The Survivor Chronicles: The Risen (14 page)

His right arm went straight out before him
as he spun back to the room with his gun raised. He held the
flashlight up with his other hand to study the shadowed recesses
more closely. He didn't see anything within the room and didn't
know where someone could possibly be hiding, but he knew there was
someone in the room with him.

John placed his hand on Carl's shoulder and
slid past him to stand in the corner of the room. Carl pointed to
the right, toward the end of the couch. He believed that might be
where the noise had come from. John nodded and began to creep
forward. The space between the couch and the wall didn't look as if
it were big enough for a five year old to hide behind, but then he
never would have expected Nancy to fit into the trunk that she had
crammed herself into either. Riley and Xander came in behind him.
They moved toward the front of the couch while he walked toward the
end opposite of John.

The tension in the room was nearly palpable;
he didn't even hear a breath from anyone as he kept his flashlight
focused on the wall opposite the couch. He didn't want whatever was
back there to know that they were approaching the piece of
furniture. Something scraped against the wall again as Carl stepped
around the arm of the couch. Keeping his gun before him, he spun
and shone the light into the dark recesses behind the couch.

At first all he saw was a human back and
then a face sluggishly turned toward him. He braced himself for the
child to launch at him, but the boy remained crouched behind the
couch, his hands clutching something that Carl couldn't see. The
dull look in the boy's eyes, and his slack expression, made Carl
realize this boy wasn't going to attack them. This child was one of
The Lost Souls.

"It's a child," Riley whispered from where
she knelt in the middle of the couch to peer over the back.

"It's a
sick
child," Carl emphasized. He took a crouched step closer to the boy
whose cat green eyes remained unwavering and unseeing upon Carl.
Those eyes were vivid in the glow of the flashlight, and more than
a little unsettling, but Carl knew they couldn't leave the child
there.

Carl held his hand out to the boy but he
remained unmoving behind the piece of furniture. The child simply
raised his hands and took a bite of whatever he was holding. Carl
had the unsettling feeling it was some of the remains that had been
sprawled and rotting on the kitchen floor. His stomach turned over
at the thought, but he continued to hold his hand out to the child.
The dirt smearing his face and the sharp angles of his sunken
cheeks made it difficult to tell the boy's age, but judging by his
size Carl guessed he was no older than six or seven.

"It's ok." Carl coaxed the child like he
would coax any other animal he was trying to get out of hiding. He
waved his fingers at him and spoke in a low, soothing tone. The boy
didn't move and he didn't acknowledge Carl's words as he continued
to stare ahead.

"I think we're going to have to move the
couch to get him out," Riley said.

Carl nodded his agreement and rose to his
feet. Riley and Xander climbed off the couch and he and John each
grabbed an end. They lifted it up and moved it away from the wall.
The boy didn't run away but his head turned to take in the people
that gathered around him.

"Careful," Xander warned when Riley
approached the child.

Carl's nose wrinkled as he moved closer to
the child's other side. The boy wasn't covered in feces or urine
but the aroma emitting from him led Carl to believe he hadn't
washed himself in weeks. He was pretty sure there were three day
old dead bodies, left out on a hot August day, that smelled better
than this kid did. At least these Lost Souls were coherent enough
to take care of their waste in a civilized manner, but then most
animals were careful not to sleep in their own waste or to have the
odor of it on them.

Animal. He was convinced that was what he
was looking at right now. A human being who had been stripped of
all coherent reasoning and left only with the ability to live in
some form or another, no matter how good or bad that form was. At
least the boy wasn't trying to eat them, that was a bonus.

"It's ok," Riley said as she knelt at the
boy's side and touched his arm.

The boy turned toward her but didn't
acknowledge her hand upon his arm. "He needs a bath," John
muttered.

"We'll get him one," Riley assured him.

"Just be careful," Xander said again.

"I am," she murmured as she ran her hand
over the boy's bruised arm.

Unlike the more malicious ones these Lost
Souls didn't have the petechial rash the angrier ones exhibited. It
was strange to see the different effects of whatever was raging
through the ones that had fallen ill so up close and personal. They
were both completely different from each other. One was full of
rage and uglier than a hairless cat with boils. The other was calm,
and though not the healthiest looking, there was still something
human to them. The boy dropped his hands away from his face and
remained backed up against the wall as he stared blankly ahead of
him.

"Help me get him up Carl," Riley said.

Vicious man-eater or not, Carl wasn't at all
thrilled about the idea of touching the child. They still didn't
know how this disease spread, he was ninety-nine percent certain it
wasn't through touch, but his skin crawled at the idea of coming
into such close proximity with one of those people on purpose. Even
so, he couldn't just walk away from him. Carl suppressed a groan as
his fingers wrapped all the way around the child's bicep with room
to spare.

He helped Riley lead the boy out from behind
the couch. They moved him into the center of the room and settled
him on the ground. "We'll get some water and we can wash him off,"
Riley said.

"You better get a fire hose," John
muttered.

Riley shot him a disapproving look. Carl
hadn't liked the way he said it but he found himself secretly
agreeing with John. He took a step away from the boy and wiped his
hands on his jeans. It wasn't enough; he would find some soap and a
scrub brush as soon as possible. None of it appeared to bother
Riley as she knelt before the boy to study him more closely.

"He's pulled out some of his hair but he
hasn't picked at his skin like some of the others," she
murmured.

Carl looked down at the pink bald spots on
the boy's skull. "That's because he had food to keep him busy in
the kitchen," John said.

Riley finally showed some sign of being
repulsed as her upper lip curled and she leaned a little further
away from the child. "Can someone get me some water and towels?"
she asked. "After we clean him up we can try the L-Dopa on
him."

"We'll make sure the rest of the house is
empty first, and that the others are safe. Then we'll bring you
some," Carl told her and nodded to John to follow him from the
room.

"See if you can find him some clothes too,"
she instructed as he moved toward the door that led into the
den.

"We will," Carl promised her.

"I'm going to stay here," Xander said. "I'm
not leaving her alone with him."

The child remained unmoving in the middle of
the room but Carl understood Xander's concern as Riley settled in
beside the boy with her gun in her lap. She was too focused on
trying to save someone to realize how much of a risk the boy could
represent to all of them. "We'll be back soon," Carl promised.

Xander stepped away from them and walked
over to stand protectively beside Riley. John followed him into the
den and pulled on the sleeve of his shirt to halt him in the dining
room. "Peter is
not
going to like
what she intends to do," John whispered.

Carl nodded and glanced toward the doorway
leading outside. Peter was still out with the cars, or at least he
had been the last time that Carl had seen him. "I know and I don't
care. It has to be done; we have to know if there is something we
can do for those people. It may be our biggest help in all of
this."

"Or it could be our biggest downfall," John
said.

Carl didn't want to acknowledge that, if he
did he would have to acknowledge the fact that it may very well be
better for them to let people suffer and die. To let that
boy
suffer and die. He'd never
considered himself an overly compassionate man but he simply
couldn't walk away from that broken child without trying to do
something for him.

"It could," he said thoughtfully.

"But we're going to try it anyway."

"Isn't that what humans have done throughout
history, trial and error? Sometimes it worked in our favor and
other times it was a giant failure. It's always been a live and
learn process for millennia."

"Yeah well, tell that to the people at
Chernobyl."

Carl snorted as he glanced at the still
empty doorway. "Come on let's go find the others."

They met Jim at the top of the stairs as he
came out of a bedroom on the right. "It's all clear up here," Jim
informed him.

Carl stared at the shadowed room beyond Jim.
"Did you look in every spot, even the really small ones you
wouldn't think anyone could fit into?"

Jim frowned at him and folded his arms over
his chest. "What happened?"

"We found a boy downstairs. He's one of the
ones that just wander about aimlessly, one of The Lost Souls as
we've come to call them," Carl told them. "And he had crammed
himself behind the couch."

"I made sure to look everywhere," Nancy
said.

She would have done so, Carl realized with a
sense of relief. Jim stared down the stairs past he and John with a
considerate frown on his face. "Are you sure the boy is one of
these Lost Souls?" he inquired.

A chill slid down Carl's spine as Jim's
words caused a thrill of apprehension to shoot through him. The
sick ones are smart, far smarter than they'd given them credit for
a few times. The child didn't have a rash, but how did he know for
certain that all of the angrier ones would have the rash? Without a
word, Carl spun on the stairs and rushed back down. He could hear
the footsteps of the others behind him as he raced through the
dining room and back through the den. He was breathless by the time
he arrived in the living room. Riley jumped to her feet at the
sight of him and Xander spun to face him.

"What's wrong?" Riley demanded.

Carl inhaled a shaky breath as he took in
the immobile boy still sitting on the floor staring at the wall.
The cannibalistic ones may be smarter than he liked but this boy
wasn't one of them. He put the gun back in the waistband of his
jeans. "Nothing," he assured her. "The house is clear."

Riley didn't look as if she completely
believed him but she didn't question him further. "Did you find any
clothes for him?"

"No, I forgot to look," Carl told her.

"I'll get some now," Jim offered. "I know
which room is his."

"I'll go with you," Nancy said and turned
away from the door.

"Don't tell
any
one else the boy is here," Carl said before
they could leave the room. They exchanged puzzled looks before
turning back to him. "I'll explain later, just don't let the others
know he's here yet."

"Peter?" Jim asked.

"Yes." Jim nodded before leaving the
room.

Mary Ellen brushed past Carl and walked over
to where the boy sat. "He's so young," she murmured.

"He is," Riley agreed before going to stand
next to the window. She pulled the slats of the blind apart to peer
out; Carl spotted a swing set in the growing twilight. One of the
swings swayed back and forth in the small breeze outside. "It's
going to be a long night," Riley murmured before releasing the
slats and stepping away from the window.

"We should probably go get the others," Mary
Ellen said.

Carl dreaded speaking with Peter but he
wasn't going to avoid the man; that was the
last
thing he was going to do. "I'll come with you
to get the L-Dopa, some towels, and water for him," Riley said.
"Will you stay with him?"

Mary Ellen nodded in response to Riley's
question. Carl didn't think it was the best idea for Riley to be
around Peter, there was a little too much hostility between the two
of them, but Riley was already walking out of the room. Carl and
Xander followed behind her while John and Mary Ellen stayed in the
room with the boy.

Al stood on the porch with Donald when they
left the house. Claire and Freddie were standing near the truck
with Rochelle. Carl searched for Peter but didn't see him in the
growing darkness. "Where did he go?" he asked Al.

Al didn't even ask who. "Peter's behind the
shed."

Riley hurried down the stairs to the car.
Carl waited until she was searching through the backseat before
continuing to talk with Al. "There's a boy inside. A Lost
Soul."

His attention had been focused on the shed
but Al's head turned toward him. "How bad of condition is he
in?"

"Not as bad as some of the others we've
seen. He's been eating the food that was in the house."

Al glanced at Riley as she stepped away from
the car, and then Peter as he emerged from behind the shed. "We
should probably try and keep them separated and Peter should be
kept away from the boy."

"I was thinking the same thing," Carl
agreed.

Riley climbed the stairs of the porch and
slipped inside. "Are we good to go inside?" Rochelle inquired.

"Yes," Carl answered. "It would probably be
best if you went straight upstairs. The food rotted downstairs and
it smells like crap."

"Thanks for the heads up," she said as she
walked by him.

Carl followed them into the house. He tried
to appear casual as he stood protectively in the doorway of the den
and waited for the others to file upstairs. Even with Peter safely
above, he couldn't shake the feeling that this night wasn't going
to end well.