Day One (Book 1): Alive (21 page)

Lloyd leaned back in his chair and shook his head to the comments being shot at him from all angles. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Brandon or that he wasn’t appreciative of the young man’s kindness, because he was. He was very thankful for it. It had more to do with the child than anything else. Since the loss of his son he had kept himself clear of other children and it helped him to heal, and now adding the one thing that would counteract what he had managed to put aside over the last week, could threaten to destroy all of that. He was strong in their eyes and didn’t want to appear weak in any way, as that’s what he had been back when the world was still normal. Here and now, he was someone that had purpose. He was a leader that others would follow and do as they were told without question. A two year old little girl could turn all of that upside down in a fraction of a second.

And that is why he didn’t want Brandon tagging along with them, even though he saw something extraordinary in the young man, he had to repress those feelings and cover his face with the mask he had grown so used to wearing.

I watched Kember lying at the foot of the bed trying to get comfortable. Her belly was full and now she was tired. It would only take her a few minutes to get into the perfect spot before fading out for the night. I took this time to soul search as to why I had deviated from what the Young Woman had told me to do and came back to this small town. There was nothing left for me here anymore. My wife and step-daughter were dead and gone. Family members that I did have, had all but shut me out of their lives years ago. They had no concern for me or my family, so I treated them with the same respects and didn’t care what happened to them, although deep down I really did care. They might be able to be that cruel; I on the hand was not.

Kember was all that I had left to hope for and I would do anything to protect her. I tried for half an hour to look at the bright side of things; however, the more I tried the more my mind switched to the negative. I focused on staying in this house for as long as I could. In the morning the strangers would leave and it would just be her and I left. With the work that we had done to the house earlier, we should be able to stay here unnoticed for quite some time. There was a grocery store in town, a gas station and a hardware store in which I could get ammunition, more guns, if there were any left, and supplies to build things. I’m not sure what
things
I would build, but if I ever got a wild hair up my ass and decided too … boom, I could.

Faint sounds of thunder rumbled in the distance. Another storm was coming and soon I would be fast asleep under its mesmerizing lull. Kember had stopped moving, apparently finding her comfortable spot, and then passing out. I put a blanket over her and turned the covers down on the bed, getting ready to turn in for the night myself. The SBR lay on the opposite pillow, close enough for me to grab in the event that something happened in the midst of the night. I was about to pull my tennis shoes off when I thought of the strangers still in the kitchen and wondered if I should get them, or at least tell them where they could find spare blankets and pillows of their own.

Why do that? They are just going to leave you and Kember here, so the hell with them!
My mind reminded me, to which I totally agreed with, yet at the same time they were still guests in my house and I had never been so cold to someone in the past. Why should I start now?

I moved to the door of my bedroom and slowly opened it. The living room was bathed in a sea of darkness, to which my eyes had to adjust before I could see that they had already found the spare blankets and were camped out on the couch and the floor in front of the couch that had a thick area rug. Another faint rumble of distant thunder spewed from the west and I shut the door.

“Be gone in the morning before I wake up,” I repeated to myself, my voice not traveling any further than the foot of the bed. I felt the need to tell them that. To make them feel the hopelessness I was feeling at that very moment, and had felt when the Young Woman told me. I wanted them to lie awake all night, wondering what would become of them the following day. How they would continue to survive in a world that was no longer bound by any set laws, moral justifications, compassion, or any other forms that humanity had somewhat obeyed since the dawn of time. They needed to know how I felt without me telling them. They needed to live the fear that kept my mouth and actions docile.

Maybe I was just overreacting to all of this?

Maybe things would change in the morning?

Through the dim light, lit by a single candle to lower the chances of any morsel of light penetrating through any unseen defects of my painting skills or holes in the blanket that covered the window above my bed, I thought I saw a flash dance over a corner of the window that had been painted, but I had ran out of paint and chose to cover what remained with a thick blanket. I focused on the single location and intently kept my eyes there waiting for it to come again. It didn’t.

“Must be the lightning reaching us before the storm,” I said with hollow confidence, as something told me it wasn’t lightning at all. The seconds ticked by like grueling hours and I was unable to undress and get into bed, as I had planned. Instead, I moved closer to the window and tried my best to see out into the night. At first glance there was nothing that looked out of the ordinary. No dead ones shuffling about on the far street, none in the backyard next to the house, and none in my backyard. Whatever had made the window light up was secretly screaming to my instincts, which were quickly coming to life. Fear filled my entire body and the harder I tried to shake it off – no doubt the rest of me was still in belief that it was nothing more than harmless lightning, harmless in the sense that as long as it didn’t strike you directly, you were fine – the more it clung to me like falling rain soaking one to the bone. The more you tried to wipe it off, the more it would soak into your skin.

Another flash and out of response for the unknown, I jerked my head back as if I was able to be seen silhouetted by the dimly lit bedroom, making me stand out like a neon sign in the midst of a blackened abyss.

Vehicles!

I blew the candle out from the head of the bed; apparently smoking for fifteen years had done nothing to stop me from killing a single candle ten feet away. In any other circumstance I would have been amazed at the feat; however, the mounting fear was far more concerned with the movement outside.

I grabbed the SBR and retracted the charging handle only a few inches while my eyes darted to the opening dust cover to see a round firmly seated in front of the bolt carrier. I grabbed the chest rig and quickly put it on, slid the one point sling over my head and right shoulder, adjusting it swiftly to ride where the weapon would be most useful in the event that I need to use it quickly and attached it to the upper rail of the weapon, inserting a fresh magazine as well. I had too many times in the past been caught with my pants down… that mistake would not find me vulnerable like that again.

None of the strangers budged at first, even though my words had flooded the silent darkness as a ragging tsunami. I spoke them again, but this time with greater intent. “Get up! There are vehicles out front!”

A stir resonated through the sleeping bodies and slowly one of them, Johnny, raised his head and looked at me. “What are you going on about?”

I pointed across the room toward the front door. “There are vehicles out there!”

Lloyd sat straight up, shifting his eyes not at me, but directly toward the front door. He was standing and wielding the shotgun before I could even realize he was awake. He was like a blur. “How many of them?”

“I only saw one, but I’m almost certain there’s more by now,” I replied, feeling for the first time the pain in my left hand from gripping the forward grip of the SBR too tight. My knuckles were white and I quickly released the grip and flicked my hand a few times in hopes of getting the blood back to where it needed to be. The wound started to ache and I was quick to step out of sight and pop a painkiller.

The others had come alive and were grabbing their weapons and scrambling low toward nearby windows in order to get a quick glance at what we all might be up against.

“I got another vehicle turning down this road,” Devin stated.

“There are two out front creeping by. They look like military vehicles to me,” Lloyd stated. “But it’s hard to tell in the falling rain.”

“We’re safe then,” I said almost jubilantly, thinking to myself that our problems were about to come to a screeching halt. They had no idea where we were, no lights exited my house and there were several other houses I had passed on my way into town that had cars parked in their driveways, so why should this place be any different.

“Maybe,” Lloyd replied in a hollow tone.

“Maybe?” I asked. “As long as we keep calm and quiet, we will be.”

Lloyd turned from the small window in the front door to look at me. “If the military is out there and any of those things show up, they’ll start shooting. And you know what that will mean.”

I had gloriously overlooked that small part. Now I knew that safety was well within our reach but we’d never make it there. The dead ones would show up due to the lights and movement, and when they did all hell would break loose. Running out into a firefight would not be the safest course of action. I was stupid, but hell, even I knew better than that.

“I say we make a run for it! They are obviously here to help,” I said and drew the attention of everyone in the room. Their looks told me otherwise.

“And if you’re wrong?” Lloyd asked clearly. “Why would it take them a week to get here? Our safety as American citizens should have come much sooner than this. We should have been priority number one.”

Lloyd’s point was extremely valid, although I didn’t want to hear that. I wanted to hear the fairy tale ending that everything was going to be okay and that we would all live happily ever after.

Maybe I should stop reading so much and get out more often?

“So we just hide in here and let them pass by, giving up any hope of ever being rescued or taken some place safe. Is that what you are saying?” My words came fast, faster than I could even think about before saying.

Devin looked my direction and pleaded with me. “Lloyd does make a good point, man. If we were so important to them, then why haven’t they tried to contact this town? Why haven’t they sent helicopters to survey and look for survivors? Ask yourself that.”

That’s just it. I didn’t want to ask myself that, because if I did I would probably side with everyone else, which I didn’t want to do. I wanted to be rescued and have this nightmare come to an end, or at least a lot closer than what it currently was. I wanted to make sure my daughter had a chance and see if there was a way I could locate my son, and then go get him.

“Where’s, Ashley?” Johnny asked abruptly and we all spun our heads looking for her. I moved into the kitchen to find it empty and it was at that very moment I noticed the dried blood stains in front of the refrigerator. I wasn’t sure how I had missed them before, but somehow I had. It stopped me in my tracks and I felt that overwhelming pain rush to the surface. I missed her. I never got to say goodbye, I never got to say anything to her that was nice.

“You ran like a coward and that’s what happens… you let her die, but then again you’ve run from or quit everything else in life. Why should this be any different?” A voice said from behind me. I spun to see the one person I knew couldn’t be there. He approached me, stopping in the middle of the kitchen shaking his head. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“You’re not real… you can’t be,” I said as the fear overtook me like no other fear ever could. I could face a million of those things armed with a yard rake, rather than face the man before me. He was the personification of fear. Fear that I had tried my whole life to hide unsuccessfully and here he stood glaring at me with those same careless eyes I had seen more than I could count.

“Oh, I’m real alright. Just as real as those people in the next room that are going to die because of you, like she did,” he stated gleefully. “You serve no purpose; have no goals, so therefore you’re worthless. Always have been… always will be.”

“Shut up and get out of my head!” I shouted, fortunately the rapid gunfire masked my angered words.

He grabbed me and slammed me into the refrigerator. His grip was inhuman and he stared deep into my eyes. “I regret the day I had you!”

“Is she in there?” Lloyd asked, but received no reply. He asked once more and when no answer followed, he got Devin to cover the glass in the door and he stormed into the kitchen to see me pushed up against the refrigerator with fear contorting my face. “Hey!” He shouted pulling me from my ugly past. I glanced at him hoping he would help me, yet when I turned to look at the man he held me tight, there was no one there.

“Are you alright?” He asked, uncertain if I was becoming unstable with all that was going on.

“She’s not here,” I replied.

“Well, she couldn’t have gone far. This place isn’t that big,” Lloyd said glancing down the hallway, and then actually heading down it and out of my line of sight.

My heart was pounding in my chest. My palms were sweaty and I felt as though I would drop dead at any moment, and given the words the man had just spoken to me, maybe that would have been better for everyone. I knew that was a line of bullshit, as my Daughter was more dependent upon me now more than she ever had, or will. It was just the negative alias within trying to find reason to force my hand in doing something rash. I wasn’t going to fall for it though. There was too much to do to give in to such irrational patterns of the past. And besides, I wasn’t that hypocrite that he had always been… I was better than that. I loved my kids and would give them the stars if I could reach up and retrieve them.