What Walks Among Us (book one)

Consequences

The walk over to the house was longer than it should have been, on more than one occassion I had to put Abby down and kill a zombie, and it got more frequent as we neared the house. By the time we were on the my street, I had to duck into bushes and make sure Abby didn't let go of my hand.

She was a little trooper, she didn't blow the whistle again, knowing I was close enough it wasn't needed, but she did squeeze my hand when she saw something that shouldn't have been there. By the time we managed to get into the empty house next door to mine at least two other flares had gone off.

I set Abby down on the counter and barricaded everything but one window, "Okay Abby, I'm going to go make sure the coast is clear, don't come out for anyone you don't know, and don't come out for anyone who can't say your name," I paused, looking her in the eye, "can you do that for me?"

She nodded, and I pressed a kiss to her forehead before crawling out of the window, once I was out I ordered her to lock it, and she did. I turned away from her then, and made my way to the back side of the house. I had left Michael's bag behind, in case he went to find his sister in the house.

The back door was slightly ajar, and while it made me pause, I went in anyways. I could hear fighting, and all around the compound guns were going off, but it seemed whoever was fighting off the zombies that had swarmed out front were doing it with pure skill and not the aid of a gun. Which was good, because it meant that the noise wouldn't attract as much zombies.

Instinctively I wanted to run and help them fight, but I knew once the fight was over we'd need to have our bags ready. The compound was being infested, and the spare time I had to grab the bags now might not be available later.

With my mind made up I skipped over the steps and ran into each room, by the time all the bags were collected, I was barely able to walk with all the weight. Beck's bag was the heaviest, and I realized that mine was the lightest, and I wondered what stuff they had in their bags. My mind went to crazy stuff as I carefully walked down the stairs, Cody would have a whole gym in in, while Beck would have the entire ammory in it. Chester... well there would be basically everything from bandaid to a beanie, and it'd all be perfectly packed. Sam would have enough medical stuff to rival a hospital, and me? I had ... books.

I shook my head at the thought and set the bags down in the entryway. The fighting out front had stopped but I still heard struggling. My heart went to my throat at the thought that whoever had been fighting had just lost because I wasn't there to help them out.

I burst through the front door, not caring about the noise I made, and raised my bat to hit whatever was still moving. I nearly dropped my bat when I realized that Chester, Beck, and Cody all stood there among a bunch of permanently dead corpses, and Michael stood with them, holding Mabel, who was trying to get free from his iron grasp.

"What the fuck?" said Chester, looking up at me, "do you think you're doing?"

My mind went a little fuzzy as I tried to process his words, "huh?"

Cody frowned, "Kodi, why aren't you safe with the other kids?"

Those words slapped me across the face, harder than my step mother ever could.

I felt anger bubbling inside me, and while I knew I'd regret the words later, I couldn't stop them from falling out of my mouth, it was like a dam had just broken and he was about to get the full force of all of my frustration that I had been holding back.

"I'm not your sister, Cody," I growled out, "I'm not a little girl, and even if I was I wouldn't have expected you to treat me like one, putting me in a school with all the other kids because you think I'm incapable of fighting, well I am capable. I can stand up and fight back, maybe not when I was here, but out of everyone I would expect the person who taught me to fight, to believe that I could do it," I took a breath and went on, "so stop it. You didn't kill your sister, accidents happen, and you can't treat me like a piece of glass because I remind you of her," I had lowered the bat and was getting really upset now, "You can't treat me like glass because I've been tossed around and treated like absolute crap for most of my life, and I haven't broken yet."