Deacon - Chapter 6 (Part 3)

There's dust flying everywhere. I see nothing but a shade of yellow-brown dust flying in puffs all around me. Everything is blurry in my eyes. It's like I don't even remember myself. Two familiar figures appear through the thick dust. They run towards me and pick me up. One of the figures says, "Kelly...- Kelly... She got shot."

A series of memories rapidly stabs itself in and out of my eyes. Kelly... I know her. "Shit... Jane... David... It's you... What happened there?" I ask. "She's gonna bleed out." Both of them say.

"Let me go!" I say. I slide off of their shoulders and limp into the tent with Kelly. There she is, lain on the bed with an actively bleeding wound. "No.. No!" I scream. In order to be able to see, I splash my face with some water. Then, I call out,

"Kelly!"

Chapter 6 (Part 3) - Horde

"Don't worry Kelly. I got you." I say to her. I never wanted this, I never wanted her to be hurt. With my blurry sight, I try to lift her up, but end up falling down. Dad picks me up on his shoulder, and Jane carries Kelly. We head out of the camp. As we leave, two guns pop out of the bushes. "Hey, you!" says a voice, "Who is she?" "What? Who?" Dad asks them. "The little one!" replies the voice. "Kelly! She's been shot and she's out cold." says dad. Soon, a man cautiously walks towards us with a gun on dad's head.

"Let me see her." the dark skin male says with an unusually soft voice. He comes close and looks at Kelly. He touches the wound and tastes the blood. "What are you doing?" asks dad. "It may have been fake. We need to make sure that she's actually hurt."

"Come with us. We have a place with medical supplies, food and water. I know, you don't have a reason to trust us, but we know how it is to lose a child. Come with us and we'll stop that from happening to you too. My wife, Ellie is in those bushes. Besides, she carrying a baby. Any day from now, we will have a family" he says.

"Alright then. For the record, we don't trust you guys. So, if you try anything stupid, you'll have your head in your hands while you are upside down on a meat hook." says dad. The man freezes for a second and nods while facing away from dad.

"I'm Damon" the man says.

During that conversation, my health slowly spiraled back to normal. I was able to just barely move my feet to be able to walk.

We then begin walking.

It felt like days had passed, but It's only been hours on the road and on our feet. Kelly too, got used to the pain so she could barely walk. Soon, Damon notices something odd in the distance. It's not a dust-storm. "It's a horde! A big one!" Damon says, "Look for some sturdy shelter, NOW!"

We all scramble. There is an oil tank next to us. It's made of steel, so we can hide in there. Jane signals to me from a house on the opposite side of the street saying that she's okay. It's fallen over. I come up with a plan. Everyone gets into it from the open top. Then, since it is cylindrical, we can shift our weight to a side to make it roll over to our position. We can position it just so the building nearby acts as a cap for it.

I say the plan to everyone and we do just that. We need to be quiet. Like always, Kelly is with me, under my shoulders. As the herd comes close, I hear a gasp of pain from the back of the tank. It's Ellie. I take my shoes off and slowly walk towards her, hoping not to dent or to make the metal screech. "Ellie, it's okay, we're here..." "I'm having the baby!" she whispers and interrupts me.

"Shit! Damon!" I whisper to him, "She's having the baby!" "What, now?" he asks. "We don't have time to waste, get your ass here right now!" "I know how to make her give birth." He says, "I can help her." "Good, do it and I'll try to keep her quiet. Kelly, you take care so she doesn't hit anything. Hold her hands down." I say.

I put my hand on her mouth and whisper to her, "Start pushing." She pushes, but she doesn't scream as much as I thought she woul- scrap that! She's screaming. Her screaming attracts the infected from the horde. I hold her mouth down. "It's coming out!" She gasps. A few seconds later, the horde seems to have gone away already. I don't hear them anymore. "Stop pushing! You're bleeding too much. I have to cut through." Damon says. "Make it quick!" I say. "I won't make it. When this is over, you have to-'' "I'll make sure that you make it!" Damon interrupts Ellie.

"Give me the knife." He says, "Ellie won't be strong enough to hold her down. Deacon, you have to hold her hands down. Ellie, you cover the mouth."

He begins slicing with his right hand, and tries to cover the cut from the left. Ellie has been screaming ever since the blade dug into her skin.

She wiggles, struggling from the pain. Soon, the force she is exerting on me is loosening. "We're losing her!" I say. "I'm only halfway there!" Damon replies. She keeps wiggling and then, a few seconds later, she completely stops. I check for a pulse but fine none. I use my thermal sights to see that the blood stopped flowing and her body is cooling down. Unwillingly, I try to inform Damon about it. "Damon-'' "I got it." Says Damon. "I just need one more-" "Damon!" I say, "Let's go, she's gone. Get the baby out of her, quick."

He looks at me with sorrow flooding from his eyes. I try to calm him, "Damon, I know-..." Then, he spirals out of control. He takes hold of the knife in a different position. He wraps his fist around the handle, keeping the blade under his fist. "Damon..." Before I could even finish saying his name, he begins using all his strength in stabbing her repeatedly right where the baby lies. "THE BABY!" I scream. He then stops stabbing her and looks at me as my voice is still echoing in the barrel. "Head straight up this road, you'll see a wall. Behind it is my camp." He says. He then reaches for his belt. He grabs a gun and holds it to his own head. "NO!" I scream as I reach towards his gun with my hand. Before I could grab on, he pulls the trigger. I freeze. A life has been taken from right in front of me, in a single flash of yellow. I look back to notice that Kelly is crying in the corner. Ellie's body is right next to her. Her abdomen cut open. In the abdomen's pool of blood, a little boy, with seven stab-wounds, caused by his own parent. Maybe he is better off dead. No one can bother him. He can go right back to heaven without being chewed on by something which used to be human. Soon enough, I notice that dad is nowhere to be seen. He was in here a few minutes ago. I look behind Kelly to notice a tiny space just barely big enough to let a human through. He may have left through there. I was right. I grab Kelly's hand and lead her out of the tank. "Dad? You left?" I yell at him. "You're my son. You can't tell me what to do." He replies. "You can't do whatever you want. Just because you're my father." I reply at him.

He then twists the topic. "Look son, I love you" he says. "I know..." before I could finish saying my sentence, He walks back over to me and gives me a hug. But, on my chest I feel something hard, something cold. He looks into my eyes and clinches his eyebrows together. He has an intense look in his eyes. Before I could notice anything else, a bullet passes through my chest. It's like I'm falling in slow-motion. Kelly screams, "Deacon!" as I hit the ground hard on my back. As I fell, I noticed that the hard, cold thing was my dad's handgun. "Good-luck taking care of that, blueberry." He says to Kelly.

Soon for me, the world starts spinning like a mixer's blade. As I'm spinning, the only thing I see straight is, Kelly reaching for me. She gets down on her knees and blocks the wound from bleeding out. I'm blacking out. "Get to safety" I whisper to Kelly. "No. You're coming with me" says Kelly. "It's too late, The bullet must've shot through my heart." I reply. "Deacon. I'm taking you to ca...'' she tries to say. Before she could finish the sentence, everything turns dark and quiet. I just hope she's safe. The gunshot must have attracted the herd back to us. I hope she gets away. Help her, Jane.