Of all the places they went for supplies, food stores were never on the list. Arthur avoided those like Satan was hiding at each one. More than once, Shawn had suggested it with all the mouths they had now to feed. It’d been only three days ago when he’d found out why.
They were pulling stuff from another hardware store and there had been a small grocery store across the street. When you added up both parking lots and the road the buildings were on, they’d been about three hundred yards from each other. But that hadn’t stopped Vicki from spotting people running in and out of the grocery store.
Shawn remembered moving to the door and watching two men drag a woman out by the hair on her head. Someone did run to help, but one of the men had raised a pistol and shot them. When they had called Arthur over, he’d just told everyone to load up and opened the sliding doors.
Nobody moved as Arthur had slid the outer doors open and lifted his AR. Everyone jumped when his rifle coughed and those with rifles lifted them up, using the scopes to see what had happened. One of the men was on the ground holding his bloody side while the other held the woman’s hair, spinning around and looking for the shooter.
When Arthur’s rifle coughed again, the man let the woman go before grabbing his chest and stumbled around until he fell. The woman ran over and kicked him in the face and took off running.
Cool as a cucumber, Arthur had closed the outer door and walked back inside. “I said, load up,” he’d snapped and then had picked Nicole up from the playpen.
“You think Arthur will let anyone else join us?” Tony asked as Shawn slowed, taking a sharp turn.
On instinct, Shawn looked back at the standup forklift strapped down on his trailer. Seeing it hadn’t moved, Shawn glanced over at Tony. “I don’t know,” Shawn shrugged.
“I hope he doesn’t,” Tony said as the radio went off.
“People at the van ahead on the right,” they heard Arthur’s voice call out.
Trying to act calm, Tony pulled his AR up and turned to face the passenger window. They saw a nice conversion van parked in a large gravel area. Three people and a kid were standing around an outdoor grill. Shawn gave a sigh at seeing the group wave because he could see weapons on the adults.
“Tony, if Arthur didn’t take risks on us, we wouldn’t be with him,” Shawn pointed out as Tony turned, keeping an eye on the group until they were out of sight. “He doesn’t need us, that’s for sure, and we are more of a drain than help, if you ask me.”
“But we aren’t scary,” Tony said, turning around. “All those that have asked to come with us were freaky.”
Remembering a sixteen-year-old boy they had met in Conway, Shawn couldn’t help but shiver. Shawn was big for his age and was bigger than the boy that had strolled up, carrying an AK47 and two Glocks strapped to his hips. But the boy just gave him the creeps.
“We have to trust Arthur on who joins,” Shawn finally said.
“But he asked you about that boy,” Tony almost whined. “He never asked anyone about the others.”
“That was the only kid so far that has asked to come. All the rest were adults,” Shawn reminded Tony.
Looking over at Shawn, Tony was clearly worried. “I know, but I think Arthur would’ve let that boy come if you had said it was okay,” Tony guessed. “We know now that he is running with that group in Morrilton.”
Nodding, Shawn slowed as they turned onto another road. “Tony, I think it’s you who’s wrong,” Shawn corrected. “I think Arthur didn’t want the boy to come, but felt guilty because he was young. Arthur wanted to see if the boy freaked the rest of us out.”
“I’m saying no if I’m asked,” Tony admitted with no hesitation.
“What if we find a bunch like Vicki’s again?”
Jerking his gaze over to Shawn, Tony slowly turned to look around them. “I was wrong,” he mumbled. “We were shot at so many times trying to get out of Little Rock; I knew we were going to die.”
“Placing camera,” Arthur’s voice said over the radio and Shawn saw the vehicles slow. When they stopped, Shawn saw Shelia dart out of the Suburban while carrying a small tripod with a game camera mounted on it.
Jumping a small ditch, Shelia put the camera next to a fence post and then ran back to the Suburban. “How that man thinks of stuff like that amazes me,” Shawn mumbled. They had ransacked an outdoor store and Arthur had had them clear the shelves of all the game cameras. Nobody ever asked why they loaded up what they did. They always knew it was needed to keep them safe.
The next day, they had put out the first of the game cameras in Clarksville and the road leading to the farm. Every day they went out, they put cameras out and picked cameras up. Shawn was actually surprised at how many people they had taken pictures of.
Arthur loved to put cameras near intersections and there were dozens of cars moving around. Granted, they had only seen a few as they’d ridden around, but the cameras had caught a bunch. It was the camera they had placed in Morrilton that had caught the sixteen-year-old boy who had asked to join them, moving with a large heavily
