You're Hoping For A Taste

The blood snakes across the ground, thick and smooth and livid. It stops just before it reaches me, spreading outwards rather than forwards.

Kellin is standing, panting hard, the gun still poised as though he's about to shoot again. He stares at what he's done before slowly lowering the weapon. It hangs in his fingers for a second, and then it clatters to the ground.

“Kellin...” Jesse starts, but he doesn't finish.

I don't think any of us know what to say. Is this good? Is this bad? Is this what we wanted?

I turn away. I can't look at Jared any longer. His eyes now stare at nothing, and I'm worried that if I stare back too long it'll be like Gabe is looking at me, lifeless again, not Jared.

“Let's go,” Kellin says. We all just stare at him, dumbfounded, but he keeps his eyes on Jared's corpse. “We need to be at the meeting point soon. If we don't go now we won't make it.”

His voice sounds cold, hard, detached. He doesn't sound like himself.

“My arm...” I begin. It's still pulsing, blood seeping from the raw skin. Justin is still hovering beside me.

“I'll get the first aid kit,” Jack says, finally breaking the stillness.

“I'll check for more supplies in the shop,” Justin adds.

The two of them move off in opposite directions. Jesse steps closer to Kellin, clamps a hand on his shoulder and gives him a comforting smile. Kellin smiles back, but it's not half as warm.

This topic, what just happened here, is now taboo. This is something we won't speak about for a while, something we won't argue the morality of. It happened and what we think doesn't matter. It may have been wrong, but I think none of us could deny it felt right. It felt like a kind of justice. Right or wrong doesn't matter much any more.

Jack returns from the car, first aid kit in hand. He roots through it, says how he thinks we're running out of things, so it's good when Justin appears, arms full of new medical supplies.

Kellin seems to eventually break from his stupor and comes to crouch in front of me again. With a gentleness – more fatigue than anything – he takes the antiseptic wipe that Jack is unwrapping and says, “I've got this, it's okay.”

“You sure?” Jack asks. He looks doubtful. He's probably thinking Kellin is going to flip again, and I'd be lying if that thought wasn't roiling at the back of my mind as well.

“Sure,” Kellin says.

“Alright,” Jack answers, standing up. “Come on Jesse, we should probably find some food to take with us before we eat it all.”

Jesse chuckles, but it sounds half-hearted, “Okay, man.”

The two of them disappear into the shop while Kellin and Justin sort out my wound. Kellin's movements are methodical, gentle. Justin keeps glancing at him, but nothing happens, and I'm too focussed on the pain to notice anything out of the ordinary.

I can't get the image out of my head. Kellin clutching that gun. Jared, dazed and in pain, just pushing himself onto his feet for more when the bullet ripped through his skull with a crack like lightning striking a tree. This is Kellin, the guy who could barely shoot a dying woman who asked him to do it. Yet somehow he's able to put a bullet through Jared's head with barely a second thought.

“There,” Justin says, attempting a chirpier tone, once my arm is wrapped up, “how does that feel?”

I move it a little and grimace, pain shooting up my arm. “It's feeling like I need some painkillers.”

“Well it's a good thing we found these then.” Something light hits my back and, carefully, I turn around to see a packet of slightly dented painkillers on the ground behind me. Jesse, emerging from the shop, smiles and I smile back. “Let's get these things loaded into the car and siphon off some gas.”

One by one the guys go into the shop and emerge with arms full of boxes and packets while Jesse siphons the petrol. I sit in the passenger seat of the car, waiting impatiently for the painkillers to work, as the car boot is filled with new, desperately needed, supplies. We're lucky we found this place. We're just not lucky a certain someone found it too.

Jack returns with the last load, the others waiting by the boot. “What do we do about...?” He nods over his shoulder at Jared, lying where he fell. From here I can't see his open, unseeing eyes, and I'm glad.

“Leave him,” Kellin says. With those words he climbs into the driver's seat beside me, his part in the conversation done.

The others remain by the boot for a few moments longer, silent words passing between them as they exchange glances. But in the end they come to an agreement, closing the boot and climbing into the back.

“Would you look at the map?” Kellin says, handing it to me.

I do as he asks, briefly outlining the route to him.

Jesse leans between the two front seats, and I adjust the map to give him a better view. “If we're lucky, we should be there right on time. Just a few hours to go,” he says.

We're meeting Vic and Tony outside a Walmart on the outskirts of Porter Ranch. It's close to LA, which in itself is dangerous – I can imagine LA is Walker hordes galore – but it's somewhere easy to find. We just have to hope Vic and Tony are still there and haven't left without us.

* * *

By the time we reach Porter Ranch, the sun is hanging low in the sky, half a golden disc teetering on the edge of the horizon. The sky is pink and orange and blue, and as we cruise along the clear highway I stare at all the colours out my window. This place is as lifeless as all the others.

There's a nervous tension in the car, a kind of repressed excitement. No one wants to get their hopes up. We all expect the worst in the hopes that we'll be pleasantly surprised. But still the anticipation makes my stomach churn and I can't stop fidgeting.

Kellin weaves the car between a few abandoned vehicles on the highway, and then he's turning left into the retail estate. The car park we find ourselves in is huge, littered with random vehicles. Any of them could be Vic and Tony's. Or none of them. We don't know until they show themselves, and they won't do that until they know it's us arriving.

“Walker,” Jack says. We all follow his gaze. There's someone meandering down near Best Buy. I'd guess from their rolling, stumbling gait that they're Dead. But the Walker hasn't noticed us yet, so we leave it well alone.

Kellin pulls up outside Walmart. When the engine switches off the silence sounds final. There's no sign of life here. But it doesn't mean we're alone.

We get out of the car. The breeze whips at our clothes, dragging up smells of must and sweat and decay. This place has seen death, and recently.

Gingerly, we make our way towards the dark shop front of Walmart. I glance at Kellin and he beckons me closer.

“We haven't missed them, have we?” I ask him.

He glances around the estate, his eyes lingering on the Walker in the distance for a moment. “I hope not.”

The darkness of the shop looms closer with every step. It's like that trip to Walmart all those days ago, where Kellin and I ran into Gabe. Where Gabe saved me. A pang of guilt, of loss, hollows out my insides. I can't keep thinking about the past. It'll be the death of me. Not Walkers, not disease, not old age, but the past.

Suddenly, Jesse holds up a hand, stopping the rest of us in our tracks.

“What is it?” Justin asks him, his voice hushed, but Jesse just keeps his hand raised.

I hear it, the crunching of feet on glass, echoing inside the store. A figure approaches the broken windows of the shop front. No, two figures, drenched in shadow, and my chest starts swelling with the suspense of it.

Then a voice calls out, “Finally!”

The guys exchange glances, their faces lit up like a cityscape, and I find myself smiling too as the figures step into the dying sunlight.

“Well fancy meeting you here,” Kellin answers.

Vic and Tony. I can finally put faces to the names.