Al had heard the sorrow in the word when she'd said it before, but now an air of regret surrounded her. "We had to…" Rusty's voice trailed off, tears formed in his eyes as his gaze went to the lake.
"I understand," Al said. "We lost someone to the sickness too. He wasn't bit but he became sick and attacked one of us. Another member of our group, Riley, was forced to kill him."
Rusty nodded but he kept his gaze on the water. "What about the other people? The ones that don't do anything?"
"The Lost Souls, that's what we've started calling them," Al explained.
"That's fitting," R.J. said.
Al didn't know if it would make them happier to know they had saved one of them, or even worse. He debated telling them about Victor as he took in their desolate expressions. Then he recalled the determination that had driven Riley to save the boy, and the look on her face when she'd first seen Victor looking back at her. The feeling he'd experienced when he'd first seen the boy staring at him.
Al turned and gestured toward the young boy peering out from behind Mary Ellen. Victor stared at Al for a minute before moving forward hesitantly. He remained partially hidden behind Al as he shyly stared at Rusty and his family.
"We found Victor a few weeks ago," Al explained. "He was one of The Lost Souls."
All eyes shot to Victor so fast that the boy took an abrupt step back. "Really?" Phoebe asked excitedly.
Al rested his hand comfortingly on Victor's shoulder. "Really," Al confirmed. "He's stayed healthy since we gave him a large dose of L-Dopa."
"So we can save them too?" Rusty asked.
"I'm not sure how many of them are left for us to save, but some of them, yes."
Rusty wiped away the tears in his eyes and knelt before Victor to study him more closely. "It's nice to meet you."
"You too," Victor said but he didn't move any closer.
"Amazing," Rusty marveled as he stood again.
He'd made the right choice by telling them. There was too much madness in this world now; any bit of good was a welcome change that lightened even the heaviest of hearts. Al squeezed Victor's shoulder and released him so that he could retreat back to Mary Ellen. "We should get these bodies out of here before the sun sets. I don't think you're going to make it back to your cabin in time but you're welcome to stay with us," Al offered.
"Neither do I," Rusty agreed as he bent to pick up the shoulders of the body at his feet again. "And thank you."
None of them spoke as they worked to get the bodies away from the cabin and into the ground. The stars were already out when the last shovel full of dirt was tossed onto the mass grave. Al ran his arm across his forehead to wipe away the sweat and dirt sticking to him. It had been a grueling day, every muscle in his body ached but the last thing he felt like doing was crawling into bed as he walked back toward the cabin.
"Have you caught and eaten any fish from the lake?" Donald's question was the first time anyone had spoken in hours.
"We have," Rusty answered. "The animals are still drinking from the rivers and lakes, and we're eating them, so we didn't think it would make much of a difference."
"I guess that's logical," Donald said with a small laugh.
"Honestly," Rusty said. "At one point, when there were even more of us, we hadn't caught any big game in awhile so it was either fish or die. It didn't matter if it made us sick or not if we were going to die from starvation anyway. It wasn't an easy thing to do, it was actually terrifying forcing that first bite of fish down, but you do what you must."
"That you do," Mary Ellen agreed.
Reaching the camp the others broke off to go inside when Al volunteered to take first watch. He walked over to the boulders at the edge of the lake and climbed on top of them. He contemplated everything Rusty had revealed today. The horsemen, the apocalypse, all the years of church and then the years of resentment and nonbelief. All of it made complete sense and yet no sense at all. Why put all of them here to take so many of them away again?
"It was a cleansing." Al turned to find Mary Ellen and Donald standing to the left of him. Mary Ellen had spoken the words.
"I'm not a very good guard tonight," he said with a laugh.
"I don't think any of us would be, not after today." They both walked around to the front of the boulders and climbed up beside him.
"How did you know what I was thinking?" he asked her.
"I think it's what we're all thinking." She slid her hand into his and squeezed it as Donald settled on the other side of her. "How could we think about anything else right now?"
"That's a good question."
"I guess the Good Lord finally had enough of our crap," Donald said.
"So it seems, but then I'd had enough of most human's crap before the Good Lord did," Al replied.
Mary Ellen laughed as her hand tightened around his. "So did I but I have a lot more tolerance for people now."
Al released a low chuckle. "Because there's less of them."
"Because even though we've seen the worst of them, we've also seen the best. We've all stumbled, we've all fallen, we've been divided but somehow we're still standing. We were forsaken by something that we weren't even sure existed before today. We've encountered hells we never imagined, we've gotten tougher, but we've kept our humanity throughout it all," she replied.
"That we have," Al murmured.
"I don't know about you guys but I have closer bonds now, with all of you, than I ever had throughout my life," Donald said.
Mary Ellen took hold of Donald's hand too and held it in her lap. Al understood what Donald had meant by that. He loved everyone he'd made this journey with deeply, he would die for any one of them, but there had been a lot of love in his life over the years and many close bonds. The lack of those ties throughout Donald's life made his heart ache for him but Donald had found a home with them now. Al wished he could take hold of his hand too; he was too far away from him.
"We're all a family now," Mary Ellen said.
"I couldn't have said it any better myself," Al agreed.
Mary Ellen and Donald both smiled at him before turning to look at the lake. "Is Rusty to be trusted?" Donald asked.
"I believe so," Al answered. "And having more people with us will be helpful when Carl and the others return."
"Do you think they'll return?" Mary Ellen asked anxiously. "After what Rusty said…"
"They'll return," Donald interrupted with certainty.
"What makes you so sure?"
"They're smart, they're fast, and they're harder to take down than a four hundred pound sumo wrestler," Donald assured her.
"That's pretty hard," Al agreed.
"It is," Mary Ellen said.
Al turned his gaze back to the lake. A feeling of peace began to steal through him as he held hands with his friend and watched the moon's light shift over the rippling water.
The sun was rising over the lake when his chin came up off of his chest. He'd taken turns with the others, and managed to doze off here and there throughout the night, but he was determined to be awake to watch the sunrise. Donald and Mary Ellen sat silently beside him as the sky came alive with pinks, oranges and yellows. The sun poked its head over the trees and rose steadily higher into the sky.
It didn't matter what Rusty had told them, there was still no certainty after this life. They could end up in Hell for all he knew. All they had was the here and now. He was determined to make their time last for as long as possible and to enjoy as many things as he could in this brutal world.
The sound of squeaking and bouncing turned his attention away from the lake and toward the dust rising up in the drive. "It's them," Mary Ellen breathed as she rose to her feet.
Excitement and relief filled him, despite his sore and cramped muscles he hurried down the boulder. His forehead furrowed, he frowned when he spotted the white trailer attached to the truck. His attention shifted to the car behind the truck as he walked around the boulder.
"They got so many su
pplies they had to take a trailer!" Mary Ellen said eagerly.
Al spotted John sleeping in the front seat as the truck lurched to a stop before them but a piercing bang against the side of the trailer caused his eyes to shoot to it. "What's back there?" he muttered.
Carl thrust open the door and hopped out of the truck. "We need whatever combination of medicine it was that you gave to Xander and we need it now!" Carl barked at them.
"What?" Mary Ellen asked in confusion. She was still smiling at their return, but then the color drained from her face and she took a step away from the truck. "Is there a sick one in the trailer?"
"Of course not," Carl said briskly as he came around the front of the truck. "John brought back a present for Rochelle."
"A what?" Mary Ellen asked.
"You brought back a horse!" Al blurted as realization sank in.
Carl gave a brisk nod. "We did."
"Carl, the horses, you don't know what comes for them," Mary Ellen gushed out.
Carl's hand was on the handle of the passenger door when he glanced back at them. The haunted look in his eyes made Al's breath catch. "We know," he said.
Had they also seen War out there? Al wondered as Carl opened the passenger side door and John slumped out. Carl caught him and adjusted him in his grasp so that he could lift him out of the truck.
"What happened?" Mary Ellen cried as she rushed forward.
Al hadn't noticed Xander and Riley approach until Xander grabbed hold of John's feet. He helped Carl to lift him out; Riley slammed the door closed. The three of them looked like they'd been through hell. Dirt and blood stained their clothes and skin, their faces were haggard, and there was a frantic air about them that made Al's heart race.
Al's gaze fell to John's flushed face; his hair was stuck to his forehead with sweat and dirt. He finally noticed the pink stained bandage wrapped around his hand. A sinking sensation filled the pit of his stomach as Riley grasped hold of Mary Ellen's hands and nudged her back. "Mary Ellen you have to get the medicine and give to John whatever it was you gave to Xander. More of it if you can!"
Mary Ellen hesitated before turning on her heel and running toward the cabin. Xander and Carl hurried forward with John caught up between them and Riley close on their heels. Rusty was coming down the steps of the cabin when Al realized something or rather someone was missing.
Apparently so did Donald as he inquired, "Where's Josh?"
"Was he bit?" Rusty's eyes were locked on John as Carl and Xander approached him.
"Who are you?" Carl demanded instead.
"Rusty's an old friend," Al told him.
Rusty's eyes bulged from his head as he stared at John and stepped in front of Carl. "You don't understand; he'll turn into one of them!" Rusty blurted.
"Get out of my way!" Carl snarled at him and nudged him aside with his shoulder.
Realizing that the situation was rapidly escalating, Al moved to intercept them but Rusty's hand was already falling to his gun. "Wait!" Al cried.
The look in Riley's eyes when she stepped forward froze Al in his place as she placed her gun against Rusty's temple. Her jaw was locked, her nostrils flared, as she stared ruthlessly at Rusty. Rusty released his gun; his hands went slowly up in a gesture of surrender.
"The last strangers we encountered killed one of our friends and then I killed one of them." Al's heart sank as he realized she was talking about Josh. "And Xander there," she nodded toward Xander. "Killed the other. If you don't get out of their way, I'm going to kill you too. I don't give a rat's ass about you, but I do for John and we're not giving up on him. Now move!"
Rusty stepped hastily aside. Carl and Xander didn't even pause before rushing up the steps after Mary Ellen. "If it's too late for the medicine he'll turn on you," Rusty whispered.
Riley lowered her gun. "That won't be the first time and if it happens I'll take care of it again if I have to." She looked over at Al and Donald. "Are you two ok out here, with him?"
"We're fine," Al assured her.
Riley glanced at Rusty again before running up the stairs behind the others. The silence that descended was shattered by the horse kicking the side of the trailer again.
CHAPTER 30
Xander,
"What happened out there?" Al asked from beside him.
Xander glanced down at him but his attention was drawn back to Riley as she began to crush up the pills Mary Ellen had given her. Riley wiped the crushed pills into her hand and dropped them into a glass that wasn't even a quarter of the way full of water. Mary Ellen opened another bottle up, shook some pills out and handed them to Riley.
He nodded toward the kitchen and nudged Al in that direction. He wasn't going to talk in front of everyone. "Who are these people?" he asked when they were pressed close to the fridge. His gaze drifted over the people in the cabin he didn't recognize. His hand remained wrapped around his gun as he watched them with a distrustful eye.
"That's Rusty," Al said and nodded to the older man that had tried to stop Carl.
Rusty had been certain John would turn on them, but he'd still followed them into the cabin. The look in his eyes said he believed John was as good as dead. Xander refused to believe that. They'd lost too much since the beginning of all of this. They weren't righteous men and women, they'd done some regrettable things over the course of their lives, but they were fighters and they were all still alive because of that, including John.
He wasn't going to give up on anything, or anyone, not now.
"And Rusty is?" he prodded.
"A neighbor, we used to hunt together. I've known him for years. That's his son R.J., and his daughters Phoebe and Leah."
"Are you sure you trust them?"
Al hesitated before nodding. "Enough. We were attacked here yesterday; we might have suffered losses if they hadn't arrived to help us. Rusty was a good man when I knew him, with a good family, and they appear to be that way still. I don't know everything they've been through but they've also suffered losses and they need more people than what they have."
Xander nodded his head in understanding but his hand remained clenched on his gun as his gaze ran over them continuously. It would take a long time before he trusted someone new, and a lot of mutual support, but there were too many threats out there now to deny every human they came across again. Even if he didn't like it, there was strength in numbers and they needed more numbers if they were going to continue to survive.
Carl stared at Rusty's family as if he were convinced they might try to jump them. He remained standing protectively by John's head. Riley was still focused on the medicine but her gun was close at hand and he knew she could grab it in a second. "What happened out there?" Al inquired again.
"Nothing good." Xander filled him in on everything that had happened. "It was Death, Al."
Instead of looking horrified or disbelieving Al simply nodded. "They saw him too," he said with a nod to Rusty and his family. "Not Death, but the horseman War instead."
Xander shuddered. He still didn't know how to process everything that had happened yesterday and last night, he didn't think he ever would. "That means the other two are out there."
"Most likely," Al agreed. "And from everything we've seen I would say Pestilence is riding the white horse."
"And the other is Famine."
It hadn't been a question but Al answered it anyway, "Yes. Did you see where it went when it left the track?"
Xander shook his head. "It just vanished into a glowing light."
"Well that's different," Al said and rubbed at his nose. "Rusty said War disappeared over a hillside and continued on into the night."
Xander absorbed this knowledge as he stared at Rusty and his family. "Maybe Death went back to where it came from when we saw it; maybe they're all going back to wherever they came from."
"One can hope," Al said. "I'd prefer not to share my planet with them."
"So would I," Xander said.
His attention was turned from Al when Ril
ey rose to her feet. With tender care, Mary Ellen tilted John's head back and Riley placed the glass against his lips. John choked on the liquid, his hands twitched, but he didn't have the strength to try and fight them off.
It had been a couple of months but Xander could vividly recall the awful weakness that had encompassed his body. Vividly recall the horrible feeling of being completely out of control of his body, of not knowing what was going on or what he was going to become. For a short time he'd lived with the awful certainty that something alien was creeping through his system, trying to take him over as it held him hostage.
"I made it through this, and so will he," he murmured. He had to believe it; he wasn't willing to lose any more friends.
"When was he bitten?" Phoebe inquired.
"Yesterday afternoon," Xander answered. "He and Josh were bitten at the same time when we were in Walmart."
"How long ago?" Al asked him.
"About fourteen hours."
"You have twenty-four hours after an initial bite to stop rabies," Riley said again as she succeeded in pouring the rest of the liquid down John's throat. Mary Ellen closed his mouth and forced him to swallow it.
"Is that what you think this is, rabies?" Phoebe inquired.
"No. I think this is something we've never seen before. Something that was freed from the earth when the quakes tore it apart and the lava melted ice frozen for thousands of years. This is something ancient but it shares a common genetic marker with some of our more modern day diseases and it can be cured. I was cured. We're just not sure what its incubation period is and we're using rabies' fast moving timeframe as an estimate."
"It could move faster than rabies," Rusty said.
Riley leveled him with a withering stare. "Victor was sick for weeks before we found him."
"Those were different medicines Riley, different sicknesses," Mary Ellen said kindly.
"I know that," Riley said but Xander knew she also wasn't going to give up. "And that's why we'll give John another dose soon."
She grabbed her gun from where it lay beside John on the table and stepped away from him. "You should probably tell everyone what you saw last night," Al said from beside him. "Some weren't all that believing of Rusty's version of War. They'll believe you."