Chapter 59
Author: Maxwell
last update Last Updated: 2024-10-29 19:42:56

Gabriel .”

There was some grumbling from the crowd, but nobody spoke up about it again.

“What guarantee do we have that any of this will even work?” Daniel said, breaking through the mutterings.

“None,” Gabriel answered for Marshall. “Just like they have been saying, this might be nothing more than a stupid, foolish suicide mission. I can’t promise you that we’ll even find this vampire that started the curse. I can’t promise you that we’ll make it five minutes outside those walls, let alone five days, weeks, years, or however long it will take to find this creature. Paul can’t promise you that his evil petting zoo won’t escape. He can’t promise you that he will ever actually find a cure. Everything is unknown, and all directions lead to danger. That’s the basic reality of living in a zombie apocalypse. Literature certainly tells us that, and all of you certainly have to have lived through enough of one to know that for yourselves by now.

“But this isn’t about promises. It isn’t abou
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    With that off his chest, Gabriel turned and stormed out of the room.Everyone turned to Rico to see how he would respond. He just re-crossed his arms and scoffed. “Yeah, whatever,” he muttered.For a long moment nobody said anything. Somebody coughed into the silence.Suddenly, Paul spoke up. “To be fair to Gabriel , even if he’s wrong there is a way this trip could possibly be helpful.” As all eyes turned on him he began to look a little embarrassed, and nervously cleared his throat. “That is to say, there is something he could do on this trip that might help. Help me, I mean.”“Well, spit it out man!” Robert demanded.“Well it’s just… you see… basically what he’s trying to do is track down the index case.”“Index case?”Paul nodded. “Yeah. What you might call the patient zero. The origin of the disease. The place where it all started. If we had Patient Zero, it might help me narrow down how to fight the disease. Unfortunately Patient Zero could have lived thousands of years ago for

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    jake turned to Daniel first, her gaze cold enough to make ice. “Daniel, Daina is a grown woman and can make her own damn decisions. You don’t own her. You can’t tell her what she can and can’t do.”“Thank you!” Daina exclaimed triumphantly.jake spun on the other woman, her gaze just as cold and solemn. “And you, Daina. You have to realize that if you go with us, you are probably not coming back. Ever. That means never seeing Daniel again. And while right now that may sound best to you…” her voice trailed off as she reached down for Daina’s hand. She lifted it up and, in a somewhat ironic reversal of Daina’s own movements only moments before, shoved the engagement ring in the woman’s face. “You made a promise to try and make this work between the two of you. So you better be damn sure that there are no other options for your relationship.”She turned away from the group and started back toward the SUV. “Whatever you decide, do it quickly. We’re burning daylight.”Daniel looked pleadin

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    “This first way, it looks like we avoid any towns or anything, but we don’t have enough gas to get us around that way, and we don’t know if we’ll be able to gather up anything. If we keep going straight, we should hit some neighborhoods just skirtin’ around the outside of this little town here. This last way we’re gonna be driving straight through the center of this other town here.”“I’m just gonna go ahead and call that one Samarra,” said Jay.“It does seem like straight ahead is our best option,” added Gabriel.By this point, the zombie group had finished crossing the road, so they started off again. When the CD that was playing ended, Aliyah ejected it as she rummaged around for a different one.“Oh, thank God,” muttered Gabriel when the silence resumed. After a moment he realized everyone was looking at him. “What?”“You have something against musicals?” jake asked.“You mean, other than the fact that they’re the sonic equivalent of having your eardrums slowly ripped apart by a

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    “Huh,” said Gabriel , staring at the sticker. “It’s one of those stupid family decals.”“Those what?” asked Jay absently, his face locked in concentration.“You know. One of those sticker sets everybody was putting on their cars for a while. The ones where you have a sticker for every member of the family. You’d have like dad stickers and mom stickers and boy and girl stickers and baby stickers. Sometimes they’d be just regular people, but sometimes they’d be like, other things that were supposed to represent those members of the family. Like various sized spaceships from Star Jump or something.“Oh,” replied Jay.“Ironically, this one is a family of zombies. A dad zombie, a mom zombie, two child zombies, and a baby zombie.” Gabriel shook his head. “It’s almost like they knew.”For a moment he continued staring at the decal, and something started to not look right about it. From around the side of the car, they could hear the “thunk” of the lock finally popping up.“Ha-ha!” Jay cried

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