After Death

Chapter 14 (Welcome to the Club)

Chapter 14: Welcome to the Club

Ethan Warren

Estimated, August 2025

About 39 months after outbreak

California, Home

Season 4

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We should have been ready. We had time to prepare but we were too involved with trying to move on that we forgot.

I didn't punish Leah for murdering that woman. I probably would have tried, it would have only been fair to Aiden, but I didn't have time to. They were here now.

They tracked the dead around our walls, trapping us inside, making it impossible to escape with our lives. So instead we were forced to fight because that's still better than giving in.

Thomas knew I'd never give him to Tim and he was thankful for that. He didn't really want to go, none of us were ready to die. As much as we might have thought we were, we were not. I wanted to live through this, I wanted to see a future for myself and my people but something like that is so unreliable, I don't know if I could prepare myself to not see that.

So after all we're gone through we were challenged to win a war against a man with an army and we accepted.

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Rudolph Alinsky

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I heard Steve's message over the radio. A part of me didn't want to go back even after he told me of the chaos that was occurring but Airianna heard the message too, and she wanted to fight. It took a while to get there considering it was a place I have never been too, but I was too late. Timothy beat me to it.

We couldn't get inside, the dead were everywhere and Timothy's men stood on top of their trucks and cars with machine guns in their hands. I knew if we were spotted we'd be killed but I also knew that us being out here was somewhat of an advantage.

I wanted to kill Timothy when I saw him step out of a black Lamborghini with his devilish smile but I had no ammo after our trip and no chance to even make a hit either way.

We got out of our car and hid in the dark behind debris in the streets. I told Airianna to stay low and quiet, to not get into danger, but of course she did the exact opposite, she stabbed a man in the back and when he fell to the ground in pain, she drove the blade through his neck. I feared that she'd bring attention to herself but as the man choked on his blood no one caught a glance. I wanted to be mad at her, I wanted to tell her that it's wrong to do shit like that but I couldn't and I can't, sometimes it's just the way things have to be. She took the man's gun and gave it to me even though I had no clue what I was going to do with it.

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Ethan Warren

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They kinda lingered a while. They were waiting for us to mess up and attack first but we never did. They shot the first shot, they started the fire. This is all their fault.

They shot at the walls and killed some of the dead that surrounded, but it wasn't enough for us to get hope of leaving. I'm not sure if any of us really wanted to though, we all wanted to see this place prosperous but at the moment it didn't look like that would ever happen. I didn't even issue the order but my people shot back at them with the little ammo that we had. I didn't expect us to win, I figured this was probably the end. Nothing good is able to come out of something like this.