Earth: Book One (Elemental Series) (11 page)

Chapter Twenty-Eight
 

Day Two: March 28
th
, 2020; 11:46 am

“Forres,” Sargent hissed behind Zander. Without part of his tongue, it came out “Florist,” instead.

Bex looked up. Her eyes were wet with warm tears. Zander goes over, pushing Felix’s gun away and knelt beside Forres. He quickly took the case out. “How do you open it?” Bex asked him.

Zander looked at Forres’s shaking chest and saw the weird necklace. He saw two but he grabbed the four sided one. He looked at the case’s keyhole before putting the green one and twisting it.

Swish.

The case opened. Inside was a needle with the stuff in it. 

Zander took it and was about to inject it into her arm but Bex stopped him. “In the neck or eye, it’ll travel to her head faster!” He looked for a spot on her neck to inject. He injected it in to a vein and Forres stopped shaking. Her body became relax and limp.

A female popped on the case screen. “Hello,” She smiled and sat up.

“Who are you?” Zander scowled at the women.

The woman smiled. “Wake up Forres for me.”

“Who are you?” Zander growled at her.

“I’ll tell you when I talk to her. Your impatient like your father,” The female chuckled.

He stared at her for a few more seconds before shaking Forres awake. She muttered half asleep: “Ben?” Zander shook her a bit harder, jaw tightened.

Forres sat up, rubbing her eyes. She felt dizzy and lightheaded and uncoordinated. When she sat up, she swayed a little.

“Forres,” The woman said.

Forres looked at the woman.  “Tracy?” Forres frowned at that name as if it came out unexpectedly and she didn’t know or wanted it to. The name felt familiar yet weird on her tongue.

“Ah, I see you’re getting your memory back, bits and pieces at a time,” Tracy said with a smile. Their eyes meet and she started to tap her fingers at a weird beat. Something in Tracy’s eyes told Forres not to look at her fingers but she can listen to the beat. “How have you been? Feeling good?”

“No,” Forres shook her head.

“Sad,” Tracy said. “Do you want your clue?” That’s when the tapping stopped and Forres remembered it all: all the pauses, and beats from the fat on her finger and her nail. “Okay listen now:’

Locked and Loaded,

Ready to kill,

Always have and always will,

Squeeze the trigger and let it fly,

Hit the bastards between the eyes,

Before they died I heard them yell,

The shadow team is bad as hell,

You have three days, good luck, Forres,” Tracy gave a small smile and turned the camera off. That meant she only really had almost two days.

“I know where that quote is from,” Dean muttered rubbing his chin, trying to think.

“I need a pencil and paper,” Forres said, holding her head as she gets up. The world spun below her feet and fell to her butt. She laid on the ground, giving up, and mimics the beat – using the fat of her index finger and nail – so she doesn’t forget it.

“Did she say Shadow Team?” Sargent asked.

Suddenly everyone was talking at once. Forres looked at her group and got a headache from their mouths. She screamed with all her might but her voice cracked a bit: “Hey! Someone get me a piece of paper!” They all stopped talking and looked at her. “Why are you guys looking at me? Get me a piece of paper!” Bex got up and went to the door. “And a pen and hurry!”

Few seconds, Bex came back with a pen and paper. Forres started to draw the beat the Tracy had just did. When she was done, she looked at the paper:

The paper became blurry in Forres’s eyes as she stared at it more and more.

“Is that Morse code?” Felix asked.

“Dead Again by George Magnum!” Dean yelled. He clapped his hands together with excitement. Everyone looked at him. “That’s where the quote is from. That book has that quote in it.

“Shadow Team is my military,” Sargent stepped in.

“Shadow Team is the zombie killer military team in the book,” Dean explained.

“In that book, where was the group mainly?” Zander asked.

Dean started to rub his chin. “Um. A hospital.”

“There’s survivor at a mental hospital. Could it possibly be them?” Chyler asked. Hope fills her eyes when she looked at Dean.

He didn’t want to hurt her. He wasn’t that type of person so he said, “Possibly.”

“Are you going to help us?”

Dean looked Felix.

Felix just gave a small shrug, “I don’t know…,”

“Forres is the key out of all of this,” Zander said.

Felix stayed silent. He didn’t know what that meant but he nodded.

Chyler smiled. “We are going to have to hurry; they could be running out of food soon.”

“If they have access to the basement, they shouldn’t,” Max’s voice came from behind the group. He squeezed pass Jackus and Rayne, casually grabbing Rayne’s butt. She scuffed as he did.

“Fine, since you know so much about St. James Mental Hospital, you draw us a map. I want every exit and every entrance on this map,” Felix said, narrowing his eyes on him.

Max nodded, looking at Forres who was staring at a piece of paper. He scowled at her.

“We need more guns,” One of Felix’s men said.

“One, there isn’t a lot of guns. Two, we need to know names or nickname at least,” Jackus said.

“Fine,” Felix started. “My name is Felix. My group is Max, Thaddeus, Buzz, Dean and Andrew,” Bex smirks and looks over at Thaddeus. He scowls at her.

“Zander,” Zander starts and stood tall as if he was proud of his team. “My team is Forres, Chyler, Jackus, Eleanor, Austin, Bex and Sargent.”

“Okay,” Felix said. “Max will draw up a map and we will go from there.”

Zander nodded and kicked the case to the side and picked up Forres who was still looking at the paper.

“Hey, you forgot me,” Rayne said, innocently twirling her hair.

“No one cares,” Zander snapped at her. Jackus moved out the door way but Rayne doesn’t. “Move or I’ll hurt you.”

“Oh so you’re going to hit a girl?” She chuckled.

“News flash, honey,” Zander barked in a semi-sweet voice. “It’s a new world that means we can do what we want. Also meaning I could kill you right here and right now. So you better move, Devil’s Spawn.”

She gave him a death glare but he wasn’t scared of her.

“Move!” Zander barked.

Rayne jumped and then moved out of the way.

Zander left the bathroom with Forres in his arms.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Day One: March 28
th
, 2020; 9:40 pm

He sat behind the table, trying not to get distracting by all the stuff on his mind.

Max was in his room, drawing the map of St. James out of his memory.
What if someone asks how you know St. James so much?
That creepy voice in his head asked.

Max sighed and put down the pencil. He leaned back in his chair, licking his dry lips and running his fingers through his hair. “I’ll tell them a family member goes there,” He shrugged and took the cigarette from behind his ear and put it in his mouth. He took out a lighter he had found before and lit his cigarette. He used to
love
smoking – was addicted. He had to stop in the mental asylum.
“Cigarettes mess with your head,”
they’d always told them when he always asked for one. But the truth was that a solid white room messed with their heads. A non-insane person goes in and came out insane.

This one time, Maria’s boyfriend lost a bus of new insane transfers so the genius filled the bus with normal people from the bus stop. When the people said it was a mistake, no one believed them. A few months later, they found out the people weren’t really insane. But it was too late… The non-insane people went insane.

What if she’s your…

Max interrupted the voice in his head. “Will you shut up with the ‘what if?’”

“Who are you talking to?” A female voice came. Max turned to see Forres staring at him. She looked as pale as before but this time she was in pj’s – a man size shirt and sweatpants.

He stared at her for a few, brief seconds and then said: “What are you doing in here?”

“Who were you talking to?” She repeated, narrowing her pale brown eyes at him. They looked foggy with exhaust. They were probably the last two up in the building besides the walkers.

“To Andrew,” He lied, nodding to the walkie-talkie that was near him.

“Oh. I-I w-was…,” She started but stops noticing that his eyes narrowed the same way as hers and that they both had misty eyes that turn red when tired. His eyes were grey but it was turning a bit of a red color. Her eyes were amber from the lack of sleep. “I was hungry and wanted something to eat…”

Max nodded.

They sat in silence before Forres said: “I guess I should go then,” he nodded and turned back to his work. She stared at his back for a few brief seconds then turned and left. She looked back at the door and saw him working and closed the door quietly.

He wasn’t really working; he was watching her with the “eyes in back of his head” until she left. He finally could breath.

The voice in his head gasped.
She is…

“Shut up,” Max muttered.

*****

Day Two: March 29
th
, 2020; 10:02 pm

Forres woke up the next morning, from a nightmare about Ben.

             
She remembered him was screaming at her to help him but she couldn’t nor she could’ve. She woke in cold sweats but brushed the nightmare off and told herself, “I’ll get over him. People die every day…”

The first thing she does was uses the bathroom and took bath – Dean had fixed the hot water. When she got out of the shower, a fresh pair of new clothing was on the sink. She got out, wrapping a towel around her not-so-skinny body. She goes over to the sink and wiped the foggy mirror.

She smiled a bit at her reflection. Her tan face was gaining some of its color back as well as her brown eyes. Her eyes trailed down to her somewhat popping out collar bones. Only one necklace sat there and it wasn’t her key one. She panicked for a split second and noticed that she would be going out naked. In record time, she got dress.

In jeans with a tank top and hair still wet, Forres ran out of the bed room and bumped into someone. It was Max. “Sorry. Have you seen my necklace?” She asked, super-fast. He hadn’t even processed what she had said before yelling: “Thanks,” and running down the hall to the main room.

“Uh… Welcome!” He called to her as she into the main room.

“Hey guys,” She announced. Everyone – in the room – looked over at her. “Have you seen my-,” Before she could finished, Zander held up Forres’s necklace. She let out a sign of relief. “Thank god. I was worried.”

“Yeah, I’m fixing it,” he replied, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Why? Was it broken?”

“I kind of broke it to open the case,” Forres send Zander a look as he said that. He ignored that and kept on fixing the necklace. “They know. You were shaking on the floor of the bathroom.”

Forres looked at the others who were pretending not to hear it. “Oh man. I don’t remember being in a bathroom. Was it bad?”

“No, I guess not,” Bex shrugged. “Not like the other ones.”

“How often does this happen?” Thaddeus asked, looking over. “Are they seizures?”

Forres didn’t know so she was grateful when Bex answers for her: “Doctors called it that but of course they have doubts. It only happened every time she doesn’t get her medication which when we were little was pretty often with the nurses.”

“No, not with Baxter. She was always on track and there,” Sargent butted in. He dragged out all of his “s”.

“Did something happen to her?” Austin asked He noted the tone in Sargent’s voice was sad.

“She was shot in front of Forres and Oliver when they were younger,” Bex explained.

Zander perked up as well as Dean. “Oliver Thurston?”

Bex nodded, narrowing her eyes on Zander.

“How…?” Dean started then the light bulb went on. “He had cancer…,”

“Has,” Sargent corrected. “He still has it.”

Just as Sargent finished that sentence, Max came in and said, “I have finished the map!” He gave it to Felix and he put it on the table. The two groups huddled around the map, except for Eleanor and Zander, who was still working on the necklace. “From basement to the top floor of the roof,” He looked over at Forres, “Did you find your necklace?” He asked.

“Yeah, I did. Thanks for your useless help,” Forres sassed. “What’s the map for?”

“St. James,” Felix answered.

“Why?”

Felix shot her a glare for asking too many questions even though she only asked two – that was too many for Felix. “Because,” He started with a bit of annoyance in his tone. “Your case is there, Chyler’s mother might be there and so are survivors. So we need to go.”

Forres nodded, pretending not to catch the annoyance in his tone.

As they study the map, Eleanor sat next to Zander on the couch. “How did you learn to do that?”

“Do what?” He glanced over at her then back at Forres’s necklace.

“Learn to fix a necklace. I mean, I can do it but it’ll turn out horrible,” she laughed.

He smiled. “My mom taught me how to do a lot of things and one was fixing necklace because my sister would break them all the time.”

“I’m sorry,” She said.

Zander looked at her just as he finished fixing the necklace. He studied her face. Her dark blue eyes went well with her long dark red curls that were pulled back into a high ponytail. Her curls went well with her fair Native American tan skin which made Zander want to touch her face and push back a strain of hair that escaped the ponytail. She was beautiful and everyone knew that. She was someone Zander could see spending the rest of his life with her. He bits his lip but accidently blurted out, “You are very beautiful…”

Forres looked over at Bex and wiggled her brows as the group, which was gathered around the table, lowered their voices.

“I didn’t mean that,” Zander started; Eleanor raised her brow. “No, no. You are beautiful, today…You’re beautiful every day, even covered in blood…,” She tilted her head like a confused dog. “I did not mean that in a weird way even though it sounded like that…,” The group snickered at him. “Shut up!!”

Eleanor smirked at his red face. His face was as red as a tomato. “Uh…,” She laughed, blushed a bit. “You are beautiful today too.”

Zander looked at her and cocked an eye brow and said very seriously, “Does that mean I’m not beautiful any other day?”