Kody Boye - Sunrise

“Please,” a voice said. “Stop.”

Dakota’s ears perked up.

“I’m not with them,” the same voice called. “Please! Don’t shoot anymore!”

“Throw your guns to the side!” Steve called back, pushing himself to his knees.

“ Don’t do it,” Dakota growled. “You don’t know if it’s a ploy.”

“I shot all of them, Dakota.”

“You don’t know if they’re all dead.”

“I must’ve missed this guy.” Steve frowned. Six clinking noises, as though something metal had just been thrown, softened his expression. “That must be it. I want you to stand up when I do.”

“But—”

“Just do it.”

Rising to his knees, Dakota took a quick breath and readjusted his grip on the gun. When Steve took hold of his pistol with both hands and began to rise, Dakota, too, rose to his feet, training his gun outside of the bus.

Though his doubts had been great, Steve had delivered in his promise—all the men on the floor were dead, sans the one who’d just been speaking. Tall, muscled beyond compare and with a buzzed haircut that reminded Dakota of the military, the guy appeared to be more of a child than he actually was at that very moment. His eyes were puffy and the end of his nose was red. A trail of blood trickled down his one arm, but Dakota couldn’t see any major damage.

You missed. Dakota snickered to himself. You, a pro shooter, actually missed.

“Quit laughing,” Steve chuckled, “because that’s the guy you shot.”

“DON’T SHOOT ANYMORE!” the straggler cried. “PLEASE!”

“We’re not gonna shoot you,” Steve said, stepping out of the bus. “You—get up. Dakota, you stay there and keep your gun on him.”

“Got it,” Dakota said, silently hoping that the situation wouldn’t take a turn for the worse.

The man stumbled to his feet with a grimace and a curse. After untangling his feet from his dead companions’ limbs, he stepped in front of Steve and pressed a hand over his wound, allowing his other arm to remain slack as he stared the shorter man in the eyes. At first, Dakota grimaced, knowing more than well that the man—who stood at least four inches above Steve, if not five or six—could easily lash out and choke his friend if he wanted to.

“So,” Steve said, clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “If you aren’t with these guys, why were you shooting at us?”

“We just broke out of jail, man. The guys said they’d kill me if I ran.”

“Why were you in jail?”

“I raped a girl,” the big man admitted. “It wasn’t one of my graceful moments.”

Dakota’s grip around his gun loosened for a moment, but he picked up the slack and readjusted his hands, sliding his finger away from the trigger.

“What’s your name?” Steve asked, holstering his gun.

“Ian,” the gangbanger said. “Ian Shaw.”

“Keep your gun on him, Dakota. I’m gonna tie him up.”

“With what?”

Steve glanced around the garage, looked to the storage shelf that had since been shot to hell, then stepped around the bodies and began to rummage through the shelf’s contents. A moment later, he stepped forward with two plastic strips and managed to improvise a pair of faux police handcuffs.

“Y-you’re letting me live?” Ian asked.

“No reason not to,” Steve said, tightening the plastic with a tug from both hands. “You’re not going anywhere anytime soon.”

“Everything good?” Dakota asked.

Steve gestured Dakota out of the bus. “Ian, meet Dakota, my best friend.”

“Nice to meet you,” Ian mumbled, face reddening upon Dakota’s approach.

“You too.” Dakota gave the man a once-over. One look at his tattoos was enough to show that he’d been involved in gang activity before the shit had hit the fan. He looked at Steve, who merely shrugged and gestured Ian away from the bodies.

“What’re you gonna do with me?”

“ We —and I mean Dakota and me—are going to finish fixing this bus after I get these bodies out of the garage.”

“Where are we going?”

“Wherever we can,” Steve sighed, hoisting the first corpse into his arms. “Wherever we fucking can.”

“Checklist,” Steve said. “Food.”

“Check,” Dakota replied.

“Water.”

“Check.”

“Ammunition.”

“Seven packs. Check.”

“First aid kit.”

“Check.”

“Emergency supplies—rope, knife, alcohol.”

“Check.”

“What else do we have?”

“Extra clothes,” Dakota said, nodding to the backpack. “More plastic ties, a nail gun and a pack of nails, two or three hammers.”

“What about the uzi and the shotgun?”

“Uzi’s out of ammo and the shotgun only has two shots.”

“Two shots more than we have.”

“All right. Well, other than that… I think we’re good.”

“We sound good,” Steve said, making his way around the bus. He stopped near the hood to check the ornate display of plywood and barbed wire before turning his attention to Ian. “Anything else you want to tell us before we leave?”

“Like what?” the man asked. Hands behind his back, he grimaced as he adjusted his position on the ground. A fresh bead of blood flowed down his arm. “I was in a gang. My arm’s fucking hurting. My last name is Shaw. I’m half-Mexican. Should I continue?”

“Don’t give me any fuckin’ lip,” Steve growled. “Or we might just leave you here.”

“Steve,” Dakota sighed. “Not now. Seriously.”

Steve turned his eyes on Ian. “Look, I believe you when you say that you got roped into this gang, but I don’t trust you one bit, especially since you were shooting at me.

“And me,” Dakota said.

“Right. You were shooting at us, so don’t expect to get any special treatment. Don’t treat me like an asshole and I won’t treat you like one. Got it?”

“Got it,” Ian said.

“Good. As soon as we get the ball rolling, Dakota’ll patch your arm up. I don’t want to stick around here for much longer anyway.”

“The zombies would’ve probably already made it here if they heard anything,” Dakota sighed, rolling the extra supplies into a tool bag.

“I know,” Steve said. “I just don’t trust the ‘probably’ part.”

Neither do I, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to come out of the blue and get us.

Shaking his head, Dakota gathered up the rest of the supplies and loaded them onto the bus. While Steve continued his last-minute maintenance on the vehicle, pounding extra nails here and applying extra barbed wire there, Ian sat idly by, only offering Dakota his attention when he caught the younger man looking at him. Dakota smiled, hoping it would entice a positive response, but frowned when it didn’t. Though the ex-con’s demeanor seemed to lighten, his overall expression didn’t. His ice-blue eyes appeared sharp, angry in the aftermath of their admittance of mercy, and his rough, stubbled jaw looked so set that Dakota thought it would break right off his face. The tip of his strong nose and the lobes of his hooked ears—places that, normally should have been immune to such displays—looked red, as though scarlet with shame or hurt, and his thin lips seemed just on the verge of quivering. The whole spectacle was sad, especially when he himself felt bad for the man.

Do I really feel bad for him , or is it just pity?

He’d never been able to distinguish the two from one another. Pity felt just like any other form of remorse. A man lost his wife and you felt bad for him, even going so far as to ask how things have been and what he planned on doing with his life, but it was never a true emotion. Sure, that feeling was there, and it would stay with you if only briefly, but it didn’t pass the impersonal barrier called your short-term memory. That was called pity.