“Hello?”
Roy and I froze in our crouched positions.
“Hello? Wyatt, that you?” the person on the radio asked.
Before I could grab his arm, Roy ran to the desk. He scooped up the microphone and hit the talk button. “Yes, we’re here. Hello?”
“Wyatt? That don’t sound like you.”
I knocked the microphone out of Roy’s grip as if I were swatting an insolent child’s hand.
“Roy! Now Wyatt’s going to know we were here,” I hissed and flicked the toggle switch to off. All the equipment went dead. We only needed them to verify the frequency by answering back; we didn’t need to talk to them.
“How else will I find Irene?”
“With these frequencies.” I pointed to the scribbler.
Carefully, I ripped out a blank page and copied down all the numbers.
“Tim’s trucker radio is only a short range one,” Roy said.
“Bring it tomorrow and we’ll try reaching them when we’re on the road. Maybe we’ll be able to narrow down the location. Or we can look for one of those extender things,” I suggested.
Roy stared at Wyatt’s equipment wistfully. “Fine.”
I was glad he could see reason. Last time he let his emotions get the better of him, he’d killed our only lead. I passed him my copied sheet, and he shoved it in his pocket.
“We need to make it look like we were never here,” I said.
Roy got to work turning all the dials back to their original positions while I packed up the trunk of horrors. Afterward, we stepped back and examined the place. To my eyes, it looked like everything was where it had been when we entered, so we relocked the door and backtracked out the window. Roy closed the window and put the screen back in place.
“Find anythin’?” John asked.
“Oh yeah, but we need to head back to the memorial,” I said.
“I’ll meet you guys there. I gotta put away my tools first,” Roy said.
We split up. John and I entered the clubhouse together, and Zoe instantly bombarded me.
“You feeling better?” she asked.
“A bit. How long do you think this will go on for?”
“Just ‘bout another hour, I’d say,” John answered.
Not wanting to be rude, I stifled a groan.
John gently ushered me to an empty table. “So what did you find?”
“We think we found the frequencies the mercenaries use,” I whispered. “And I found a trunk full of bloody women’s clothes and a knife with blood on it.”
John sat back in his chair, starting to fiddle with a cup that had been left behind on the table.
“You think Wyatt did it?”
“I have no idea. It’s either that or he’s hiding the evidence for one of his cronies,” I said.
I had no proof, just some circumstantial evidence. Either way, Hargrove wasn’t as safe as they made it out to be.
“We still headin’ out tomorrow for that other group?” John asked.
“Yes.”
Although I wasn’t sure I should bring them here while there was a killer on the loose. Maybe once they got here, we could all form a new safe haven somewhere else. But where would we go? Plus, I’d have a hell of a time convincing Ethan to leave. Hargrove was already up and working, minus the murders of course.
Clearly, Wyatt, along with his crew, were crooked; they needed to go. Why were the others in the town not suspicious of Wyatt? Were they that afraid of life outside these walls that they were willing to put up with a murderer and corrupt leadership?
“What do you think we should do with this information?” I asked John.
“There’s no police to go runnin’ to, so I say don’t do anythin’ rash. We need more proof first.”
“Aside from catching whoever’s doing this in the act, how do we find more proof?”
“Killers tend to keep goin’ till they’re caught. Chances are, they’ll do it again.”
“And this helps us how?” I asked. I didn’t like the idea that we’d have to wait for the killer to strike again.
“We can form some kind of watch.”
“That’ll be hard with just the handful of us. And what if someone from Hargrove sees us?”
John readjusted his hat. “I honestly don’t know what to do, Bailey, other than leave this place.”
It was a tough call, but I was thinking leaving was our only option. The question was: would they let us leave?
The memorial wound down and we all headed back to our condos with the promise that a nightly street patrol would start tonight.
“Get some sleep. It’ll be a long day tomorrow,” Roy said as we each retired to our bedrooms.
I tried to fall asleep but ended up tossing and turning for most of the night. Nowhere was safe. Maybe I should just pack up a car and try to head back home? The journey would be long but worth it if I got to see my family again. What if they were gone? What would I do with myself then? What about my new “family”? I was floundering again.
My eyes had a hard time opening when morning came. Roy had to knock on my door to wake me.
“I made some instant coffee,” he yelled through the door.
My body begged me to roll over and get back to sleep, but grudgingly, I got out from under the covers. After a quick shower and two cups of coffee, I was standing with our group around the Mazda. Roy had packed food and the trucker radio. The real reason he wanted to go on this trip wasn’t to bring back the people from the apartment, but to find a lead for the whereabouts of his wife, Irene.
John had borrowed an M4, which I was pretty sure was the one they’d taken from me. We’d also packed extra ammo for our various weapons. I checked that my Beretta was fully loaded, along with the extra magazine, and I had my trusty axe sitting in the back seat. Roy was hugging his daughter goodbye, clearly reluctant to leave her. He’d asked Zoe to watch over Amanda while we were gone.
“How long do you think you’ll be gone?” Ethan asked.
John was holding our old map. “We should be back by the end of the day.”
“You sure you don’t need another body?” Darren asked again.
“No, three will be enough, son,” John said. “We need all the room we can get.”
“Roy did say they have a big truck and an airport shuttle van,” I said.
“They did when you left ‘em. Who knows what they have now.”
“Then what difference will one person make? I can go instead of Roy.” Darren motioned to the sad goodbye scene.
“Roy needs to go,” I blurted out.
Crap.
“Why?” Darren asked suspiciously.
“I know the way,” Roy said before I could insert my foot further into my mouth.
Darren huffed but didn’t press the issue. He knew how directionally challenged I was.
“All right, daylight is burnin’ folks. Let’s go.” John held his hands out for the keys.
For the first time in over a week, I sat in the passenger seat of the Mazda. Roy piled into the back, and we drove to the front gate. The others followed to wave us off as the heavy iron gate opened wide. I looked in the side mirror to see our friends’ faces disappear behind the gate as it closed with us on the outside.
John didn’t need me to read out the directions to find his way out of the city. He knew where Gretna was from memory and from studying the map before we left. It was nice to sit back and leave the driving up to someone else. The trip was almost relaxing, until we hit our first patch of infected. John drove onto the sidewalk to avoid them, the Mazda’s suspension groaning.
“The suspension sounds
off
,” John said.
I avoided his accusing eyes. “I may have had to jump a curb or two.”
John didn’t reply.
We didn’t head back to John’s shop, because technically, that would be backtracking. John knew a quicker way out of the city. According to him, some people had cleared a lane along the bridge leading out of New Orleans over the Mississippi River, so that was where we were heading.
“How do you know?” Roy asked.
“Grant.” John said his name in a clipped tone. “He mentioned that another group he knows of cleared it ‘bout a month after everythin’ went to hell. He claims to have used it before.”
“So he wasn’t always with Hargrove then?” I mused out loud.
“I don’t think so,” John said.
Maybe that other group Grant had mentioned happened to be the mercenaries?
We played chicken with all the infected. I had to hand it to John: he knew how to maneuver this car pretty well. It wasn’t until we got to the bridge that we had to stop.
John had been right about one of the lanes being cleared of cars, but now it was full of infected. He pulled out his bag from the back and handed me a black tube.
“Here’s a suppresser that’ll fit the Beretta.”
“It doesn’t match the color,” I joked, and John gave me a look that told me now wasn’t the time for jokes. He gave me that look a lot.
“You and Roy need to take ‘em out before I can get through,” John said.
“I’ll take the axe,” Roy said.
We got out of the car, facing down the long road filled with shambling bodies.
“Well, you ready?” I asked Roy.
“No,” he deadpanned.
“Too bad.” I raised my gun and shot the nearest infected.
The body twirled to the side and fell over the railing, landing in the water with a splash. This grabbed the others’ attention. I walked with my Beretta at eye level, my sights landing on various targets. One infected popped out from a spot between two cars in the lane beside us. Roy whirled the axe toward it, chopping at the infected like it was a tree.
The thing gurgled and hit the hood of one of the cars as it fell. The rest moved toward us even faster, encouraged by the noise.
Thanks a lot Roy
.
He raised the axe again and split the infected’s head open.
We kept moving toward the group, John right behind us in the car. He had the easy job. Once they were in range, I shot the infected, although I missed a few times, hitting shoulders instead of heads. As we walked on, we dragged the dead bodies aside to allow the car to pass through unimpeded.
I jumped when one of the infected I reached for wasn’t quite dead. Its hand groped at my leg, and I flew backward, right into Roy.
“What the—” Roy said as we stumbled back.
I pointed at the squirming infected stuck under the fallen body of its friend. Roy raised the axe and caved its skull in. While we were distracted, another infected jumped out from behind a delivery van. I whirled around with my gun and shot, the bullet going way off course. I heard the distinct whistling of air escaping from a tire and watched the van sink down on its back left tire. This distracted the infected long enough for me to shoot again.
Its brains splattered all over the logo for a home renovation company painted on the side of a van. The smiling photo of a family peeked out from underneath the carnage, and a pang of guilt hit me for some reason.
I had to reload my Beretta about halfway with the extra clip. It took a while, but we finally reached the other side of the bridge.
“You use up all your ammo?” John asked as we got in the car.
“About a magazine and a half,” I said.
“Roy, can you pass her my bag?” John asked.
Roy handed me the heavy duffle bag, and I rummaged around for extra 9mm bullets; I’d rather use Hargrove’s supply than my own. I loaded up the Beretta while John swerved around a group of loitering infected. They reminded me of a group of teens hanging outside a 7-Eleven, bumming cigarettes off people.
We finally hit the turnoff for Gretna.
“There should be a guard or two here,” Roy muttered as we passed through unimpeded.
No one popped out like they had on my last visit.
“Maybe they decided to stop doing that,” I suggested, but I knew something was up.
“Stay alert,” John said, his eyes narrowing.
Roy pressed against the window, peering out at the small town. As we passed familiar scenery, I spotted the top of the rundown apartment building a block away.
“That’s the place.” I pointed out the windshield.
John took a right and we found ourselves on the street in front of the building. I could tell from our spot that the glass front door had been smashed in.
Shit
. Roy got out in a rush, almost forgetting the axe.
“This ain’t gonna be good,” John said in a low voice.
He got the M4 ready before exiting the car. I gulped and followed them out.
Roy ran into the building like an idiot.
“Roy!” John yelled, running behind him.
The glass from the broken door crunched underneath our feet as we ducked under the metal hand bar. There was no one in the entrance, alive or otherwise. Someone gasped, and I ran down the hall to the common room.
“Bailey, maybe you should stay there,” John instructed, holding his arm out.
I pushed his arm away and turned the corner. Blood, copious amounts of it, was sprayed all over the walls like an unfinished morbid mural. The source: the fallen bodies sprawled around the room. But there wasn’t a single ragged infected among the bodies.
“People did this,” John muttered as he kneeled to look at one of the fallen elderly ladies. “They’ve either been shot in the head or butchered with what looks like machetes, judgin’ from the wounds.”
“Holy shit,” I said.
The image of the family I’d found back at the hardware store when I was with Chloe came to mind. Gore and carnage, not at the hands of the infected. In a roundabout way, the infected were to blame. If they hadn’t taken over, this probably wouldn’t have happened. But more concerning was the question of who was directly to blame for this. Was this the work of the mercenaries? Why would they come back? To avenge Tim?
A thud sounded from the floor above us, and Roy took off up the stairs. We rushed after him, John yelling at Roy to slow down. The hallway on the second floor was empty, except for the body lying in the doorway of one of the apartments. The thud sounded again, louder this time, from a room at the end of the hall.
Before Roy could sprint away, John latched onto his shoulder. “Listen, we don’t know what’s in there. Whoever did this could still be in there. Calm. Down.”
Roy shook off John’s hand but didn’t immediately take off. Carefully, we made our way to the closed door, our weapons raised.
“Roy, you open the door and get outta the way. I’ll stand in front with my rifle ready to go,” John instructed.
Roy nodded and put his back flush against the wall beside the door. He reached for the doorknob and shoved the door open. John took a step toward the entrance. Nothing flew out of the room, no bullets sailed through the air, but banging started from inside the apartment.
John jerked his head, motioning for me to follow. He entered the room, checking every corner for movement. We were like a SWAT team sweeping through a drug den. The noise was coming from behind one of the bedroom doors.
John opened the door a little and backed up, only to have the door slam shut again.
“There must be an infected in there,” John said as he readied his gun to shoot.
“Wait. What if it’s not an infected? Just some scared person?” Roy asked.
John’s mouth formed a mulish line, but he listened to Roy anyway.
“If anyone is in there, identify yourself,” John yelled.
All we got as an answer was harder rattling against the inside of the door.
“I don’t think the thing in there is alive,” John said, then turned to me. “I’m gonna open it and hold the infected between the door and the wall. You go in and shoot it.”
He turned the handle and burst through the door. I ran in right behind him a few feet into the room. The light coming through the window was dull, but I could see the infected squished behind the door, swinging its grabbing hands at me. Its teeth ground together as it struggled to free itself from John’s trap. I raised my Beretta and shot it in the forehead.
“Come on,” John said.
I rushed back out, but not before I caught a glimpse of the bloody bed sheets and a dead infected crumpled in the corner. John let the weight of the falling body slide the door shut.
What the hell was with that scene?
“Where’d Roy go?” John asked, as he stepped into the hallway.
“Goddammit,” I hissed. “He probably went to check the other floors.”
We ran up the rest of the stairs and found Roy coming out of an apartment on the top floor.
“They’re all dead,” he said to no one in particular.
Neither John nor I knew what to say.
“Did you see Elaine or Mac?” I asked.
Roy shook his head.
I went back downstairs to the apartment Mac used as his kitchen. The fridge door was wide open and all the cupboards had been cleaned out. A drawer full of cutlery had been tossed all over the scuffed floor, a bloody butcher knife in the mix. But Mac wasn’t in here. I backed out and ran down to Elaine’s office. John met me at the door.
“What did I say about runnin’ off?” John said angrily. “Who knows what’s in there.”
“You find Mac?” Roy asked.
“No. There’s a mess in his kitchen, but no body.”
I gently pushed open the door to the medical office and found it ransacked. All the shelves were empty, even the ambulance stretcher was gone. I spotted a pair of white running shoes sticking out from behind the metal desk. I approached slowly. Elaine was lying face down, a massive, bloody crater adorning the back of her head.
“Looks like a shotgun wound,” John said.
I lowered my gun and took a deep breath. Seeing dead bodies was one thing, but seeing the dead body of a friend was … different. It was like you realized your own mortality that much more if you knew the person. Elaine hadn’t been my favorite person, but that didn’t mean I’d wanted her dead. As I looked down at her body, sadness deflated my chest. She hadn’t deserved to be gunned down.
“What should we do with all the bodies?” Roy asked, kicking at the floor.
“We don’t have the time to bury ‘em all,” John said.
“We burn them,” I said, tearing my eyes away from Elaine’s corpse.
“I dunno ‘bout that, Bailey,” John said.
“Well, between the three of us, we can’t bury them all, but we’re sure as hell not leaving them like this,” I argued, stabbing a finger at where Elaine had fallen.
“They deserve to be put to rest,” Roy added.
I wasn’t sure if burning the place was putting them to rest, but it was the best solution I could think of. I wouldn’t want my body left to rot.
“All right, but we gotta give the place one last sweep to make sure there’s no one alive in here before we set fire to the buildin’.”
None of us wanted to tour through the horrific sights again, but we couldn’t assume everyone was dead. For all we knew, someone was hiding in a closet or something.
“Any way to tell when this happened?” I asked.
We’d only been gone four days.
“The smell ain’t that bad, and the bodies aren’t that decayed. I’d say it happened somewhere between five and twelve hours ago,” John said.
“If we’d stayed, maybe we could have done something,” Roy muttered.
“Or you’d be lyin’ right alongside the rest of ‘em,” John said bluntly.
Roy’s face scrunched up, and I punched John in the arm. Seeing everyone massacred was rough on me, but Roy had lived with them for a long time before they ran him off. This had to be ten times harder on him. I grabbed the white lab coat hanging on the back of Elaine’s office door and used it to cover her body as best as I could, then said my silent goodbye.
We hurried through the apartment building one last time. Our search was fruitless, not one person was left alive. Some people had been shot in their beds, while others were crouched in closets, shot while they were hiding. Whoever did this had swept through the entire building, looking to kill. This hadn’t been a raid for supplies; it had been a massacre. The sight of one of the elderly ladies wrapped around one of the young kids, both huddled in the bathtub and shot dead, was something that wouldn’t leave me any time soon.
We regrouped downstairs, all with the same morose expression.
“Let’s grab one of the gas canisters,” John said.
“Will one be enough?” I asked.
“We just need enough for the fire to start and spread,” John answered.
As we exited through the busted door, I wasn’t surprised to see the arsenal by the entrance was empty. Someone had used a shotgun to break open the lock.
With a lighter and gas can in hand, John returned inside, leaving us with the instruction to stay by the car.
Roy and I stood in silence staring at the apartment building, absorbing all the things we’d seen.
“So you never spotted Mac?” he finally asked.
“No.”
“Maybe he got away.”
“I hope so.”
“You think the mercenaries did this?”
“I have no idea. But if it was, why did they come back?”
Roy shrugged. “Maybe they were here for me.”
I turned to look at him. “Why would you say that?”
“I killed Tim.”
“They wouldn’t know that unless there was another mole to tell them,” I pointed out.
“Well, why else would someone do this?” Roy asked, his voice cracked.
It was human nature to rationalize people’s actions. That was the basis of psychology: why people did the things they did. Sometimes, there wasn’t an answer, and my guess was that we would never get one.
John came running out, a small trail of flames following behind him.
“We just need to make sure it catches, and then we need to take off,” he huffed, out of breath.
Roy pushed off from the side of the car and dug into the open trunk. He gently placed the black trucker’s radio on the rooftop. I had almost forgotten about Roy’s ulterior motive for coming. He flicked it on, the dial already on the right channel.
Roy pressed the button. “Hello.”
We waited for an answer.
“Hello, can anyone read me?” Roy asked again.
The radio crackled before a male voice came through. “Who’s this?”
All of us turned to look at the radio.
“Who’s
this
?” Roy countered.
“I don’t have time for this shit. You lookin’ for Shawn?” the man asked.
“I’m looking for my wife, you asshole. I know your group took her,” Roy spat into the microphone.
“Way to go, Liam Neeson.” I glared at him. “You could have started with something less antagonizing.”
The man on the radio didn’t immediately reply, and I motioned to the box as if to say, “
See
.”
Harsh laughter echoed from the radio. “You don’t know shit, pal. Why don’t you tell me where you’re at, and we can talk this through?”
John grabbed Roy’s arm. “Don’t you dare tell ‘em where we are.”
“I’m not stupid.” Roy brought the talk piece back to his mouth. “Why don’t you tell me where you are, so we can come to you? We got your frequency working, so you must be nearby.”
We waited for a reply. There was no way we could just march into their lair. I’d done that once before at the police station, and I wouldn’t be doing that ever again.
The eerie laughter returned. “Come and find me if you can.”
The static returned.
“Hello?” Roy tried again and again, but the guy had tuned out. He slammed down the radio talk piece on the rooftop of the car and stepped away. “Fuck!”
“You sure these are the guys who took your wife?” John asked calmly.
“Wyatt’s scribbler had the same eye and hand symbol by the frequency numbers as the ones who attacked the apartment,” I answered for Roy, who was fuming not so quietly.
John adjusted his cowboy hat. “I admit, that’s pretty damn suspicious, but we can’t just go stormin’ their gates by ourselves.”
“Wyatt’s got to be in cahoots with them, so we won’t be getting any help from Hargrove,” I said.
“I’ll go myself then,” Roy said through a stiff jaw.
I walked right up to him. “Who will take care of Amanda when you die, and you will die. I’m sure as hell done with my babysitting days.”
It was harsh and made me sound like an insensitive asshole, but Roy needed to hear it.
“What would you do if it was Ethan?” Roy argued.
“Well, we don’t have the history that you and your wife do, but I’d want him back. I’d just be smart about it,” I said, although I couldn’t be sure how I would react. Spewing advice was easy. Taking your own advice was hard.
“How about we do some recon first? I happen to have some experience in that,” John said.
Roy crossed and uncrossed his arms. “You’d help me?”
“Of course.” John nodded, the brim of his cowboy hat briefly covering his eyes. “Family is all we got. Blood or not.”
John wrapped an arm around my shoulders. I had to blink away tears that his statement brought to my eyes. We were family now, and always would be.