Chapter 28

They met up with the group at a building where they stopped to rest, which was further along the road, when the sun came up. They got the surprise of seeing that Claire and Alicia were distressed and anxious because Nick ran away in the middle of the darkness when no one noticed him.

Paul growled angrily at the stupid thing Nick continued doing, that guy until something terrible happened to him he would not stop.

"We need to look for him," Madison distressedly said to everyone. "We need to find Nick."

"Calm down, Mom," Alicia tried to appease her mother. "We will look for him."

"Nick keeps doing this. Why? I don't understand him." Claire exclaimed, frustrated and worried.

"Calm down, Madison," Strand said to her as he saw that she was about to leave in the pickup she came in. "First, let's have breakfast and equip ourselves with the stuff Paul and you brought back. Then we can look for him more safely. After all, you don't want to be also worried about your daughters while looking for him."

"You are right. It just...I don't know where he will go, what he will do," Madison said as she angrily closed the pickup door.

"Mom... We will find him," Claire said as she took her mother's hand.

"Madison, even if we try to find him, given the current conditions, it would be hard. You need to be prepared for anything," Strand said, as he looked around the building.

"We should start looking around this place, just in case he didn't run away, but something happened to him," Andrea said, putting forward an idea.

"That sounds better than going headless to look for him," Daniel also approved. "We should look for 5 kilometers around this building. Past that, he left this place. Then we should project the search from here in the direction to the vineyard," Daniel explained how to move forward as he pointed around and then to the direction of the Abigail vineyard, which still left a cloud of dark smoke in the distance.

After a quick breakfast and equipping themselves with the necessary supplies, the group set out to search for Nick. They split between groups, hoping to cover more ground.

Paul paired up with Alicia, while Madison and Strand teamed up together. Claire, Andrea, and Amy left for another direction, the same as Liza and Chris. Daniel and Ofelia stayed behind. Ofelia wanted to make sure her father wasn't having any problems after yesterday's episode and to keep an eye on the cars and the rest of their things as the rest traveled lightly armed on foot across the desert, looking for Nick.

Paul and Alicia headed towards the mountains as Paul used his enhanced senses of smell in wolf form to see if he could pick up his scent somewhere or if he could find any signs or clues that could lead them to Nick. As they walked down the rocky and gravel ground, Paul's wolf body started to squirm and convulse as his body structure reconfigured into one of a human. He attentively felt the process to know how to undo it on his own.

"Brother!" Alicia exclaimed in surprise as she threw herself at him, seeing he was back as a human.

"I'm back, baby sister," Paul said as he kissed her lips and grabbed a handful of her round ass.

"What happened to you? How did you become a wolf?" Alicia asked quickly, like a spitfire, with two questions.

"I don't know, as I have said before. Well, I wrote it on the ground before," Paul said as he rested his forehead on hers. "But it felt like something wanted to come out of inside my body when I looked into the moon. Then the next moment, the only thing I felt was my body breaking apart and the agonizing pain of it. After that, I found myself like being put in a totally different body. I couldn't coordinate at first because it felt totally different, the feeling of trying to move a limb of the body."

"How could you have so many weird things happened to you? First your powers, then your blood changing humans into those things, vampires, and now you became a wolf. How? I can't do anything of those things you do, and I am your twin sister! Hell, even Mom who birthed us can't." Alicia was so weirded out by the occurrences happening to him and a little jealous too. She wanted to experience supernatural things too. She was his twin sister!

"Hey, don't get jealous, baby girl. We'll try to figure it out and see if you and the others can do something similar to this. For the moment, I don't know what it is; it just happens." Paul tried to appease his sister with sweet words and touches after she calmed down.

"We'll continue at another time. We should keep looking for Nick," Paul said that, but he was naked in the heat and on the hot ground, so they got back to the building where Paul changed and explained to Daniel and Ofelia what happened as he could. No really telling them anything like Alicia, as he didn't know how to explain that. So, he did like he didn't know what the problem was.

As the sun got hotter at midday as the afternoon started, Paul and Alicia found themselves still looking everywhere without success searching for any signs of Nick. The desert plains stretched out before them, and the heat was intense. They took turns calling out for Nick, their voices echoing through the empty landscape.

At some point, Suddenly, a figure appeared on the horizon. Alicia squinted, trying to get a better look. "I think I see something!"

She raised the binoculars, her heart pounding in her chest. The figure was too far away to make out any details, but she could see that it was moving opposite of them.

Paul couldn't see him clearly because his back was turned, but he figured his height was about the same as Nick's.

They quickly made their way towards the figure, their hearts racing with a mix of hope and fear. As they got closer, they could see that it was a man, stumbling through the gravel terrain. Paul and Alicia exchanged a look, both hoping that it was Nick.

As they approached the man, their hopes died of him being Nick, because it was a walker, it had shredded clothes and half a chest eaten as his form stumbled as it moved.

Sighing Paul unsheated the bayonet and killed him. "We are getting nowhere looking for him like this, but there is no other way to know if he is around the building or left."

"Paul, we need to keep looking. It's Nick!" Alicia said with worry.

"I know, I'm not talking about giving up looking for him, just that it's frustrating, he left on his own will from us. He left us!" Paul angrily kicked a few rocks away from the ground as his eyes changed to a glowing yellow.

"I know, but we can't leave him alone, you know how he is. He will die if we don't keep helping him." Alicia says, as she touches his face calming him.

"Let's keep looking for the idiot, he should be our little brother rather than the big brother." Paul snickered and took Alicia's hand as they kept looking.

Not long after, well into the afternoon, they closed the circle as they found themselves with Liza and Chris and by now Madison and Strand should have found themselves with Claire, Andrea and Amy."

"Did you find anything?" Paul asked the mother-son duo.

Liza sighed at that. "Nothing, there is no sign of him."

"We are the same, we found a walker stumbling across the desert but nothing else." Paul massaging his brow said.

"Your brother will be fine, after all, he walked across the dead with no fear. So he shouldn't have a problem with them. Don't worry." Chris tries to lift the mood by seeing Paul and Alicia's frustration and worry.

"Yeah, I hope so too," Paul says, a little resigned.

"Let's go with the others to see if they found something," Alicia says. She then moves in the direction of the building from where they started.

A while later with the sun descending everyone reunited again.

"We don't fund anything, just rocks and a walker," Paul spoke first.

"We also didn't find anything until the moment we came upon Paul and Alicia." Liza also talked about their search.

"The same with us, there was nothing," Madison said saddened by it.

"We found something," Andrea said, renewing everyone's hope. "There were tracks in the ground of a person walking from our direction going away. They were clean, orderly and without interruption, so it was a person and not a walker."

"Yes, we found them in the direction of the vineyard," Claire also added. "We need to go back there to take a look for him."

"Let's go. We need to go." Madison quickly said, anxious about him.

"We need to move now if we want to look for him," Paul said as he prepared more thoroughly. "There is little time of light before the sun finishes going down. After that, we will need to wait for the next day to keep looking for him."

"We need to go well equipped in there," Paul said as he strapped the M4A1 on his back and put a belt with ammo pouch for it, filling them with magazines. "We don't know what would be found in there or could happen. The workers or walkers could be waiting for us or anything."

"We shouldn't go all of us. We need someone to stay and look after the rest of the things." Paul commented.

"I will go with you two," Claire said as she strapped body armor and the leftover M4A1 as she had seen her mother do.

"I'm not staying. It's not happening," Alicia echoed, not waiting for a word from anyone. She took the AR-15 and the leftover body armor and helmet.

Andrea silently took a rifle from the cargo bed. It was a Smith & Wesson M&P15 rifle, the one Luis brought aboard the Abigail when he first appeared. She strapped it on her back. When she saw Paul looking at her, she smiled. "I'm going too. You are my family now, like Amy. Your brother is part of it too."

"Yeah, there is no way we are not going. Paul, you are ours as we are yours. We support each other," Amy said as she strapped around her waist a belt with a pistol holder and ammo pouch with clips. She took a Beretta to use as a sidearm and wanted to take one of those AKs, but Paul knew the recoil would be a disaster without practice.

"Wait Amy," Paul said as he gave her the M4A1 he had in hand, and he took one of those AKs instead. He liked the M4A1 more than those AKs. Sure, both did the job, but he preferred the firepower made in his country.

"Girls..." Madison was emotional with a smile on her lips, seeing and hearing Andrea and Amy at their commitment to their family.

"We would help too." Liza also said, and Chris followed after her.

"Stay," Strand says as he straps the MP5 and moves into Thomas' pickup truck. "We should go in one truck to save fuel, just in case. You four can protect this place and the rest of our things here."

"But we want to go too," Chris retorts.

"It's okay, Chris. You stay and protect this place," Madison says, trying to appease him.

"Yeah, we shouldn't be long anyway. It's getting late and there's little daylight left," Paul says. "Liza, try to give a check on Daniel to see if he's okay. He had a rough day yesterday."

Paul climbs into the cargo bed, while Madison and Alicia sit in the front seats. In the back are Claire, Andrea and Amy, along with Paul.

As they approach the burned-out vineyard, they see the charred remains of the buildings still burning. A few side walls have collapsed, bringing down entire rooms of the villa. The walls that remain standing are blackened, and the windows are shattered.

They cautiously make their way through the vineyard, keeping an eye out for any movement. Paul scans through the rows of grapevines from the back of the truck, finding a lot of walkers roaming between them. A few are burned into charcoal but still walking.

He doesn't find any person 'alive' along the road until they stop beside the main building that is still burning but not as strongly as during the morning. They descend the truck to search for clues if Nick is still around here or if he came here in the first place.

"Alright, let's take a look, but don't move too much around. Stay near the truck," Paul says to them as they load their guns.

Strand moves along the gardens to see if he finds something. While Madison, Alicia, and Claire take a peek around the burning house and the building beside it that still remain mostly intact.

Paul, Andrea, and Amy stay behind beside the truck at the entrance of the house as they clear the walkers and look around. Paul moves around through the rubble in the front, searching for anything, but there is nothing to be found more than rubble and ashes.

Then he moves along the side roads in front into a few little cottages beside the field of grapevines. As he moves, the walkers attracted before by the truck as they come started appearing, stumbling out from behind the rows of grapevines, their rotting flesh hanging off their bones.

"Kill them, girls. You need to keep practicing. What better than live targets? You learn faster with pressure," Paul says to Andrea and Amy, who are a little stressed having the walkers so close.

"Paul!" Andrea exclaims at him, but she puts the Smith & Wesson M&P15 against her shoulder and aims, starting to shoot nonstop at the group of incoming walkers.

To some walkers, she gets to kill from close headshots. For others, she puts a few rounds in their necks or grazes their heads. And if she doesn't, they just pass away beside them. Andrea's grouping isn't so bad, given the little practice she has with the guns. Given time, she could be a deadly woman with a gun in hand, because she has the guts to see the front and pull the trigger, which not everyone can do. After all, not everyone reacts the same to a given situation, doing different things.

Amy still has hope too, like Andrea. She keeps her eyes open in the front as she shoots, but she isn't so good with the assault rifle. She needs more practice to hit, to have a more trained and firmer hand as she aims and shoots. Still, as they retreat back and continue to shoot, they kill the group.

Paul can also hear a few dispersed shots in the distance. Strand and the girls are shooting at walkers too because there are a few bursts and then they stop altogether after a moment.

After being done with this group, Paul kills with the bayonet one that is lagging behind and keeps moving along the path into a hovel that is intact. He picks up sounds of breathing inside it.

Paul raised his gun and moved slowly while aiming at the building as he yelled, "Come out, I know you are in there."

"Don't make me go inside; it would do nothing good for you if I do that. I will not hurt you if you come out with your hands in the air." Paul yelled again. Andrea and Amy beside him were surprised as they didn't hear anything or see from there to know that someone was inside. They also aimed at the building.

Soon a figure walked out with her hands up. It turned out to be a woman around her thirties, nervous and scared. Seeing by the clothes she wore was a worker here, but she had a limping leg. She must have been left behind, Paul thought.

"Please, don't hurt me," she spoke, trembling. Her eyes were wide with fear.

Paul lowered his gun, his voice softening. "We're not going to hurt you. We're looking for one of ours. Have you seen a young man with brown hair, around 20 years old? He was with our group when we came here."

The woman shook her head, her eyes darting nervously between Paul, Andrea, and Amy. "I haven't seen anyone. I've been hiding here since the fire and the dead, trying to stay alive."

"Why are you here? Where are the others?" Paul asked her with force in his voice.

"They left... I stayed..." The woman timidly said.

"Why?" Paul pressed her for more.

"Why, woman? Answer." Paul said strongly as he aimed at her with the gun for being silent for a while.

"I say... Please don't shoot." The woman trembling, yelled almost crying.

"I stayed because I was about to offer myself to them as I couldn't go so far with this leg in the middle of the night. But I got scared, okay? I couldn't do it. I don't want to die yet." The woman said, whimpering.

"Don't you were like the rest, believing that after becoming like them you were reborn, living in a different way?" Paul mockingly said.

"I... I don't know... But I don't want to be like them anymore. I want to live." The woman timidly said.

"Alright, we will take you out, but first, tell us what you are still hiding from us. I know you haven't said everything. Where are the other workers of this place?" Paul pressed further.

"They left after this place started burning all over." The woman slowly spoke with a dry mouth. It seemed she was in that hovel left to die with no food or water. "Seeing that this place was done, they left for their family in other places. I know some of them planned to go south to La Paz."

"Some of them must still be in the village or along the way from here to there." The woman added. "Maybe they know something about the guy you were talking about, the one who brought Luis back, right?"

"Yes, that's my brother. We are looking for him. He left in the middle of the night in the direction to here." Paul said, annoyed at Nick and not finding anything about him.

Paul then approached and gave her a water bottle, so she could drink, seeing her thirsty.

"Do you want to leave this place?" Paul asks as he observes her.

"Yes, please. Take me out, I will die if I stay here with all those...dead people." The woman with hope pleads but hesitates how to name the walkers.

"We can take you out of here and drop you in some house along the way," Paul says after accepting to take her out of the vineyard, after all, she provided some info. "But, if u can be of utility as maybe knowing where to go to look for other people that worked here and could maybe know where my brother is, we can treat your wound and give you supplies."

The woman's eyes brightened at the mention of giving her medical help and supplies. "Yes, I know a house where you can look for them. They talked about a place where they will stay before departing, maybe they are still there."

"Fine, we will take you up to your word. But don't lie in vain making us waste precious time that we could use to look for him." Paul warned her.

"No! I'm not lying, is true, I know of that place and they talked about going there." The woman said again excitedly.

"Alright. Alright, don't get excited." Paul says as he looks around for walkers.

"What's your name?" Amy asked the woman.

"Sonia. I was just a simple housemaid in this place" Sonia says a little weakly and in pain. She had a sprained foot.

"Ok, let's go back to the truck, we will not find anything in here," Paul says to them indicating Andrea and Amy to go in front and he in the back covering them all, Sonia was in the middle of them.

As they made their way back a walker appeared limping between the grapevines having the flesh from his leg eaten, he was a man that Paul recognized so he stopped and drew the bayonet and put the body to rest. It was the peón Ramón who took care of the stable.

When they appeared in the front of the house there were a few walkers around the truck who they dispatched fast, not long after Strand, Madison, Claire and Alica came back almost at the same time.

"We didn't find any trace of Nick or anyone," Madison says downcasted at everyone. "Who is she?"

"Sonia. She worked here, I have seen her before a couple of times, she isn't like the others she was pretty new." Strand says as he sees the woman. "I don't find anything in the gardens and his surroundings."

"Sonia said that everyone left after the fire, she stayed...But changed her mind about her fate midway." Paul says with a knowing look at the group.

"Let's leave; we won't find anything even if we keep trying. There is no light anymore," Paul says as it is evening already. "Sonia knows where the people from here will be after they left. We reached an agreement to treat her leg for the information; she will guide us there. It's our best bet to know more about Nick before we keep looking here."

"Alright. Let's move," Madison sighed tiredly and depressed.

As the moonlights illuminated their path, the group made their way back in silence, exhausted and covered in sweat. They had searched a lot since the morning with no rest, but there was still no sign of Nick.

Madison sank into Paul's chest, her face etched with worry. "Where could he be?" she whispered, her voice trembling. "We've looked everywhere."

Paul placed a comforting hand on her back. "We'll find him, Mom. In the morning, we will go to the place Sonia says and see if we find more about him. If not, we will try again here to see if there are footprints or something somewhere."

As they drove back to the building where they were staying, he couldn't help but wonder if Nick had left this place entirely, leaving them behind for good. The thought made his stomach churn with anger, but also worry for the fool; after all, he was his brother.