Chapter 1: "Desperation"
The hum of a light he couldn't see switching on caught Iggy by surprise, milliseconds before he heard the words, "Don't move. I'm an excellent shot." He froze in shock.
What the…? How had someone managed to sneak up on him? The stress, no sleep, and horrendous headache that had been pounding against his brain all night were apparently taking their toll.
Well, whatever had caused his massive mistake, it now meant he was in a very dangerous position, trapped in a tiny, enclosed space he couldn't see, inside of an unfamiliar house, with what he assumed was a loaded gun between him and freedom. Under normal circumstances, if he'd had the element of surprise and somewhere safe to run to, he'd have just rushed the woman and knocked the gun out of her hands to escape, but his hesitation had cost him that option. Anger intensified the feelings of extreme uselessness he'd been harboring for two days and he let the bottle he was holding fall into his pack before turning to face his captor head on.
"Look, lady," he whispered desperately, not used to trying to talk himself out of scrapes like this, but also knowing the stakes were too high to fail. His family was depending on him. "I just need –"
He was cut off. "Need a little fix? Small pick-me up?" The woman's voice was steely, but also almost strangely disappointed. "Or maybe just need a little cash to get by? Something quick and easy to fence? Well, I can tell you with certainty that there's nothing in that medicine cabinet that's worth the mess you'll be in with the cops if you try to walk out of here with it."
Panic started to well up inside Iggy. She thought he was a junkie! Looking for his next fix! And he so didn't have time for this! "No, you don't understand!" he cried urgently, unconsciously taking a small step forward until he heard the click of a safety being released and frozen again.
"Empty the bag," the woman said firmly, not budging an inch.
"What if I'm armed?" he asked defiantly.
"If you were armed you'd have gone for me the minute I caught you red handed. Now, dump the bag."
He couldn't fault her logic there. It was completely the truth.
With a frustrated sigh, he upended his pack on the bathroom tile, wincing as the sound of pilfered canned goods and medicine bottles hitting the hard surface assaulted his aching head through his usually overly sensitive ears. To him it was the sound of utter failure. Max never would have gotten herself caught. Neither would Fang. But useless Iggy sure did, and now time was running out and he'd created one more disaster to add to the other million that had built up in the last forty-eight hours.
There was silence for a long moment and he cursed his blindness for the inability to see this woman, know what she was thinking, but finally she spoke.
"You can keep the food," she said, her voice a little warmer but not any less firm. "Put it back in the bag."
And here's where the fun part started. They desperately needed that food and he wasn't above begging, but he'd dumped it all out and let it roll wherever. To put it back in his pack, he'd have to get down on his hands and knees and feel for it. So, he now got to choose between tipping this woman off to his serious vulnerability but salvaging the food he'd come to get for the Flock, or refusing and allowing them to go hungry again.
Gritting his teeth, he sank to the floor and, never turning his back on the woman and her loaded weapon, started retrieving the cans and packages of food. He used every bit of concentration he had to try and remember where things had rolled so he might not appear to be completely groping in the dark. He had no idea if he pulled it off or not: the woman didn't say a word the entire time.
"What were you looking for in here?" she asked when he was finished and standing back up.
"Meds," he answered truthfully. Max was the brilliant planner, not him. He was too tired and his head hurt too badly to keep thinking up new lies. At least this woman hadn't gone all wolfy on him yet. Or called the cops. Of course, after Anne, he knew you could never be too careful. Still, at this point he was betting he'd get out of this mess unscathed, just without half of the vital items he'd come to get in the first place.
"I gathered that," she said dryly. "For what? You don't look like the typical junkie."
Sarcastic words leapt to his throat, but for once he didn't snap them out.
The last three days had been some of the worst of Iggy's life – and given the events in his short life history, that was saying a whole heck of a lot.
It had started with a crowded college campus they'd tried to blend into for "family day" on the hope of scoring some free food, followed by a long flight through freezing rain and an even longer night spent huddled together for warmth in a very shallow cave when the lightening had forced them out of the sky. Nudge and Max came out of it with a bit of a cold, but no one thought anything of it. They rarely got sick, and when they did, they were over it in a day or so. It was business as usual on a much nicer day, until Max literally fell out of the sky as they flew over more acres of generic farmland.
Fang managed to catch her before she made her own crater, but she was barely conscious and burning up. They sought refuge in the loft of a barn, Max claiming she just needed a few hours of rest and she'd be fine.
Yeah right.
By yesterday evening Nudge was worse than Max and panic was setting in for the Flock. An even quieter than normal Fang stood up to go scouting for supplies and promptly passed out, only Iggy's incredibly quick reflexes stopping him from a nose-dive out of the loft onto his head on the cement floor two stories below.
This morning saw only Iggy and Gazzy left standing, Angel succumbing during the night. The other four were now fighting for their lives against some illness he couldn't even guess at. All he knew was it left them vomiting, disoriented and too weak to move from intense head and neck pain, and burning up with fevers way too high for bird kids to live through for long.
Hating that he couldn't just do it himself, he'd been forced to let Gazzy check the others to see if awful numbers were appearing on their necks that shouted "hello, it's time for you to die." Thankfully, there were none – at least not yet. Meaning that whatever this was it was probably on the contagious side of health-scares rather than the mutation one. At which point he'd sent Gazzy out to scrub head to toe at an old water pump and then banished the boy to the far side of the barn, hoping against hope to keep at least one kid safe.
And then he'd had to decide what to do. He, Iggy, usually third-in-command and now de facto blind leader of a flock of four puking zombies and one hopefully healthy eight-year-old kid, had to figure out the next plan.
Obviously, the one he'd picked hadn't worked out that well, given he was being held at gunpoint in some lady's bathroom, unable to even steal a few drugs.
He hated to admit it, but he needed help, needed someone to tell him what the heck he was supposed to do now.
He'd watched – okay fine, "listened to" – this woman over the last two days as he crouched hidden in her barn loft, trying to care for his family. He'd heard her whistle as she mucked out stalls, talk softly to a nervous ewe, grumble and kick her old truck when she couldn't get it going… She sounded…real…genuine. Nothing like the carefully constructed front Jeb and just lately Anne had always projected.
"I asked you want you wanted the drugs for," the woman's voice cut into his drifting thoughts, reminding him of the tense situation he was still stuck in.
"I'm not a druggie, if that's what you're thinking!" he snapped, any nerves he had left after these two days of hell worn thin.
"Then tell me what they're for," she demanded again. "And then I'll decide whether to call the cops on you or not."
It was his last chance and Iggy knew it. His head hurt so badly, was fuzzy from lack of sleep and the agonizing decisions of weighing everything that hung over them. Death for his family by torture if he trusted the wrong people and they ended up back in the clutches of the school. Death by some unknown, stupid illness if he did nothing at all. Hello rock, meet hard place. What should he do? And in that moment, he realized he had no choice. He was backed into a corner in oh so many ways right now. So, putting his own life and the lives of every single person he loved on the line, Iggy took the biggest risk of his life and blurted out, "For my brother and sisters, who're out there dying right now!"
There was utter silence after that. No yelling. No beeps of little phone buttons being pushed. Just the drip of a leaky faucet somewhere and the hum of a noisy fridge. Then finally, in a voice that told him the gun was still firmly in place, she spoke.
"Okay. Pick it all up then and let's go."
"Go?" he echoed stupidly.
"Go get them. Help them."
She still thought it was a lie, he could tell, knew she was also scared and trying to remain in control. But he wasn't gonna make a fuss about that now. He needed help from somewhere, and this gun-wielding lady hadn't shot him yet, so… He scrambled around the bathroom floor, finding everything he'd dropped and stuffing it back in his backpack. Then, taking the hugest risk of all, he reached up and finished swiping the entire contents of her medicine cabinet into the bag as well. It's not like he could tell if he had the right stuff anyway; better to take it all and let Gazzy sort it out later.
There was an almost amused sounding snort from the woman's direction, but she didn't say anything or stop him. Then she backed up and let him walk slowly past, falling in step behind him with her gun as he carefully wove his way through a hall and then the kitchen up to the back door he'd picked the lock on what felt like ages ago.
This time it opened freely, and he stepped outside only to immediately be accosted by a terrified eight-year-old.
"Iggy! What happened, dude? You were in there for – oh."
And he knew Gaz had seen his unwanted shadow and her hardware.
He let out a long-suffering sigh as he found the kid's shoulder and gripped it, squeezing gently. "I know, and I'm fine. Just lead us back to the others, okay?"
0o0o0o0o
Sarah's heart wasn't hammering quite as loudly in her throat now, but she was far from calm. In fact, she was utterly confused. Everything about this situation was somehow just…off. From the kid who did not scream criminal to her but was still not telling her the truth as he stole from her, to the utterly dumb excuse he'd thrown out. Dying brothers and sisters? Really? Who even tried something that farfetched as an excuse? She'd been no stranger to the art of lying on the spot in her younger years and this lie was outright terrible. And yet…who would use such a lame and easily seen through lie unless it was true?
At least part of it was confirmed truth when a much younger boy literally jumped the tall one as they exited the house, worry rolling off him in waves as his questions all died at the sight of her standing there, holding a gun. A jolt of shame rushed through her.
The tall kid reached out and grabbed the younger one's shoulder. It was supportive and meant to offer comfort, but there was more to it than that. "I know, and I'm fine," he told his companion cryptically, not letting go. "Just lead us back to the others, okay?"
Lead… Lead us back…
It hit her like a Clydesdale, the strange way he'd picked things up off her bathroom floor to replace them in his bag, the fact he didn't let go as the younger boy started walking…
Her would-be thief was blind.
And she was standing there holding a little kid and a blind boy at gun point.
She felt sick.
"Just a second," she called out immediately and turned back into the kitchen, no longer caring if the boys were telling a mess of lies and took the opportunity to bolt. She reset the safety on the rifle and set it on the counter, pushing it to the back. "I don't think I really need that, do you?" she asked, seeing they were actually still waiting for her.
"Thank you," the tall one, or Iggy as his younger friend had called him, said sincerely.
"You'd never have had the chance to use it if Ig really put up a fight anyway," the little boy said with a shrug.
'Ig' gave a sort of bitterly amused snort, and somehow Sarah didn't feel very comforted by either of these comments, such that they were. But she was in too deep to back out now. And to think she'd been dreaming about a nice, quiet, uncomplicated summer break.
"So, where are these other siblings again?" she asked resignedly.
The younger boy glanced warily at his companion, asking a silent question the blind boy somehow understood and answered with a nod.
"Out here," the kid said then, springing into action and guiding his friend down the dark path to her lambing barn, Sarah following along wondering exactly how far in over her head she'd just jumped.
0o0o0o0o0o
Author's Note: If anyone's reading this, I would love to know what you think.