Ellie walked by, nudging Jon with her elbow, asking, “Jon, you still trying to redeem yourself from last year?”
“Pretty much. I think if it had been anyone else, Clary wouldn’t have cared as much, but I think that man thinks of you like one of his own kids.”
“I don’t know if I’d go that far, but I definitely know that he likes me way more than you. I’m going to go out on a limb and just ask all of you guys that you do know we are going in town, like Des Moines in town if we can. We’ll be on a college campus and god willing can find the departments that we need and the ingredients on this list. I made two copies for everyone here. I want you to stick them in your pockets so you’ve got a backup if things go bad. You make sure that you stick to the list though. I want to be in there and out just as fast as we can be. So, when we get there that means no looting things we don’t need.”
Ellie had turned around and was staring dead on at Joey. Joey held his hands up trying to look just as innocent as possible. His big puppy dog eyes didn’t change her mind about what she was thinking. Joey said, “Hey, I’m going because I want all of those Turned to be put out of their misery...but if I go and walk past a perfectly good pop or vending machine I don’t think that I can live with myself if I went and wasted the chance to go and get something I could share with my…”
“I’m sorry, are you really lying to me? You know how much I like you; you wouldn’t lie to me would you?”
“I might give someone some of the candy.”
“Really, Joey?” Kya said, trying not to laugh.
“Sure, I hate coconut...not the taste but the consistency.”
Joe looked to Yassa, who whispered, “He’s seen Zombieland right around a thousand times.”
Ellie figured if they had the time, and they were able to get him something, it would be a small price to pay in the amount of time to see how happy he would be. Ellie pointed to Joe and said, “Officer Joe, do you think you could handle driving? I’ve got directions to get there. Hopefully, we don’t need to stress out about anything if we just go nice and slow and keep things quiet.”
“And what do we need all these guns and bullets for?” Lucas, who was one of the camp kids collected when Ellie had raced off after Shaun, asked. She didn’t know, of course, the hell that she’d be unleashing on her group and the new one by chasing after someone who, at the time, didn’t want to be found. By the time the day was over, she wasn’t sure if she’d ever felt that much loss before in her young life.
“We pack heavy and then pray we don’t need it, but if I know one thing, it isn’t that zombies are easy to deal with. I just wished they could have been the out of the grave kind that don’t have the ability to rip arms off. The kind who can’t outrun an Olympic sprinter, or heal themselves or....”
Lucas interrupted Ellie, saying, “Yeah, we are all well aware how horrible they are. We aren’t looking forward to this, but doing something like this is freaking epic! I can’t believe that we get to go.”
“You can thank Joey. I would’ve taken anyone who knew how to shoot competently, outside of Mark the science guy, who is invaluable.”
Yassa was debating a smoke when he finally decided to save it for a victory and asked, “Do you think we could get going? It is still early and I want to make it back in time to watch the game.”
Joe didn’t know his sense of humor and leaned over to Joey asking, “Did this guy hit his head, or is there something wrong with him?”
Yassa heard him perfectly as he climbed into the backseat saying, “Oh, there’s definitely something wrong with me. Thank god there aren’t any pills anymore to fix it.”
“Well, that’s relieving,” Joe said.
Yassa slammed the door, rolling down the window, and said, “You just remember the good news is that I haven’t killed anyone yet...today.”
Joe got into the driver’s seat, looking at the unproven group that he was going to put his life in the hands of.
Chapter 8
Earl watched in dismay as they tore his gun to pieces. He’d spent a lot of time on it and the fact that these bastards were tearing it apart did little to make him feel okay. Earl wished that he could unleash that fifty-caliber on them right now. But he wasn’t ignorant and knew exactly what was going to transpire if he did such a thing.
Greg did little to help Earl feel better, yelling, “I don’t know why the hell they’d want it, it doesn’t do a damn thing good. If it worked, we’d never be in a situation like this.”
“It does...or it did work before those effers went and broke it in half. It isn’t my fault about the bricks, having to break those vials was nothing that I usually have to worry about.”
“There is no usual, you idiot. You have to do something more than once before you can say something like that! You only took the stupid thing out one time,” Scott yelled, failing to hold back
