The Dead Don't Talk (Book 1)

Chapter 10: I dont sleep

I looked nastily at the squirrel, but he was right, I wouldn't be able to make it just eating beans and I kind of thought he didn't bring anything else just so he could force me to eat squirrel just to laugh.
We had already been out about a mile today and it was getting near lunch time, I was super hungry and I had already eaten some beans. He was right, there was no way that was going to be enough for me. I had no idea how Angela could eat squirrels. Much less Christian actually liking those.
I watched sadly looking at the campfire thinking of how nasty it was going to be to eat another one of those. But I also didn't want to starve and he had only brought us 6 cans of beans and we had already eaten 2 of them. Christian laughed at me when he saw my face as I looked at the squirrels.
"Come on kid, you overreact. It really is not that bad..." He told me. Actually it really was that bad, and it wasn't just me overreacting. It was straight up disgusting, I guarantee if you brought one of those to the community no one would want to eat it.
"It is, Im pretty sure you only want me to eat them to laugh at me." I said to him. He began laughing again, which basically told me that I was 100% right. "Surely you could have just brought more cans of beans."
"Maybe I could have, but better not to waste food, you never know if that group that's out there finds us, cans of beans might be the only thing we have to live off of." He told me. I knew that there was no other group out there and it was just a conspiracy. The same thing that happened to our parents probably happened to them as well, no matter how many times Angela and i disagreed on it. She would always tell me that the place looked way different than it did when the storm past through. I would have to see it to believe it.
"Can we go see the other group, I want too see if it is really true." I asked Christian. It seemed like he was going to ignore me, that's what Angela did when we talked about it, it was another reason I didn't believe in their conspiracy.
"Kid that place is about 30 miles out, after we get through training I will think on it." He told me. I nodded and he then extinguished the fire. "Eat up kid."
He then tossed me the squirrel and I just let it sit there on my lap. I didn't want to eat it, but at the same time I didn't to starve. I picked it up and began to chew on it. It was still disgusting to me but I could manage with it this time.
"Look at that! Not as bad now huh?" He said laughing at me and then continuing chewing on his piece of squirrel. I shook my head at him and then began laughing. It was kind of funny to think of my reaction now that I was thinking about it in my head. He continued laughing now that I was laughing with him.
"Oh it is still nasty, but I am getting used to it." I told him. I then continued to chew on it and we ate in silence for the rest of the meal. It wasn't the best meal, but we would have to make do with what we had. I just don't know why Christian and Angela really thought that another group was going to attack us.
After we finished our meal Christian got up from the log and began looking around as if someone was looking at us, I began to talk asking what he was doing but he put his finger up to his lips to get me to shut up. I was beginning to become scared and my heart was racing. I moved closer to the middle of the fire that way I would have a chance if someone came at me with a knife.
I heard the footsteps, they were getting closer but I couldn't tell the exact direction it was in. I pulled out my machete and was ready to attack if anyone came at me. Suddenly I heard Christian grunted and I ran over to him.
"Its alright kid, just one of the dead. They don't usually go out in the woods, you can never be too sure." He told me. I nodded and he pulled his machete from out of its head. It still was kind of nasty just seeing a thing that used to be a person have their head get torn in half.
He then went back to the campfire and then picked up a towel and began cleaning off his machete. I sat back down on the log and finished off the rest of my squirrel. Once we were both ready we then began to head out of the woods.
"So where are we going today?" I asked him. He stayed silent for a bit, it looked like he was looking at the ground a bit sad about something. I really couldn't be all that sure though, he always seemed to pretend like he wasn't hurt my anything even though he had told me different.
"Today we are going to be going to a gas station a bit further out, if we find one of the undead I will test you, tomorrow if you can prove to me that you can kill one of those, I am going to take up your offer of what you said yesterday." He said to me. I was a bit confused on what he was talking about. I don't particularly remember telling him that I would go and something for him. And besides, he said that he could basically do anything by himself. What exactly did he need my help with?
"What do you mean? I don't remember giving you any sort of offer yesterday." I said to him. He then lowered his head down again and we continued walking. Why wouldn't he just tell me, I really had no clue what he was talking about. "Can you tell me? You are training me to be strong not weak. And it seems like you are the one being weak right now."
"Kid, its what I said yesterday. I hoped you would remember because I don't like talking about the story over and over again. Its my wife and my child, I want you to go finish them, but that is only if you can prove to me today that you can actually kill one of them." He said to me. I then remembered all that he had told me yesterday and felt a bit bad for forgetting that he had even told me that. That was something, that if it had happened to me, I would wish I could forget that but I knew I truly never would.
"Sorry I forgot about that, don't think to much about it, it will hurt more, I've had to pass away all my memories of my parents." I said to him. He shook his head and then stopped. I looked around a bit confused to see if one was around, I closed my eyes trying to listen but I could not here one anywhere nearby.
"Kid I know, I don't need your advice, I just want to get that done, that way it will forever be out of my conscious. I don't want to ever walk in and do it myself, its something I couldn't even get Peter to do. If you say that you will actually do it, I will trust you, don't break my trust, so tell me now." He said to me. I thought on it for a few and we continued standing there for a while. It was his family, I knew it, and I definitely could not do it to mine. I wasn't even near the level that he was on either. Killing one out here was different because I didn't know any backstory behind them, so I wasn't too sure if I could do it for Christian.
"I will try, don't trust me that I can do it. Killing one out here is different then killing someone that I have been told about. If they were your family I know they were good people, you try to act tough but you are still a good person." I said to him. He nodded putting his hand around his machete and we began walking again.
We had gone not too far out, maybe a bit less than a mile, so we were going to be going almost 5 miles Christian had told me earlier. I didn't know if I was ready for a night out there, but I would have to get over it because I knew it would just make me stronger. I know a lot of people didn't believe in me, not even the girl that was my best friend when I was younger. Jordan had always made jokes, and called me farmer boy when I was younger. A lot of his friends actually ended up being farmers as funny as it sounded.
There was still know dead in sight and I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to kill Christians family if they were going to be the first ones for me to kill. I feel like that would just brake me as a person if I had to do something like that. Besides, Christian had told me, only if I killed one today. If we were going 5 miles out and near a gas station and he also wanted me to do that, then surely we were also going towards his old house, or rather somewhere nearby it.
Christian had his head lowered a bit still, I wasn't too sure he believed in me, and I didn't feel upset about him because I wasn't sure I could do it myself. But at the same time I didn't want to break his trust. I had to do it, I just couldn't think on it too much, that way it would not hurt me.
Christian then stopped and pointed me at something. I looked in the direction but could not see one anywhere. I wasn't sure where it was so how was I going to kill it?
But then I saw it, he looked at me a bit confused and I shook my head. Surely he wasn't looking at me for some sort of explanation right? There was a body just hanging from a tree. Christian didn't pull out his machete this time. He had his gun a bit down but I heard him click on it to notify that it was loaded.
"That was 100% not here last time. Last time I came through this way was less than a week ago." He said to me. Which told me, that did look fairly recent to me and the body was moving around, people weren't dumb enough to hang one trying to kill it right?
Besides that looked like Angela's friends body, it couldn't have been dead no less than a day or 2. I didn't have a gun on me like Christian did however but I still did have my Machete. If I hit someone it might not kill him but it would 100% be enough to knock them out unconscious.
"Keep your eyes and ears open kid. That body was a living one. That tells me whoever did that is not a friendly person. That is very recent." He said whispering to me and looking in all directions. I kept my head up too making sure there was nothing nearby us. I had never seen something like this. I knew that I had heard stories about a few crazy people out there. I had even heard one story about there being cannibals out here. I wasn't sure if it was true or not but Angela looked at me like it was so it must have been. If they were eating the undead then they would have gotten poisoned right?
These were clearly not cannibals though because they had just hung the body down. They hadn't actually eaten the women and there were no marks on her to tell us otherwise.
Christian then began heading towards her and i followed him looking back in the opposite direction several times in case someone was watching us. Whoever it was, they definitely were not a person we would be taking into our community. Christian grabbed me and nodded for me to look at the ladies body.
"I don't know this ladies name, but she was a wanderer. I'm going to have to tell Shannon to keep a close eye and I'll have to tell her about it. We are going to have to train more warriors if 2 is not enough to protect her. Im not sure who was with her, but you can see the blood around her and they weren't hers. There's no blood on her. This was definitely more than 1 person, unless that 1 person was a fast guy and a hell of a good fighter, along with good shooter." He told me. I nodded and continued looking in all directions, if someone was near they surely would have shot at us, or shot one of us already though. And clearly they had good accuracy.
"Haha... There's an envelope right there by the way." I told him. There was a red what looked like paint brush but also could be blood on her body. The more that I thought about it the more I realized that it was blood.
Christian picked up the envelope and then began to open it. Clearly there was a message inside. I looked back towards him trying to look at what it said, instead he just read it to me.
"You will find this soon, we killed one and took the other with us. Haha... You all are next, we know where you are its too late." He said to me. I wasn't sure now, if there was another group they could be even bigger than ours but I wasn't too sure. Also we had way too many people in our community there's no way they could attack us. But at the same time it all began to make sense.
That's what the hole in the wall at the other community was. I wasn't too sure about how it had all went down, there were so many theories of how. But if this was true then this could definitely be the group that brought them down.
"What does it mean? Is it like what happened with the other community? Are they going to attack us?" I asked him. He stayed quite for a couple of seconds and then he put the envelope into his backpack.
"Kid, I don't know... And if they do, we are over 10x bigger than that other group, this time we will be ready too." He said to me. I nodded and he looked around a bit more as if they were going to appear out of nowhere. After about 15 minutes he finally nodded for me to follow him.
"Are we going back to the place?" I asked him. He shook his head which confused me a bit. Surely he wanted to notify the community as soon as possible. We needed to be ready for any kind of possible attack.
"If they are watching us, they'd have to go tell their group about it, and their group has to be at least 50 miles away from us, bare minimum. I will tell her tomorrow, there's no way there were over 1000 of them that just attacked 3 people and can go around several days with that much food on them." He said to me. The more that I thought about it, the more it made sense. But at the same time I would like to notify the community as soon as possible that way everyone was ready and ready to be trained.
"Are you sure? Don't you want everyone to be ready?" I asked him. He laughed a little bit. I didn't find any of this funny at all and it scared me more and more the more I thought about it. I thought about Liam dying, I knew Angela could make it, but Liam was so young and he had so much to live for, he couldn't fight off the attack.
"Bare minimum kid, 1000 people will come to attack us if they really have been spying on us. That will take almost a week for them to even get to their group, and it will take up to a month to have 1000 people following them, they also have to plan an attack on us. We will be fine, we will have time to be ready." He said to me. I nodded, the more he said that, the more it made sense and I shouldn't worry about it too much. Even 1000 people attacking us couldn't bring us down, and they were stupid to let us know that they were coming after us. They had to be way bigger than that. Maybe they didn't even know about us, but I shook my head. They had too if they were less than a mile out and had killed 2 of our people.
My head and body began to twirl the more I was thinking about it, and seeing that ladies body made me feel so sick, with all the blood nearby, I had seen Angela's friend but I hadn't thought about it as much as I was now. Especially sense I knew everything was all downhill from here.

"Alright kid we are going to stay the night here, I got everything locked up, you go ahead and catch some z's." He said to me. I looked at him thankfully. It had been a long day and I felt sick all the way here. Unfortunately I was not able to kill one of them today, so that most likely meant that I would not be helping Christian tomorrow.
At this point it really did not matter, we had way more important things to attend to rather than just that. I was more scared than I had been in my entire life. Its like all the conspiracies and horror stories I had been told were coming true. It scared the hell out of me, and this was just my 2nd day out here, surely no one else had it as rough as I did my first few days. Angela hadn't even gone outside the walls till a week after she had begun training.
I also knew that Peter was a lot like Christian which meant that most other people being trained probably had it way easier than us. I wanted to throw up, I wasn't ready for what was about to happen.
If they were spying on us it had to be an inside job. There was no way they could be spying on the entire community from outside the walls and none of the wall guards noticed them. The more that I thought about it the more I knew that there was no way they could get through us.
Shannon was doing a good job even though I had lost respect for her. We weren't like the other group, there were way more of us and we were way stronger, bigger, and smarter.
Shannon had so many people on those gates and there were so many people that were ready for an attack. If they really thought that they could attack us then they had better be joking.
Its almost like our community was already ready for an attack. If they really thought they could bring us down they had better be joking. They had no idea what was coming for them, and even though I didn't like Shannon she was a very smart lady.
She knew if we were to get attacked then the group attacking us was absolutely screwed. They had no chance, and there was no way 1000 people could just come marching in with no food and have it be over a month to get here. There would maybe be 100 hundred and we would take them down so fast.
Then we would find their community and bring them down. They think of us as weak and a joke. They would be proven wrong, Tyler had told me the walls were no joke and everyone there was always on guard.
"Alright I will try, sorry we couldn't find one today, I promise I will take them out someday soon." I told Christian. He let out a bit of a snort and then tossed a blanket towards me. There was a small matress out in the back side of the gas station. The glass had been torn open back the door was locked and barred shut in the room we were in.
"Its okay kid, we have more important matters to attend to anyways." He said to me. I nodded and then lowered my head to fall asleep. There was no pillow but I would be fine. I was so tired after today and all the walking and horror in my head I had been dealt up with.
"Aren't you going to sleep to?" I asked him. Surely he was tired after a day like today too? He had to be thinking the same thoughts as me in his head. He chuckled a bit but just shook his head.
"Nah kid... I cant right now, Im too worried about everything, its days like this I don't sleep."