Survival Ties (The Outbreak Chronicles Book 1) (8 page)

The smell of spaghetti and garlic
bread drifted through the bus.

“Hope everyone likes
SpaghettiO’s and Texas toast.” Sydney greeted as we followed our noses. 

“Where’s Thomas?” Sydney asked
Angela.

“He refused to come out. He said
that his head hurt and the light hurt his eyes.” Angela answered as she tore
off a piece of her toast and dipped it in the SpaghettiO’s.

Aaron shot a look at me that
said we definitely had to keep an eye on the boy, to keep the rest of our
family safe. I noticed that Sydney was watching both Aaron and I, her eyes
holding a warning.

“Did Thomas get some sleep
Angela?” Sydney asked as Sam and Tone finally came out of the front of the bus
to join us. They both looked grim.

“Yeah he slept all afternoon
but he says his head hurts now and the light makes him cry.” Angela answered as
she kept eating. She didn’t see the look that passed between Sam, Tone, and
Sydney.

“Well, when you’re done eating
you can bring him some dinner. We’ll give you some pain killers to give him,
maybe that will help and he’ll come out and play tomorrow.” Sam told her.

“Yeah, he’ll love having dinner
in bed! It’ll be just like when he got sick at home and mom would bring him all
his meals in his room. She’d read him a story as he ate and he’d sleep.” Angela
told us, it was the most she had said about her parents so far.

There wasn’t any real
conversation between us through the rest of dinner. Sawyer and Micah were
talking quietly together. Angela finished as quickly as she could. She
disappeared back into the room, bringing Thomas food and pain killers. Daisy
was trying to engage Axel in conversation but he kept staring at where Angela
went. Aaron was sitting next to me, but we ate in silence.

“Listen up.” Sam said breaking
the shell we were all in.

“Yeah?” Sydney asked.

“We all need to talk about what
we are going to do about Thomas. If his symptoms are not just from what
happened to him and healing, then we have to be prepared for him turning.” Sam
responded as he looked around the room. Aaron looked at me.

“I thought he was getting
better.” Axel said, “That’s what Sydney told Angela.”

“He might be but some of the
things he’s doing right now are very similar to the symptoms the crazed
showed.” Tone answered.

“Then shouldn’t Angela be out
here to have a say in everything?” Axel asked, “It is her brother we are
talking about and you lied to her.”

“We didn’t lie to her. We don’t
know what’s going to happen and we don’t want her to worry if it’s nothing. It
would be cruel to scare her.” Sydney told him, trying to calm him down.

“You’re talking about possibly
having to kill her brother and you waited till she wasn’t in the room to do
so.” Axel said through gritted teeth. Aaron walked over to stand in front of
Axel.

“Look Axel, everyone wants
Thomas to be fine, but we have to be prepared to protect all of us if he
isn’t.” Aaron told Axel as he kneeled down to look him straight in the eyes.

“Can you honestly say you could
kill Thomas?” Axel asked him.

“Yes. If it came to that. To
protect the rest of us, I could pull the trigger.” Aaron answered. Axel spit in
his face.

“You wouldn’t kill Thomas would
you?” Angela cried. She had come out of the room without us hearing her. There
was no telling how much she had heard but she had definitely heard what Aaron
had just said.

“Sweetie we didn’t want to
worry you.” Sydney answered.

“You said he was getting
better.” Angela said.

“We just want to be prepared in
case we are wrong and he isn’t getting better.” Sydney said soothingly to her
and tried to take her hand. Angela pulled away out of her reach.

“You’re out here planning to
kill my little brother. Are you even going to give him a chance or were you
just waiting till I fell asleep?” Angela choked out between sobs. Her face was
wet from the tears and I couldn’t blame her, this must feel like a betrayal.

“We’re not planning to kill
your brother. We are planning on how to protect everybody if he’s not getting
better.” Tone tried to talk to her.

“You are all just liars; you
said we were safe here with you.” Angela said as she threw the plate she was
holding at Sydney, “I hate all of you!”

Angela stormed out of the room,
stumbling and coughing and sobbing. She went into her room and slammed the
door. The lock clicked. Choking sobbing sounds continued to carry through the
bus. Sydney looked defeated. Axel looked guilty and hurt. Sam and Tone were whispering
to each other. The rest just looked on, shocked.

“Okay everyone we need to get
some sleep. We’ll talk to Angela tomorrow and she’ll understand what she walked
into. For now, she won’t hear anything we say.” Sam said.

Daisy headed to her room with Axel
on her heels. Through the open door we watched her hand him blankets and a
pillow. He set up a place for himself on the floor at the foot of her bed,
which looked a lot like a nest.

“You got him?” Sydney asked
her. Daisy nodded as she shut the bedroom door.

“Ashlyn, do you mind Micah
sleeping in our room tonight? He’ll sleep on the floor.” Sawyer asked me.

“No that’s fine.” I answered.

“Hey you should get sleep too;
we’ll figure this out tomorrow.” Aaron told me.

“Will it be okay?” I whispered
to him as I hugged him.

“I don’t know, but we’ll get
through it.” He whispered back.

I followed Sawyer and Micah
into our room where he already had a spot made up on the floor and she was
crawling into bed. I followed her and Micah turned off the light.

I didn’t think I would sleep
but as soon as I lay down I was out.

The room was still dim but bathed in
pink when Aaron shook me awake.

“Shh.” He said motioning to
Sawyer and Micah. Sometime during the night Sawyer had moved off the bed and
was cuddled up with Micah. I followed Aaron out of the room and he led me
outside.

“What are we doing?” I asked
him as we walked to the front of the bus.

“Look, I’ve been thinking. I
mean, things go bad, yeah, sure. Some of that bad was yesterday.
We do what we gotta do, but it’s
like you have to remember the good too.” He told me as he pointed to the sky
where the sun was just beginning to peek out from behind the mountain. Within
minutes the sky was pink chased by orange. Aaron was right, it was beautiful
and I had forgotten that things could be this perfect.

We were still standing out
there watching the sky when Sydney came running out.

“Are they with you?” She asked,
sounding panicked.

“Who?” Aaron asked.

“Angela and Thomas.” She
answered, looking around the other side of the bus.

“No we haven’t seen them.” I
answered.

“They’re gone. They aren’t in
their room and their stuff is gone.” Sydney said as Sam and Tone came up to us.

“Any luck?” Tone asked as soon
as he saw Sydney.

“No they haven’t seen them.
Where could they be?” She responded.

“They can’t be far, we’ll find
them. Angela probably panicked and thought she was saving him. The problem is
if he’s really turning, then she’s in very serious danger.” Sam said more to
himself as he placed a hand on his hat.

“We can’t have everyone out
looking for them; someone needs to stay with the bus and the kids that stay.”
Sydney said.

“You’re right Sydney; would you
be willing to stay with the kids and keep everyone calm?” Tone asked her. She
looked at him and nodded as his words sunk in.

“Yes, I can do that.” She
agreed, “I’ll go start breakfast.”

“Tone you’re with me, Aaron
would you be okay on your own?” Sam asked.

“He won’t be on his own, I’ll
go.” I told him. Sam looked like he was going to argue with me but Aaron cut
him off.

“Don’t worry I won’t let
anything happen to her.” He said.

“Okay we’ll head back the way
we came, how about you both head the way we’re going.” Sam agreed even though
he didn’t look happy about it.

Both our little groups headed off in
opposite directions. We had all grabbed some water to take with us. Everyone
else on the bus was still asleep and Sam was hoping we would find Angela and
Thomas before they woke up. Aaron was walking more in the ditch when we found
the first foot prints.

“I think they went this way, do
you see where there’s mud?” Aaron asked and there on the ground by his feet
were two sets of footprints.

“Looks like they stayed in the
ditch near the road. Should we get the others?” I asked.

“Yeah but we’d have to run to
get them, you up for that?” Aaron responded and I nodded.

We ran back towards the bus. We
could see Sam and Tone on the road up ahead, we didn’t want to yell and attract
any attention.

“Did you find something
already?” Sam asked as soon as we caught up with them.

“Yup, there’s prints in the
mud, they’re small.” Aaron told him.

We headed back to where we saw
the footprints with Sam and Tone following us. Nobody said anything when Aaron
showed them the prints. We started following the trail. It turned out that
Aaron’s hunting skills had taught him how to track. He was picking up the trail
when I thought there wasn’t one.

We had been walking for quite a
while steadily heading further into the woods when we came across an RV. We
stopped and watched it for a while, but there didn’t seem to be anything going
on around it. No one coming out or walking around and there wasn’t any noise
coming from inside.

“Do you think it’s abandoned?”
Aaron asked.

“Maybe or whoever’s in there is
still asleep.” Sam answered, still scanning the area.

“The trail heads towards the
RV. Maybe they got lucky and found it abandoned. It would have given them
shelter for the night since it seems she snuck him out as soon as we were all
asleep.” Aaron said, “We haven’t seen any movement, I think we should check
inside.”

“Looks like that may be what
happened.” Tone agreed, “Ashlyn stay here.”

“No she comes. She’ll stay
behind me but we’re not leaving her anywhere.” Aaron said and Tone just
shrugged.

We moved quietly up to the RV.
There wasn’t any noise. Sam looked into the windows but they were all blocked.
He tried the door and it opened easily and swung open. As soon as the light
streamed in we saw the blood.

Following the trail, we saw
Angela laying on the floor under a table, Thomas was sitting on her. He was
covered in blood and when he turned to us his eyes were red. I could feel the
tears falling from my eyes. Most of Angela’s body was covered in blood. I could
see her stomach was torn open and most of her innards were thrown around half
eaten.

Thomas was growling at us as he
started to move towards us, forgetting Angela. I never saw Tone raise his gun,
but I heard it go off and then Thomas was on the floor, a hole in his forehead.
He looked so small.

“Will she come back?” I asked
looking back to Angela.

“No, look at her head. Its
angled wrong, it looks like she hit it when he attacked her. You can see where
he dug into the wound.” Aaron told me gently. Sam was going into the RV.

“What are you doing?” Tone asked
him.

“Seeing if there are blankets
we can carry them in. I want to bring them back to the bus and bury them.
Everyone will want to know what happened and say goodbye.” Sam answered as he
vanished and returned with two blankets.

I thought it was lucky that the
blankets were a deep brown, they wouldn’t show the blood. Sam very carefully
wrapped both the bodies. He handed Angela to Tone, and carried Thomas himself.

“I want you two to go ahead and
tell Sydney what happened and what we’re doing. Let her tell the others.” Sam
said as he came out with the bundle that was all left of little Thomas.

“You heard him Ash. Come on
I’ve got you.” Aaron said as he grabbed my hand.

I followed Aaron mostly by his
grip on my hand. I wasn’t seeing anything around me. All I could see was
Thomas’s face, with those Red Eyes, and all of Angela’s blood, it kept
replaying. Aaron periodically squeezed my hand in an attempt to reassure me. I
didn’t even notice when we walked up to the bus. Aaron got me on and sat me
down at the table.

“What happened? Is she okay?”
Sydney asked.

“No she’s not. We found Angela
and Thomas but it’s not good.” Aaron said.

“How not good?” Sydney asked.

“Thomas turned. Tone had to
shoot him. Sam and Tone are carrying the bodies back so we can give them a
funeral.” Aaron answered.

“What about Angela?” Sydney
asked her hand was resting at the base of her throat.

Aaron shook his head.

“Oh God.” Sydney said.

“Yeah, Sam said to let you tell
the others.” Aaron answered as the others were starting to come out of the
rooms.

“Tell us what?” Axel asked.

“Kids, gather round and sit
down.” Sydney started and waited till everyone was seated.

“What’s going on?” Sawyer
asked.

“It looks like Angela took off
last night with Thomas. We found them but we were too late.” Sydney answered, “Tone
and Sam are on their way back with their bodies, we’re going to bury them. I
want all of you to be prepared for a funeral.”

“This is all your fault.” Axel
shot at Sydney as he started to cry, he let Daisy hold him but his eyes were shooting
venom at Sydney. “If you would have told her the truth she’d be alive.”

“Shhh, Axel we don’t know that
she may have panicked sooner and it wouldn’t have ended any different.” Daisy
told him as she hugged him and he held on to her.

Everything around me seemed to
be happening far away or to someone else. I didn’t even realize Aaron had his
arm around me.

“You’re going to be okay, Ash.”
He whispered to me.

I noticed that he wasn’t saying
that everything would be okay, just that I would be.

I looked around the table at
everyone and could see the shock on their faces as the tears fell.

“Will we all be okay?” I
whispered to Aaron. He kissed my forehead.

“I think we’ll all make it
through this, once the shock wears off and we’re back on the road.” Aaron
whispered back.

Sydney was making her way
around the bus checking on everyone. It seemed that was how she was dealing;
she was trying to take care of everyone else.

Axel still wouldn’t talk to her
and he wouldn’t look at her. I was sure he’d forgive her once he thought about
what had happened. When Sydney came around to me, Aaron told her that he had
me.

“You sure?” Sydney asked him.

“Yeah, I saw what she saw, I
got her. She’ll be okay.” Aaron said. Sydney looked up out of the window and I heard
her sigh before she turned to everyone.

“Sam and Tone are back.” She
said “Let’s go help them and say our goodbyes.”

No one responded but everyone
got up and filed off the bus. There was more crying when they saw the blankets.
Sydney came off the bus with shovels and I saw Axel take one from her. He went
and started digging a hole as Sam dug another.