This Would Be Paradise (Book 3)

Chapter 22

"You ready?" Rose asked us.

We were standing at the front gate waiting to leave. Most survivors had come out to wish us luck on our run. It just made me that much more uneasy. Ethan had wandered out with Crystal dogging him the whole way to the front gate. The mercenary had hit him pretty hard on the skull; Crystal even guessed that they may have cracked it. His balance was still off and he had some pretty bad sensitivity to light. He was speaking clearly, though. Crystal said that was a good sign because if he had internal bleeding it would have created pressure on his lobes and that usually affected speech. Although, nothing was certain without real doctors or exam equipment. All we could do was hope that he didn't have any permanent damage.

Chloe was beside Ethan, keeping a stern eye on him. Not that her ten-year-old frame could do much to stop Ethan's significantly larger stature from hitting the ground.

"Be careful out there," Ethan said. "I wish I could help or do somethin'." He scowled as he touched the gauze wrapped around his head.

"You'd be a liability. Injured or not, you ain't immune," Rose said, ever tactfully.

I took a breath through my nose. "Just listen to Crystal, okay? I don't want to come back and find you a drooling mess."

Ethan gave me a small smile. "Bring back some of those strawberry frosted Pop-Tarts, yeah?"

"They grew on you, did they?" I said, thinking back to the time we had raided a Wal-Mart all those months ago. I had squealed I'd been so excited to find those. "I'll see what I can do."

Henry and Sheri opened the gate for us to slip through. John gave me one last hug before they locked the gate up. I turned from the other's pensive faces to the street. Rose was already at the other end of the short side street leading to the castle motel waving impatiently at us.

We're off to see the wizard...

I must've looked ridiculous trying to hold back my laughter with my bottom lip sucked into my mouth and my top teeth biting down. Leo gave me a strange look as I passed him. I just looked straight ahead, not wanting to bother explaining my hysteria. Lucas paid me no mind as he was already on full alert mode. His head was whipping back and forth scouting for infected as he pushed the dead lawn mower. He was going to make himself dizzy if he kept that up.

No one talked as we strode down the main street. We were trusting Rose to lead us. The map she had wasn't specifically for this area, but it did focus on the eastern part of New Orleans. If we got cut off and couldn't come back the way we came, Rose should be able to direct us a different route with the map.

We passed by a bunch of warehouses but nothing stood out as specifically as a food company. Some of the buildings were rusting; most were just dirty. An infected wearing a trucker's hat started toward us, stumbling to get from the ditch onto the actual street. Lucas left the lawn-mower to run up to the infected and whack it in the head with his crowbar. There was a metallic dinging sound and the infected dropped to the ground, sliding back into the overgrown ditch.

"There," Rose hissed while pointing to a warehouse.

The decrepit sign was missing a few letters but the last word clearly meant to say, "Grocer." We had found our food warehouse. Some of the loading bays even still had big-rigs backed into them. A chain-link fence was separating the warehouse yard from the others beside it but it didn't go all the way around, so we were able to just walk right in. Except for the infected standing guard.

"Slow and quiet," Rose said leading the glacially slow charge.

We basically tip-toed into the yard. It was a bit harder for Lucas since he was pushing our bait. The infected didn't seem to notice us at first, then they eventually caught on that we were moving. They started toward us from all directions. My muscles started to twitch and my mouth went dry as Rose gave us the signal to hold still. We let the infected approach as we stood still like misplaced statues. I tried to control my breathing but it was hard when your heart started to beat rapidly. Lucas went to pull on the engine cord of the mower, but Rose quietly said, "Not yet. Last resort."

They reached Rose first. She didn't even blink. If the infected had any ability to show emotion, it would have been confusion. They circled Rose as their decrepit heads went from side to side. I heard a crack and one infected's head stayed crooked to the side. It was the most decayed of the group, it's nose sunken in and the left side of its face sagged, drooping the eye off to the side. They did seem like they were continuing to decay once they turned. Maybe they would eventually get to a point where they are so decayed that they just dropped. This was a hopeful thought; extinction of the infected.

I was so lost in thought-a defense mechanism perhaps-that I barely noticed that the infected had moved on from Rose to the rest of us. They wandered in between our frozen statures, seeming to size us up and down. The one with the crooked head chose me to inspect. Don't you dare laugh. I looked straight ahead with my lips tight, keeping the infected in my peripheral vision. It rasped right beside me and I nearly jumped out of my skin as it's arm brushed against my side. I was breathing through my nose, but that was quickly aborted as the smell of rot consumed me. This one had to of been dead for quite a while. My eyes were threatening to water from the smell.

Stay still. The infected moved from my side to in front of me. I desperately wanted to shove it over and stab it with the knife, but any movement would wreck our plan. It got dangerously close to my face. I took a discrete inhalation of air then held my breath. One, two, three. The infected just continued to stare at me as my lungful of air depleted. Eight, nine, ten. My face was going to turn purple soon. The breath I had sucked in wasn't as big as it could have been since I was trying to remain quiet. Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen.

"Fuck this," Lucas said.

He ran straight for the side of the building, abandoning the mower, not even bothering to turn it on. I sucked in as much air as my body would allow when the crooked infected took off toward Lucas. They all had started going after him, leaving the rest of us alone.

"That dumb shit," Rose muttered. "Well, at least he got 'em off of us. Let's keep movin'."

"What about Lucas?" I asked through a cough. My lungs were burning from the lack of oxygen.

"He made his choice. 'Sides, if he's as tough as he acts, he should be able to take care of 'em."

"What about the lawn-mower?" Leo asked, his priorities obviously straight. I could almost hear what he was thinking: we had gone to the trouble of bringing it, might as well use it.

"We might need it when we leave later, so don't turn it on," Rose said.

I bit my lip. Just leaving Lucas to fend for himself felt wrong, even if he was a douchebag. Rose didn't leave me anymore time to contemplate right and wrong as she bolted through the rest of the yard. With no infected, we could afford to move fast. Leo looked at me and jerked his head toward the warehouse silently telling me to get a move on. With one last look at the side of the building where Lucas had disappeared, I started after the other two.

We tried the front door but it was locked. And there was no way we'd be able to move one of the heavy metal bay doors up. Rose went to the nearest truck first, then to the one after that.

"Come here," she hissed from out of sight.

Leo and I took off after her and found her at the end of a big-rig by in one of the last bays.

"This guy didn't know how to back in here properly."

She pointed to the space between the back and the bay. Sure enough there was enough room so that we could see into the warehouse. It was dark for the most part.

"Shit, we don't have any flashlights," Rose said.

"I brought one," I said.

I turned around and Rose reached into my backpack. She clicked on the large flashlight and pointed it inside the warehouse.

"I don't see-" Rose flew backwards into us, knocking an unprepared Leo onto the asphalt.