The Orphans (Book 3): Strangers (20 page)

Greg said, “So what do we do?”

Clary looked at the armory that was less than a few hundred yards from them and smiled. Greg said, “You know that’s kind of a creepy smile you got going for you Clary.”

Clary nodded, “Oh i’ve got a horrible idea. You make sure you got your seat belt clicked. I think you are going to want it.”

“Why what are you going to do?”

Clary didn’t answer he just pushed down on the gas. As they approached the armory building Greg kept thinking that it would be a good time to slow down. As they got closer the turned started coming down and in front of the windshield. They were smashing their faces into it trying to break it free and get their reward on the inside. The window started to splinter and as they got closer to the building Clary accelerated even faster not letting his foot up on the pedal. Greg put his arms on the dashboard trying to be ready for the impact. Clary looked over and yelled, “Unless you want to broken arms you might not want to do that. Just put your hands in your lap and holster the pistol that things going to become a flying rock as soon as we hit the wall.

Greg screamed trying to keep his feet and hands from pushing against the floor and dashboard. “WHy the hell are we going to crash it? That’s the best that you can come up with?”

“Unless you got a better idea kid, there isn’t many other options, there are two of us? If we stick our hands or heads out the windows those things will rip them off and rip into us. We have dick choices and I know they suck but it is better to crash a truck than to just stop and have them come inside here.”

“What about Aslin can’t we like drive over there and tell him to shoot them off of the truck?”

“YEah we could, and they could jump off of the truck as we lead them all there and then they kill all of them. Would that make you feel better?”

Greg looked up to the roof thinking of Shaun, Tina and everyone and knew it wasn’t something that he thought they could risk either. He said, “Ok crash the stupid thing and lets see what happens.”

Clary slapped him on the chest. “That a boy. You know we will make it just fine we just need to play it smart.”

“You are crashing a truck on purpose into the wall. What is it about that, that is playing it smart? I mean...I got nothing.”

Clary said, “You know what i’ve been told what to do for twenty years now i’m done doing what others tell me to do. Listening to other people has got me driving a truck towards a wall balls to the wall in a zombie infested state. So when you say what about this is playing it smart - I can’t really answer that, but I can tell you that no one and I mean no one told me to go and do it.”

Greg just stared, “You don’t seem like the married type Clary.”

Clary said, “Because i’m in the military dipshit, no thank god im not married. Can you imagine what i’d have to worry about if there were zombies and i had to worry about my family god knows that’d freak me out something crazy.”

Greg went to say something but it was then that the truck finished its forward moving path and smashed into the wall. The turned who were glued to the windshield were now gone. They smashed into the brick wall in front of them. Greg looked over the dash trying to see them but between the seatbelt and the smoke coming from the radiator there was very little to be seen. Clary wiped at a cut on his forhead and said, “You alright Greg?”

“Greg rolled his shoulder feeling tense and tight and said, “I don’t know yet, define alright.”

“Can you walk?”

Greg nodded and they slipped out of the truck slowly both getting out Clary’s side. Clary swung his rifle in the direction of where the turned should have been. He saw nothing when he went to the front of the truck. He saw the bloody imprints of their bodies on the wall and followed the fresh flow of blood on the ground seeing beneath the truck is where it ended. Clary got back to a safe distance where he saw three turned. None of them were able to stand he guessed that they had broken their spines when they crashed. Greg said, “Why aren’t they attacking us?”

“Because they can’t stand kid. They must have broken something when we hit.”

“What are you gonna do?”

“Oh that is a much easier question.”

Clary fired the rifle three times ensuring that there would be no further victims taken by the three turned. Greg said, “You realize we are gonna need another truck rigt? do you want to start walking back now, or do we want to see if there is anything inside this place before we have something to worry about?”

Clary said, “See now you’re starting to think smarter not harder. You might just have a chance kid. We need to get inside first which could be tricky, these things are usually secure as all hell. Greg went to the front door and pulled on it but no give came. He hit the intercom next to the door waiting for a voice to come back telling him that he was trespassing but none did. Clary said, “Well it looks like that door is going to have to be removed, what do you think?”

Greg said, “Well if we had a truck we could totally pull it off of there, but since someone crashed it into a big brick wall we won’t be able to do that. Let me guess you have something that will turn that door into many, many little pieces?”

Clary nodded, “You know it Greg. My supplies getting pretty pathetic though I gotta admit.”

              “I think we need to try and get in another way still. These things are like flies on shit when it comes to any kind of noise, if those rifle shots aren’t going to draw them in then there is a good chance blowing a giant door off is going to.”

              “I’m listening, what do you want to do?”

              “I say we walk the building and see if we can find another door, or maybe some way to get up on the roof.”

              “That’s actually a pretty good idea kid. I have to say that i’m more than ok if we don’t run into anymore of those things today. God knows its a matter of time before they get the jump on us and - well we don’t want to have to worry about that anymore than we need to.”

              The two walked the perimeter of the building slowly guns up and ready but found nothing that they needed to use them on. As they walked around Clary hit his throat mic once and said, “Hey Aslin, we are going to need another truck before this is all said and done.”

              Aslin said, “Wait there is enough stuff for two trucks, that is awesome.”

              “No you misunderstood, there is a huge armory yes. But I don’t have a clue what is inside of it. We had to crash the truck to get rid of some of the turned taht were on the windshield. So we need a new truck. We are still trying to get inside of the armory. Greg here seems to have a good head on his shoulder at least.”

              Aslin said, “YEah well I guess it’s good that one of you do. We will do double time here getting the food but I need you to not try and break any more toys Clary. We only have so many things here that we can steal and it’d be nice if we can make the trip back to Adel as well. You do want to drive back don’t you?”

              “Blow me. Just get here when you can. We should be able to at the least find the inventory list and get stuff ready to load by the time you guys get here. Just get here as soon as you can though. We don’t have the time to waste.”

“Says the man who crashed the truck we need to put stuff in. No worries we can bust ass here and be on our way there asap. Just don’t do anything stupid until I get there.”

Greg was trying not to laugh but the inner smartass was to dominant. He said, “Oh wow, it’s like I heard my dad. Actually wait, no are you sure you aren’t married because that sounded all too familiar.”

Clary just shrugged, “When you’ve been in a unit like mine for this long you are pretty much family. We had one new kid with us but other than thta we’d all been together for as long as I can remember. If you needed something done, we were the ones who got to go do it. We might not always do it pretty but you can be dead to rights that it would get done and we wouldn’t quit trying until we got it done. Who would have thought that all my team would have been lost in one days time. You don’t have any idea the shit that we’ve seen over the years. We don’t get sent in to happy place, we don’t go to war zones where there are already ten thousand pairs of boots on the ground. We go in first, we do our thing and we get out. They might as well give us covert status because we go in and don’t come back until its done. I just hope it wasn’t all for nothing. There were a lot of good men lost yesterday.”

Greg said, “Yeah they were great to us man.”

“That isn’t fair to them Greg. We were told t go to Iowa find research papers and get out of there. They told us that there could be infected everywhere and that because of the spread of the virus as it was that we couldn’t bring anyone back. If you went somewhere like that and were told you couldn't bring anyone back would you be trying very hard to make best friends with anyone? Hell no you wouldn’t, and on top of it, it isn’t like it was adults we were going to leave behind, it’s a bunch of damn kids who have or should have nothing but a long fulfilling life left to live. But in the latter it seems like everyday that we live through is one that we should thank god himself for daily because with all the shit we are seeing so quick i fear it’s only going to get uglier and until we know if there is a cure we don’t really have a reason to go around killing these things if we don’t need to. The end goal here is to stay alive, stay away from these things and keep everyone safe.”

“Yeah I can see not wanting to become bff’s with any of us if that is the case. It’s crazy to think that the government could handle doing that to its citizens though.”

“It takes some serious shit for something like that to be decided on but if you think about it the lives of a group of teenagers versus the entire country having to worry about you being infected and spreading the worst thing ever to touch American soil - well then it kind of seems like a small price to pay to have our homeland still safe.”

              Greg nodded looking at the wall and staring at the ladder. He said, “You know we could climb this and go in through the roof if we wanted to. You up for that?”

              Clary looked at the ladder and took in the long flat piece of metal that protected the first ten steps on the ladder. How the hell do you expect to get up there it’s gotta be five feet up.”

              Greg said, “Put your hands together and give me a boost.”

              “Right but how the hell do you expect me to get up there?”

              “I’ll come around and let you in, just give me a few minutes up there.”

              Clary said, “Yeah right, i’ll just sit out here and hope that i’m good to go waiting on my own. How about instead we think outside that box.”

              Clary stripped off his backpack and cut the straps off of it and fastened tem together he did the same with Gregs and by the time they were done had a three foot makeshift handle to pull himself up with. He snapped it together checking its strength and clasped his hands together as Greg ran towards him landing a foot in his hands and Clary threw him up to reaching distance of the first rung on the ladder past the piece of steel. Greg grasped at it with everything he had pulling himself up with everything that he had. The weight of the rifle and the magazines in his side pack each felt like an additional twenty pounds. Gregs arms quivered as he pulled himself up to the next followed again and again until he made it far enough to where he could put his feet on the ladder and rest for a minute regaining his strength. Clary threw up the makeshift strap to him and Greg connected it so that he could put all of his weight on it that he needed to. Clary tossed his rifle and magazine pack up to Greg and wrapped his hands around the strap and started pulling himself up pushing his feet against the wall to help keep his balance.

              Clary looked up to Greg realizing how much he was trusting in someone he barely knew that was just a kid himself. He wanted to tell him he was doing a great job and to keep it up but what he saw about made him fill his pants. Greg said very calmly, “I want you to get really close to the ladder and do not move.”

              Clary said, “Expand on why there is a rifle pointing at my head.”

              Greg said, “Simple there are Turned and they came from around the building, they arne’t sure if they want to approach us right now and I am ready to split their skulls open if they end up making the bad choice of coming over here this way. In the meantime you can either get you ass moving, or you can dangle there and see if we are going to get attacked by the. Its your choice but I don’t think that we have a lot of time to be killing here.”

              Clary not being a big fan of being bait started pulling himself with everything that he had in him up until he could reach the ladder. Once he started moving quickly the sweat poured even further from his scalp and the Turned crouched and then stretching to its full height up on its tip toes for a second its tongue out and its nose sniffing wildly like a animal. Greg yelled, “It smells your sweat, you need to -”

              “Greg if you are going to tell me to quit sweating let me be the first to go ahead and tell you to shut up and how stupid that is. Do me a favor will ya and shoot those fuckers before they come here. Cure or no cure we aren’t going to wait around for these things to come after us just because we think that there might be a way to fix them. There has to be a degree of common sense to everything before we just go ahead and give in and let them do whatever we want.”