The Orphans (Book 2): Surviving the Turned (22 page)

Phelps walked to the hill, lighting up and getting his first good look at the climb to the cabin. “You know, your grandpa might have been a damn genius putting it up this far out of town and in the hills, but that looks like a real bitch. Let’s get moving. The general wanted me to remind you boys that time is kind of important and that the lines they set up on the east border of Illinois have already fallen.”

Shaun shrugged, motioning to follow him. Ellie and Greg fell in next to him. Shaun said, “Well, I think it’s great that we are able to get them the research and amazing that they can’t give you guys a ride out of here. I can see why they might leave me but…”

Ellie slapped him on the shoulder. “Shaun, it’s not your fault. Why don’t you blame Lucas, or the principal, or a thousand other people who could have made the smallest difference in the day? We get these asses what they want, and they get out of our hair.”

Greg said, “Well, I’m kind of happy about one thing.”

Tina shot him a glance. “What the hell could you possibly be happy about, Greg?”

Greg smiled, pointing to the SEAL team hiking it up the hill spread out behind them. “Well, if we get chased by those things, we got youth and the fact that we don’t smoke on our side.”

They all looked back at the soldiers, smiling and laughing. McClellan saw this, and walking with a smoke hanging out of his mouth, he yelled. “Something funny, kids?”

They stopped laughing. Turning back around, Ellie whispered, “Smoke ’em if ya got them, boys.”

When they got to the top of the clearing, Patrick said, “I’m going to go get Mike. Is there anything else that you want from the cabin, guys?”

Tina said, “Greg and I will come with you. We might want to get some more food; those guys look like they can eat.”

Greg asked, “Shaun, you sure you want to go with them? There isn’t any reason that you need to watch them unbury him, is there?”

Shaun shook his head no, kicking at some branches. “I don’t know. I think it’s my responsibility to make sure they put things back the way they were.”

Greg yelled over to the group, “You guys got a shovel with you, by chance?”

Phelps nodded, pulling out a collapsible hand shovel. Greg couldn’t help himself; he laughed out loud, pointing at it. “You gotta be kidding me; we need to go back to the cabin, anyway. If we need to be hurrying then you're going to dig it up way faster with an actual shovel.”

Phelps looked at it, thinking about the plots he’d seen dug in his life… something that he’d been witness to way too many times. He put his shovel away and they walked up a second hill to the cabin as he heard Shaun yell, “It’s just over this hill.”
              Greg said, “Christ, Shaun, how much wood did you leave on the stove? It’s smoking like a son of a bitch.” He pointed at the black smoke rolling up in waves into the sky.

Shaun dropped his pack and sprinted up the hill. Ellie followed closely behind him. Shaun got to the top of the hill, dropping to his knees at the sight—the cabin and his hopes getting smaller by the second. Shaun stared in disbelief, unable to deal with the idea of what was happening. The fire reflected in his watery eyes as he clinched his fists, smashing them into his legs. Ellie reached down and hugged him.

“Ellie, this is all we had. This was going to keep us alive. We were going to be able to survive up here because of this. What do we do now? What hope do we have?”

Ellie didn’t say anything. She just held on to him, asking the same questions he was, scared for their future as well. Greg and the rest made their way up the hill. Greg yelled, “Holy shit! Would you look at that? What happened? We’ve only been gone a few hours; we didn’t leave that much wood going in the stove.”

Shaun pushed up to his feet, walking slowly to the inferno burning in front of him. “We didn’t leave too much wood on the stove. It’s a cast-iron stove; it could be filled to the brim with gas-soaked wood and it would have burned fine.”

              “So what the hell did we do wrong?”

              Shaun was focused on one thing and one thing only. He marched towards a tree where a piece of yellow paper was flapping in the wind, held in place with a knife stuck through it. Shaun held the paper down so he could read the short note.

             
“Burn in hell, Shaun. Your dad ruined everything. There is no reason for you to have an advantage over those who are innocent. - M”

             
Greg said, “What is it?”

              Shaun ripped the knife from the tree, letting the note blow away in the wind. “It’s Mike’s death wish.”

              “Huh?”

              “That ass, Mike, set the cabin on fire. He said we don’t deserve any advantages over anyone else. If I see him, I’m going to kill him and cut his goddamned heart out.”

              The soldiers walked up behind him. Clare asked, “Christ, what the hell did you guys do before you left?”

              Greg did a calming motion with his hands, trying to advise them to be quiet. Shaun had enough of a mental work out for the day and couldn’t help himself; he turned, dropping his rifle and charged Clare at full speed. Greg saw this and jumped, missing Shaun, trying to save him from any awkwardness. Clare was looking at the other men and not paying attention until it was too late. Shaun raced down the hill, leaping into the air and connecting his shoulder with Clare’s gut. The wind emptied from his lungs and the two flew backward. Clare attempted to yell but was unsuccessful because the main ingredient to yell was air, and it wasn’t something that he had to use at the moment.

              Shaun pushed up off of him, throwing a left and right punch into Clare’s face. Clare took the first two blows then caught Shaun’s hand and tried to catch his right, but the kid was relentless. Shaun was throwing hammer fists at this point. Clary leaned over near Phelps. “You want me to break this up?”

              Phelps shook his head. “No. Clare needs to learn when to keep his mouth shut, and if he can’t take care of a teenager, then he’s the wrong man for our crew.”

              Clare’s eyes were open wide and angry. He ducked two of Shaun’s punches and sent a punch up under his chin, snapping his head back. Clare gripped his shirt, and with all the muscles in his legs, flipped Shaun over his head. Shaun lay where he landed, his chest heaving up and down. The tears came freely and streamed down his face. His will and hope, which were already depleted, were at a new low. Clare jumped to his feet, crouched and ready to give the kid a run for his money.

              Phelps nodded at McClellan, who walked over as Clare started to run for Shaun. He gripped Clare’s sleeve, spinning him around in a half circle, and let go. Clare rolled onto the ground, sitting up quickly, ready to get back up. Phelps cleared his throat. “That’s enough of this bullshit. We need to get moving; we are going to forgive this little matter, and you will get past it. He’s had enough, all right? He’s a kid, he made a bad choice, you got yours back in, and now you are done. You got it, Clare?”

              Clare nodded as he rubbed his jaw and stared at the kid on the ground. He felt more than guilty about punching someone so young. He thought about what he’d been through—the horror that he’d seen. Clare realized that he couldn’t imagine what the kid had experienced over the last couple days… losing his dad, finding out he was responsible, seeing his town being taken over by these things. Clare nodded again, calming his breathing, and stood up straight. He walked over to Shaun and helped him up to his feet. Shaun wiped at his eyes and face and started down the hill. He looked at Greg and said, “Show them where Dad is. I’ll be at the truck, waiting.”

Ellie ran over to Greg, picked up Shaun’s pack and rifle, and jogged to catch up to him, carrying everything until he was ready to take it from her. Greg started walking toward Frank’s burial place and motioned for Phelps and the rest to follow him. “I guess it is a good thing that you guys have those little shovels, after all.”

They walked down to where Frank was buried so they could unearth his body and get a blood sample and pictures of the corpse. Clary looked at Greg, who watched, baffled at the amount of work they were going through to be able to prove to someone in Washington that he was dead. Phelps said, “All right, that’s enough. We got what we need; let’s get back down the hill.”

Tina yelled, “You need to cover him back up! If we come back here and Shaun sees his father like this, he isn’t going to be the same. He’s going to hurt someone… he’ll probably want to hurt you guys.”

Phelps shrugged. “Hey, princess, we won’t be on the ground by then, and I don’t care to waste any time right now. This is something you can do now. You can stay up here for all I care. Shaun seems to be the only one of the group who is going to be of any use to us today.”
 

              Tina charged at Phelps; Greg grabbed her around the shoulders and waist, lifting her and carrying her back. “It’s helping nothing. We can come back tonight and take care of Frank.”

              Tina laughed, pushing herself away from Greg. “What the hell are you talking about, Greg? We won’t be coming back tonight; we’re going to be looking for a new place to live. Did you forget the burning cabin that made Shaun snap? We are homeless… like nowhere to live.”

              Greg shrugged. “Did you see all those people in the field? I don’t think finding a place to live is going to be that difficult. It’s just not going to be as great of a place as this one to stay in, but we’ll find something. We can come back here tonight; we got nothing but time. Hell, we can sleep in the truck if we need to.”

Tina yelled and kicked a handful worth of sticks at the soldiers. “You guys…. you guys suck! If someone unburied one of your fallen soldiers, you’d probably slit someone’s throat if they didn’t take care of them and treat them with respect!”

The men stared at her in disbelief; the fire in her eyes was hard to miss and she turned, pulling Greg behind her as they walked back to the truck. Aslin watched them as they went down the hill. “Well, she’s a goddamn spitfire, isn’t she? Let’s do this double-time, guys. We can get him dug up and back in no time if we put some effort into it. What do you guys say? You up for some hard work?”

The company yelled, “Hooyah!”

The men dug like they were possessed, stopping for nothing except once when McClellan realized they were all alone in the woods. He asked Phelps, “Hey, sir. You got the truck keys, right?”

Phelps never stopped digging; he just nodded his head. “Yeah, you think that I would have let those kids leave us up here without the keys?”

McClellan nodded, digging and thinking about the new truck, and how when he’d driven home in his own brand new truck, he had received two keys. He realized it was going to be horrible if they walked down and the truck was gone. He wouldn’t blame those kids a bit if they did. “You got both sets sir?”

Phelps stopped digging abruptly, dropped the shovel, grabbed his rifle and pack, and sprinted down the hill, running with everything he had in him to make up the distance. Clare was the only one in the group who was not bursting at the gut in laughter. “You guys think we need to get down there too?”

Clary and the rest of the men never stopped. “No, we’re okay. He won’t let them leave without us. Get back to digging; we’ve got to get a move on. It’s already the middle of the day. We won’t have more than four or five hours of daylight left on our backs. When they got to Frank, they brushed off his corpse and pulled him up, wiping at his face to be sure they had a clear shot. They took several photographs of him and compared them to the pictures that were in the file. Aslin pointed at Frank closely. “Didn’t those kids say that he got bit?”

McClellan said, “Yeah, why?”

Aslin pointed to Frank’s head. “This man got shot in the top of the damn head. He couldn’t have done this to himself. Christ it was his dad?”

“Weird shit happens, man. There’s probably more answers in a much longer conversation with those kids that we don’t need to have.”

The men placed him back into the hole as they had found him and replaced the earth over him. Clare said, “Should we say something?”

McClellan packed his shovel and started walking down the hill. “We’re SEALs, not priests. Get moving, will you?”

*****

Phelps burst out of the woods, sweat pouring from his face as he heaved for fresh breath. He looked around wildly. His point of exiting the woods had him turned around and thrown off from where he thought he was going to exit. He saw the truck and all of his worries diminished at once. The kids sat watching him looking around like a lunatic then they looked at one another. Tina pulled out the extra key from her pocket, dangling it with her index and middle finger. “Did you think we were going to leave you? Feeling a little bit guilty about being a prick up on top of the hill? Worried that our new, shiny truck wouldn’t be here waiting for you? Or did you think we wouldn’t be around to guide you around town and help keep you safe and sound, sir?”

Phelps hit his radio, giving Tina a look of disgust as the others laughed under their breath. Greg looked at Tina. “And they say I don't know when to keep my mouth shut.”

Ellie laughed. “I don’t think any of us can. You are extra gifted at it though, Greg.”

              Phelps walked over to Tina, taking the extra keys, and then walked away to the side of the woods. He hit his mic and radioed up. “You guys done getting him undug? For god’s sake, we got shit to do and limited time left to be getting it done.”