Authors: Julie Cooper Brown
“Angel.” Kate said. “Oh, so she is an Angel. It’s very nice to meet you Angel.” John told her. “It’s berry nice to meet you too. Are you gonna take me where I gotta go, cause I fink my house might be there and I wanna go.” He seemed to look puzzled for a moment and asked, “Well, where do you have to go?” She released a heavy sigh. “I don’t know, I thought you would know.” And with that she hugged Teddy tighter and folded into Kate’s lap.
“So, you two are military. I gotta tell you, when we saw your uniforms, we almost hightailed it outta here, but I saw the girl. You do know that the troops that are left, are killing everyone?”
“Yea, we know,” Kate told him, “We don’t follow those types of orders. We took off on our own. We’re in the business of saving lives, not taking them.”
“I tell you, that
is so good to know.” He turned back and looked at Angel. “You know what, Angel? We have a little girl back at our camp just about your age and she’s been a handful, but I think with a new playmate, it might calm her down. Would you like a new friend, Angel?” John asked her. Angel’s thumb remained in her mouth and he nodded her head yes. Kate thought it was a good idea and hoped that a new friend would brighten her spirits. Maybe it would help to distract her from thinking of her father for a while. “So, where are we headed?” Dave asked.
“We have shelter at the Mineral Springs in North Port. There are ten of us all together, well thirteen counting you three. Let’s see. There is Tisha, my wife. Our nephew Allen and his girlfriend Krista, they’re just teenagers, a couple of elderly women that were already there when we got there. Maude and Jewell, she’s cranky, you have to ignore her. Kimmy, she’s five years old, her social worker, Miss Blake and a young man we picked up on our run yesterday, Seth I think his name is. We’ve set up there, it’s the perfect place. There’s a café, showers and the main attraction, the mineral pool. Everything is in working order, at least until the generators run ou
t
of gas. We’ll burn that bridge when we get there.”
“Sounds great. How do you know it’s safe?”
“Most of the residents there took off when the Infection surfaced. The ones who remained turned and the troops took them out. So, Tank and I set up a perimeter around the site everywhere that access was visible. There’s still a little left to finish, but hopefully with your help, we’ll get it done in no time. Of course we’ll give you a chance to rest. We’ve got extra sleeping bags and pillows. We’ve set ours up in the hallway. We can lock the doors on both ends and will be able to see any infected that might be able to wander its way in. Really convenient actually, we’ve been there for the last seven weeks and everything’s been going good so far.” Kate looked down at Angel and she was looking at Kate, shaking her head ‘no’. Kate was going to ask her what was wrong when and Tank said, “We have a problem.”
John had been turned around in his seat talking to them, and they hadn’t paid attention to anything other than John. He turned around and everyone looked ahead at the parking lot for the mineral springs. There was several infected spread throughout the parking lot. A young woman and a teenage boy carrying the meanest looking child they had ever seen on his hip, (who was steadily beating at the boy’s head with a naked Barbie doll, and he was trying to fend off her blows), ran out in front of the van. The woman held her right hand out in front of her and pushed the young boy carrying the child back out of the way of the rapidly approaching van with her left. Tank slammed the brakes to avoid running them over and everyone was flung forcefully against the back of the seats. When the van stopped the woman’s outstretched hand was touching the hood.
“Tisha!” John cried and jumped out to usher them safely into the van as Dave opened the side door and began firing at the infected. The three jumped in and John jumped in the back with them. Dave continued firing at them as he got in the passenger seat and locked the door, now firing out the open window. Tank was firing out of his side as well. Kate could see that John’s wife Tisha was exceptionally younger than him. She had shoulder length brown hair; it was pulled up in a ponytail, short bangs and a full figure. She was not fat by any means, only a little plump which suit her well.
The boy, Allen, had jet black hair, but you could tell he was truly a blonde by his roots and his very pale eyebrows and lashes. He also had each end of his bottom lip pierced and was sporting small silver hoops in each hole. He sat the fighting child in the seat next to Angel and she continued to swing at Allen. Tank floored it to get away from the surrounding dead and they saw many more heading in that direction, but stopped and watched us as they drove away. The girl was still pummeling at Allen.
“Settle down, Kimmy! I will take your Barbie away!” Tisha scolded her. She shoved at Allen one more time and he was laughing at her. She stuck her tongue out at him and turned to Angel who was clutching her teddy by the arm. Kimmy bit her lip with all of her teeth showing in an evil sneer (she would make this expression quite often when she was being bad,) and snatched the bear from Angel, ripped its little nightcap off its head and slammed it down into the floor board. Angel screamed and picked Teddy’s cap up off the floor and screamed in Kimmys face. “You hurt my Teddy!”
“I will
KERE
your Teddy!” Kimmy said pointing her little chubby finger in Angel’s face. Kate smacked her hand away and Kimmy gave her the evil eye. Her little black dress didn’t seem to be dirty, she was wearing Mary Janes on her feet as well, except that hers were black. Her hair was coal black, too and very short and uneven, it stood straight up in several places. Her fingernails were dirty and bitten down to the quick. The strangest thing, were her eyes. They were a brown so dark the color of her irises bled into her pupils and you could not tell where the pupil ended and the color began, making her eyes look solid black. Angel noticed her eyes at the same time Kate did, and climbed into her lap. She whispered in Kate’s ear. “She’s not a little girl, she’s a crazy demon.” I guess it would look that way to a child. Little Kimmy had been holding her naked Barbie and was pulling its hairs out one by one. She had been at this a while, Kate could see many little bald spots on Barbie’s head, and she was also missing a hand.
Kate tried to speak to the girl thinking she just needed more interaction to calm her down. “Aww, what happened to Barbie’s hand?” she asked her. Kimmy got up on her feet, in the seat and screamed in Kate’s face, “I ATE IT!” She stuck Barbie’s foot in her mouth and began gnawing on it. Tisha put her hand behind Kimmys knees and it made her fall to the seat on her butt. She struggled to get back up but Tisha held her there. “You settle down! One more outburst and I’m taking your doll, I mean it! SIT!
DOWN
!”
“I bet she would explode if I had a clove of garlic to shove in her mouth.” Allen said from the back making them all snicker which pissed off little Kimmy, who turned in her seat and started swinging at him again. They were all laughing at her. Kimmys eyes grew wide as if she perceived that statement as a threat and so she hit Allen harder. Tisha grabbed her by the waist and forced her into her lap and held her there. Kimmy raised her hand to hit Tisha and thought better of it when Tisha said, “If you hit me, I am going to slap the shit out of you. No court in the world will convict me. Try it.” Kimmy slumped into Tisha arms and became very quiet, though she was staring at Angel intently and making mean faces. She wasn’t much of a demon after all; they don’t recoil at th
e
threat of a good slap, but children do.
“So, now that that we have Kimmy settled down, I’m Tisha, and this is my nephew, Allen. It’s nice to meet you. Sorry about Kimmy, she has ADHD. She’s a handful sometimes… well, all the time.” She held out her hand and Kate shook it, introduced herself and Angel, and Dave took the honor of introducing himself. He was loosening up a little by then with this new crowd. He had even been chatting it up with Tank, he took to him pretty easily.
“What happened back there?” John asked.
“It was Seth, John. He was infected when you brought him in yesterday.” Tisha answered.
“No, he wasn’t he was fine. He didn’t show any signs of illness. He had no injuries.”
“How do you know he had no injuries, John? Did you check him? Did you, Tank?” She asked with a little attitude.
“No, we asked him and
felt he was being truthful.”
“Well, he wasn’t. He lied. Allen saw a bite on his back in the shower and asked him about it. Seth told him it was a dog bite. Allen came to tell me, and I confronted him. While I asked him about it, he changed. Right in front of me, John. He almost had me. Do you want to know who saved me? Jewell, cranky old bitchy, Jewell. She shoved her cane right in his fucking eye. Turns out she wasn’t so damn bad after all. You two and your bleeding hearts, put us all in danger. I swear.” She slammed herself against the back of the seat and squeezed the squirming Kimmy tighter.
“What the hell happened that they all got infected? Why is our shelter ruined?” Tank asked. Tisha looked back at Allen and no one expected Kimmy to say, “Krissa fupped Sef! They were kissin’! Cause Awen was sweepin!” Allen slapped her in the back of the head and she said “OW!” and scrunched her face while she rubbed her head.
“Well, Kimmys right. Krista did sleep with Seth, and I guess that’s how she became infected. She didn’t die, though. Just like Seth, she turned almost immediately and I saw her attack Jewell. Jewell fell to the ground but without her cane, she couldn’t get up so Krista jumped on top of her screaming and crying, but biting her still. I tried to help but Krista turned on me, so I ran to get Tisha, who was burying Seth on the other side of the lake. By the time we got back over here, Krista had attacked Maude and Miss Blake, too. Jewell was coming back to life and Baby Reagan here, was standing there laughing at all of it.” He slapped the back of her head again. “I picked her up and followed Tisha to the parking lot, and then you guys showed up.”
“What about the Infected in the parking lot? Why were they here? We have been safe for weeks.”
“Krista and Seth had snuck off to the store, I don’t know what for. I guess they followed them back. Three years with that bitch.” Allen said. “She’d done it before. I forgave her every time. I wasn’t going to forgive her this time, I’m just mad that I didn’t get to tell her that. She didn’t even know I knew.” He pulled an iPod from his pocket and inserted the earphones. Rob Zombie’s Dragula could be heard clearly.
The signs said they were travelling north on I-75 and even though they had to slow down a few times to pass abandoned vehicles, but all were amazed at the ease of access to the road. It should’ve been harder than that to travel. They should’ve had to abandon the vehicle by then, but somehow, the way was clear. The clouds had begun to darken some time before and they could see that a big storm was brewing. They were nearing the Georgia state line when the storm finally let loose heavy torrents of rain and large gusts of wind caused them to weave all over the road. “These rains are too heavy, I can’t see and it’s hard to control with the winds. We’re almost out of gas, too. I’m gonna pull off the next exit and see what we can find.” He pulled off at Turner Road and made a left off the exit. They were able to drive another mile before the van sputtered and died.
Chapter Twenty One
“Looks like were walking from here.” Tank said. “We’ll wait till the rains let up, though. Who wa
nts to stay up and keep watch?” “I will.” Dave volunteered.
“I will, too.” Allen said from the back. “Okay, I’ll sleep a bit,” Dave said, “Wake me in an hour and we’ll head out.” Tisha, John, Kimmy and Angel were all already asleep. Barbie hung by her one hand from Kimmys mouth and Kate knew that when Kimmy woke up, Barbie was a goner. The child even looked mean as she slept. Kate wondered what the hell happened to her, to make her behave like that. Angel’s head was in Kate’s lap and she hugged her teddy tight, its nightcap she clutched in her other hand. Tisha had her head on John’s shoulder and John’s head had fallen against the back of the seat. Kate didn’t want to doze off but the rain hitting the roof of the van made it impossible to keep her eyes open and the passing winds became a lullaby. When Kate woke up,, Tank and John were awake and everyone else was still sleeping. Dave and Allen had gotten in the very back seat to sleep, when John and Tank woke to relieve them. “What’s the plan?” Tank turned to face her, “We’re gonna head to my place, in Ohio. I don’t know how yet. I don’t want to leave my van though. I think there’s a gas station about a mile back. I couldn’t tell because of the rain. It was sitting pretty far off the road. Maybe John and I will head down there for gas.”
“No,” Kate said “Dave and I will go when he gets up. How long has he been asleep?”
“A couple of hours, maybe three.” John answered.
“How long did
I
sleep?”
“Around five hours, the rest of them should be waking up soon.”