Survival Ties (The Outbreak Chronicles Book 1) (15 page)

“Why were you in a trunk?” Evan
asked, looking at Micah.

“My dad locked me in our trunk
when we got caught on a jammed road and got attacked by the Red Eyes. He gave
me the key but the battery died in it and I couldn’t get out.” Micah responded.
“If they hadn’t driven that way and decided to clear the road I would still be
in the trunk.”

“That was a smart place to have
you hide, do you know if your dad got away?” Evan asked.

“He never came back and there
wasn’t anyone alive around the area so I have to assume that he didn’t but he
saved me.” Micah answered, “We were on our way to find my mom and sisters but I
don’t know if they made it anywhere safe either.”

“Maybe when we get to Paradis
Roulette they’ll be able to help you. Maybe then you’ll see if you can find out
anything about what happened to your family.” Evan said.

“I hope so. I don’t want to
think about my family being Red Eyes.” Micah told him, “I hope they found a
safe place and I’ll be able to find them.”

“Once we get to the dome, I’m
sure we’ll be able to sit and try to find all our loved ones. Maybe we’ll be
able to figure out how to go get them, if we can make contact.” Sawyer said as
she wrapped her arms around his waist.

“Stay like that a minute.” Evan
said as he reached for his sketch pad and flipped to a blank page. Sawyer and
Micah both looked a little confused, but they stayed.

“He’s an artist.” I told them
and they both smiled.

Evan had them stay like that
till he had the rough outline done. I watched him fill in the lines; it was amazing
to see both Micah and Sawyer start to appear on the paper. He finished pretty
quick and started to do another copy of the same picture. He made a copy for
both Sawyer and Micah but he kept the original in his sketch book and added
their names to it.

Watching Evan draw took more time than
I realized. Sam had come back to the living room and was discussing dinner.

“We’re not stopping to eat
dinner. I’m going to make burgers and Tone will keep driving, we are getting
close to Paradis Roulette now.” Sam told us as he went into the kitchen.

Sam had the last of the rabbit
meat on the stove and the bus filled with smoke causing Hunter and Aaron to run
around to open windows. The smoke cleared instantly leaving the smell of
cooking meat. He brought out everyone’s food to them on plates.

He even brought food back to
the room where Sydney and Scott were still watching over Hannah. Sam ate his
own food quickly. And we stopped just long enough for Sam to take over driving
so Tone could eat.

The sky was starting to darken
as sunset came. Sam was stretching in the front seat as he drove. The world
looked to be bathed in gold as we continued to drive.

“Starting to look like we
should find a place to park for the night.” Tone said to Sam.

“Don’t think you’re going to
want to pull over.” Evan said from where he was sitting looking out the window.

“Why?” Sam called back.

“We got a whole horde of Red
Eyes in the trees. They seem to be following the bus’s movement.” Evan said.

“I’m not seeing anything in the
rearview mirrors, Tone go check out where he’s looking.” Sam responded and Tone
got up to join Evan at the window.

“He’s right we have definitely
attracted a following.” Tone called over to Sam.

“How many are following us?”
Sam asked.

“A lot. It was the cooking
food. We opened the windows to clear the smoke and never closed them again.”
Evan said, “They’re following the smell of our dinner.”

“Then close the windows and see
if we can lose them.” Sam demanded as Evan and Tone closed all the windows.

“It may help but they are
following our movement now too. So even without the smell we need something
else to draw their attention.” Evan was saying.

“So we have to keep driving
until we lose them.” Sam said.

“Yeah, there are a lot of them
out there and if we stop I think they could overwhelm the bus.” Evan agreed.

“We need to figure out how to
lose them soon. I don’t want to drive at night where the headlights will draw
more attention to us. We can’t drive without them on once darkness comes.” Sam
said, sounding like he was trying to work out what to do.

“I’d suggest driving faster but
with it getting dark that could prove more dangerous to us.” Tone said.

“I could distract them and you
guys could get away.” Evan said and everyone looked at him.

“Distract them how?” Sam asked,
keeping his eyes on the road.

“I’ll jump off the bus and give
them something to chase.” Evan responded.

“I appreciate the thought, but
we are not leaving anyone behind. You are staying on this bus with us and we
will figure out how to get them to leave us be.” Sam said in a tone that left
no room for argument.

“What if we stopped long enough
to put a radio on the ground? Would the noise distract them?” Daisy asked.

“Like a boom box thing?” Evan
asked her.

“Yeah, use the noise to keep
them from following us.” Daisy responded.

“That might work.” Evan said,
sounding excited.

“Get the boom box Daisy, it’s
the only plan we have right now.” Sam said.

Daisy rushed back to her room and
returned with a boom box cd player.

“I found an audio book I was
listening to so it’ll be like someone talking.” She said as she put the boom
box on the dining room table.

“I’ll be the one to hop off and
set this up.” Evan said as he took the boom box.

“We ready?” Sam called back.

“Yeah, ready when you are.”
Tone responded.

Sam stopped the bus.

“Go.” He called back.

 Evan jumped off the bus and
placed the boom box on the ground hitting play. The Red Eyes were getting
closer as he ran back to the door and slammed it behind him.

“All set Sam, let’s get out of
here.” He called as soon as the door was shut.

We all gathered around the
windows looking as Sam got the bus moving again.

At first it didn’t look like
the Red Eyes were going to stop, they were still watching the bus. Then the
voice on the boom box caught their attention. They started to fight trying to
get to the voice. One had the boom box in its hands and was trying to bite it.

Soon they were just dark
figures behind us. The plan had worked and we were moving away from them. Sam
kept driving even as it got too dark to not use the headlights. He didn’t turn
them on at all; he didn’t want to draw attention to us. We were crawling along
by the time Sam felt like we were far enough away from the horde to stop for
the night.

“That was good thinking Daisy.”
Sam said and patted her on the head.

“Thank you but why are you
patting my head? I’m not a dog.” She said and started to laugh.

“Thanks for offering to
sacrifice yourself Evan, but let me make this clear. As long as we can help it,
we are not leaving anyone to die.” Sam told Evan.

“I just thought I was newest
and not really part of the family yet.” Evan responded.

“You became part of this family
as soon as you stepped on the bus.” Sam told him, I saw Evan’s eyes fill with
tears; he didn’t let them fall as he nodded to Sam.

“Now let’s get some sleep.”
Tone said and laughed.

Hunter followed Daisy to her
room where he had set up a bed for himself on the floor. Micah had his spot on
the floor in the room with Sawyer and me. Axel gave up the bed in the room he
had been using to Tone for the night while he slept on the floor.

Evan went up front with Sam and
got the passenger seat all laid back to sleep in. Sam stayed in the driver’s
seat while Aaron plopped down on to one of the couches.

Morning came showing us most of the
bio dome that Paradis Roulette was inside of. You could feel the change in
everyone’s attitudes. Being able to make out the bio dome and knowing we would
be there soon cheered all of us. There was energy that hadn’t really been there
much since we started out on this journey.

Sydney and Scott even thought
it would be good for Hannah to be around everyone. So they got her all set up on
one of the couches. She seemed happy to be around everyone again. Although she
looked pale and the wound on her arm from the bullet was looking red around the
edges and swollen. Sydney was putting an ointment on it while Scott watched.

“I think it’s infected, we have
stuff that will help but we really need to get her to a hospital.” Scott said,
as Sam got the bus moving.

“There’s one inside the dome.”
He said. “They’re so far out that my nephew wanted to make sure there was a
hospital, in case of emergencies. It is fully staffed.”

“Perfect because the ointment
doesn’t seem to be clearing this at all. I can’t do anything with it without
clearing it out.” Scott said, even as he fussed over the wound and got it
wrapped again in clean bandages.

“She’s going to be okay though,
right?” Hunter asked, as he sat by Hannah on the couch and held her hand that
wasn’t being bandaged.

“I think she will be, yes.”
Scott answered as he finished wrapping the wound.

“You know I’m right here, you
don’t need to talk about me like I’m still behind closed doors.” Hannah said.

“I’m not talking about you like
you’re not here. I’m just asking the doctor questions you can’t answer.” Hunter
told her and she stuck her tongue out at him.

“It’s good to see you back out
of bed though.” Daisy said to Hannah.

“Yes, the room was getting a
little bit boring.” Hannah said.

“It was for your own good.”
Sydney told her as she grabbed a pillow to put under her hurt arm.

“I know just not any fun.”
Hannah said and her eyes landed on Evan. “Who are you?”

“I’m Evan Smith; they picked me
up from the gas station I was living in.” Evan answered, smiling at her.

“Oh, well hi. See I didn’t even
know we picked anyone else up.” She complained. “What else did I miss?”

“Only us getting stuck in the
mud and almost having to abandon the bus. You know about Evan. There was last
night when we couldn’t stop until we distracted a horde that was following us.
Which we did with a boom box.” Axel chimed in as he sat by Hannah’s feet.

“See all I’ve been doing is
sleeping and out here you have been facing exciting things.” Hannah went on
complaining.

“Well if it helps, it wasn’t
fun, it was scary and if you had been out here you may have not wanted to see
it all.” Hunter said, seeming to be amused by his sister’s complaining.

“You’re probably right. I just
hate that I was sleeping for so long. They kept me sedated.” Hannah said, “They
wouldn’t even let me go use the bathroom, I had to use a bed pan.”

Hunter was trying not to laugh.
Hannah made it sound like she was a prisoner in the back room instead of
someone who got shot.

“Must have been horrible.”
Hunter said, but he started laughing, losing the battle not to do so. Hannah
looked at him for a moment before she started laughing too.

“I guess it was better than dad
locking me up.” She finally said.

“Yeah, you knew why they were
keeping you in there.” Axel said.

Sydney came out from the
kitchen; she gave Hannah a couple of pain pills. To help her stay comfortable
and hopefully help fight off the infection.

“We are going to be getting to
the dome today.” Sam called back from the front of the bus making everyone
cheer and look out the windows.

“How long do you think till
we’re there?” Sydney asked him.

“Not long if the way is as
clear as it looks to be, all that driving last night put us closer than I
thought we were.” Sam answered her.

He had a determined look on his
face and it seemed we were going a bit faster than we had the last couple of
days.

Sam was right that getting to
the dome didn’t take much longer after he had told us.

We were all watching out of the
windows as the dome grew in size as we got closer. Soon, we were parked in
front of the entrance that had ‘Paradis Roulette’ scrawled across it in gold.
Sam stopped by a call box and hit a button. The rest of us were in awe of the
size of the dome. There was beeping from the box before a voice came over.

“Sorry we are not open.” The
voice said.

“Drew?” Sam asked.

“No.” The voice answered.

“Well go and get Drew, he’s
expecting us.” Sam demanded. The voice didn’t respond. I was starting to worry
that we were going to be turned away after everything it took to get here.

“This is Drew.” A new voice
came over.

“Drew its Sam.” Sam told him.

“Welcome back Uncle.” Drew said
as he laughed, he sounded relieved to hear his uncle had made it. “I was sure
you weren’t going to make it since I haven’t heard from you and I thought you’d
be here days ago.”

“Well it’s a mess out here
Drew, but we do have a girl here. She’s been shot and we got the bullet out but
the wound is infected.” Sam told him.

“I’m going to open the doors
then drive straight to the hospital, I’ll meet you there.” Drew said. We all
watched the gate out the window. I could feel my heart pounding as we waited.
There was a low rumble as the gate started to open. It split in the middle like
an elevator door. As soon as they were open Sam drove through and hit a button
on another box past the doors. That seemed to be the signal for the doors to
close. Sam stayed parked there for a minute while they slid closed; as soon as
they met in the middle he started driving.