~ ~ ~ ~
Walt didn't keep me much longer. I think he could feel I wasn't comfortable, and he wasn't going to invite me inside with the Misses still around. I wished I could have told him it had nothing to do with him. There was a part of me that did want to stay and talk longer, but a bigger part of me needed to get away from his pain. I had enough pain in my own life that I couldn't take on his as well.
He did manage to give me a container of squirrel soup. It sat in the passenger seat beside me, sloshing around as I drove and I really wasn't sure if it was going to get eaten or dumped along the side of the road. I gave him some packages of noodles and some spices. I'm sure he had enough food stored away, but he thanked me greatly for them.
Sharing food that would spoil was one thing, but passing on the things that would keep was something completely different. Those were precious commodities you tried to hang on to for as long as possible. Some days you never knew when you were going to eat again, but if what Walt said about our diminished need for food was true, then that should relieve some of the stress.
Inevitably, as I was driving, my mind wandered to Walter's stories about his wife and Michael. Everyone left on this wasted earth had lost someone. There was no escaping it. I didn't want to try to count all the people I'd lost, but I couldn't help but think of Joss.
Did I really do the right thing for him? That old farmhouse seemed like a much better home than traveling around with me. Their growing community looked stable and safe. Guilt rattled around in the pit of my stomach though, and I couldn't pinpoint why.
I let my mind continue to drift in memory, going back to when I met Joss and Seth. I was passing through El Paso and saw a grocery store with the lights on. Normally I would avoid something like that, or at least approach with more caution, but the tide of freaks that were banging on the doors and windows told me someone in there was desperate for help. I couldn't let it be.
I was driving an old red truck at the time and decided I could use it as a battering ram to take out a handful on the outside. It left me room enough to get into the store through a broken window so I could find what had caused the frenzy.
There were waves of them inside the store, rushing up and down the aisles. That was a good sign they hadn't found what they were looking for yet. Someone in here was alive.
"Hello!" I called out, going against my cautious nature. I found myself hoping it wasn't too late.
I started killing the freaks I could corner. Although they were ignoring me, they were fast and hard to pin down while they were frenzied. Wanting to save bullets, I had resorted to my knife, but death by knife was extremely messy. It was best to get a killing blow in one swing because it contained the mess to where they fell. If I missed, then I had freaks running up and down the store, raining blood on everything until they collapsed.
No one answered my calls, and I already had more than a few face-eaters down when I noticed a group of them starting to converge in one aisle. They were crowding in, all of them trying to get into one spot, jostling each other around, biting and snapping as they were shoved. I couldn't see what was drawing them there. I spotted a broken ceiling tile being trampled under their feet. I looked up.
The ceiling in this section was low, like the designers were going for a homey feel for the bakery. Someone standing on the top shelf would easily reach the low ceiling. I was looking past the ceiling into the blackness beyond and someone moved up there.
"Are you okay?" I shouted, assuming they were uninfected. The freaks were moaning and growling quite loudly, but I heard a muffled reply over the din.
"You should run!" A child's voice. I pulled my revolver without a second thought. Even the loss of the precious bullets didn't cause a moment of hesitation. I was a crack shot, my dad taught me extremely well, but I took two steps forward before I started firing. There was no reason I needed to take any chances.
Six shots later, there were six freaks on the floor. Only three were left standing. In their frenzy, they hadn't taken their focus off the child in the ceiling so I brought out my knife. With their heads thrown back and looking up, they were all giving me a great target to shove the long blade of my bowie knife into the soft flesh of their neck and twist it up into their brain. I dropped the final three, one by one.
"How you doing up there?" I called up, my eyes trying to penetrate the darkness.
A boy with dark shaggy hair and clear blue eyes poked his head down to look at me, his eyes wide with shock and fear. "Where's Seth?"
I shook my head at him, "I just got here. Haven't seen anyone else. You okay up there for a few minutes still? There's more freaks running around down here."
He nodded vigorously, "Seth was leading them off. Please find him!"
"Just stay there,” I warned as more freaks started to make their way over to us, the noise attracting them. I backed the opposite way down the aisle and pulled my spare cylinder out of my belt pouch.
I knew they'd stop under the kid and not go for me, but he didn't know that. He tried to scream a warning when I saw an adjacent tile to him crack and break, a worn Nike shoe pushing through. Whatever had been supporting him in the ceiling was starting to give way. His scream of warning turned to fright as he slipped down to the top shelf, inches away from the grasping hands of the freaks. Again, I wasted no time and used more bullets to dispatch the four freaks that were raging to kill the boy. The imminent danger gone, I quickly tallied the body count.
"Thirteen here, at least seven outside." I looked up into his frightened little face. "I haven't got them all yet. Stay up there."
"No, don't leave me!" His pleading whine stopped me, and I groaned against my instinct. I couldn't leave him there.
I glared at him, calculating the best course of action to make sure this kid stayed safe. "What's your name?"
"Joss."
"Joss, I'm Ali. Can you see any from up there?" He looked around, stretching up to the ceiling and quickly ducking back down.
"There are some by the front doors. I can't see Seth."
"How many?" I asked and was hoping this Seth guy was still alive. I couldn't take a child under my wing now.
"Five or six, they're stuck in a checkout lane." He gave me a nervous smirk and a shrug, but the frightened look immediately returned to his features a second later.
"Okay. Joss, this is what's going to happen,” I started as I reloaded my gun and my extra cylinder. "You are going to stay up there, but you can follow behind me and keep a look out. Can you get back up in the ceiling if we get surrounded again?"
He nodded vigorously and I continued. "You tell me if you see anything, and stay down. Make sure they don't spot you."
"Okay,” he said weakly. I gave him an encouraging nod and started to move towards the front of the aisle. As soon as I could get a clear shot, I was going to take them all out and worry about the ones outside the store afterwards.
Then all hell broke loose.
Before I even made it to the end of the aisle, my truck...
MY TRUCK!
My old red Dodge truck came barreling through the sliding glass doors, sending shattered glass flying everywhere. It crashed into the checkout lane, sending splintered wood and plastic raining down around it. The fact that the five freaks ended up underneath it was no consolation to me at all.
"Seth!" Joss yelled out with an enthusiasm that I was not feeling. I was ready to make this jackass wish the freaks had eaten him.
"You son of a bitch!" I yelled as I withdrew from the cover of the aisle. The crash had caused the driver's side door to jam, and I could see the man inside kicking at it to get it open. Joss was on the ground now and running forward in his excitement, but he didn't realize the danger wasn't completely over. As he was running past me, I grabbed him by the back of the shirt and jerked him behind me. Two more freaks were coming in through the newly made opening.
"Seth!" Joss screamed again as he saw the freaks, his voice taking on a desperate tone. Seth had managed to
kick the door open as I leveled my gun, but I had to readjust to get a clear shot.
"Get down!" I yelled at the man as he staggered out of my truck, but he didn't hear me through his daze. His head was bleeding, and I figured he must have taken a pretty hard hit against the steering wheel during the collision. Joss was screaming frantically behind me, and one of the freaks was five feet away from Seth, already in a frenzy to get at him. I had to take the shot.
The freak crashed into Seth, causing him to stumble forward against one of the remaining checkout tables and he shook himself free of its tangled arms in a surge of panic, but he was safe. The freak was already dead. I didn't miss. I took the last one out easily, and Joss tried to rush past me again, but I held him fast.
"Are you bitten, you truck stealing son-of-a-bitch?" I yelled at him, letting Joss lead us at a slow approach.
"What?" Seth mumbled as he stood up, spitting out a mouth full of blood.
"Are. You. Bit." I ground out through clenched teeth. If he wasn't bitten, I was going to kill him myself.
"No." His blue eyes finally focused on me. The same clear blue eyes as Joss's. The same hair, the same long face, he was an older version of Joss. Brothers. "Who the hell are you?"
I let Joss go, and he barreled into Seth, wrapping his arms tightly around his mid-section. I saw Seth groan inwardly, but to his credit, he didn't make a sound and even managed to pat Joss on the back.
"That's Ali, and she's fucking awesome!" Joss exclaimed as he backed away from Seth.
My eyebrow rose in surprise and amusement for the briefest of seconds before Seth snapped, "Watch your mouth."
Seth glared at me, and I glared back. He couldn't have been much older than me, and the two of them looked like they had been eating decently. They weren't the skin and bones some of the survivors I ran across were. One quick look at my truck, and I knew it wasn't going anywhere ever again. That glance renewed my anger, and I directed it at Seth.
"Alright asshole, you better have a vehicle. Since you destroyed my truck, you're stuck with me until we're out of here,” I grumbled as I moved to grab my packs out of the cab.
"I don't think so," Seth returned, but Joss came to my defense.
"She saved my life, come look." He was pulling Seth's hand to lead him to aisle three. I finished collecting my bags before I followed them to find Seth and Joss standing over the bodies of the thirteen freaks I killed.
"She saved your life too, Seth," Joss said quietly.
Seth glanced at me, his brow furrowed. Then he turned and walked down the aisle, stepping over the freaks and pools of blood. He motioned me to follow. I distinctly remember Joss's ecstatic expression as he ran back to me, grabbed my hand and led me behind Seth.
Pulling my mind back to the present and wiping tears from my cheeks, I took a right in Sweetwater, heading north. Wherever this guilt was coming from, I had made a mistake leaving Joss there. Ten minutes later I was rolling up the driveway to the old ranch, my stomach doing flip-flops with anticipation. When I saw Jeremy coming around the back of the house holding a rifle, I rolled down my window to call out a greeting. He relaxed and stood with the rifle propped against his leg, waiting on me.
Something was wrong. I knew it before I even got out of the truck. I didn't see any of the kids, and the look on Jeremy's face was grim. So grim it made me want to turn around and not look back. With a knot growing in the pit of my stomach, I approached him. When he wouldn't meet my eyes, I could hear his words before he even spoke them.
"Ali, good to see you're doing well." His voice didn't even have its usual gruffness. It was flat and lifeless.
"Where's Joss?" I demanded immediately. I was surprised to find a lump already growing in my throat.
"A day ago, we went up for a haul to Romy," he started, but fell silent. I swallowed hard and closed my eyes. I didn't want him to tell me. When he spoke again, it was barely a whisper. "Jake and I, we forgot to check the ladies room. Becky..." His voice cracked.
My eyes opened wide at that. Tears glistening on his cheeks, and he choked back sobs as he continued, "He tried to save her. Bravest kid I ever saw. Killed two of those bastards."
I wanted to collapse. I wanted to scream. I stumbled away from Jeremy, back to the SUV. My emotions twisted into rage, and I punched my fist into the hot metal. My knuckles cracked under the pressure and pain reverberated up my arm. I let the physical pain course through me, grasping on to it like a lifeline.
"Are they dead?" I had to know.
"Turned." Jeremy choked out. I faced him again, seeing he was openly crying. Tears streamed down his cheeks and snot dripped from his nose. The sight of Kevin standing on the porch watching us caught my attention for a brief second. Their only child now.
"Ali," Jeremy continued. "I couldn't do it. I tried, but I couldn't do it."
My thoughts drifted to Walt and his Misses. Walt couldn’t do it either. Could I? I had to see it for myself. The ache in me for leaving Seth wouldn't allow me to let Joss live like this. I didn't want to cry while I was in front of Jeremy, but my eyes welled up with tears.
"Where's this Romy,” I managed to say through gritted teeth.
"Just north up 70. You can't miss it."
I turned without another word. In that moment, I hated him. His carelessness had gotten Joss and his own daughter killed. I didn't care about his pain. My rage at this injustice was too strong. I knew I shouldn't have left Joss here. They didn't take this new world seriously.
By the time I was back in the truck, I had myself convinced it was my fault. I never should have left him. I could have stayed and protected him. He should have been with me.
I turned the truck north, heading to Romy.
Chapter 4 – Joss