Find Me (Life After the Outbreak, Book 2) (13 page)

Janet nodded and looked away. "We leave in the morning. Get some sleep."

I thought for sure I wouldn't sleep, that I'd be up all night worrying about Will and going back out there. Instead, I was out cold as soon as my head hit the pillow. Just knowing that we were going to do something, rather than sit on our asses and take orders from some asshole who didn't give a shit about Will, gave me comfort. It was probably a good thing too, since I didn't know how long we'd be out looking, and there would be no such thing as a good night's sleep outside the safety of the military base.

By the time I woke up, the sun was peeking over the horizon, and Janet was banging on my door. I jumped off the bed and pulled it open, confused.

Janet pushed past me into the room and dropped her bag on the floor with a thud. "Were you actually sleeping?"

"Uh, yeah. Isn't that what people normally do at night?"

She shook her head and looked over me. "I didn't figure you'd get much. You packed and ready to go then?"

I glanced around the room at the meager belongings. Not much of it actually mattered. I shoved the few things I wanted in my bag the night before. I had no idea how long it would take to find Will or if I'd even be coming back to the base, so anything important was going with me.
 

"Yeah. I'm ready."

Janet waited while I threw on some clothes and my favorite sneakers, and we headed out the door. The base was quiet. No one was up, except maybe the food prep workers, and it was easy to forget what was going on in the world at that early hour.
 

"Derek is going to meet us at the front gate." Janet walked a little slower than usual, staying in pace with me.

"Does the General know we're leaving?" I wasn't sure how he was going to feel about it after he denied the rescue team.

"Yes, he knows and he isn't thrilled with it, but he won't try to stop us."

"Do we know where to even look for him? Do you have some sort of plan?"

"Sort of, but I have no frigging idea how we are going to find him. You were right, though. We have to try. Derek knows the general location where he was last seen, but there's no way of knowing if he is anywhere near that area or not. I guess we can start there and decide where to go after that."

I figured Janet would have more of a plan than that. She always seemed to have all the answers.
 

She looked at me and snorted. "I'm guessing you didn't have any sort of plan."

"No, but I would have come up with something. I couldn't just sit around and wait. I was planning on finding a way out of here on my own. I was going to go, with or without your help or permission."

"Of course you were." She laughed, and it echoed through the cool air. "I had no doubt you would find a way to do something stupid on your own. You aren't difficult to predict."

“Wel,l you certainly are. I never thought in a million years that you would step back and wait for someone's permission to help Will." I was holding a grudge. It was childish, but I couldn't help it.

"You're right. It's so easy to get comfortable here and wait for someone else to take responsibility to make everything okay. You might be a pain in the ass who can't stop from jumping into the fire without thinking about the flames, but you are right."

I was right and Janet was wrong. I didn't think I'd ever hear those words again. I smiled to myself and savored the thought a moment.

"Hurry up, Derek's waiting. And quit smiling like an idiot." She punched me in the arm and picked up her pace.

Derek was standing at the gate talking to Holden. He had a backpack almost as big as me on the ground by his feet. I glanced over my shoulder at my puny bag. Everything I owned wouldn't fill half Derek's bag. Well, unless I counted my stuff back at my old house.

"About time you girls showed up. I was thinking about sending out a rescue party to find the rescue party." Derek picked up his giant pack and slung it over his massive shoulder. I thought the guy could carry Janet and me on his back and not even break a sweat.

"Ha ha, very funny asshat. You better get used to it now. Andi's toddler legs don't move very fast." Janet pulled out a map, and her and Derek went over the route we'd be taking.

"I wish I could go with you. Will is a great guy." Holden kicked a rock on the ground and leaned against the guard shed.

"He's never mentioned you. How do you guys know each other?"

"We actually grew up together, long before the whole zombie thing. He was one of my best friends."

"Oh. He hasn't told me much about his life before. He's talked about his family but not too much about friends or what was going on in his life."

"Yeah, that's how he is. He likes to keep everything bottled up inside." He met my eyes and smiled. "He's told me a lot about you, though."

"Oh? What has he told you?"
 

Holden laughed. "Uh … well … the usual stuff, I guess."

"If you're done socializing, we're ready to go, Princess," Janet called over as she waved the folded map at me.

Janet's bitchiness didn't even bother me anymore. It was part of her charm. She was becoming like the big sister I never had. I still wanted to punch her in the throat half the time, but I couldn't deny that I loved the bitch like family.

“Coming, Mother." I patted Holden on the arm and jogged over to Janet and Derek.
 

Janet rolled her eyes but a hint of a smile broke through.
 

We walked for hours without another living, or dead, thing in sight. By noon, I was exhausted. I had to take twice as many steps to keep up with Janet and Derek. A month before, I would have been on the ground begging for a break, but thanks to Janet and her hardcore training, I was in much better shape. I would have thanked her for that if she wasn't purposely walking extra fast, making it nearly impossible for me to keep up. I was starting to think she didn't actually want me to keep up.

Janet and Derek chatted on about anything and everything, which went against everything she said we should do. She insisted just weeks before, that we needed to be quiet and alert when walking unprotected, so her behavior made no sense.

There was no way I could keep up that pace and still keep going the rest of the day. I slowed down a bit and let them go ahead a few yards. Oddly, Janet's pace also slowed so that she was going about as fast as I was at that point, but keeping the distance between us. She was laughing at Derek's jokes, and they weren't that funny. And, she was acting all girly. It was weird to see Janet like that with a guy.

I laughed to myself, and Janet turned to look at me.

"Everything okay back there?"

"Yeah, fine, just getting a little tired so I'll hang back here some. If that's all right?" If anyone deserved a little happiness, it was Janet. I owed her a lot.

"Okay, sure." She shot me an odd look. "We'll take a break soon."

Derek winked at me before turning back ahead.
 
I was sure he knew exactly what I was doing.

We walked another hour before Janet finally decided it was a good time for a break. My feet were starting to ache, and I was starving.
 

"We will be at the location Will was last seen in about an hour at our current pace," Derek said as he opened up his massive backpack and pulled out a few energy bars for the three of us.

I unwrapped the bar and practically inhaled it. I wasn't used to starving anymore. "It's not like we are going to find him standing there waiting for us, so what's the plan?" I asked, my mouth still full of bits of granola and dried fruit.
 

Janet and Derek looked at each other and shrugged.

"Not really sure. Since we didn't find him on his way back, I guess we keep going. Maybe he got pushed further out," Derek said.

"How do we even know what direction to go in? I mean, even if he did get pushed back, it could have been in any direction. We could go in the opposite direction he went in," I asked, looking from Janet to Derek and back to Janet.

Derek dropped his head. I could tell he didn't think we were going to find Will alive, no matter what direction we went in. My guess was that he went along because of Janet. I tried to read Janet's face, to see if she felt the same way, but she wasn't giving it away.
 

"You don't think we are going to find him alive, do you, Derek?" He kept his head down and stayed silent. "What about you, Janet? You think he's dead too?"

"I don't know. I want to believe he's alive." She sighed and shook her head. "I just feel like if he was, he would have made it back to the base, or we would have found him by now."

I heard some branches snap nearby. All three of us turned to look, and Janet and Derek drew their weapons.
 

"Do not shoot. It is me." Hadley peeked out from behind a tree holding her hands up.

"What the hell?" Janet lowered her bow and stomped over to Hadley. "How did you get out here?" She pulled her out by her jacket and dragged her into the road where Derek and I were standing.

"I walked, same as you, silly. You walk really fast, Miss Janet. You know that, right?" Hadley tilted her head to the side and flipped her lashes over her eyes a few quick times.

"What are you some kind of ninja, kid? You've been following us for hours without making a sound. That's impressive." Derek dug another energy bar from his bag and tossed it to her.

"No, what it is is stupid. You shouldn't be here. This isn't some fun game out here, little girl. You can get yourself killed." Janet fumed.
 

It was nice not to be the one on the other end of Janet's anger for a change, though I did feel bad for Hadley.
 

"Hadley, why did you come?"
 

"I had to, Andi. I was meant to be here." She walked over, dropped her bag on the ground, and sat on top of it like a cushion. "It is just one of the things I know."

Janet looked up and threw her arms in the air. "This is just great. The voices in her head told her to follow us all the way out here so we could babysit her. Perfect."

Hadley opened the energy bar and nibbled on it. She seemed unconcerned with Janet's anger. She actually smiled up at me as if she were happy to see me. I wasn't quite sure what to think about her being there. It might be nice to have someone to talk to since Janet was occupied with Derek, but Hadley had no training with weapons, or even self-defense. Janet was right. She was a liability. We needed to keep out focus on finding Will, not keeping Hadley safe.

"Do you not think it is odd?" Hadley asked.

I thought a lot of things were odd, especially when it came to Hadley, but I answered her anyway. "What, Hadley?"

She finished her energy bar and shoved the wrapper into her backpack. "That there are no bodies."

It was kind of weird that we hadn't come across a single dead body, zombie or ally. Our soldiers were supposedly out here for a week fighting off a swarm of zombies on their way toward the base, and not all of them returned, so where did they go?

"She does have a point. Why haven't we found any dead bodies?" I looked to Derek, figuring maybe he had some answers.

He just shrugged. "I have no clue. Maybe the guys dragged them off into the woods or something. Our own dead they might have buried … or … honestly, I just don't know. No one said anything about moving them to me."

Janet looked just as confused. It didn't make sense for them to move dead flesh eaters any further than maybe to the side of the road. And they never would have taken the risk to bury our own people out there while fighting off a swarm. If anything, they would have put them in the truck and brought them back to the base.
 

"Hadley, did you see any in the woods while you were following us?" Janet asked.

"Nope. Not a one. Weird, huh?" Hadley pulled a juice box out of her bag, popped the straw in, and sipped loudly.

Derek took a walk into the woods and looked around while I took advantage of the chance to sit and rest my feet.
 

"Why didn't you just leave with us, Hadley?"

"Come on, Andi, you know Janet would not have let me go and I had to come."

“Why, though? I know you said you were meant to be here and all, but why?" I knew Hadley saw herself as some sort of psychic or something, but even in a zombie apocalypse, I had trouble believing it was anything other than in her head.

Hadley smiled. "I know you do not believe me, but that's okay. Your belief is not required. It is what it is."

Half the junk that came out of Hadley's mouth made no sense at all, but I smiled and nodded to be polite. She was weird, there was no doubt about it, but I did like having her around.

Derek returned and picked up his pack. "Let's go, ladies. I don't think we should stay here too long."

"Did you see something in there?" Janet asked and grabbed her stuff as well.

"Nah, not a thing. Something just feels wrong about it, so I think we should keep moving."

I groaned, and my feet protested as I pushed myself off the ground and reached out to help Hadley up. We went back to Derek and Janet walking several yards ahead while Hadley joined me in the back. Every so often, she skipped in a circle around me, then returned to my side. She didn't seem to be paying any attention to our surroundings or to be looking for any sign of Will. Each time Hadley circled me, Janet turned to glare at her, but it all went unnoticed. As usual, Hadley was in her own little world.