Wardens For Life

Later that night, everything was peaceful and quiet, something that was rare to come by. John drove, Elaine sat next to him, and their prisoner dozed on and off. Riley lay in the back seat, mumbling random words, as if he were still doing his word puzzles in his sleep. Jewely and Josh road in the truck, Josh driving with the groups new found pet poking its head out his window.

As John drove, Elaine noticed his head occasionally bob, “John, do you want me to drive?”

“Hmm, oh, no that okay, get some sleep,” he said, but Elaine new he was going to fall asleep at the wheel if she didn’t make him pull over soon.

“Come on babe, pull over,” she said, rubbing his arm. Reluctantly, he pulled to the side of the freeway, and got out.

“Is everything okay?” Josh asked pulling up next to them.

“Just switching out drivers,” Elaine explained as John got back into the car, now sitting in between Elaine and the prisoner.

“Okay, want me to take the lead?” Josh asked, and at the words lead, Adam barked happily. Elaine laughed at the dog’s happiness.

“If you want Josh,” she said, then got into the driver’s seat and closed the door. Apparently Josh didn’t want to lead as he waited for Elaine to get going before taking off after her. Setting the crus control at sixty miles per hour, she started the long drive from Fort Worth, Texas to El Paso, Texas. As they drove John placed his hand on her leg, and gave it a quick squeeze before going to sleep. His head slowly slid down to her shoulder, where it remained for some time.

“You really do love him don’t you?” the prisoner asked her, making her jump, as she had believed that she was the only one awake in the vehicle.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Elaine said crossly.

“Nothing really, it’s just, you remind me of…… never mind,” he said quietly, he almost sounded sad, maybe even sorry. Elaine wasn’t sure if she wanted to know what he was about to say or just ignore him, but her curiosity ended getting the better of her.

“Who do I remind you of?” she asked, this time with a gentler tone to her voice. He didn’t answer for a couple minutes, but she didn’t want to push him.

“You remind me of my wife,” he said, and his voice broke as he said this.

“I'm sorry,” Elaine said, “what happened to her?”

“How long have you been with your husband?” he asked, confusing Elaine with the sudden change of subject.

“Umm, sixteen years now I think. We got married on my sixteenth birthday just before I graduated high school. Why, what does this have to do with him?” Elaine asked.

“Were you with him about a year ago, in an undercity called Kazan?” he asked her. After thinking for a little she remembered the place.

“Yeah, something happened while we were there, not good,” she said, running her hand over the scare she’d received from the place, remembering how horrible it had felt when that piece of metal had shot into her.

“So you know? Then you should know why your husband is a murderer,” he quietly exclaimed.

“Okay, buddy, this is your last warning, call John a murderer one more time and you’re going to wish that John had let Jewely pull that trigger, understand,” she threatened him. This threat seemed to actually scare him as he went silent. “I’ve answered a question for you, now I want some answers from you.”

“And what do you want to know,” he said, looking out the car window, seeming distracted.

“What is your name?” she asked, for it had been driving her insane for some time now, not knowing who he was.

“Daniel Pealy,” he said.

“I know that name from somewhere,” she said more to herself than to him.

“That’s probably because John might have mentioned me, or you heard me over the radio,” he said. Thinking back to that day, when she’d woken up in the back seat of this very car, John hadn’t mentioned talking to anyone on the radio.

“Another question, why do you keep insisting that my husband is a murderer, and don’t be a smart ass,” she warned.

After exhaling loudly he answered her, “I had a wife as you know. When your group had arrived in Karan you gave orders that the residents should stay put in their home until you had dealt with the creature. The last day you were there, my wife snuck out our bedroom window sometime in the morning before I…… before I woke up……. She never came home……. so I went over to the mayor’s house and got hold of your husband using the walky-talky you’d left with the mayor. But when I was trying to ask him for help, an explosion went off. When he came to the mayor’s to get supplies, I was there waiting for him. I asked him about my wife, but he just lashed out on me, then he left. Later that day, I found were the explosion had gone off……. I saw what was left with her, mixed with that disgusting creature. He used her as bait.” Elaine could see everything that had happened there that fateful day. The woman running around in the cave where Elaine had set up a motion activated explosive, aka very powerful claymore.

“It’s not how you think it to be,” Elaine said.

“Then tell me what really happened,” he said, now looking her in the face, grief stretched across his middle aged face.

Taking a deep breath, Elaine recounted everything that had transpired that day, “I stayed up all night putting together one of the most powerful claymores I’ve ever constructed. Being it was motion activated, I had to build it where I was to set it up, just for safety measures. It took me hours, but when I finally finished, I activated it and climbed back up to camp. I was putting my things away, getting ready to move on as my part was done, but I noticed someone out of the corner of my eye. There was a woman running towards the claymore, and without thinking, I went running down there to warn her off. But as I got down to the bottom, I realized that she was being chased by the creature, blood was pouring out of her right shoulder, her shirt caked with mud and blood,” she stopped and looked at Daniel, “sorry, I shouldn’t.”

“No, it’s okay,” he said calmly, but his eyes glistened with tears.

“Well, she was in bad shape, and I knew that if I stayed down there I would be killed,” she continued, “she saw me and ran in my direction, right into the path of the bomb. The next thing I clearly remember is John standing over me, telling Jewely to get Riley, and my whole body throbbing from the impact with the wall when I went flying back. I had nearly bitten my tongue off, and a large piece of metal had shot into my abdomen. I was out of it for three weeks, and every time I closed my eyes I would see her. Your wife.” Elaine stopped at this and the car was completely quiet, except for the soft breathing of John in her ear, and the occasional mumbling from Riley in the back seat.

“That’s why,” Daniel said quietly after a while.

“What?” Elaine asked.

“When John came to the mayor’s he seemed agitated, upset, I thought it was because Jane had made him angry, I never knew that you’d almost died,” Daniel said, a tear escaping his eye and rolling down his cheek.

“Jane?!” Elaine said, a switch finally clicking in her head, “your wife’s name was Jane?”

“Yes,” he said softly, “I just wish I knew why she had snuck out that morning.”

“Did she have a birthmark shaped like a flower on her neck?” Elaine asked, things starting to make sense to her finally.

“Yes, how do you know that?” he said, now looking surprised.

“Oh my…. Jane,” Elaine said softly, a knot forming in her throat. After taking a few breaths to calm herself she continued, “She was my older sister. We were separated when we were young. We never knew our dad, but our mom died of cancer when I was only seven. Jane was adopted, but I never was. We kept in contact, but we never got to see each other, because she moved to Missouri and I was stuck in New Mexico. She must have found out I was part of the Wardens and snuck out to see me. But she ran into the creature.” That’s why the woman had been so familiar to her. That’s why she had haunted Elaine’s dreams all this past year.

“Jane told me she had a sister, but I thought that her name was Leana,” he said.

“Well, it was,” Elaine said, “I take back what I said about never being adopted. This older lady had adopted me once, for about four months, before she decided that I wasn’t beautiful enough to be her heir. Boy that lady gave me the creeps. She insisted on changing my name when she adopted me. I used to be Leana Jade McLaughlin, but she changed my name to Elaine Rosa Jones. I always thought it was a weird name, but I like Elaine, so I stuck with it. But on my marriage certificate it just says Elaine Celina, no middle name.”

“Oh, that’s too bad, about the crazy lady I mean,” Daniel said.

“No, it actually wasn’t that bad, the adoption agency just didn’t know that the crazy old lady was bipolar,” Elaine said with a slight laugh.

“How’d you meet John?” Daniel asked.

“That’s a funny story,” Elaine laughed, “Well, after the crazy woman took me back to the agency, I went back to my old school, and there was this seminar on zombies being hosted at the school one afternoon, you know, just before the sickness came over from Asia. The army was trying to teach people how to defend themselves against zombies. Well anyways, I decided to go to the seminar. John, Adam, and Jewely happened to go to it too. After a long and interesting lecture on how the zombies had come to be, due to Asian scientist experimenting with human DNA trying to create the perfect soldier and how something had gone wrong, the soldiers had us form groups of one male and one female. I looked around for a partner, and then there he was towering over me.”

A slight laugh escaped Daniels’s lips.

“Hey, I mean more so than now, I was shorter back then, I was only thirteen, I’ve grown a couple inches since then,” she said. Daniel just looked at her with a slightly amused expression on his face, “Okay, so maybe it was a few centimeters.”

“How old was he?” Daniel asked, trying not to laugh.

“About sixteen, it wasn’t like he was planning on flirting with me,” she said, “Anyways, we teamed up and the thing turned into some kind of competition, and John and I were the winning team. But that wasn’t when we started dating, when you’re thirteen years old, it seems strange to be dating someone three years older than yourself. But we became friends, and I really liked having someone besides Riley. Even though we weren’t dating, John still took me to his senior prom, but by then I was fifteen and a sophomore. During the last slow dance of the night, we kissed.” Elaine paused for a moment remembering their first kiss, but was brought back from her thoughts when Daniel cleared his throat, “And that’s how we ended up together.”

“So you knew each other only a couple years before dating?” Daniel asked.

“Yeah, and we were married a year later. Riley got to walk me down the aisle,” Elaine said with a slight laugh, “if it hadn’t been for the zombie crisis spreading throughout the world, we probably would have waited til we graduated from college, but things changed. It’s weird to think that I was only nineteen when I graduated from () at the top of my class.”

“Reminds me of mine and Jane’s marriage,” he laughed softly, “got married right out of high school.”

“You still think my husband’s a murderer?” she asked him.

“No,” he said, and they road in silence for the rest of the night.