Runner Series (Book 1): Runner 3 (17 page)

“Wait for my signal,” She stepped out of the truck with her rifle ready to shoot and walked around the edge of the tank.

There were still dregs meandering around without any clear purpose so she looked back around to the truck and waved at Lincoln.

He started the truck and as soon as he shifted it the engine backfired. The bang from the backfire had disturbed a hoard of at least fifty dregs that started swarming toward the sound.

She had never fired an automatic rifle before and it was harder for her to aim than it was with a small pistol.

She held the trigger down and emptied the first magazine. Unsure of how to reload it she swung the gun onto her back and unsheathed her machete. She slashed at the dregs that ran at her and headed for the doors with Lincoln slowly backing the truck up behind her.

Audrey watched as he skillfully ran over the remainder of the hoard while shooting his gun at their heads. As soon as he made it to the school he jumped out of the truck and started firing the gun Audrey had given him into the hoard of dregs.

“Well, that wasn’t expected,” she said when he was done.

“You know I was in the Army for a little while,” he reminded her and opened the front door. “I picked up a few skills from some of the guys I worked with.”

“Great, do you mind coming over here and helping me?” Audrey swung her machete in a wide arc at a dreg that had fallen on the ground and was slowly crawling in her direction. Its head fell to the ground and its body lay still.

None of the remaining dregs in the area around the school seemed interested in attacking them, but Audrey and Lincoln rushed to take the pins out so they could hurry in case the dregs behavior changed.

“The bar is stuck in there,” Lincoln growled and pounded at it with the heel of his hand.

“Could we push it in with the truck?” Audrey asked.

“It’s worth a try,” Lincoln said. “Get in and back it up.”

Audrey jumped in and put the truck in gear. It didn’t take much for the bar to pop out and slam into the ground with a loud ringing thud.

Audrey flinched and looked out the windshield. A smaller wave of dregs was rushing towards her.

“Audrey, I need you back here!” Lincoln shouted.

She turned around to see him swinging his ax at a group of dregs that had surrounded him from inside the building.

She groaned and opened the door. She rushed around the truck and swung her machete at the heads and necks of the dregs closest to Lincoln.

When there were only a handful of dregs left Audrey let out a sigh of relief. She felt worn out and grumbled when she turned around to face the front of the truck and saw a dozen more dregs pounding at the windshield.

“Could this get any worse?” She asked Lincoln.

“Don’t jinx us,” he lifted his injured foot off the ground and rubbed the back of his neck.

“We can just leave the truck here and bring the boxes to the bed before we drive off,” Audrey said.

“Do you think that will work?” Lincoln asked.

“There isn’t enough room between the truck and the door frame for them to get through,” Audrey pointed out.

“Let’s hurry then,” Lincoln agreed to it.

They ran back and forth from the truck to the gymnasium a handful of times before a blaring horn echoed through the halls.

“What is going on?” Audrey yelled to Lincoln who shrugged.

They rushed back to the truck where they saw the dregs outside had broken through the windshield and were climbing into the cab where they were hitting the horn.

“We need to get to the gym!” Lincoln yelled over the growls and roars of a sizable throng of dregs moving swiftly towards them down the opposite hallway.

They sprinted toward the gym but were cut off by a third smaller group. Audrey felt her stomach drop and worried that they might not get out of this. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled and she hastily lashed out at anything that came close to her.

It was difficult for her to keep up with the onslaught. Her breathing was labored and it hurt her side when she lashed out with her machete.

“I wish I had a gun right now,” she complained over her shoulder to Lincoln.

“From what I saw it would be better if I had one,” he said back to her before swinging the ax at the closest dreg. “We’re getting closer to the gym. As soon as we get close enough make a run for it.”

They inched their way through the endless assault. It felt like an eternity had passed when Audrey saw the doorway.

“Now Lincoln!” She yelled and swung her sword at the neck of the dreg closest her.

She heard Lincoln gasp and moved out of the way to make sure he got into the gymnasium before she pulled the door closed. Audrey made sure the door was secured and turned to find Lincoln looking at a gash on the side of his leg.

She stopped mid-stride, “Did one of them get you?”

“What? No,” Lincoln looked back at his leg. “I hit myself a little with my ax right before we got back in here.”

“Are you sure?” She asked warily. “What if you’re infected now?”

“I’m not, I promise, it was right as we were heading in here,” he said. “I took one last swing and hit myself on accident.”

Audrey didn’t move any closer to him, “But what if you are infected?”

“It’s a fast moving virus,” Lincoln said. “We’ll be able to tell by the time everything dies down out there. If I’m infected, kill me.”

“I can’t do that,” Audrey leaned against the wall by the door and slid down to the ground. “Why would you ask me to do that?”

“Because I don’t want ever hurt you,” Lincoln answered. “It would be easier than doing it to family. I’ve heard you had to when you were in Carlsbad.”

“Yeah,” Audrey said not looking at him. “Lincoln, I—”

“Don’t worry about it, Audrey,” he said calmly. “I promise it was my fault. A dreg didn’t get me.”

She flinched when one of the dregs slammed its body into the door behind her, “They won’t be able to get in here will they?”

“I don’t think so,” Lincoln leaned back against a box of ammunition and laid his leg on the ground. “You secured the door really well.”

Audrey shuddered at the blood coming out of Lincoln’s leg in tiny gushes and stood up to look around the gym for a first aid kit.

She found some medical supplies by a door to the locker rooms and grabbed it. She rushed back to Lincoln and started to care for his leg.

She used the strap from a gun to create a tourniquet before she cleaned it out with antiseptic.

“I don’t think I saw any gauze,” she said after she applied antiseptic cream to the wound.

“That’s okay. Are there any supplies for sutures in there?” he asked. “That’s what we’re really going to need.”

She nodded her head and pulled a white package out of the kit, “What do I do?”

“There should be gloves in there, put them on and then stitch me up,” he said calmly.

“Isn’t it going to hurt?” her eyebrows bunched together and she frowned.

“Not any more than getting hit the leg with an ax,” he tried to smile at her, but winced instead.

“Okay, but I need something to cover it when I’m done,” she said.

“Let’s worry about getting it to stop first,” he said, lying his head on the box.

She opened the packet and took the green gloves out of the plastic. She threaded the needle with the stiff thread it came with.

“I can’t do this,” she said with her fingers on his leg.

“Yes, you can,” Lincoln agreed softly. “Just push it through the skin.”

She felt a ball form in the back of her throat that she couldn’t swallow. She put the needle on his skin and pushed it until his skin gave way. It was easier than she expected it to be, but every time she looked down at the cut she felt like she was either going to vomit or pass out until she was done.

“The coach’s office is over there,” he pointed to the corner of the gym. “There might be something in there to cover it with.”

She ran across the gym and into the office, there was athletic tape and a few school issued t-shirts that she grabbed. She ran back to him and sat next to him, “How are you feeling?”

“Like I’m tired and want to go home and lay down for the next week,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” Audrey frowned, she folded one of the shirts up and pressed it over the wound. “They should have sent someone else with you.”

“Like who?” Lincoln held the shirt in place while she wound athletic tape over the edge.

“I don’t know,” she answered, pushing his hands away so she could tape the shirt. “You could have even come yourself if you needed to.”

“I’d be in a lot worse shape than I am now if you hadn’t of come along.” he said incredulously and pointed over his shoulder. “You can hear that, right?”

“Would it really have been that bad?” she questioned.

“That’s not a real question is it?” he looked away from her with a scowl.

“I could have come on my own,” she uttered the thought before actually thinking.

“You don’t know your way around here and there are a lot of people who would miss you if anything were to happen to you. People need you. Plus, you were worse off than I was at the start of this,” he frowned. “I hate to say it, but you probably would have been screwed more than I would have been on my own.”

“I don’t have family, though,” she said sadly. “It wouldn’t have mattered in the end.”

“Anyone can be family,” Lincoln said sternly and pulled her into a hug. “We’d all be lost without you.”

“Thank you,” she said against his shoulder.

“Not to ruin the moment or anything,” he said. “But why did you tape my entire leg up for a six inch cut?”

Audrey laughed nervously and leaned away from him, “To make sure your leg would be alright.”

“I’d have been alright with some Tylenol and a little time to heal,” he picked at the edge of the tape. “It’s going to hurt taking this off.”

“Sorry,” she said and back on the floor.

She closed her eyes and listened to the dregs pulling and banging at the doors for over an hour.

“Sounds like they’ve finally given up,” Lincoln yawned after he woke up from a short nap.

“I guess we aren’t worth waiting it out to them. Not that it’s a bad thing,” Audrey looked out the tiny window in the door and watched two dregs amble away from the doors.

“It looks clear enough to head back to the truck,” she unlocked the door and pushed it open.

“We need to get more ammo into the truck bed before we leave,” he struggled to get up.

“I know we’re supposed to, but I don’t think we’ll be able to with your leg being injured,” she didn’t want to push him any harder now that his leg and the opposite ankle were both hurt.

“It needs to be done and I’ll be fine as long as we don’t take long in Carlsbad,” he said.

“Are you sure this won’t be too much for you?” Audrey asked him as he limped to the door with a box of ammunition in his hands.

“Not worse than being smacked around with a stop sign by a Behemoth,” he joked.

Audrey grabbed another gun off of the gym floor and opened the door for him. She made sure the hallway was clear and stayed close to Lincoln. His shoes occasionally squeaked on the linoleum, but there weren’t many dregs around to hear it.

Wanting to avoid attracting another pack of dregs Audrey quickly disposed of any they encountered straggling along with her machete.

She took the box from Lincoln as soon as they got to the truck and lifted it over the tailgate. The cab of the truck was clear, but the seat was covered in the shattered glass.

“Here, take this,” she said handing him the new rifle. “Cover me while I grab more boxes.”

“Okay. I’ll clear off the seat in the cab so we don’t have to sit on broken glass,” he opened the small window in the back of the cab and awkwardly climbed through it. She watched him open the door and start sweeping the glass out.

“I’ll be right back,” she said.

She ran through the hall half a dozen more times so she could load the back of the truck with boxes and extra guns.

“I think that’s enough,” Lincoln said in hushed tones.

She nodded and opened the door next to the one they had parked in, “Let’s get out of here.”

Her heart was beating fast when she turned the key. The engine didn’t backfire, but the sound of the truck echoed through the halls.

“They’re coming again,” Lincoln panicked when groups of dregs came around the tanks surrounding the school.

“We won’t be here by the time the make it to the doors,” Audrey pushed the gas pedal to the floor of the truck.

She drove through the gap between the tanks and pushed the truck to go as fast as she could and keep control of it. She watched the dregs swarm behind her in a frenzy while she drove away from Hobbs as quickly as she could.

It was mid-afternoon when they finally headed towards Carlsbad. The sun was lower in the sky and looking at the clock Audrey knew they might not have time to go to Carlsbad and head back to Roswell.

Audrey felt a pang of anxiety in her stomach on the long stretch of road between Hobbs and Carlsbad.

“I wish there was a radio station we could listen to right now besides the emergency broadcasting that’s still going,” she said.

Lincoln laughed, “With a morning DJ that’s borderline inappropriate and acts twenty years younger than they are?”

“Oh yeah, that was always the best, having some guy in his forties or fifties that totally gave off the ‘I’m still cool and I can prove it by being ridiculous’ vibe,” Audrey rolled her eyes.

“It would be fun to have something like that,” Lincoln said. He put his feet up on the dash and winced a little before readjusting how he was sitting.

“There kind of is. Did you know someone is broadcasting a radio station in Roswell somewhere?” She asked him.

He shook his head, “No, I hadn’t heard that. Is it any good?”

“They played old popular songs when I heard it last night. I tried to find it this morning, but couldn’t, so it might only be available once in a while,” she watched him closely. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I am. My leg is really sore and of course there’s my ankle that’s bothering me,” he shifted in his seat.

“I’m sorry, Lincoln. I wish you didn’t have to come, I could have handled this on my own,” Audrey frowned. “I hate the buddy system.”

“We’ve already gone over this. Don’t beat a dead horse, Audrey,” Lincoln grabbed her hand and squeezed it comfortingly. “It gives me more time to get to know you anyway.”

“What do you want to know?” Audrey asked, welcoming the change of subject.

“I don’t know,” Lincoln shrugged. “Everything. What is your favorite color?”

“Blue,” she didn’t hesitate to answer. “I’ve always liked blue.”

“Not pink, very interesting. If I remember right, I used to think every girl had to like pink,” Lincoln chuckled.

“No, that was just poor marketing at stores. I mean sure, it’s nice to have things in every color, but I ended up having to shop in the boys sections a lot to get my blue fix,” Audrey acknowledged.

“Would you say you’re a tomboy then?”

“No, I just love the color. It got easier when I hit preteen, that’s when stores start putting out more than cutesy outfits in pink, purple, or yellow.”

“That is a plus,” Lincoln looked out his window.

“Yeah, but then there was the underwear.”

“What?” Lincoln sat up a little straighter. “Why are we talking about underwear?”

“Because, it was a plus to have more color options for clothes, but it felt like there was nothing but G-strings, thongs, and underwear with stupid sayings on the butt to wear. It was uncomfortable,” Audrey complained.

“I see, I didn’t think it was that bad for girls. I remember feeling super accomplished going from tighty whities to boxers,” he wiggled his butt in his seat. “So comfortable.”

“Ah, you’re a boxer man then?” Audrey asked and raised her eyebrows.

Lincoln stared at her and then burst out laughing, “No, I don’t wear boxers, but that’s as far as I’m going to discuss my underwear.”

“Boo, I told you all about my underwear problems and you just brush off my question? Not fair,” Audrey joked.

“Okay, ask me a different question,” he said.

“When’s your birthday?”

“January twenty-seventh. That was an easy one. What’s yours?”

“The seventeenth of July,” Audrey said. “It was actually the day I met you.”

“That’s cool, I wish I would have known. I might have gotten you a gift,” he suggested.

“You let me use your tent. I think that counts,” she reassured him.

“Do you like being on you own?” Lincoln asked.

“No, I would have been a super codependent daddy’s girl if it weren’t for the zom-pocalypse,” she admitted.

“You were a daddy’s girl?”

“Absolutely, my dad was the greatest,” she said quietly.

“Can’t argue with that. It’s sad that he died when he was so close to finding a real solution to the virus problem,” Lincoln said solemnly.

“It wasn’t his fault though. He was just trying to clean up the mess the government made by engineering a virus that was pretty much unstoppable,” Audrey said.

“Did he ever figure out how it worked?”

“Not that I know of,” she said. “He was working in a lab in Utah right before he can home and um… Well, he was working there and the stress was getting to him, so he came home for a weekend and we went to Carlsbad.”

“I wonder if he was one of the people my mom used to talk about,” Lincoln mused aloud.

She stopped talking when her shoulders stared feeling heavy. She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel and bit her lip.

“You don’t have to talk about it,” Lincoln said softly. They drove through a small town that was really just an old rest stop in silence.

“Half way there,” Lincoln said off-handedly after they had driven for half an hour.

“Yup, we are,” Audrey said. “Sorry for being weird.”

“It’s okay, I know what it’s like to lose people,” Lincoln said. “So, do you go into the caves or anything when you go to Carlsbad?”

“No, I actually just go into the town near the caverns,” Audrey said looking out the window. She pushed the gas pedal, anxious to get to their destination.

“I thought you catalogued the mutants at the caverns,” Lincoln pulled his feet off the dashboard. “What do you really do there?”

“It’s really nothing. It’s kind of a personal errand,” she said staring straight ahead at the road. “I used to go down to the caverns, but here was really not a lot there aside from a ton of Howlers and a few of a mutant we called a Gusher.”

“Audrey, you’ve been putting your life at risk making long runs every month,” Lincoln said. “I think if you’re going to put me at risk too I deserve to know what’s going on.”

The wind stung her eyes but she refused to look away from the road, “You can just stay in the car. I’ve taken care of most of the non-mutated dregs that were around Carlsbad the last few months.”

“That’s not an answer I’m okay with,” he snapped at her.

“I promise you won’t have to worry about anything as long as you stay in the car,” she said, her knuckles turned white as she grasped the steering wheel hard. “Just stay in the car.”

“Audrey, maybe we should just go back to Roswell,” Lincoln suggested.

“No! I need to do this and I know you won’t understand,” Audrey clenched her teeth together and blinked rapidly, trying to fight back tears, but they spilled out onto her cheeks anyway. “Just, please, let me do this and stay in the truck.”

Lincoln sat back in his seat and studied her. He didn’t say anything for a moment.

“Alright.”

They drove in silence until they saw a sign saying they only had a few miles left to Carlsbad.

“Are you okay?” Lincoln asked her.

She finally looked away from the road to answer, “I’m fine.”

He asked her again stiffly. “I’d like to know why we’re going to Carlsbad. Will you please just let me know what you’re risking your life for?”

Audrey looked at the clock and considered ignoring his question and driving in silence the rest of the way. No one knew what she did in Carlsbad besides Dean. She had never trusted anyone else enough to tell them.

She looked at Lincoln and swallowed hard before she decided to tell him part of what she was doing because she knew he was right when he said he deserved to know.

“I go to the hotel where my family was.”

“What?” Lincoln asked.

“That’s what I do. I got to the hotel we were at when my family all turned into dregs,” Audrey said.

She glanced at Lincoln quickly. His mouth was open and he looked like he was a mix of angry and surprised.

“You realize how insane that sounds, right?” he asked.

“It’s the same as visiting a cemetery,” Audrey defended herself. “It might be a more dangerous cemetery, but it’s pretty much the same thing.”

Lincoln thought about it briefly, “I still don’t get why you can’t make like a memorial place or something less dangerous like that back in Roswell.”

“It’s personal,” she reiterated. “Will you just trust me?”

Lincoln nodded and looked back out his window, “How much longer does the GPS say we have?”

“Going how fast I am we have about ten minutes,” she said.

“What do you want to talk about?” he asked.

She shrugged, “I don’t know. What do you want to talk about?”

“What do you want to do when Runners aren’t needed anymore?” he asked.

“I used to want to be a teacher when I was a kid,” she said. “I don’t know if I still could with the way things are now.”

“You never know, maybe if you decide to leave Roswell you could still do it,” he suggested. “You said Albuquerque had schools open still.”

“Yeah, but I don’t have a teaching degree,” she told him. “Not even close. I should still be in high school.”

Lincoln shrugged his shoulders, “Do you really think degrees mean much of anything anymore? I mean, sure for doctors I’d like to know where they were trained and who trained them, but teaching could be people reading things from books and testing others with it. Isn’t that all there is to it anyway?”

“I wouldn’t know, I never went to school to become a teacher,” Audrey poked him in his arm. “What will you do?”

“I was going to be in the Army for the foreseeable future, but I don’t know if that’s going to still be a thing,” he said. “I know there isn’t an organization like that now. Everyone is more concerned with getting their countries working again. We’re all too busy and weak to fight wars, not that that’s a bad thing.”

“No, that’s not a bad thing,” Audrey concurred.

They drove into Carlsbad and Audrey slowed down. She stopped at a stop sign and didn’t move when Lincoln started laughing.

“Why are you laughing at me?”

“You’re stopped at a stop sign,” he said.

“Of course I am! It’s a stop sign,” she flicked him on his shoulder. “It’s the law to stop at a stop sign.”

“Okay, drive on,” he didn’t stop laughing, but she drove until she got to a road called Canyon Street. She turned and drove for a few minutes at a slow speed.

“It’s right here,” she said pulling into the parking lot of a small motel.

Most of the windows in the buildings had been broken out and most of the doors were broken, missing, or boarded up.

“And you want me to just sit in the truck and wait?” he asked her, raising his eyebrows.

She nodded. “The room is on the second floor. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

She left the keys in the ignition and grabbed the second bag she’d brought out of the truck bed.

She climbed the steps to the second floor and stood in front of the faded green door. The yellow drapes had been pulled closed over the window so she couldn’t see inside the room.

She pulled her travel papers out of a zipped up pocket and unfolded them. She pulled a small keycard out of the papers and slid it into the door lock, she pushed down on the handle when the light turned green. Butterflies danced around excitedly in her stomach when the door clicked open.

A low snarling sound came out of the dark room. She could see the furniture clearly in the muted afternoon light, but she couldn’t see what she was looking for.

Audrey flipped the light switch and dim yellow light flooded the room.

“Hi Dad,” she whispered when a dreg, that used to be her father, stood up in between the two queen sized beds and walked into the middle of the room.

He was still her dad, but not how she remembered him. He still wore the plaid pajama pants he was wearing the day he’d changed. The knees were torn now and his white t-shirt was missing a sleeve and had a gaping hole in the middle that revealed tight grey skin clinging to his rib cage. His cheeks and eyes were sunken in and his lip curled above his teeth.

She wanted to hug him. She wanted to be held and comforted by him, but she knew she couldn’t act on what her emotions wanted because of the danger, but he was still her dad.

He snarled at her and she quickly took the pack off of her back and pulled out sandwich bags full of raw ground beef, “I brought this for you. I’m sorry I couldn’t bring more.”

He tried to walk to her, but stopped when the belt around his ankle that was tied to the bed pulled tight.

Audrey threw the bags at his feet and watched as he knelt down to devour the meat that wasn’t as fresh as it had been that morning when she took it from her freezer at home.

“I wish you could talk to me,” she said to him. She sat on the floor by the door and stretched her legs out. “I miss you all the time.”

She watched as he ravenously scarfed the meat down. When he was done eating she stood up to leave.