Samuel stared at Mitch and smiled for a brief second before bringing the radio up to his mouth a final time. “You will want to come here yourself. Your son, Mitch, is waiting for you.”
“No!” Mitch screamed out in horror. It wasn’t what he wanted. He hadn’t been careful enough in his approach with Samuel and now he had lost his chance to come face-to-face with Olivia. He ran forward and tackled Samuel into the floor.
It was the perfect chance for me to get away. Mitch was not thinking about me in his blind fury, and his command over me felt broken. I started to move toward the door on the other side of the room. I was going to be free from the invisible, mental bindings that Mitch had tied me with.
But I had reached the door too late. Just before I could grab for the handle, a deafening, blinding explosion rocked the wall in front of me, sending me falling to the ground. For a moment it felt like I had been knocked unconscious, but I couldn’t have been. I could see everywhere I looked. I was able to comprehend what was happening around me. My back was on the floor and my ears were ringing. There were two more explosions, but being on the ground protected me from the blasts, though the pieces of drywall, wood, and metal rained down on me like fiery chunks of hail.
Somehow I found the strength to look behind me at Mitch and Samuel who were both on the floor as well. I watched as Shadowface’s soldiers charged into the room. One of them stood over Mitch and hit him in the face with the butt of his rifle. Another two helped Samuel to his feet. He said something to one of the soldiers but I could still only hear ringing. One of them pointed at Mitch, and Samuel called something over the radio. I assumed he was asking Shadowface what to do with him. I never heard a response, but neither Samuel nor any of the other soldiers touched Mitch. Instead, they turned to me and pointed. The next thing I saw was the butt of a different rifle traveling toward my face.
I didn’t see anything again until I awoke in my metal, white room. The lights had come on and a voice over the intercom told me that it was time for breakfast.
“I’m telling you, they are with Shadowface,” I whisper to Gabe at the dining room table.
He shakes his head at me, obviously annoyed at my insistence. “You don’t know that.”
“Oh what are you two whispering about now?” Nancy calls out from the kitchen.
“Probably thinking of a way to get out of another one of your meals,” Ray spouts grumpily as he walks out of the kitchen shaking his head. He picks at his teeth after having eaten some of the food in question. “I tell ya, after this whole outbreak thing, her cooking has gone considerably downhill.”
“I heard that!” Nancy yells.
“How are you feeling, Remi?” Ray asks as he takes a seat.
I’m half surprised that the chair doesn’t break underneath his weight, but it remains solid as he sits across from me, still picking his teeth. It has become a ritual over the past month for Ray to ask me how I’m doing ever since Gabe and I got here. It’s almost as if he’s never seen a gunshot victim before. Of course, I’ve got to admit that I did look pretty rough for the first couple of weeks.
“I’m getting better and better every day,” I tell him. I feel for the bandage underneath my shirt, though I know I don’t need to anymore. For the longest time, I had to feel for it to make sure it hadn’t bled through, but that stopped a long while ago. I’m pretty much healed up now, though I don’t feel as spry as I did a month ago. Maybe that’s because Gabe and I have been hanging around these two geezers for so long. Of course, I mean no disrespect, it’s just that these people were raised in homes where there was no television, internet, or anything stimulating, so they are used to keeping themselves busy throughout the day and night when there is seemingly nothing to do. I spent so many years
not
being bored after the virus outbreak, that I had forgotten what it felt like until I came here.
So, Ray asking me how I am feeling right before we eat is just another item on a long list of routines we go through each and every day. I appreciate the concern, but I think he will still be asking me how I’m feeling ten years from now if we stayed that long—or if we lived that long. I sigh at the thought. Living here has been boring, but that’s not a bad thing at all. It’s been such a relief to not have to worry about anything. I haven’t had to make runs for food, and we haven’t been attacked by greyskins. It’s been wonderful.
Ray and Nancy are part of a settlement, but it’s more like a village. The defenses are subpar, but it’s more about the location than anything. No greyskin seems to wander nearby, and if it does, it’s a strange sight. And raiders have yet to try and rob the place. It’s one of the more well established settlements that I’ve seen, and it rivals Crestwood in its feeling of safety. Not to mention it has no presence of Shadowface.
Not yet.
That’s what has me concerned about tonight’s meal. This morning, two men came by the village in a beat up truck. The people of the village didn’t like it one bit, but the men just stuck their hands up in the air and asked for food and a place to stay for the night. Ray and Nancy, being the lovely saps that they are, decided that the two should stay with us. I started to raise an objection about it, but Nancy just said that it would be all right since Gabe and I would be here.
Great,
I thought. I didn’t like them from the start, but what I really didn’t like were the questions they started asking when they came into the home.
So, how many people are here? Who is in charge? Who constructed the defenses? What sort of preparations do you make for greyskin attacks?
It was like they were appraising the village for its value or usefulness. It sounded a lot like Shadowface work to me. When I mentioned something to Gabe about it, he just shrugged it off and said that it was probably because they hadn’t felt so welcomed by a village before.
It is odd how welcoming everyone is here. Though there doesn’t seem to be a lot of danger, it does feel like their naiveté will be their undoing someday. A couple of men like these could have assault weapons in their truck and before anyone could run back into their houses, the strangers would have wiped out half the village just to steal some food.
I guess I should be glad that they have been so helpful. If it weren’t for Ray and Nancy, I might be dead right now. Everyday I think about how we came to be here and I just have to shake my head.
I remember Gabe had tried to make me as comfortable as possible, but lying in the back of a truck for six hours while trying to stop the bleeding in my side was taking its toll.
I was tired, and I had resorted to closing my eyes. I had fallen asleep a few times, but Gabe had taken notice and made sure to yell at me when I slipped out of consciousness.
When we were far enough away from Paxton and his men to feel comfortable enough to stop, Gabe had tried to move me to the front, but sitting wasn’t going to happen. I had to lie down. He would stop about every twenty minutes to check on me until I finally yelled at him to just keep going. He had tried to tie off the wound, and I had been keeping pressure on it, but the bullet had dug into my side and blood was flowing freely no matter what I did. And I had never known much about anatomy so I couldn’t be sure about the state of any vital organs that may or may not have been punctured. Gabe finally quit stopping and resorted to craning his neck around to get a good look at me while he was driving.
For the first few minutes, I didn’t feel pain. It was as if I had been bleeding from a phantom wound. But after those few minutes passed, the rest of the night felt like someone was driving a stake through my ribs with a sledgehammer.
Gabe had finally stopped again and started talking to two people in the road. My eyes were closed, but I tried to listen to everything.
“How are we supposed to know this isn’t a ploy for you to rob us?”
“If I wanted to rob you, I would have already done it,” Gabe said. “Just have a look at her, you’ll see.”
There was a pause. When I opened my eyes again there were three figures standing over me, staring. “This is interesting,” I remember saying, trying to play it cool.
I must have sounded worse than I meant to, because the old man and woman looked at each other with worried glances. “You can follow us,” the man said. “We’re a small group, and we’ve survived because of that fact. But we also don’t want to turn away someone in need.”
“Thank you,” Gabe said.
The man and the woman walked to their vehicle and started it. “We’re almost to a safe place, Remi,” Gabe said. “How are you feeling?”
“Like a million bucks.” I hated the sound of my own voice. I sounded like I was about to die. I lift an eyebrow at the thought. Was I close to death and didn’t even know it? I felt so drained and weak, but I didn’t think death was near.
Apparently death and I were starting to become close buddies because at some point between following the older couple and getting proper medical attention, I passed out. I didn’t wake up for two days.
“You lost a lot of blood,” Gabe told me the morning my body decided to stir. “Finding Ray and Nancy was the luckiest thing that’s ever happened to us. You, really.”
“Who?” I said.
“Ray and Nancy,” he repeated. “They are the couple we came up on in the road. “I thought Ray was going to blow my head off with the double-barrel shotgun he was carrying, but instead they gave us shelter. We’re in a small town called Orick.”
“We’re welcome here?” I asked.
“Surprisingly yes.”
I looked down at my side and could see fresh bandages wrapped around my whole chest and side. I was shirtless, though the bandages covered me up like a mummy.
“You didn’t fix me up, did you?”
“No,” he said with a wink. “Nancy was sure to make me leave the room before you were cared for.”
“You mean
stripped down
,” I said. I let out a short laugh, but it hurt my side so badly that the laugh turned into a grimace. “How bad was it?” I asked.
“The bullet was pretty deep, but Nancy got it out,” he said. “I guess since you’re still breathing it didn’t hit anything vital.”
“That’s reassuring.”
He shrugged. A long moment stood between us and I could tell that something was on his mind.
Probably Paxton.
“You know, I can believe Paxton turned on me, but I’m surprised that he turned on you,” I said. “You were his number one guy.”
“It surprised me too,” he said solemnly. “I never knew when you started looking in to this whole Shadowface thing that you’d have uncovered something this deep. The only way I can fathom Paxton turning on us like he did was because Shadowface threatened him. I know you heard the conversation over the phone, but there had to be something else too. I mean, we were taking him to his granddaughter for goodness’ sake.”
“Shadowface could have told Paxton anything,” I said. “She could have said that they found Evie and had her safe or that she was already dead—any number of things. The chance to get his granddaughter
and
keep the resources Shadowface offers was probably too good of a concept to pass up.”
“I suppose he has her now,” Gabe said.
That was certainly a possibility. I felt a pang of guilt when I thought about Elkhorn, though I knew I shouldn’t have. We did our best to get them help. We failed. And now they could all be dead. And Waverly was among them.
“We have to figure out a way to go back there,” I said.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Gabe said. “You have to rest. Elkhorn’s problems are far from us now.”
“How can you say that? My sister is there.”
“You know how the fight was going,” Gabe said. “Yeah we were holding them off, but it was only a matter of time. Shadowface will have them overrun by now.”
I knew he was right, but that didn’t quell my desire to see for myself. And with this gunshot wound, I wasn’t going anywhere any time soon.
I suppose the desire is still there. I want to go to Elkhorn, but I’m sure there won’t be anything to return to. Even if Waverly and the others got out before Shadowface and the greyskins took over Elkhorn, they would be long gone by now. I plan to still be on the lookout for my sister, but hope isn’t welling out of me.
“Watcha got on your mind, Remi?” Ray asks as he looks down to try and meet my eyes.
I look up at him and quickly shake my head. “Nothing, I’m just tired.”
“It’s that dang gunshot wound,” he says. “It can take a lot out of ya for a long time. Maybe a hot lunch will make you feel better.”
Nancy’s hot meals have never really made me feel better other than the fact that I knew I wasn’t going to be starving. Ray wasn’t kidding when he claimed Nancy’s cooking had gone downhill since the outbreak, not that I know anything about it before, but it couldn’t have ever been much worse. I haven’t had the chance to be picky in the past three years, but lately I’ve noticed that her bland vegetables and undercooked entrees could use a little more seasoning, or longer time in the oven. But I will never complain like Ray does. He’s had a hot meal every day since the outbreak. I know what it’s like to go a few days without any food—to feel a sense of elation at the sight of canned peas.
“Ray, could you set out six plates?” Nancy calls out.
Ray rolls his eyes and lets out a loud huff. “I swear I never get peace with this woman around.” He looks at me and Gabe and winks.
“I heard that,” Nancy says.
I know he only says it because he doesn’t know what it would be like without her. Nancy gives him everything he wants. I think of the life that these two have had. I’ve heard the story of how they came to be here. In their mind, they have suffered since the outbreak. They have seen some of the undead up close. They have had a run-in or two with a raider. Life has been tough.