Dead Frontier/Issue 13

This is Issue #13 of Dead Frontier by Walkerbait22, titled Miles Apart.

Issue 13 - Miles Apart
The light from the morning sun shines through the car window and wakes Billie. Her eyes flutter open and she yawns, recollecting the events of yesterday. She can feel herself panicking again--''How will we get food? Are Dwight, Mercer, Adam Dommy, and Hannah dead?''--but she quickly composes herself.

"Cole?" Billie glances at his slumped body in the passenger seat. She notices his forehead glistening with sweat and his exposed calf wound. "Cole?"

She shakes his shoulder but he doesn't respond. She escalates to shouting his name a few more times. She places two fingers to his neck to feel for a pulse and feels a faint heartbeat. "Don't die. Please."

John Pascoe stands from his lawnchair in the motel parking lot. He sees Dwight's truck approaching from the distance. "They're back!" John calls out.

The rest of the survivors crane their heads to see; Melody assists Mary West with standing, and the old woman waits anxiously to see her grandson.

The truck finally rolls up, and Dommy, Adam, Hannah, Mercer, and Dwight exit. Dwight carries Mercer over his shoulder and hurries him to one of the motel rooms. "Get a Med kit!" Dwight calls out. "John, we've got to help him."

"What's wrong with my baby?" Mary asks. She jogs after Dwight as fast as her frail body will allow, but Adam grabs her shoulder. "Where are they taking Mercer?"

"Mary," says Adam. "The trip didn't go well. Mercer ended up cutting his ankle pretty bad, but he'll be fine."

"Are you sure?" the old woman says shakily.

"I promise." Adam turns and sees Dommy sitting on the hood of one of the cars, Hannah and Melody tending to him.

"What the hell happened?" Melody asks as Dommy removes his shirt, revealing the severity of his wound. It is deeper than they thought, and puss begins to form around it. "Oh, God."

"How's it look?" Dommy asks.

"Not good," Hannah replies.

Melody asks, "How do you feel?"

"Besides my shoulder hurting like a bitch, I feel normal."

"What if he turns?" Adam asks.

Dommy glares at him. "I'm not going to turn. I didn't get bit; it's just a scratch."

"But...what if a scratch infects you too?"

"It doesn't, okay?!" Dommy explodes, rising to his feet. "I'm going to be perfectly fine. Just watch."

Micah marches up to Hannah and leads her away to the other side of the parking lot. "Where's Cole?" He sees her start to tear up, and that tells him all he needs to know. "No, no, no..."

"He and Billie, they got separated from us somehow," Hannah says. "The last thing I saw was them surrounded by infected."

Micah covers his face with his hands. "He can't be dead. I mean, it's Cole. Fuck. We were friends since the fucking fifth grade and..." Micah trails off and bursts into tears. Hannah places a comforting hand on his shoulder. The guilt of not aapologizing after their fight washes over her, and she cries too.

Billie scrambles her head for ideas. She's miles from the motel with no gas and a injured man who looks like he could die any minute. She decides her only choice is go out on her own and look for something to help Cole. She grabs her shotgun from the backseat and locks the doors of the car before she exits.

The empty road makes her uneasy. Any second she expects a tumbleweed to roll through. Here and there a few houses are seen, but after her experience with the other home, she decides not to check them out.

After walking for a few moments, she hears a sound behind her, like crunching grass. She turns her head quickly but sees nothing; instead, she strains her ears for any sounds. The fact that she doesn't hear the groans of an infected puts her at ease, but that feeling doesn't last long.

"Stop!" Billie hears a deep voice shout from behind her. She turns and points her gun. A large, middle aged African-American man stands, pointing a magnum at her from about ten feet away.

"Who are you?" Billie asks. But before the mysterious man can answer, Billie feels someone grab her and press the cold steel of a sharp knife blade against her throat.

Previous/Next Issues
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