บท 26: Chapter 26
Madison promptly got up, still tired and with her son's cum leaking out of her used, puffy pussy as she put on her clothes. Paul and the girls also followed suit, doing the same.
Paul quietly passed his mother a Beretta, which she hid on her waist with her shirt. He didn't like having a pistol carried like that because if there was some malfunction in the safety mechanism, the bullet or the needle could cause a tragedy. Sometimes a bad design could also trigger an unintended shot just by moving it around abruptly. Sure, with these Beretta what were the odds of that happening? but he didn't want to tempt maths, if he could avoid it he would do it.
Sighing and having no choice, he also carried it like that. "Let's go and see what happened. If there is danger, we move to the car we came in while bringing Nick and leave everything here."
All the girls nodded, and they left their bedroom. Not long after, they saw how the people were moving into Thomas and Victor's bedroom. They saw along the way Nick also rushing there, Chris and Liza also moving in that direction.
From the door, they saw Jorge, a worker of the family who looked to be a security guard of the place, Sofia the housemaid who received them in a dressing gown, and Celia. Strand was beside the dead body of Thomas Abigail; it seems he had shot him after he died, as indicated by the hole in a pillow above the head of the body and the pistol beside Strand. He arched an eyebrow as he saw it, recognizing it as the pistol Luis used—a pretty one. If he doesn't badly remember, Luis told him it was a Springfield Armory XD.
"What can you tell him?" Celia asks Strand after looking around at all the people who suddenly appeared in the room.
"This man who loved you..." Celia reproaches him sadly at Thomas death. "Who died believing your lies."
"You tell him the truth. That you looked inside yourself, deep into the place where your soul should be and found it empty." Celia, almost despising him, said it more excitedly as time passed.
Strand was emotionally shocked after doing what he did while shedding a few tears in his eyes, not having words to refute what she was saying.
"You tell him that!" Celia exclaimed loudly as she bitch backhanded slapped his face, humiliating him.
"You love no one. You believe in nothing." Celia says as she raises her hand, preparing to give him another bitch slap.
"No, that's enough. That's enough." Madison says as she intervenes, stopping her.
"Why are you here? Who are you?" Celia looks at her and asks her with scorn and sadness.
"His friend," Madison responded to her with a neutral face as she looked at her.
Celia scoffed at that. "You are his fool. So was my son," she said as she moved to the bedroom door to leave the room.
"Celia, I'm so sorry," Nick stops her before exiting, giving her his condolences as if Strand killed him with that shot after he was already dead.
Paul looked at his mother in confusion, seeing Nick like that, and so were his sisters.
"I have to bury him," Strand says brokenheartedly.
"You don't deserve to bury him." Celia despises him, saying.
"It's what he wanted." Strand still insisting on that.
"What he wanted?" Celia says, not believing at the gall of Strand as she was listening to him. She moved closer and pointed to the poisoned sacramental bread in the paten. "What he wanted was what you promised."
"This man, my beautiful, stupid son, wanted you!" Celia exclaimed to him loudly as she pointed to him.
"He is not your son," Strand says, refuting her.
Celia was shocked by what he said, feeling truly resentful about it and was preparing to fight with him.
"Celia, hey, he didn't mean that." Nick stops her, seeing her excited state, not knowing how she will react. "He didn't mean that."
"Stay out of it," Celia says, not looking at Nick but at Strand with fury in her eyes. That if they could kill someone with just looking, he would be dead over a hundred times over.
Madison looked a little sad, seeing how Nick was so close to that woman in such a short time and seeing also how bad her influence was on him.
"They need some time. Please." Nick pleads for Strand given his excited state.
"You're going to let this boy do your begging?" Celia mocks Victor who was sitting looking at what was happening, not intending to say anything.
"Fine," Celia says, as if relenting, but she was actually favoring Nick, bringing him closer to her.
"Now Thomas can get everything you have to offer. An empty hole, some dirt." Celia with a mocking tone ends the discussion. As Strand just distractedly looks anywhere but at her.
"You have one day," Celia says as she gives him an ultimatum and all of us too, as she looks to Madison and the rest. "The sun comes down, I want you gone. All of you."
It happened just as he expected will to happen, with Thomas gone, Celia is the new defacto leader of this place and it was worse, given that she doesn't even like Strand now. Actually, this situation helped with his idea of leaving this place, so he didn't say anything when she told them to leave by sunrise.
Madison sat beside Strand on the bed as she sighed at the situation at hand. While the rest also were thoughtful about this.
Nick looked outside the window and left after a moment without saying anything.
After a moment, we all left the bedroom and went to our own room. In our bedroom, there was Nick, Liza, Chris, and everyone else except Strand, Daniel, and Ofelia.
"What are we gonna do?" Chris asks while looking at everyone.
"We leave when the sun comes down. She said it," Paul says the obvious.
"Where? Where can we go?" Liza says worriedly.
"For starters, we could try going back to the yacht. If that doesn't work, we can go back to the country, crossing the border. I have a place in mind where we could live peacefully enough," Paul suggests.
"We have a plan then. We need to prepare what we have to depart," Claire says as if everything was decided.
"Hold on, I'm not going back to the boat," Nick says excitedly, seeing how they already had plans to leave this place.
"Baby, we don't have a choice," Madison says, trying to appease her son. "They'll force us off the land."
"Mom," Nick tries to say something, but gets cut off by Madison.
"These people are not our friends. Get it through your head," Madison says anxiously to him. "This place is dangerous. That woman is dangerous."
"She's just upset. I can talk to her," Nick tries to reason with her.
"Nick, there are things you still don't know about this place," Paul says to his brother, telling him everything they found so far about this place and its people. "So, we can't stay in this place."
"You stay away from Celia," Madison snaps at Nick, not wanting to hear anything of it. "Do you hear me? We are leaving."
Nick doesn't say anything more, seeing how everyone has already chosen what to do. But inside, he had other plans.
"When the sun rises over that hill, that's when we move," Madison says while pointing outside through the door leading to the exterior, with the hills far away in sight.
Nick left the room in silence, not saying anything more. Chris and Liza also left to rest for a while and prepare their things.
"Alright, prepare all we have and rest until the time comes. I will go after Nick to see that he doesn't do anything wrong," Paul says to the girls and his mother as he leaves after Nick.
After a moment, he spots him walking along the road to the entrance gates of the vineyard. Trotting, he quickly catches up to him, who is already near the gate.
"What are you doing? Where are you going?" Paul says to Nick, who was surprised for a moment seeing his brother.
"I'm going to make things right, so we don't have to leave this place. Celia, after she calms down, will let us be here," Nick says as he keeps walking.
"Nick, fuck, Nick, we can't stay here, brother. We already told you why," Paul says, trying to reason with him. "It will not change anything if she lets us stay willingly."
"No, Paul, we are fine here. The people here don't fear or are bothered by the dead. There is also food, water, and shelter here. I don't want to go anywhere, killing everything that moves in front of us again," Nick says to him honestly.
"These people are insane, Nick. They see those walkers as living people. Why don't you get it?" Paul says exhaustedly to him.
"Because maybe I am starting to believe that, Paul. Maybe they are alive," Nick says strongly to him.
"No, Nick, you can't believe their nonsense. You already know they aren't," Paul says frustratingly, trying to make him recapacitate. "Fuck, Nick. Listen to yourself."
Nick didn't say anything more as they left the vineyard. Paul couldn't leave his brother in that state; he knew this was something momentaneous that he would enter into reason after he wakes up from the fantasy he was weaving in his mind, fed by the weird belief of Celia and those people.
They walked and kept walking, guided by the moonlight as Paul followed Nick. Amazed that they hadn't crossed any walker on their way, they finally reached Nick's destination—the yacht.
"What are we doing here, Nick?" Paul asks, seeing the yacht a little ways off on the water and the zodiac on the rocky beach.
"I don't know you, but I'm here to retrieve Celia's son to persuade her to let us stay," Nick says as he starts descending toward the beach.
"Fuck," Paul says. He doesn't go with him, seeing that he is already near Rosarito. He prepares to look for a truck to move all the weapons he left outside the vineyard.
He watches as Nick kills a walker and guts him, covering himself in the walker's shit. Seeing that he would have no problem with the walker Luis on his way back, he leaves the place running fast along the coast into the city, far away.
After an unknown amount of time, with dawn breaking and the sun appearing in the sky, he finds a pickup large enough like the one back in the vineyard that Strand took. He hot-wires it and refuels it with the nearby cars by siphoning their fuel.
Not long after, he returned to where the yacht was. He sees that the zodiac is back on the beach in a different place from before and there are no signs of Nick. It seems he has already left with Luis.
He moves the zodiac into the water and boards it, moving toward the Abigail to see if everything is fine for when they come back later.
Once aboard, he checks their stored supplies, but the yacht is empty, picked clean of it. He doesn't know what to think about it or who did it. He checks the M2, and it is there where they left it. So he picks up the tools from where he stored them and removes the machine gun and also picks up the empty .50 cal ammo boxes with their metallic disintegrating link which bound cartridges to each other at the neck inside them, waiting to be filled with their cartridge.
As he places them into the zodiac, he sees in the distance two big navy ships coming closer to this place. He is tempted to board them and kill anyone inside them, but they don't have the personnel to man them nor do they need them. He wants to go back to the country more than being in the water or Mexico. They capturing the yacht is actually making it easier for him to push the group back to the border in the direction of the east coast. So he just boards the zodiac and leaves the yacht.
He carries the M2 along with the rest of the things he picked from the yacht that were worth taking and places them in the cargo bed and leaves in the direction of the vineyard.
After two hours or so of doing detours and picking up all the guns and everything he left, he moves the truck to hide it with everything in a place he thinks would not be looked at as it is hidden good enough.
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Meanwhile at Abigail's estate.
"What do you see?" Celia asked, her voice with excitement as she observed the walker that once was her son. "Look at him. Is this death?"
"What you see is my son. Changed, yes, but no less my son. My Luis. Who you brought back to me." Celia's eyes were filled with love as she softly spoke. "Put him with the others and take care of him."
"There are many who do not understand us or are afraid to. You are not. Why?" Celia asked her voice filled with gratitude and emotional eyes as she caressed Nick's face.
"I don't know," Nick says with a neutral voice. His mind racing with thoughts.
Celia's eyes locked with his, her voice filled with conviction. "You belong here with us, Nicholas. With me. Stay."
"But what about my family?" Nick inquiries. Still not showing his emotions.
Celia's expression softened, her voice gentle. "You want to do the right thing. But they are not like you."
"Celia, they are not bad people." Nick firmly says trying to make her reason.
Celia's eyes hardened, her voice filled with anger. "And when they look upon my son, what do they see? Go on, say it."
"A monster." Nick sighed and said it.
Celia's eyes flashed with rage. "Is that what we call these creatures who can't control their nature, their hunger? And what do we call those who destroy them? The ones who kill without thinking."
"Which is the monster?" Celia's voice was low but her eyes were burning with intensity.
"They will learn. My family won't hurt anyone. They will be safe here." Nick assured her.
"You can't change them, Nicholas." Celia didn't believe it.
"Please." Nick pleads.
"You will be responsible for their actions while they are here. Do you understand?" Celia says after relenting, her eyes looking at his as she carefully explains the terms.
"Yes," Nick answers with a little smile appearing on his face.
"Tell your family they are welcome to stay. But not Victor Strand. He doesn't belong here. He never did." Celia leaves no room for Strand.
Celia's voice rose, her eyes gleaming with anticipation as Nick was about to leave the room. "This is not apocalypse, Nicholas. This is our beginning. The end of death itself. Life eternal."
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Paul entered the vineyard, jumping over the wall as he walked down the dirt path between the grape fields. He exited through the gardens, where he saw Strand digging Thomas's grave.
Paul took one of the chairs that were under an umbrella, as a resting place in the garden as the trees at the sides also provided comfort under the sun and moved it beside Strand, sitting on it as he looked at his digging. This raised eyebrows from both Strand and the other workers around the place.
"It must be tiring," Paul said with a smile as he opened a Coke he had brought with him from outside. "Fuck, this thing is warm but still tastes good. Do you want some?"
"What are you doing here? Where did you come from?" Strand asked him, weirded out by his appearance and the Coke in his hand, which nonetheless he grabbed to sip because of the hot sun.
"I was outside, just came back," Paul said nonchalantly about it. "It seems we need to go at any moment; the sun is up."
"I don't think you're going anywhere so fast," Strand said as he gulped a big mouthful of the soda and passed it back to him, preparing to keep digging. "Your brother brought Celia's son as a peace offering, so you guys could stay. It was quite a show for everyone seeing him appear with him."
"Yeah, well, I knew about it," Paul commented as he kept digging. "I followed him but separated from him at the beach, moved into Rosarito to see if we could go there in case we needed it and picked an extra car also."
As they were chatting, Daniel appeared beside them.
"Paul, where were you?" Daniel asked him, seeing his comfy look instead of preparing to leave this place.
"Just came back from outside," Paul said as he sipped the Coke. "I intended to prepare to leave now with my family, but Strand told me about Nick's show. It wouldn't change anything because I still intend to leave this place." Then he extends his arm to him. "Do you want some?"
"No, I don't want any," Daniel said to him, then turned to Strand, who was digging.
"Don't do this. Don't put him in the ground," Daniel said with concern in his voice as he looked at the vineyard workers standing nearby, watching.
"What?" Strand asked, confused by what he was saying and a little bothered.
Daniel's eyes darted around, as if searching for something. "This place is unholy. The ground here... it's infected. Even the dirt is tainted," he said, his words rushed, almost panicked.
"What?" Paul asked, raising his eyebrows, worried about Daniel. He thought that Daniel had already gone mad or something.
Strand shook his head, trying to make sense of Daniel's words as he continued digging.
"The walls in this place. That woman, her dead." Daniel shook his head, his voice subdued.
Daniel's eyes locked with Strand's, his voice filled with warning as he took the shovel and started to hit the ground with it, seeing that Strand wasn't paying attention to what he was saying. "Hey, your friend; he won't rest. He'll come back for you."
"You don't believe?" Daniel asked him with an intense gaze and unblinking. He was convinced about what he was saying.
"If I did, I'd be with him right now," Strand paused, his patience was wearing thin with Daniel's nonsense. He was tired and sweaty from all the digging work.
Strand took the shovel from his hand, looked at him again, and started digging once more.
"He will return. They return, but they're not the same," Daniel said again, but this time with a low, subdued voice that was almost breaking. He looked distressed as he told him. "And they hate you for it."
"What's wrong with you?" Strand's eyes narrowed with worry, his voice filled with confusion and frustration.
"Don't put him in the ground," Daniel said firmly, looking into his eyes for the last time before leaving.
"Wait, Daniel. Come and rest for a while. Don't leave," Paul tried to make him stay. He saw that the man wasn't in his right mind right now, and obviously, there was something wrong with him. He had seen what Alzheimer's could do to a person; one moment they were there, and the next, they were seeing other things. Their wires got a short circuit, and their brain made them experience or act weirdly to the eyes of other people except them.
"We need to go, Paul," Daniel only said before leaving.
"What is wrong with him?" Strand asked Paul as he sat on the chair, drinking from the Coke again.
"I don't know, but obviously, there's something wrong with his brain. He started acting weird since we came to Baja," Paul explains, getting thoughtful. "I think he might be developing or already has Alzheimer's or something like that. It has to be something psychological or neuronal."
"That's some serious and nasty thing to have," Strand says as he takes a breath, pausing his digging.
"Yeah, it's one of the worst things that can happen to someone as they get old. It's not only bad for them but also for the people close to them," Paul nods, taking a sip of his soda.
"Anyway, this place isn't helping him with whatever he has. Hopefully, when we leave, it'll get better," Paul comments, looking around.
"Yeah, I'm not so sure about that," Strand says, unconvinced, and starts digging again.
"You've still got a while to go. Want some help?" Paul asks, noticing his tired and sweaty appearance.
"No, I've got this. This is something I need to do on my own," Strand declines, continuing to shovel.
"Alright, alright," Paul shrugs, having already offered his help.
After a moment, his mother joins them.
"My love, you're back. When did you come back?" Madison asks, embracing her son who is sitting in the chair.
"Not long ago. I saw Strand and kept him company for a while," Paul replies, placing the bottle beside the chair and taking his mother into his arms, making her sit on his lap with his cock pressed firmly against her big ass. "We also saw Daniel. He doesn't look good right now."
Madison moves her ass on his cock, finding a comfortable position on his lap. "What's wrong with Daniel?"
"We're not sure, but he was saying some weird things. There's definitely something wrong with his brain. I've seen similar episodes from him since we came to Baja," Paul explains, placing one hand between her legs and the other on her ass.
"Do you think it's something serious?" Madison asks, enjoying her son's touch and slowly moving her ass on his cock.
"There is something serious going on with that old man," Strand adds from his digging. "He was spewing a lot of nonsense, but also seemed really worried about something."
"We don't know. I hope not. Hopefully, when we leave this place, he'll get better. Being here isn't helping either," Paul says, as he enjoys the warmth of his mother's body against him. "Also, Nick is another one who has been getting worse since we came into this place."
"Yes, I wanted to talk to you about your brother. There's definitely something wrong with him," Madison says, her rising arousal fading as she starts to worry about her son. "I don't know what's happening to him."
"Mom, about Nick..." Paul was about to start explaining that he was being tricked into accepting the insane ways of these people by being manipulated in a moment of weakness when Strand quickly interrupted him.
"Yes, you do," Strand says, stopping his digging and extending his hand towards Paul, asking for the Coke at his side.
Strand takes a sip, wetting his mouth, and continues. "You take a vulnerable kid, an addict, drop him in a mess of death and doubt, and it won't be long before he starts looking for something to cling to."
"In comes Mama Celia with her authentic Mexican cuisine, a side of quasi-religious voodoo bullshit, and voila. You bet your ass she's got her hooks in him." Strand says this as if it's a matter of fact that Nick would be manipulated given his antecedents.
"That's what I've been saying," Paul exasperatedly comments. "All these people in this place are insane. They believe in some weird shit, and I've already told him, but he doesn't want to listen or see. He started thinking these things since he found out he could become 'invisible' to the walkers, but he doesn't seem to understand that camouflaging from them doesn't mean anything. They are dead. Period. There is nothing grander in the matter."
"There are no ifs in between," Paul continues, fuming, "they are not alive, they have no soul, they are not what they were anymore. They are just an empty shell that moves around and are dangerous. To no say disgusting too!" Paul releases what he thought about it. "There is no worse deaf person than the one who does not want to listen."
"This isn't how I imagined us parting. Everyone seemingly going crazy," Strand sighs as he rests against the shovel.
"Where will you go?" Madison asks from her son's lap, mentally exhausted about everything.
"Back to the boat. Ha! If there is a boat," Strand replies, taking a drink from a water can beside him after finishing the last sip of Coke from the bottle and dropping it away. "You interested?"
Paul smiles at him. "We were thinking the same."
Strand raised an eyebrow at that but didn't comment anything.
"We can't leave without Nick," Madison says.
"You should stay, take care of your own," Strand says with a small chuckle.
"You aren't leaving either, Strand," Paul interjects. "At least not to the boat. Before I came, the Mexican coast guard took it. There is no boat anymore."
Strand and Madison are surprised at the news of the yacht's fate.
"Dammit, now I need to figure out where I'll go after this," Strand curses, becoming thoughtful about what he would do.
"You can come with us," Madison invites him. "We'll take Nick forcefully if needed and leave from this place."
Strand chuckles. "To where? Where would you go?"
"We can try Rosarito, before planning something more permanent, there is this big hotel beside the beach that we could use momentarily as a stop," Paul says what he was thinking after leaving here. "Being honest between us I'm not so keen on staying in Mexico, I want to go back to the country if possible. There are a couple of places where we can settle more permanently."
"There you have it. Would you come with us?" Madison asks again, grateful that he took them from the danger of LA all the way to here.
"Look at both of you, getting all sentimental," Strand says as he digs. "We were the means to each other's end. We helped each other get here. It was a useful arrangement. Let's not go confusing things with vague terms like 'friend.'"
"Oh, come on. Don't be an asshole," Paul says with a smile, rolling his eyes at Strand's antics.
"Fine. I will go with you and your family," Strand concedes, continuing to dig.
"Good. Let's wait until Strand finishes what he needs to do, and then let's grab Nick and go," Paul smiles. He knew Strand would leave with them; he was just playing hard to get.
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