A Dark Evolution (Book 2): Deranged (13 page)

The boy took her hand softly and smiled.

Kala stood and walked away. Exhaustion was finally crashing in on her. After the long drive, she had already felt like the living dead. Now the adrenaline rush that had pounded through her was waning and her body threatened to fall over. She locked the office door behind her when she went in and let out a long breath.

“Are you sure that was a good idea?” Dylan asked as soon as she came in. His eyes were a little angry, but moreover, she saw concern in them. He was worried for them, for his sister. Kala only repeated what she said earlier.

“It’s going to be okay, Dylan. I’ve got a good feeling about them, and that’s saying something.”

Dylan still looked frustrated, but then Sophie was bouncing up beside them again, searching her brother’s face for what might be bothering him. He smiled at her and handed Kala the shotgun, then picked her up. “Let’s go find a soft spot to sleep, huh, Sophie?”

“Can I join you two tonight?” Kala asked. Sophie nodded vehemently. That night they curled up on the short carpet in the breakroom, Sophie curled up against Dylan, and Kala laying on her other side, curled up against the little girl. It felt almost like home. What a strange thought, since this is as far from home as possible. Still, the warmth of the three of them and Sophie's little body reminded her of the family she lost.

*****

“Come on, hand me the corner, Lukie,” Kala said. She was on her hands and knees in the living room, covered by a thick fuzzy blanket.

“I’m trying, it’s hard!” Lukie struggled to haul the corner of the blanket across the shaggy carpet; friction made it difficult to move.

“I’m suffocating in here Lukie, hurry!”

“You are not suffocating!” he huffed in response. Kala chuckled and a moment later Lukie tripped over the blanket and tumbled over her back. She flattened to the floor with an
oof
, with Lukie and the blankets tangled on top of her.

“That didn’t go like we planned, huh?” Kala said.

Lukie giggled and rolled off her, disentangling himself from the blankets.

“Here you go. Here’s your end,” he said, out of breath, handing her one corner of the fuzzy, tiger-print blanket. Kala snatched the end from him and knocked him over, back into the pile. He kept giggling, his high boyish voice cracking through the space. It made her smile. The perpetual child, her brother.
Luke had symptoms of Asperger Syndrome that had been present since his infancy. This caused his brain to function differently than most people, and socializing was especially challenging, but Kala could not imagine a more perfect brother.
He was exceedingly kind, and terribly bright.

Kala hauled the corner of the blanket over to the gas fireplace in the wall.

“Hey, help me with the doors, will ya? I always pinch my fingers,” she said.

“That’s because you don’t do it right,” Lukie answered, and crawled over to the fireplace, pulling open the folding glass doors. “Shove it in there!”

Kala stretched the blanket over into the fireplace. “Now Lukie! Engage the locking mechanisms!” she told him excitedly.

“Yes, ma’am!” Lukie cried happily, and slammed the fireplace door shut, pinning the corner of the blanket inside.

“We’ve done it!” Kala declared delightedly, more from the joyous expression on Lukie’s face than anything else.

“Yes!” Lukie exclaimed, looking out over their kingdom. “Now we prepare for battle!” Kala laughed and grabbed his hand, then dragged him down under the blanket, where they army-crawled under the fort of fabric to the other side of the living room. They had stretched their three couch blankets across the room, attaching them to lamps, the fireplace, and stuffed into the crease on their father’s recliner. Now they had a proper fort to do battle in. As Kala reached the far side of the tent and daylight entered from the other side, Lukie wriggled on ahead of her, his bare feet wiggling against the carpet.

Kala followed him out, to where their soldiers awaited in neat, long rows outside the blanket fort. Lukie started gathering up the figurines, preparing to set them up inside the blanket tent.

“So who do you want to be this time, the storm troopers?” Kala asked, mirth in her tone.

Lukie huffed, “Of course not, Kala! You’re always the storm troopers! You know I’m the Jedi!”

“Are you sure? I’ve got you outnumbered at least twenty to one, you won’t stand a chance.”

“Ten to one, and it doesn’t matter, you can’t defeat the Jedi!” He gave her an incredulous look as he started to shuffle back to her with his soldiers.

“But why?”

“Because I’m the hero!” he answered indignantly.

Kala smiled as he made his way back into the fort. He would set up on the far side, hoping to ambush her imperial troops as they advanced. It didn’t matter how badly outnumbered or injured his Jedi became, they would fight for him, fiercely and loyally. And he would win, of course, because he was the hero.

*****

“Thank god for water towers,” Kala mumbled to herself. She held the mop bucket under the faucet in the utility room, filling it with cool, clean water. The mop bucket wasn’t pristine, but for her purposes, it would have to do. She located a roll of paper towel, and then rolled the bucket out to the garage, with Sophie and Dylan by her side. Kala wore a pistol in her waistband and Dylan had a large knife at his hip. Otherwise, they were unarmed. They were trying to show a front of friendliness this morning.

The garage was quiet when they entered, with shards of light creeping in from around the bay doors and from the small block windows near the ceiling. As soon as they came in, a small voice shouted inside the bus and Devon came barreling out toward them. His mother was close behind, shouting for him to wait. Devon paid her no mind, however, and shot like an arrow toward Sophie.

“Wanna play Sophie, wanna play?” he asked excitedly. Sophie jumped in place and proceeded to race around the car with him. Dylan shook his head at her, but Kala squeezed his hand gently.

“It is good that she can have a little fun, right?” she asked him quietly. Kala had woken in an exceptionally good mood this morning, cuddled up with her newfound family.

“You’re right,” he said, and helped Kala push the bucket toward the bus.

Devon’s mom eyed them curiously.

“Good morning,” Dylan said.

“Good morning,” she responded, but the bags under her eyes told a different story.

Kala presented her with the mop bucket and paper towels. “I thought it might be a good morning for a bath,” Kala said with a smile. The woman’s eyes widened, and she unconsciously ran a hand through her matted hair.

“Oh, that would be great,” she said, still sounding hoarse. “We haven’t been able to wash since we’ve been here.”

The woman held out a hand to Kala. “I’m Andrea,” she said. “I’m sorry about yesterday. With everything that’s happened, we’ve just been on the defensive this whole time.”

“I understand,” Kala said, remembering their encounter only yesterday with Mitch and Terry, the two militia men who had tried to kidnap them. “I’m Kala, this is Dylan, and you’ve already met Sophie, Dylan’s sister. Are you from around here, Andrea?”

“Panama City Beach, about forty minutes away on the Gulf,” she answered. “We left to try to find some place safer.” The woman looked down. “But there is no place safer.”

Kala’s heart sank a little, she had hoped that here in the north of Florida, the infection wouldn’t be as bad.

“Well, let’s wash up, okay? Then I want to chat with you about what’s going on.”

Dylan produced a bar of scratchy green soap he’d found and began to lather it up using the water.

The woman nodded. “How old are you Kala?”

“I’m sixteen.”

“Jesus,” Andrea said, “your parents?”

“Gone.”

“I’m so sorry,” Andrea said, and Kala could see there was real sympathy in her eyes.

“Well, there’s a lot of that going on now. All I can do is move on, try to find somewhere better, and safer. You agree?”

Andrea agreed, “We just want to find a place our son can be safe,” she said as Sophie and Dylan made another pass around the bus. Andrea’s husband came walking out of the side of the bus. He walked with a slight limp, she noticed, and looked like he had a mean kink in his back.

“Morning Tom,” Andrea called over. Tom narrowly avoided being run over by the two children at play. “Back acting up again?”

“Isn’t it always?” he grumbled. Then he saw Dylan using the paper towels and water in the mop bucket to clean off his face and arms. “Oh, that’s perfect,” Tom said. “I was starting to smell like the ass end of a northbound cow!”

Kala laughed and Andrea shook her head. “That’s my man. Quite the romantic, isn’t he?”

“My mom always used to say that about my dad, too,” Kala added with a grin. She sighed and knelt down next to Dylan, trying hard to scrub her body, and her thoughts, clean.

*****

Tom gagged on the floor of the garage. His eyes were watering and his stomach heaved with the effort. It wasn’t wasted though, the hose drained rich, pungent diesel from the large drum next to the wall into one of the four gasoline cans they had procured. Kala said a silent thanks that her mother had insisted on a diesel station wagon. At the time, diesel had been cheaper and cleaner running than gas. At least that's what the commercials told them.

As soon as one can was full, Dylan hauled it to the station wagon and dumped it into the tank. It took three full cans to fill the tank, and the barrel kept on giving.
It's a freaking gold mine,
Kala thought,
thank god no one got here before us.
They filled all four cans to the brim even after the car was full. It would be cramped, what with the six of them in there, but for now at least, there was safety in numbers.

Andrea had no experience with guns, and Tom’s was very limited. The gun they had, before Kala shot it to bits, they had looted from a neighbor's home after a wave of infected had come through and killed them. Kala was fascinated by their story of escape from their hometown of Panama City Beach, an oceanfront city packed with people. According to Andrea and Tom, the infection caught hold in the college students that traveled up from down south, then exploded through the population. What was interesting though, was that after a day or so of mindless rampaging, the infected started grouping together, swarming through the streets in great packs of twenty to thirty.

The life expectancy of these zombies wasn’t long, so as the groups moved on, they would leave trails of dead zombies when their hearts finally gave out, but the more infected that were out in the streets, the more insects bit them and picked up the parasite, then spread it on to those who were not yet infected. As best as Kala could figure, the infected might live for one to three days once the parasite infiltrated their brains, which was a far cry from the scientists’ initial findings of twenty-four hours. The infected were able to cause mass amounts of mayhem in the days they had left to live. The only positive to such a hot, fierce infection was that the likelihood of it burning out was high. But that wasn’t happening yet, at least not here. Florida was the world's largest breeding ground for mosquitoes, so Kala could imagine families that had been hiding in their homes from the infected, finally emerging a week later only to be bitten by another infected mosquito. And then there goes the neighborhood...again. It was a damned tough situation to be in.

“We’re set,” Dylan said, walking up to Kala, who was staring blankly at a wall, searching her thoughts.

“Are you all right Kala?” he asked.

She turned to him and took in his nervous eyes and the way his hands seemed to fidget. He looked worried. Kala knew he didn’t trust these people they were picking up. She understood his thinking - people were dangerous, and the living, breathing, thinking kind were far more dangerous than the infected. Anarchy had been declared by the remaining Florida residents it seemed, and that was a scary thing to think about. Kala didn’t know what would happen if they ran into a group of organized militants that wanted to do them harm. She shook her head. That was too much to think about right now.

“I guess I’m as okay as you are, Dylan.”

He stared at her for a few more seconds. “I’m worried about the littles.”

“The little kids? Well, obviously, we’ve got to keep their safety as a top priority.”

“No,” he said, “that’s not what I mean.” Dylan glanced over to where Sofia and Devon were climbing into the car. “I’m worried these little kids are a liability.”

“Well, of course they are Dylan, but there’s nothing we can do about that.” Kala gave him a cold, stern look, “And we certainly can’t leave them behind, can we?”

“No, I know that, it’s just - what are we going to do if we get in an actual firefight? I know you can shoot, but well, I just don’t know.”

Kala put a hand on his shoulder. His young muscles were hard and twitchy. She had to remember that he was only fifteen, still a boy, and one who had seen terrible things.

“Listen Dylan. We’re going to take care of these people, we’re all going to take care of each other. Is shit going to get sticky? Well yes, probably.”