The Orphans (Book 3): Strangers

  The Orphans 3

  By Mike Evans

  Prologue

  In 2008 soldiers were dying at a such a massive number that the heads of government and the military could no longer try and say was manageable. The government of Iraq had all but ignored the rules set forth of war by the United Nations Act. They had begun using chemical warfare at such a rate that those who had been exposed to the deadly gases were considered lucky if they never made it back to the base.

  The government assembled a secret team of scientists responsible for creating a cure for these men. The cure that they made was hell unleashed on society. The cure transformed the men into freaks of nature hungry for flesh, blood, and anything that they could tear off of their victim. The team of scientists along with the patients exposed to the deadly drug had been part of a large scale government coverup. When they dropped a bomb in the middle of the desert wiping out the base and all of its inhabitants the generals in charge thought that they had rid the world of having to worry about any future chances of this being released again.

  The leaders were unaware that Dr. Frank Fox who was one of the team members ahead of his time in the way that he could fuse ideas and science had been removed from the base. He had been recruited like the others and against his better judgement was asked to leave his ailing wife who was fighting a battle of her own against cancer. Fox left his wife and young son Shaun by themselves at the urging of his wife that he had to put the soldiers before his own wants and needs. This was something that his son shaun was incapable of understanding at the tender young age of five years old. When the team finally made a breakthrough and were on the verge of human trials Frank got the call that the woman of his dreams would only be seen in his from then on. She had lost her fight with cancer and moved on. Frank was faced with coming back home to a bitter son who held him partly responsible for not being there.

  Eight years later Frank was to busy working and constantly struggling to reconnect with a son who wanted little if anything to do with him to look for new love. When a chance encounter brings his son Shaun and Shaun’s love interest Ellie together Frank meets Ellie’s mother Karen and it is love at first sight. This only enrages Shaun and further puts distance between the father and son. Frank is helpless and falls for her feeling a second chance at life that he never felt he would have again. The two date for a very short time before he announces to Shaun that he is in love, that he will have to learn to deal with it knowing that true love is such a gift that he can’t afford to lose it a second time.

  When Frank has his mind made up that she is for him he asks her to take his hand then and forever. Karen breaks down confiding in him that she is dying of cancer and that she refuses to put him through it again. Frank drunk with love tells her that he has something that he thinks can cure her disease. With her blessing he starts down the path to save her with only the help of his lab assistant who in the end is the man responsible for the outbreak.

  Karen finally is seeing the end of her path the disease has finally taken over and is winning. Frank races to the hospital with doctored results courtesy of his assistant Rogers. Frank gives her the drugs unknowing what he’s done and when he goes back to his lab to get more he runs into Rogers who has been infected with the disease as well Turning him into a ravenous hungry monster. Frank fights him to the death escaping with his life just barely but by the time he makes it back to the hospital Karen has almost fully Turned and she has infected the staff.

  He raced from Des Moines as the infection spread faster than could be imagined His one and only goal was to save Shaun and Ellie from them. At the same time Rogers had sent the drug for mass production. The unfortunate driver had crashed the semi causing traffic to be backed up for miles. The gas spread throughout the traffic jam and when the bus from Shaun’s city arrived back for the welcome home rally the teenage girls on it came out in droves killing without bias. The townspeople never stood a chance and Frank got Shaun and many other newly made orphans out of the town and to the family cabin.

  Frank with his best efforts put forth unfortunately did not survive day one. He was bit by one of the Turned and by the time they had made the first trip up the hill the Turn had begun. He tasked his only son Shaun with keeping him from transitioning into one of them.

  Day one held much loss and day two was not much better for The Orphans. The CDC made an announcement stating that they knew where the virus had started from. When Shaun opened a letter of goodbye and explanations from his father Frank he found out that it was his dad and Rogers who were responsible for the outbreak. The group headed down to town looking for his father’s research and meeting up with a Navy Seal Team. They saved some of the members from the hoard that was roaming the countryside, leftover Turned from the mass of vehicles whom had been exposed to the gases and were out roaming and hungry.

  They found the research but loss all of the team with the exception of their demolition expert Clary, and one of the greatest snipers the armed forces had ever seen Aslin. The two soldiers stayed on with the oprhans not knowing the layout of their land but getting first hand experience as to what they were about to endure if they were left in town and by themselves. After losing the cabin because of a revenge bound Mike who had set fire to it and went off on his own the orphans were homeless yet again.

  They went back to where it they had gotten all their gear before hoping to find Andy and they did but found more dead than they could count. Clary rigged a building to come down on them if they could trick them into entering it. When Kristy made her way in she stayed just a step ahead of the Turned. When she left out the back triggering the bomb the shard from the large steel door splintered from it and embedded itself in her chest. The turned attacked and mauled her but Shaun Fox with one shot put her out of her misery and only added to his own pain and pent up demons. With one less orphan and Andy back with them they headed to his farmhouse with the gear that was left from his shop picking up some lone teens in much need of assistance.

  Chapter 1 Day 3 Andy’s Farm

  Aslin walked down the stairs quietly doing his best to be quiet. He was perfectly fine with having the place to himself for a while to think without interruption. He had taken supplies much like everyone had on day two from Andy’s shop. Since it was a military surplus store the clothes he’d taken looked exactly like the ones he had worn into the store except this one had no tears, blood, bomb residue or pieces of the Turned dried on them.

  He squinted in the dark seeing a red glow coming and realizing it was Clary smoking one of his hand rolled cigars. Something that he knew he always made sure he had plenty of extras of. Clary was focused out the window watching the bridge that went between Andy’s property and the town. Aslin who’d been on the same team for a decade knew that Clary did not get nervous but could see a look of serious worry on his face when he inhaled on the cigar lighting his face by the light of the embers. “Good morning Clary how goes it out there?”

  Clary rolled his neck cracking it multiple times. “What do you mean good morning? Christ i’ve been sitting here all goddamn night.”

  “You couldn’t sleep or you were too worried about those things coming across the bridge while you slept?”

  “Everytime I close my eyes I see Kristy coming running around that doorway sprinting for everything her small frame had. I just can’t help it Aslin I feel so fucking guilty about having a front row seat to my own snuff film.”

  “It wasn’t your fault Mike that could have happened to anyone.”

  “Says the guy who didn’t rig the bomb to go off. I’ll be fine, it’s just one of those things that you need to take some time to get your head around.”

  “Well just make sure it doesn�
�t fuck you up to bad. You are the only brother I got left at this point. I’d sure like you to stay around for a while.”

  “I’m not going anywhere we got as one or we don’t go anywhere.”

  Aslin looked around the kitchen and the living room seeing no one around. “Are all the kids sleeping still?”

  Clary shrugged, “It’s five o'clock in the morning of course they are. Well except for Fox that kid slept as much as me.”

  “So did you get a chance to speak with him. I didn’t know how long it would take for him to get past us having to dig up his dad? If it would have been my dad we did that to i’d have gone to my grave hating us for doing that.”

  “No that kid is strong, he’s tormented i think about what he’s been having to go through the last couple days. He spoke about how day one and how he had to take his dad out before he Turned. He spoke in detail about how bad he felt about Kristy. He asked me if it got better and I lied and told him that it did. You never know he might be the small percentage that can put something like that past him eventually. Who am I to tell him how he should or is going to feel?”

  “Good.”

  “What’s good about him punishing himself?”

  “It means his heads on straight. If he didn’t have some pent up feelings i’d probably be a little more worried about the kid being around while I slept.”

  Clary nodded looking outside again. “I think that we’ve got a chance here. If we just stay put for a while we can let the CDC do it’s job. We can keep listening to the updates and give it some time we know it won’t be overnight but it’s better than trying to move around in this crazy shit. We don’t know where would be safe to even try and go to if we did want to try and make a break for a military base.”

  “You just want to sit around and play farmer until you hear something?”

  “I don’t know Aslin I guess what’s the advantage of leaving the farm given the shit we saw yesterday?”

  “Supplies for one, the old man has a lot but he doesn’t have enough if we have to be here through the winter. Remember we brought on eight more kids and if they can keep from becoming meals then they are going to want some food. If we don’t teach them how to shoot we are going to be too busy protecting to be able to do anything else worthwhile.”

  “Would you rather go looting or do you want to make sure that this place is secure? These things can walk out of those woods and we won’t know until they have a couple hundred yard run.”

  Aslin shrugged while searching the kitchen for the can of coffee he was confident that the old man had given the stained coffee pot on the counter. He did a fist pump when he found the classic roast folgers. “We could work on making sure the place is secure and that’s not a shitty idea at all. The longer we wait the better the chance of people coming out and searching themselves. Those that survived aren’t going to take what they need to just get by for a week. They are going to take every last one of everything that isn’t nailed down, guns, ammunition, and food. So yes I say we go now and stock up and make sure that we can stay here as long as we want to.”

  “So where do you think that we should go?”

  “We are going to need to talk to the kids to see where to go. I’ve never had a reason to come to Iowa before.”

  Clary thought about his travels in the states realizing if he’d been to the state before that he’d be damned if he knew when it would have been. “Can’t say that i’ve been here before either. Let’s just look it up on a computer we could be gone before anyone gets here gets up.”

  “Sure we can but first we’d have to go get one. Believe it or not the old man doesn’t have one.”

  Clary slapped his forehead pushing up walking around the living room. “You are shitting me right? We came to the one house in all of America that seriously doesn’t have a computer what are the chances of that?”

  “Clary you do realize that the man is older than dirt right? How many people can say yeah I remember when computers were the size of a warehouse? He can because he is old! He doesn’t strike me as the type sitting on Facebook trying to keep up with friends and family and shooting selfies with a cell phone he probably doesn’t own either.”

  Clary thought about this and agreed wholeheartedly that the man probably didn’t want or need one and was perfectly happy not owning a computer. He pushed up from his chair that he’d been sitting in for hours stretching his back out and feeling the long night in his bones. Aslin teased him holding out a cup of steaming black coffee the way Clary took it and he tested it making sure a good scalding was not in his future. He took a long drink from it knowing no matter where he had to fight from as long as he had a cup of coffee and a pound of plastic explosives that he’d be ok anywhere. He patted Aslin on the shoulder smiling for the first time probably since before he’d taken off.

  Andy came into the kitchen hacking up the cigarettes from the day before stretching out muscles as he tried to clear his lungs. He was shaking a fresh smoke from his pack as he entered the kitchen. He took in Aslin and Clary standing together in the kitchen patting his back and barked out a laugh. If you two are done kissing and hugging in my kitchen then i’d very much like it if you got the fuck out of my way so I could grab some coffee if ya’ll didn’t drink it all already.”

  Aslin shrugged off Clary’s hand about as quickly as Clary could remove it, neither man had anything smart to say to Andy. Andy limped in looking through the cupboard for his coffee mug. He looked through everything and when he looked down and saw Aslin taking drinks from the cup that he used every morning he snatched it from him tossing the remainders into the sink and wiping it with his dirty shirt. He looked up choking on a laugh, “Don’t want any of your twos germs Clary doesn’t look all that well kempt. You do what you want though I won’t judge I far be it from me to judge the sexuality of two brave soldiers.”

  “We aren’t.”

  “You aren’t doing anything, get out of my kitchen i got a pound of bacon i’m gonna throw on and teach these city kids what a good looking breakfast can look like. you boys want to talk, you do it after i get my first smoke and cup of coffee of the day.”

  The two just stood there in a daze, neither of them used to having to talk to someone so old fashioned and minded. When they didn’t get out of his kitchen he clapped his hands twice shaking them out of it. “I said get the fuck out until i’ve cooked some food and had a smoke. I’m not a morning person god damn it and if i’m going to have more damn people in here than the Walton’s then i’m going to need some space, and you two dipshits are standing in it, now get out now!”

  They hustled out of the kitchen and outside where they could catch some cool air. Andy was slamming pans around like the world was coming to an end which wasn’t all that hard to imagine. The pans being thrown about brought people down the steps one after another. Aslin realized that he didn’t know any of the new kids names or anything about them. They watched as the new kids came down the stairs. Aslin slapped Clary on the shoulder pointing into the house. “Hey, hey check out the new kids coming down you see any potential recruits there?”

  Clary turned around watching the youths coming into the living room. The teens assembled in the living room looking like they were waiting for someone to give them directions. Alsin was about to ask Clary if they should go and help get the food assembly line moving when Andy came out with a stack of paper plates in his hand yelling for all to be heard. “Everyone getcha some paper plates and some food. We use the fine china here at casa la senior andy’s place.”

  The teens who looked nervous were instantly taking a like t Andy and looking at him like they would a grandpa figure. Clary said, “Looks like he likes kids right?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because he was a total prick to the two of us.”

  “You have that effect on people Clary.”

  Aslin left him on the wrap around deck mouth open and thinking a slew of curse words towards Aslin. Clary watched as the kids he hadn�
��t gone through hell yesterday with made their way into the living room with plates full of food. He hadn’t paid much attention to the kids yesterday when picking them up off of the street. He noticed one boy that was stocky and shorter than the rest and had almond shaped eyes. Aslin was about to go inside when Clary snapped, “Aslin come here now.”

  Aslin laughed, “No way dude i’m going to get breakfast.”

  Clary who wasn’t joking at all said, “Fucking come here for a minute now I want you to look at something.”

  “What….what is it that you need me to check out?”

  Clary pointed, “Did you see that kid?”

  Aslin looked through the window and seeing the boy that Clary was pointing at. The boy looked up seeing this and looked around verifying that he was the focus of their attention. He ignored them pointing at his food. Aslin said, “Well now I feel like a creep, what is it that i'm supposed to have seen Clary?”

  “He looks like he has down syndrome doesn’t it?”

  “Well yeah, and what of it?”

  “Do you know anything about the disease? Is he going to be extra work, we can’t handle anything like that.”

  “But Patrick is on insulin and you aren’t worried about him.”

  “Patrick is ok, he won’t be any extra work.”

  “But the kid you haven’t even met yet will be?”

  “Look it’s you and me we don’t need to be politically correct, you know what I mean so stop pussy footing around the difficult answer.”

  “Why don’t we just go in there and get the answers that we want instead of making the kid feel all sorts of creepy.”

  They went into the living room and the boy had already forgotten about Clary and Aslin. They walked in staying in the back of the room and listened to the conversation between the boy and a girl who had some similar facial features but not the young face looking more than a little perturbed with the boy. He slammed the food on the coffee table startling everyone. “Mom makes cheerios, biscuits and jam on wednesday’s today is wednesday and he made toast, eggs and bacon.”