Shore Haven

by Reynolds, Jennifer

  Chapter 21

  ~~~Jason~~~

  We searched all five levels of the lab, but only found two other people, and calling them people was generous. They weren’t zombies yet, so we couldn’t call them that, but they were far from human.

  I held the I.D. for one and Tera the other, so the doctors hadn’t left when they’d thought they’d had a vaccine after all. According to the notes Russ found, things had played out the way Dr. Barnes had said at first. When it had come down to just the three of them; Barnes, Ming-Na Eng, and Basdev Nair, and they’d known they were getting close to a vaccine, she’d drugged them in their sleep, strapped them to tables, and started using their blood for experimentation. The vaccine she had given them, thinking that she really had found something, had only prolonged the turning time.

  The creatures we’d put down were half zombie and had been that way for days, maybe even a week.

  “So what do you think the newest version of the vaccine her notes say she has would have done to us?” I asked Russ, as he poured over the papers.

  “The same as far as I can tell from what she’s written and judging by your blood sample. They’d been down there for a little over a week like that with probably another week before full transformation. This,” Russ said, holding up a vial, “would probably take even longer. It would do in a pinch if we didn’t have a vaccine or cure on hand but could get to one soon. I wouldn’t want it, though. These notes make it sound like you get sick right away and stay in that stage for a much longer time. That would make transporting a person hard.”

  “Should we destroy it all?” I asked them after we put down the half zombies.

  Tera looked from me to Russ, then said, “I wouldn’t. We’ll take the notes and her pass to get into the building. We could give them to someone we trusted to continue the research properly.”

  Russ reluctantly nodded.

  “That sounds like a plan. Let’s gather the supplies and medicine that tent community can use and get out of here,” I instructed.

  By noon, we were upstairs in the house eating lunch. Even the doctor. We searched every room and grounds for other entrances to the lab and searched for more keys that would let her into it, but we found nothing. We disposed of the key cards we’d found inside of the lab except for the doctor’s key. That one, we placed inside my pack with the notes.

  Luckily, Barnes was out for most of that, so she didn’t have a clue what we’d done except lock her out of her lab. She was furious, but since we’d tied her up and we had weapons, she couldn’t do anything to us.

  “You can’t just leave me here like this,” she said, as we were packing up our meal.

  “We can, and we will,” I said, thinking that I’d already said that exact phrase to her once that day.

  “But…”

  “But nothing. You’re a psychopath. We don’t want someone like you where we’re going. You have a beautiful house here. There’s lots of farmland. You’re smart enough to make it work,” Tera said.

  “You even have electricity,” Russ said. “We turned that on just for you.”

  “We suggest you spend the rest of your life praying to whatever god you believe in for forgiveness,” I said, motioning for Tera and Russ to follow me out of the house.

  “You have to untie me first,” Dr. Barnes called out to us holding up her bound wrists.

  “Not on your life,” Russ said, shutting the door behind us.

  Leaving her tied up like that felt cruel, but Tera reminded me that the doctor was a capable woman. She could cut herself loose easy enough. We just had to hope that she didn’t figure out how until we were long gone.

  Our journey back to the tent camp was tiring, as the supplies we’d packed for the sick people loaded us down, and we were going on very little sleep, but we made it there before dark. The same woman who’d met us the day before met us then. She and a few others had been on the lookout for us. She gratefully took the supplies we offered.

  “Did you find the doctor? Is there a vaccine,” she asked, handing the meds off to two teenage boys who ran with them back to camp.

  “We found a doctor, but there isn’t a vaccine.” I quickly told her the story.

  “Well, that sucks,” she said, putting her hands on her hips and turning to face the tents spread out below us.

  “She doesn’t know we’re here, does she?” the woman asked.

  “No, but if she leaves that farmhouse, she could be upon you in no time. As much as you guys need a doctor, I don’t know if you’d want to trust her to your welfare,” I said.

  “I won’t. I won’t turn the woman away if she comes. I can’t afford to, but she’ll be guarded for sure.”

  “I don’t think she’ll be leaving that farmhouse anytime soon. She’ll exhaust all efforts to get back into the lab before leaving,” Tera said. “How many have you lost,” she asked, turning to look at the pillar of smoke.

  “Too many to count,” the woman said, wiping a tear from her cheek. There aren’t many of us left who aren’t sick. Can I ask a favor?” she said, turning to us, looking imploringly into each of our faces.

  “You can,” I asked wearily.

  “Two kids showed up late yesterday. I stopped them from coming to camp, but they’re in shock and keep trying to wander in no matter what we tell them. Can you take them with you? We won’t be able to leave for a while, and they aren’t safe out there in the woods by themselves.”

  “Are you sure they aren’t sick or infected?” Russ asked, pulling out a pair of binoculars to search the area on the other side of the camp for the kids. He made no indication as to whether or not he could see them.

  “No, but neither was showing signs of either the last time I saw them, which was about two hours ago.”

  “I can’t make you any promises, but we’ll check them out. Where’s their camp?” I asked, turning to Russ.

  “I see their tents, but not them,” Russ said, pointing toward the woods near the north edge of the field.

  He continued to watch for the kids while Tera and I gave the woman, who we’d finally formally introduced ourselves to and in turn found out her name was Katrina, instructions on how to find Shore Haven when they were moving again…if they start moving again.

  Once all of that was final, Katrina went back to her people, and we skirted the camp and the fire pit to find the kids. At first, we thought we were coming upon a trap of some kind, as all we saw was a dying fire and two, small, empty tents. No one answered our call when we tried to announce our arrival.

  After circling the camp once, we started widening the area around it, looking for their bodies or some indication as to where they were, but still, we didn’t find anything. We were about to leave when the kids stumbled from a section of trees, holding armfuls of firewood. They nearly dropped them when they saw us.

  The two weren’t kids, but teenagers about Kayla’s age. Judging from the way they held themselves, Katrina was right, though, they wouldn’t last long by themselves. Someone had been sheltering them, to their detriment, from what was happening in the world.

  “Katrina sent us,” Tera said, drawing their attention away from Russ and I and to her. We all looked the same in our Shore Haven suits, packs, and arsenal, but being female, they would automatically see her as the lesser threat. To be honest, though, I’m betting she was the most dangerous.

  “She said you guys needed help. They,” Tera said, pointing back to Katrina’s camp, “are too sick to be of assistance. Too many of their people have died already, and they don’t know how many more will die before things get better…if things get better. She asked us to take you with us.”

  “She did?” the girl asked, looking from Tera to the camp, unsure if she should believe us, and probably wanting to run to Katrina to ask, something the girl couldn’t do, or she’d be exposed to whatever illness the camp had.

  “She did,” Tera said. “She and her people will be following behind us in a day or so, once they’re better.”
>
  “Where are you taking us?” the boy asked.

  “Have you heard of a place called Shore Haven?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said, visibly relaxing. “My grandpa was one of the sponsors. My dad was a doctor. Grandpa’s money was supposed to ensure us a place inside when it was finished. We tried to come when the outbreak hit, but Mom was too sick, and dad wouldn’t leave her or the hospital. Before he died, he told me to go there if I could, but by then all flights were canceled, roads were jammed, and the group of survivors I was traveling with had heard rumors that Shore Haven had started the virus. I couldn’t convince anyone of anything else. I didn’t want to leave them. Safety in numbers and all that,” he said, dropping his load of wood by the fire and motioning for the girl to do the same.

  She did so reluctantly. She stuck close to the boy. They didn’t look as if they were related, but in our world, you grow attached to those with whom you come so close to death. Of the two of them, he seemed to be the one in charge. That wasn’t saying much, as he didn’t appear to know what he was doing.

  “What happened to the group you were traveling with?” Russ asked.

  “Dead. We’ve lost a few here and there to the zombies since the initial outbreak. We gained a few as well, but mostly we lost them. Then, a few days back, we ran into this massive horde. I don’t think we were the only ones from our group to escape, but the horde scattered us to the point that we couldn’t find anyone else.”

  “How did you find these people?” I asked though I was sure I knew the answer.

  “The same way you did, I’m sure. We just stumbled upon them. I didn’t have a plan on what to do after we separated, but I guess in the back of my head, I was making my way to Shore Haven. We were ecstatic when we saw the tents, but Katrina stopped us before we got to camp. She said they were all sick and that we couldn’t come any closer. I didn’t believe her until I saw them burning the bodies.”

  “They won’t share their food with us,” the girl said with a bit of a whine in her voice.

  “That’s because there is a high probability that everything the group has is contaminated. They’ll be lucky if half of them survive,” Tera said, sounding a bit impatient with the girl.

  We couldn’t leave them, but I could tell that none of us were going to be able to put up with and take care of someone who was still that spoiled. The boy, and whomever else they’d been traveling with must have catered to her every need. Both kids looked that way, telling me that they were probably with a military group or one that was so large that anyone under twenty-one wasn’t a part of the protection group. They had a lot of growing up to do if they wanted to come with us.

  “But we’re hungry,” the girl said.

  “Better hungry than dead,” Russ said. His tone had more than a bit of a bite to it, which caused the girl to flinch a little.

  The boy put his arm around her and glared at Russ.

  “Look, son,” I said, stepping between them. “You two,” I nodded to the boy and the girl, “are going to have to learn to toughen up if you’re going to make it out here. I don’t know what kind of group you were with before, but there is only a handful of us so we can’t babysit you. You’ll have to defend yourself, you’ll have to work for your stay, you’ll have to go without food for extended periods of time if necessary, go without baths, or brushing your teeth. Shore Haven is a two to three day’s walk from here if we’re lucky and don’t run into any problems. We can’t hold your hand. Once we’re there, things will be better, safer. We have food, medical supplies, and proper beds, but you’ll still have to work, help the entire group survive and rebuild.”

  “We’ll stay here then,” the girl said, pouting.

  “Fine,” I said, walking away from them a bit. “If you go near the camp, you’ll most likely get sick and die. We don’t have much in the way of rations to leave you, so you’ll have to forage for yourself, and pray they get better quickly. That isn’t going to change much, though. I doubt they are going to baby you. They’ve already lost half their numbers. More are going to die. If you can’t fend for yourself, you’re a burden, and they may not let you go with them.”

  “Katrina and her people can’t just leave us,” she said, looking pleadingly at the boy.

  “They can and just as easily as we will. They won’t run the risk of you getting them killed because you’re too spoiled to see the world for what it truly is. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have a lot of miles to make up for before dark.”

  “Take us with you,” the boy said. “We can make the trip and won’t be in your way.”

  “But…” the girl said.

  “He’s right, Emily, we can’t stay here. We don’t know if anyone from that camp will live out the week. These people are our best bet for survival. We can fight. We can kill those creatures if we have to. We can hunt and scavenge for food if we need as well. We don’t have a choice. Our last group took care of us, and we should have helped more. We took advantage of them. That might be why no one came looking for us.”

  Emily pouted, and I could tell that I was going to regret letting them go with us, but I couldn’t, in good conscience, leave them to die. In disgust with her and myself, I looked away from them to my people. Russ’ eyes pleaded with me to change my mind, and Tera gave me a look that said she’d rather leave them but knew we couldn’t. I nodded to her, then turned back to the kids.

  “Before we go any further with this, we need to know that neither of you is sick or infected. Tera will take Emily over to her tent and look her over for bites, you…”

  “Trevor,” he said.

  “Trevor, we’ll go into yours, so that I can make sure you aren’t bitten. If you were, you’d be showing signs by now, but I want to be certain.”

  Emily tried to complain, but Trevor shushed her and pointed her toward her tent. She huffed but did it.

  I wasn’t happy about having to look at the boy, but I did, and to my relief didn’t see anything.

  Tera and Emily emerged from Emily’s tent about the same time we exited Trevor’s. Tera gave me a nod. I returned it. Russ motioned for the kids to take a seat near the fire while he pulled out a medical kit. Just like with the bites, if they were sick, they should have started showing signs by now, but a low-grade fever might tell us if there was a possibility that they were getting sick.

  All tests we could think to run came back normal, to my relief. They were going to be annoying, but I didn’t want them to die.

  After that, we gave them protein bars, promised to stop to eat in a few hours, and packed up their campsite. We watched Katrina and a few others throw two more bodies into the pit before leaving the field.

  Emily tried to complain a few times about the walk, but after me telling her that she was welcome to stop at any time, but we were continuing and her trying to call my bluff by stopping, then losing her shit when we, even Trevor, kept walking, she shut up.

  We stopped and had supper in a barn. On that part of the journey, we only saw a handful of zombies. Most were expiring on their own, so we quickly disposed of them. There were a couple that weren’t within killing range that we left to die on their own, knowing they’d never catch up with us.

  Emily freaked out every time we saw one, even after Russ and Tera scolded her for it. Trevor wasn’t much help in killing them, but he kept out of our way, so that was something.

  As we were packing up, I said, “The next zombie’s we encounter, you two are killing.”

  “Excuse me,” Emily said, turning white.

  “Either that, or we leave you here.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “I’ve already told you that you won’t be putting our lives at risk.”

  “But we haven’t,” she said.

  “You have. Every time you scream like a damned fool when a zombie is nearby, you put us in danger. You attract more zombies to us, and you get the attention of other survivors. The second isn’t a bad thing unless the people you draw are just as deadly as
the zombies.”

  At her confused look, I went on to say, “Not all the survivors are decent people. You’ve been lucky, as far as I can tell, but we’ve seen some bad shit out here, Tera’s seen even worse shit—most of it done by humans, live people who’ve gone insane. We don’t want those kinds of people finding us. I don’t know about Tera or Russ, but I can barely bring myself to kill the zombies, knowing they used to be human. I don’t think I’d be able to kill an actual human.”

  Emily looked to Tera, and Tera said, “I’ve witnessed things you’ve only seen in horror movies. Things I can’t even hint at without giving you nightmares. Jason’s right, you have to toughen up, or we’re going to have to leave you behind. We have people waiting for us, a community waiting to rebuild. If you aren’t strong enough to make it out here, you aren’t going to be strong enough to help us in there, so we might as well leave you now.”

  The girl started crying. Trevor looked pissed off, but he didn’t say anything. I could see that he understood that what we were saying was true.

  No one consoled her, and once she realized that no one was going to, her tears dried up quickly.

  “We aren’t mean people,” Tera said, “We don’t like being so brutally honest or cruel to you, but you have to wake up girl. You’re living in a world that will eat you alive, literally, if you don’t learn to fight back.”

  Eventually, Emily nodded and pulled out her weapon.

  “Good girl. Let’s get back on the road,” I said, leading them out of the barn.

  Emily didn’t kill the next zombie we encountered, but Trevor did. He didn’t have much choice. The zombie was walking straight toward Emily, but the girl only stood there frozen. To give her credit, she didn’t scream. She didn’t make a move to kill it, though.

  Trevor was pissed with us about it, stating that we were just going to stand there and let her die. We didn’t deny it, though, that wasn’t what would have happened. One of us would have stepped in to kill it before it could do much damage to her—and we did the next time around—we just needed her to know we were serious.