“I said …boo!” I try again and she glances at me with a raised eyebrow.
“You don’t scare me,” she stated quietly. Her eyes traveled up and down my body slowly before she put a carton of cereal back on the shelf in front of her, then wipes away the crumbs from her mouth with the back of her hand. “What do you want?” she asks me curiously.
I put my hands on my hips and stare the little shit down, before I sigh loudly. “Gas. Know where we can get some?”
“We?”
“Yeah, me and my brother,” I confirm jerking my head toward the front of the store. “He’s waiting outside for me.”
“Oh boy,” she mumbles quietly.
“What?”
“I should go tell Daddy he’s not a bad guy, then,” she says simply with a shrug. “Daddy doesn’t like trespassers on our street and if he sees him out there then—”
“HENS!”comes the muffled scream from outside.
“Come on!” the little girl shouts frantically as she sprints passed me. “Daddy listens to me!”
With a grunt, I give chase, picking her up as I run by her, then cradle her on my hip, boots pounding until we burst through the remaining pane of glass on one of the front doors.
Just in time to see some kind of hybrid—not quite a man, but not yet one of the diseased—overpower Tieran and throw him to the ground.
CHAPTER11
TIERAN
When you feel an enormous strength of unknown origin pick you up then throw you down, it sort of pisses you off.
At least, it does me.
Hensley is my first concern, so I bellow her name. Then I go into defense mode. My knife comes out swinging, and I reach for my bat. The man-thing, which resembles quite remarkably like a mixture of an uninfected and an infected meshed together, jumps out of the trajectory of my knife, far enough back that he’s safe, but still close enough that he still has me covered.
"What do you want?" he asks me in a gravelly voice. His lips drool when he talks, his tongue thick on the pus-filled side, making his words come out like he’s talking with his mouth full.
Keeping the knife in front of me, I scoot back, managing to stand up. "It's none of your fucking business what I want, however, for starters, your head on a spike would be nice."
Before he can respond, the glass shatters from the station.
"Daddy!"
The creature, brandishing a tire iron, looks perplexed and stops coming forward. I glance over to see Hensley holding a little girl on her hip. The girl jumps down, runs to the hybrid, and throws her arms around his waist.
"Daddy! These are friends. They don't want to hurt us."
"I think that ship has sailed," I say, grabbing my bat.
Hensley comes over to me, puts her hand on my arm, "Tieran, wait. Let's see what they have to say."
As far as I was concerned, there was nothing this monster could say to save his life, but I deny Hensley nothing.
Dropping my arms down, I lower my weapons. Nodding at the half-breed, I wait.
"Carra, what’s the meaning of this?" As the man chastises the girl, one of the boils bursts open and runs down his face. Hensley watches his face with keen interest. I know my sister. She doesn't care really what he has to say, she just wants to see more of the blisters ooze.
"Daddy, they only come looking for fuel. They weren't trying to hurt us." The little girl pleads for empathy with the tortured man.
"We don't allow outsiders."