The Dead Don't Talk (Book 1)

Chapter 26: A Game

I woke up, and then I looked around a bit confused why I wasn't in my normal room. It seemed to happen like that from time to time. I would wake up and think that I would be in a normal life like I used to.
Even after the apocalypse, at least being home and sitting around all of the time was at least somewhat normal. Now I woke up wondering if I was going to wake up the same the next morning. Not in a good way either. I feared that one morning I might wake up and eat Liam or Angela.
I hated feeling like that, but something like that was always stuck in my head. It scared me, I was more scared that Angela or Liam was going to die rather than I. Christian said in this world now, you had to think for yourself before you think about another person.
Maybe he was not wrong, even though when I was a lot younger Angela used to be mean and make fun of me from time to time. I hated coming home from Jordan just to get a little bit of action from my sister.
My mother and stepfather never really knew much about it, and Angela apologized a lot for the way that she used to treat me. She was young though so I kind of understood why she was doing that.
Ever since my mother had died, she had became a mother for not just Liam, but also me, she was almost an adult when it had all gone down. She had changed so much while she had grown up. I was proud of her for that.
I was happy for her that we had found Tony as well, Angela always thought that he was still alive somewhere out there. Someone had taken him in and done something to him, she would tell me. She was not wrong, I wanted to head back to the community as fast as possible and tell them the news.
However, Christian wanted me to finish our training before we went back, he told me that I needed to worry about that before I started worrying about other things. I think he was a bit too late on that however.
All that I could think about once again, like I had the first few days when we had found out about Jordans mother. All I could really think about was that someone might attack us and maybe kill Liam or something.
I knew Angela was smart, strong, and brave. She would most likely be out there though when the community got attacked, which meant that Liam was all alone to defend for himself. I was scared for him, he was smart but he was only 4, and I had no idea what a group would do to him if they got their hands on him.
Maybe they would kill him... Maybe they would rape him like that other group that we had found a while ago. I didn't even want to know about the horror stories that Tony was about to tell us about that community over the next couple of days.
Clearly he took our group over his, so he did not like that community all too much. There was so much I wanted to ask him, I could get around to it over the next couple of days though. We were already over halfway through towards the mountain.
I noticed that Tony was a lot different than he was before, maybe it was because of what the other community had done to him. I really had no sort of clue, but it might have been for the better or for the worse.
I could tell that his mind was a bit off, but it seemed as if he had changed to become a better person. Maybe it was because of the things that had happened to him while he was with that group.
I got up from my spot on my bed, there was no window really in the room so I didn't know what the exact time was, I would not be surprised though if Christian was still asleep... He had gotten almost no sleep the other night.
I wouldn't be able to sleep either if there was a couple of guys holding me hostage. I shivered just thinking about all the little kids that had been raped again.
I was still a bit young, I wasn't as strong, A big dude could easily take advantage of me. I cleared my head of all of those thoughts and left the room that I had shared with Tony. I wasn't sure the exact room that Christian had gone in, I had not paid any attention last night, I just wanted to fall asleep as soon as possible.
I saw there was only 1 other room besides the living room and kitchen though. The house was bigger than the house we had back in the community, but there was just less rooms.
The bedrooms, living room, and Kitchen were by far a lot bigger however.
I looked into Christians room and opened the door to see if he was awake. The room that Christian had slept in had a Window so I could see that the sun was just setting into the sky, we would not be able to head out anywhere tonight.
The dead were faster and harder to see in the dark, I had heard they could smell and hear you better as well. I didn't really have a chance to see if that was true, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to find out about that in the first place.
Christian was not asleep which sort of surprised me, but he told me that he always slept a lot less than a normal person. Even without him getting any sleep just last night.
I would be ghast if I tried doing something like that. I heard some noise in the kitchen which basically told me that they were in there. They were probably making something for all of us to eat.
When I walked in it was actually surprisingly lit up in the room and I could see around perfectly. I then realized that they had candles, I had heard about them but we had never really used them because the community didn't have the supplies necessary to make them.
"Oh that's cool, you guys found candles in here?" I asked them. Tony shook his head and then handed over a peanut butter and jelly sandwich over to me. I happily took it not realizing how hungry that I actually was. I used to get tired of eating these, but it was definitely a lot better than eating boring nasty beans all of the time.
"Nope, the guys I was with carried them around with them in case we got needed them for when we were hiding out somewhere for the night." Tony told me, I nodded and then finished up the rest of the sandwich which Tony had made for me.
"Yeah he told me they put up little traps and hooks in case one or the dead snuck up on them in the night, they didn't like sleeping in the houses." Christian said to me. I didn't really understand that, the houses were a lot safer than even a tripwire hook.
I got up and then looked through the window to see the area that we were in right now. Christian pulled me over and showed me the map for the area that we were about to walk to and fro for the next couple or days.
"There are some roads that pull through right where we are at right now. We will take those and we should be over there by tonight if all goes well." Christian told me. I nodded, I wondered what was going to be up there, definitely some deer that we could hunt and eat. We would be there for a couple of days.
"Alright, I know the area sort of well, Id been there a couple of times when I was really young." I said to the both of them. Christian sat down at the table with me and we looked through the map to find the best path up to the mountain.
"Yeah you were really young though, but I'll trust your memory." Christian said to me. I nodded thanfully, one thing Christian told me was, he would trust me until I broke that trust, and then he would never trust me again.
I wasn't really a dude to lie to anyone so I think I would be fine unless it was something that was really going hurt him, and if he found out I was lying about that I think he would understand why I was lying in the first place.
Tony sat down beside us and all was silent for a little while, but after a few more moments I was the first one to talk to them.
"Tony, maybe you don't want to, but can you tell us about what happened to you? From the beginning..." I said to him. I nodded and sat back looking a little bit depressed, and I almost felt a bit bad for asking him to do it. But I really wanted to know how bad this world really was, I had heard stories but not really known what it really was like out here.
"Well I was there on a normal mission, trading with the other community, they were about to give me a lot of ammo that I would bring to the community... Then all of the sudden while I was in there with them, there was a loud pop, like a bomb or something that had blown off..." He said to me. I nodded for him to continue, Christian sat up from the table and shook his head.
"Where are you going?" I asked him. He turned away for a few moments before he looked back at me and shook his head again.
"He's already told me a lot about the story, its disgusting... Im going to explore out there for a little while and so if I can find anything maybe in that other house." Christian said to me. He then looked at Tony and nodded to him. "You don't have to tell him the full story if you don't want to. He's still young."
Tony nodded and then Christian walked out of the door and then left the house that we were in. For a second I thought that Tony was going to be soft on me and not tell me what was really going on. I wanted to know, sometimes Christian didn't want me to, and others he did.
"Well... This is about to be your full job really soon, so you should know..." Tony said to me. I sat back and waited for him to continue. He just kept shaking his head for some reason and shivering. I could only imagine the things that had happened to him while he was with that group.
"After it blew up there were hundreds maybe even thousands of them just shooting up all of the men... The weak ones at least, that's what they told me. They kept all of the women and all of the little kids though... I tried to fight back... Or else I would be dead as well."
He told me continuing where he had left off in the story. It was beginning to be a bit obvious where the story was heading.
I almost wanted to tell him to stop, and to not tell me anymore. But this was the world that we lived in, and I needed the know what was coming... I needed to know what to do and how to fight back against things like this.
"They brought me in because I fought back, they said I would be dead if I had not... They said I was a warrior... They gave me a bunch of women, and they said I could do what I wanted with the kids..." He said to me. I already knew what some of them would do with the kids and he could tell not to put that into the story.
I sat back just thanking myself that pur community had not ended up like theirs... This was right around the time that Liam was born... I could only imagine a bunch of big dudes raping my mother and raping a little maybe Liam...
"They gave me the scar... Cut me open... Told me I was one of them now... I had to stay with them, they would kill me if I tried running, they always find you..." He said to me. It made since now, they were going to attack the community, clearly sometime soon... Maybe that's where Tony's group was heading at that time, to go scout the community.
Maybe Tony would have warned them about the upcoming attack... I shook my head and then waited for him to continue as he drank a little bit of water for himself.
"I had to... I didn't know you guys were the ones we were attacking... They've attack 4 little groups, one a lot bigger than you guys as well, over 10,000 living there... Some of them got away, I don't know what happened to the others..." He said to me. I looked down at the table just wandering why the world had come to the way it was now.
"So why doesn't someone fight back for leadership? Surely they know what they do is not right..." I asked him. He just shook his head and then got up from the table that we were both sitting at.
He began making another sandwich and then he looked at me, he looked broken, I would too if I had gone through what he had all of those years.
"It doesn't work like that, you fight for leadership... He always wins, this world is evil... It always was, now that there's no laws... It has become the way it is now." He told me. I wanted to almost throw up thinking about it.
I wanted to run back to the community as soon as possible... We needed to warn them, but Tony said we would be fine for a couple more days that way I could finish my training. I almost didn't want to, but I knew I had to... There was more important things at the moment that we needed to attend to.
Tony walked out of the room, and I felt a little bad for asking him all about what had happened. I was surprised that Christian wasn't back at this point, it had been nearly an hour, he was probably hunting for something.
I still was worried about him because of last time he had disappeared. He had never done it before and I know where he had gone now.
I was lucky that I had not been caught, I had saved him, or else me and him would be in Tony's position right now... Maybe not me though, I wasn't exactly a big strong guy, I would not be surprised of they took me out because of that.
I got up and looked through the window, I could see Christian walking back right as I was thinking about him. I ran over to the door, like a little kid coming to greet their parent after a long day of work.
I opened and Christian nodded to me when he saw me. His bag looked a bit heavier than it did when he had gone over so clearly he had gotten a couple of things that might have some sort of use.
"What did you get over there?" I asked him. He sat the bag down on the floor and looked around for a couple of seconds before he finally responded to me.
"Got a pistol, amazing how many weapons you find near the mountains... Not much much other than that, besides couple of things not really important that I might throw away if my bag gets too heavy." He said to me. I nodded to him and was almost about to ask what it wad that he got, but I believed him if he really said that it was not all that important.
We both sat down at the table, by now it was almost fully dark, and it seemed weird having this sleeping schedule again, and being awake at night, I had that type of schedule for a while. But that was over a month ago now.
Tony walked into the room, he had a big bag with stuff in it, I couldn't tell what it was but he was smiling at us.
"Either of you want to play a game?"