Survival Ties (The Outbreak Chronicles Book 1) (4 page)

Neither Daisy nor I wanted to be alone
as we laid on her bed looking at the ceiling. She had a poster of the General
Lee taped there. We were quiet. Thinking about what Sam had said and wondering
if we’d ever be safe.

“Where do you think they’re
planning to stop?” Daisy asked.

“Someplace that’s abandoned, I
hope.” I answered.

“Agreed. Do you mind staying in
here with me tonight since it seems like Sawyer’s staying on the couch?” She
asked as she fiddled with a strand of her green hair that had come out of the
ponytail. 

“Yeah, I don’t really want to
be alone.” I answered.

Daisy fell asleep before I did.
I listened to her even breathing for a while hoping it would lull me into
sleep.

It was no use I could feel my
heart pounding.

My mind was racing with
scenarios we may or may not face at the next stop.

Morning came bright and glorious, I
felt like I had just fallen asleep when knocking sounded on the door.

“What?” Daisy called from under
her pillow.

“Rise and shine girls.” Sam
called back and opened the door.

The smell of eggs cooking
wafted through the open door as we pulled ourselves away from the warm
blankets. I stumbled out to the kitchen to find Tone standing at the stove. The
handle of the pan in one hand and a spatula in the other. The closed cabinets around
him had hook locks on them, I hadn’t noticed that before.

“What are you looking at?”
Daisy asked.

“Just noticed the cabinet
doors.” I answered.

“What about them?” She asked.

“The locks.” I said.

“Well yeah, how else would the
food and everything stay in them while the bus is moving?” She responded.

“Ah.” I said as I took the
plate Tone handed to me.

Sawyer was still lying on the
couch. Although Axel was now sitting on the chair, with a plate on his lap.
Sydney smiled at both Daisy and me as we sat down at the dining room table with
her.

Angela came out and grabbed a
plate but she returned to her and Thomas’s room without saying a word to anyone.
She was skittish around us. It was the first time we’d really seen her since
she got on the bus. We hadn’t seen her brother at all.

“They’ll come around.” Sydney
said as Angela closed the door.

“Wonder how long they were out
there and how much of the attack they saw.” Daisy responded looking at the
door. “They’re staying in Johnnie’s room.”

“Johnnie was the drummer,
wasn’t he?” I asked her.

“Yeah. He threw me into the bus
and made me promise not to go back out. I can still hear him screaming, I
couldn’t get the door open he jammed it somehow.” Daisy replied. “I never even
saw that there was danger near the bus; I thought we had left it at the stage.”

“He saved you.” I said.

“He did. Tone and Sydney found
me in here when they opened the door.” Daisy answered, “I hope she didn’t see
or hear as much as I did.”

“Do you know what happened to
the rest of the band?” Axel asked.

“I saw Robert get pulled down
off the stage, Johnnie was with me. Andrew, I lost in the chaos. He didn’t come
back to the bus and I don’t know if he’s dead or alive.” Daisy told him.

“I saw my parents get
attacked.” Axel told her.

She nodded and hugged him to
her.

“Do you think there are other
groups like ours?” Daisy asked.

“Probably and maybe we’ll even
find some more people on our way and they’ll join us.” Tone answered.

“I hope so.” Sam said, clapping
Tone on the shoulder.

It was easy to not look out the
windows and ignore that we were on a trip trying to make it to safety. We all
had loved ones lost we tried not to think about. Some we knew were gone, others
we weren’t sure about. We knew we had to keep our minds on surviving and not forget
what the bus protected us from.

“There’s a Super Wal-Mart a few
miles up the road from where we are right now.” Tone started, “We plan to stop,
get supplies and check for survivors.”

“We understand if you want to
stay on the bus, but the more eyes we have inside the safer we will all be.”
Sam continued.

“Everyone would stay in a group
no separating unless absolutely necessary. We still need to make sure we have
food and water for our trip.” Tone added on, “There may be others that have no
place to go.”

Both Daisy and I volunteered to
go. Axel said he’d stay with Sawyer on the bus and keep an eye on her. Having
the scavenging group decided, Tone got back behind the wheel and we started off
towards the store.

The trip was quicker than I
would have liked. I was afraid we would be walking into the same situation as
the gas station. I guess this time we were at least prepared for running into
Red Eyes.

Sam gave us some wicked looking
hunting knives. The weight of the knife was comforting as we pulled into the
parking lot that looked like a mass accident.

There were cars everywhere and
you could see dead people in some of them.

The worst one was a child
hanging out of a window, half of him gone.

There was a lot of blood
everywhere like some Hollywood movie, only no one was going to be calling cut.
Sam took in everything as he looked around us.

Tone pulled the bus up to the
front of the store making sure he had a clear path to get us back out of the
parking lot. Nothing was moving, not even a breeze.

“Okay, we are going to do this
quickly. Head to camping first. Grab what we can and any bags we can.” Sam
directed, “Then go through the store hitting food last so we have an easy time
getting back to the bus.”

“Remember we are grabbing
anything we need, so medicines, bandages, clothes, food and such. Stay
together. Ready?” Tone asked us as we stood by the door, waiting.

“Here we go.” Sydney said as
she stepped off the bus and we followed her.

Sydney took the lead, Sam was
in the middle with Daisy and I, while Tone took up the rear. The doors to the
store were crushed and once we were inside we found a car someone had driven through
the glass.

Other than the car, the store
wasn’t as torn up as I was expecting it to be. The lights were out and it was
hard to see clearly past the light from the wrecked door. Maybe I just had the
images from too many horror movies in my head. I was expecting shelves to be
mostly looted and knocked over.

Everything still seemed to be
in fairly good order as we made our way to camping supplies. We grabbed a few
carts on the way and as we continued deeper into the store, our eyes adjusted to
the dark.

We started seeing spots that
were dark, like oil spills, but we all knew they probably weren’t oil. Halfway
through the store Sam tripped over what was left of someone’s arm.

Once we got to the camping
aisle we saw that there were two bodies lying at the other end. It was too dark
to tell if they were male or female. Tone went to check the bodies; he came
back shaking his head.

“Are they going to come back?”
I asked, not wanting to face Red Eyes in the close quarters of the aisle.

“No, there’s not enough left
for them to rise.” Tone answered, taking a tarp and throwing it over them.

“Let’s get lanterns, knives,
and tents if there are any left.” Sam said. He looked like he was on high
alert.

There was only one tent left on
the shelf and it was one of those huge four room ones. The lanterns on the
other hand, looked like no one else had even touched them so we took all of
them. Sam had us grab tarps and sleeping bags while he loaded up cases of
bottled water that were right on the end of the aisle.

We had one cart completely
loaded when Sam took us over to electronics to grab any and all batteries we
could.

We did the same at home
improvement grabbing ropes, chains, and tie downs. Trying to ignore bodies or
limbs.

We followed Sam over to the
pharmacy.

He hopped over the counter and
started grabbing things from there. The rest of us just started throwing
everything we could off the shelves into the cart. Not even looking at what we
grabbed.

We did the same with clothing
until we had all three of the carts piled way past capacity. We headed back to
the doors to pass off the carts to Sawyer and Axel, then grabbed new ones to
head over to the food aisles.

We were scooping canned food
off the shelves into carts when we heard something hiss at us.

Sydney turned on a small
flashlight she had on her belt and shone it in the direction the noise had come
from. Huddled as far from the light as the back wall of the store would allow
were three people.

As soon as Sydney moved the
light away, a male lunged at us only to slip on a wet spot on the floor. A drop
fell from the ceiling on to him and he screamed and ran off closely followed by
the two other people. Sydney shined the light up where there was water dripping
down, maybe from a busted pipe. There was a ladder and one of those wet floor
signs near the puddle.

“I’m guessing crazed.” Sam
decided as he turned around to head back to the front of the store.

“Why are they afraid of light
and water?” Daisy asked.

“I’m not sure but we’ll keep
that in mind.” Sam answered, motioning us to follow him. He was leading back to
the bus when we heard something above us in the ceiling. Tone had a finger to
his mouth telling us to stay quiet. Sydney went to investigate.

She came back shaking her head
at us.

“Let’s hurry and get the hell
out of here.” Sydney said.

“What did you find?” Tone asked
her.

“Red Eyes upstairs in the
employee area, must have chased someone up there and had no reason to come back
down.” Sydney told him.

“In that case, I think we’ve
got plenty, let’s go before we give them a reason to come down here.” Tone
said.

We were quiet as we headed back
to the doors. I saw a display that had those shoe figurines Daisy had been
talking about. Without thinking about it I swiped all the ones I could off it
and into a bag I found on the ground. I hurried to catch up with the group.

Sydney came back and grabbed
the cart from me. As I walked with her I tripped and stumbled into the car
parked by the door. The car had one of those stupid overly sensitive alarms
that started to scream at us.

Tone looked up from loading up
supplies and grabbed his gun. Sydney and I rushed back to the bus with the
cart.

At first all we could hear was
the damn alarm, and then there was crashing as the Red Eyes were drawn to the
noise. The alarm seemed to even draw the attention of Red Eyes that were
walking by.

We left the last of the
supplies and rushed to load back into the bus as the first of the Red Eyes
started rushing towards us. Tone jumped into the driver seat. Sam slammed the
door shut.

“Go, go, go!” he screamed to
Tone.

The engine revved up and we
pulled away from the store. You could hear the Red Eyes running into the side
of the bus trying to catch us. The bus bounced around over bumps that I had a
sick feeling were bodies of some of the Red Eyes. I was shaking as Tone got the
bus back on to the road and away from chaos once again.

“Everyone okay?” Sam asked as
he sat next to me and took my hand into his.

“Yeah. No one’s hurt.” Sydney
answered him.

“I thought they were going to
get us when that alarm started going off.” Daisy said as she sat down on my
other side, “What’s in the bag?”

“I grabbed something you might
like.” I said, handing her the bag.

“What?” Daisy asked. She looked
inside.

“Oh my god!” Daisy said as her
eyes lit up and she smiled.

“Before you say anything Sam I
didn’t wander off to find those, they were right where we were walking.” I told
him before he could lecture me.

“You know what, we should be
enjoying the small things and we should be trying to make each other as happy
as we can. We have no idea what lays ahead of us now.” Sam told me, “Plus
you’re right you didn’t wander away and draw attention to us.”

Sawyer came out from the room
we shared. She took one look at me and threw herself into my arms.

“Hey, are you okay?” I asked
her when she didn’t let go.

“Yeah, it just hit me how much
we’ve lost. I heard that alarm going off and I thought I was going to lose you
too.” Sawyer told me as she sat back. I was glad to see her up and moving
around, out of shock.

“I’m sorry I scared you.” I
told her.

“How long will it take us to
get to your nephew?” Sawyer asked.