Chapter 15
The Others
The men sat patiently in the woods waiting for the radio call to come through. Jr looked to Cade and said, “Hey, Cade, how long are we going to fucking wait? We’ve been sitting here for hours.”
Cade lifted the hat from his eyes. He wanted to make sure that Jr knew that he was interrupting the short stint of slumber he was allowing himself. “The fact that we’ve been out here all night Jr is because of me not because of her. Now, I know that your little mind can’t grasp this but I want you to think real fucking hard about what I'm saying right now, okay?”
Jr nodded slowly and Cade continued making his point. “The idea of driving a shit ton of ATV’s and SUV’s through the countryside in the middle of the morning is pretty much like just painting asshole on the side of your truck. Are you calling me an asshole, Jr?”
Jr shook his head no almost hard enough to give himself whiplash. He said, “Hell no, I wouldn’t do that to you, Cade. Do you think that I have a death wish?”
Cade shrugged, “I don’t really give a shit what you think Jr, just so long as you don’t go out of your way to do anything stupid. You and I have an understanding?”
Jr nodded slowly, “You know I think that I'm going to go do one more round of duty out here and make sure all is well before the shit hits the fan.”
Cade stretched realizing he would not be going back to sleep after the interruption. The radio began to chatter before he had time to think about it. It was Bella, he smiled knowing that she had made one of the largest sacrifices and taken the biggest chance of probably anyone including himself in the group. He whistled and the men gathered around.
He did hand signals telling them to head to the fence. They left the ATV’s near Cade’s truck and headed in the direction of the fence. Cade heard gunfire just a minute later and his heart went up in his throat. He yelled over his walkie-talkie, “What the hell is happening, what happened?”
One of the men came back but choked on the answer. Another stepped in his place to speak. “I got bad news, Cade.”
“What, what happened?”
“You better get up here and see for yourself.”
“The man had not even finished saying that when Cade sprinted through the woods. He made it there seconds before Joey was out of sight with Patrick in tow. The man at the fence cut the last of the links no longer keeping the facility safe from intruders. When Cade made it up to the fence a few of the men had their hats off and were staring at the ground. When he saw Bella in a crumpled pile on the ground his heart sank. He said, “What, what happened, who did this to her?”
The men all shrugged and said, “We don’t know, sir, by the time we got up to the fencing they were already gone. She was like this when we got here. I don’t know what it was, Cade.”
Cade walked through ignoring the sounds of the grenade launcher in the distance. Cade walked to his daughter kneeling down scared to try and lift her with the damaged skull. The thought that a piece of her collapsed head could very well fall off, was the worst thing he’d ever had to consider in his life. He felt for her pulse and didn’t have any questions after that. He walked past the men that were trying to hide from the damaging grenades coming in and said, “I don’t want you to keep anyone. I want every bullet you have fired and everyone dead. You leave no one, no prisoners and no witnesses to what we did, the young, the old, and everything in between. If anyone has any questions let me know, I’ll happily help you spend a few of your bullets.”
Jr started to run off but Cade gripped his shoulder. He said, “Jr, you come with me. We’re taking Bella back home. She deserves a burial.”
Jr wished that he could have grabbed the words back as they slipped off of his tongue. “Sir, we got more important shit to do then throwing dirt over your damn daughter.”
Cade did it without thinking or regret. The damage that could be permanent to Jr was of no concern to him at the moment. He made sure that he had Bella supported in his left hand and sent a blinding speed punch into Jr’s throat hitting it just hard enough but not enough to break his windpipe. He went cross eyed and his hands immediately wrapped around his throat tightly. He tried to say something and Cade pulled his pistol with his right hand. He said, “Do you want to live to see another day Jr or did you want today to be your last?”
Jr quickly shook his head no still coughing and trying to speak but failing miserably. Cade motioned for him to follow and the two men with Bella situated themselves in the rear of the truck. Jr collapsed into the back of it trying to do his best to not touch Bella. Cade had her in his arms unconcerned about the blood loss from her head and his clothes. Tears were slowly coming from him but not a sound. As they got near the outer edge of the woods the dead were there. The driver, Travis, yelled through the window. “Hey, Cade, if we don’t give them something to chew on they’re going to pick us. This rumbling old truck ain’t doing anything to help me out here neither.”
Cade looked down at his daughter. Jr said, “It would have been how she wanted things, Cade. You are doing the right thing. Here, why don’t you let me lift her over the side of the truck.”
Cade nodded and when Jr bent down to pick up her feet a knee was coming up out of nowhere. Unfortunately, there was a lot of rage in Cade and it needed to leave his body. His knee caught Jr square in the face snapping his head up and when he went to say something the blade of Cade’s knife was already coming across towards his neck. Jr tried to block the blade but it did little good and sliced through both hands. When he held them to his chest trying to help slow his bleeding Cade brought it back over the same way slicing through all the layers as deep as he could in Jr’s neck. He gripped at it with his blood filled hands and Cade stabbed him ten times in the stomach before finally kicking a confused and dying Jr. over the side of the truck. The dead that had been running for the truck smelled the blood in the air and ran for Jr. who was bleeding out on the ground.
Owen looked in his rearview mirror at Jr. on the ground and said, “Looks like we won’t have Jr. around anymore boss.”
Cade had knelt back down and was kissing Bella on the forehead. He said, “Until you are in the ground, honey, we aren’t going to separate. I'm so sorry, baby, I never thought in a million years something like this was going to happen to you. I never would have had you go into that rats nest if I’d have known this was going to be the fucking outcome. I swear to God that if I have anything to say about it that every last one of those bastards are going to die and do so by my hand.”
Owen slowed when he pulled up to the road. There had to have been fifty of the dead making their way towards the fence line. Cade tried to smile but the emotion just wasn’t in him. All that he could think about was his daughter’s skull and it being crushed in. They drove until the dead were everywhere, speeding back towards their base. They hit the radio when they were close and Owen said, “We got some trailers coming behind us and I want you boys getting that cleaned up and doing so now! I got the boss with me and if I were you guys I would refrain from saying anything whatsoever about anything.”
A voice, Jep, came back, “Can you be more specific?”
Owen tried to think of a way to say it and shut the window to the tailgate. He said, “Yeah, Jep, I can explain things to you. When the boss comes back, if I were you I wouldn’t talk to him. Bella went in a few months ago and didn’t come back out of this. We left before Cade could have a breakdown and we lost him.”
“Oh shit, I’m okay not talking to him then. How close are you guys?”
“Half a mile away. A shit ton of them went into the base. I don’t know if we’re going to see anyone coming back that we left behind though.”
“You guys just left people there?”
“To fight and to kill those bastards. They have more shit than they know what to do with there, though, fucking grenade launchers, and machine guns, and God knows what else. That was just one guy. We’ll be going back I’m sure of it. There’s no way he isn’t going to seek retribution on them.”
Jep said, “Whatever, just get your asses back here if you got dead on the trail, that ain’t no joking matter. We’ll do everything we can and get all men on the gate. Give us a minute and take a detour if you can. But we’ll be ready for you. We still got plenty of men left here.”
“Whatever, just get your asses moving. I’m going to take the long way, if things go worse because of it then God help you.”
He looked to the man in the passenger seat and said, “We need to get someone back there who can keep those things from getting any closer than they are.
Travis said, “And that gets to be me, I guess?”
“Well, considering the fact that I’m currently driving, Cade is in his own personal hell right now and there’s no one else in here then, yeah, I’d think that probably leaves you. Take two of the rifles with you and get your skinny ass back there. The sooner, the better.”
“There ain’t no chance I’m going to be able to hit those things in the head from a moving truck with a rifle.”
Owen slapped him in the chest and said, “If you don’t do something then we aren’t going to have to worry about tomorrow. You don’t know anything do you? Those things don’t die unless you shoot them in the head, agreed, but there’s nothing saying that you can’t take them down temporarily while they get a shot to the spine, or knee, but if you just hit them in the stomach or arm they’re going to come at you even more pissed off than you think that they ever could be.”
“No shit, Christ, you know how many times we’ve had them things coming after me and I wasted all those bullets trying to hit them in the head.”
Owen looked over at him baffled. He said, “I can’t tell you how interesting that is to hear. Are you like someone's nephew or a brother?”
“How’s that?”
“I just think someone as ignorant as you has to have done someone a serious favor, or been related to someone for you to get the go ahead to stay here.”
“Yeah, I was with my Uncle Jake when the shit hit the fan. He got a call from Cade on his radio and grabbed every damn gun he’d had and left town for a few days with them. Once the initial panic stopped and people tried to bunker down that was when we came back into town and took over that community we’re staying at.”
“Well, that is really interesting, Travis. Now you can get in the back, or I can toss you out the door but I need something and I don’t care what it is right now to keep those things from catching up. We got some curvy ass roads coming up and I’m not going to be able to do fifty miles an hour. That being said, which option would you like?”
Travis looked at the little white lines passing and thought of the road rash from the ground he’d get at forty miles per hour and held up his hands. He rolled down the window climbing up on the edge of the doors window and put two rifles over his shoulder. Owen said, “Shake a leg, kid, those fuckers are gaining.”
Travis wanted to ask why Cade couldn’t help but when he looked down at the man clutching onto his daughter like his life would end if he let go he decided to not say anything. He pushed up slowly, climbing up onto the truck’s roof while making sure to avoid Cade and Bella when he stepped down. The words of condolences ran through his head and then he thought of Jr. and seeing him being sliced into pieces with his knife.
Travis fell forward as a bump hit the truck almost flipping over the edge. He caught himself on the tailgate and collapsed in a heap near its edge. When he saw that Cade was in a world of his own he decided quiet was as good as anything. He put the rifle on the tailgate using his left arm to rest it on. When the first of the dead was in his sights he took the first shot he could. The shotgun blew through the leg and bone of the first in the long line of the dead. Its leg went out from beneath it and it skidded to a bloody stop tripping up the first few running behind it. When he thought they were safe the others seemed to run faster, infuriated that others had fallen. He pumped off every round he could, tearing through flesh and bones and they got the much needed time for Owen to swerve in and out of the curves.
Within a few minutes Owen had gone on the detour route and the men back at home had the time to collect themselves and arm the front of the building. Once Owen was on the main drag he floored it and did not slow down until he was within the compound itself. He skidded to a stop and a distinct thud came from Cade and Travis in the back. He was so relieved that they’d survived that he didn’t put together the fact that he had just sent his boss into the back of the truck when he was not in a safe place mentally.
Owen could not have gotten out of the truck faster. He sped to the back of it jumping on the tire and into the bed. He saw Bella crumpled against the truck bed and where it met the truck’s cab. He felt his manhood rise up into his throat. When Cade looked up at him he already knew that he was a dead man. Owen, who felt he had been fighting every day since the beginning of the outbreak, wasn’t going to just die because the man in charge was pissed. He pulled up his shirt exposing a forty five and pulled it as quickly as he could. Cade stepped forward knife out and gripped tightly looking like a deranged man and one that knew how to use it.
Owen leveled his gun but it was too late. Cade was already bringing his knife up. He gripped his gun hand with his left and brought his knife into his wrist bottom to top. Owen screamed immediately trying to clutch at his wrist and free the knife. Cade lifted his arm up still holding the knife and twisting it with Owen screaming until it was pointed at the man’s own face. The other men were watching in awe unsure what they should do.