Sunrise (30 page)

“We did it!” Jamie cried, waving up at the window.

“You did what?” Dakota called back.

“We nearly finished the walls! We—” Jamie stopped. “What the fuck happened to your face?”

“The curtain panels,” he said. “I thought something bad was happening.”

Jamie reached up to run a hand over his face, then looked back at Ian and Steve, whose smiles simply widened as their shoulders rose, then fell. “You’re ok though,” Jamie said, “right?”

“Just a few scratches, that’s all.”

“Come on down here. We need to rig up a gate, but that’s pretty much all we need to do.”

“Give me a few minutes to get dressed,” Dakota smiled. “Good job, guys.”

“Thanks!” Steve called up.

“We’ve been at it since before dawn!” Ian added.

They’re crazy,
Dakota thought, drawing back into the bedroom.
Fucking crazy.

After dressing and checking to make sure that his face hadn’t been too horribly cut, Dakota left the room, made his way down the stairs, then out through the front door. He took notice of the gap on the south wall almost immediately. “I thought you said you were finished?”

“We are,” Jamie said, setting a hand on Dakota’s shoulder before he could continue any further. “The only problem we have now is devising a way to rig a gate up.”

“Can’t you just use hinges?”

“In case you haven’t noticed, there’s not many hinges that can hold a gate this big.”

“We were thinking about taking the hinges off the storage shed up the road,” Steve said, stepping forward to stand beside Jamie. “This way, we don’t have to risk going back into town yet.”

“We’ll have to go back into town anyway, Steve. We need supplies.”

“But we want to do it when we’re better coordinated, not when we’re dead-tired from working on our defenses.”

“If we can get the hinges off a shed, I don’t see why not,” Dakota said. He turned his eyes toward Jamie a moment later. “I thought you had this all planned out?”

“I did.”

“Then why do we need hinges?”

“I grabbed the wrong size.”

“What?”

“He grabbed the wrong hinges,” Steve chuckled. “It was an easy mistake.”

Jamie sighed. “Sometimes shit like this happens.”

“We can’t do much about it,” Dakota said.

“Other than get the hinges, no.”

Steve stared intently at a spot in the distance. He raised his hand to his eyes for a moment, shading the sun, then pointed. “Hey, someone’s coming.”

Dakota looked. Jamie’s fingers tightened around his shoulder as the vehicle came into view.

“It’s Kevin,” Jamie said.

“Who?” Steve asked.

Dakota’s heart sank as the vehicle crested the first turn at the tip of the road and continued forward.

“So,” Dakota mumbled. “They decided to come after all.”

“Eagle’s dead,” Kevin informed them. “And so is my Jessiah.”

They were in the living room, sharing a snack of soda and biscuits. The boys and Kevin were on one couch, Ian, Desmond and Steve on another. Dakota and Jamie remained standing with their hands in their pockets or at their sides, watching the man and his remaining two sons with eyes wary, yet concerned. It seemed unlikely that a father who’d once been so determined to remain at home with his children would travel hundreds of miles through zombie-infested territory to meet up with them, but if what he said was true, they’d suffered a terrible tragedy, one that had almost completely stripped away the former self of the man Dakota, Jamie and Desmond had met little more than a week before.

He’s so thin,
Dakota thought,
and his kids…they’re…

Sad? Angry? Dead? What word did you use to describe the sight of children so pale and white that they appeared nothing more than corpses freshly-pulled from the ground? With their raccoon eyes and their fleshy-pink lips, they appeared to be nothing more than animals, creatures taken from another world to show the current one how sad things could really be.

“What happened?” Jamie finally asked, as though unable to bear the silence any longer.

“Jessiah died in his sleep four-and-a-half days ago,” Kevin said, turning his head up to look directly at Jamie. “As for Eagle, we’d just left Minnesota and were staying in a World War Two memorabilia barn when we got jumped. One of them grabbed Arnold. Eagle pulled it off of him so he could get in the truck when he…” Kevin bowed his head, “when he got bit.”

“There’s nothing you could’ve done,” Jamie said, reaching forward to set a hand on the man’s shoulder. “He died protecting your son.”

“He didn’t deserve it,” Arnold mumbled.

“No one deserves to die, Arnold. No one.”

Jamie stepped back. He cast a glance back at Steve, Ian and Desmond, but didn’t say anything to them. Instead, he gestured Kevin and his boys to stand before leading them to the door. “It’s not much,” he said, “but you can have the house on the far end.”

“What?” Kevin asked.

“The third house, the one with the coral roof. It’s yours.”

“I can’t accept that.”

“You opened your home to us.We’re offering the same. I’m not turning you away, especially not with your children. There isn’t enough room here and the second house doesn’t belong to me, it belongs to Erik.”

“Where is he?”

“Lying down. He’s been sick for the past week. Migraine headaches.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Give him my best.”

“I will.” Jamie smiled. “The key’s under the rock by the door. And we’ve already searched it. It’s safe.”

“Thank you, Jamie. Such kindness means a lot to me.”

Jamie reached forward, took the man’s hand in his, then brought him forward into a brief embrace. Kevin gave one final nod before exiting out the door with his sons.

“That’s the guy you stayed with while you were in Minnesota?” Ian asked.

“Yeah,” Desmond said. “His oldest son was my age.”

“He got bit by his horse,” Dakota sighed.

“His horse?” Steve frowned.

“Horses don’t carry it,” Ian added.

“They don’t carry
it,”
Dakota said. “They carry
something.”

“What are you talkin’ about, kid?”

“The way he explained it to me was that his horse had been acting strange. They’d been away from the cabin for a while, so he was worried that the neighbor who came to check on his horse wouldn’t be around. When they got there, the horse was swaying and acting…well, sick. When he tried to put her in the barn, she bit him. He didn’t think it was anything serious until the skin started to turn black.”

“He never told his dad?”

“No. He wasn’t bit by a zombie, so he didn’t think it was that serious. For all he knew, it could’ve been bruising.”

“Still not the best way to go about it,” Steve pointed out, kicking his foot up on the coffee table.

“No,” Dakota sighed, “it wasn’t. Jessiah got really sick near the end. I asked Jamie if we could leave because I wasn’t comfortable being around someone so ill.”

“Which isn’t your fault,” Jamie said, closing the front door. “When you told me about it, I didn’t feel comfortable being there either.”

“So we can trust them?” a voice from the hall asked. Dakota found Erik standing in the threshold, jeans hanging from his skinny waist and a cigarette from his lips. “Can I smoke in here, Jamie?”

“I don’t care,” Jamie said, “but to answer your question, yes, we can trust him.”

“Jessiah said he killed a man and his girlfriend who tried to steal food from them,” Dakota said, “but that was because the guy drew a knife on one of his sons.”

“Which is completely understandable given the circumstance. I know I’d shoot someone if they pulled a knife on my kid.”

“I only heard a little of it,” Erik said, “but he seems…disoriented.”

“He just lost his kid and his friend, Erik. Of course he’s going to be disoriented.”

“Just watch him, ok? And lock the door at night. He may be a friend to you, but he’s still a stranger to us.”

“He’s not gonna do anything,” Jamie sighed. “Especially not with two kids.”

“People act reckless nowadays. You know that.” Erik stepped into the room, took a drag off his cigarette, then settled into one of the reclining armchairs and leaned back into it. All eyes settled on him. “What?” Erik laughed.

“You’re feeling better,” Jamie smiled.

“I feel better, yes.”

“Is your headache gone?”

“For the most part.”

“We’re gonna send someone up the road to take the door off Mr. Barnsby’s old woodshed. We need the hinges for the gate.”

“I’ll go.”

“Me and Dakota are going,” Steve said. “Right, Dakota?”

“Right,” Dakota said, deciding it would be best to go along with the plan rather than question it.

“I’ll go too,” Erik said. “I can help.”

“You need your rest,” Jamie said. “I don’t want you trying to do something only to end up back in bed with another headache.”

“Quit stressing over what I’m going through, Jamie. See? Look.” Erik stood and spun in a slow circle, spreading his arms and strumming his fingers. “I wouldn’t be able to spin if I still had a headache.”

“But it’s not as bright in here as it is out there.”

“I’m not staying trapped in this house.”

“You don’t have to be trapped. I just don’t want you going with them.”

Erik stopped strumming his fingers, his arms fell at his side and his eyes narrowed. At that moment, Dakota thought he could’ve been a snake, a wicked viper with its fangs extended and venom coursing through its veins.

Uh oh.

“It’s nothing personal, Erik. I just don’t want you getting hurt.”

“Fuck
you, Jamie. Seriously—
fuck you.”

Erik turned, made his way into the hall, and slammed the door to Jamie’s old room behind him.

“Someone’s in a mood,” Steve chuckled.

“He’s still sick,” Jamie sighed. “Give him a day or two. He’ll come around.”

Dakota sure hoped so.

They made their way down the road with their guns drawn and their eyes set ahead. Spaced five feet apart, both to afford themselves two distinct viewpoints and to protect each other from any possible threats, Dakota raised his hand to suppress a sneeze, then pointed at a house near the very end of the road.

“See that?” he asked.

“I see it,” Steve said, fingering the safety on his gun. “Why do you ask?”

“I have a weird feeling.”

“Bad, or just weird?”

“Just weird…for now.”

Great, now I’m getting the heebie-jeebies. Get a hold of yourself,
Dakota thought, shaking his head and steeling his nerves.
Now look what you’ve done—you’ve freaked yourself out.

“Not my fault,” he mumbled aloud.

“What did you say?” Steve asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “Just thinking.”

“About what?”

About the molehill that’s just become a mountain.

Choosing not to reply, Dakota stepped up onto the sidewalk and continued to make his way toward the house that held the storage shed, taking extra care not to linger too close to the houses or the picket fences that separated them. To think that you would ever have to worry about getting too close to a harmless picket fence was impossible, comparable to a queen crossing the road in only her hosiery and sneakers. But the blood that tipped the perfect little spikes of the fences spelled fear like jagged nails on a chalkboard.

Blood used to be nothing more than a driving source that fueled the human body.  In this day and age, touching it meant a fate worse than death.

His morbid thoughts having entertained him for the last ten minutes, Dakota barely realized they had crossed the street until Steve reached out and grabbed the back of his shirt. When he did, Dakota took a moment to shake his nerves off before looking up at the shed before them.

“This is where we’ll run into trouble,” Steve said.

“How come?”

“There’s blood on the door. See?”

The rusty smear needed little explanation, much less to be pointed out. “You think whoever did that is still here?” Dakota asked.

“Yep. Probably in the shed,” Steve nodded. “There’s fingerprints on the edge.”

“What do we do then?”

“It wouldn’t be locked from the inside…unless someone rigged it up, but I highly doubt that.”

“Why?”

“If something were chasing him, you’d think there’d be more blood on the door.”

“Unless the blood on the zombies was dry.”

Steve reached up to scratch the stubble on his chin before grabbing the door handle. “Ready?”

“Whenever you are,” Dakota said, raising his gun.