The Orphans (Book 2): Surviving the Turned by Mike Evans

which by looking around I’d say it did, why don’t we just upgrade?”
    Tina said, “You sinner! Are you suggesting we steal a car?”
    Shaun cut in, “That really isn’t a bad idea. Might not be bad to get more than one. If that dealer turned, then what will he care? Money won't do anything for him ever again, right? We should hit the grocery store too. We have a ton of food now, but how long is it going to last all of us, eating three times a day?”
    Ellie’s shoulders sank a bit. “How are we supposed to do all this when Patrick needs medicine? The dose that Kristy gave him wasn’t even what he is suppose to get for the morning; he’s almost out.”
    “What’s a few more hours? Besides, it isn’t our fault that he wasn’t prepared, is it?”
    Ellie snapped back, “Well, if it wasn’t for Andy at that surplus store, we wouldn’t have had a damn thing to take into those hills, would we? How the hell should he have known that he was going to need all his medicine? He was going to a damn homecoming rally for the volleyball team and probably figured he’d be back in less than an hour. He didn’t have the foresight to know that he was going to go hide in the woods with a bunch of strangers and lose everyone and everything that he probably has ever cared about in a matter of minutes.”
    Shaun nodded, feeling a bit guilty about how he was approaching the situation. “Well, we can get him his drugs and maybe come back, depending on how things look. At least that guy gave us enough military surplus clothes that we won’t have to walk around naked,” Shaun added with a laugh.             
    Tina smiled playfully, saying, “So, you’re saying if we run out of clean clothes then you’ll be okay if we go nude around the cabin, Shaun?”
    This comment sent immediate shivers up Shaun’s spine. He stared at Tina and then at Ellie, and his face grew red at the unbelievable thought of the two of them naked. He opened his mouth to try to reply and could not think of an intelligent thing to say that did not sound like a caveman.
    Ellie sat back, shaking her head, and Tina punched Shaun in the arm playfully. “You can breathe now, stud. I was just screwing with you.”
    He accepted the challenge happily and tried ever so slightly not to look anywhere but straight ahead. They came to the outskirts of town and Tina pulled to a stop. They rolled the windows down and listened. There were no sirens; there were no screams. There was only silence—the loudest silence that they had ever heard. They each secretly wished for some noise or a car to go by. Tina started to drive straight, and Shaun said, “No, don’t go that way. We don’t want to go through the middle of town; it’s too close to the school. They are probably in the middle of town by now. Hell, they could be everywhere. Who knows?”
    Tina said, “Well, where are we going then, great navigator?”
    Shaun read off the address from the license he’d snagged out of Patrick’s wallet and said, “Just go left here and take a right on Sommer Page Drive. We can skip the whole town this way.”
    Tina looked over at Ellie. “But shouldn’t we find out? Shouldn’t we know?”
    Shaun shook his head no and said, “Just think about it this way—if we have to go into town and then we get chased, we still need to stop at Patrick’s to get his drugs. If we are being chased by those things, we can’t stop and what was the point in coming this far if that happens? All we do if we go home empty-handed is hand him a sack of false hopes.”
    Tina said, “Then when, Shaun?”
    “Simple, we drive straight through the middle of town on the way home. We don’t care if they chase us then because we’ll already be so far out, it won't make a damn difference who is after us. There’s no way those things can run fifty-five miles per hour, right?”
    They pondered that for a moment, thinking about it and a little worried that, yes, maybe those things were