Jase was always energetic like that. Other folks had even started calling him Teflon, since the nastiness of the world around us seemed to roll right off him. But I knew better. Jase had seen a lot of shit and buried his memories, fears, and emotions under a thick coating of that Teflon. Back at the cabin, when he was exhausted after a hard day, I sometimes saw the real Jase. The Jase that was still a kid and was struggling to fake it through each day. He’d toss and turn all night, often waking up in a cold sweat. I’d sit with him until he fell back to sleep. By morning, he was back to being Teflon.
When two survivors showed up at the park with a dog, Jase had avoided them for over a week until the kid—and his dog—cornered Jase one day. I’d noticed Jase’s eyes watered as he petted the dog that day, remembering things he tried so hard to forget. He wasn’t afraid to pet the dog after that. In fact, he seemed to seek out Diesel. I’d thought about finding a dog for Jase’s birthday but had decided it was still too soon. He had too many wounds in his heart that needed time to heal.
“Let’s roll.” Clutch headed toward the Jeep.
Wes looked confused. “Oh, I don’t think you have to come, Clutch. You’re—.”
“I’m coming,” Clutch interrupted. He then turned and pulled himself out of his wheelchair and onto the passenger seat using the Jeep’s roll bar and seat.
When I saw the intensity in Clutch’s eyes, I said, “It’s fine.” I came up and grabbed the wheelchair, folded it, and set it in the back before climbing in next to it.
“Uh, okay. You guys need to stop for any gear before we head out?” Wes asked as he sat down and pulled the Jeep back around.
“We’re good,” I said, knowing that Clutch never left the cabin without being fully prepared for anything, a trait I’d quickly picked up after a run-in at an elementary school.
I checked my rifle. Loaded and ready. I just hoped I wouldn’t have to use it.
Chapter II
“How many zeds are we talking about?” I asked, my question muffled from trying to talk while chewing on the granola bar Jase had given me.
“A big herd,” Wes replied as we drove through the opened front gate, which the two scouts on duty closed as soon as we went through. “Tack’s report was twenty, maybe even thirty. Always hard to count when they look the same and keep shuffling around each other. Tack said that the zeds have surrounded a house full of survivors, somewhere in the middle of town.”
“Shouldn’t be hard to find, not with a town the size of Freeley,” I thought aloud.
“These better not be bandits we’re risking our lives for,” Clutch said as he held onto the Jeep’s windshield. “Or else they’re going to quickly learn that they’d prefer the zeds’ company to ours.”
“Amen,” I added.
Most survivors had already joined with settlements like Camp Fox. Since the outbreak, civilization had been regrouping, finding strength in numbers against the relentless zeds that kept spreading out from the cities. Camp Fox had become a new home for survivors in central Iowa. Even larger, more powerful city-states were being formed across the country.
Bandits were a different story, and they were becoming more common to see than survivors. While everyone looted empty houses and stores, bandits were greedy outlaws, taking anything they wanted from other survivors and leaving bodies and scarred victims in their wake. I hated bandits more than I hated zeds.
Zeds couldn’t control their evil. Bandits could.
We drove past the gas station Clutch and I had cleared out before Camp Fox relocated to the park. We had avoided the station ever since, leaving it to other scouts to loot. No one else had come across the two zed kids that we’d seen there. They’d simply disappeared, even though all the doors to the restaurant were still closed. The pair we’d seen had watched us while holding hands, and it had freaked both of us out.