Aim for the Head (Chapter 5)

“Damn it… Dante, is that your crowbar out there?” Lucas turned to Dante, looking him up and down as he shook with fear.

The flame in Dante’s eyes had died away from all the terror he had then endured. The only response given was a meek nod of the head as he kept his eyes on the ground ahead of him. He shut his eyes tight, pushing tears free and baring his teeth as he began to sob once again.

Lucas sighed, “No, no, no, Dante; I’m not angry… It’s alright, I’m just saying they found it, and it’s not your—“

“Who the fuck left this here?” the man growled in their general direction, startling them. Dante and Luke froze, sliding back into the shadows once more. “We know you’re here; come out with your hands up, or I’ll send people lookin’!”

“Shit,” Luke muttered as his group was distributed throughout the area.

Shots were pointlessly fired into the air as some sort of power play, and Dante jumped, absolutely horrified, beginning to cry out of fear for the second time. He tried to keep his pathetic whimpers at a low volume, but it just wasn’t happening, so Lucas crawled to his spot. He placed a hand on his back and shoulder, shushing him gently. Dante knew what would happen if he didn’t keep quiet, but the sobs just kept coming; it just wouldn’t stop. And the better part of it was the fact that Lucas knew how he felt, and knew just how to calm him down.

The man’s minions continued to scavenge the area, and after a while, one of the females sprinted down the alleyway they were hiding within. She spotted the top of Dante’s head, the honey blonde contrasting with the brick walls behind them and her eyes went visibly wide. She turned around, “Guys! Over here!” she called.

They were found. Lucas turned to Dante, and “Run,” was all he said.

Dante gave a nod of the head and bolted in the other direction, away from the red-haired, gun-yielding woman left stunned. Lucas sprinted right on his heels. They heard the things that were said in the alleyway, “They’re getting away!”, “After ‘em!”, and all that went with, and soon, they heard quick footsteps and yells from right behind them.

The same female from before was too fast for two famished boys with things loaded onto their backs, and so she quickly caught up to them, choosing Lucas to tackle to the ground.

Lucas yelped and plummeted involuntarily to the cement, his culprit rolling him over and putting her knees on his chest. Dante dropped his things in a panic. “Hey, get off him!” the blond screamed helplessly.

Struggling to get out from underneath her trap, Lucas kicked and thrashed about aimlessly. His skirmishes had no effect, so he began cursing and threatening the woman above her with his colorful vocabulary.

“Shut up and put up your hands, kid! Where’s your weapons?” She held his arms down, exposing Luke’s satchel to her.

Dante, who was now struggling to pry the redhead off was suddenly yanked away from the fight scene by the same white-haired man. He flailed against him, but to no avail– Dante was very feeble. He was angrily thrown to the ground in a heap of dread and he groaned in agony, clutching his arm and rolling to his side in pain.

Lucas snarled between hitched breaths, “We haven’t done shit! What do you want from us, lady?” And the redhead took the satchel off the side of his pants, unsheathing the gun and tossing it to the other side of the street. Lucas screamed in a rage, “What the hell was that? That’s my gun!” His voice broke between syllables in anger.

“You’ll get it back later!” the woman growled in response. “You got any food? Any more weapons I should know about?—“

“Get the fuck off me!—“

“Hey, hey, hey! Mabel, back off, please! We’re done!” The gray-haired man yanked Mabel by the arm and she stumbled before pulling herself to her feet, dusting herself off. Lucas jolted up, pausing in pain of his chest before rushing to Dante’s side. He rolled him on his back, asking if he was okay and receiving a nod in response.

Luke nodded back, then turned to Mabel and the other man with a vile glare. “Why’d you do that? Why are you even here?”

Some others from the truck a few blocks away came driving up. A man and another woman hopped out with their guns, a younger boy with a , one brunette stood next to the hazel-eyed man. The man chuckled. “Are these questions really necessary?”

Lucas sneered. “What’re you talking about?”

“You’re out here, alone, with all the Things out walking around, looking for one thing: your flesh, your blood and your brains. Did you really think you and your little blond friend could survive out here, all by your little lonesomes?”

The brunette put a hand on his shoulder. “James, we don’t need this—“

“We did, and we still do, thank you. We’ve both been doing it ever since this all started and we’ve made it this far. The screechers haven’t got to us yet,” Lucas interjected, hatefully staring at the brunette.

“Is that what you call them? Screechers?” Mabel criticized, a bit sarcastically.

“Who cares? They’re still out for us. We have our own place to call home, and it’s just fine,” Lucas replied, sharing a look with Dante.

James let a ‘tch’ noise escape his lips. “And how can you be so sure?”

“…Well, we…” Luke’s sentence trailed off when he realized… he really had no idea whether Dante’s den was safe or not. It was rather rickety, with boards falling off windows and doors becoming worn and what-not. Dante had told him he almost had a break-in after hunting, when he was caught by a horde and ran all the length back and locked the double-doors. They were hit and banged and scratched on when they followed him, but no screechers made it inside. They were worn down quite a bit, however.

Lucas gandered at Dante with a worried grimace, and Dante just shrugged. “I’ve only been hiding there for five days,” he whispered solemnly, as if he’d disappointed Lucas.

James only smirked, knowing the boys pushed themselves to thinking they’ve been defeated. “We’ve got a population of sixteen, and counting. They’re all good people. We think you should come there, stay for a while. If you like it, you can stay for good. If something goes wrong, I give you full permission to evacuate. What do you say, uh…—“

“Dante. This is Luke,” Dante confirmed.

“…Right, okay.” The hazel-eyed man turned to Lucas, sitting overcome on the pavement. He smiled, holding out a hand and making an offer. “Do you wanna try it out, Luke? You can bring your little friend Dante with you.”

Lucas scowled at the bony hand held in front of him. “We don’t need your pity offers, buddy. We’re fine on our own,” he spat.

And right then, he felt a hand gently placed on his shoulder along with a soft “Lucas…”

So Lucas moved his gaze to Dante’s brown eyes, glinting in the faint light of the sun and pleading for him to make the right decision. Dante gave the brunet a sincere look, murmuring quietly so no one else would hear. “Luke, please… I already know we can’t hold out on our own for much longer. It’s freezing in that den, we don’t have much food and no blankets what-so-ever.” He paused, giving Lucas a good, long look and nodding his head. “We need this.”

And Luke looked back at Dante, his cheeks peppered with dark freckles for a long while. Then he sighed, giving in.

“Fine. We’ll go, but we need stuff from back where we came from,” Luke muttered irritably.

James gave a nod of his head. “Right. Oliver, Cynthia? C’mere.”

From the back of the truck, a young boy with dark red hair stood up hesitantly and jumped to the pavement, pistol in hand. He glanced fearfully at James, striking blue eyes looking all around as if someone were to jump out from behind a building and tackle him to the ground. He pushed up the thick frames of his glasses and stared down at the ground next to James.

Next that followed came a short female bolting from the truck and onto the road directly in front of James. She flipped the short black hair from her face to reveal pale blues staring deceitfully at Luke and Dante. She adjusted the sleeves on her leather jacket, and clicking her handgun, she gave an impudent glare to the man and nodded. “Sir, yes sir.”

“You two, go with these two boys and retrieve their things. You know where to find me when you’re finished,” James ordered, walking back to the vehicle and climbing into the passenger’s side, Mabel in the opposing driver’s side.

As they drove away, Cynthia sighed obnoxiously. “By the way, call me West. Cynthia’s stupid. Oliver, can you recite the rules to these little boys?”

Lucas glared at her, then turned to the redhead.

Oliver looked around timidly, pointing a finger at himself. “Me? …Why?” Oliver said, so quietly, it was more like a whisper.

“Are we really going to do this again?” Cynthia snapped, and Oliver looked to the ground.

He twiddled his thumbs as he spoke. “Uh, rule number one: …We only shoot Things, and don’t shoot people. Only if ab-so-lu-tah-ley necessary,” he laughed nervously, continuing.

Dante noticed the way he put inflection on his words. The pace at which he spoke was unbearably slow, as if he struggling to speak, which was probably the case. On the words he did know, he picked up French influence and trouble pronouncing longer words. His syntax was a bit off and he stuttered every other phrase, mixing up syllables with the syllable before or putting the adjective after the noun. Yeah, English definitely wasn’t his first language.

“…And rule six: …um, we don’t hurt you if you don’t hurt us.” Oliver looked away, avoiding eye contact with the three that stood around him and waiting approval from Cynthia.

Cynthia put a hand on her forehead, frustrated. “Good enough, let’s get going.”

So Dante showed them the way back, and they began their ten mile trek back to his den.