, "I want you next to me or Kale at all times. Okay?"
I nodded. He didn't have to tell me twice.
The sliding doors opened up by themselves oddly enough. The lights on the ceiling inside were still shining brightly and there was a soft melody of music playing. I wondered how many stores had their power on still. I also wondered how many were trashed like this one was. It was like the living room and kitchen back home but so so much worse. The place was a disaster and I imagined the panicked people that made had probably made it this way, running and grabbing any supplies that they could even though it didn't look like a lot of it had been taken. Some of the shelves were tipped over but the majority of merchandise remained, either still hanging
on the shelves or now on the floor.
"Dani and I will head for the pharmacy." Beckett turned for Kale who nodded his approval.
"Then Alex and I will look for food."
It was a bit of a maze to get to the back of the store where all pharmaceuticals were. Beckett found three backpacks still hanging on a hook on a shelf and handed one to me, telling me to stuff it with what I wanted. Passing by the hygiene necessities, I grabbed deodorant, toothbrushes, toothpaste, a hairbrush, shampoo, conditioner, and plenty of ponytail holders. In the next row, Beckett threw handfuls of bandages, band-aids, painkillers, antibiotics and antiseptics, and just about anything we could ever need. He filled the two backpacks as much as he could, to the point where he could barely zip them shut.
We found Kale and Alex minutes later with several plastic bags filled with various foods and bottled drinks. Beckett and I headed back out to the car and filed into the backseat once again. Kale decided to go back in and grab more while Beckett set to work on re-bandaging my arm.
His face recoiled slightly as he unwrapped the tan fabric. The puncture wound looked like it could have been mistakened to have happened a day prior. It stared angrily at me, rimmed red and oozing with blood. There were spots of white and yellow pus emitting from dried cracks within the wound itself.
"Ick," I commented distastefully.
Beckett nodded and let go of my arm, digging into one of the backpacks. I held my forearm up to my face, cringing at the wounds. I poked at one of the crusted over patches.
"Don't touch them, Dani. You'll make it worse."
I smacked my lips and held my arm back out my brother as he gestured for it. The antibiotic in his hand was a nose tipped bottle that I truly didn't like the look of. He swished it onto a pad on his knee.
"This is probably going to sting." He cautioned, eyeing me for an indication keep going.
I nodded and watched him gently set the pad on the injury. My teeth gritted painfully as an electrifying tingling sensation pulsated through my arm.
"Okay. That was an understatement." I said between my clamped teeth.
"I warned you."
"Ya. Thanks for that." I frowned. Beckett let a tiny smile escape from his lips for a fraction of a second.