Aslin pulled the truck back out into the street and looked around and made sure that he was not bringing an entire horde worth of the dead behind him there. When he realized they weren't, he said, “Can a couple of you guys jump into the back of the truck, we are going to have a hell of a time getting Greg and Joey in here when we arrive. I’m a bit worried about bringing an entire convoy back of people. There might be a few of you who are going to have to try and ride in the cars with the new people. I don’t like the idea of only having a lead car with guns, or for that matter the same thing with being the tail. It’d probably be best if we had someone front, middle, and back to keep from worrying about those bastards coming out of nowhere and well you know what else would happen after that….”
“Hey, I'll go with one of the new people if you want,” Hammond said.
McQuaig followed him and said, “Yeah, as long as Shaun is going to be ok, I say that we could let me go too, besides if Ellie is passed out there’s really no reason why I need to do the job that she could do unknowingly anyways. If they are just laying there it would probably help him out more than me being here.”
Aslin liked the idea of this and said, “Ok that works. I want to make sure that we are able to take anything out that is in the parking lot when we get there. It sounds like there are going to be quite a few people coming down those stairs. I can only assume that we are going to need to kill some time before we are able to head back to base since we will have a convoy of cars that are going to need warmed up. I just hope that there is enough room to get everyone back. I’d hate to think that we need to leave anyone at all behind, especially if we end up having to use the guns. Who knows how many of the Turned there are in the area, the last thing we want to do is come to save them and only end up bringing a horde of dead to their front steps. I’m sure they have protective doors, but we know if those things want in something, it's a matter of simple science that they will happily smash their damn heads in through something and there unfortunately isn’t a whole lot that we are able to do about it.”
Patrick asked, “Aslin, once we get back are we going to come back for more people, I mean are we going to start looking for survivors if we think that there are any?”
Aslin started to nod his head. “Yeah there is a good chance that Greg set the building blocks for doing something good. Of course there are about a million fucking ways that he could have done it smarter and been better prepared, but nonetheless, with the amount of space that we have, I can’t think of any intelligent reason that we aren’t out there trying to bring people in. He’d said something before about how the longer that we have to wait the less people there are going to be to bring back. Well he had a point and he was probably right. Just because we aren’t able to cure these things doesn’t mean that we should hide out for the rest of our lives. It's not going to be easy, but we are going to figure out a system and we are going to get as many people back as we can.”
“You know there are probably lots of supplies in the towns as well. I don’t understand why we don’t get what we can and eat it before it goes bad.”
They all thought that Shaun was out for the count and was unconscious but he whispered, just hardly able to hear, “We need to kill.”
Aslin looked back at him, slowed down after checking his mirrors to make sure the coast on both sides and behind was clear and asked, “Shaun, Shaun are you ok? How are you feeling?”
Shaun said, “Bad, but we need to kill them. If there is no cure, then we need to stop wasting our time and start putting the world back the way it belongs.”
Aslin started to talk but Shaun’s eyes rolled into the back of his head and he was gone again. He looked at McQuaig and said, “You stay right there until we have someone to take your place, you are his lucky charm right now I think.”
“I’m not going anywhere until you have a warm body to replace me with,” she replied.
Aslin and all of them thought about what Shaun was saying, there really was little use in spending their lives hiding when they could get people trained and get the supplies they needed that they could take those things out. That they could be safe, and while the world would never be the same again, it surely would be a better place without the dead roaming the streets and always on the brink of acting like they were going through starvation.
Chapter Eighteen
Greg never left the window and Joey sat next to Ellie with her head in his lap. When he saw the truck pull in he let out a breath of relief. He snapped his fingers and yelled to Lou. “Hey, Lou they are here, let’s get your stuff ready, it’s time to hit the road.”
Lou patted him on the shoulder and said, “We've been ready to go. You get your stuff and let’s get out of here. I can't thank you enough for doing this for us kid. I know it wasn’t the circumstances that you were shooting for but it is what it is and I will take any hope that we can now.”
Greg rose and hit the radio and looked at Lou, not kidding and said, “Well just remember that you were happy with me now, but you can save the thank you for when you are on the base and safe and warm and don’t have to worry about anything else.”
“What, have you had some bad experiences in the past or something Greg?” asked Lou.
Greg went to speak but Joey cut him off. “Any day that we get to wake up is a good day Mr. Lou. That is what Mr. Aslin and Clary say. But we lose people, not in a long time though, but the first couple days that we were together were pretty bad ones.”
Lou said, “Bad ones?”
Greg didn’t want Joey to get too upset so he pulled Lou in close to him and whispered, “We don’t talk about the past. I know you lost your wife and I can’t imagine that, but we’ve lost friends, family, fathers, mothers, you name it, siblings as well. Joey here lost everything, and while we don’t try to treat him special or different, he is. He can do anything else that we can but he is emotional. I think the last thing that you would like to do is cause him to lose his shit just before the ride home. It’s going to be cramped I'd think, with everyone trying to ride together, but we don’t need to break this kid’s heart all over again, bringing up the past only hurts. There is nothing to do with the past but try and make sure that you don’t become part of it.”
Lou stepped back smirking at Greg for a second and asked, “You sure you are only eighteen?”
Greg shrugged, “Well I’d have to say that with the shit that I've seen that has to put me at least at twenty-one right?”
Lou shrugged and said, “I don’t know but we ran out of beer months ago kid. If you haven’t gotten a taste for it, you might as well keep it that way. No reason to fall in love with something that probably won't ever get made again.”
Greg nodded, hit his radio and asked, “You guys ready for us? How do you want to do this? You got any room in that truck for us?”
Aslin said, “You can bring down Ellie and then get a few cars started at a time. As cold as it is, we are going to want to let the vehicle's warm up before we try and go for a drive with them. It’s still slicker than shit out to so tell them to take it easy driving, there’s no race to get anywhere. I can assume that there are quite a few of them who haven’t driven in a very long time.”
Greg said, “What are Joey and I riding back in?”
“You have a small army it sounds like of new people, you can hitch a ride with some of them. You need to figure out who is going to ride middle and who is going to take the rear. I want a few guns in each of those cars so that the Turned don’t come out of nowhere and break up our motorcade. How many cars do you think you are going to have coming with us?”
Greg looked at Lou who was thinking all of this out and showed him ten fingers. Greg went back over the radio, “Ten sir, and those cars are going to be plenty full it looks like from the sheer number of everyone.”
Aslin thought about the truck and said, “Then we might have to do this in two trips.”
Greg said, “We are less than twenty minutes from the base, why don’t you just call Clary and we can get everything in the stairwells, or take Ellie back and Joey and I can stay here and wait?”
Aslin said, “Yeah I don’t want to have to worry too much about the return trip, just hold on a few for me, I'll see if Clary can help us out.”
Aslin flipped stations and said, “Clary its Aslin, come in, come in.”
Kya was there, she asked, “Is everything ok? Where are you guys? Did you hear from anyone yet, Aslin?”
“Jesus is Clary too busy to keep his lazy ass next to the-”
Clary came on hitting the button taking over the control from Kya. He said, “No but I'm old and after I drink a gallon of coffee I tend to need a piss to alleviate bladder pain.”
Kya looked over cringing and said, “That’s totally gross Clary.”
“Wait till you turn forty something sweetheart and see how much pop you can drink before you decided that your teeth are floating and you need to take a leak.”
Kya shook her head, “You realize, you are like, crude, right? Do you practice or is it a gift?”
He shrugged, ignored giving a response and said into the radio, “What’s up Aslin, did you find anyone? Is there anything you need?”
Aslin said, “We need a much bigger vehicle, do you think you could bring a couple trucks with to help out?”
Clary said, “Did you crash another truck? Christ man!”
Aslin who never had much patience for anyone yelled, “Look, we don’t have a lot of fucking time. We have a lot of people that we need to bring with us who probably have even more useless shit that they don’t really need to bring with them to fill the vehicles with.”
Clary fell out of his seat at this. He hit the button to speak again, “You mean you actually found survivors while you were out there?”
Aslin said, “No, I didn’t find anyone, it was Greg and Joey. We did find Shaun though and he is still alive. He isn’t doing too damn good though. I’d feel better if I could take Ellie and him back to the sick bay honestly.”
“What is wrong with Shaun?”
Aslin said, “He is pretty close to a serious case of hypothermia. I think he fell into a lake or pond, whatever it was. When we found him, a Turned was about an inch away from ripping his neck apart. He didn’t even know what was going on when we found him. I took it out just before it took a chunk of him. Ellie got treated by a nurse and seems to be doing ok. At least she wasn’t bitten, it was some other kind of wound that got stitched up ok. Greg said, she’s in some kind of a coma though and is going to still need some serious rest, and that is best case scenario.”
Clary sat there for a second thinking of new faces and said, “It’s going to take us at least a half hour to get there in this storm, let me get a couple of the trucks brushed off and I will head that way. What is the Turned situation looking like there?”
“It isn’t bad, but there’s also been no noise to try and get them to come out if they are on the second floor. Greg said that they already took care of the first floor. But this is a long apartment building. I’m not in top running shape right now either, FYI, so the quicker you can get here the better. I wouldn’t bring trucks either; I’d clear off some buses.”
Clary signed off, looked at Kya who yelled, “Well don’t just stand there, let’s go, come on, they need our help Clary!”
Clary thought of who he had to pick from and went to find Philip, who was in the rec room on base shooting pool and smoking one of what had to be the last packs of smokes on base. When he saw Clary come in he stopped what he was doing, he’d been worried for the group leaving since he won the bet with Shelman and got to stay here. He asked, “Is everyone ok? Did they make it back yet?”
Clary shook his head while walking over and grabbing Phillip’s s parka and tossing it to him. “We gotta go get them, they don’t have enough room to bring everyone back. Aslin is beat up, and Shaun and Ellie are both out for the count right now. There’s going to be a shit storm if they have to sit out there too long I fear.”
Phillip looked outside, knowing that at best, they had an hour’s worth of light left in the day. On a cold ass winter day like this in Iowa, there was a better chance that with no sun shining, that it would be even less. “Is everyone else ok? I mean, has everyone else…..you know, made it?”
Clary shrugged and said, “I don’t know, but I don’t think finding anything out until we need to is probably best. We don’t have the time to waste anyways, let's go now.”
Phillip followed closely behind him, thinking things must have really have gone to shit if Aslin, of all people, was asking for help. They went to the vehicle station and Clary came out with a set of keys for two buses that were painted army green. Phillip asked, “You, uh, don’t want to take like a tank or something Clary?”
“There’s an entire floor of people that we are bringing back we need all the damn room that we can get. If we can split off into two buses, each of us will be able to have a few people behind triggers. Get yours started, it’s going to need a few minutes to warm up. You just follow me out there. Aslin said it’s impossible to miss and that Greg’s crashed Humvee is out in the middle of the bridge on Eighty- Sixth Street by a Casey's and there’s some apartment complexes around there.”
Phillip nodded, he said, “Yep, I know where that is, man that place had great pizza back in the day, you could get beef, sausage, or-”