The Omega Protocol Chronicles (Book 1): Exodus (18 page)

“Claud, sweetie, you’ve gotta say something to us,” she said, her own voice choked with emotion. Still her sister didn’t move and she turned back to Quinton. “What are we going to do about her?”

“It’s from the trauma of seeing Mom…” She watched his knuckles turn white as he tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “I don’t know what to do about it. I’m not a psychiatrist. I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t know what the fuck we’re going to do!”

He slammed his palm on the wheel, causing her to jump, her breath catching in her throat. Fresh tears sprung to her eyes as Quinton seethed beside her and Claudia said nothing behind her. They were lost, not just on the road, but from each other. They couldn’t do this.

A memory of her father surfaced in her mind, a conversation from her childhood that she had never forgotten.

“Veronica, when something bad happens you get one minute. You take that minute and you yell, swear, cry, punch, kick, whatever it is you have to do. Just let it all wash over you but only for one minute. When the time is up, you’ve got to push the sadness away because you’re the oldest and you’ll have others looking to you to be strong. So one minute, that’s all you get, and then you have to pick yourself up and move forward.”

Well, they’d had more than a minute. They had all night and now the sky was beginning to grow pink as the sun came out on a new day. She was the oldest, the head of the family now, and she had to pull them together. It was up to her to keep this family whole.  

She reached out to him, prying a hand from the steering wheel and taking it into her own, gripping it tightly.

“It’s okay, little brother. We aren’t looking to you to fix this one, not by yourself. We’ll figure all of this out.”  

She shifted in her seat and reached her other hand into the backseat, taking Claudia’s limp hand in her own.

“And we’ll do it together.”

Quinton squeezed her hand back and she could see tears gathering in the corner of his eyes but he quickly blinked them away and cleared his throat.

“Alright, enough of the after-school special bullshit.”

She let out a watery laugh and he patted her hand, giving her a smile. They slipped back into a comfortable silence but Veronica did not let go of either of their hands, needing to keep the connection with them.

She and Quinton watched the gas gauge as it headed towards the empty side. The Explorer had finally stalled two miles outside Maryville, coasting to a stop in the middle of the road. Veronica and Quinton had worked up a sweat pushing the vehicle off the road and into a wooded grove not too far from the shoulder. Veronica hoped it was enough to hide it from any passer-bys.

The back was packed with supplies, more than they could carry with them, and they would have to leave it behind and hope it was all still there when they returned.

Quinton had wanted to go by himself while she waited at the car with Claudia but she wouldn’t hear it. After what had happened with their parents, there was no way she was going to let either one of her siblings out of her sight.

So they had filled their backpacks with as much food and water as they could carry and taken stock of their weapons. Two M1A rifles, one AR-15 with a scope, two Bushmaster M4s, two Remington shotguns, five Glocks and a dozen boxes of ammo for each calibre.

It was more firepower than they would need but they looked intimidating with the semi-autos strapped to them. If anybody spotted them, they’d likely decide the civilians armed like military weren’t worth the trouble.

Now Veronica and Quinton sat side by side on the tailgate, loading the ammo into the cartridges and magazines.

“You absolutely positive about bringing her with us?” Quinton asked, glancing over his shoulder at Claudia, who was still in the backseat, silent and unmoving.

“What choice do we have?”

“We don’t even know if she’ll come with us,” he said, shaking his head as he finished loading a clip and began popping bullets in the last empty one. “She’s just laying there, completely useless.”

His tone was harsh with condemnation and a stranger would think Quinton was being unnaturally cruel but she knew better. He had always hated showing that something upset him. It made him vulnerable in the eyes of others and that was unacceptable. So he hid it by pretending he didn’t care, by going out of his way to act like what was happening was an annoyance instead of a painful blow.

So she didn’t bother to tell him to be more sensitive to their sister and instead hopped down from the tailgate. “You finish the clips, I’ll handle Claudia.”

She walked around the side of the car and opened the door. Claudia did nothing to show she registered her presence.

“Claud, we need gas so we’re all going to walk into town together,” she said, her voice soft and gentle.

She had expected it would take some time to coax Claudia out but her sister surprised her, immediately unbuckling her seatbelt and climbing out without any further prodding. She was steady on her feet but her eyes were still absent of any emotion. At least they now knew she could hear and understand them.

She wished she knew what to do to help Claudia. Maybe they would be lucky and stumble across a therapist’s office and she could find some books on treating post-traumatic stress.

Quinton shut the rear door and walked around the car, his eyebrow raised as he looked between her and Claudia and she shrugged her shoulders. She had no idea why Claudia was responding now but she had no desire to question it in case it went south again.

He handed her three of the spare clips before approaching Claudia, resting a hand on her shoulder and ducking down so he could make eye contact with her. “Claud, I don’t want any of us to go in there unarmed. I’m giving you a gun but I don’t want you to do anything stupid with it, okay? You promise me you won’t do anything stupid.”

He waited for a response but Claudia just stood there, staring blankly at a spot on Quinton’s forehead. He shook her shoulder firmly, her ponytail bouncing around as her head bobbed on her shoulders and Quinton gripped her chin, forcing her to face him.

“Claudia!” he shouted, “Look at me!”

For a moment, she didn’t respond, but finally her eyes shifted and came to focus on Quinton.

“Promise me,” he ground out between clenched teeth. Claudia nodded her head and took the shotguns from Quinton and put the straps over her shoulders and put the Glock in the waistband of her jeans but not before checking the safety was in place.

She’d remembered Dad’s safety lessons when handling a weapon and Veronica added that to the good sign list.

The three of them set out down the road, walking in silence, both Veronica and Quinton focused on watching the surrounding area for any sign of danger while Claudia trudged along between them. The only signs of life were the sounds of birds flitting about the trees and the occasional scurrying of squirrels through the branches.

“There’s a building up ahead,” Quinton said, lifting his chin towards the roof in the distance. She could see the driveway that met the road and a sign at the foot of the drive and she squinted to make it out.

“It’s a sheriff’s station,” she said.

“Okay, we approach from the front in case there is anyone there,” he said. “Last thing we need to do is sneak up on a bunch of trigger-happy cops.”

The station was a squat brick building with a large parking lot. An ambulance was parked directly in front of the main doors and two unmarked sedans and three cruisers were parked at the far edge of the lot.

As they walked up the drive, they kept an eye out for movement from the station but the place remained dark.

“Let’s check the tanks, see if they have gas in them,” Quinton said, leading the way to the back of the lot, Veronica keeping an eye on the station and the road as he checked out the vehicles.

“Fuck yes! Some good luck finally,” Quinton said with a laugh. “They have full gas tanks. If we can get the keys, we can drive them back to the car and siphon their tanks. We’ll have more than enough to get us to the cabin and we don’t have to risk going further into town.”

“Okay, so do we try to find another way in or move the ambulance?” she asked. “It’s got to be parked there for a reason. Either someone didn’t want anyone to get in…”

“Or they didn’t want something to get out,” Quinton finished her thought.

They crossed the parking lot and came to stand by the ambulance, both of them looking it over. The two rear tires were blown and the passenger side was wedged right up against the glass doors, keys still dangling in the ignition.

“I’m going to go with they didn’t want something to get out. If this was about keeping themselves safe inside, they wouldn’t have left the keys in it.”

“Shit,” Quinton cursed. “Okay, you keep watch here, I’ll see if I can spot anything through the windows.”

She waited, keeping her eyes on the road, anxious to get this over with and get back to the car. There was something unsettling about being at a police station, a concrete symbol of civilized order, and finding it abandoned.

She sighed in relief when Quinton appeared around the corner of the building, a small smile on his lips.

“It was pretty dark in there but I didn’t see any movement,” he said, “I think it’s worth the risk to go inside. The other doors are locked tight, this is our best bet of getting inside. I say we move the ambulance. It should be enough noise to get the attention of whatever is in there and draw them out.”

Veronica stood with her gun trained on the door, Claudia directly behind her as Quinton started the ambulance and slowly reversed it, exposing the glass doors. He quickly put the vehicle in park and climbed out, his own weapon trained on the doors. They waited, straining to find any movement behind the glass and, despite her readied stance, she still jumped when a figure ran out of the darkness, smashing right through the glass doors.

The figure stumbled in the door frame, falling face first onto the pavement along with the rain of glass shards. She took aim at the figure’s head, her vision narrowing to a pinpoint, her finger about the squeeze the trigger when Quinton shouted for her to hold up. She took her finger off the trigger and let herself take in the entire scene. The figure was a man in a sheriff’s uniform and blood bloomed across the back of his shirt, a large piece of glass protruding from his back.

Quinton took a step towards the man and he suddenly came to life, struggling to get to his knees while he let out a pained screech as the glass impaled in his chest shifted with his movements. He rolled to his side and she saw his milky white eyes bugging out of his red face, spittle coated lips pulled in a grimace of pain. A hand groped at the glass shard in his chest, trying to pull it out but only succeeding in cutting his palm to ribbons.

Veronica felt bile rise up in her throat and she had to turn away from the scene. “How is he not dead yet?”

“
It
,” Quinton said, his lip pulled up in disgust. “The infected aren’t people anymore, no hes or shes, just its. The glass is keeping it from bleeding out quickly. It’ll die soon enough though.”

Quinton was right. It had stopped trying to pull out the glass, its hand dropping limply to the pavement, tiny moans issuing from its mouth as its legs shifted uselessly on the pavement.

“Do we just wait then?” she asked, glancing at Quinton who was glaring at the thing with a sneer on his lips. His knuckles were white where he gripped the barrel of his rifle and she belatedly realized he was barely holding himself together.

The thing rolled onto its stomach, screaming in agony. That set Quinton off and he brought the butt of his rifle down on the thing’s back, eliciting another howl from it.

“Quinton!” she called out, startled by his sudden violence and he turned those angry eyes on her.

“These things killed Mom!” he spat back at her, his voice ragged with pain.

She felt his anguish as sure as if he had punched her in the face, nearly doubling over with it as he kicked out and landed his boot in the thing’s ribs. She looked to Claudia and found her watching Quinton, tears trailing down her cheeks and her hands clenched into tight fists.

Veronica put her hand on Claudia’s shoulder and at the contact a sob tore from her throat and Claudia ran forward, bringing her foot down on the back of the thing’s head, smashing its face into the pavement. The crunch of bone and cartilage should have turned her stomach but instead Veronica found satisfaction in the noise. It was as if she was feeding off their anger, drawing fuel from their rage to stoke her own to life.

Before she even knew what she was doing, she flipped her rifle around and brought the butt down hard on the its kidney. Quinton was right. These things...these
freaks
 killed their mother. They were the reason their father was killed. They were monsters and they deserved to suffer.

The world around her blurred, the memory of those freaks attacking her mother superimposed over this one as she brought her rifle down again and again.

She didn’t stop until her arms began to burn with the exertion and she finally stumbled a step back, letting the rifle come to rest at her side. She was shaking, her breath coming out in shuddering gasps and tears soaked her cheeks.

Quinton and Claudia stepped away from the freak that was now finally dead. Claudia refused to meet her eyes as she continued to stare at the dead thing. Quinton looked her dead in the eye and nodded at her, his head held high, as if to say there was no shame in what they’d done.