The Orphans (Book 4): White Lie (18 page)
“Just make sure that you stay where you are, and don’t leave. Unless that place is on fire, I want you to stay in Lou’s apartment or condo or whatever the hell you are in until we get there. You make damn sure that you do your best to not do anything ignorant until we arrive, or you’ll never see the outside of a base again as long as I am in charge of you and your actions.”
Greg, being a teenager, was already running through his head where he could stay if things went bad. He was confident that he could handle this apocalypse with what he knew and could stay far enough away and off the grid that it wouldn’t make any difference. He just needed somewhere safe to sleep and something warm to eat and he would be fine.
He was sure that if worse came to worse that he could get a few like-minded individuals to leave with him and they would be just fine on their own. They didn’t need any adults to tell them what to do. They weren’t ignorant and knew to eat when they were hungry and to sleep when they were tired. He knew there wouldn’t be any parties to worry about going to, they were all straight edge, it had been put into their heads that drugs and booze were bad and now more than ever most of the teens were pretty hardcore thinking that was correct. The idea of trying to run away from one of those things and thinking on their feet wasn’t something that they wished to pursue while under the influence.
Greg said, “Yeah I hear you, maybe it will be a good idea if we sit down and have a talk about you being in charge of me and what I do.”
Aslin started to reply but knew that getting into a screaming match with a teenager over the radio wasn’t going to do any good. He set the radio down and started to race towards Urbandale, doing his best to keep control of the truck. Ice was ice and it didn’t matter what you were driving, it always sucked. He took his time after a few awkward patches were hit and slowed it down. Hammond looked over the side of the seat at how hard he was gripping the wheel and asked, “So are you gripping that because of the pain in your arm, or because of what Greg had said?”
Aslin looked in the rearview mirror, trying to determine how he wanted to answer that. “You know I can’t really say for sure, between the conversation, losing Shelman, hearing Ellie is hurt and that Shaun is lost, there’s not much more that would ruin my fucking day. I can’t say that having to think of the answer to this question is really helping with a hell of a lot Hammond. Did you have anything else that would piss me off even further that you would like to ask me, or did you want to go back to being able to enjoy this beautiful ride through the snowy damn tundra?”
Hammond patted him on the shoulder. He wasn’t stupid and knew he hadn’t done anything to help with the pure rage that Aslin was currently feeling about the circumstance presented to him. The rest of the ride was quiet and somewhat uncomfortable. When Aslin pulled onto Eighty- Sixth Street they saw the faintest hint of tracks from Greg’s truck and started to see the Turned coming out of the ditches. The large truck was not easy on the ears and the muffler and engine echoed across the wide streets. When Aslin saw this he started shaking his head. He said, “You guys check your safety and you make sure you are ready. I don’t want one of those fuckers getting within twenty yards of this truck. The last thing that we need to do is get stranded. We won’t be doing a damn bit of good if that is the case. Clary already wants to come out here the last thing we need to do is give him a valid reason to do so. If they start making their move, you make sure that you split their damn heads open!”
Aslin hit the windows for the front and back and killed the heat, knowing that it wasn’t going to be doing any good for the time to come. He figured at the same time that he was going to be doing even more use by having them down because it was going to be next to impossible seeing Shaun dressed in what he would assumed would be his white fatigues to match the environment. The Turned did not waste their time watching the large truck leave them behind, they started sprinting for it, and Aslin saw this and asked why no one was firing their rifles. The three teens answered by unleashing a reign of hell on the dead. When Aslin saw that none of them were falling he screamed, “Christ are any of you guys going for something that will put them down?”
Hammond yelled, “Hey it isn’t easy hitting these things in the head. Between their jumping and leaping it’s impossible to hit them. I don’t know what else you expect us to do.”
Aslin screamed, “Shoot the fuckers in the gut, shoot them in the leg, shoot them in anything that is going to keep them from standing upright, take them down damn it. Just because shooting them in the head kills them doesn’t mean you can’t take them down if they are after you. You just want to take them out of the equation right now. Later we can come back and put every one of them down, and make sure that one goes into their brain.”
The kids stopped looking for the small impossible moving target and started leaving crippled zombies sitting in the street unable to move or crawling wounded after them. Aslin slowed down just enough so that Patrick and Maryann could jump out of the truck. They got into the rear end, rested their guns over the edge of the tailgate and were ready to go. Hammond tapped him on the shoulder yelling, “They are in place, let’s get going.”
Aslin drove slowly now having control over the situation and the teens were systematically putting them down. When Aslin drove over the hill, he saw nothing but Turned in his path. He pulled to a stop and the rest of the teens got out of the truck then aimed down the hill and putting what Turned were there down before they had a chance to come for them.
Aslin sat back in the truck thinking there wasn't one bullet spent training that was a waste. The piles of dead in the streets gave him a creepy good feeling that made him content with their actions, knowing that they weren’t going to have the opportunity to cause any further harm to anyone else.
When they were cleared, Aslin drove up to Meredith Drive and saw more Turned but these were down and staying that way. When he pulled into the parking lot of the store he could tell some serious blasts had taken place there. The dead started in the middle and the rest that seemed scattered across the driveway had serious parts of their skulls removed. From his decades of experience behind a scope, he didn’t need anyone to tell him where the shooter had been perched. He looked up to the roof of the store but didn’t see anyone there, yet knew that at some point there had been someone.
He slowly drove along all sides of the store and only saw one exit. Aslin saw a Turned lying by the side of the door and it definitely looked like a small one on one battle had taken place. The damages to the Turned looked gruesome. He could see something sparkling in the snow and since he saw none of the dead around, he yelled for Hammond to run down and check it out. When he came back he opened a snow covered glove showing off a handful of rifle casings. Aslin took one, smelled it and knew that it had not been sitting out here for long. He hefted his scoped rifle and rested it on the door and peering around but didn’t see anything that looked human. He saw Turned spread down the distance and knew that Shaun had headed in that direction.
Chapter Seventeen
Shaun opened his eyes as the growling was getting closer that much he knew. It sounded like it was coming through a tunnel though, he wasn’t sure if he was dreaming this or if it was real. He knew something was wrong and when he tried to open his eyes fully it felt like someone had attached weights to them. What he could see looked as blurry as anything he’d ever seen out of focus. When he tried to use his arms to push up, he fell back down into the snow, no longer feeling cold so much but not remembering why he felt this way.
Shaun finally was able to open his eyes and he saw a Turned crawling towards him with its mouth open. It was also having issues moving itself. Shaun knew that they could heal but didn’t know to what extent or what time it took to do so. It wasn’t something that they could exactly test on a daily basis; their run-ins over the last few months with the Turned had been all but nonexistent as none of them had ventured that far out of the city quite yet in search of food.
Shaun shook his head the best that he could then stared at the Turned. He wanted to push away from it but was having no way of doing so. He knew that this was the end. He would not even be able to take out the one who was going to finally get him. The Turned was leaving a slosh of wet, bloody snow in its trail as it slowly pulled itself forward but was going as quickly as its body would enable it to do so. When it was finally within a foot, it reached for Shaun grabbing him by the coat and that was when Shaun could feel his body begin to slide through the cold, wet ice. Shaun winced at the movement. His body felt rigid like never before. He tried to reach for anything that could save him but it was too late and it was over.
He thought of his dad and Ellie in his last seconds on earth as a human and the only thing that he could think of was the number of people that he would hurt. Shaun thought of the base before the first snows had fallen and the temperatures were near unbearable to be outside unless guard duty was the reason for it. He remembered brushing the hair from Ellie’s ear while they sat on the tanks watching the sunset going down and pretending if only for a short time they weren’t in the middle of hell on earth. When his mind travelled to the gross images of him ripping flesh from his own arm and then from the bodies of as many as he could, it made him want to puke right there on the ice.
Shaun was screaming no, to little avail and when he stopped sliding he closed his eyes, waiting for the bite. The only thing that he felt was warm fluids hitting the top of his skull and forehead. A single shot echoed across the small valley that he was in and then everything went quiet. He couldn’t judge time in his current state and it felt like he sat there for hours waiting for the bites to come but they never did. The warm fluids started to become cold and he could feel ice forming from them. He wished for something warm but knew that if he wasn’t going to be Turned on this ice that he would freeze to death on it. Shaun heard the echoes of gunfire and screaming and then he watched, feeling like he was floating. He looked up to the overcast gray sky, waiting for himself to feel something new, to raise higher into Heaven, wondering if his parents would be there, curious if his father was invited to partake in the pleasantry of afterlife knowing how much pain he had helped to be responsible for. What he did hear sounded still like it was impossible, there was definitely noises but they didn’t sound like the Turned and they sure as hell weren’t angels from the amount of cursing that was being screamed into his ears.
The sky disappeared in exchange for a bright light which made him feel even more at ease. The first time he’d been able to feel something was a painful one and it didn’t react all at once but slowly. He tried opening his jaw when a second vicious attack of pain hit his face. A head came into view rubbing away the snow and ice that had formed around his eye lashes and enabling him with the opportunity to see much better again. When he started to blink on his own, Aslin was there screaming something and Shaun just blinked.
Aslin yelled to the rest of them who had good arms to help get the clothes off of him, down to his drawers. Shaun could feel hot air circulating within the truck. He saw a silver looking blanket being pulled out and didn’t realize what it was. There was so many questions he was going through in his head but unable to rationalize or verbally say any of them. Aslin pulled his coat off, as did the others, draping it over the near naked and trembling Shaun. Shaun could feel hands going up and down his sides and it started to burn as the heat started to make its way through his body just before he passed out in the back seat.
Hammond said, “Shaun, Shaun wake up.”
Aslin felt his pulse and could at least tell that it was steady. He said, “He isn’t in the clear but we need to make sure that he stays warm.”
McQuaig, only going off of what she had seen on television, stripped her sweatshirt off and slid under the blanket and pile of coats lying behind Shaun and sharing the body heat that one day he would have reason to thank her for saving his life with. She said, “I saw this on television. Just don’t tell Ellie, or she might kill me.”
Patrick tucked the blankets in around them again and slid his dry watch cap over Shaun’s head. He said, “You know I'm pretty sure that Shaun and Ellie will both be thanking you one day for this. Thank God this is a giant truck or there would just be barely be enough room for everyone in here.”
Aslin shut the doors, making sure the windows were back up as well, and cranked the hot air until they were all feeling the effects of the intense heat that the pickup was putting out. He said, “We need to get this thing as hot as possible and get him back coming around. Just make sure no one startles him awake, the last thing he probably saw before he passed out was one of the dead and we don’t want him waking up thinking that is who is coming after him, or you might be surprised at the amount of force someone woken out of a nightmare could possess.”
They pointed all of the vents in the front and the back at the two teens and Patrick took an additional thermo blanket from his pack and placed it on the vents so that it poured directly back onto the two teens huddling together in the back seat.
Aslin watched this, thinking that Patrick had a higher calling with his ingenuity, but didn’t know if there’d ever be a time or place or way for him to learn the things that he needed to in order to use it for any good. For the time being he was thankful to have him for the backup and to help keep people’s heads on straight. He knew how stressful it was for everyone, yet the kid who seemed the weakest of all, sometimes from appearance, was one of the best at keeping people from freaking out at any given moment.