****
The soldiers helped them as they came up the ladder taking their gear and weapons. The new recruits stared in awe at the man whom it seemed could not be killed. A light blood trickle came from his ears. They knew if it was his eyes that he had been Turned and that he would need to be dealt with. They stared at his arms as well, the other immediate sign to tell if he was one of them was missing skin from the first bite of flesh they took was almost always that of their own. They tightened down the hatch moving from one building to the next until they were in the back up bunker where a portion of goods was left.
The young soldier who had tried to talk to Shaun earlier came up a second time eager to speak to the man. He had heard stories of him for the last few years. Each one was wilder depicting him as a man that was immune to the bites, who could take the Turned on with his bare hands and win. Shaun turned around eying the kid and nodded his head. “Sir I just wanted to ask you where we are going to go next, I mean we are after a cure or something right. Your dad he was a scientist?”
Shaun just stared at the kid, he pointed to one of the Turned who they had put down when they entered this building originally as a backup shelter. The boy nodded looking at it, Shaun walked over pulling the bayonet knife from his rifle and knelt down next to it. The other new recruits followed in closely staring at the man who had no signs of a weak stomach. Shaun stabbed the knife down into its chest deep and brought the knife all the way down the Turned’s sternum. The group all took in a deep breath as the stench of rotting flesh was unbearable. Shaun pulled the knife back out wiping the sludge on its pants and pointing to different organs which were no longer intact or weren’t much more than a black sludge. He pointed at where the heart used to be. In its place was at best a quarter of a heart that until a bullet by his rifle had pierced the monsters skull had still been pumping even in its mangled state. Shaun looked up at the group realizing this was probably the first time that they had seen something like this and anything like this so closely.
“Look here class, there is no cure, and the only way to avoid getting this is to not breathe in the spray from X-74 and to not get bitten, scratched, or share any blood with the infected. You can ask for forgiveness if you make a mistake, but it won’t save you from having a bullet put in your skull if you make a mistake that turns you into one of them.”
Shaun looked up at the group each of them looking ill. The harsh realization of what they had to deal with on almost a daily basis was pushing their young minds past the brink that they could handle. He peered over seeing Ellie resting in the corner, she was making a drop it down gesture with her hand. Shaun took a second gaze seeing that every kid here was looking at the specimen in front of them praying that it wouldn’t be them. He thought of the original group that had gone up to his family cabin when the shit had hit the fan, all of them now were either in a better place or had abandoned the group convinced staying with Shaun and Ellie and their never ending battle would wind up with them dead or worse Turned.
Shaun stood covering the man again, trying to think of something, anything that would make the small group feel at ease. It was not something that was his strong suit. He held up the rifle for all to see. “They might have numbers, they might be stronger, but they are not the dominant race. We know that a bullet to the head will kill them, we know that without legs we can chop their damn heads off we can win this battle! We can take back the continent!”
The young man who had originally been so optimistic asked. “How are we going to do that?”
“We blow the son of a bitches up.”
Everyone just stared at Shaun who was confident, thought that he was insane. But he had been thinking of this plan for a while. He came up with the idea after going to the last military base. It had been stockpiled with plastic explosive enough to make what they had done today look like a small firecracker. “We can lure them into following us and I don’t mean just a few I mean we go through the city, we find cars that still have gas in them and will start and we get them to follow us. We find the biggest building in the city and we blow the son of a bitch up.”
Ellie was standing now, not sure what to think about this. “What building are you talking about Shaun? We’ve been here for months you have your pick from what I can tell of big ass buildings lying around just sitting empty with the exception of the Turned that were either stuck in there or who were still looking for a fresh meal.”
“I was leaning towards the Regan building, its big enough if we stack the walls with the
C-4 that we can bring the entire thing down around them.”
The group just stared at Shaun, Ellie the only one confident enough to talk back to him or question him nodded her head slowly in a natural for her sarcastic tone asked. “So…. we go get some cars and we get all the explosives we can carry and then we get every turned in DC to follow us into this building armed and ready to have an explosion big enough to be seen from outer space?”
Shaun who was more than use to Ellie’s sarcasm nodded his head. “Exactly.” Offering no further explanation of the plan for the night.
*****
He pushed through the doors carrying his pack where he found a cot and dived into a restless night filled with ghosts of the past of more people than he knew the names of. Ellie came in lying next to him only able to sleep when she knew he was safe. He was almost never safe and he almost never got the chance to rest like he was tonight.
Shaun awoke when she came in. He couldn’t fall back asleep but was able to relax feeling the same way about Ellie. She had rested her hand on his chest and breathed deeply. Shaun pulled out the last thing he would ever receive from his father besides heartache. It was crumpled nd had been folded a thousand times.
“Shaun this is the impossible letter to write. I don’t know how to put this into words, I don’t know if you will ever choose to forgive me? By the time you read this it will be too late and there will be nothing that anyone can do about this. I can only pray, pray to god one day they will be stopped. If you choose to tell Ellie that I was responsible for this than that is your choice. I don’t have time to make peace with everyone that will be harmed today by this disease.”
Shaun read until the end laying the letter down looking at Ellie thinking of how much happier the rest of the world would be if he had just been the guy in the hall who just kept walking. But he knew that he couldn’t live without her in his life even if it meant an existence of blood, death, and loss.
Over the next week the young crew of all that America had left fighting for it gathered the supplies needed. Had there been astronauts still in outer space they would have been able to see the explosion from their space craft.
The Orphans Brigade
By M. Evans
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