Chapter 45 "West Little Rock"
Day 101; Group A&B
Time dragged by; seconds, minutes, hours. It all began to blend together into painful waiting. Every second felt like a day.
Malcolm and Taylor sat by Sarita's side, tears dried up on their faces and their eyes still red from crying. She needed to wake up. She needed to hurry. They weren't sure if amputation would work anymore. They were fairly certain it would not. Not after the five hours that had passed. But even so, they needed to talk to her one last time. To say their goodbyes. To ask her how she truly wants to die.
The wind from hours before still raged on, rattling things outside the house and around the lands. It whispered a haunted moan among the house, making the boys even more uneasy.
Sarita was turning pale, her brown Indian skin becoming milky as hours passed. Though her chest was still rising and falling with the breath of life, she was dying. Everyone knew it; there was no question about it. Within the next twenty-four hours, she would be no more.
Lyrik walked in, sent by Shawn. She came up behind the two and put her hands on their shoulders as she observed the dying woman lying in the bed before them."I think it's time," she said to them quietly.
"Not yet," Taylor said coldly.
Lyrik bit her lip. "Shawn said it should be soon."
"Just give her a chance," Malcolm said, his voice cracking as he spoke for the first time in hours. He looked into the black girl's eyes, pleading for her to understand. "If she dies," he promised, "we'll do what we have to do."
Lyrik stared into the brunet's eyes, understanding his sadness. "Okay," she conceded. "I'll see what I can do to buy you more time. You both should really get some rest, though. Pretty much everyone else is asleep again."
"Thank you," Malcolm said curtly, turning his head back to his friend as Lyrik exited.
Time passed, and Sarita still had neither woke up nor died. The sun was now beginning to rise. To no one's surprise, Shawn still wanted to get moving as soon as possible. Having been the one to take over for Taylor as lookout and thus missing out on sleep, it was an understatement to say he was cranky.
"Either we're putting her down now, or we're leaving!" Shawn yelled in fury, bursting through the door into the room the trio was in.
Taylor and Malcolm looked up at him in unison, aggravated and depressed. Taylor rose to his feet, challenging the farm boy to order him around again.
"What, you gonna kill me?" Shawn asked cockily. "You hurt me, you and Mackerel are out of here!"
"My name's Malcolm."
"Whatever! You two kill me, there's no way you're getting out alive."
"Oh," Taylor said darkly, "I'm not going to kill you. I want you to feel what I'm gonna do to you."
"Are you threatening me?" Shawn asked, narrowing his eyes and getting in the larger man's face.
"Are you threatening Sarita?" Taylor questioned as he stepped closer as well.
"She's the threat," Shawn declared. "And by keeping her alive, so are you."
Taylor punched the thinner man in the face, sending him reeling backwards.
The farm boy wiped blood off of his mouth as he looked up to the muscular man. "You son of a bitch!" he screamed, flinging himself onto the man and punching at his head, using his fingernails to scratch at him.
Malcolm rushed to his best friend's side and did his best to shove the firecracker of a leader off of him. Selenis and Beth, who were in the next room and had heard the commotion, rushed inside to help break up the fight.
When the two men were separated, Shawn spat blood onto the floor. "Five minutes, and that's it. If she doesn't wake up before then, you're putting her down and we're leaving."
Shawn stormed out, and Beth and Selenis said some quick apologies before following the leader, making sure he didn't fly off the handle again at someone else.
Malcolm and Taylor sat at Sarita's side in silence, having run out of things to say. They had already come to their decision of what they would do to her. They knew what she wanted.
It wasn't long after they sat down and caught their breath that they realized she had stopped breathing. "When did that happen?" Malcolm asked, grabbing the woman's arm in a panic as he searched for a pulse.
Taylor sighed as he rubbed his face. "I don't know. I guess she went while we were fighting." The large man's face began to turn red as he did his best to hold back tears. This was it. Sarita had died. Soon, she would turn.
They looked to one another and rose. Malcolm grabbed his knife from its holster as Taylor turned away. Malcolm walked to the blood Shawn had spat on the floor and rubbed his knife in it, trying his best to dye it in red. Taylor turned back, his eyes failing to hold back the tears.
"You know this is what she wanted," Malcolm said grimly.
When the knife seemed to be convincing, the two left the room and closed the door behind them to announce the news.
"Sarita's dead," Malcolm said sadly.
"Did you put her down?" Shawn asked, his voice still rigid and angry.
Malcolm silently pulled his knife out of its holster, showing off the red glimmer.
Shawn half-smile at the man. "You did the right thing," he comforted, putting a hand on both of the men's shoulders.
"You're right," Taylor said, his voice a depressed quiver, "we did."
Hours later, the group was on the road, following Allan's instructions as he navigated them towards Little Rock.
"Just don't go into the city," Allan warned them.
"Why not?" Shawn questioned. The group had never really gone to a large city, but they've been in plenty towns, and it seemed no different than just being out in the woods, in terms of the amount of people and walkers you would meet.
"Because cities are dangerous," Allan said as if Shawn was stupid.
"How are they any different to other places?" Shawn said, getting annoyed once more.
"Have you even taken a second to consider how? Think about how big the population was before this all started. Think about how many people turned, or died there. Before and after the outbreak. People were probably trapped in buildings, leaving entire skyscrapers full of walkers. Then, after, all the people that went there for sanctuary, or to scavenge. Cities are the breeding grounds for walkers."
Shawn drove on, still towards the city. He did feel quite stupid, not having thought about any of that before, but he wasn't certain if the man was telling the truth. He wanted to check it out for himself.
After running into a few roadblocks, the RV had made it just outside of the city. It kept driving forward.
"Shawn, I'm serious, turn around now!" Allan begged.
"Listen to him, Shawn!" Seth said, standing between the two men's seats.
"Look!" Shawn said. "The roads are completely clear. We can just drive through the city, make it to the place through there."
"That's not a good idea!" Allan yelled again. "You drive through here, you're gonna get all the walkers to come out of hiding and you're gonna lead a herd right to our new home!"
"Yeah, yeah," Shawn said, speeding up. Seth and Allan looked to each other in panic. Seth quickly grabbed a glass bottle they were using to make fires and smashed it over the back of Shawn's head. Allan quickly grabbed the steering wheel, doing his best to steady it as Shawn went unconscious. The pressure on the pedals slowly went away until the RV halted to a stop in the city.
"Quickly!" Allan yelled to Seth, demanding him to pull the leader out of his seat. When Shawn's body was removed, Beth ran to him and began to make sure he wasn't too badly injured as Allan moved into the driver's seat. "Hold on!" he warned them, revving the vehicle up and making a sharp turn as walkers began to materialize from all directions behind buildings and alleyways.
They pulled up about an hour later, two blocks away from the gates of what was, according to Allan, West Little Rock.
The walls stood tall, about ten feet high. They were intimidatingly massive, metal barriers that came to a peninsula in the middle of a road. According to Allan, there were two gates, one on both sides of the road. Currently, the group was parked outside of the south wall.
"You sure about this?" Seth asked, his hand on his gun.
"Of course," Allan stated. "You think I'd run all of you into a deathtrap?"
In the backseat, Shawn grumbled a "Yes," under his breath. Beth had a wet rag held to his head, and she shushed her brother. He rolled his eyes at the girl, contemptuous as ever.
"Here, here," Allan said, pointing to an approaching figure. "Look. That should be Boyd." As the figure drew closer, his hands up in the air, Allan realized it was not the person he thought it was. "Who… Oh! It's Kevin."
The group in the RV remained tense, wanting to trust Allan, but finding themselves uneasy. Each of them had a weapon prepared, ready for the worst-case scenario.
As he approached, his appearance became clear. He was a tall, lanky, thin man wearing cowboy boots, jeans, and a black leather jacket. He had a thick, gray mustache, and looked like a cowboy who had lost his hat. As he spoke, it became ever more convincing that he could have been a cowboy of some sort before the world ended. He had a thick southern accent, and spoke like a well-trained Southern boy.
"Howdy, everybody. How are y'all doin'?" he asked. "The name's Kevin."
After rolling down the driver's seat window, Seth nodded, taken aback by the man's friendliness. "Uh," he began, "my name's Seth. This is Allan," he pointed to the thin man beside him.
"Allan?" Kevin said, squinting and leaning his head into the window to get a good look. "Good Lord, it's Allan! Where the hell've you been? Where's everybody else? Is Patti here? Or Kelly? Dante? Ryan, and the girls?"
Allan smiled as Kevin recognized him, but it quickly dissipated as the cowboy interrogated him about his old friends. He shook his head at his old friend, uttering a quiet "No," and he quickly shut up.
"Oh," Kevin said sadly. "It's just you?"
Allan looked slightly offended, but shook his head once more. "Mika's here, too. Mika," he called for the girl to come towards him, "you remember Kevin?" Beth gave her a worried look, then looked to Shawn, who shrugged. Beth nodded her head to the young girl, but followed right behind her.
Mika came forward and looked out the window over Seth and a large smile came across her face. "Kevin!" she said happily, leaning over the bodybuilder to hug the cowboy's head. Beth stood behind, nervously eyeing the new man, her hand gripped firmly on her gun.
"Awww, Mika, you don't know how good it is to see you 'gain. I missed you and your sister's pretty little faces runnin' around here and distracting us."
The teenage blonde shook her head vehemently at Kevin as he mentioned Lizzie, but he paid her no heed until he realized Mika's smile was now a frown.
"Shoot, I'm sorry," he said, petting the girl's hair and pulling away. "Go on in, y'all," he said to the group. He pulled out a walkie-talkie and pressed a button on the side of it. "They're good, Boyd."
"You sure?" a deep voice replied through thick static.
"Oh," he smiled and licked his mustache, "I'm sure. There's some old friends on board."
The group exited the RV and admired the scene before them. From a distance, it looked almost as if nothing had changed here; that the apocalypse had never struck. Aside from the armed people manning the walls about fifty feet between one another, the place looked like a happy, normal neighborhood.
Apparently, protocol was to park the new residents' vehicles in the gates and walk them into the community, giving them a tour as they went. Clearly, this made a few people uneasy, but Kevin and Allan reassured them that everything would be fine.
There was one long road that ran perpendicular to the road the gates were on, which led from the gates to the lateral end of the estates. Along it were three large, white wind turbines.
As they walked down the road towards the main area of the community Allan walked side-by-side with Kevin, clearly feeling right at home. To their right, they saw a sign in front of a section that was cut off from the rest of the neighborhood that said "The Governor's Estates."
"Was this where the governor used to live?" Selenis asked.
"Yes, ma'am," Kevin smiled. "Arkansas' politicians and celebrities made a life here."
"Why's it still cut off?" questioned Shawn.
"Well," Kevin shrugged, "it's where the original members live. The people who made this place safe in the early days. Or, people who lived there before this all started. Like Boyd, or myself, or Allan here," he smiled.
"So, what's the deal with Boyd, anyways?" Shawn asked rudely. "Why didn't he come with us?"
"We can't leave the front gates lonely, can we?"
Shawn half-frowned as he looked back to see the dark-skinned old man eyeing the RV, checking the gas, and observing outer cabinets. "Well, then, what's he doing to our ride?"
"Protocol," Kevin stated, scratching his neck. "Making sure you didn't rig a bomb to it, or keep some members of your group hidden to come in and kill us all in the night. You can't be too careful no more."
Shawn opened his mouth once more, but his sister elbowed him in the ribs, telling him to shut up.
As they continued walking, they neared a large pond, where children were playing at. There was a teenage boy with dark black hair and a toned body splashing water at a blonde teenage girl. A much younger boy jumped in, joining on the splashing and playing.
Many of the members smiled at the sight, pleased to see there was still such joy in the world.
A tan-colored girl in a yellow floral dress with a stroller crossed the street as the group finally approached the public's estates. She had just come from a set of large buildings to the left of the group. Robert grew a huge smile as he pointed out the adorable toddler in the stroller to his boyfriend, who held his hand as they ogled fondly at the baby and his mother.
"These," Kevin pointed to the large buildings, "were the administration offices and apartments. Most of the apartments are empty, 'cause most of our residents prefer living in houses of their own, but any of y'all are welcome to live wherever you like when we git this all sorted out. Come on," he gestured, leading them into the central building.
As they walked in, they were hit with a burst of warm air; a feeling they only got in the RV. "You have heating?" Patricia gasped incredulously.
"And electricity?" Lyrik grinned.
"Yup," Kevin said. "Four underground generators, all powered by wind and solar panels on the top of the apartments."
"That's amazing," Lyrik and Malcolm said in unison.
Allan smiled at the cowboy beside him, admiring his modesty. "This place would be nothing if we didn't have Kevin here. He helped connect the generators to all the turbines and the solar panels."
"Aw," Kevin said, "weren't nothin'. Anybody coulda done that. Just 'cause I did it don't mean I did anything special."
Allan shook his head at the group, shrugging off Kevin's humility. "This man's a god. He can do anything."
The group smiled, never having seen Allan so happy and kind. It was refreshing to see a lighter side of the usually hateful man, and the environment around them helped them feel comfortable with the whole situation. No one had any idea that Allan could be so delightful, or have such a strong friendship with someone.
Kevin continued on, bringing them down a hall on the first floor of the apartment complex and into a large office. In a desk at the far wall sat a plump, middle-aged man with an aging, wrinkled face and graying black hair. "Hello!" he resounded. He nodded to Allan and smiled at Mika. "It's good to have you back," he greeted before looking over the rest of the crowd. "So you're the new people?"
"Yes, sir," Shawn said, stepping up as leader.
"Well, you all seem quite weary." He locked eyes with Seth, Shawn, Beth, and Robert, who were either limping, were missing fingers, or had scars or bruises on their face. "I'll try to keep this short so you all can go get Doctor Carson to make sure you're doing well."
They all seemed relieved to hear they had an actual doctor on board. "Thank you," Beth said with a kind smile.
"Of course, my dear," the plump man said. "Firstly, how about introductions? My name's Jim Dupree, and I'm the one in charge here. Welcome, to West Little Rock."