The Orphans (Book 3): Strangers (5 page)

              “It gets better.”

              “What does?”

              “The hurt...the guilt...the pain of whatever you're going through.”

              “Really the nightmares i’m having aren’t going to be there waiting for me to go to bed every night?”

              “They won’t come every night you won’t think of it everyday with every minute you are awake.”

              Greg looked over at Shaun and nodded, ‘You to?”

              Jordan looked back at the two and said, “Sounds like you’ve had a shitty few days run. Do you think that what your dad made can be fixed?”

              Shaun shrugged, “You know as much about it as I do at this point Jordan. I’m not sure if they can cure people.”

              “I know my dad is still running around, I don’t know what they could do for my mom he acted like he didn’t even know her.”

              “They don’t man if you see your dad and they haven’t done the cure yet you make sure you stay away there’s nothing that you can do for him except put him out of his misery. Or keeping him from causing someone else pain.”

              “I can’t shoot my own dad that’s effed up.”

              Shaun took a long deep breath, “We sometimes are put in situations that we can’t control, sometimes we have to do things for the greater good of others and put yourself second.”

              “Well that’s easy to say but.”

              Greg cut him off. “Sorry to say man but you don’t know what you are talking about. Like you said we’ve had a pretty shitty couple of days.”

              “So he had to.”

              Shaun leaned forward speaking very clearly and very slow. “Remember bringing up the past now does nothing to make anything that has already happened easier. The only thing you gotta know is that if it comes down to you or them you better be ready because they don’t hesitate and they don’t wait.”

              He nodded thanks for the heads up I just need someone to teach me how to do one of those things. My dad taught football but never did anything with guns. He thought they were dangerous.”

              Aslin patted Jordan on the shoulder and gave him a thumbs up. “By the time i’m done with you guys you are going to know so much more about weapons and rifles than you ever wanted to. Once your training is done though only those that don’t want you to be armed will have a reason to fear you with a gun. Shaun and Greg seem to have a pretty good start already like you’ve been shooting for a while.”

              Shaun pointed to a main highway not wanting to get into any other talks that would keep the discussion on his father. “Hey here’s the last road we need to take to get into Camp Dodge hang a right we’ll be there in no time.”

              Aslin said, “Thank god a solid road. So it’s just past this farm?”

              Greg said, “Nope this isn’t a farm it’s where they go and play their war games on the weekends. They have a skeleton crew working most the time full of guard members that put in their forty at least that’s what my dad would say. Anyways that field has all the different types of courses all rolled into one making sure that they stay in war time shape.”

              Aslin slowed letting the truck coast. He said, “Greg didn’t you say that all resources were being gathered when you listened to the CDC announcement yesterday? So there is a pretty good chance that those guys all got called out. I wonder if any of them came back?”

              “Aren’t they going to let you back on either way? I mean don’t they have to if you showed them any credentials?”

              “It depends on what their orders are. There is a hell of a good chance they aren’t letting anyone in. It might be smarter if I took a stroll in there before I put you guys in arms way to.”

              Jordan asked, “Do you think that you could get in there?”

              Aslin stopped the truck checking out the road ahead of him and saw a barrage of military vehicles not parked, not on guard but crashed into each other in the street. They weren’t smoking or on fire but from the blackened pavement it didn’t take a genius to try and see that something was seriously wrong here. Aslin drove the truck up slowly as they got closer they looked at the guards entrance and could see that the entrance was not accessible. Instead of having a metal gate or a wooden gate it was worse. They saw large foot thick poles that rose from the ground and enough of them that there would be no chance of getting through. Shaun said, “We are going to have to go in on foot. You think that’s a good idea Aslin?”

              “Fuck no it’s a horrible idea. Let’s take a minute and think about this though.”

              Jordan said, “Well what the hell do we know about this type of thing. What are you asking us for?”

              “Because it’s your life on the line. You aren’t a kid anymore, you aren’t waiting for mom and dad to tell you what to do. If you want to survive all this shit you need to think like a man and you need to be able to make decisions for yourself. It’s important, don’t be a follower, none of you be a follower, you’re going to have to make tough choices and if you follow someone thinking that they know more than you then you probably aren’t going to last to damn long.”

              Shaun said, “How about we pull in a little further and see what it looks like. We are still in a truck and there isn’t anything behind us that we need to worry about as of now so if we need to get out of here I think we are ok.”

              Aslin thought about it and did a u-turn in the middle of the highway. He backed it up slowly Clary sat at the edge of the tailgate watching he sat back by the window and slid it open. “You boys seeing this here? Shaun what the hell’s wrong with them they’re just standing there.”

              Shaun turned around in his seat giving them the full attention that they deserved. “Don’t get any closer I’m pretty sure those aren’t soldiers there it’s something worse.”

              Clary tapped on the roof of the truck, “Stop the truck will you? Greg hand me your rifle I want to see those things up close and personal. If they’ve Turned I say we take them out from a distance anyone got a problem with that?”

              Aslin said, “Well you know my take on distance over up close and in it. I wonder how many more there are there. I hope we have enough ammunition on us.”

              Shaun patted his backpack happier that he brought it with every passing second. “Greg and I should have plenty of ammo to get us through this. If we can’t find some more 223 bullets at a army base we are seriously doing something wrong.”

              Aslin put it in park and said, “What’s the point in changing a working formula?”

              Clary twisted a knob on his shoulder. “My battery says half full s that means it’ll probably last another half hour at best. You know how great these things are.”

              Aslin checked his and opened the door walking across the highway and into the woods that lined the opposite side of the highway. Clary yeled, “How long do you need to take care of them?”

              “Give me an hour, keep your battery off and reserve it.”

              “That’s great and all but what if you need help?”

              “Well Clary if you hear me firing my handgun how about you guys come and pick me up.”

              Tina hopped out of the truck and climbed into the front driver seat. She looked at Shaun and Greg laughing for a second. “What’s so funny Tina?” Greg asked.

              “Seems kind of like deja vu you guys ready to go and save the soldiers and me driving through no mans land.”

              Shaun tried to watch Aslin but within a minute he melted into the tree line and was gone. He pointed at Greg, “We need to be able to do that shit.”

              Greg said, “Yeah but what goods it going to do if they can still find us by smell? Remember the bloody rag it did more than us screaming at those things did.”

              Shaun watched in awe. He didn’t care what Greg said, those kind of skill were going to prove to be useful. If reports didn’t come back with the news that they were praying for from the CDC this was going to be good to know. He thought that as people changed that sometimes it would be better to be able to go undetected. Clary poked his head in through the window, “TIna go ahead and kill the truck last thing we want to do is pollute the air wit our carbon emissions.”

              Tina snapped her head around but Clary was already smiling, “We don’t have the gas to waste.”

              “Nice to know boys never mature Clary.”

              “Things are already dark enough, if we can’t joke then we are all gonna snap at some point.”

              Tina killed it just leaving the radio on keeping it low but they all felt a little piece of normalcy if it hadn’t been for the pistols and rifles spread around the truck. Clary heard the new music playing from bands he’d never heard before, “Hey great music guys really uh different.”

              Tina smiled, “I have these guys on my mp3 they are the best right?”             

              Clary gave a thumbs up nodding excitedly as he slid the window shut to the truck and moved to the rear putting as much distance between himself and the music as possible. He rested his machine gun on the truck’s tailgate not taking his eyes off of the Turned soldiers in the distance. He knew that even though they looked comatose right now that it was a matter of a sound a gun blast or anything to make them come out of their current state. He thought of all the places that he and his team had been, the nightmares that became true in third world countries and he knew that he would gladly, gladly trade any one of those horrible missions for their current circumstances.

*****

              Aslin moved through the woods being extra cautious to avoid broken branches. He’d been trained by the best to be a ghost in the shadows. Even now decades later after his training had been long past, he could still hear the screaming of his instructors even after passing buds training. It was something that he was sure had helped keep him alive over the years.

              Aslin moved slow until he was within a few hundred yards of the Turned soldiers. He rested behind a fallen tree counting the men there were fifteen in all and he knew that they were just waiting to do harm. He rested the rifle on his left arm sighting in the closest of them and thankful as hell for the silencer on the barrell. He started firing one after another dropping them and keeping them from causing pain to others. After the third had fallen they came out of their state. They tilted their heads back sniffing searching for the meal they knew something was harming the others but unsure what or who it was. They launched themselves into the air landing on top of the burned military trucks still searching. Aslin never stopped firing and had never been happier to have a silencer in his life before now.

              He walked out of the woods when he could not find anymore of them to take out. He waved to Clary signalling for them to come down and meet him. Aslin walked slowly seeing the trucks with bloody hand prints on the inside of the trucks thinking of guards who must have tried to stop the men from entering the base when they were trying to come back in, possibly running from the Turned themselves or already on their way to being infected.

              He saw the poles that rose from the ground acting as a gate and knew that the’d have to be going on foot if they wanted anything from inside. He was unsure how they were going to get or his the supplies out in the mass amounts that he was hoping to score. He walked slowly through the mess avoiding the men on the ground and knocked on the door at the guards office. When no one answered he thought about walking in and realized he had a perfectly good teammate coming real soon that would be a good thing to have watching his six.

              Aslin stayed alert slinging his high powered rifle for his much more compact machine gun. He walked around making sure there were no hidden surprises still wandering waiting for their meals. He made his way back to the road yelling to Clary to follow him. Shaun yelled from the truck, “What do you want us to do?”

              Clary said, “You guys wait there, leave it running Tina, we don’t want anything slowing us down if there is a reason to leave. Shaun why don’t you and Greg get in the bed of the truck. The two of you keep an eye out incase any of those things are still lurking around here.”

              The two boys climbed out and Greg winked and said, “Tina you two be good in here all by your lonesomes.L

              Jordan tried to answer but Tina was already ahead of him. “Don’t respond to him Jordan he’s just going to keep talking if you do.”

              Jordan nodded, “You’ve been with them for longer than a few days I assume.”

              “Unfortunately I’ve known them for quite a while. We were all already close before the whole zombie outbreak thing started. Shaun’s dad saved greg, patrick, and me from the school where the breakout really happened.”

              “Wait the guy that started this came to your rescue to?”

              “The guy that started this was screwed over by his assistant and he’d have let Ellie’s mom and the love of his life die before he would have tried a experimental drug on her.”