Five

          “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Reed stammers nervously.

            Jagger shakes his head and tsks, looking completely disinterested in Reed’s defense. “That’s what they all say.”

            “Who’s they?” he asks, trying to avoid the fact that a shotgun is ready to blow him to pieces. It would be a simple choice, really. Kill Reed, leave him for the dead, gather our supplies and go back to the safe house. We could stay there until we couldn’t. It’s the perfect plan, yet my finger doesn’t close down on the trigger.

            “Answer my question,” I snap. “And drop the gun.”

            “Really, Sloane,” he says as if my name helps his case. “I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.”

            “Drop the gun,” Jagger barks.

            The gun flops onto the ground.

            I want to roll my eyes but keep them trained on him. “I’ve been watching you this whole time. Something’s up. There’s something going on that you’re not telling us. Are you going to kill us? Lock us in the store and shoot to signal the dead?” I purse my lips. “No, you’re not that type of guy. You’re too much of a coward. You’d just leave us here and drive off.”

            He looks as white as a ghost, and flinches when Jagger peels himself off of the Jeep. Cole still looks like a statue, only his eyes flickering between us as he tries to gauge the situation.

            “I’m not lying,” he pleads. His hands are up in front of him now, and I can see them visibly tremble.

            Jagger takes an irritated breath, and before I know what he’s doing, he’s taking a swing, his fist colliding with Reed’s face that creates a sickening smack. Blood flies through the air before I know what’s bleeding and Reed’s clutching his face, swearing at Jagger for what he did. He acts as if he didn’t just punch Reed. And despite how awful it sounded and looked, it wasn’t a sucker punch, either. Jagger went for the gold.

            “What the fuck,” Reed curses, bent over as he clutches his bleeding face. Both his mouth and nose are now oozing blood, and I begin to wonder how much force was really intended in Jagger’s punch.

            “She asked you a question,” Jagger states, folding his arms across his chest. “Unless you’d like to avoid it again and see what comes after the first punch.”

            Without warning, Reed lunges towards Jagger, his eyes full of rage and his bloody mouth baring teeth. Cole runs towards them, yelling whoa as he tries to restrain Reed before anything can happen. He continues to try to break out of his grasp, and just as he removes one of Cole’s arms, he punches Jagger in the stomach.

            He doubles over, clutching his stomach as he tries to regain the air that was knocked out of him. Before anything else can happen, I shove my gun towards them.

            “Hey,” I yell. Loud enough that they’d freeze, but not loud enough like how a shot gun would call the zombies back to us. When everyone stares at me, frozen in their places, Jagger still bent over, Cole half holding Reed and Reed glaring, I nudge the gun at Reed. “Let go of him, Cole.”

            “Sloane, are you sure?”

            I nod and he backs off. “Reed, over there.” I point with the gun before immediately returning it to his body. Slowly, Reed moves towards the wall of the store, his blood dripping on the ground. He looks more pissed than scared as he holds his arm, somehow it must have gotten hurt in the midst of everything. “Now you need to tell us what the hell is going on, or you’re dead. Got it?”

            He scowls, his lips parting to either answer the truth or curse at us. But then, before any words leave, something answers for us. It’s a rumbling in the distance. Louder than anything I’d heard before, loud enough to cause the ground to shake and the sound of crushed metal to make me cringe. Immediately Reed is my last concern, and I’m spinning to face Cole and Jagger, all of our shocked faces mirroring each other.

            “What the hell is – “

            A loud bang sounds out, cutting whoever – Jagger or Cole, I don’t know – off.

            When I whip around, Reed looks like he’s about to pass out, his whole body shaking so much I can tell it’s from himself and not whatever is reverberating through the ground.

            “Reed,” I shout over the noise, “what is going on?!”

            He shakes his head, his mouth hanging open slightly before he snaps back into it. Quickly, he starts digging through his pocket, and before I know what he’s doing, he shoves the white, folded square paper into my chest. Without a word, he’s taking off towards the Jeep, shoving Cole and Jagger onto the ground before he jumps in.

            “Hey!” I scream at the top of my lungs, running towards him. Just as he turns the key in the ignition,  I aim on the back wheel of the Jeep and pull the trigger. Nothing happens.

            “Don’t just stand there!” Cole yells. “Shoot!”

            I pull the trigger again and this time is the same as the last. I can feel the clicking inside the chamber, but nothing comes out of the barrel. “I did!’ I call back. Then, as Reed speeds away, I throw open the barrel and look inside.

            Cole and Jagger are picking themselves up off the ground, watching the Jeep go as I snap the gun closed. I curse under my breath as they reach me.

            “What happened?” Cole asks, his face full of fury. Jagger doesn’t look much different.

            “It’s empty. He must have emptied our bullets last night while we were asleep.”

            “Or before,” Jagger adds. “I never checked.”

            Cole shakes his head. “Me neither.”

            “None of us did. I don’t know what this noise is, but we need to get out of here before we figure it out.” I begin jogging towards the 7-Eleven, Bullet at my side and the boy’s right behind me. Once the doors are open, Cole clears the area, checking for zombies while Jagger and I begin to barricade the door. I help him push two shelves in front of it before the three of us meet in the middle.

            “Clear,” Cole huffs, hunching over a bit as he tries to catch his breath.

            The unidentified rumbling noise continues to come closer, its sound getting louder and louder until it starts to shake the dust off of the ceiling and around us like snowflakes.

            “We should get out of here.” Jagger looks uneasy as he turns around to peek outside. “Whatever that sound is, I’d bet my life that it knows we’re here.”

            No one pays attention to me as I unfold the tiny piece of paper Reed had given me. As soon as it’s open and crinkled, I breathe in an angry breath. “They definitely know we’re here,” I snap, turning the message around so they can see. “It was planned.”

            They read the message with wide eyes. RUN.

            “I’m starting to question where Reed’s loyalty lies,” I say in between breaths minutes later as we jog through the back ally that the rear entrance led us into. By the sounds of the metal scraping and the rumbling underneath our feet, we’re going straight towards the beast. But what other choice do we have other than to go through the city? The other way is into the desert – three kids and a dog. It will be like shooting fish in a barrel for whoever Reed is working with.

            And besides, Reed is out there too.

            “Weren’t we all along?” Jagger side glances at me and pumps his arms faster. “Something was up this whole time. And now we’re one step closer to figuring out what it is.”

            My legs begin to protest and the adrenaline fades despite the constant noise, and I have to slow down. I change to a walk and the boys follow a few steps ahead, not saying anything. With being at the safe house, we haven’t had to move much or fight, and still haven’t recovered from our long trek across the country.

            Realizing I hadn’t loaded my gun, I slide bullets from my pocket and into the barrel of the shotgun. The boys do the same, Jagger cursing the fact that we hadn’t done it sooner. Only a few days of safety and we’ve lost our touch. Our guard is down even when we think we’re being cautious.

            “We’re going to end up dead if we keep acting like this,” I snap, in the middle of shooting the barrel when a slip of paper slides out and flutters to the ground.

            “What the hell is that?” Cole barks.

            Jagger grabs it off of the ground for me, opening it with his fingers. It’s the same size as the other note, a full piece of paper folded in larger squares. From the opposite side, I can see writing and drawings on the view from Jagger, but can’t make out any of the scrawls.

            “Reed wrote us a letter,” he explains, scanning over it with his eyes. “He drew us a map. He wants to go to a place that he says is safe.”

            Cole double checks his gun for notes and turns up empty.

            “We’ve done that twice already, and once with him. Look where it got us, both times,” I reply.

            Jagger doesn’t look convinced at my protest. In fact, he rereads the letter more than a few times, the sound of whatever was after us fading in the other direction.

            “It’s a set up,” I continue. “He didn’t want to get found with us and left us there. Knowing we’d escape, he would tell us where to go to get caught all over again.”

            He shakes his head while Cole looks between us.

            “I don’t think so,” Jagger says just as Cole agrees.

            He glares at Jagger. “What, then?”

            “I think,” he says quietly, still looking at the paper, “that he’s telling the truth.” He flips the paper around for me to see, and when my eyes don’t look over the words but instead the drawings, he moves beside me to point out the sentence he wants me to see. “Why else would he tell us this?”

            Sloane, it reads, they’re after Sloane. I don’t know why or what they want for her, but the military wants her, and they won’t stop until they find her.