7PART THREE: WINTER
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
LOUIS
I tore through the trees, the cold wind stinging my face and eyes. It was about to be daylight, the sky was starting to have some light to it. I heard Kayla running behind me, yelling for me to stop. Mitch probably wasn't too far behind her. But I couldn't stop, not until he was found.
"RAE!" I shouted, my voice echoing through the trees.
"Louis, stop!" Mitch called.
"RAE, WHERE ARE YOU?"
My foot got caught in a tree root and I tripped and fell face first into the snow. I pushed myself up, shaking from the cold. I had left my jacket in the camp, all I had were jeans that were starting to tear and a light sweater that had a ripped sleeve from when it got snagged on a branch. "RAE!" I called out again. Silence.
He was gone, disappeared from camp while I was on watch. Mitch got out to relieve me so I could get some rest, and I jumped down and opened the sliding door to the minivan that we were all sleeping in. There was Kayla, sound asleep. But no sign of Rae, and his backpack was gone. He had gotten out of the van early last night and told me he was going to take a leak. I nodded and he had disappeared behind some trees. I was so exhausted I hadn't even noticed that he didn't come back.
I kicked the nearest tree, ignoring the sharp pain in my foot. I had never been so mad at myself.
Rae had been distant since we left the ruins of Colorado Springs two weeks ago. Even more distant than he had been after we left Shreveport. He wouldn't even look at me anymore, and I was lucky if he said more than two words to me in a day. Kayla was the only person he would speak to now, and she also wasn't the same. We weren't close anymore. We didn't spend nights together anymore. For a while, I thought she and I had some sort of a thing going on, something that would develop into more than just friendship, but that was gone now. And it was weird that it affected me so much.
They blamed Mitch for the most part, and me for being there. Rae had told Kayla what he had seen on that rooftop, and he blamed me for not stopping it. He didn't tell me that, but it was pretty obvious. Kayla had actually called Mitch a monster when she found out everything, and neither of them spoke to us for a couple days.
If the winter hadn't hit us so hard, we'd probably be at The Community by now and this whole ugly affair would have been behind us. We'd have the opportunity to mend and deal with it instead of worrying about the cold and a warm place to sleep. But the day after we left Colorado Springs, there was several inches of snow on the ground and we were freezing. No time to mend the mistakes, no time for Mitch to explain himself, and Kayla and Rae blamed us both more and more each passing day.
Kayla and Mitch caught up to me, both shivering and out of breath.
"No luck?" Mitch breathed.
I shook my head.
Kayla sighed. "Great. We've been searching for hours with no luck."
"We need to keep looking," I said.
Kayla grabbed my arm. "No. We need to get back and get our things, then we'll keep looking. We're not going to continue without our equipment."
I tried to protest, but she stormed off in a huff. I reluctantly followed.
I didn't realize how far I'd ran. By the time we got back to our little camp, which consisted of the minivan and a charred logs that had once been our fire. The sky was a dull grey, snowflakes swirling their way down to the earth. Mitch opened the minivan and tossed me two jackets. I shrugged into both of them and went over and grabbed my backpack, which had a canteen of water and a few granola bars.
"So where do we start looking?" I asked.
Kayla shrugged. "Mitch, are there any towns nearby?"
Mitch pulled the map from his backpack "Just some small towns. Maybe he's run off to one of them."
My heart was pounding so hard I thought it was going to break out of my chest. What if he wasn't in any of those towns? What if he had run farther? What if he was gone for good, disappeared to who knows where in this God forsaken world.
I wanted to drop to my knees and cry. I wanted to scream and yell at this world, and tell it how cruel it was, how unforgiving it was. But then I thought of Rae, alone and cold, surrounded by Infected or bandits or whatever other sick bastards are out there and that was an image I couldn't handle.
"Let's get moving."
KAYLA
Our first stop was a little dot on the map called Alma. I had to say, the town was pretty. It wasn't a total wreck, the little towns usually weren't. The snow on the buildings and trees made it look like a Christmas card one would receive from their distant relatives. There were small buildings that, way back before the infection hit, had been brightly painted and well taken care of. Now they were just an echo of the past, the paint chipped and faded and glass windows shattered. But the snow made the destruction seem less dreadful.
We moved down the main road through town, scanning for any sign of movement. Louis was looking around frantically, his face red and his eyes worried. I felt absolutely zero sympathy for him. After what happened in Colorado Springs, after he stood by and let Mitch kill someone, I didn't feel anything for him. Not love, not hatred, nothing. Rae had mentioned in our talks that he had thought about running away, but I didn't think that he would actually act on it, otherwise I probably would have mentioned something to Louis about it.
And yet here we were, and the only reason I felt remotely bad about the situation was because Rae had told me and I didn't take him seriously. I could have at least tried to talk him out of it.
Screams shook the air and shattered my eardrums. I turned around and saw some Infected crawling out of a broken shop window, getting shards of glass stuck in their skin, which normally was a sickly olive color, but the winter had changed their skin tone to an odd shade of blue. Their lips were blue, their hands were black from frostbite, and the dried blood that stained their lips and neck looked almost black. Mitch unsheathed his machete, but Louis gripped the lead pipe he had and charged at them.
"Louis, what the hell?!" I shouted.
Louis swung hard at the Infected leading the small pack, hitting it in the temple. It fell to the ground, and started to get up, not quite dead yet. Mitch sprinted forward and buried the machete into the back of its skull. Louis swung at another one, hitting it in the jaw causing teeth and blood to spray out of its mouth. He raised the pipe and bashed the top of its head in. Mitch ran up to another one and shoved the machete up through its chin, the tip of it coming out of the top of its head. The last one was farther behind, screeching and flailing like crazy. Louis slowly approached it and swung at its leg. The Infected fell and writhed on the ground, trying to get back up. Louis stepped on its hand, preventing it from doing much. He then began bludgeoning the Infected's head over and over again until it wasn't moving, and then continued to until its head was nothing but a fleshy pile of brains.
I had killed a lot of these things since all this started, but I still thought that was pretty sick. These things were people once after all. . . .
"My, my, my, that was a bit excessive," said a soft voice behind us.
We whirled around and saw an older man, maybe in his late sixties or early seventies, standing in the middle of the street with his hands overlapped in front of him, smiling kindly at us. His eyes were a soft grey, and his hair (the little bit he had left anyway) sat in white wisps on top of his head.
"But I must say," he continued, "It certainly got the job done."
"Who are you?" I asked.
"A friend," the man responded, his voice soft as velvet.
"Don't be vague with us," Mitch growled. "Answer the question."
The man held up his hands, shaking his head. "Calm down, my son, I mean you no harm. I just get curious when I see new people in the area. My name is Anthony."
My eyes moved from the man's face to his clothes. Despite the fact that it was freezing, he wasn't wearing a coat or scarf. He was wearing black pants with a grey dress shirt and a dirty black sweater over the shirt. He also had a white collar around his neck.
"Are you a priest?" I asked.
"Somewhat," he answered. "I wasn't in my past life, but the people with me now follow me as if I am one. I guess you could say that they are my flock," he chuckled.
"You have people nearby?" Louis said.
Anthony nodded. "In the next town over, yes."
"Have you seen a kid in the area at all?" Louis asked, stepping forward. "A little redheaded kid wearing a red jacket with a black and white blanket tied around him?"
Anthony's eyes lit up. "Oh yes! He actually just joined us early this morning. Found the little fellow going through our stash of food in one of our homes."
"Rae is with you?!" Louis exclaimed.
Anthony's brow furrowed. "He didn't say his name was Rae, he said it was Jack. But he sounds like the kid you just described. Might I ask why you're looking for him?"
"He's my brother, he ran away from us."
Anthony sighed. "Ah, well, if you want I can take you to him. Our church is about a two hour walk from here."
"Please take me to him," Louis begged.
Anthony stepped forward and grabbed Louis' hands, smiling at him. "I will, my son. Please, follow me."