Chapter 20

The rain kept coming. Cassie was shivering from head to toe. We had to find shelter and we needed to find it fast.

Devin's words played through my mind over and over again, This is the age of Ealim Jadid. The age of the new world.

So the people behind this really think that they're laying the foundation for a new world. A world where the dead walk the earth in unending hunger, where people are forced to kill to survive.

They had to be stopped, but who could stop them?

They already had the world at its knees, humans were on the verge of extinction. I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't. If I try to stop them, me and what's left of my team could die, if I don't, we could still die from the undead.

A small shack is barely visible in the distance. The rain hasn't let up yet, Cassie wraps her arms around herself to keep herself warm.

"There's a shack, Cass." I say, pointing in the distance.

Through her chattering teeth, she says, "finally."

The door to the shack is nearly rotted off of the hinges, it's a far cry from a 'shelter' but it'll have to do.

I open the door carefully, as to not rip it off. The roof leaks terribly, but the holes in the floor drain the water.

I lay the ammo bags down and the AR. I keep the pistol holstered and the knife sheathed, just in case.

Cassie finds a corner that's relatively dry and brings her knees to her chest and wraps her arms around them, keeping trying to raise her central temperature.

I walk over and sit down next to her and put an arm over her and bring her close, combining our body temperatures. Eventually her teeth stop chattering and the shivers fade.

"He was never on our side, was he?" Asks Cassie.

"He wasn't."

"He took something, Jack. When the masked men took us, they handed Devin some kind of liquid in a little bottle, along with a hypodermic needle. He injected it into himself."

"Masked men? And what color was the liquid?" I asked, already knowing the answer to one of them.

"Yeah, the people who took us were masked, and they were silent. I didn't know what was happening until I had already been zip cuffed. And the liquid was a yellowish color." She answered.

    I thought of the dream I had where I took the same colored liquid. I laid my head back against the wall.

    "How did you and Devin end up alone in the woods?" I ask.

    "When we were captured they loaded us into a van. Before we were loaded Terry had snuck a knife into his pocket. While in the van he cut his bindings and killed two of the masked men. That's when Devin came to the back of the van." She pauses, tears coming to her eyes.

    "You don't have to..." I say, but she interrupts by continuing.

    "Devin grabbed Terry by the shoulder and punched a whole right through Terry's abdomen and opened the doors and threw him out of the van."

    "I seen Terry." I say, "he bled a lot and was bitten, but he killed the zombie even after substantial blood loss. He asked me to... to help him... and I did." I say, struggling to get the words at the end out.

    Cassie lowers her head, "after that we drove for a few more miles and then the Russians voice came through a walkie talkie saying to kill you, and use me as bait. My mom flipped shit and started screaming, 'we had a deal, we had a deal!' Over and and over again."

    She raises her head and wipes tears from her eyes. "I tried to fight back, but he was too fast and too strong. He knocked my mom out, and took me into the woods, and you know the rest."

     I stared at the wall opposite of us, why would Cassie's mom scream about a deal?

    "Has your mom ever told you anything about the deal she was yelling about?" I ask.

    "No, I'm as confused as you are on that one."

    A lot of this doesn't make sense and putting the pieces together is like trying to finish a puzzle that's missing pieces.

    "Well, let's get some rest. We've got a long journey ahead of us." I say, and Cassie snuggles closer to me.

    "Thank you, Jack." She says.

    "No need to thank me, you'd do the same."

    She laughs a little and says, "good night, Jack, I love you." I'm taken aback by the last part.

    "Cassie, I'm a lot older than you..."

    She punches me in the shoulder, hard, and in the dim light I can see her cheeks turn cherry red. "Not like that you idiot!"

    "First off, ouch," I say, rubbing the knot now forming on my shoulder. "And how was I supposed to know?"

    She looks back at the ground, "you're like the older brother that I always wanted, but never had."

    I smile, and think about how I told Alyx that Cassie like a little sister to me.

    "What are you smiling for?" Cassie asks, reeling back her arm to punch me again.

    "I love you too." I say, and she drops her arm. "Good night, Cassie." I lay my head against the wall again and close my eyes. After a while Cassie lays her head back on my shoulder and begins snoring.

    The rain pounded the little shack, thunder rumbled in the sky and lighting illuminated the woods every now and then.

    The downpour eventually lulled me into the perpetual darkness of sleep.