T
he men
who’d knocked on the door were inside rooting around. Wren and I sat there quietly. There was a lock on the outside of the door. The owner of the house had locked it after we ducked inside. Why anyone would have placed a lock on a small room below the stairs led me to wonder who lived here before. I know it wasn’t that family. I’d seen photos on the walls of strangers. Either way it was odd. You never really knew some of the weird shit people were into when you met them out and about. People could genuinely look like nice folks then behind the curtains their lives could be screwed. All of society wore masks.
We’d seen our fair share of homes along the way from Castle Rock to the eastern shore. The number of times we had rooted around searching for food and come across weird shit in people’s homes seemed countless.
“Have you seen this guy?” a gruff voice asked. It dawned on me that they probably had a copy of my ID. ID’s were one of the first things that the community created as a means of keeping track of everyone. In an apocalypse it might seem strange that anything like that was important, but when you lived behind walls and they wanted to ensure that no one dangerous had slipped it, it was an easy way for the four officers to check. As helpful as it was, it was now being used against us to track me down.
I shouldered my assault rifle before aiming it at the door. I fully expected them to search it.
“No, I haven’t seen them.”
“Are you sure?”
We were worried that the wife, who didn’t seem keen on us being there, would say something but she didn’t. She remained quiet as the men went around. We heard one of them go upstairs and check the rooms.
“Let’s go.”
Then there was silence. For a second I thought they had left but then a shadow appeared from under the bottom of the door. The door was yanked a few times.
“Open it up.”
“I don’t have a key.”
“What’s inside?”
“I don’t know, we only moved in here a few days ago. We don’t have any belongings. I assumed it was a storage area.”
They gave it a few more tugs and I assumed they would shoot the lock off, but then we heard someone call to them from outside. A few more tense seconds and they were gone.
A door closed. More silence, then the door was unlocked. We came out from the stuffy dark room and thanked the man. Wren went to the door and peeked out from behind the curtain. We waited there until the trucks pulled away. They left in a hurry.
“Thank you again, I realize the risk you took.” I looked at the wife and kids. We didn’t hang around any longer. We pressed on, threading through the side streets that would take us to a forest close to section A.
“You still love her, don’t you?” Wren asked.
I didn’t reply but continued to trudge through the thick undergrowth. It was dark in the forest. A canopy of dense branches above us blocked out what little light was coming through.
“Well?”
“Things have changed, Wren.”
“But if you she came back to you, you would give her another chance, wouldn’t you?”
Without replying, I was giving her a response.
I’d known Jess for years. She was my first, real, steady girlfriend. The others before her had always had some issue with me, or with themselves. The longest had lasted a couple of months before she decided a sporty guy was more her thing. There were others, ones who strung me along. Played me like a fiddle. Those were the attention seekers. The kind of women that would never be satisfied with the love of one guy, they always had to have someone paying attention to them. They fed on drama and at times pulled me into theirs. They spoke behind people’s backs, thinking it was perfectly fine. Yeah, I didn’t have time for those drama queens even if they were nice girls at the start. They soon showed their true colors. The fact was I had grown up with a father who was loyal to my mother; despite all his flaws and ridiculous fascination with the army, he was the kind of man who worked through shit. My parents fought like cats and dogs before she passed away, but somehow they would always get through it and come out stronger. I snorted at the thought of it as we weaved our way through the trees.
I knew what Wren was asking. Did I still have feelings for Jess? Of course I did. That would never change. It’s not like you could just cut someone out of your life. Some things lingered even if anger ruled most of your thoughts about them. Jess and I had been through some ups and downs. It wasn’t like this was the first time. Even though she had denied it, I knew she had cheated on me back in Castle Rock. I could have thrown that up in her face the day she asked me about Danielle and me but I didn’t. The fact was, I think she had always been on the fence about me. Unsure if I was the one for her. Regardless of the apocalypse, we probably would have broken up.
Of course those who heard about my time with Danielle, might have thought I was the one being a jerk. You had someone, a few people said. But the reality was, I didn’t. Jess was never fully there. I mean, she was there but her heart was all over the place. Never satisfied. I was never enough. Certainly that didn’t justify the connection I made with Danielle but if people could have seen the complete picture they might not have rushed to judgment about me. But that’s the thing, folks were guided by their own views, moral high ground and sense of what should or shouldn’t be done, regardless of the circumstances that people found themselves in. In our case, Jess would have eventually moved on from me. The relationship would have dissolved — with or without Rowan.
As we came close to the tree line, we crouched to stay out of view. There seemed to be a lot of activity going on. Men who usually guarded the wall were no longer there. Two helicopters were nearby. Where was Fritz?
“Doesn’t look like Jess or the others are here.”
Wren looked perplexed. “Maybe they reached her.”
We waited there for five, maybe ten minutes observing the comings and goings of Fritz’s men. From the corner of my eye I could see Wren glancing at me.
“What is it?” I asked while trying to make out why there was a sudden increase in trucks.
She looked as if she was about to say something, then before she could, my eyes widened. Being dragged out of the back of a truck were Rowan, Jess and Baja.
“
G
et
your fucking hands off me, man,” I said as one of them shoved me in the back, and another dragged me forward by the rope tied tight around my wrists.
We hadn’t been back at the house more than ten minutes when the trucks rolled in. From there everything turned to chaos as Fritz’s men burst through the door with weapons aimed at us. We were thrown to the ground, our wrists were bound and then we were loaded into one of their trucks. All the while we were trying to get a clear word out of them as to what we had done. I figured Fritz had learned about Johnny being on the island and wanted to bring us in for questioning. The afternoon sun was bright as they brought us up in front of a large trailer. The door opened up and out came Fritz. He had this smug look on his face as if he had the whole world on a string.
“Well done, Steadman.”
We were tossed to the floor on our knees and told to keep our eyes downcast. Obviously I ignored the command only to feel the full force of a whack to the side of my head. My ear stung like crazy and I was sure it was bleeding.
Fritz walked back and forth in front of us, not saying anything for a short while.
“Rowan,” he pointed at him, tapping the air. “I had high hopes for you. My fault, really, I shouldn’t have trusted a member of the resistance.”
Rowan spat near Fritz’s feet and Steadman swatted him with the back of his hand. “Humanity. Crazy. One minute we are floating along down the river of ignorance and the next, scrambling to find a cure.”
“By killing people? That’s not finding a cure,” Rowan said.
“You are not seeing the full picture here. Every day you go out those gates and seek out food. There is a chance you aren’t going to come back. If you don’t, people get over it pretty quick. Take the fire for instance. Is anyone mourning the loss of the sixty-odd people who were burned alive? Or the fifteen that died the next day? No. Why? Because people understand that in this new world, one bad decision, one wrong turn can lead to death.” He paused. “You’re probably wondering what the purpose of those deaths were? Why did I ask my men to do that? Why not just sweep in and take this place the way we have now, without any casualties?”
“Because you’re an asshole?” I asked. My reply garnered another sharp hit to my face. “Next time can you hit the other side? I have a bit of an itch.”
“What do you want?” Rowan asked.
“That’s the question. What do I want? What do any of us want?” he said sweeping his arms around at his men who were looking on.
“We want the cure. That’s what we want and it’s pretty simple. We had five immunes but our track record for successful operations was kind of low. So it’s important that we find Johnny. Now I’m pretty sure he’s still around here.”
“I told you he left.”
“Ah, I know you did but that’s not what these two told me. Bring them out, Steadman.”
A door opened on a trailer and two people were shoved to the ground. It was Elijah and Ben. Both of them were covered in blood.
“You bastard,” I said hopping to my feet about to plow into him when I was knocked on my ass.
“Now I know he came back here. So where is he?”
“Fuck you,” Rowan said.
Fritz shook his head and let out a heavy sigh. “I was really hoping we could have this sorted out fast. In my old age I just don’t have the patience for this crap.”
He walked up to Steadman, removed his sidearm and in one fast sweeping motion he wheeled around and fired a bullet into Rowan’s skull. The sound of the gun going off echoed. Jess screamed and fell on top of Rowan. Blood gushed from the side of his head. With my hands bound, I looked on in complete horror. Fritz handed back the gun to Steadman and turned back to us.
“I really didn’t want it to come to this but we don’t have a lot of time and my patience is running thin. So this is how it’s going to be.”
He walked back to a trailer and returned with the megaphone that was usually used at the large meetings. He held it up to his mouth.
“Johnny. I know you can hear me. I know you are out there. Every day I am going to kill one of your friends until you hand yourself in. Do you understand? This is not personal. All I want is you. This is about the cure. The future of humanity rests in the hands of the immune. You can bring an end to this virus.” He paused as if hoping to hear Johnny respond. My eyes scanned the tree line and road looking for him. Was he out there? Did Wren see her brother get killed?
“You have until tomorrow to hand yourself in or I will kill another one.”
I cast a glance over at Ben and Elijah. Their faces were badly beaten. We had been in some tough situations before but nothing like this.
“You bastard,” Jess said getting to her feet and charging at Fritz. She didn’t make it even a foot from him when Steadman slammed the butt of his gun into the side of her head and knocked her out cold.
“You have less than twenty-four hours. Do you hear me?” Fritz yelled at the top of his voice before returning to his trailer.
“Put them in one of the trailers until tomorrow,” Steadman said.
Several men came at us and grabbed us up. Jess was carried and tossed into an empty trailer. I say it was empty but there were two chairs with rope attached to them. Below on the floor was blood and several teeth. They had put us back in where they had tortured Ben and Elijah.
As the door slammed closed I breathed out a heavy sigh. Wherever Johnny was, I hope he knew how to get us out of this.
I
held
my hand tight over her mouth.
Wren struggled beneath it as warm tears rolled over my fingers. Between trying to keep her quiet and keep us out of sight, my mind was churning over what to do. Never had the odds been stacked this high against us. The thought of any one of them being harmed in my place was too much to dwell on.
“Shh, you have to stay quiet, Wren.”
She mumbled beneath my hand.
Minutes earlier we had watched as a bullet exited Rowan’s skull. If Wren had been by herself, she would have joined her brother. I had to tackle her to the ground and force her to remain still. As much as I wanted to kill Fritz and his men, it would have been impossible to stop them.
The sight of our group on their knees made my stomach sink. We were in way over our heads. Wren was sobbing uncontrollably as we went further back into the forest.
“What are we going to do?”
She looked at me as if I held answers. I had none.
“We need help.”
“H-help?” she stammered. “From who? Everyone that we know is either without a weapon or locked up.”
“Not everyone.”
The walk back to the truck was quiet. Occasionally I would hear Wren begin to sob again. Nothing could prepare you for the loss of family, especially your brother.
“How did you do it?”
“Do what?” My eyes drifted across the tree line looking for any sign of Fritz’s men.
“Get up every day after you lost Dax.”
I stopped for a few seconds. “I didn’t have a choice. We either moved on or we would die. As hard as it is… It—”
She cut me off. “Don’t say it gets better or easier in time.”
I allowed her to vent. The pain was fresh and no amount of words would bring her comfort.
“I was going to say, it isn’t something that you get used to. I miss my brother every day. But what can I do? I can’t change what has happened.”
She met my gaze. I marched on, leaving her to contemplate it for a few seconds before she caught up. The drive back to the beach seemed longer than it was. The thought of being captured was at the forefront of my mind.
“You are just going to leave them?”
“Of course not. But you and I can’t do this alone. We need help.”
“We don’t have the time.”
“We have twenty-four hours.”
I got in the boat and extended my hand to her. She took it and stepped inside. Within minutes we were away and moving across the water. Whoever the people were that I’d met, I had to hope they would help. As I rowed across the water my mind drifted back to better days, before the infection had made its way to Castle Rock. To think that I wanted to get out of that small town seemed absurd now. It held everything that was important to me — family, familiarity and friendship.
What I would have given to go back in time and appreciate those days leading up to the virus outbreak. Everything was always so much clearer in hindsight. Why was that? Why did we have to wait until we were stripped of all we had to appreciate life and those around us?
In the face of death, all our bickering and problems seemed so trivial.
When we arrived on the other side, we began the arduous task of walking to Orient. It would take us over two hours. The thought of Jess and the others troubled my mind. Wren stayed silent the whole way. I knew she was reflecting on Rowan. No matter how much of a dick he was, he was still her brother and that meant something, if only to her and Jess. Eventually we reached the breakwater that separated East Marion from Orient. It was a road that passed across the Peconic River. Up ahead a large wall had been created out of steel. Their access point was much like ours, a structure that was held up by large steel and wooden posts and a gate that could slide open.
As we got closer a vehicle approached us. Two men were inside. They pulled up about sixty feet from where we were, got out of the truck and pointed assault rifles at us.
“That’s as far as you come.”
“We’re not here to make trouble.”
“Then what do you want?” they shouted.
“I need to speak to Rayne, or Brolin.”
They looked at each other and one of them lifted a radio to his mouth. A sharp coastal wind whipped at our clothes and the harsh reality of what lay ahead of us sunk in.
“What’s your name?”
I gave it.
A few more seconds of waiting and they waved us forward. When we reached the truck they took our weapons. I expected that. Both men were average-looking, non-military and suspicious of us. One of them zip tied us.
“Precaution. I’m sure you understand.”
I nodded.
As we drove back through the gates, four more men on the other side took over their post. We traveled through two more gates before we made it into their community. All around us the land was flat. We could see the bay either side of us. Large posts that once were used for power and phone lines had been taken down and propped up against a steel wall that sealed them in. For the most part the land was expansive, with clapboard homes dotted around. We passed by a store called the Candyman.
“Any undead still here?”
“No, we cleared it all.”
We stayed on 25 until we reached a business called the Orient by the Sea Restaurant and Marina. Unlike Paradise community it appeared as if most lived on boats.
“Does everyone have a boat?”
“No. But if push comes to shove we have a way out.”
As the truck parked, the four people I had met along the way were already waiting. All of them were sprawled out in various positions on a large yacht. Brolin motioned with his head towards us.
They cut our ties and told us we would receive our weapons on the way out.
“Thanks,” I said before hopping out. Wren took a hold of my hand and I led her over to them.
“Change your mind?” Axel said with a grin on his face. He was eating a piece of apple off the end of a knife while lying on his side. Lincoln stepped off the boat and made his way up. I could see Wren had the same expression on her face as I did when I first saw them. Brolin fell in step.
“So what brings you back?”
I cast a glance around. There were lots of people working on boats. Some were reeling in nets full of fish.
“We need your help.”
Brolin raised an eyebrow. “Doesn’t everyone.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant by that but if their community was anything like ours, they would have had their fair share of people showing up at the gate seeking shelter, food and safety. It was what drove everyone now. No one wanted to live alone. Human contact not only made you feel less alone, it kept you from losing your mind.
“You hungry?” Lincoln asked.
“What?”
Hungry? I couldn’t think of food at a time like this.
“You know, chow,” Brolin said with a smirk on his face.
“No, we don’t have time for that.”
Lincoln turned around and started walking away. Brolin joined him.
“Where are you going?”
“To eat. I don’t think well on an empty stomach. If you don’t want a plate of food, fine. But I am famished.”
Wren and I shot each other a sideways glance. I shrugged. We had twenty-four hours. Lincoln cast a glance over his shoulder. “Well? Are you coming or not? I’m guessing whatever it is you need help with isn’t urgent or you wouldn’t have come all this way.”
Urgent? Of course it was. I blew my cheeks out and followed after them.