The Returners (16 page)

Chris turned his head towards the SUV and saw the corpse of Clayton grab Mike's arm and bite into it. Blood sprayed everywhere as he tore a large hung of flesh away. There was no time to react or holler a warning to Mike. Raising his gun and walking towards the truck he watched Mike pull out his knife and drive it into Clayton's skull. Mike immediately let go of the knife and grabbed his arm. Falling backwards he began to convulse, an unfamiliar pain began to shoot throughout his body.

Mike was on the ground twitching in violent spasms when Chris made it to him. Chris had seen this before, you always came back when you died, but it could take anywhere from two to ten minutes. For some reason the process was different every time it happened. A bite on the other hand was an immediate death sentence. It killed you quickly, usually within seconds and you returned as fast as you died.

There was nothing he could do to save Mike and he knew it.

“Sorry old friend,” Chris said as he squeezed the trigger of the shotgun.

Andrew opened his eyes, a sharp pain ran up his left leg driving into his hip.

"Dammit! Fuck! Shit!" It was all he could think to say at that moment. "Anyone? Someone help me!" He knew Chris was alive, he'd seen him just before passing out.

Chris heard Andrew holler and ran over to the truck, kneeling down beside him. The boy looked up with a tortured expression and began to laugh, Chris wasn't sure what to do. The whole situation was messed up, and he began to laugh as well. Madness briefly overtaking both of them. As the absurdity of the situation overcame them. When they finally managed to pull it together Andrew began to speak.

"You know what? This day has really, really sucked," Andrew said as he looked down at his leg.

Chris didn't say anything, but simply nodded in agreement.                

"Anyone else make it?" Andrew asked him.

"No,” Chris said, watching as the boys face became sullen at his response. “Let’s not worry 'bout that right now, we need to get your leg out." Chris stood up and walked to the back of the SUV, grabbed the vehicles jack and returned to the truck.

Andrew wasn't so sure this would work, but he figured Chris knew what he was doing. It wasn't like they had many other options short of cutting his leg off, and that was the last thing he wanted to happen. Chris placed the jack under the edge of the truck and put the crank in so he could turn it.

"Alright as soon as you can, pull your leg out. I don't know how long this will hold once it's up. Do you think you can even pull yer leg out?" 

Andrew responded hesitantly, "I think so." 

Chris started cranking on the lever and the truck slowly began to rise. After a few cranks Andrew managed to pull his leg free with a pain filled grunt.

"Fuck me that hurts." The kid’s voice was a mix of pain and agitation.

"Let me look at it." Chris bent down to get a better look. Surprisingly it wasn't too mangled and there was no bone sticking out. There was a good size gash running from the knee down to just above the ankle. Besides the gash it looked otherwise undamaged.               

"It’s messed up, but I don't think it's as bad as it could have been. Let’s see if you can put any weight on it?" Chris said. He held out his hand and Andrew grabbed it.

Chris pulled Andrew to his feet, he winced when he put pressure on the bad leg, but it didn't feel broken. He was able to stand on his own as long as he kept most of the pressure on his good leg.               

"I think I’m alright, it hurts like hell though."

The kid was tough, Chris had to give him that. "You're damn lucky it wasn't worse. Let’s get it wrapped up and figure out what the hell we're gonna do. We're in one hell of a pickle right now."

********

Jacob and the others heard vehicles off in the distance, a loud crash and a few minutes later gunshots. It was hard to tell how far away it actually was, sound carried a long way up here. They had only gone a mile or so from the trailer when everything happened. Immediately they went into the woods, hiding in a section of thick spruce trees out of sight from the road.

While they waited Joe told them the group at the camp had a few running vehicles they used for supply runs. Because of the direction they'd heard the noises come from it was a good chance it was them. It was unlikely, but not improbable that it could have been someone else. 

It had been about an hour since they'd last heard anything. The decision for now was to stay put, see if they went by them or heard anything else. The other option was chance moving towards their destination. Joe paced back and forth keeping an eye on the road from the tree line. His nervous demeanor reading like a book,  Briella walked over to him hoping she could calm him down. His pacing was only making everyone else unsettled.

"Joe, it’s not going to do you any good to pace back and forth like that. You're freaking out everyone else." His eyes were still fixed on the road. She put her hand in his. "Joe look at me."

He turned. "Sorry, just have a bad feeling is all, something I can't shake." He kissed her on the forehead. "I just don't know what I'd do if something happened to you."

Briella hugged him before they walked back to where the others were sitting. She could see Jacob was no longer sitting and had stood back up. Scanning their surroundings, he turned towards the group and began to speak.

"We've gotta figure out what we're going to do. Right here we're safe and out of sight, at least for the moment. We haven't heard anything for a while and I don't really want to be on the road after dark unless we have no other choice.” Jacob didn't feel like staying,  it just didn't feel safe to him, he wanted to get moving.

“I'm going to leave it up to everyone on what we should do, majority rules seeing there are five of us. Should we go or stay?" Jacob wanted to make sure they all had a say in this. He didn't want to just make the call and not get everyone's input. This was far too important a decision for that.

Everyone was quiet for a moment as they pondered over the situation and what the best course of action was.

Emily caught everyone off guard by being the first one to speak up, "I say we get moving. If those people are coming after us then we're going to end up facing them sooner or later anyway."

Everyone was a bit taken aback by the young girl’s commentary on the matter. None of them had expected it, but she was right. By hiding, all they were doing was prolonging the inevitable.

Jessica spoke up next, "I agree with Emily." She put her hand on her daughter’s shoulder and smiled at her. She was proud of her little girl for having the courage to voice such an adult decision.

Jacob looked at both Briella and Joe. "What do you two think?" 

"We're in this together,  if you guys think we should go, then I'm with you. Do you agree Joe?" Briella responded to the question as she looked at Joe who nodded in agreement.

Jacob put his backpack on and grabbed his gun. "Alright then, we're moving on. I say we stay close to the edge of the woods and off the road for now. The traveling might not be as easy, but if they come along it gives us a chance to hide from them. We may have to fight, but I'd rather do it on our terms not theirs."

********

Chris and Andrew sat for a while trying to figure out what to do. After what seemed like hours Chris stood up and walked over to the truck. Andrew wasn't sure what he was doing, but didn't want to burden him with a lot of questions right now. A few minutes later Chris walked back over to him. 

"The truck ain't in bad shape. The glass's busted out, but it's not damaged much far as I can tell. Tires ain't messed up or nothin'. I think if we can get her tipped back over we can use it."

Chris could tell the kid didn't know what to think about his suggestion, but he wasn't going to give him a choice in the matter. "I know your leg's messed up, but you're gonna have to help me with this."

“Alright, what do you need me to do?" Andrew said as he stood up. His leg was sore, but he knew he had to help or they were stuck. Out here with no cover and gimped up wasn't exactly how he wanted to spend the night.

"We've got that hand winch in the back of the truck and a good amount of rope. We're gonna hook onto the truck, and I'm gonna need you to crank the winch while I use the jack to lift it up." Chris hoped this would work. It would be almost impossible for them to make it back to the camps on foot in the shape they were in.

Chris walked to the back of the SUV and opened it up. Grabbing the winch and rope he walked back to the truck. Looping the rope around the frame where the window had busted out he handed the remaining piece to Andrew.

"Take this piece of rope and the winch, hook it up to a tree and run the rope through, get her as tight as you can. When I start jacking the truck up and holler, you crank the winch. Easy enough right?" Chris hoped the kid had it together enough to handle this.

"I can do that." Andrew took the winch and rope and hobbled over to a decent sized birch tree and hooked everything up. He stood there waiting for Chris to holler. While he stood there waiting he kept looking ahead of the truck at Damien's corpse. It was an unnerving site, one he couldn't make himself look away from.

"Go!" Chris hollered as he began to work the jack.

Andrew began to crank the winch. The rope slowly began to slide through and the truck began to tip. He cranked again and again, each time the truck moving a little more. Finally it moved enough so it wasn't off balance and came down on it's tires with a loud thud. Glass from the windshield finished breaking off as the vehicle settled and came to rest.

Chris jumped back as the truck came down, at least this one thing had gone right. "We're gonna have to give her a minute. Don't wanna try and start her just yet. We'll give her time to settle some and hopefully she'll start."

Andrew walked to where the winch and rope were tied and undid it. Now that they'd gotten this done, what was their next step he thought to himself? Throwing the winch and rope in the bed of the truck Andrew sat on the tailgate which had fallen down.

"Chris what exactly are we doing if we get the truck going?"  

Chris walked to the back of the truck where Andrew sat and stood there for a moment without saying anything. He'd been thinking about this since the chaos of the morning had come to an end. Over and over in his mind he wondered if his penance for revenge had caused him to not think out the situation properly. Was continuing on going to solve anything? Probably not. The situation had only been made worse by what happened. The kid’s leg being messed up wasn't going to do them any good and without the others he doubted they would stand a chance if they ended up in fight. Hell these people had taken out Ray, what chance did they actually have? He felt like they were just trying to chase the rabbit down the hole at this point. What was the point in killing other human beings over stupid things like supplies when they had Returners to worry about. Somewhere along the line all of that had been lost on them. They'd become as despicable as the The Returners.

"We're goin' home kid."

Andrew wasn't sure why Chris had come to that decision. After all that had happened, it made him angry to think they weren't going to do anything. His voice began to trembled as he spoke, "Why? Why are we not going after them?"

"What good is it really gonna do us? I was blinded by revenge and made some stupid choices. Those choices got these men killed. What's the point in putting our lives in danger any further? We may not even find them, at some point the killing needs to stop, we need to stop fightin' the living. What sense does that really make? I'll tell ya' it don't make none."

Chris voice was full of emotion, everything that had happened was hitting him hard. He wasn't an emotional man and this was something he wasn't used to. It actually made him a bit embarrassed. But maybe, just maybe his words would burn into the kid's mind and prevent him from making a similar mistake down the road.

"I'm sorry for all this, ain't nothin' I can do to change it. The only thing I can do is try an' make things right, be the leader the camps need. No more killing unless we don't have any other choice."

The words Chris spoke took a few moments to sink into Andrew's head. He was still angry about what happened and the decision to not continue on. When they finally did he realized what Chris was saying was right, even if he didn't want to admit it.

"What are we going to tell everyone that happened? People are going to want to know." 

"We tell 'em what happened. We work on keeping ourselves safe from the Returners and figure out what we're going to do as a community from here on out. I don't want anyone else to perish over stupid mistakes. Enough of us have died already."

“That sounds fair, now what about the truck? Can we get it going?” Andrew asked. If they couldn't get the truck going they probably wouldn't be telling anyone anything.

Chris walked to the front of the truck reached through the window and turned the key. The truck turned over but wouldn't start. He opened the door, cleaned the glass off the seat, jumped in and turned the key over again. This time putting the gas pedal all the way to the floor, still nothing. He repeated what he had just done again and the engine caught and sputtered, seeming like it wasn't going to catch but did. He pumped the gas pedal a few times letting the engine rev. Once he was sure it would stay running he got out and walked back to Andrew.