Sometimes We Ran (Book 3): Rescue (19 page)

“Go back in the house. I didn't make any promises to kill you. Just go back in the house”

Nate stopped, and rubbed his eyes. Then, he lowered his hands and clenched them into fists.”I need you to do it! I can't do it! Just end it....end it!” I felt Claire jump behind me at the volume of Nate's voice. His eyes had gone wild as his sanity broke within him.

I curled my hand around the stock of my gun, and my finger found the trigger.

“You need to go back inside the house.” I told him one last time. ”I'm not going to shoot you.”

Nate began to cry, and a strange, horrific sound came out of his mouth. It was a cross between a blood-curdling wail of anger and mournful sobbing, and it got louder and louder in the small backyard. It rose into the air like the smoke from a raging fire, and surrounded all of us gathered there in Nate's backyard. The blood drained from my head, and a familiar fear washed over me. Claire and I had dealt with people like Nate before.

And it always ended bad.

With surprising agility and speed, Nate pulled a knife out of his jacket. He lunged towards me with murder in his eyes, slashing the air with the sharp weapon.

My gun was already out. I pulled the trigger twice, catching Nate in the throat and chest with my shots. He dropped the knife, and fell off to the side. He lay on the ground for a few seconds, choking on his blood. A few wheezing breaths later, he went still and died. I lowered my weapon, and leaned against the old pick-up. Claire came up from her hiding place. Her hands covered her mouth.

Covering him with my gun, I walked over to Nate's body. After confirming he was dead, I put my gun away and flipped him over. Blood was coming from his mouth, and the gaping wound in his throat. His eyes were wide open.

“I told you to go back inside the house. Didn't you hear me?” I said, kneeling by his corpse in the cold mud of the yard. I turned to Claire. “You heard me tell him to go back in the house, right?”

Claire was visibly shaking. “Yes, I heard you. You told him to go back in the house.” She walked over to me, and put a hand on my shoulder. “It's okay, John. He was going to try and hurt us.”

I stood up so quickly it almost knocked Claire to the ground. “It's not okay! Tell me anything you want Claire, but don't tell me it's okay!” I was shouting, and my voice echoed off the walls of Nate's house. Claire recoiled away from me to give me a little room. Sinking to the ground, my anger and fear exhausted, I said, “I told him to go back in the house. Why didn't he listen?”

Claire took a seat on the ground a few feet away. We sat like that, not talking, on the ground for a few minutes. We left each other alone with our thoughts, and let our heartbeats return to normal.

Eventually, the ground got too cold and I stood up. I walked over, and offered my hand to Claire to help her stand. She looked up at me, tears in her eyes. Despite yelling at her, she took my hand and stood up at my side.

“Come on. Help me find something to wrap up Nate's body. I don't want the Red-Eyes to get him,” I said. Claire nodded, and we went back into Nate's house to find a cloth or a tarp big enough for a dead body. 

C
laire and I rode in silence. In fact, she hadn't said much since we left the old man back at his place and hit the road. I guess I hadn't been much of a conversationalist, either. Both of us were thinking about what had gone down in that backyard.

It took two tries to get Nate's old truck started. Claire slid behind the wheel after first putting down a cloth over the moldy seat. I pushed it out of the backyard and got it to the road. With Claire in the driver's seat and me shoving from the rear, we set about the task of starting the truck. The first push start produced a couple of lurches and a lot of blue smoke from the tailpipe. The second time was the charm. The old truck coughed to life, and making a quick U-turn, she came back to pick me up. We headed north out of Nate's subdivision. The Junkmen's compound, known locally as the Fort, was our destination. We both hoped Lyle and the van were there and intact.

Neither Claire nor I had any idea where the Fort was located. The only thing we did know was that it was somewhere on the road ahead. I figured I would just point our ailing truck north up the road, and see if we could find the place. Rumor had it that the Fort had walls and barricades made out of junk metal and other debris. That couldn't be hard to find.

Claire rode with her window wide open, even though it was quite chilly. She mentioned before we left that she didn't feel well and needed a little air. Once in a while, she'd put her hand out the window and let it surf the air currents flowing past our truck. I used to do the same thing in the back seat of my family's station wagon on long, hot car trips.

Moving the gear lever into third, produced a crunching-groaning sound that told me the gear was on its last legs. Second gear wasn't too good either, and the clutch had an “I'll-engage-when-I-want-to” feeling about it. Sometimes it went to the floor, and other times I could barely move it using all my strength. None of the gauges worked, the heat was out, and turning the steering wheel was only for the brave. The alignment was that way off, and dangerous. There was also some nasty looking black mold over everything in the interior that made Claire sneeze, and the springs in the busted driver's seat poked me in the butt. But it was mobile. As long as it kept heading north, it was the best truck in the world.

Claire brought her hand inside, and started rolling up the dirty window. The glass was halfway up, when the brittle plastic handle snapped off in her hand. She showed it to me, and broke out into some soft laughter. She threw the broken-off handle onto the dashboard and leaned back in her seat, sending dust flying all over the cab. “You know, John, this truck really is a piece of crap,” Claire said.

“I'll take it to the dealer in the morning. Maybe it's still under warranty,” I said. We shared another light laugh. At least we were talking again, even if it was about our crappy truck.

Claire rubbed her eyes. The mold was irritating her allergies “John...he was a crazy, old man. He would have murdered us both if you hadn't done anything. You know that, right?” she said.

“Yeah, I guess,” I said.

Claire turned towards me, sending more black mold into the air between us. “You and I, we've met up with people like that before. You know what being alone and cut off from civilization does to people. We've both been there and back”

“I know,” I said. The road was full of people like Nate who had given up on the spot, or in their cars, or on the porch of some unpainted house full of Red-Eyes. It was scary to think about it now, but me or Claire could have wound up just like Nate, collecting things in cardboard boxes and eating rotten meat. Rambling around an old house, paranoid and wanting to die. In the end, you go nuts. Then, you just might blow your brains out.

Or you get some other fellow survivor to do it for you.

The truck started sputtering and lurching. The electrical system in the truck was a little sketchy, and the engine misfired. I calmly pulled over into an open spot on the side of the road. Claire and I weren't too concerned. The truck had been doing this little dance since we started our journey. Claire would hop out and watch the road, and I would try to get the truck healthy again. I reached down, pulled the hood release, and got out of the truck. “Keep an eye out for bad guys,” I said to Claire.

“Roger,” she said.

Claire took a lap around our sick truck keeping a look out for anything that might harm us, and I looked under the hood. I turned my attention to the mass of wires and plugs connected to the greasy four-cylinder engine. There were many cut bundles of wires that went nowhere, and a few of the plugs were not plugged into anything. Every time we had to stop, I found a few more errant plugs to put together with their corresponding sockets. Maybe it was my imagination, but each new plug that found a new home seemed to make the truck run better. Claire had finished her lap, and was coming back to the truck, when I caught some movement behind her on the ground. “Watch out,” I said, nodding to a clump of weeds near the side of the road.

Claire glanced behind her. “Got it,” she said. Being careful not to aggravate her hurt ankle, she leaped into the grass as a badly damaged Red-Eye crawled into view. Chewed up and broken, he slithered towards Claire with red eyes blazing. The zombie saw Claire, and tried to raise himself up to take a bite. She caved his head in with a swift blow from her bat. When he tried to come up again, Claire slammed him again. After the second blow, the messed-up zombie stayed down for good.

“Legs missing on that one. How do you suppose that happened?” Claire said. She grabbed a cloth from her backpack to wipe off the parasite-laden blood and gore from her weapon.

“Dog may have got him. Maybe some Red-Eyes tore apart a survivor, and that's what was left to turn,” I said. I had to close my eyes for a second. Suddenly, my head felt like it was filled with quick-drying concrete.

Claire finished wiping off her bat, and was checking it for damage when she noticed my distress. “You okay?”

“I'm fine.” All the stress and problems of the last few days were coming to a head. I tried to concentrate on the task at hand and find and fill a few more of the empty plugs. It didn't work, and I wound up just leaning against the truck.

Claire sat down in the bumper, a concerned look on her face. “I feel it sometimes, too. Like your head is about to explode. Like you can't get any air, and the walls are closing in even though you’re outside. What happened at Nate's house sucked. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but he was coming at us with a knife. Nothing you could do.”

“He was bluffing. He wanted me to shoot him, and I did,” I said, going back under the hood.

“He had a knife. There was nothing you could do,” Claire said again.

“We could have run. Run away, and leave him alone. But all I could think about was how we needed his damn truck,” I said. I threw one of the broken plugs on the ground, useless.

“I need to know if you're okay. We can't go on to the Fort until I know you are okay,” Claire said.

I looked at my good friend of five years. She stood there in front of me, all five feet of her, like a rock. I couldn't move her if I tried. Her ice blue eyes stared at me, wanting a answer. During the bad times, we watched out for each other. Not just for bad survivors and zombies, but for our sanity as well. She was doing what she always did, trying to keep me from cracking up and becoming another Nate.

“I'll be fine,” I answered.

Claire went back to leaning against the truck, a heavy sigh escaping her lips. My answer didn't seem to convince her of anything.

I continued with the rewiring of the truck. “I'm sorry I yelled at you back at Nate's house, ” I said, softly.

Claire looked at me, then she put a hand on my shoulder. “Don't worry about it. I just want to know if you're going to be okay.”

Slamming the rusty hood, I said, “I'll be fine,” I said it again. ”Just give me some time. Let's go find Lyle.”

“Sounds good,” Claire said, taking her seat in the decrepit pick-up.

I got in beside her and turned the key. The engine ground to life, and settled into an uncertain idle, going up and down as the old gasoline flowed through the truck's veins. Another thought came to my mind as I sat there. I reached down to the key, and turned off the ignition.

“What's the matter?” Claire asked.

I ran my fingers over the cracked, sun-beaten plastic of the steering wheel. Even through my gloves, I could feel the splits and rough texture. “It's just that...I'm afraid. It's getting too easy to kill a man these days. It should be harder somehow. I don't know what it means, really. Can't figure it out. It just seems like the line between doing the right thing and doing what you need to do to survive is getting pretty thin. Sometimes, I don't know who we are anymore. What we've become.”

Claire put her hand on my shoulder again to steady me. “He was a crazy old man with a knife,” she said. “Would you rather have been killed and buried in his backyard, or become part of his next pot of stew?” She looked me in the eyes. “You know what it's like out here.” Claire stared at me with wide eyes. Maybe I was scaring her, and for that I was sorry.

Maybe she thought I had finally snapped.

“You're right,” I said. “Don't worry. I'll feel better. You know how I get sometimes.” I turned the ignition, and the old truck reluctantly came to life. I hit the road, and turned north again.

A few hours passed, and we still hadn't found the damn Fort. Claire pulled the maps out of her backpack and began marking off possible side roads where it might be. We had checked out a few, but so far, no luck. The afternoon was going away. The thought of spending another night out here on the road depressed me. Not to mention that any further north, we would be hitting Huntsville. Cities were no fun after dark. They were full of many terrible things, who used the night to hunt.

After going up another road and finding nothing, I decided to stop and take a look. I brought our truck to a halt in an intersection, and found a good point to see in all directions. Sweeping my binoculars around revealed nothing. No Fort, no Junkmen. Just empty gas stations, supermarkets, distant forest and a few zombies out and about.

“Where the hell is this place?” I said to myself. I searched in vain down each road leading away from the intersection, and across the landscape. Empty. Nothing to indicate where the Fort stood.

Claire walked up, map in hand. “It's got to be around here somewhere. How hard is it to find a metal fort?”

“Pretty hard, I guess,” I said, swinging the binoculars around for one last look. I even took a look down the road behind our truck. Maybe we missed something. “I can't believe this. Nothing.”

Claire put the map on the hood of our truck. She pointed to our approximate location. “You think we need to turn around and try another way?”

Looking at the map, I knew we were running out of options. With the afternoon disappearing fast, we had to find this place soon or be stuck out on the road. I traced my fingers along the red line on our map that represented our direction of travel. “No. Let's keep going along this road for a while, or at least until it starts to get dark. The road is moving northeast. Couple of towns coming up. Maybe one of them has the Fort. If we don't find it soon, we may have to just go home.”