by Jack Hunt
“He’s right, Johnny. I’m not doing it either,” Ben said.
“Well, I guess then it’s just you and I,” Baja said spinning two Glocks around his fingers as though he was John Wayne.
I shook my head. “I hear you. Maybe it is time we hung up our guns and avoided danger for once instead of running into it.”
Baja slapped me on the chest bringing me to a halt. “Hold on a minute. You said you were in. What? So now you’re not going to do it?”
I shifted from one foot to the next before spotting a Z twenty yards away feeding on the remains of a human like a buzzard. I lifted my assault rifle and shot it in the head.
“I don’t know, Baja. I’m back and forth on it.”
“This isn’t about a stranger who has been taken. It’s about justice for fifteen who were burned in front of us. Or have you all forgot? Izzy was one of them,” Baja bellowed.
Elijah walked up to Baja and pressed his finger into his chest pushing him back. “Listen up, dickhead. If you want to go up against those assholes, be my guest but don’t drag our ass into it. Johnny was thinking clearly until you fogged up his head with your demented idea to once again play the all-American hero. Well, fuck your heroics. You want to go do it, go ahead but you are not bringing us down with you.” He kept pressing Baja backwards with his finger; I could see Baja starting to clench his hand.
“Elijah,” Ben tried to get him to rein it in but he wasn’t listening to him. He continued to push up against him and bring up all manner of things that annoyed and frustrated him about Baja.
“Just let it go,” I said moving on hoping that he would stop but he didn’t.
The next thing I heard was Elijah shout, “Oh, you want a piece of me.”
Instantly he was on his ass, and Baja was on top. He got a few more jabs in before Ben and I dragged them away from each other. The two kids looked on as if we were all demented. They weren’t wrong.
The rest of the journey was quiet. Baja on one side of the road, Elijah on the other. Both of them pouting like little kids. We came down Riverhead-Hampton Bays Road which crossed underneath Sunrise Highway.
“I say we cut them loose here and let them walk the rest of the way.”
“You would. You coward,” Baja replied.
“I will fuck you up,” Elijah yelled, trying once again to get over to Baja and give him an ass whopping.
“Will you two give it a rest, for god’s sake?”
As we got closer to the turnpike, we heard the rumble of vehicles approaching. All of us crouched down and sought cover within the many trees that lined the side of the road. One jeep passed, another and then another. It was the pale ones, heading towards the community.
“What the heck? Are they going to attack?”
None of us knew what to make of it.
“Now it’s not about one girl. How does the whole community being in danger sound to you? You still want to walk away?” Baja said to Elijah.
“It’s their problem now.”
Baja snorted. “Yeah, just as I thought.”
Once again we found ourselves pushing them back to prevent them from getting at each other.
“Look at you two. You think this is going to help?”
“Why the hell did you even leave Salt Lake? You have been nothing but a pain in the ass,” Baja muttered.
“The only reason I came along with you idiots is because I thought that maybe, just maybe it would lead to finding the cure and sorting this shit out.”
“Bullshit. You had nothing left for you back in the city.”
I was about to take my socks off and jam them down both of their throats. Lying down in the undergrowth, we watched as another sixteen jeeps passed us.
“What do you want to do?” I asked the others.
“I still think we send them in. No one is going to bat an eye to two kids,” Elijah said.
“We aren’t sending anyone in there until we have figured out what is going on.”
“This is unbelievable. A few hours ago we were free and now we are heading back in?”
“Wren, Jess and Rowan are in there,” I said.
“No, I’m sorry, I’m not doing this anymore. You guys can go by yourself.” Elijah jumped up from his position and began to walk away.
Ben looked as if he was caught in the middle. Unsure of what was best to do. “Elijah.” He jumped up and rushed over to him. “Hold on, man, this is more than just an act of revenge.”
“I don’t care anymore what it is. I’m not winding up dead trying to save people who don’t give a shit about each other anyway.”
“What are you on about?”
“Look at us. We just spent a year inside those walls separate from each other. You went about your own business, everyone did.”
“You never complained.”
“Why would I?”
“I dunno, maybe because I’ve known you since you were a kid.”
“Ben, you don’t get it, do you? We keep risking our lives for people we don’t know and the ones that we do, well, they just turn away the first chance they get. Everyone leaves. Everyone.”
I could tell there was more to this.
“You’re on about your father, aren’t you?” Ben asked.
Elijah pulled out a cigarette and lit it.
“You told me to see him the day he died but I didn’t, and you know why?”
“Because you hated him?”
“No, I loved that man. All I ever wanted was to make that guy proud and everything I did disappointed him.”
I was glad to see I wasn’t the only one with father issues. All of us had such diverse backgrounds. And yet we all had one thing in common. Troubled upbringings. We were all as messed up as each other.
“He was proud of you, Elijah. Believe me. I know that,” Ben said.
Elijah blew out some smoke. “But that’s it, Ben. You knew it. I didn’t.”
“He found it difficult to tell you.”
“But it wasn’t hard to tell you,” Elijah replied.
Baja groaned, rolled his eyes and buried his head in his hands. “How much longer are we going to have to endure his whining? Your father was a dick. We get it. Get over it,” Baja said.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. But one thing was sure. We were falling apart at the seams. On the surface for so long we had held it together. On the road it was only ever us. Our group relied on each other. We didn’t have time for meltdowns. But safety had given each of us time to reflect.
“No, I’m done.” With that Elijah turned and walked away.
“Where are you going to go?” Ben shouted.
“I don’t know but not here.”
Ben looked back at us. It was clear he was conflicted, pulled between two hard spots.
He shrugged. “I have to go with him.”
Baja military saluted him like he didn’t care. “Whatever, buddy.”
The tension between us was thick. Rowan, Jess and Wren had gone one way, Baja wanted to go another, Ben and Elijah had their own reasons. I sat there, a little back from the tree line, and ran a hand over my tired face. Baja was stupid enough that he would have gone in alone and probably got shot the moment they saw him. I understood where Ben and Elijah were coming from, I felt the same but here we were with two young lives in our hands, and no idea of what Sebastian or Steadman were up to. No matter what decision we made, it was liable to be the wrong one in someone’s eyes.
We had been cornered into some tight spots in the past but nothing we couldn’t figure our way out of because there were more than a few of us to decide. Now that wasn’t the case. I thought about what Ethan had said a few months into our stay when I had doubts about what was being built.
“United we stand, divided we fall.”
He believed that together we could rebuild and grow but if everyone took offense at decisions made eventually we would come apart at the seams. He was right. In many ways that’s what was happening. If we returned to the community, we stood the chance o
f being detained and punished for whatever they thought was a just reason. If we walked away, I would always wonder if Wren and Jess were suffering.
“Fuck it all. We are going to have to do this alone.”
“Suits me fine,” Baja replied.
“Yeah, it would, you’re a nutcase.”
“Whoa! I’m not the one with the daddy issues.”
“No, you’re the one with head issues,” I said.
There was no way we were going to be able to just stroll up to the gate, we were going to have to return to the boat and enter that way. The thought of returning seemed so overwhelming. It had taken us the better part of the morning just to get here.
“I say we just go back in.”
“Oh my god, Baja, and get tossed back inside that steel cage?”
“Think about it. We can say that we had a change of heart. That we wanted to get on board with Sebastian’s agenda.”
“Right. Good luck getting them to believe that.”
“Well, I’m not walking back the other way.”
“Are you kidding me?” I said turning to leave.
“No, I’m dead serious. We are ten minutes away from the access point. It’s going to take us until the evening to get back around to the other side, maybe longer.”
He was right. A journey that would have only take about forty minutes by car had taken us the better part of nine hours by foot.
My mind was processing what he was saying and looking for everything that was wrong about the idea, then it dawned on me. Maybe that was the way to do this.
“You’re right. You head in through the front gate. Take the two kids.”
“Glad you are coming around to my way of thinking.”
“No. I’m still going around.”
He blew out his cheeks exasperated.
“Listen, it’s perfect. They are going to let you in. You can go in there and tell them that you had a change of heart. In the process you found these two and decided to return to the community. They are going to grill you over where we are. You tell them in the city. They will go looking. I just need to get in, and find out what’s going on.”
“Well, then just let me do it.”
“No. Chances are they aren’t going to buy your story and they will toss you in the can.” I ran a hand through my hair. “Hell, for all we know they might shoot you on the spot.”
“Well if they do, fuck it. I was already close to doing myself in anyway.”
There was no easy way to do this. We had to get in and find out what was going on or leave. Those were the two options. I glanced over my shoulder at Ben and Elijah who were quite a distance away. It was insane. There was no other way of looking at this.
Baja smiled. “You still care for her, don’t you?”
“Who, Wren?”
“No, Jess.”
“I always will. But I’m not kidding myself. What we had is gone. It’s over. It’s in the past but that doesn’t mean I want any harm to come to her. I just need to know they’re all safe. If I walk away now it will eat away at me.”
Again I cast a sideways glance down the road and could see Elijah and Ben in the distance. I kind of hoped they would have a change of heart but they weren’t returning. Slowly they would become a dot on the horizon. I turned to leave when Baja grabbed my wrist.
“If we don’t make it this time… it’s been one hell of a ride, Johnny. Dax would have been proud.”
“That he would.”
CHAPTER 11
BAJA
WITH LUKAS and Kiera either side of me, I trudged my way towards the access point. There were very few things I had done in my life that were stupid. Well, I’m sure Johnny or one of the other guys could have reeled off a long list but that’s all subjective. But this had to be right up there with the time I tried to get into the Guinness World Records for rolling the biggest blunt. Now as far as I know no one had managed to get in for anything more than a big cigar. And that was a sixty-two-foot, twenty-pound stogie. I had big plans to blow that out of the water with an eighty-foot blunt. Unfortunately, police raided my secret pot farm. They burned the whole lot. That’s what led to my infamous joyride in my parents’ 1979 Country Squire station wagon. For the life of me I thought that the police were chasing me. Truth be told, the boys in blue had just wanted to stop me for a taillight infraction. Once they caught sight of a twelve-year-old at the wheel, that’s when shit got real. I honestly thought I was going to escape, I mean, I had seen The Dukes of Hazzard many times and those guys made it look easy.
No, it wasn’t easy.
Man, the look on their faces when I flipped that car.
Yep, that was a stupid idea but this was far worse. Here we were approaching the front gate like lambs being led to the slaughter. I mean, how would this look? It was like escaping Alcatraz only to come back and ask to be let back in.
“Stop right there.”
I looked up to four men in the watchtower.
“Baja?” Ray Colt asked.
“The one and only.”
“Where the hell have you been? You are in a whole heap of trouble.”
“You think? Open the gate.”
The large gate groaned as the pulley system engaged. We were at the first of the three gates. Once inside Ray along with one of the pale ones came over and took the assault rifle. “Sorry, but we’ve been given strict orders.” He glanced at the kids. “Who are they?”
“Came across them on the way back.”
He frowned. “Why did you return?” he asked as he loaded us into a truck and drove us the rest of the way.
“You mean, why did I leave? Ten minutes out there and I knew it was the wrong choice. Place is still swarming with the undead.”
He gave me a skeptical eye. As the truck rumbled through the final access point I saw the men from the city.
“Who are they?”
“Seems James Fritz and Sebastian have been working together.”
“And you let them in?”
“I didn’t have much choice in the matter. Our weapons were taken this morning. I also don’t think everyone knows. We were told if we wanted to stay alive, to keep following orders. I have a family to think about.”
“But you know what they did to the others?”
He got this faraway look in his eye. “Yeah.” He didn’t say much more after that. I think the realization of the changing situation hadn’t fully dawned on him. It came down to what you wanted more. For some, that meant saying nothing. For others they didn’t care who was in charge as long as their needs were met. And that was before the apocalypse. How much more would people be willing to back down if it meant having a warm bed, food and protection for their loved ones?
As we arrived in section A, Ray had already radioed ahead to let them know that he was bringing in two kids and myself. We rounded a bend and standing near a truck was Sebastian talking to none other than James Fritz. The very man the resistance had fought against.
This was wrong on so many levels. What the hell was going on?
I would have been lying to say that I didn’t feel a nervous twinge in my gut. There was no telling what he would do. Ray pulled up behind the truck and we got out.
“Now isn’t this peculiar. I’m quite intrigued by your little escape. Even more so, by the fact that you chose to return. I’m not sure which one I find more stupid.”
“Sebastian, leave him be. Come this way, Baja. I would like a few minutes of your time.”
“What should I do with the kids?” Ray asked gesturing over his shoulder to the other two who looked fearful.
“Take them over to Bernice’s, she’ll make sure they’ve got what they need.”
I cast a glance over my shoulder to them. Kiera knew what she was getting into. On the way in I had brought her up to speed on how we came to be here. What the place was like and how things were changing. Even at a young age she seemed to grasp the gravity of the situation.
“Where are your men?” I asked as he le
d me into a small building that was used for offices.
“You’re looking at them.”
I cast a glance outside at the hundred-odd pale faces.
“Shouldn’t you be in some bunker somewhere working on the cure with the rest of your mad scientists?”
“My daughter is here.”
“Your daughter doesn’t want anything to do with you.”
“Of course she doesn’t. She’ll soon come around to our way of thinking. By the way, where are Johnny and the others?”
“They went their separate ways.”
“And why did you come back?”
“Have you seen the state of things out there? Listen, I might not like that prick Sebastian. But I know a good thing when I see it. At least here I get a house, food and protection.”
“Seems you pissed him off.”
“He was the cause of fifteen people dying.”
“Yes, I heard about that. That was unfortunate.”
Baja snorted. “Unfortunate is dropping my tea, or having someone eat the last piece of chocolate. Burning to death fifteen people in front of us. That is insane.”
“What can I say? It’s not what I would have done but there is only so much I can control. Like you all, they have their moments.”
My chin dropped as I stared at the ground.
“Are you having second thoughts about having returned?”
“No, of course not.”
“What direction did Johnny and the other two head in?”
“Why the interest in him?”
“Um, let’s just say that what he has flowing through his veins is of dire need.”
“You have five others.”
He studied my face. “Let me ask you something. Have you ever made juice from fruit?”
“Do I look like I own a juicer?”
“Okay, maybe not. It takes a lot of apples to make the right amount of juice. We think we may have pinpointed the genetic makeup for a permanent cure but it’s a delicate procedure that involves operating on the brain. As you can appreciate, the brain is a delicate piece of technology. The pineal gland holds the key. Unfortunately, what we believe must be done places the subject at risk of death.”
“I don’t follow you. In fact, I pretty much slept my way through biology.”