The Orphans (Book 4): White Lie (27 page)

Clary said, “Nothing. That is going to help us get Shaun back here. You don’t open those gates for anyone unless they are with me or Aslin, do you understand that? Is there anything about the words coming outta my mouth that you didn’t comprehend one hundred percent?”

Mark was rubbing his shoulder and giving looks that could kill over to Henry. “Yes sir, that makes perfect sense to me. We, or I, won’t let that gate open for anything that isn’t one of the two of you guys.”

Clary didn’t say anything else, he just clicked off and hit his radio again. He could feel a cold sweat starting beneath his shirt and wanted to immediately distinguish the hatred that he was gaining, ready to place blame before anything had been determined. He said with anger into the radio, “Greg, Greg, come in and do it now damn it.”

Greg grabbed his radio and said, “Hey, what’s up, do you need something?”

“Yes, yes I do, I want to know exactly where you are and I want to know now.”

Greg laughed clicking back over, he said, “Well at the moment I'm indisposed.”

“Where the hell are you Greg, are you with Shaun? Are you on this base?”

Greg started getting an immediate sick feeling deep down in his gut. He said, “Yes of course I'm on the base, do you think I'm that stupid that I would leave again already?”

“Yes, unfortunately the thought immediately crossed my mind. So you wouldn’t know where Fox is or Patrick or Kya for that matter?”

Greg said, “Patrick and Kya are in the rec room reading. Joey is shooting pool and the last that I saw Shaun; he was working out in the infirmary waiting for Ellie to wake up. It's about all that he does nowadays unless he has a reason to venture outside. He hasn’t wanted to leave her side in quite some time. I’m sure that he’s ok, or as ok as he is going to be for what is probably going through his head. I mean everyday I've been checking on him he looks like he is more pissed off.”

Clary didn’t like how this was going and already started walking toward the armory. He said, “So he’s pissed off and missing. You didn’t talk to him about any ideas he had about leaving today then?”

“Nope I didn’t have a chance to talk to him today. I’ve been on the indoor range working with the new kids all day. I’m getting worried now, could you tell me why you are thinking of him now please, what happened that made you make this call out?”

“Because Mark and Henry are on guard duty at the front of the gates and they said that Shaun came rolling through with his gear and a four wheeler saying he was going to drive around and check the fence perimeter.”

Greg said, “Why the hell would he be on the outside to check the fence perimeter, that’s just ignorant. The fence is something you can see through for Christ sake, that doesn’t make any sense at all. What a couple of effing morons.”

Clary said, “Do me a favor, grab a couple guys and meet me up by the armory, I don’t want to have to worry about him going off half crazed. I know he is worried about Ellie, but it is still no excuse. This is déjà vu all over again damn it.”

“Hey but at least this time it isn’t my fault right? That is a positive note isn’t it?” asked Greg.

“There is no positive note Greg until he’s back on base and we know that he is safe. Besides, you do realize that you are a horrible influence right? Do you think he would have ever gone out on his own if you four hadn’t gone out and left the base originally? Now he thinks that it is acceptable behavior to try and do.”

“Yes I'm very well aware of what kind of influence I represent. It isn’t all my fault though. He doesn’t just blame me for a few weeks ago, he blames the Turned and he hates those things more than anybody I know. If I had to guess, he’s on his way back to where he and Ellie got hurt. I’d say that he probably wants retribution because of it. I’d say things are going to be getting ugly real soon. He wouldn’t just leave without having a plan Clary, he isn’t stupid.”

“Isn’t that what you did Greg?”

“I am not afraid to man up and I'm also not worried about admitting how smart the kid is. If he left, he has a plan; him not wanting to make it back to Ellie would seriously surprise me Clary. I would imagine though he’s going to get some retribution. They got him last time but he hadn’t had weather or weeks to think about what he would do if he had another chance. If he left he’s got those answers figured out. Those Turned would do best to try and find an easier meal somewhere else because he sure as hell isn’t going to be an easy one to get to.”

“Well let’s hope he is as smart as you think he is. Go get Hammond and a few others. If you think Patrick is up to it, then get him too. I might see if Aslin is around, if Patrick isn’t going then we’d be smart to have a distance shooter with us. We need to line up someone new since well we know what happened to Maryann.”

Greg thought of the math that he had seen them doing with Aslin before ever getting to pull a trigger and said, “Well it sure as hell isn’t me, I don’t have a clue how they use math to shoot something a thousand plus yards away.”

“Yep that makes two of us kid. Get moving, we need to be out of here in twenty or less.”

“I’m out. We will meet you as soon as possible.”

Chapter Twenty-seven

Shaun rolled in through town, going slow and taking his time, being sure not to have his muffler screaming like he knew it could if he pushed the small vehicle to its limits. He drove slowly and when he saw the bus crashed and flipped, he did the sign of the cross for the two that had risked their lives coming for him and the others. He saw no remains of either of them but he knew that something had come for them and cleaned up the scraps of whatever was left over on that day. He saw their Humvee as he got closer and had a flashback of the entire day. Shaun cruised by the apartments and saw that true to everyone's word, there were three floors and the bottom two looked like they had concussion grenades go off inside of them, blowing the glass outward.

He saw that the Turned, to no shock, didn’t believe in burial and had left their dead to rot in the driveway. Shaun thought it might be a good thing that they can’t think to that detail or they really could have a fight on their hands when they finally tried to take back what was rightfully theirs. Shaun drove down to the middle of an intersection, making sure there were no Turned lurking in the streets before getting his gear ready. He pulled out six of the blood bags and attached a thin rope through them and poked just the slightest hole into them. He repeated this until all of the first set was done and when he had that completed, he threw them up and over the stop lights in the intersection, letting them dangle and drip, tying them off to the side of the pole. He drove up to a second set another hundred yards away but viewable from the vantage point he was going to take and repeated the act. When he was done, there were twelve blood bags hanging in the air with their contents dripping and their scent filling the early afternoon’s air.

Shaun did not want to have to wait forever to spill blood of his own. He pulled out a knife and split one, then two, and three bags of blood and let them paint the street. He could pretend to see the meal that would be screaming in the air of fresh blood to Turned who were probably having a hard time with finding meals on a regular basis, or at least that is what he was hoping they were experiencing.

He did not want to wait around long to see if it was going to work and wanted to get into his shooter’s nest. He went to the store where he had been when Ellie had gotten hurt and climbed the structure, armed much heavier than before and this time he was ready. When he had his sights dialed in, he lay in the prone shooters position waiting patiently. His finger was feeling like it had an itch to scratch, one that only his trigger was going to cure. Shaun did not have to wait long. He put the silenced rifle over the edge of the building, and squeezed it ever so slightly. With the exception of a small puff of smoke, there would be no signs that they would be able to use to know that he was up there. With each squeeze the Turned were dropping like flies. They stared around trying to figure out what was happening, looking at their brothers and sisters now lying dead on the ground. The temptation of the blood was too much to be able to leave. They were just as interested in finding the meal as the thing that was taking them out one by one.

When they started to stop, Shaun would shoot the street sign sending an echo of metal ping through the distance and keeping the dead interested for that much longer. When they would stop he would focus on the next set of stop lights that was an additional hundred yards from him and begin firing at the Turned. He gave his barrel a rest, surveyed his damage and thought this might have been more Turned than anyone had been able to take out before without casualties of human life. When there were no more Turned to be taken out, Shaun packed up his gear feeling content about his actions and knowing that they were that much closer to being able to claim what was theirs. He knew that if there was a way to get more shooters as well as a meal that would be much more interesting to the Turned that there would be no limit to how many they could take out. Shaun thought of the armory, knowing damn well there was no shortage of anything that they would need to accomplish this mission that would not be over until they had nothing left to shoot. The idea of making Iowa a safe zone filled his heart and mind with a goal one that would need to be accomplished if he wanted to ever try and have a dream not filled with nightmares again.

*****

When he got to the bottom of the ladder he looked around seeing that it was clear. His ATV was untouched and fine. He got his gear attached back to it and started to drive out slowly. He stopped immediately after hearing something in the distance. He thought that it would have been damn quick for them to have figured out he wasn’t going to come back immediately, but nonetheless, he did hear engines coming his way. He pulled to the edge of the driveway expecting to see sand, camouflage color Humvees but was mistaken. What he saw was a string of trucks and SUVs coming. He thought about making a break for it but thought that there were survivors and they might be up for a new place to stay if they seemed like they were on the up and up. He waited impatiently trying to think that he was going to freak them out when they saw a teenager with a machine gun, sniper rifle, and a U.S. Army four wheeler.

When the trucks got closer it was obvious that they saw him. They turned towards the parking lot but did not pull in. The strangers stopped in the street getting out of the trucks and approaching slowly with hands at their sides, but pistols and rifles were not hard to see. One of the men walked up slowly a bit ahead and he could tell if there was a leader of the group, that it was probably this guy. The man held a hand up in the air and yelled, “Hello, my name is Bowers.”

Shaun didn’t say anything he just sat there on the ATV letting it idle and thinking he’d be smart to just punch the gas and tear ass out of there. Bowers could see the kid was not going to be a big talker and said, “We don’t see to many other people around. What are you doing out here?”

Shaun pointed to the intersections that had the blood hanging from the bags. Bowers slowly pulled out a pair of field glasses and looked at both of the intersections with their blood bags hanging in the air. He whistled and said, “Are you telling me that you were hunting those things? Where’s the rest of your crew at that helped you shoot them?”

Shaun shook his head no and Bowers asked, “Wait, are you trying to tell me that you took out all of those things? Holy shit kid, how old are you?”

Shaun said, “Does it matter? I took them out on my own. There’s too many of them on the streets. It’s time we stop waiting.”

Bowers said, “Amen to that, do you have people or are you out in this shit on your own kid?”

Shaun didn’t say anything. He thought of his pistol on his side beneath his zipped coat and his machine gun on his shoulder. He counted the number of men in the trucks but contemplated that he did not have nearly enough rounds in one magazine if worst came to worst. He said, “I need to get going, I want to be gone before dark.”

Bowers said, “Well we got plenty of room at our place. We could use someone we can trust to help take these freaks out. We’ve lost too many people and well we are short of bodies right now. I still can’t believe that you came out to hunt the damn things.”

Shaun said, “I got a place, but I'm glad that you and your group are alive.”

Bowers looked back at his men and asked, “You sure you don’t want to come back with us? We got a nice place, a whole subdivision worth of houses all to ourselves and cleared out. We don’t go out too often, we’ve been waiting for a spring thaw so that we could try and get some more supplies. Is that what you are out doing too?”

Shaun clicked his radio back to the on position and hit the transmit button. He said, “No I'm just out hunting, no supplies today.”

“You have a chance to take supplies and you are passing them up? How good of a place do you have to hold up at?” the man asked.

Shaun didn’t say anything, he just hoped that someone on the other end was listening. The idea of shooting humans wasn’t beyond him but if it didn’t have to happen, he didn’t want it to. Shaun was thinking on his feet as best he could, trying to decide if they were friend or foe, and at this point there was something he didn’t like about the group. They seemed too willing to be friendly while leaving something undesirable about them. Shaun said, “I got enough to keep me for a few days. I figured I can just come back.”