Chapter 35
They look more horrifying up close. The taller one looks even more alien-like. Its head is abnormally long, it's eyes as small as buttons. They are still yellow though. It scrunches over, because it's too tall to stand up straight, it would hit the ceiling. It's claws are digging into the floor to help hold himself up.
The second one looks like a over-grown salamander. It's skin is dripping with green syrup-like goo. It's hands make small twitching movements that make me jump with every one.
My shaking hand grabs my gun, I quickly bring it up to eye level.
I have to kill them before they kill Robbie. Scooter and Layke can't loose another person from their family.
Robbie coughs a little, and I can see blood shoot out of his mouth. His face is covered in droplets of blood. His brow is flushed and I can see beads of sweat developing on it. His flannel is shredded in the front, the small frayed fabric is soaked with red.
"Don't worry Robbie, I got this." I act more confident than I am.
He slowly looks up at me. His eyes say, "Help me." And I can tell he's pleading for his life.
I hold my head up high, and take a deep breath. I squeeze the trigger multiple times.
Two shots enter the tallest ones abdomen. It's body moves back a little, but it doesn't do anything but let drops of blood slip down it's bumpy skin. It lets out a growl so deep, that you would think it's thunder.
I just made it mad.
The creatures step over Robbie and start to crawl on all fours towards me.
Panic sets it. My face goes white. I thought this would be easy, but I was wrong. I'm always wrong. I can feel my blood freeze in my veins, stopping myself from making any sudden movements.
I'm fucking dead.
My finger manages to squeeze the trigger again. I shoot at the smaller one hoping I will have a better shot at killing that one first. A bullet enters its eye, but it doesn't seem to faze him.
I mindlessly shoot a couple more times. Two bullets enter it's head, and it slumps over onto the ground. Black gunk falls out of the wounds, creating a small pool of it on the white floor.
Before I know it, the taller one jumps at me and pushes me over. It pins me to the ground, with the breath knocked out of me. I can feel my bones being pushed through the floor. My skin feels like it's melting into the tile under the weight of the creature's body.
I squirm and yank my arms and legs to try and get away. But the creature holds me down with tons of pressure. My chest feels like it's caving in, I wouldn't be surprised if my heart is left as a mushy mass of muscle.
The creature inches its head closer to mine. It's eyes stare at me with intense disturbance. I can see every brown dot crowding the glowing yellow irises, even though it's eyes are extremely small. It opens its mouth a little, and I can smell the stench of rotting organs creeping up its esophagus.
I realize I dropped my gun when the creature pushed me over.
This is it. There's nothing else I can do.
I squeeze my eyes shut to save myself from seeing my body being eaten alive. I'd rather just feel the pain, then see it happen. Plus, I couldn't handle seeing blood pouring out of me like that. That's not the last thing I want to see before I die.
My eyes water at the thought of leaving Brianna here without me. She'll be heart broken. So will Cameron. I'll just have to trust that he'll take care of her. Hopefully better than I would. I'll miss them. I'll miss Layke too. I'll miss everyone. They feel like family now. I guess it was only a matter of time before all of us die. Going from place to place is making us vulnerable, and that isn't the way to live. You have to find somewhere safe, and stay there.
Too bad it's too late. Maybe I should have listened to my father instead of going into the city. Maybe none of this would have happened.
"Get off her now!" I hear a yell from behind me.
The creature looks up and I strain my neck to look who it is.
Brianna stands there. Alone. With no weapon at all.
What the hell! Why did they let her out of the attic without a gun! Now she's going to die too!
"Are you insane?! Get out of here Brianna!" I yell, damaging my voice. "It will kill you!"
"I said get off!" She yells completely ignoring what I said.
Slowly the creature takes its grip off of my chest. It's eyes narrow while looking at her. It backs up so it's not on top of me anymore.
Is.... is it listening to her?
"Now get out! Before we kill you!" She points to the shattered glass door.
The creature laughs. The clicking making my skin crawl.
I look back at Brianna. She's now only a foot away from my head.
Her eyes. They're not brown anymore. They....they're yellow and glowing. Just like the creatures.
A low breath comes from the monster's mouth. It's almost a scoff. Then it turns around and slips out of the room in a blink of an eye.
I can't believe it.
It takes me a second to process what just happened. I blink my eyes over and over again, trying to wake myself up. This has to be a horrible dream.
"You okay?" Brianna kneels down and puts her hand on my shoulder.
Her eyes look exactly like an infected's. Is she bit?
I get up off the ground and stand up. I inspect her skin to see if she has any scratches or bite marks. After finding none, I pull her in for a hug. She squeezes me back.
"What's happening to you?" I ask.
"I don't know."
"Did you know you... you could do that?" I ask while pointing behind me at the shattered glass door.
"No."
"So you were just came out here and hoped for the best!?" I ask raising my eyebrow.
"I guess." She shrugges her shoulders.
"How did you get out of the attic?"
She laughs. "Well, while Cameron and Scooter were arguing and yelling at each other, I quietly put the attic door down and snuck out."
"You can't do that!" I yell. "You could of got yourself killed!"
She rolls her eyes. "So could you."
I shake my head. Slowly, I watch Brianna's glowing eyes fade back to their original chocolate brown color. Our attention shifts to Robbie, the sound of him coughing made me realize he's still in the room.
I rush over to him and pull away the flannel from his chest. He has huge scratches going from the top of his collarbone to his belly button. They're bleeding pretty bad, and they look really deep.
"We need to get out of here before the military comes in. There's no way they didn't hear the gun shots." I say and press my hands on Robbie's cuts. He groans in pain, and slightly rolls onto his side.
"What do you want me to do?." Brianna asks.
"Um I don't kno-"
"Brianna!!!" I hear from the living room.
"In here!" She yells back.
Scooter, Cameron, and Layke walk in the room. The second they see Robbie on the ground, they run over to him and inspect his chest.
I pull Cameron aside. "Why in the hell did you let Brianna out of the attic alone!" I growl.
"Uh.... it just kind of happened. I swear I didn't let her do it. She did it herself." He looks down at the floor, almost like a scolded puppy.
"Thanks Cameron." I sigh. "Good to know I can't trust in you."
"Really Summer? All I do for you and you pin this all on me? I'm sorry I was loosing my shit that Scooter shut the door in your face. What was I supposed to do? Just let you die down here alone?"
"No Cameron, I can take care of myself."
He backs away from me and starts to help pick Robbie up off the floor with Layke and Scooter. "Well, it looks like you can."
Cameron watches as Scooter and Layke carry Robbie toward the garage. He walks up to Brianna and points his finger in her face. "Never do that again."
"Well you three weren't going to do anything." She says sarcastically while giving a small smile.
"I was trying too! Scooter wouldn't let me!" Cameron gets a little agitated.
I pick up my gun off the ground and put the strap over my shoulder. "Look we can deal with this later. We need to focus on getting out of here."
"We can't drive away, they'll follow us. They probably have us surrounded already." Cameron spits.
"Then we walk."
"We can't, not with Robbie looking like that. Plus, we have all those supplies. We can't leave them behind."
"Were going to have too." I sigh.
"Do you know how much food that is Summer! That will feed us for-"
"Starving is better than being killed by the military."
"Not if they both end in us dying." Cameron says under his breath as we walk out of the kitchen.
"Do you have a better idea?"
Cameron thinks for a couple of seconds. "No."
"Okay then, its settled. We walk."
"But we need the protection of the van, you know how many infected are probably out there?" Cameron turns around and stops us from walking. His tone has calmed down a bit. It seems like he's starting to think about the situation instead of being mad at me.
"We'll find another car Cameron." I put my hand on his shoulder.
He nods somberly, and continues to walk towards the garage.
We argue with Layke and Scooter for a while before they agree with what we decided. I go back into the attic to grab my duffle bag, and empty some of the stuff out of it to make it lighter. I take Wilbur out of the cage and put him in the bag so I won't have to carry the clunky cage around. I leave it unzipped a little so he can stick his head out.
Brianna grabs a over-the-shoulder bag to take with us. I quickly stuff it with clothes and toiletries. Cameron takes his backpack that has all his stuff in it. Layke and Scooter grab their bags. Scooter makes sure to grab Robbie's.
When we're ready to leave, we try to get Robbie up and walking. He knows that he has too, and tries his hardest to subside the pain to keep up with us.
We quickly make our way out of the house, through the pool area, and over the back fence. Scooter and Layke drag Robbie along to help him jog faster. I make sure Brianna stays at my hip, and that my bag doesn't bounce too much to hurt Wilbur.
We cross a couple more houses, and over the short brick wall that separates the subdivision from miles of woods.
After jogging for a couple minutes, we sit Robbie down on a rock to bandage up his wounds quickly. Cameron and I take watch for infected, or military, or creatures, while Scooter and Layke help Robbie.
Layke takes off Robbie's flannel and shirt. Then he takes a bottle of alcohol out of Robbie's bag and pours it onto his chest. I knew Robbie would take some of his 'anti-depressants' with him when we left that house. No surprise.
Scooter puts his hand over Robbie's mouth so his scream wouldn't be that loud. But, through his closed fingers, his scream was still completely audible. After the wound's disinfected and wiped clean, Scooter takes a shirt out of his bag and cuts it up with his pocket knife. He presses the small strips of cloth over the deep cuts to help stop the bleeding. Cameron hands them a roll of duct tape out of his bag, and they start to attach more strips to him.
"How do you think they found us?" Scooter speaks up.
"Followed us?" I say.
"No way. There's no way they followed us. We were at that house for almost a full day before they showed up." Cameron says.
"Yeah but we had to bury..... Linda. And that took a while to do. Maybe they watched us and followed us from there." I breathe heavily and try to stop the image of Linda's rotting face from disturbing my mind.
"I still don't think they did that." Scooter says and he motions Layke to give him another piece of cloth.
"Well could they have tracked us?" I ask.
"There's no way there could be a tracker in any of our stuff. All of it was in the van." Cameron says while shifting his gun in his hands.
"What about their guns? We still have a couple. Could their be a tracker in them?" I say.
"No-, there's no way. I-If there was a tracker in it, we would be able to see it on the outside of the gun." Robbie says softly in between winces.
Scooter rips a piece of duct tape off the roll with his teeth. "The only thing we took from the compound was Brianna."
"Could their be a tracker in her?" Layke asks.
"Maybe." Scooter says.
"Whoa now, you guys are not going to be digging into my little sister." I huff.
"Why would they want her back anyways?" Cameron asks.
Maybe because she's special? I know she is! Her eyes were glowing! Should I tell them about what happened with the creature? What would they do? Would they want to give her up and run? I can't let that happen. The only person who knows about this is me. Maybe Robbie if he was conscious, which I think he was. I need to keep him quiet.
"I don't know... But you guys aren't poking her with knives. She's been through enough." I say trying to keep myself from looking suspicious.
"Lets just take a look, okay?" Scooter asks while finishing up Robbie's bandages.
I step in front of Brianna to shield her from them, but she makes her way around me.
"Maybe it's these things?" She asks while touching one of the implants in her arm.
"That has to be it." Layke says as he steps closer to her to get a better look.
"No! Don't touch her!" I try to hit his hand away.
"I'm not going to hurt her, I just want to look at them." He rolls his eyes.
As Layke looks at the implants on Brianna, Scooter puts Robbie's shirt and flannel back on.
I'm worried his cuts will get infected. And if they do, he's done for. We don't have any antibiotics or anything to help get rid of it. We have to find somewhere safe.
"These could be it." Layke says while stepping away from Brainna. "We're going to have to remove them."
"What! No we can't! We don't have enough supplies to keep her from bleeding and getting infected."
"We have too Summer." Cameron puts his hand on my shoulder.
"Can we at least wait until we're not surrounded by dirt and pollen and woods?" I sigh.
"No we can't wait. You want them to follow us again? If we get rid of them later, it would give them an idea of what direction we went in. It's better to get rid of them when we're somewhat close to them." Layke says.
How the hell am I going to let them dig a knife into my sisters skin, and remove these things from her? It will cause her so much pain.
"Okay. Lets do it, quickly." I grit my teeth as I watch Layke take his pocket knife out and click it open.