Breadcrumbs For The Nasties (Book 1): Megan (15 page)

A few hours into the day, I spotted someone ahead of us, maybe a mile away, too far to discern any real detail. I pointed. “Look.”

Blueeyes
nodded, gaze already focused on the distant figure. “ I see it.”

“Do we need to turn around?”

He didn’t respond, didn’t look away, assessing the situation. “No. Keep your head down, keep walking.”

The person ahead of us was moving significantly slower than us. In no time at all, we closed the distance. It was a man, short, baggy pants with a camouflage print, covered in filth. This shirt was short-sleeved, very thin; he must have been freezing. He seemed to be pushing a cart, metal bars and wobbly wheels, rusted welds barely holding together. Every time it hit a crack in the pavement, the cart wobbled to the right. He struggled to get it straight again.

We were a hundred feet away when
Blueeyes
stepped in front of me and retrieved his machete, holding it at his side. “Stay behind me.”

We moved to the opposite side of the road and
Blueeyes
nudged me to the dirt. As we neared the man, I could hear him mumbling to himself, incoherent nonsense into the mass of gray facial hair devouring his face. He was old, wrinkled skin like abused leather, discolored and bruised. Whatever he was pushing in his cart was covered with a tarp, tied with rope, and knotted at the top. When we passed, he didn’t look up. If he saw us at all he didn’t let on. I noticed his hands, red, covered in blisters extending halfway up his arms. They wouldn’t stop shaking. 

His voice was as unsteady as his arms. “Assholes…all of them ruinedeverything…sonsofbitches…cocksucking bitches….stealmyshit…never stealmyshit again.” 

At the time I didn’t know what any of it meant. I’m not sure he knew, either. 

I tugged
Blueeyes'
jacket lightly. “What’s wrong with him?”

He swatted my hand. “Quiet.”

The old man never acknowledged our presence, continuing instead to babble into this chin, cursing his cart, his shoes, and at one point, the sun. I listened to him for another ten minutes, peeking over my shoulder, stealing glances. Eventually, he disappeared, sinking below the horizon, swallowed by the road.

I tugged
Blueeyes’
jacket, stiffer this time. “What was wrong with him?” 

“Nothing.”

“What about his hands, those sores?”

Blueeyes
returned his machete to its sheath and sighed. “He’s sick. We’re all sick.”

It wasn’t the answer I wanted. It was the only one he gave.

We walked until the remains of the sun began to dim. The temperature dropped, so cold I could see my breath, ice crystals in the puddles along the road. Night had arrived when we reached a more congested part of town: slightly taller buildings, abandoned cars littering the road. Everything was boarded, reinforced. Barbwire stretched along the tops of fences, wrapped over doors and looped around windows. There were words painted on anything flat, bright red and massive, none of which I recognized.
Blueeyes
noticed them, too. His body language changed.  

I pointed to one in particular, four words splattered in paint, so large they nearly covered the front of a building. “What’s that say?”

Blueeyes
retrieved his shotgun. “It says we shouldn’t be here.”

Another answer I didn’t want.

He grabbed my arm and pulled me to his hip. “Stay close. We need to move quickly.”

Suddenly, we were jogging, darting back and forth,
Blueeyes
watching the windows on either side. We moved from car to car and lowered, dropped our backs to rusted steel, taking a moment to scanning the surrounding area before moving to the next. When I stood too straight,
Blueeyes
pushed me down. When I moved too slow, he shoved me forward. Feeling like a burden, I reached for
Pointycrunch.

Blueeyes
shoved my hand away. “No. You’ll move quicker without it.”

The farther we progressed, the more
fortified
the buildings became. Huge sheets of steel covered doors, bars covered windows. There was a trench surrounding one house, fifteen feet wide and filled with sludge, jagged metal breaking the surface. Suddenly, the road stopped, blocked with debris, a wall of scavenged wire and steel, warnings scrawled in red. I didn’t need to know what any of it said to understand what it meant.

When
Blueeyes
moved, I grabbed the leg of his pants and held tight. “We should go back.”

“Can’t go back,
gimp
territory. Too many of them. Can’t be out here at night. “

Just once I needed him to tell me something I wanted to hear.

Blueeyes
took my hand and held tight. “Stay low and keep quiet.”

We crawled through a hole in the wall between a sheet of metal and an old car door. Behind the wall everything looked burnt, charred and gray, colorless. It smelled awful. There were pillars on either side of the road, one every fifteen feet, taut barbwire linking them. In the distance the sky seemed to change from gray to yellow, a hint of red. Something was glowing. I peeked over the hood of a car, staring through the black and hearing only my breath. I saw smoke and black, tiny embers popping in and out of existence, pillowed shades of black. It was fire. It was massive. My heart stopped, then suddenly sped. I didn’t bother to ask
Blueeyes
what we were looking at, didn’t have the nerve to whisper. The next time we moved, we moved slower, almost crawling. Voices emerged, distant but noticeable, distinctly human. We were barely fifty feet from the glow, crouched behind the remains of  a bus, so close we could feel the heat from the fire and hear the crackle of the flames. 

“That should be good enough to keep the
gimps
from making a move. Let’s get the kids in the for the night.” A man’s voice. “Parker and T have watch. Willie and I will douse this thing. You know the drill people, let’s get to it!“

Blueeyes
nudged me to my hands and knees, whispering. “Underneath.” 

I crawled along the pavement and under the bus, watching as feet moved away from the fire.
Blueeyes
slid beside me, shotgun at the ready. There were at least thirty pairs of legs, men and women and a little girl in a red dress. I’d never seen a dress before, not in real life. I liked it.

“There’s a little gir—” 

Blueeyes’
hand went to my mouth. 

At the center of the fire were bodies lumped into a pile four feet high and charred to crisp, stark white teeth visible in the black. Soon after the group dispersed, there was an incredibly loud noise, like an engine, a generator. A pair of legs joined the remaining two, dragging a hose behind it. A spray of water smothered the fire, continued doing so for at least a minute. When the engine died, the water stopped. Black runoff carrying bits of burnt flesh moved across the road and under the bus, splashing against my arms. It smelled sticky, sour, a pungent muck. 

Blueeyes
removed his hand from my mouth and leaned close. “Whatever happens, you stay here. Do not move until I tell you to move.”

He was going to do something. I didn’t know what, but he was going to do something. “What’re yo—”

His hand returned. “Stop asking questions. Stay here and shut up. Got it?”

I nodded. 

The next thing I knew, he was crawling past me, knees splashing, crinkled black flesh clinging to his pants, heading for the feet and the smoky remains of the fire. The moment he was in the open, he stood. Feet spun and jumped, weapons clicked, men screamed.

“Motherfucker! God damn motherfucker!”

“Put your hands in the air!”

“Drop the weapon and get ‘em, asshole!”

Blueeyes’
voice was steady. “I don’t want any trouble.” He lowered his shotgun to the watery concrete. 

More feet arrived from every direction, boots splashing. More guns clicked and shifted, anxious screams. In a matter of seconds my friend was surrounded.

“Where’d you come from?”

“How did you get in here, dipshit?”

“Answer him, motherfucker!”

They were screaming all at once, caught off guard, frenzied.
Blueeyes
remained calm. “Hole in your gate. Saw the fire.”

A single voice emerged from the chatter, more assured than the rest. Whoever he was, he was the leader. “So you just walk right in? That how you think shit works? Looks like you’ve been around long enough, buddy…you know better than that.”

Even more feet arrived, more guns clicked. When I looked behind me, I saw even more on other side of the bus, pairs at both ends. There were too many to handle, even for
Blueeyes.
I tried to steady my breathing, wrangle my emotions. To keep from screaming I mashed my palm against my mouth, left it there. 

“Just want passage. Nothing more.”
Blueeyes
again, voice unchanging.

“I’ll give you passage motherfuck—”

“Calm the fuck down, Willie!”

“Fuck you, Sam! This asshole comes trotting in here like he owns the place! I ain’t putting up with that shit!”

“You’ll put up with whatever the fuck I tell you to put up with! Now stand the fuck down!”

While they argued,
Blueeyes
remained quiet. His legs never moved, never retreated or waivered, never once backed down. Looking back on it now, I realize he was assessing the situation the entire time. He knew what he was doing, probably knew how many there were, where they were hiding. He was reading them, studying, watching how they reacted, and planning his next move. They probably thought they had the advantage, figured they could fill him full of holes and toss him in the fire with the rest of the corpses. If they’d known what he really was, they might have understood how wrong they were.

Tensions settled a bit and the leader of the group spoke up. “You alone, guy?” 

Blueeyes
took a moment to answer. “No.”

Chaos again. Legs scattered, weapons shifted. A pair of boots charged my friend, feet away, probably pressing a gun to his head. “Where are they, asshole? Where the hell are they?”

“Willie, stand the fuck down!”

“Fuck you! I’m done with this stone-faced fuck!”

“I won’t tell you again, Willie!”

Blueeyes’
finger moved, just his finger motioning behind him, pointing in my direction. Angry heads dropped into view and guns pointed in my direction. The moment they saw me, their expressions changed. 

A dark-skinned man near the front of the bus lowered his weapon, both confused and let down. “It’s a kid. It’s just a little kid.” If I’d been anyone else I would have been dead.

The mood around the fire changed drastically after that. When
Blueeyes
told me to, I crawled from under the bus and stood beside him. He immediately grabbed my hand and held tight. 

The leader of the group noticed, lowered his weapon, and ran his hand along the sweaty brown skin of his head. “If it hadn’t been for your daughter there, you’re brains would be splattered along the side of that bus…you know that, right?”

Blueeyes
didn’t correct him, just nodded.

He stepped toward us and guns began to lower. “Name’s Sam. That’s Willie, Mark, T, Alan, Parker, Denise, Jersey, Erick, and a bunch of other people that’ll put you down if you decide to get froggy.”

Blueeyes
nodded again. “I’m Bob. This is Sue.”

I almost corrected him.

Sam chuckled softly, his gaze moving from
Blueeyes
to me and back again. “Bob and Sue, huh?” He didn’t believe the names, but didn’t care enough to bring it up. “Okay, Bob and Sue it is.”

I looked past him to the smoking pile of corpses, wet and shimmering. Up close the details became clear: twisted limbs and screaming mouths, empty sockets that once held eyes, everything peeled and red, cooked. 

Sam noticed me staring. “Don’t worry, little girl; they were dead long before we torched ‘em. Believe it or not, the smell of burning
gimp
flesh keeps the live ones away. Don’t know why it works…don’t care. It keeps ‘em away and that shit’s good enough for me. Been two months since we had an attack.” He laughed. “We’re living like the old days around here.”

Blueeyes
looked concerned. “What about
howlers?
”

“None of them out this way…not this deep into town.
Hairy bastards
don’t like being closed in.”

The man I assumed was Willie moved closer; he was tall and skinny, pale skin covered in fading tattoos. He seemed annoyed, anxious, and never let go of his gun or lowered his guard. I watched his finger lightly tracing the trigger of his weapon. His eyes narrowed and locked on my friend. “You’ve got the
passage
you wanted, big man. Hit the bricks.”

A woman moved through the crowd toward the center, short hair and deep brown eyes. Walking beside her and holding her hand was the girl in the red dress. She was younger than me, not sure by how much. Her hair was dark and curly, sculpted into two puffy balls resting atop her head. I’d never seen someone so made up, so put together. She looked like she didn’t belong. She was out of place, the mountain of corpses still smoldering behind her. When I looked at her she looked away, dropped her head and stared at her feet. The pair moved to either side of Sam. The little girl wrapped her arms around his leg and buried her face into his side. 

The woman coiled her arm around Sam’s waist and looked up at him, concerned. “Sam?”

He nodded. “I know, baby.”

I thought of Father, of Mother.

I looked away as well.

Sam sighed. “Look, I can’t send you and the girl out there at night. This block is clean and the smell will keep the
gimps
away, but I can’t say the same for the rest of town. As far as I know this city is overrun. That being said, I can’t have you sleeping in my living room either; no offense.”

Blueeyes
motioned behind him. “We’ll take the bus.”

Willie stepped between us and turned to Sam, a finger in his face. “Like hell they will. Straight up, are you serious with this shit, Sam? We’re just going to let them pitch a tent on our front lawn? Am I the only one who sees a fucking problem with this?”