Glory (Book 5) (19 page)

Chapter 11

Once they had gathered all of their things, they met back in the middle of the library.

Adam pointed at Robert's wagon. The little boy was standing beside it with Emily. "I don't think we should take that," he said.

"Why not?" Charles asked. "How else are we going to bring the children?"

"We'll carry them if they get tired," Adam replied.

"Carry them?" Charles knew that he wasn't going to be able to do anything of the sort.

"It's…well…" Adam took a moment to gather his thoughts. So close on the heels of the fight, it wasn't as easy as he had hoped. "I don't think we should take the road."

No one understood what he meant by that
.
They had always taken the road.

"I think we should go out through the forest out back," he explained. "We know that these men came from down the road, and we have no idea if the
y
al
l
came or if there are some more men still at their camp. I don't want to risk running into them. I also don't want to head back the other way because that's the pretty much the same direction we all came from."

"But the forest?" Claire asked. "Why would we do that?"

"The road on the other side of it," Adam said. "We could get to it and continue our journey from there. I think it'd be safer for us to tak
e
tha
t
route than anything else."

"Me too," Scooter said, axe over his shoulder. His gun was in his backpack.

Adam was thankful for the support. "Is everyone okay with that?" he asked.

They were.

"But we have to leave her a note," Robert declared. "Just like we did for my parents."

Adam turned to the little boy. "A note? For who?"

"For Jane. She's not going to know where we've gone if she comes back. We have to tell her."

Charles explained to Adam about the note they had written at Robert's house for the little boy's parents.

"But we can't do that," Adam said, trying his best to keep his voice empathetic.

"Why not?" Robert asked.

"Because if any of those men are still out there, they'll know where we've gone. They'll follow."

“But...” Robert thought about this for a moment, then accepted it. "We can keep looking for her, right? You said we're going to go out through the forest. That's where she went. She's still out there. I know it."

Adam wasn't as hopeful as the little boy, but they could find Jane. It was possible.

"And what about Alice?" Julie asked next. "What are we going to do with her body? We can't just leave her here."

Adam looked over at where the old woman was sprawled across the floor. Someone had covered her with one of their blankets. Her blood had easily soaked through it.

"We have to leave her," he said.

"We can't leave her," Julie argued. "We have to bury her."

Adam didn't have any intention of burying Alice
.
That would mean that they'd have to find a shovel. Then they'd have to dig a hole large enough to put her in
.
"We don't have time," he said, straining a little to keep the softness in his voice..

"Why not? The men are dead. The creatures too."

"But, like I told Robert, we don't know if there are any other men coming here. We also don't know if any other creatures heard the shots. They probably did. They could be on their way right now. We don't have time to wait."

That frightened Julie. Even Emily whimpered when she heard his words.

Scooter took a step toward her and placed his hand on her shoulder. "I don't want to leave her like this, either," he said. "But Adam's right. And I don't think Alice would want us to do anything that might put us in danger."

Julie slowly nodded.

Without any more discussion, Adam led them all to the library door and stepped into the hallway. He looked up and down the hall, confident that no one was out there, but wanting to be cautious.

Then they exited the school.

The sun was bright overhead and Adam had to squint his eyes to get them to adjust.

"We should have lots of time to find a place to spend the night before it gets dark," he said. "We'll definitely get to the cars on the road out back. We can figure out what to do once we get there."

They started walking, side by side, across the school grounds to the top of the ditch.

When they got there, Adam turned around to look at the school. Besides a few broken windows, it was hard to see that anything bad had happened inside.

It looked normal.

"Come on," Claire said, pulling at his hand.

He turned and looked toward the forest.

Their next step.

Chapter 12

As they walked down the embankment, Adam had to stop himself from looking over at the dead bodies piled up at the bottom of it. He didn't want to see those types of things. Not now. Maybe not ever. He had seen too much already.

They all ha
d
.

He stopped before going into the forest and took a deep breath. "This is it," he said.

"This is it," everyone repeated.

He took another deep breath and led them forward.

Chapter 13

Adam had been too busy thinking about all that had happened to notice that Claire was still holding his hand. It was only when she pulled at him did he remember.

"Are you all right?" she asked, concern in her eyes.

"No," he replied.

"What's wrong?"

"I can't stop thinking."

"About what?"

"About everything. What happened. All of the people we killed. What we're going to do next."

Claire's grip tightened around his hand. "We didn't have a choice," she said.

He wasn't sure about that. "We could have just left," he said. "While the men were fighting with thos
e
thing
s
. Why didn't we just leave?"

Claire squeezed Adam's his hand even more. "Because we were fighting for what was ours," she answered.

"But we ended up leaving anyway."

"We didn't know that at the time."

"That doesn't make me feel any better."

Claire sighed. She didn't want him to worry about what they had done. "Those men would've come after us when they had seen that we were gone," she said. "There was no way that they were going to let us get away. You know that."

"I suppose."

Claire stopped and forced him to as well. She stared into his eyes. "No," she said. "Don'
t
suppos
e
. It's true. They wanted to kill us. We killed them instead. That's all there is to it."

But was that all there was to it
?
Adam wondered. He didn't know.

*

As they continued to walk, Adam thought more about the things they had done to the men at the school. He assumed that everyone else was thinking about it as well because no one was talking. They moved in silence, barely even looking in one another's direction.

The men. The creatures. The blood.

He squeezed Claire's hand this time to let her to know that he appreciated her trying to talk to him about it
.
And maybe she was right. Maybe they had needed to die. If they had lived, they would have come after him and his group. And when they had found them they would have…

Adam didn't let himself finish that thought.

They did what they needed to to survive.

Once more, Claire squeezed his hand back.

Chapter 14

No one knew how long it took them to walk out of the forest
-
they hadn't been paying attention
-
but now that they were out in the open, they could see that the sun would set in the next couple of hours
.
It was more than enough time to get to the cars.

Adam pointed ahead of him. "That way leads to a road. I'm not sure where that road goes, but there are cars on it, so I think there must be something like a town nearby. And if we're lucky…"

He didn't get to finish.

A man barged out of the forest with his hands raised over his head. "Don't leave me!" the man shouted. "Please!"

Though he was taken by surprise, Adam let go of Claire's hand and quickly levelled his gun.

The man came closer, arms flailing. "Don't leave me…pleeeease!"

When the man stopped in front of them, Adam could make out the dirt on his clothes, the wildness of his hair. He had a few weeks worth of growth on his face.

But no blood
.
That was the first thought Adam had.

His second was that the man looked familiar.

"Sam!" Shelly shouted. "That's Sam!"

Sam kept his arms raised above his head, but there was a look of relief on his face. It was as though he was glad to see the young girl and expected her to feel the same way. "Shelly," he said. "I can't believe that it's you!"

Shelly took a step toward him. It was then that Adam remembered the young woman was holding a gun.

"Shelly, stop!" he shouted. He could see that she had already raised to aim it at the man who had attacked her. "He's not worth it!"

"Not worth it? Don't you remember what he did to me?" the young girl asked. She kept her gun trained on Sam. “What h
e
wante
d
to do!”

As soon as Sam saw it, he started to panic. His hands flapped in front of his face. His eyes opened wide. "That was before," he screamed. "I'm a changed man. I promise!"

Shelly took another step toward him, but Adam placed his hand on her shoulder and forced her to stop.

"He's not worth it," he said again. "You don't want to do this."

Shelly stared at Adam for a moment, struggling with his words
.
No
,
she thought
,
she did want to do this. She wanted Sam dead.

Yet, even with that, she lowered her gun.

"Good," Adam said. He turned to look back at Sam. "How did you know we were here?"

Sam looked uncomfortable, like he didn't want to answer. "I was…I…I was with those men that attacked the school."

"You were with Big Mike?" Claire asked.

Sam turned to her, more fear in his eyes now. "Yes…because I was afraid of being alone. He said that he was going to take care of me. He said..."

Adam interrupted. "I don't care what he said. You were part of the group that was trying to kill us."

"No, not me! I ran away when you started shooting at us. I didn't want any part of it. I didn't want to kill you. I didn't even know that i
t
wa
s
you."

There was something in the way that he spoke that Adam didn't believe was the truth. "You didn't know it was us? You didn't know that Shelly was in that school?"

"Well..." Sam sounded uncomfortable again. "I...well...I had heard that there was someone in the school who looked like Shelly. I thought that it might be her. But I didn't know."

"So you came to find out. And when we started shooting, you ran."

"I...well...no…it's…"

Adam didn't want to hear it anymore. He knew what Sam had wanted. And he knew what he would have done to her if things had worked out for him.

The thought of shooting Sam passed through his mind
.
Sam definitely deserved it
.
And no one in his group would care if he did. They might even be happy about it. He knew that Shelly would be.

And it was then that it hit him
:
He didn't want Shelly to be happy about something like that. She was too young. Too innocent.

He took his hand off his gun and pointed back toward the forest. "Get out of here!" he shouted. "Now!"

Sam looked stunned. "But I have nowhere to go. I need to stay with you. Please."

Without a word, Adam grabbed hold of his gun again, spun it around, and slammed the butt of it into Sam's face. Adam was sure that he had heard a crack and Sam's nose started to bleed.

Sam fell to the ground, his hands raised over his head. "No," he screamed with a muffled voice. "Please, don't. I wasn't going to hurt you. I didn't fight. I didn't shoot. I ran away!"

Adam looked down at the man on the ground. He could picture him like this back in Shelly's apartment. Adam had thrown him to the floor and had scared him out of the apartment. But he had come back.

Maybe Claire was right
,
he thought
.
Maybe guys like this would always come back until the got what they were looking for.

Adam felt the gun in his hand. He thoughts shifted back to killing him. It would be simple. He could just shoot and be done with it.

Yet, Adam didn't want to kill anymore. There had already been too much killing as it was.

"Get out of here," he said. "And don't come looking for us again."

"I...but..."

Adam brought the butt of his gun down on Sam's shoulder. There was another loud crack and Sam screamed out in pain. He dropped further to the ground and his hands went from over his head to his shoulder.

"Get out of here," Adam screamed again. "Now!"

Sam looked up at Adam. There were tears in his eyes. Pain. And fear. "Please let me come with you. I..."

Adam raised his gun again, but didn't bring it down. "This is your last chance. I'm not going to tell you again."

Sam opened his mouth to argue, but then thought better of it. He got to his feet, keeping hold of his shoulder. Blood dripped onto his shirt from his nose.

He glanced at Adam, hoping for some compassion. None came.

He turned and, without any more pleading, ran back into the forest.

Once he was gone, Claire was the first to speak. "Why did you let him go?" she asked. "You know that he's only going to keep coming back."

"I don't think he's going to bother us anymore," Adam disagreed.

"He might not even survive his wounds," Marianne added. "If you broke his shoulder that is."

Adam turned to look at the woman. He hadn't thought of that. But maybe she was right. He decided not to worry about it
.
If the man died, so be it.

He turned to Shelly. "I'm sorry. I just couldn't let you do it. It wouldn't have been right."

Tears built up in the young girl's eyes. "But remember what he did?"

"I remember. I'll never forget. The thing is we have to be better than men like him. We have to be stronger. And to kill only when we need to."

"I know," Shelly said slowly. "But…"

"He's not going to come back. I'm sure of it."

Before she could say anything else, Adam hugged her. She hugged him back. Then she buried her face into his shoulder and started to cry.

As he stood there, Adam wasn't sure if he had made the right decision. He didn't think that Sam was going to bother them anymore, but he'd probably bother the next group of people that he came upon. And if he managed to find a young women, well, Adam knew what Sam would do then.

It might have been best to have killed him.

There was nothing he could do about that now. He had let Sam go.

Adam kept his arms around Shelly until her crying stopped.