He hoped they got their shit together, but in his mind, they were a bomb waiting to explode.
Rick seemed like he good guy and he could lead, but he wasn't coming up to speed fast enough. Well, the coma probably didn't help. That and it took Casey 10 minutes to realize Ricks wife and Shane had had 'a thing' while he was in dreamland.
Casey couldn't stand either of them. Shane was walking a razors edge to insanity and Lori was a whinny bitch.
Hopefully, Dale could back Rick up on his decisions. He seemed like he had the groups ear. Glen was just too young and willing to please to have any effect on 'policy' issues.
Caseys thought were interupted as he saw a farm house up ahead. It was set well back from the back road he was shadowing. Taking stock of his situation, Casey realized he was going through his water MUCH faster than he anticipated. Food wasn't yet a problem, but in his situation, it was always a concern. Ammo was good. He could do with a day or so to recover from the 40 or so hard miles he had covered in the last 3 days. There was about 3 hours of daylight left, he wanted to conserve the batteries for his Night Vision goggles (NVGs).
It was time to risk contact before exhastion degraded his combat performance.
As he walked up the edge of the overgrown dirt driveway, He noticed the large barn/garage off to the right of the single story modular home. Adjusting his route to keep the barn between him and the house, It looked buttoned up but he saw a small window in the side of the barn.
Creeping to the window, he saw a Jeep Wrangler and a Chevy Blazer inside. If He could get either of them running...
The window was too dirty and too small to see the entire interior.
Casey came around the corner of the barn, checking out the house as best he could. Nothing was moving. Casey took one step forward and BAM.
The next thing he knew, Casey was flat on his back with blood flowing, heavily, from a large gash on his right check. The culprit being the handle of a god damn bow rake. Just like a bad three stooges show, he had stepped on the damn thing. Head and ears ringing, he wobbled back to the corner of the barn. 'No more stupid amateur mistakes', ran through his head as he pulled a signal mirror from his pack. Quickly checking the area and finding it clear, he checked his face.
A large gash ran from just below the corner of his right eye to just above the right corner of his mouth. DAMN. Opening a bottle of super glue, he used it to close the wound as good as possible.
The pain made him clench his teeth until his jaw ached. As the pain subsided he checked himself in the mirror. What a mess.
"Oh well, I was never gonna be a chippendale dude anyway," he mumbled to himself.
Working his jaw loose (while checking the area again), He waited a few moments. Both to collect himself and, more importantly, so he wouldn't stupidly glue his face to the M-4.
His old commanding officer used to say, "Proper prior planning prevents piss poor performance" and that was even more important now. 'Time to be smarter.'
Dropping his pack behind a patch of overgrown weeds, he checked the chamber of his M-4 and made sure the suppressor on the Glock 19 was on tight. A third quick check of his surroundings and he took off running towards the house. About 10 paces into his run and he thought he heard something moving in the barn. "Oh well, I'm fucking committed now"
He made it to the house without incident. He stopped at a corner that would not allow anyone in the home to see him and waited to catch his breath. 'Damn this was easier 20 years ago,' ran through his mind. When he wasn't breathing so hard he worked his way around the house, stopping at the door to the screened in porch. It was open, only the sliding screen door to the interior was closed.
'Not a good sign.' He had a decision to make. Breech and clear right now or continue to make his way around the home. He figured he had seen about two thirds the outside already and with the pain he was in, breeching was what he decided.
Going in he quietly closed the screen door behind himself and transitioned to the suppressed Glock, mainly to try to preserve his hearing. He crept up to the sliding door and did his 'patent pending sniff test'. Pass. All he could smell was dust and vague moldyness. Next listen. After a solid two minutes... Nothing. Time to go in.
Trying the door, he found it wouldn't move. instead of forcing it Casey decided to take out his knife and quietly cut the screen. Finishing that he moved in, of course catching the rail of his carbine on the edge of the screen, negating all his supposed stealth.
Checking the interior, he was in the dining room, to the right was the kitchen and then what looked like a dayroom or family room that had a door to the outside. Straight ahead was the living room and the front door. To the left of the living room, a hallway. Probably the bedrooms and such.
Casey decided to go right, clear the family room and head toward the bedrooms. Next time, he would finish the walkaround. The family room was clear and it had a laundry room that was also clear. Casey noted that there were some canned goods there, but now wasn't the time to check them. Hanging on a set of nails were three sets of key. Casey pocketed them right then.
Taking his time, Casey cleared the house without contact. It wasn't until he was in the master bathroom that he saw how messed up his face was. Red and puffy. Painful to the touch.
He dug into the med kit on his belt and took some of the anti-inflamitories and "Kick ass" antibiotics that they had gotten from Doc Jenner.
The home didn't have a basement, so Casey went back and closed the dining rooms sliding door. The next clear would be hairy. There were pull down stairs in the hallway. That had to be cleared. He pulled the stairs down only about 2 inches and left them that way as he backed into the living room. After a minute or two of nothing, Casey pulled them down the rest of the way. Except an underwear ruining moment of two starlings bursting out. He cleared a remarkably empty attic. Next step. Shoe the birds out. Then the barn.
The barn had a door facing the house, Casey was just finished putting the suppressor on his M-4 when he heard a man's scream of agony. Casey wasn't a very large man, but living in today's devastated world had solidified his 6 foot 200 pound frame, and when he moved with purpose, he was a wrecking ball. Putting his foot to the door almost took it off the hinges. Before the door had finished moving, he was in.
It was a definite 'WHAT THE FUCK!' moment. Inside was two people, a man, clutching his bleeding left hand and a blonde woman duct taped to a 4X8 sheet of plywood! There was a large amount of blood on the woman and board, the man turned to him with a scalpel in his right hand. Casey's surprise lasted just long enough for the man to take two steps toward him before Casey fired two rounds into the man's chest and then one into his head.
After ensuring the man's brains were goo on the floor, Casey turned to the woman and got another surprise. She had turned. Finishing her with his knife, Casey tried to figure out what was going on.
The man had a bite on his left wrist, very fresh.
On a workbench was a slide with a blood sample and a wooden box with dozens of similar slides.
There were dozens of pictures hanging in such a way that no matter where the woman looked, there was a picture. Some were of the woman, 2 children and a man. Some were of a crime scene. It looked like a carbon monoxide murder/suicide involving the man and 2 children. Wait, although they looked a lot alike, there were two different men and the second one only had a little girl in the pictures with him. There were police reports for that family as well. Creepily similar. The wife in both reports had different names, but the photos were of the same woman. The woman on the table.
OK, so the woman killed 2 families. This dude killed her by... bloodletting, again creepy. But why? A check of the man's wallet revealed his name was Dexter Morgan and he had been a forensic blood spatter analyst from Miami. OK, that explained how he got the police reports. It seemed the woman died, this Dexter let his hand get to close and he was bitten.
But what was up with the slides? And the gash on the woman's right cheek?
Sometimes answers just lead to more questions.
Time to get one of these vehicles running...