The Renegades (Book 5): United (9 page)

“Okay, let’s go see.”

We descended down into the musty basement that smelled like water had seeped in through cracks in the foundation. The flashlight beam swept over dusty shelving units. I kept my assault rifle on the ready, Elijah moved ahead. In the corner of the room huddled together were two small children. They couldn’t have been more than eight years of age.

As they cowered in fear, the look on their faces was disturbing.

“It’s okay, we aren’t going to hurt you.”

I placed my weapon down and held out my hands. “Come here. It’s okay.”

Then we heard the metallic noise we’d heard upstairs. It was coming from the next room over. Elijah cautiously moved towards the open doorway. As he turned the corner he unloaded his weapon twice. All of us rushed in to see what he had fired at. Attached to the wall by chains were two adults.

“What the hell?”

They had turned and were now out of their misery. Turning back to the kids Ben asked them if it was their parents. They nodded.

“We can’t take them with us,” Elijah said.

“We can’t leave them here,” I replied.

“Shit!” Elijah stammered.

“We’ll take them back,” I said.

“We can’t do that. The moment they spot us we are screwed.”

“If we leave them here, they are screwed. Now you decide what you want to do.”

Elijah leaned against the wall with his rifle down by his side. He reached into his top pocket and pulled a packet of Marlboros out. He tapped one out and lit it. Blowing out a cloud of smoke he motioned to them. “So we put them on the boat and send them over.”

“No, that water was rough enough with both of us rowing but two kids… It’s going to have to be the main gate.”

“Or we could just wait until trucks are returning and leave them in the middle of the road,” Baja suggested.

I moved towards the kids and they flinched. “It’s okay. You’re safe. What are your names?”

“Lukas and Kiera.”

I studied their faces. “Who did this?”

The boy looked at the girl.

“He doesn’t talk. He’s mute,” Kiera said. “They had pale faces. There were lots of them. Our parents told us to hide. They came in looking for food. After our parents gave them some…” she looked as if she couldn’t even bring herself to say what they did to them.

Whatever they had been through, whatever they had witnessed, it would stick with them for the rest of their lives. How long that would be, was to be seen.

W
e weren’t going anywhere
. I knew that the moment we saw those kids. We remained in that house for another hour as we tried to determine the best course of action to take. At first I figured it would just be a matter of getting them to the community. Sure, Sebastian had gone off the rails but there were others there that could help. It wasn’t like there was anywhere else they could go. The chances of them surviving by themselves weren’t good and going with us wasn’t an option.

What they told us next, changed everything.

“They have our sister.”

“There are more of you?”

The girl walked over to a side table and picked up a photo frame. She handed it to me. It spoke of better times. The parents were smiling, behind them an ocean. The two youngest were out front and a dark-haired girl off to the right.

“What’s her name?”

“Jade.”

“Didn’t she hide with you guys?”

“She did, but when they began hurting our parents she tried to reason with them.”

Why would anyone think they could reason with the insane?

“When they left they took her.”

Elijah looked at me. “Oh no, no, no. We are not getting involved. We are leaving right now. Like you said. We don’t want to place ourselves at risk any further. Remember?”

When I didn’t respond he strolled off and kicked the back door open.

“This is not a good idea, Johnny. The best we can do is get the kids into the community and then get the hell out of here,” Ben said.

“And the girl?”

“We can’t help everyone.”

I looked down at the photo frame and removed the photo.

How many others had they taken? On one hand we could leave and live. On the other, we could raise a little hell. If we died in the process, well so be it. We should have died long ago. The fact that we had got this far had to mean something.

Baja got this smirk on his face. He knew me better than anyone else. I don’t even know why it riled me up but the thought of people being taken against their will brought back a flood of memories. Apocalypse or not, no one had the right to supersede another’s will.

“So when are we going over there?” Baja said as if reading my mind.

“As soon as we have dropped these kids off.”

* * *

I
t was still
early morning when we rolled out. The idea was pretty simple, we would get them as close as we could to Sunrise Highway and the first access point. Before leaving I had written a small note to Wren and given it to Kiera.

“Whatever you do, don’t let anyone else see this.”

I gave her the address of where Wren would be and then we left. The journey took us another two hours to reach the highway by foot. It didn’t help that we encountered a fair number of Z’s along the way. I was starting to think that we had wiped them all out. But that couldn’t be done. They were everywhere, whether that was in homes, below the ground or navigating their way through the forest.

With a machete in hand, I hacked the head off some old guy who looked as if he had worked as a mechanic in his previous life. His head rolled across the ground leaving a trail of blood behind.

“I still think this is a big mistake. I’m all for helping people but we don’t know this girl. Does it really make sense to risk our lives for someone who may just die later from a bite? Heck, her sister could be dead for all we know.”

I stopped in the middle of the road and twisted around to Elijah. “Does any of this make sense? You know, I have been asking myself that from the day we left our small town. What is the purpose of existence if the world we knew no longer exists? What’s the purpose of helping anyone?”

He rolled his eyes and continued walking. I fell in step.

“Believe me, Elijah, I’m tired of helping others only to have shit thrown back at us but I will be dammed if I am going to die without having helped somebody.”

“You have, Johnny. We all have. We don’t need to help everybody.”

“I hear you. I really do. The odds are stacked against us. No doubt there. But what would have Izzy done? Do you think she would have walked away?”

“We’ll never know,” he replied.

“That’s right, we won’t.” I paused. “Maybe we should put this to a vote.”

“At least then we can all have a say.”

“Really? We had our say back in the community and look where that got us.”

“There’s too many of them, Johnny. You would need an army of people to go up against them.”

“I’m not thinking about killing them. That’s insane. I’m talking about going into the city, observing them, finding out where the girl is and then seeing if we can get her out.”

Elijah chuckled as we continued walking the deserted road cluttered with charred vehicles. “Okay, smart-ass. So we go in there and get her out. Let’s say two of us get killed in the process. Now what? What good have we done? In our attempts to save one life we have lost two. This isn’t rocket science. It’s common sense. Salt Lake City, that made sense. It wasn’t just about saving one life. It was all about getting the cure.” He let out a laugh. “And look at where that has got us. No further ahead. But let’s continue on. The Fortress. That made sense, there were a lot of people and far fewer that we were going up against. Hell, even the Hive, which was completely crazy, made sense but this… no, I’m sorry, Johnny, but I’m not down with this one. We drop the kids off and then we are on our way. If you want to go in, that’s on you. I’m not going.”

“He’s right, Johnny. I’m not doing it either,” Ben said.

“Well, I guess then it’s just you and I,” Baja said spinning two Glocks around his fingers as though he was John Wayne.

I shook my head. “I hear you. Maybe it is time we hung up our guns and avoided danger for once instead of running into it.”

Baja slapped me on the chest bringing me to a halt. “Hold on a minute. You said you were in. What? So now you’re not going to do it?”

I shifted from one foot to the next before spotting a Z twenty yards away feeding on the remains of a human like a buzzard. I lifted my assault rifle and shot it in the head.

“I don’t know, Baja. I’m back and forth on it.”

“This isn’t about a stranger who has been taken. It’s about justice for fifteen who were burned in front of us. Or have you all forgot? Izzy was one of them,” Baja bellowed.

Elijah walked up to Baja and pressed his finger into his chest pushing him back. “Listen up, dickhead. If you want to go up against those assholes, be my guest but don’t drag our ass into it. Johnny was thinking clearly until you fogged up his head with your demented idea to once again play the all-American hero. Well, fuck your heroics. You want to go do it, go ahead but you are not bringing us down with you.” He kept pressing Baja backwards with his finger; I could see Baja starting to clench his hand.

“Elijah,” Ben tried to get him to rein it in but he wasn’t listening to him. He continued to push up against him and bring up all manner of things that annoyed and frustrated him about Baja.

“Just let it go,” I said moving on hoping that he would stop but he didn’t.

The next thing I heard was Elijah shout, “Oh, you want a piece of me.”

Instantly he was on his ass, and Baja was on top. He got a few more jabs in before Ben and I dragged them away from each other. The two kids looked on as if we were all demented. They weren’t wrong.

The rest of the journey was quiet. Baja on one side of the road, Elijah on the other. Both of them pouting like little kids. We came down Riverhead-Hampton Bays Road which crossed underneath Sunrise Highway.

“I say we cut them loose here and let them walk the rest of the way.”

“You would. You coward,” Baja replied.

“I will fuck you up,” Elijah yelled, trying once again to get over to Baja and give him an ass whopping.

“Will you two give it a rest, for god’s sake?”

As we got closer to the turnpike, we heard the rumble of vehicles approaching. All of us crouched down and sought cover within the many trees that lined the side of the road. One jeep passed, another and then another. It was the pale ones, heading towards the community.

“What the heck? Are they going to attack?”

None of us knew what to make of it.

“Now it’s not about one girl. How does the whole community being in danger sound to you? You still want to walk away?” Baja said to Elijah.

“It’s their problem now.”

Baja snorted. “Yeah, just as I thought.”

Once again we found ourselves pushing them back to prevent them from getting at each other.

“Look at you two. You think this is going to help?”

“Why the hell did you even leave Salt Lake? You have been nothing but a pain in the ass,” Baja muttered.

“The only reason I came along with you idiots is because I thought that maybe, just maybe it would lead to finding the cure and sorting this shit out.”

“Bullshit. You had nothing left for you back in the city.”

I was about to take my socks off and jam them down both of their throats. Lying down in the undergrowth, we watched as another sixteen jeeps passed us.

“What do you want to do?” I asked the others.

“I still think we send them in. No one is going to bat an eye to two kids,” Elijah said.

“We aren’t sending anyone in there until we have figured out what is going on.”

“This is unbelievable. A few hours ago we were free and now we are heading back in?”

“Wren, Jess and Rowan are in there,” I said.

“No, I’m sorry, I’m not doing this anymore. You guys can go by yourself.” Elijah jumped up from his position and began to walk away.

Ben looked as if he was caught in the middle. Unsure of what was best to do. “Elijah.” He jumped up and rushed over to him. “Hold on, man, this is more than just an act of revenge.”

“I don’t care anymore what it is. I’m not winding up dead trying to save people who don’t give a shit about each other anyway.”

“What are you on about?”

“Look at us. We just spent a year inside those walls separate from each other. You went about your own business, everyone did.”

“You never complained.”

“Why would I?”

“I dunno, maybe because I’ve known you since you were a kid.”

“Ben, you don’t get it, do you? We keep risking our lives for people we don’t know and the ones that we do, well, they just turn away the first chance they get. Everyone leaves. Everyone.”

I could tell there was more to this.

“You’re on about your father, aren’t you?” Ben asked.

Elijah pulled out a cigarette and lit it.

“You told me to see him the day he died but I didn’t, and you know why?”

“Because you hated him?”

“No, I loved that man. All I ever wanted was to make that guy proud and everything I did disappointed him.”

I was glad to see I wasn’t the only one with father issues. All of us had such diverse backgrounds. And yet we all had one thing in common. Troubled upbringings. We were all as messed up as each other.

“He was proud of you, Elijah. Believe me. I know that,” Ben said.

Elijah blew out some smoke. “But that’s it, Ben. You knew it. I didn’t.”

“He found it difficult to tell you.”

“But it wasn’t hard to tell you,” Elijah replied.

Baja groaned, rolled his eyes and buried his head in his hands. “How much longer are we going to have to endure his whining? Your father was a dick. We get it. Get over it,” Baja said.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. But one thing was sure. We were falling apart at the seams. On the surface for so long we had held it together. On the road it was only ever us. Our group relied on each other. We didn’t have time for meltdowns. But safety had given each of us time to reflect.

“No, I’m done.” With that Elijah turned and walked away.

“Where are you going to go?” Ben shouted.

“I don’t know but not here.”

Ben looked back at us. It was clear he was conflicted, pulled between two hard spots.

He shrugged. “I have to go with him.”

Baja military saluted him like he didn’t care. “Whatever, buddy.”

The tension between us was thick. Rowan, Jess and Wren had gone one way, Baja wanted to go another, Ben and Elijah had their own reasons. I sat there, a little back from the tree line, and ran a hand over my tired face. Baja was stupid enough that he would have gone in alone and probably got shot the moment they saw him. I understood where Ben and Elijah were coming from, I felt the same but here we were with two young lives in our hands, and no idea of what Sebastian or Steadman were up to. No matter what decision we made, it was liable to be the wrong one in someone’s eyes.

We had been cornered into some tight spots in the past but nothing we couldn’t figure our way out of because there were more than a few of us to decide. Now that wasn’t the case. I thought about what Ethan had said a few months into our stay when I had doubts about what was being built.

“United we stand, divided we fall.”

He believed that together we could rebuild and grow but if everyone took offense at decisions made eventually we would come apart at the seams. He was right. In many ways that’s what was happening. If we returned to the community, we stood the chance of being detained and punished for whatever they thought was a just reason. If we walked away, I would always wonder if Wren and Jess were suffering.