The Survivor Chronicles (Book 2): The Divide (27 page)

He slumped to the floor as John released him. "Is he dead?" Riley panted.

She wasn't entirely sure how she would feel about that. She didn't want to kill someone again but she didn't think she would feel any remorse for bashing this asshole's brain in. If he had any brains to bash in.

John fumbled at the guy's neck before shaking his head. "He's still got a pulse."

"Oh."

"Remind me not to piss you off."

She turned to find Carl standing a few feet away with his gun raised and his head quirked to the side. His hat had been knocked off and his damp brown hair was plastered to his face. The term 'hat head' wasn't adequate enough to describe what he had going on right now.

No wonder he refused to take the hat off
, she realized as she spotted the filthy cap sitting by the door.

"You guys ok?" Carl asked.

"Just peachy," Riley muttered.

"Yeah," John said as he nudged the guy with the tip of his toe. "What do we do with him?"

"Leave him, he can't hurt us anymore, and Al needs help," Carl stated.

"What's wrong with Al?" Riley demanded as she recalled the door opening seconds before all hell had broken loose.

"The door caught him in the head, he's out cold. Rochelle's with him."

"Is he going to be ok?"

"He should be fine," Carl assured her.

Carl's work boots crunched on the glass as he bent down and grabbed his hat. He shook and beat the glass off of it before squishing it back onto his head. "We can't just leave this guy," John said. "He killed the clerk and stashed him in the back, and he was going to kill us. He'll kill other people when he wakes up."

"He killed the clerk?" Riley eyed the guy on the floor as she recalled that look in his eyes. She'd seen something wrong within his gaze but she didn't like to have the confirmation of that in a dead body out back.

"Yeah and I don't think it was because the guy was a threat to him. We can't just leave him here," John said.

"What would you like to do, bring him with us?" Carl asked as he came toward them again.

"Fuck no," John retorted with a shake of his head.

"
Kill
him?" her voice squeaked a little on the word kill. She had just almost smashed his skull in but she wasn't about to kill someone in cold blood.

"No, we'll tie him up or something. There has to be something around here we could use," John said.

"If we tie him up and those people come in here, or he can't get free, he's as good as dead," Carl told him.

"Anyone he comes across is almost as good as dead anyway," John retorted.

"I have to agree." Riley bent and grabbed the gun she'd been trying to attain. She walked over and placed it on the counter before retrieving the gun she had stupidly placed down when ordered to do so earlier. "There was something completely wrong with this guy."

"Fine, give me a hand getting Al in here first. We can't leave him out there," Carl said.

"What about Lee?" Riley asked anxiously.

"He's fine right now," Carl assured her.

Riley followed them to the broken door. Rochelle was hunched down beside Al amidst the glass and blood from the gash on Al's forehead. Riley kept one eye on them as they lifted Al's unconscious figure carefully up between them, and the other on the unconscious form still lying face down on the floor. John and Carl carried Al inside and carefully laid him down on the floor.

Riley knelt at his side to investigate the nasty injury. "I'll find some bandages or something," Rochelle volunteered as she leapt to her feet and rushed down one of the aisles. "It looks like a bomb went off in here," she said from amidst the shelves.

"Or a gun," John muttered as he eyed the large man still out on the floor. "We need something to tie him up with."

Rochelle reappeared with some sopping boxes of band-aids still dripping coffee out of the bottom of them. "That's not going to help," Riley said.

"I'll go out to the truck," Rochelle offered.

"No, I'll go. I want to check on Lee anyway," Riley told her.

Rochelle took Riley's spot at Al's side as she nodded to Carl and John. John was busy searching the shelves for something to use to keep the guy restrained. Carl kept his gun trained on the slumbering man on the floor as he turned toward her. "There is some weedwacker string behind the driver's seat in the truck. It's not the best but it will keep him occupied for awhile if we can't find something else for this guy."

"I'll get it," she assured him.

Riley stepped over the ruined door and jogged across the parking lot to the vehicles. Lee had to be sweltering within the car but when she peeked inside he was still buried beneath the t-shirt. She counted the seconds as she waited to see the rise and fall of his chest. She was almost to seventy before he finally took a breath.

Her heart hammered more now than when the guy had been shooting at her. She didn't want to think about what that said about the circumstances of her life right now when having bullets flying at her was less troublesome than the possibility of losing her friend. Though, if she thought about it, she'd rather be shot than consumed by lava or eaten by some wacked out rabid nut job.

The windows had all been opened at least halfway but she opened the passenger side door and rolled it the rest of the way down. Lee didn't even flinch when she closed the door again. She glanced nervously at the woods as she opened the door of the truck and pushed the bench seat forward. She shoved aside numerous things that she couldn't identify before wrapping her hand around a roll of plastic looking string that she could only assume was what Carl had been talking about. She pushed the seat back into position and hurried to the back of the truck.

After opening the doors, she climbed in, and quickly located the medical supplies. She pulled out the peroxide and bandages they had used on Al's hand.
The poor guy was having an even worse couple of days than the rest of them
, she realized as she tucked the bandages into her pocket and climbed out of the truck.

She closed the doors and checked on Lee one more time before returning to the store. John handed her a bottle of water as she stepped though the doorway again. She nodded thankfully to him, twisted off the top and guzzled down half of the warm contents before dumping the rest over her head. It cooled her to some extent but dreams of air conditioning were dancing through her head as she knelt beside Al again.

Rochelle helped her to clean and bandage Al's cut. She checked his pulse, relieved to find it thumping steadily beneath her fingers. She was suddenly grateful for the crash CPR course they had received in health class. Though she knew it wasn't as intensive as the Red Cross class she at least had some rudimentary knowledge of what to do in a pinch.

Hopefully he would wake up soon though; she knew how tricky head injuries could be. Her friend, Martha, had received a concussion in a car accident last year and for three days straight she had asked everyone what their names were, repeatedly. At first she'd found it funny, then it had become annoying, but by the end of day one Riley had been scared that Martha would never remember any of them, never remember any
one
again. Finally, on the third day, Martha had awoken perfectly fine but with no memory of the last three days, or the accident that had left her completely out of it. Martha had laughed about it when they told her, but Riley had stopped finding it amusing by then.

Riley sat back and groaned as she pushed herself to her feet. She imagined this was what it felt like to be thirty as she stretched her cramped and sore muscles. "I'm going to check out the back," she told them. "Maybe there's something we can use there."

"Wait," John said as he leapt to his feet. Carl and John had succeeded in tying the man's hands with the string. The string was wrapped around the ATM machine and Carl was securing it with a roll of duct tape. The man's hands had also been wrapped in the tape and tied before him on his large belly. Riley really would have liked an apple to shove into the guy's mouth in order to complete the scene unfolding before her. "I'll go with you."

John cut her off before she made it to the back room. "I told you, the clerk, Kyle, his body is back there."

Riley swallowed as she nodded. "I know, but there might be boxes back there we can use for supplies, and perhaps something else we can use too. I want out of here as badly as you do, but there is stuff here we
will
need."

John frowned as he glanced at the backroom and then at her again. "Ok, but let's make this quick."

Riley nodded and took a deep breath as she stepped into the gloomy backroom. John led the way through the shadows, past the ice machine and toward what she assumed was the manager's office. "You should look away," he told her as they approached another puddle on the floor.

She didn't look away though. It wasn't morbid curiosity that made her keep her head straight, but simply the fact that she had seen plenty of dead bodies recently and she felt that looking away from Kyle now was cowardly. John made it to the office door and pushed it open.

"Need this?" Riley jumped as a flashlight clicked on and light flooded over them. Carl's chuckle was low as he clicked it back off. John muttered a curse as he hurried back toward the doorway Carl stood in. "Hurry up," Carl told him as he handed the light over.

"We will."

John clicked it back on as he returned to her side. They stepped into the cluttered room full of boxes, filing cabinets, and papers. Riley pulled open one of the boxes and peered inside in the hope that it was full of some food or other shelf supplies. She was met with even more papers. She lifted the box up and dumped the contents on the floor to use to hold the things they would need.

John was shaking out the contents of another box. "Anything else useful?" he asked.

"No," she admitted.

"Let's get out of here then."

Carl was still standing in the doorway when they reemerged from the office. His head turned toward them as Rochelle stepped around the aisle and hurried forward. "Al is starting to wake up," she said eagerly.

"Finally some good news," John muttered.

"Finally," Riley agreed. Hopefully Al would know who they were and they wouldn't have to spend the next three days telling him their names over and over again.

Carl grabbed Rochelle before she could step into the backroom. "Why don't you go stay with him," he suggested. "I'm sure he would like some company."

Rochelle frowned at him sternly but didn't resist as Carl turned her around and nudged her toward the front of the store. "Anyone else back there?" Carl asked when Rochelle was at the end of the aisle.

Riley waited until she was out of sight before answering. "No, there's also nothing…"

Rochelle's high pitched screams drowned out her next words. The three of them remained unmoving, frozen as the screams continued to sound. Then, Rochelle came into view as she pin-wheeled backward and crashed into the wall. Riley dropped the box and leapt forward as Carl dashed down the aisle toward the girl.

Rochelle's screams abruptly broke off as she slammed both her hands over her mouth. Her dark eyes were rolling as she turned toward them. Carl stepped in front of her and searched the store with his gun raised. Riley couldn't catch her breath as she stepped around the line of shelves. She saw nothing but Al propped against the front shelf of gum and candies. Al's red rimmed eyes were focused upon where they had left the man tied up; his mouth was gaping as he tried to push himself further back against the counter.

She glanced questioningly at Rochelle as Carl hissed, "What is it?"

Rochelle lifted a shaking arm and pointed toward where they had left the idiot tied up on the floor. A cold sweat slid down Riley's back as chills raced up and down her arms.

Had he somehow gotten free
?

But she didn't think that would have elicited the reaction from Rochelle that she was now showing. Carl crept forward, his gun at the ready as Riley followed behind him with hers down at her side. John was close on her heels, his breathing labored in the hushed store. Carl stood on his tiptoes to try and see over the shelves, but he shook his head and came back down.

He hesitated before stepping around the final row blocking their view of the man. His arms wavered, the gun dropped down before snapping back into place. There was a knot in her chest that was making it difficult to breathe. She knew, without having to look, she knew what she would see before she stepped behind Carl.

Even though she'd known, she still wasn't ready for the spectacle that greeted her as Lee lifted his blood stained mouth to look at them. She couldn't look at the man's body; she simply couldn't see what Lee had done to him, but the blood…

There was
so
much blood.

No human being should be able to do that to another. Not with their bare hands, not with their
teeth
. Something inside of them should stop them from doing such a thing, something inside of them should scream against this being
wrong
. Completely and hideously
wrong
.

But whatever part that was didn't seem to be working inside of Lee anymore. He chewed and swallowed a piece of what Riley knew wasn't simply just skin, but something that had come from within the man's midsection. She didn't know if the man was still alive, but if he was she hoped that he never woke again.

A groan rose up in her, tears threatened to fall, but she didn't release either as Lee's cloudy dark blue eyes focused upon them.
Shark's eyes
, she thought wildly. They weren't black like a shark's, but they were as cold and emotionless as a shark's eyes. His lips curled back, his blood stained teeth still had bits of flesh hanging from them as he rose to his feet.

Riley leapt in front of Carl, pushing his arm aside as he leveled the gun at Lee's chest. "No! Lee it's me! It's
Riley
!" she cried as she threw up her hands. "Please Lee, you know me. You don't want to do this. We're friends," her voice hitched, she was struggling not to fall apart as those unsettling eyes focused on her.