Chapter 2: The Survivors Club

EDWARD

I'd finished off all my canned goods about four weeks ago. And now, I wasn't getting enough nutrition. I caught plenty of fish, but I could tell that I wasn't getting everything I needed because I was always tired. In my little house, surrounded by trees, I was able to get a few more hours of sleep each night than I'd been able to since the dead had risen, but I still barely had enough energy to go to the water's edge to catch fish.

I was also craving vegetables. It was funny. Only a few months ago, I'd fought with my mom over having to eat them. Now, I couldn't stop thinking about them—carrots, broccoli, and cucumber. The thought of them made my mouth water.

At first, I scavenged the houses nearby, but they were all empty. Even the house with the family was now empty. Either they left because they'd run out of food or they were overrun. So, I had no choice but to go back into town.

On the way into town I searched abandoned cars, but they were pretty picked over, so the only choice was to venture further into the once populated areas.

Then, the worst thing happened to me. I caught a cold. I thought about how in Biology Mrs. Richards told us that in order to catch a cold or flu you had to be exposed to the viruses.

Where in the hell had I been exposed to a virus? I thought I was the only one left to contaminate anything, I thought bitterly.

Now, in a town full of the dead, every sneeze, every cough was a siren, calling the dead to me.

I ran down an alleyway, allowing my nose to run because I couldn't sniff or blow it without attracting attention. In front of me, there was a row of abandoned storefronts, but each had broken windows or kicked in doors as people had looted everything they could.

Moving quickly, I stayed tight to the wall under a row of awnings. Dusk was closing in and shadows were lengthening, burying me in shade, as I moved.

I was keenly aware of the heavy breathing I was doing as a result of the weight of my backpack and my snot filled nose.

The sense of being surrounded by the dead was frightening. I couldn't see any of them, but I could hear them and I knew that they were right around the corner. While I was pretty confident in my killing ability, I was no match for a herd of them even if I weren't sick.

Finally, I saw a store that wasn't broke into. I would have loved for it to be a grocery store, but it was a paint shop. I crept up to the door and was shocked when I found it unlocked. That could have been a bad sign, but I had no choice but to go inside.

Hauling out my bowie knife, I quietly slipped into the building. Once inside, very slowly, I reached back to the door and locked the deadbolt. For better or for worse, I was here for the night because I was on the verge of collapse. I could feel my fever spiking again and I didn't have any Tylenol left. Nervously, I searched the dark corners for the dead, knowing that they'd probably be the death of me. However, thankfully, the shop was empty.

I slid down the wall, but made sure that I positioned myself to see around the side towards the front of the store.

From this point, I was able to watch the dead stumbling down the street, passing by the shop, oblivious to my whereabouts.

I would never get used to their bloated grey skin and various stages of rot.

Their stench seeped into the shop even though the windows and doors were securely shut, and the vibration of their moans sent chills through me that was even more intense than my fever.

When the mob finally passed, I let out a sigh of relief. But no sooner had it escaped my lips then a great wracking cough took a hold of me.

Doubled over, I tried to cover it with my sleeve to muffle the sound, terrified that the dead would hear me.

When it finally passed, I sat frozen…. waiting.

For a few moments, I thought that I'd actually escaped notice. Then, the unmistakable sound of moaning got louder, accompanied by thumps and scrapes as the dead stumbled along the wall of the shop and then began to slap against the windows and door.

Staggering to my feet, I ran for the back of the store, praying for a back exit.

I passed by an office and then was into the back room where the paint was stored. Scanning the darkened space, I saw with relief an exit sign across the room.

As I ran towards it, I heard the sound of breaking glass coming from the front of the store.

Praying that there were no dead on the other side, I slammed through the door and was then in an alley.

Quickly, I ducked behind a dumpster overflowing with garbage, hoping that the cloying scent of rotted vegetables and rancid meat would mask my scent.

Looking left and right, I searched for the best direction. One led back onto the street where the dead could be heard moaning, so I had no choice but to turn right and pray that I didn't run into too many.

Dashing out of the alleyway, I looked for another secure building, but there was nothing. Gasping for breath by this time, my cold was strangling me as I ran. It was enough that I couldn't contain the coughs that tore at my throat.

In desperation, I rushed towards the nearest car and threw myself to the ground in order to wedge myself under it. I dragged myself as far under it as possible and then stayed as still as possible. I tried to calm my breathing, but I could hear them coming and the panic was only making my breathing worse.

So, I closed my eyes and tried to pretend that I was somewhere else.

I heard the thumping and snarling of the dead as they surrounded my vehicle, but I kept my eyes tightly closed because I didn't want to see my death coming for me.

A loud scraping and creaking erupted in the air as one of them grabbed my leg and dragged me out from under the car.

I screamed in terror, waiting for the searing pain of my flesh being torn.

Instead, I heard a deep voice.

"Get up, boy!" someone growled over me.

My eyes flew open in shock.

An older looking man stood over me, holding a shot gun in one hand.

When I didn't move, he snarled at me.

"What's wrong with you?! Get up! Or we're leaving you!"

I heard the unmistakable sound of fighting and then gunfire behind the man which caused me to snap out of my daze and jump to my feet.

Three other men with him were gunning down the herd as they surged towards us, but it was clear that they were not going to be able to fight them off.

"Boys! There's too many. Let's head back to the trucks. We'll take this one with us!" the man shouted.

As one, the three turned towards us and started to head in our direction. Each of them were burly outdoor types who had the hardened look of men that had lived tough lives. They were exactly the kind of people that would survive in a world like this.

But one of the men had misjudged how close the monsters were to him. A bloated corpse of a woman in her twenties jerkily lunged out of the herd and bit into his bicep. With a cry of pain, the man yanked his arm away from her, blood spraying everywhere. Spinning towards the herd, he slammed his gun down onto her head, cracking it open. However, the smell of his blood in the air seemed to bring on a frenzy amongst the dead, causing them to surge towards him, taking him to the ground.

"Help! Garrett! Please!" he screamed but it was muffled by the writhing bodies on top of him.

"Let's head out boys. He's done for." The old man said and without looking back walked in the opposite direction.

I stared in shock at their retreating forms before running after them.

The three men strode down the street with confidence. They would wait until the dead were close enough to cause problems and either hack them down with machetes or shoot them squarely in the head. The man who rescued me was older than the other two, probably in his 60s, but was clearly in charge.

We walked quite a distance out of the town centre and into a more residential area where surprisingly they headed towards a small park.

There, I saw a small group of trucks and vans set up in a circle with people holding rifles standing guard. In the center, I saw people milling around including women and children.

"Welcome to the Survivors Club," one of the men said to me with a harsh laugh before walking past the guards and into the circle.

I cautiously followed him, trying to look everywhere at once.

I'd learned not to trust groups because the groups that I'd seen in towns and in the countryside survived by being cutthroat. I knew this world was survival of the fittest and I had no qualms about stealing to survive, but I'd been horrified when I'd seen one group kill another group of survivors to get their food.

People were looking at me just as suspiciously, including the mothers who corralled their children away from me.

"Hey, boy! Boy! Get over here!"

I scanned the small group looking for the owner of the voice and saw the older man who had rescued me, beckoning me towards a small campfire.

An older woman and a younger one stood next to the fire cooking something in a pot which caused my mouth to water.

"What are you looking at, boy?! I told you to get over here," the man growled.

I stumbled towards him and tried to focus on him instead of the savoury smell of food coming from the pot.

As I approached, I scrutinized him. He was a tall lanky man with piercing blue eyes and long sandy hair he kept back with a leather thong. He didn't seem like the friendly type, which caused me to be even more suspicious about why he'd rescued me.

"What's your name, boy?" he demanded, once I was standing right in front of him.

He was staring me down with his mouth set in a grim line while he waited for me to answer.

So, I refused to speak. I had no reason to trust him.

"Not talking, eh?" he snarled at me, but I just stared at him.

"My name is Garrett and this is my wife Kate and my daughter Tanya," he said motioning towards the older and younger women.

"Now, speak. What's your name?" he said.

"Edward…" I muttered.

"Okay, Edward. Where are your people?" he asked, staring at me intently.

I felt myself tense up in suspicion. He was probably wondering if I got separated from a larger group that may have supplies.

"I'm alone," I grunted at him, my eyes straying back to the food.

"Don't lie to me, boy. You're just a kid. You can't be more than sixteen. No kid could have survived on their own for the past five months," he said with a snarl.

"Well, I don't know what to tell you sir," I snapped at him. "I'm almost fifteen and I have been alone and I've survived just fine."

The man stared at me a little longer and then let out a bark of a laugh.

"Well, looks like you might have a bit of fight in you. That's good…. That's good…" he said with a grin that wasn't altogether friendly.

"Sit down, boy. We've got enough to share tonight, but you'll have to start pulling your own weight starting tomorrow," he said, reaching out to take a bowl from his wife.

I sat down, staring at the bowl as it was passed to him.

"Excuse me," a quiet voice said next to me.

I tensed as I snapped my head to the side to see where the voice was coming from.

Tanya, the daughter, had a bowl in her hands outstretched towards me.

With a grunt, I grabbed the bowl from her and without even looking at it, started shoveling it in.

With a gasp of pain, I spit out the food in my mouth at the scalding temperature.

The girl stared at me in shock and then burst out laughing.

"Hungry, much?" she said with a smirk.

"Shut up! Not everyone has a family to feed them," I snarled at her, causing her to take a step back from me.

Suddenly, my head was wrenched back by my hair and I was staring into the furious eyes of Garrett.

"You will speak to my family with respect or I'll put a bullet between your eyes, boy," he hissed between his teeth.

Gulping loudly, I nodded.

Releasing my hair with a shake, Garrett stomped away from me and thumped himself down on an overturned log.

"Now, eat and I don't want to see a drop spilled. We don't waste food here."

With that, he went back to eating and for the rest of the meal I was ignored.

I couldn't figure out what his motive was for bringing me back to his camp. It didn't make sense to share resources with a stranger.

I felt eyes on me as I ate. The other people in camp were staring at me suspiciously, so I wondered whether they often invited strangers to join them.

As I ate, I tried to take in everything about my surroundings including the people.

Garrett's wife was almost the exact opposite of him. While they were both in their mid-fifties to early sixties, Kate was delicate with long pale blond hair and pale skin. Garrett, on the other hand, had deeply tanned and lined skin with graying brown hair .She didn't look particularly motherly, but I could definitely see that she doted on her husband. As he leaned towards her talking quietly, she stared up at him with adoration.

Tanya sat a few feet away from them staring openly at me with a small smile on her face, like she had a secret.

Tanya was pretty in a girly-girl way. She looked a lot like her mother, but had the same pale blue eyes as her father. But the thing that was the most shocking about her was how clean she was. Everyone around us was covered in grime and filth, but even her clothes looked washed. She looked exactly like one of the popular kids at my school before the world fell apart. Empty headed girls who thought more about clothes and make-up than anything else.

"Hey, Edward?" she asked, snapping me out of my thoughts.

I flushed red, realizing that I'd been staring at her.

I looked into her eyes and saw a hint of smugness like she thought that I'd been staring at her because I thought she was hot.

So instead of saying anything, I just glared at her and slurped the last of the stew out of my bowl.

Unfazed, she continued.

"Do you want to get cleaned up? There's a well nearby and some of the women brought a bunch of water back to camp to wash. I can even find some clean clothes for you. You're probably about the same size as Jasper."

Getting cleaned up was the last thing on my mind.

It was at that moment that I began coughing.

As soon as the coughing fit had died down, the air was thick with tense silence.

"Are you sick, boy?" Garrett asked me with a grim look on his face.

"I've got a cold. I caught it a few days ago," I said, feeling suddenly nervous. "I'm getting better though."

Garrett stared at me for a few moments.

"You better be…" I thought I heard him mutter under his breath before standing up.

"Go get washed up, boy. I can smell you from here. Then, it's to bed for everyone not on watch this shift," he said loud enough for the whole camp to hear him.

I was annoyed at being ordered around by this man, but not enough to fight back. It was the first time that I'd felt full in months and I couldn't just give that up because of his bedside manner. I wanted to milk it for all it was worth for a few days. Then, I'd sneak away taking some of their food with me. They seemed to have plenty of it.

So, I got up and followed Tanya towards one of the large RVs.

I had to admit that it felt good to be clean again. Clean hair, clean skin, even clean teeth along with a full stomach made me feel like a person instead of the animal that I'd become in the last month or maybe even months.

I was relaxed enough that I took my time walking back to Garrett's campsite. Looking around it seemed like there were a lot of families, but also clusters of men with heavy gun power. Some of them were older, but there were also one or two that were my age. They glared at me with suspicion when they sensed me staring at them.

A guy with blond hair that was pulled back into a pony tail openly glared at me as I walked by. He was taller than me and lean. He looked like he was around my father's age, but if I'd met him walking down the street I would probably have steered clear of him. He just exuded this air of danger. When he noticed that my eyes had focused on him, his eyes blazed and his stance hinted at the barely contained violence of a killer.

I clutched my crossbow to my chest, deciding then and there if he made a move on me I'd shoot him.

"That's James," a voice said next to me. "I'd steer clear of him."

I spun around, my finger landing on the trigger of my crossbow.

With a grunt of frustration, I saw that it was Tanya.

"Do you want me to give you a haircut? I don't know who did it last, but it looks like someone just started hacking away at it."

I sighed in frustration as I looked at her.

She was looking at me flirtatiously and it made me extremely uncomfortable.

"I want you to leave me alone. I don't want anything to do with you," I said as harshly as I could.

Instead of being turned off though, she walked past me with a smirk, dragging her fingers across my shoulders as she left.

"We'll see…" she said in a sing-song voice.

That night, I refused to sleep in any of the vehicles. Instead, I settled down next to one of the camp fires. I felt more at ease out in the open because if any of the people tried anything I had room to escape.

Despite my distrust of the people around me, I fell into a deep sleep. I didn't wake up until dawn and by that time most of the camp was up and about.

I sat up and looked around. Today, I was going to look for where they stashed the food, so that once I was rested I could steal some and slip away before anyone noticed me.

So after going to the communal fire for some stew, I casually walked around the camp, surreptitiously looking for their food cache. However, no sooner had I started looking then I felt someone watching me. Pausing, I scanned the camp. At first, I didn't see anyone, but then just at the edge of the camp site, leaning against a tree trunk was a guy who didn't look much older than me. He wasn't much to look at, being average height and skinny with shaggy blonde hair, a long face and a nose that seemed slightly to large for his face

I hadn't seen him with the others in the camp the day before, but it was clear that he knew who I was. His eyes followed me as I wandered around camp, so it was obvious he was there to keep an eye on me.

I glared at him and then raised my eyebrow in a question. What do you want?

The guy just smirked at me in response.

Knowing that he was probably going to continue watching me, I gave up on my search and went to where Garrett was giving out orders.

"Liam, you and Brady go into Oakville and check out the hospital. We're almost out of antiseptic and bandages," Garrett ordered two older men, one of whom carried an axe and the other a shotgun.

"James and Jasper, take the new kid on a hunt. Let's see if he can keep up," Garrett said.

"Boy, this is your audition. If you can't prove your worth on this hunt, you'll be out on your ass by this evening," he stated bluntly as he turned to stare at me.

I looked over towards where James was standing and saw that the guy that had been watching me earlier had joined him. James seemed to contemplate this prospect soberly, even gravely. But his black eyes sparkled.