Chapter 31:
Lea's POV:
"Ugh, screw off." I say as Trent hits my leg to annoy the heck out of me. "I love you, okay? I said it." Everyone kind of hears me, but doesn't know what exactly it is I said. "I LOVE TRENT, EVERYONE." Their eyes look to me.
Andrea, Trent and I ride together in this car as we make the long hours to New York.
I've been hearing things from the radio I secretly kept from my days with Eric. I think it was my whimsy attempt to try and hold one to my first love. I honestly think it is also a way to spite it. I mean I get the visions that backfired from the injections and stole an unaccounted for radio.
The bastard has it coming. He took away that sense of possibly being safe in a world with danger around every corner. Eric stole one of the last pieces of sanity that I had tried so hard to hold on to. When he found my shattered pieces on the floor, he picked up a few and handed them to me, but he kept the rest to himself. He held onto them. Sometimes I'd get a piece back, other times he'd break one a little more. This guy is trying to kill everyone left in the world.
He needs to be stopped before he can do anything else.
And I'm just the one to do it.
-
"L?" I hear Sam whisper as everyone else in the car sleeps. Sam is super shy when you pinpoint it. He has been since I met him a few months ago. I'm sure everything that happened didn't help either. Everyone here is a little broken.
We had one day I remember specifically. We all told our stories, or bits and pieces of it.
That day really put me to see what everyone else had to deal with.
Some were horrible, some tough. All making us see what has happened.
-
"I remember walking up the steps of my old house and looking in to see what had become of my family. They were battered and bloody and eaten. We would have all made it, had not been for the neighbors looking for a breathing snack." Sam breathes out. "My two brothers and I made it out alive. My mom.. My dad.. My three sisters... They never got to get away from the house." Beads of sweat trickle across his forehead. "Maybe it was better they left instead of having to suffer through this for as long as we have been." Sam grabs one hand with the other to keep it from shaking. "My brother James died due to Eric's mistake. We were trying to get away from a huge swarm of zombies. Eric got in the van and left the door open for us to jump in. James threw me in when the zombies had just got us. He screamed at us to go. That it needed to happen. He said it was too late for him. He slammed the door of the van as the zombies got closer. He collapsed and was taken over by zombies." A tear falls down his eyes. "That was the day Eric lost it. He smashed his fists into the steering wheel as we got far enough away. We pulled o and he screamed out about how it was his fault. That he was supposed to stay awake. That was the day I realized that I needed to grow up."
"I remember the fear that set into my eyes as I watched my parents turn into the monster. It was a gradual, not a thirty-second thing." Explains Max. Bex was too timid to say anything on the subject, nor was Reed. "I remember grabbing Bex, who was not quite four yet, and running to the four-wheeler the neighbors kept. Curiosity got the best of me and I ran i to see if the neighbors were either alive or have left." Reed tenses up at Max's words. Max, with sadness in his eyes, continues. "I carried Bex in my arms and ran inside cautiously, hoping not to stumble into a monster.." Bex tenses up as Reed hugs her harder. "What I found in the living room was a boy, Reed, unconscious. The room stunk horribly. My eyes scanned over the two people butchered in the living room. I asked if this five year old was capable of this.. Then I knew. He had to. Fear makes us do crazy things." Bex's eyes swell up. "We left and continued moving ares through Minnesota. I was about fifteen at the the time, Bex five, Reed six. We did the best we could. My girlfriend here, Angela, joined our team. Eventually we lost each other in a raid. I cried for weeks. After a while we adjusted with more sorrow to bear. Everything went as it does in an Apocalypse until Bex went missing. That's when we learned how scary it is to lose the one person who helped you keep moving." He adverts his eyes to Bex, asking if he can tell her piece. "Bex looked everywhere until she found L. That's what really helped us. Reed and I figured this out. We knew the stories of what Lea had done. How brave she is. We knew Bex would come for my best friend's little sister. Thank gosh for that. She kept going, hoping, maybe even knowing, we were alive. We are grateful."
