Shaun yelled, “Hey, Aslin, you’ve been driving this for like ten minutes and you haven’t crashed it yet.”
He looked back and yelled, “Look, you little shit, I’m not that bad of a -.”
The bus rocked as Aslin took it head first into a Prius sending the car spinning wildly into a local building. “Not one word, Fox, not one fucking word. God, I hate kids some days.”
Shaun suppressed the smile knowing later that there would be shit given and it would be plentiful. The bus stayed straight as an arrow the rest of the way and there were no other issues as they passed through the end of Urbandale, and back to the highway which would lead them to the base. Once they were close to the base Aslin punched his radio and said, “Hey, we’ll be there soon, get the barriers down so that we can enter quickly.”
Clary said, “You got anything or anyone following you three back?”
“No, we don’t have any threats behind us and it’s two not three.”
Clary hated himself a little bit hoping it was one kid over the other but Shaun was the most impressive young man that he’d ever met. He said, “It wasn’t Shaun, was it?”
“No, no he made it. He’s in the back of the bus, he’s still being a pain in the ass too.”
“Do I even want to ask what happened?”
“Is it going to change anything, Clary? Talk about the past brings up the past, regardless if it's ten minutes or ten months. I don’t want to get into it right now. If you want to talk about it after we get home and take care of those others, then we can. It is about as pleasant of a story though as any other kids that we’ve lost.”
“Okay, that makes sense, and no I don’t need to know the details; I already have a hard enough time sleeping the way it is. Filling my head with more demons isn’t going to help.”
“Retelling the story isn’t going to do anything for me either. Just make sure you get those gates open and ready for us…this thing is a bitch to handle.”
Clary already knew his answer before he asked it but couldn’t help but bait him with the question. “Sorry, how long have you been driving a Humvee? You still don’t have the hang of it.”
Aslin said, “It’s wasn’t my fault this time. Well, it wasn’t completely my fault; there’s a big ass driveway to that place and needless to say there was the mother of all hordes in there.”
“Did you crash another vehicle? Christ, you wonder why we don’t have nice things. Why the hell did you get a bus?”
“Because it was the only thing big enough to get all of this blood back. Did you get the sprayer ready on the truck?”
“Nope, I decided that was a risky idea.”
“So, what the hell are we going to do, we lost a good kid running for this shit, and now you don't want to-”
“Don’t get your panties in a bunch, Aslin. I was going to say that we’re taking a tank out. These things are just sitting here ready to rock. I think Greg might be in love with the idea of them and the firing power. I’m glad that he didn’t know that I could drive one of these prior to today.”
“You know that is actually fucking genius! Damn good work, Clary.”
“Hey, prick, don’t act like it is that shocking that I came up with a good idea. I’m a damn genius, man.” Clary said.
“Uh huh, we’re about five minutes out,” Aslin said. “Are we going to be able to make it past those guys out front that you bombed the shit out of earlier?”
“Yeah, you should be okay, there won’t be extra room, but I want to leave it there. It is a good deterrent for anyone that thinks that coming after us would be a good idea.”
“We need some signs letting people know what we got going on here. Basically, if you want to stay here, you want to come in and chat that we’re down with it, but that if they’re here for any other reason we will rain hell down on them,” Aslin said.
Clary said, “That’s an idea but it isn’t a necessity at the moment. It is going to be awhile before I welcome anyone with open arms. We can figure this shit out later. I’ll be there in a few so you make sure that everyone is ready to go when I get there. We fill it up and we get out of there.”
“What are we doing with the kids that don’t know how to shoot?” Aslin asked.
“They can still aim and pull a trigger towards their little base. At the very least if they don’t hit anything they’ll still seriously make some fucking racket. You pair each of them with Ellie, Kya, Scott, and well I guess that is it, isn’t it? Fuck, we’ll use that tank for everything it is worth.” Clary said. “We will see you two in a few. I’ll make the call to assemble everyone. They aren’t too far off.”
“Ten-four.”
Chapter 23
Clary hit his radio calling everyone in. When they made it up to the tank, a smile crept across their faces. They didn’t have a clue what it really could do and could only imagine what they knew from movies and television shows. Ellie saw the tank and said, “You know how to drive this, Clary?”
“Well, if I don’t, Ellie, we aren’t going to make it very damn far, are we?”
“You going to drop some hell on those assholes today with the long gun?”
“Yes, we’re loaded up with as many as we could fit in it. We can drop forty bombs on them, that’s probably overkill but I’m a pretty big fan of being thorough and it’ll save bullets. Does everyone here that doesn’t have any experience with these rifles have ammunition for them?”
A fifteen-year-old girl, Aliyah, stepped forward holding her hand up. Clary knew most the kids but figured this one must have been one of the last groups that had come in. He smiled looking at her hair, the final remains of purple danced at the tips of her hair almost completely grown out after a year of the dead. He thought of luxuries kids used to have and that they’d not waste time on such things going forward. There was no reason to set themselves aside from the others because they were all one now. But he secretly loved the rebellious kids unafraid to be judged by their peers. She said, “I don’t know how to use this thing, like at all. I mean I’m not stupid, you pull the trigger and it goes off. But other than that I’m more likely to shoot one of you then to hit anything with it. I don’t think that is a very good idea.”
“Well, young lady there aren’t a lot of options. With the exception of Aslin and Fox, there’s no one else to fill your shoes. If you want to survive, hell if you all want to survive we need to put these men down before they come back and wipe us out. I guarantee you that they will come back. If they had all their cards in today they probably would have won, especially with the number of people that they were able to take out with pure luck at the bunkhouse. If I wouldn’t have been watching the surveillance and Patrick wouldn’t have let us know with his dying moments on earth, then we’d all be lying dead where we stood.”
“That doesn’t make me feel very safe,” she said.
“It wasn’t meant to make you feel safe. There isn’t anything to save us but ourselves. We no longer have a government, police, or citizens that we can trust as back up. It’s us, the welfare of life is gone and if we want to make it we need to make a stand; we need to take them out and we need to do it today while they’re still licking their wounds and mourning the loss of their group. That is if they’re mourning anything.”
She held up her rifle, “So, what do you want us to do with these things then? If you think I’m kidding about not knowing what to do with it then I hate to be standing behind you with one of these when the times comes.”
Clary walked over taking the gun from her. He said, “For those of you, what do we have eight that don’t know what they’re doing with these it looks like?” He took the rifle holding it out in front of him. “Everyone hold your rifle out like so, don’t put your finger on the trigger, I repeat do not put your finger on the trigger. Push this button it’s called a magazine. The thing falling from it is called, can anyone guess? That’s right…a magazine. It will fall out given you aren’t resting it on the ground. You only hit this button when your gun stops firing and you are out of bullets. You release it push it aside and put in a new one…here. The best way to know if it is in there correctly is if the bullets are pointing to the bad guys when you put it in. The idea of them facing you means you’d like the gun to shoot you but they won’t fire that way nor will the magazine fit. They call this survival of idiots in combat. Once you have it in there securely you pull this handle back; it is called the charging handle and it will let you fire the gun again. There is a safety on here. You put it on until we get there. You will notice there is a scope on here. If you put it on single fire, you can try and see any bad people through it. If you can find one and put the crosshairs in the middle of their chests then God bless you and please, please, please pull the trigger and take those assholes out. I know that is a lot to remember but really just remember magazine release. Charging handle when empty, and safety on until we get there. Do you think you got that?”
He handed the rifle back to Aliyah who looked at it for a second hit the button letting the magazine fall to the ground, pulled a fresh magazine out of her pocket, and placed it in pushing it home. She pulled the charging handle back letting it release and aimed at a nearby tree missing the first three shots and on the fourth hit home. The rest of the teens followed her lead and within one magazine they each had hit the bark of the tree consistently for rookies on a rifle.
Clary said, “Alright, now save what you got and make sure that you have a fresh one in and what on?”
The group all yelled, “The safety!”
“And why do we want that on?”
“So we don’t shoot you in the back.”
“Yes, so we don’t shoot anyone in the back of the head. We don’t want to worry about me, because I’m going to be in that tank.”
Greg coughed, and Clary said, “With Greg sitting next to me, which I’m bound to regret.”
The teens nodded and Ellie said, “Come on, when you think you have enough bullets is going to be when you run out. Let’s run inside and grab everyone a few more to stuff in your bags. There’s no reason to go light today when there is so much in there. Just make sure your shots count, please, so we don’t waste them.”
The group followed her and Aslin pulled in slowly with the bus. The front of it was covered with gore with a smiley give blood character on the front on a giant red sticker. Greg said, “Christ, he crashes the shit out of things doesn't he?”
Clary looked to him but didn’t need to say anything.
“Hey, I’m getting better at driving so lay off, man.”
McQuaig coughed and said, “That’s why I drive anytime we go somewhere, right?”
“You drive because I’m a beautiful, evil genius behind a machine gun, McQuaig.”
McQuaig looked to Clary who actually wouldn’t deny that it was not somewhat accurate. “He is pretty good but it sure seems like it's getting deep in here.”
Greg questioned, “Deep?”
McQuaig was already pulling back the reel to set the hook. “Yeah, Greg, deep, like you’re full of shit.”
Greg started to smile trying to hold it back. He said, “You watch yourself, McQuaig, or you might just make me fall in love with you.”
She winked walking back and Clary said, “Watch yourself, Greg, she might be trouble.”
Greg pointed to himself and said, “I’m sorry, does that look like something I’m ever concerned with?”
Clary turned around getting the rest of the gear up on the tank to drop in. “No, it must be nice being young and dumb…I was young and dumb once. Was one of the best times of my life.”
Chapter 24
Kya sat next to Joey who looked like peace was not in his dreams. His face was scrunched up and he was shaking his head more than she liked to see. He had been sedated so Lou could work on him and didn’t want the boy waking up violently in the middle of it. He was scared enough doing such technical work on a boy who he had no medical history with, as well as it being the first bullet wound he had worked on. Kya held Joey’s hand and felt his forehead because the sweat that was building on top of it was making her nervous and she did not want to see anything else happen to him. If she had any more loss in her life today she felt that her heart would literally break.
When she wiped the sweat away from his forehead she kissed him on the top of the head making sure that he didn’t have a fever. It was the way that her mother had checked her temperature for years when she was sick and always made her feel loved and better. Joey stirred and groggily started to try to talk. The spit from his throat was nonexistent and he had jumped a little when he woke up.
Kya sat back in the seat looking at him and realized she had only seen the boy look that scared twice. She thought back to the first few days that they had been hiding in the business district in Adel before Shaun and his crew had driven by. His father had been eating his mother for his birth into the zombie apocalypse. It was a dream that had haunted him since the beginning of the apocalypse and probably still did today.
His brother and sister had done everything in their power trying to make the boy calm and feel safe in that store front but they had very little valid reassurances that they could promise the boy to make him feel better. He had not understood that his mother was gone until they had seen her randomly walking across the street and at that point there was no question that she was most definitely gone and no longer of the living.
The second time she recalled was only a day later on the first day that they had slept in a bed since it started, and being at the old man Andy’s farmhouse on the edge of town had given them the much needed respite they were so desperate for. They’d all woken up feeling like this was going to be their home for a long time. That, of course, had only lasted a few precious hours before absolutely everything went to hell in a handbag.
She remembered how Patrick and Joey had been bonding on day three of hell. She could see how Patrick was standoffish and didn’t really know how to talk to anyone. He had been happy to help but was unsure what to do with Joey. If he should treat him differently or just like anyone else. Joey who had not given him any chance to like him had clung to him instantly. They had bonded quickly, and by the afternoon looked like they had known each other for years. They had split wood that Andy had said would be imperative to heat the hundred plus year old house in the winter…if they made it that long.
That was something she could remember wasn’t high on her list of things she thought would happen. Just as she thought she was getting to know Jen and Ellie the bus had come from nowhere, filled with other kids from an orphanage led by two men that had no clue what they were doing. She thought how most of those kids were no longer alive and that at best there were probably five still there. Joey’s sister had been taken in the farm pasture by the dead that followed the bus that would end up saving their lives. She knew that the dead would have made their way there eventually but she would have been grateful, and felt blessed, if it had been more than half a day.
Joey tried saying something again but it was useless and he could only move his mouth. The more he tried to speak the more nervous he got. He looked around wild eyed trying to figure out what was going on. Kya sounded like she was yelling to him in a tunnel; the drugs were impairing him and making it impossible to understand anything.
Kya gripped his hand with both of hers making sure not to cover them up. When she saw him trying to speak she let go and poured him a glass of water. He drank it quickly and she had to tell him, “Take small sips, Joey, I don’t know if you are going to make yourself sick or not by chugging that water, so take your time.”
Joey nodded slowing down and then tested his voice a second time. He cleared it and said, “What, what happened, Kya? Why am I in this bed, where am I, is this the hospital?”
Her heart broke as she thought of it. “I’m sorry, but you don’t remember anything? You don’t remember what happened?”
Joey shook his head no for a second and then looked down the long room seeing that they were the only ones in there. When he saw part of Patrick’s pack laying on the bed it brought everything rushing back to him, hitting him like a semi-truck. Joey tried pushing himself up and felt the pain rushing through his side and abdomen. “Was Patrick okay? Did Mr. Lou save him, did he make it, is he okay, what else happened?” The questions poured out of him now that he remembered.
Kya wiped at new tears. She shook her head no slowly giving Joey a hug that the two of them both needed. She held him until he no longer was trying to get up. “Lou is going to take care of you while we’re gone. We’re taking who is left and going to go to the bad people’s base.”
Joey said, “What are you going to do that for? What if they win?”
Kya kissed his forehead again and handed him a fresh cup of water. She said, “I’m going to go tell Lou that you are awake. We can talk about everything else that happened later if Lou doesn’t fill you in on the details. It’s best if you just relax and try not to move. I don’t know too much about what he did for you but they always say you need to sit back and relax. It won’t hurt anything. But Ellie said that you tried your best to save Patrick. I can’t tell you how much that means to me, Joey.”
“He was, or is, well, he is my best friend. I’d do anything for Patrick, Kya. When I saw Bella run that knife across his neck, all I could think about was saving him. She shot me while I was running and I hit her with my baseball bat that Mr. Clary made for me.”
Kya nodded her head just barely able to speak, “We will be back before too long, Joey, I promise.”
When she grabbed her gear and turned around she saw Ellie sitting in the doorway, wiping at a few tears of her own. Ellie came in giving Joey a hug. “Hey, I’ll be back, Joey, we all will. And I’ll try and bring something good to eat for you when I come back. I’m sure there’s something lying around that is horrible for you.”
Joey smiled wiping the tears from his face. He pulled her in close and whispered, “Look on the top left shelf in the kitchen in the far back behind the extra plates. There might be some candy bars and cookies back there. Don’t tell anyone that it is there. Cookies are almost gone; I’m going to miss cookies, Ellie.”
“Joey, as long as we can have an oven there will be cookies, I can promise you that.”
“Yeah, but there’s a lot of good stuff at Keebler that isn’t ever going to get delivered.”
“We have bad guys to go take care of, Joey, we will be back in a few hours.”
Joey nodded and the two girls left. Kya said, “So, I assume that they’re ready to leave?”
Lou saw them walking and Ellie said, “Hey, Lou, it’s time to head out. Clary wanted me to give you these.”
He said, “You’ve seen the basics before, right, so he sent a care package. If any of the dead or those asshats try getting in here you’ve got more bullets than you should ever need in this bag. You have any questions about how anything works before I go?”
Lou took the bag staring at a hundred magazines in it. He took both rifles from her and a pistol and said, “You girls be safe. I know how to use these for the most part. Just aim it at the assholes and pull the trigger, right? I can handle it. You get going, the sooner those guys are gone the better. It’ll be nice to have one less thing to worry about. My biggest fear has already been brought into existence. It won’t be easy for anything to get worse. I guess if I had to worry about you kids that I’ve grown to know and love over the last few months I would, but do me a favor, Ellie, Kya, try not to do anything stupid. Can you do your best to be safe, please?”
“The stupid, yes, the safe, we will do our best. We’re purposely going to a group of people who are obviously insane, given the fact they sent a fifteen-year-old girl in as a freaking spy, I mean, talk about father of the year material,” Ellie said.
Lou asked, “I saw Clary messing with a tank, is he really going to do something with that?”
A small grin stretched across her face as she thought about what the destruction was going to look like when he unleashed hell on the housing community. Ellie chuckled and said, “He and Greg are taking it in…don’t worry Greg isn’t driving. They’re going to decimate that effing place and whoever is left is going to get picked off one by one. We hope very much to have the dead in tow behind us so we can use the bastards that came to the base as bait. It is going to be one hell of a party for the men who are clueless that we’re coming.”
“Even as bad as it sounds, honestly, it could still be worse and I don’t think that I would feel like we’re getting the justice that I’m seeking,” Lou responded.
Kya said, “There isn’t much else we could do, Lou, with the amount of firepower and the limited resources that we have going on right now. I promise if we had the resources we would wage a war on those men that would leave them running for days on end. Unfortunately, since the asshats took out so many of us it’s difficult to do anything about it at the moment. They won’t have to worry about us coming for days on end and we won’t have to worry about them taking the time to regroup and get new men to replace the old.”
Lou gave them both a hug, saying, “I just hope very much that I get to see you later. I can’t handle anymore loss today. In all honesty, there isn’t much more to lose besides you kids. I guess I’d miss Aslin and Clary, Christ the idea of running this place with all of you and no other adults would drive me crazy.”
Ellie pulled him down and gave him a kiss on the cheek. She said, “You are the closest thing to a dad that I’ve had in a long time, Lou.”
Kya did the same thing and by the time they left he felt hope and a reason to live instead of taking the easy way out in life.
Lou walked around the corner knocking on the side of the door frame. Joey sat staring around unsure what he was supposed to be doing. Lou stopped by the office section of the building grabbing a few odds and ends. He held up a Snickers bar and a Marvel Comics magazine. “Are you interested in either of these, Joey?”
Joey looked like he wasn’t going to say anything but then motioned with his hands for both of them. He said, “You’ve been hiding candy, Lou?”
Lou patted his belly, chuckling. “You think I keep this thing up just eating salads and meat? It isn’t easy keeping this much good looking going at once.”
Joey patted his belly which, unlike Lou’s, had a layer of solid muscle beneath it. He said, “Yeah, I have to, like, fight the girls off of me.”
Lou tossed him the Snicker’s bar, “Dig in, buddy, I don’t want you leaving a pound lighter than you are now, lots of that water too. I’ll see if the gym has any Gatorade in it tomorrow when we start trying to recollect what is going on here. There’s going to be a bit of weirdness for a few days until we get things back in order. We are going to need you to get better quick because we won’t be able to handle having a man down for that long. You are important around here, Joey.”
Joey ripped the wrapper down the middle of the candy bar and went to take a bite off of it before thinking. He ripped it in half and threw it to Lou. He said, “You are important too, Lou. You aren’t getting rid of me anytime soon, you can count on that! I got cookies if you want to trade sometime, Lou.”
Lou popped the rest of what he had into his mouth and winked. “You need anything before I do a walk around? I want to make sure and lock down the windows and doors. If the worst case scenario happens I want to make this place impossible to get into, or at least hard enough that by the time they do try and get in I’ll be close enough to make them regret it. I’m going to shut all the lights down; are you going to be okay with that, Joey?”
Joey looked at the long dark room. He looked down at his side gripping his baseball bat with one hand and brought it up setting it next to him with a flashlight on the other side. “I’ll be okay, Lou, don’t worry about me. But you are coming back, aren’t you? You aren't going to go sit somewhere on your own in the dark, right?”
Lou shook his head, “No, buddy, I’ll be back real soon, give me about twenty minutes. I’m going to be quick.”
Joey who didn’t know, asked, “Are you going to get Karen and Teresa before you lock it down? Are they okay, Lou?”
Lou tried to smile but grief flooded back over him; the visions of his daughters, both bloodied by bullets, in his arms brought him back to a personal hell. It was one that he was sure he would be able to revisit on a regular basis. Lou tried to keep a straight face until he turned around, the gut wrenching agony of the losses he had pouring out of him were more than he could handle at the moment. He went to a nearby room and buried his face in a pillow to muffle the cries and screams. He, for a moment, actually wished that there would be someone trying to get in because he was confident that he would leave nothing of them to be Turned.
Chapter 25
Greg secured the chains to the feet of the men that had fallen to the tank. There were three Humvees lined up, and enough bullets and gear that it dropped the trucks suspension by a foot. McQuaig, Aslin, and Shaun each had a set of keys and were ready to roll out. Ellie and Kya came up to it as the last two the group had been waiting for. Clary said, “Hey, Kya, you two ready to go?”