Shaun got out of the truck, followed by Greg. Shaun said, “I got my radio on, I'll let you know if we need anything. If you aren’t able to pick us up, if it means that you can follow those guys, you go on ahead and leave us. We should be fine if we are on top of a big building like this.”
Aslin pulled the truck around, nodding as he did so, and the two boys started their climb up the ladder. Shaun looked at the roof and asked, “You think that there is anything up there that we need to worry about Greg?”
“Nah, I haven’t seen one of those things climb a ladder yet, at least that I can think of.”
“Yeah that is true, but I'll be damned if I haven’t seen them jump some pretty insane heights before.” Shaun climbed up slowly on the last few steps making sure that there truly wasn’t anything to worry about. Though when he climbed up the rest of the way, he found that he wasn’t the only one that thought refuge on top of a building was a good idea. He walked up to a group on the roof walking around them and examining. He wasn’t sure how they had been dead, but the threat that they were going to turn was not one that he was worried about currently. There had to have been at least twenty people up there. Greg saw this and said, “What the hell is wrong with them? Why did they stay here, they are skinnier than hell.”
Shaun knelt down and somewhat examined them. He saw no blood and no bite wounds. He whispered, “It looks like they starved to death.”
“Wouldn’t you want to make a break for it, I mean these things are morons right? Is there really a reason that they couldn’t have tried to get away?” asked Greg.
Shaun said, “Well think about it Greg, we don’t know what their patterns are, they could have been here for a matter of hours with the Turned down there or months. You combine that if they went up here when it first started and there’s a damn good chance that it was hot, with no water or food. It might not have taken very long at all for this to happen, after that they just sat up here dead and rotting in the summer heat for months on end. That isn’t something to think about pleasantly but there is a possibility that it not only happened on this roof but thousands of roofs across the state. People didn’t have someone like we did attempting to look out for them. There were probably thousands upon thousands of people in the state that had less than a minute’s notice that they needed to get the hell out of dodge or they were screwed. This probably seemed like a great place to hide…...that is until the malls were overturned, along with the hospitals and any sporting events taking place on a Sunday. Imagine a church filled with five hundred to thousands of people and you had one Turned run in biting someone that turned into two, then four, then twelve and so on until they had been all taken care of. I can’t imagine what that would be like.”
Greg thought back to day one for him and said, “It’d probably be like a school bus coming tearing into the parking lot where you are standing filled with school spirit…..only to have the bus doors exploded open and have a shit ton of zombie teenage girls jump out of it and go on a vicious and bloody rampage.”
Shaun just watched and surveyed the area for a moment, thinking of how many roofs there were and how many probably had bodies that needed to be cleaned up. He walked, keeping low, to the end of the building and took a position away from the bodies. He rested his rifle over the edge but kept the machine gun within reaching distance. Greg took position next to him and they began to wait. They sat there for three hours waiting for something to come their way. They kept radio open with Aslin who was asking them regularly if they were ok, after the first few hours Shaun started to get bored of the assignment and started to scan the streets for the Turned. He could see that they were stuck inside of store front and that there was no shortage of them. They walked around moaning and growling ever so often if they bumped into each other. He made notes of the different streets and which ones had poles which he thought they could hang the blood from.
When afternoon was almost gone and evening was on its way, faint motor sound was coming along the silent air. Shaun stopped what he was doing, put down his pen and nudged Greg who was already on it. The two watched through their scopes as a small group of trucks came their way. Greg hit his mic and said, “Aslin, this is Greg, they are on their way here. Unsure if they are hostile or if they were with this group either.”
Aslin said, “Just let us know if they are coming our way, we are buried back inside of the large heavy duty trucks. We wanted to be absolutely sure that we are hidden if they drive past us. I’m sure the guys with them said something about where they were going and when they were supposed to be back.”
“I don’t know if anyone would miss assholes like that, but I guess if that is all you've got then they probably are with them. What do you want us to do?” Shaun asked.
Aslin said, “Well if I told you to take them out then I'd be a moron because we need to know where they are camped out at. If there is someone that needs help then we need to offer it. But we can’t do any such thing until we roll up there and look. I am still thinking there’s no way that everyone staying there is there on their own accord. Things might be that bad, but worry about things like that will make you old before your time. I am just glad that Shaun isn’t that stupid.”
Greg went to say something in question about Shaun’s intelligence when Shaun sent a quick elbow to the gut. Shaun said, “I’d watch who you are calling stupid Greg, how long has it been since we went out on a joyride together?”
Greg said, “Shaun, how long are you going to bring that up for, you need to get over it man.”
Shaun said, “You realize it’s been less than a month right? I mean Christ, you are probably going to get shit about that, especially from me, until time that you do something else equally as stupid. Although, you were setting records with that joy ride.”
Greg began to say something else but the group of trucks started driving their way. He hit his mic and asked, “Hey, they are getting much closer guys, you want us to come down?”
Aslin said, “No just stay put.”
Hammond leaned forward in the truck. He said, “Uh didn’t we want to find them? I mean, how are we going to find them if we do not follow them?”
Clary turned around, he and Aslin had been doing this long enough that he didn’t need to ask Aslin what he was thinking because it was what was going through his head as well. He said, “We don’t give a shit where they are going Hammond, what we care about is where they go when they are done. They are looking for their group. They want to know where they are, but once they find them, which I don’t think will take too long, they are going to be coming back this way. We need to know when they are coming back though. There won’t be much for them to look at when they see what happened to their friends. But we wanna make sure we got our guard up because there’s a good chance that as soon as they see us, they are going to open up fire. I know I would in that case.”
Hammond thought about that and asked, “Is it smart that we follow them to where they live? What if they have more people there that are hidden? We might be driving right into a shit storm that we don’t know about.”
Clary said, “As long as we find the place, that is enough for today. We can go back and make real plans. Aslin can take Shaun with him and they can do some research. It’d be good for him to get some firsthand experience, doing it out in the field is worth a thousand times more than practicing in a empty field. Those people will let you know if you do it wrong.”
Aslin said, “So what you get to do is just sit back and wait for us to give you information. You know damn well how to do all this shit too old man.”
Clary said, “This is true, but Shaun needs to learn.”
“They all need to learn. Why don’t we just go and take it from different positions? We can see if they have the numbers and go from there, it could be just a handful of people that are there. We could have hundreds but we won’t know until we put some time into trying to find out.”
“So it looks like we get to do some old school recon huh? And here I thought the good ol’ days were now over. We need to see if we still got it then.”
“I know that I do. I don’t know about you of course, some of us are just naturally gifted at things like this and others, well, they need to try.”
Hammond sat back in the seat, enjoying the uncommon harassing that each of them was giving. He was thinking that other than the fact they were sitting in a Humvee and with a full stock of machine guns, that it could be just like before all this happened sitting around with his own friends.
The men in the trucks were back in a half hour, driving slowly this time with windows down and rifles sticking out of the side of the truck and ready. Clary said, “Well it looks like they definitely must’ve seen the bullet holes in the trucks.”
The men stopped, stared at the parking lot to see if there was anything that they needed to worry about. When they could find nothing to make them nervous, they continued to drive out. Aslin hit his mic and yelled, “You two get your asses down here the second that truck is out of sight. I don't want to lose them. There’s nothing we can do to find them if we don’t keep up.”
Shaun and Greg duck walked quickly across the roof back to the ladder and raced down it. By the time that they made it down the truck was already halfway down the street. The boys jumped into the truck and Aslin pulled out slowly, making sure that they were far enough back that they wouldn’t be seen. They headed into Johnston to a gated community.
“That’s close enough. Any of you three know anything about that place? Do you have anyone that you knew before this that lived there?” asked Clary.
Shaun and Greg both shook their heads no. Greg said, “We didn’t leave Adel all that often honestly.”
Hammond said, “I didn’t know anyone from there, we were stuck at the orphanage unless there was a special function. There weren’t many reasons to come to Johnston.”
“Well I can’t say I'm too damn happy that they are living less than fifteen minutes from the base. I find it a bit difficult to believe that they aren’t coming out here, or that they haven’t come to try and break into it or salvage anything while we have been there,” Aslin said.
Clary said, “They had an entire housing development, maybe they had enough canned goods that they could survive. What I mean is, maybe they were smart enough to not go out trying to fight a winter that would fight back.”
“And you need to stare at me while you say that don’t you?” asked Greg.
Everyone in the truck nodded and they headed back for the base, taking the long way and being extremely sure that there was no one following them. When they deemed it that they were safe and no one was on their tail and there were no Turned to worry about as well, they went back to the base. When they pulled in Mark and Henry came out looking around and hitting the gates. They looked at Shaun sitting in the truck and said, “We are gonna have a talk with Fox real quick if you guys want to leave him with us.”
Shaun climbed out of the truck and said, “Guys, thank you for coming after me. I’m sorry I did that, but it was all that I've been thinking about as I've been staring at Ellie in that hospital bed. It’s the only thing that I know now. It seems as if I want to be happy, they need to be dead. We should talk more about the blood drive; I think that it is a good idea.”
Greg patted him on the shoulder and asked, “Did you want me to come with you?”
Shaun shut the door, he said, “No it’s ok, I'll be fine. They probably just have questions about how things went. They won’t keep me long because I want to get to Ellie as soon as I can.”
Clary said, “You realize you are going to be the one who got their asses in some serious trouble by blowing out of here and leaving them to be the one who was left to tell me what stupid thing that they had done.”
Shaun waved them on while looking at the two boys seeming to wait patiently. The truck pulled out of sight and when they did Mark and Henry stepped forward. Mark said, “You know not everyone gets to take guard duty. I know it probably doesn’t mean anything to you since you get to be in charge of perimeter and get special one on one training with Aslin and Clary, but it means a lot to us. “
Shaun said, “I wasn’t trying to get you guys in trouble, but I had some business on the outside of the gates and well, you were the only way that I was going to get out of here. If you got a problem with that, it sure as hell wasn’t my intention. You’ll need to get over it though, if you guys remember, we were the ones standing behind you and showing you how to do everything when you were still brand new and we started training after the first six months. You wouldn’t have known how to do anything with those guns if we hadn’t trained you guys. You’d just be another one of the people praying that there are no Turned coming because it would mean your sure death.”
The two boys waited patiently for him to quit speaking. When they knew that the three of them were alone, they set down their rifles and started approaching Shaun. Shaun said, “You guys sure you want to go there? It has been a long damn day.”
The two boys nodded and Shaun set his bag down as well as the machine gun and the sniper rifle. He rolled his neck cracking some of the stiffness from having a very long afternoon. He waited with his hands up and his palms out. The bigger of the two, Mark, stepped forward, his hands were not open he had full on fists and was ready to go. When he stepped forward Shaun said, “I prefer to take out my aggressions on the Turned, but if you take a swing at me, I promise you that I'm going to put it in on you.”