The Orphans (Book 6): Divided Read online

  He took a step, more confident this time, and put an arm around her, but he was shrugged off. He wasn’t used to that and yelled, “Don’t be like that, Kya. We’ve got to be nice to each other. You can’t be mean. We don’t have enough left to be mean. We’ve got to like each other, and be nice, and love.”

  Kya stopped her march, looking around the long bunkhouse, seeing fresh Bondo that had been filled in hastily and not yet painted over. It was an attempt to erase those reminders of bullets that had taken those who had been one dear to them; loved ones, friends, sons, daughters, fathers, and mothers.

  She didn’t say anything and ran outside, getting yet another reminder of how their life, much like the base, was still in shambles from where the explosions had taken place when the others had intruded in their home. The massive amounts of equipment that had been brought back when Aslin had finally broken Clary down to go get it so they would never have to worry about food was still sitting in the middle of the base. She looked at it, wondering silently if making this their home would be the right play. She was a native to the state and knew that there was more farmland than the eye could see the end of once you got outside of the city, where commercial development had not taken control of the masses.

  There was no reason why she could not get a look at the surrounding area. There were enough kids, she thought that they could figure out something. They probably wouldn’t even have to go very far.

  Joey was watching her, still waiting for an apology or for any sign of emotion to come across her features. She turned to him, looking at his questioning face and said, “You know what, Joey, I think that maybe it is time we stop worrying about what everyone else wants me to do.”

  “Uh, good? I don’t know if I understand, Kya.”

  “What I mean, is that maybe it is time that we start making some decisions for ourselves. Why are we staying on a giant military base? I’d say after a year of waiting that we probably don’t have any cavalry coming to pick us up. Why don’t we just go somewhere new? We wouldn’t have to worry about people coming to kill us if we went to the middle of nowhere.”

  “But how will Clary, Greg, Ellie, and everyone find us if we leave?”

  Kya laughed. “We’ll come back, Joey, it isn’t that big of a deal. We don’t have any good memories of this place. You realize we’ve been sleeping in that hospital for a long time? You know why? I’ll tell you: because nothing good happens here, and everywhere else has nothing but bad memories in it. I say we find someplace new, move everything, and just stay off the radar for a while until we get something safe set up. Aslin got us enough things that I think we could go anywhere we want to and make a go of it. What do you say?”

  “That, I agree with you, Kya… Oh, and Mr. Clary is going to be, like, totally pissed. Don’t tell Mr. Clary that I swore. He doesn’t like it; he’s always yelling at Greg about it.”

  “Yeah, it’s because he curses like a sailor. You’re a saint compared to him, Joey.”

  “You sure you don’t want to just wait a couple hours for Mr. Clary and them to get back? He doesn’t like it when he isn’t listened to. Besides, I bet they are gonna be back soon. They were only going to Johnston; it’s, like, five seconds away. They’ll get Ellie and they’ll come back.”

  “Yeah, well, if I leave now, I don’t have to worry about him saying no. You ever hear that it is easier to ask for an apology than permission?”

  “You really wanna try to use that on Mr. Clary? What about the other kids? We can’t leave them here by themselves, can we?”

  “We can do what we want to, Joey. There’s no reason I need to listen to Clary anymore. No one wants to tell me what is going on. He doesn’t think I should go out. The last time a Seal left and we were by ourselves, the devil came through our gates.”

  “I thought it was just the bad guy, the Devil came here too? Oh, I think that is way worse.”

  Kya shook her head, walking off. “Do you want to go, or are you going to stay here to babysit?”

  “If you leave, I’m gonna tell Lou.”

  In the distance, Aliyah watched the two talking conspiratorially and ran over. “You two going somewhere? I want to leave. Other than getting to leave once when we went after those assholes, I haven’t been anywhere in, like, forever!”

  “We were going to go for a ride, but Joey is threatening to tell Lou,” Kya explained.

  “Like into the city, or what? How good are you at driving?”

  “Did you hear me? He’ll tell Lou,” Kya said.

  “Right, and what is Lou going to do? He isn’t your dad; he doesn’t own the car we are going to take, right? Are you able to drive? Do you know how to get us there without crashing? Why are you leaving?” Aliyah asked.

  “I’m good. I’ve had some lessons, and I already knew how to drive for the most part when I came here. It doesn’t take much to be better than Greg at least. We are going to go look for a new spot.”

  “What kind of new spot?”

  “Like one that isn’t a military base filled with memories of death and pain. I figured there’s got to be more places outside of here, or maybe there’s somewhere in the city we could go? That’s where all the good stuff is going to be, is in town. But I think if we drove out into the middle of nowhere, that is where we are going to find, like, entire houses that are untouched. Who knows, maybe there’s some sweet old farmer like Andy and his wife who will take us in?”

  “You really think that they are going to take everyone in? Have you even spoken to Clary about this?” Aliyah asked.

  Joey yelled, “I’m sorry but didn’t you hear me? Is there a reason that we can’t just wait until they come back? I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  “Kya, we can just leave Joey here, right? He doesn’t need to go if he doesn’t want to.”

  “Clary lost his best friend. You know I felt bad—like, real bad—when I lost my sister and brother. You are gonna break Mr. Clary’s heart if you go. You gotta be patient and take your time. He’s going to be hurt, and you don't wanna make it worse,” Joey pleaded.

  “Joey, you just don’t understand. I just want to leave this place. I want all of us to leave this base; nothing good happens here,” Kya tried to reason.

  Aliyah threw up her hands. “We aren’t leaving, are we? Yet another day full of boredom.”

  “Better than zombies trying to eat your brains,” Joey said as he made hand motions of one of The Turned pulling his brains from his skull.

  The girls nodded slowly, not too sure how to react to him.

  Chapter 6

  Ellie’s feet dangled beneath her. She watched the running water, never had she so badly wanted to be in it as she did right now. She craned her head back, seeing one of The Turned that had a grip on her daypack beginning to lift her. It screamed in her face, and that was when five other of The Turned came up next to it, screaming as well, each pushing the others out of the way. Ellie was doing her best not to lose her mind, but wasn’t able to focus and couldn’t see how she was going to live through this. The alpha Turned screamed at the others, letting them know that this meal was his, and he would not be sharing a single ounce of it.

  When The Turned brought its head back around, it saw the barrel of a rifle pointing directly at its face. Ellie smiled devilishly, squeezing the trigger twice and sending two bullets through its skull, decimating the rear of it. The Turned behind her stumbled backwards, and the one who had a grip on her pack released it as the signal coming from its brain shut off. Ellie hit the side of the bridge as she fell and a burn raced through her wrist. She prayed that she had not done what she thought she had.

  She impacted the water hard, feeling like she’d landed on concrete. Once the initial shock of pain wore off, she thought that maybe, just maybe, she was home free. But The Turned—who could not swim and had yet to realize that fact—leapt into the air after Ellie. She watched as fifteen practically dove into the water. Some went down feet first, never bobbing back up, while others belly
flopped.

  Ellie did her best to stay head above water. She could feel a pulling coming from her feet and realized her tennis shoes were trying to pull her beneath the water. She kicked at them furiously until they came off, refusing to become another one of the dead—or for that matter to be one of their victims.

  The Turned who had not sunk immediately flapped their arms, not knowing what they were doing, but the reaching motion was doing an effective enough job in trying to reach for Ellie that they started to sloppily swim. Ellie laid her head back, doing a back float. When she went under the bridge, even more jumped in. Some landed within a few feet of her face. She got her float under control and was spread eagle, her legs lining up the dead in her sights, and fired her pistol as quickly as she could, taking those doing the horrible swim out.

  She made sure to shoot true, because there wouldn’t be time for second chances. She screamed as the dead leapt further than she could imagine. One made it to her, clenching onto her leg, ready to bite. The two of them both went under the water from its sheer force. She kicked with her free leg, but the dead would not let go of the grip it had on her calf. She waited for it to bite, knowing that would be her end, but it didn’t come.

  When the two of them surfaced again, she shot once more, skinning the top of its head. It looked as if she’d run a zipper down its skull, exposing its brain. When it brought its head back up, she clicked empty on her pistol. Ellie brought it down into The Turned’s brain until the pistol butt disappeared into its skull. It let out one final scream—not from pain, but in frustration that it could not get in one last meal.

  Ellie watched as she gained speed and the dead slowly started to disappear from her sight. She thought of them beneath her and went back to keeping her feet above the water. Ellie saw The Turned running around the bridge to try to catch up, but she’d gotten enough of a lead between herself and them that, even with their speed, they would be unable to make up the distance.

  She hit the release on her pistol, catching the magazine and stuffing it in her shirt, then replaced it, hoping that it would not rust out before she made it back to the base. There, she could exchange it for one of a thousand new ones that had never had a round fired from them or seen the light of day.

  She watched the sky as she floated for what seemed like forever. Ellie wasn’t stupid. She was aware that she needed to get out of the water, and that with every minute she stayed in, she was floating further away from the base, her friends, and what safety it provided. She was confident that the majority of those who had turned were wandering the cities, not looking for the living out in the woods.

  She pulled back her sleeve, trying to self-assess her wrist, glad that it was not her dominant hand. Ellie rolled it, feeling nothing good coming from it. She thought of Lou and figured he’d be her first stop after she got the ass-chewing up one side and down the other from Clary, and probably anyone else that had risked their lives to come and find her. She definitely felt guilty, as well as embarrassed. If she’d had kept her emotions in check, she could have gone with a crew, and they would work together to bring home the dead. Those that could be buried always were, for it was a luxury no longer known to most.

  She jumped when something hit her in the face. She instinctively batted it away, only to have another one, and another come at her. She screamed until she could finally hold it up and see what it was. A thin rope was resting on her chest with a cowboy lasso on the end. Ellie held it up and tried to look both ways, not yet following the rope to its home. She realized this was probably a sign from God, and that she might want to hold onto this one.

  Ellie held onto it with her bad hand until she could put the safety on her pistol and tuck it back in her holster. She switched to her good hand yelling, “Pull me in, please. Please pull me in!” She sat wading in the water, holding onto the rope like her life very well depended on it—which of course it did. “I said pull me in.”

  She was having a hard time trying to see who was on the other end of the rope. She bobbed up high enough to see a pair of teenagers and what she assumed were their fathers sitting behind them. One dad had plain clothes on, but was wearing a deputy's badge on his chest. He had a pair of binoculars and was leaning over towards the other adult.

  The man with the badge yelled, “You got some pretty serious hardware there. You keep that at your side when we pull you up. Any issues with that, sweetheart?”

  Ellie—who would normally have a smartass comment ready for any man she knew, or even did not know, who called her sweetheart—yelled back. “If I don’t, what are you going to do?”

  The man with the badge walked up, taking the rope from the two boys, and pulled out a knife from its sheath. “I cut this rope and you see how long it’ll take you to get out of this river once you hit the serious currents, which aren’t too damn far off, I promise you that.”

  “Just pull me in; I don’t want to shoot any of you. I didn’t even know you guys were here.”

  The man nodded, going slow with the rope. When she brought up her second hand, he pulled a little faster. She could tell trust would be an issue for the short time that she was going to be around these people. She thought of her own base of operations and realized that maybe they had been screwed over before, or worse. She knew besides the attack the month before, they really hadn’t had as tough a time as many others. They had a base, guns, food—which, at the time, didn’t seem like much. Now it seemed like it would never end, given how many people had been taken from them.

  The two teen boys went to walk forward to help her out of the water, but the second man put hands on their shoulders. “You two stay right where you are. We don’t know her. You’ve seen a girl before; try to think with your other head, if you can.”

  Ellie could tell they took directions well, or at least well from him, because he did not have to ask a second time. He walked up slowly, hands up in a non-threatening manner and looking more than a little nervous. She remembered that she was wearing no shoes and the rocks at the edge of the river’s bank cut into her feet until she slowly made her way out. She slowed down, reaching to move some, but the man walked into the shallows of the river, gripping her without asking under the armpits, and carried her the rest of the way to the bank’s edge.

  “You don’t seem to have any shoes there, girl, now do you?”

  She didn’t know what to say. She put her attitude in check, realizing these men had done her a solid, and it was not their fault in the least that she’d washed up in their life, literally. “No—I mean I did. I had to kick them off; they were pulling me under. I hadn’t planned on going for a swim today.”

  The man came up out of the bank, staying behind her, and reached up, pulling the rifle from around her neck and shoulders. “I'm not saying we are keeping it, but we don’t know you quite well enough to trust you with this thing. I’d like the pistol and knife also, please.”

  “I need these things, sir. I'm not a threat to you or your camp.”

  The man who had clearly once been a police officer—based on the badge—came forward, not looking nearly as calm and polite as the man who’d carried her to save her from bloodied feet from the river’s rocks. He held out his hand, keeping his right hand on his own pistol. “If you leave you can take it back. How does that sound, fair?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Not if you don’t want to go back into that water right there. We got one rule at our little camp. It ain’t much, but it is ours and it is safe. We don’t go around inviting all kinds of strangers into it. We do that because we like living and breathing. I know that probably comes as a big shocker, huh? I'm still wondering how a girl who looks like she wouldn’t even know how to drive yet is carrying around something like this. Makes me wonder if you are trouble, or if you aren’t, if there’s trouble after you, given you were in a river fully clothed.”

  “It was either jump in the water or get eaten. The Turned were on my ass and they were coming from both ways. I had to di
tch my ride. I'm almost sixteen and I probably know how to drive as well as you guys do. I don’t have any trouble looking for me. I hope that the dead that followed me into the water have drowned by now, or we would have seen a few screaming as they passed us.”

  “You jumped into this water on purpose? You must have been up shit creek, excuse the pun,” the man who had carried her out of the water said.

  One of the two boys came up, shy looking at the wet clothes that were more than plastered to her thin frame. Ellie, much like the other girls, had begun to mature over the last year, and it didn’t go unnoticed. She’d always had a face that her mother said would only make her more beautiful as time passed, but with her coming into womanhood, it had only made the attention worse. Especially with the lack of women on base.

  She cleared her throat. “Eyes up, kid.”

  The boy seemed to take offense to that immediately. “Look, I'm not a kid. I'm fifteen years old. I'm Allen, and this is my friend Tony, he’s sixteen already. He’d have his license by now if… well, you know, they still had that out there. We can drive too. What were you talking about with The Turned? What is that? Was it a group chasing you or something?”