“So, did you get away? I mean is that when you left and hit the road?”
Shaun nodded, “I left after I dealt with the guy.”
“What’d you do?”
“He wasn’t a threat after I was done with him. I left him for the Turned to do what they wanted with him. From the sounds of his screams, it didn’t seem like he was going to be any issue to worry about going forward. I couldn’t handle the guilt after that and hit the road. I didn’t want to bring anyone into my new circle, but it didn’t matter, and I just kept collecting new faces.”
“I’m sure it hurts, but I’m glad that you did. I don’t know how long we would have tried to wait it out in the basement. I think if we’d have tried for too much longer that we either would have gone insane or Timmy or Talon would have screwed up and found a way to make enough noise that the dead knew where we were and then dismantled the house trying to make their way in.”
“It is nice to know that something good came out of it, I guess, right?”
Shaun thought of their grandma running around when they showed up. Saving two would not make up for losing Aslin and McQuaig, it never would, not that he truly blamed himself for what had happened. It just didn’t make anything any easier. There wasn’t anything to say so he just smiled. “So how long will it be before they start arming Timmy and I?”
Shaun smiled, and this time it was believable. “You’ll need to wait awhile first. But don’t worry, I’m sure that they still do fitness in the mornings if I know Clary. We know that we can’t outrun them, but being quick on your feet can lead to saving your own ass quite quickly.”
“I hate running.”
“You’ll really hate running after you start going for your first five-mile run. Once you can knock one of those out you start going for a little longer and a little longer until you can run as far as he can.”
“Then I have to worry about carrying one of those machine guns around?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“You’ll know when you get to carry one when Clary starts training you. Once he trusts you, that’s when you get a gun.”
“Gotcha, well hopefully he isn’t too worried about me since I came with you.”
“I can’t think that it would hurt. The fact you are from a completely different place with no knowledge of this one won’t hurt anything either. That bunk over there looks to be like where you are staying at.”
“What about you?”
“I don’t really know yet, I slept over there since we got here with a lot of them. We’ve moved around a few times. After those guys shot the place up, we didn’t want to sleep where we’d started. It wasn’t pleasant and shortly after that was when I left. They might still be sleeping in the infirmary.”
“So, they are putting us in the place where everyone died?”
“There are a lot of bunkhouses, but keeping everyone close is the way to go. We walk perimeters at night and we are far enough out that we don’t get a lot of traffic.”
“Yeah, it's real quiet out here. How many of those things did you just kill?”
“Remember, it started here in Des Moines and Adel. There’s a helluva a lot of the dead here. We’ve killed a lot of them, but I know there’s no shortage left.”
“We came back here to fix this, right?”
“Right.”
Chapter 3
Next Morning
Clary had a fresh pot of coffee sitting on the table and was blowing on a cup he’d poured for himself. Mark and Scott came in first, followed by Shaun, Greg, Ellie, and Earl. Clary looked at Earl when he came in and questioned, “What are you doing, Earl?
“Following this group of folks. See, in the Army, you see yourself a group and you go with em, keeps you from being late. It also has some real big benefits sometimes.”
“Benefits?”
“See, now, nobody eats cake alone.”
“Cake?”
“Yeah, you know, cake. They take some eggs, and flour, little vanilla extract, not the imitation shit neither-”
Clary cut him off, “Fuck, I know what cake is, what the hell are you talking about!”
“You follow the line and that’s when you could find a birthday cake. I love cake, don’t matter none if it is chocolate, vanilla, chocolate with vanilla, I ain’t picky.”
“So, you thought that maybe you were going to find some cake following everyone in here?”
Earl shrugged, “Seemed like I wouldn’t be out anything if there wasn’t none.”
Clary realized that giving him a tank lesson and sending him on his way might just be the best thing in the world for his own sanity. He didn’t have the patience to deal with this guy on a regular basis. “Well, there won’t be any cake today so if you’d like to try your chances elsewhere, we can wait while you leave.”
Earl sat down and kicked his feet up and smiled, “Nope, I ain’t been here long enough to know what else to go do with myself. I figure since I’m one of the geniuses that designed this working thing, that I guess it ought to be me who stays here and helps ya’ll think ‘bout how we can take care of this shit.”
“Geniuses, you know, Earl, you pretty much took the words right out of my mouth.”
Scott, knowing that this could continue for the entire day, intervened asking,
