Aslin screamed for Joey to get back to the truck. Joey held up his bat to Aslin and Aslin screamed, “Get to the fucking truck now, it takes two of those things at once and you're fucking dead. Get in the truck Joey and do it now!”
Joey ran for the Turned, never looking back. Two of the Turned were running side by side and Joey took a stance then swinging, in caving it’s skull with one vicious and hate filled swing. It knocked the other one down and Joey brought a boot down into it, knocking it back down and then stepped back and did a finishing blow to the head with his bat. He looked up defiantly at Aslin who was just shaking his head and gave the kid a thumbs up. He ran back towards Greg and stood by his side and as they became thicker. Greg moved to stand in front of Joey, taking them out as quickly as they could. Patrick fired off round after round and a stream of the dead came for the truck. Aslin used his good hand to fire off as quickly as he could with his firearm but it did little to no good, there were too many of them. A stream of the dead was making a beeline approach for them. Aslin was confident that this was it; he looked at Patrick and Maryann on the top and thought that in another time and place these two would have been decorated beyond belief with medals for valor and bravery, but instead were freezing outside and shooting zombies in a damn apartment complex. Just as one was reaching for Aslin, Clary came through the parking lot full speed, smashing into fifteen of them that were running like the pack that they always seemed to be in. The arm that had been reaching for Aslin now lay without a body on the ground, still twitching.
Aslin jumped a foot back after kicking at the hand and looking at the bus in shock, he said, “Christ he’s certifiable and I love the son of a bitch, good God.”
Clary slammed on the brakes, sliding to a stop with his hands clenched onto the steering wheel. He looked into the rearview mirror and saw Scott with a death grip on the seat, wide eyed and breathing heavily. He asked, “I thought we needed to like, plan shit out and know what we were going to do if we were going to survive?”
Clary said, “Now normally this would be a true statement but I refuse to lose anyone else if I can help it. They didn’t have a chance if we didn’t get in there. Aslin is like a brother to me. I can’t lose that guy.”
Scott was thinking it must be nice to have someone that you care about that much. He looked behind him and noticed that the Turned that were left saw their now crippled brothers and sisters and they filled the small area with their screams of rage. They crouched down then leapt towards them. Aslin and Patrick took out three of them but missing one that landed on the truck's hood with its eyes set on Patrick. He did not move, instead tried to aim on the Turned but it jumped too quickly and when it was within two feet of him, Maryann pushed him aside and he went head first over the side of the truck. He would have landed on his head had he not caught his hand on the edge of the truck. The Turned never stopped its assault in the direction that it was heading and knocked Maryann off of her feet. She screamed as she fired rapidly but it was too late. The Turned ripped into her neck, sprouting blood and then gouged into her face first, tearing off her cheek and then her nose before yanking her head in rage and smashing it against the wheel well. Patrick pushed up from the ground, saw what she had done for him and the anger he felt for this Turned was more than he had felt for anything since this started. He looked at Joey standing there and took his bat and stood up on the truck tire and brought down the bat with enough force that the crack of it echoed and bounced the bat back up into the air, only for him to bring it back down again and into its skull, not stopping until it’s head split open and brains poured out into the back of the truck.
Patrick knelt down next to Maryann, her body now massacred. He looked at the tears which washed away at the blood that was covering her face. He whispered thank you next to her ear and put a pistol below her chin and pulled the trigger once, sending one bullet through her and out the top of her head and lodging itself in the truck's bed tailgate. He collapsed into the back of the truck staring at her, unable to move. He knew that if he made it back to the base he wasn’t going to be the same as when he left. Joey looked over into the bed and took his bat back, shaking his head and looking at the bloody mess that was the driveway filled with the Turned everywhere. Aslin screamed to Greg, “Get those people on that bus now!”
Aslin looked at Joey and took a few steps back to look into the truck bed. He saw the teen and the Turned. He shook, as it was the only thing he could do from screaming in rage. He couldn’t stand the idea of losing any more kids on this day. He tried to say something to Patrick, anything that would make him feel better, but the words fell short of coming out of his mouth. When Clary backed the bus up, a very nervous group of people came to it and climbed, on seeing Clary and Scott waiting for them to be seated. Clary yelled to Scott, “Go sit in the back Scott, I want guns on the back, front, and the sides! Go now, we aren’t staying long.”
Aslin yelled to Hammond and Greg to get in the bus. They didn’t waste any time, Greg walked past Clary who then gripped him quite tightly, pulling him towards him and said, “We are going to have a talk and it’s going to be very soon Greg.”
Greg wasn’t one to back down from anyone or anything. “We can talk whenever you want Clary.”
Clary said, “You do realize that you can’t just go off halfcocked right? There are consequences, ones that ended in our friends lives today.”
Greg leaned in close to Clary, he said, “You ever make a mistake before Clary, all these years in the force you ever think that maybe you could have done something different that would have changed the ending? We have all the time in the world to talk, but with the number of shots we fired off, I don’t need to tell you how important it is to get out of here.”
Clary didn’t answer, even though the kid made sense, it did little to help at this time. Aslin jumped up to the front step and said, “You want the rear or you want to follow me?”
Clary thought of the drive back and said, “I don’t know, why don’t you go ahead of me, just keep the same station on your radio going so we can say something if the shit gets too thick or they come from behind.”
Aslin gave a thumbs up and walked back. McQuaig was waiting outside the truck, still on full alert. He went to the rear of truck and shook Patrick’s shoulder. He seemed like he didn’t even know that he was there before hand. He looked at Aslin and numb was the best way he could think to say something. He said, “Patrick, I need you to get in the truck, bud. I need you to do it now. We got an entire bus full of people that we need to get to the base.”
Joey climbed into the back of the truck and helped Patrick up. He said, “Come on Patrick, I think you better sit in the bus.”
Patrick let himself be pulled up and followed him to the bus. Joey knocked on the door and ushered him in. Clary asked, “You ok Patrick?”
Patrick just walked past and found a seat. Joey said, “Hey Mr. Clary, he needs some time I think. It’s been a long day.”
“You riding with me too Joey, or are you going with Aslin?”
Joey looked at Patrick and leaned back out of the bus and screamed, “I’m riding with Patrick.”
Aslin acknowledged and McQuaig took shotgun in the truck and they slowly pulled out, waiting for Clary to back the bus out into the street and straighten out. Aslin drove slowly, pulling back out onto the main road. They passed the crashed truck and when they went past the other bus, Aslin slowed down just a little, seeing the blood stained snow and wreckage. He thought back to how hard it was going to be to tell him about Shelman, and then in a single accident, everything went to hell and Phillip had been lost too when only good intentions had been the reason he came.
Lou walked up then took a knee next to Clary and said, “Hello, thanks for coming after us. I can’t imagine what would have happened if you hadn’t come.”
Clary held out a hand shaking with him and said, “Well we didn’t really have a choice but to come after you guys. Greg was the reason everything went to shit today.”
Lou said, “That kid had nothing but good intentions and I'm happy that he did what he did. I’m sorry if you lost anyone today, but he saved us. It was only a matter of time before the dead on those two floors got into the third. We have a chance now, we are all scared and excited about having a chance to make it through this damn thing.”
Clary acknowledged then looked in the rearview at what had to be thirty people. He thought of the three they had lost and while it was not something that made him feel good, he knew that sometimes you had to lose something to gain another. They needed to save people and while it wasn’t their responsibility to do so, it still felt like it was something he should do. He thought how he had skills that others didn’t and the more of them that knew these skills the better that it would be for him as well and the chances of the survival of humanity was as important as anything. “So you are the one that fixed Ellie up?”
“Yep she didn’t look very good, I was sure one of those bastards got her but it’s just a really bad head wound. She must have really hit the shit out of it on something. She needs to be monitored over the next few days but hopefully she comes out of it. I don’t have the knowhow to be able to help her further as far as relieving any pressure built up. She’d just be screwed at that point. I don’t know where we could find a doctor, but the more of them that we could find the better. I can only imagine over time that there is going to be a great demand and need for them. I can do a lot but there’s a great deal more we might need them for, babies, and old timers like us are going to get sick as we get older, we could have heart problems, cholesterol or God forbid cancer.”
Clary thought about it then said, “You know I have to agree, before they are gone we probably need to do our best to find everyone, but at the same time we need to get everyone, not just those that we think serve a purpose. Everyone that is alive needs saved. I think this has shown us that there are more out there than we expected.”
Lou, trying not to sound like he was judging him, asked, “So you guys have been on that base since this thing started? You haven’t been out looking for people?”
“Well for the first six months we were trying to find people but it was getting less and less that we were finding survivors, so when the news came out that the Turned, or the dead as you were referring to them, couldn’t be cured, it seemed kind of pointless to continue. There wasn’t anything that we could do about it and we wanted to teach those who we had been fortunate to find, some of the skills while we were still around to show them.”
“So the government dropped you in here on purpose? Man whose shit list did you get on to have to get dropped into hell?”
“We are who they sent places to do the things that people in the states don’t want to know about. They figured sending a small team in to look for notes on the cure was going to be easier than dropping hundreds off. There’d only be a massacre from the time one of them Turned.”
“But you found it, and Greg said there isn’t a cure, there’s no hope?”
Clary said, “Oh, there’s hope, but it isn’t the hope that someone is going to do it for us. What we came to realize is that they’ll go nowhere as long as there is a meal. What we need to do is take those things out and then move on until we have somewhere safe.”
“How big of an area are you thinking?”
Clary shrugged, “The city, the state, the continent maybe? Whatever we can do is better than nothing right? These people need to have a place to come, we need to be safe.”
Lou pushed up from the floor and said, “You know what, whatever I can do to help out with that, please don’t hesitate to say something. I want to have a place for my daughters that they can sleep at night.”
Clary said, “I want a place to lay my head at night Lou. Just like anyone else. It isn’t going to be overnight, it’s going to take planning and time but we can do it if we get the numbers or even a half ass good idea would help.”
“Do you have any ideas?”
“Yeah but it’s going to be just a while. We need to get this winter weather to thaw before we can really do anything. They have plenty of supplies at the base and one of my main things that I used to do was demolition.”
“What do you mean by demolition?”
Clary gave him an evil smile and said, “I got to blow things up.”
“Did you like that?”
Clary nodded and said, “I really can’t say that I hated it. Anytime you can take out a threat without putting your friends in place of it there’s a good feeling. There’s enough to worry about in a combat zone, so when we could take out the threat without a gun, that wasn’t a shitty thing.”
Lou patted him on the shoulder. Things would probably get bloody before they became safe. The fact that the government couldn’t do anything for him or his family did not fill him with much confidence in the new world as it was. He sat down next to his daughters, putting one of his giant arms around both of them and squeezing them tight. He said, “We are going to make this world safe again. We are going to do it by killing one of those things at a time until they are on their backs if need be.”
“You really are going to go hunt those things?” asked Karen.
Lou said, “We might go hunt those things. I’m done making believe that you two are helpless, that you can’t do anything. If these men can teach you, I can’t think of any reason to not have you do so. You need to learn to survive or I think you two won’t be around long.”