Chapter 71: Fifteen Years
’Ephraim.’
He had never heard the name, never seen it written anywhere in the shop, and in the second it took him to understand that Basil meant the man he had called his uncle, the silence had already stretched too long for a nephew.
’So that’s what the rounds were for...’
Naturally, the man still needed to collect water ultimately, but he had known from the beginning that Basil had more than simple intentions with all of this.
"It’s been a while," Dion said.
Basil nodded slowly.
"How long did he have that shop? I always forget."
Dion looked out at the city, his internal expression only cringing more with each word he uttered.
"...A long time."
"You ever go shooting with him out at the range in the back? He used to keep it open on Sundays for friends."
Dion didn’t answer that one. He could only internally sigh to himself at this point.
Basil let the quiet linger for a while longer.
Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a photograph, creased at one corner and small enough to fit in a palm, and he held it out.
Three men stood in front of a wide lake with a camping caravan off to the side behind them, and camping equipment set up all around them as well.
The one in the middle was older, heavyset, with a broad face and a cap pulled low.
To his left stood Basil, younger by several years, with his arm over the man’s shoulder.
A third man on the right was laughing at something outside the frame.
And in the distance at the back, facing the lake with a fishing pole was another younger man, though he looked more somewhere in his early teens than properly grown.
"That’s Ephraim," Basil said, pointing to the man in the middle. "I took this from the office when we went through. It was on the wall behind his desk."
Dion looked at the photograph, and then at Basil, and said nothing while he internally remembered the look on the zombie that he had killed in that store room.
’He really was... just unlucky.’ He thought about how the man had clearly been preparing to leave for survival.
"He didn’t have any nephews," Basil said, bringing the picture back into his pocket. "He didn’t have any family at all, besides his ex-wife, and she moved to the coast years ago, and I would know. I was one of his closest friends for the better part of fifteen years."
The floor below them creaked as someone turned in their sleep.
"So what I want to know," Basil said, lifting his solemn gaze up to him, "is what you’re actually doing here with us."
"..."
"Surviving on my own worked for two days, but it won’t for much longer. The things out there are getting stronger, and I don’t know enough about any of this yet. I didn’t even know what a class was until it was mentioned in the car. So really, there isn’t any smart reason to think I should continue surviving alone."
Basil watched him without his expression shifting.
"That’s a reason to find a group. Not a reason to lie about who you are to get into one."
Dion shook his head a little and shrugged, saying, "If I had walked up to you as a stranger, alone inside a locked gun shop, using a shotgun I claimed I hadn’t taken... would our immediate meeting have been so straightforward considering Irvin’s attitude towards me? Not to mention, would Anton have brought me back so readily?"
Basil’s jaw moved slightly, and he didn’t answer that, because they both knew.
"Ephraim’s... probably dead," he said. "Most people probably are. And whatever your reasons were for being in that shop, you didn’t take anything from a living man, so I’m not angry about that."
He turned to the window, not facing Dion fully.
"But here’s where we are. You’re strong enough to be useful, and you’re willing to trade what you can do for the safety of numbers. That’s fine. But as far as Anton and the rest of them are concerned, you’re a stranger who showed up tonight and started telling them what to do.
"Irvin already doesn’t trust you. And Irvin carries weight with this group. If I tell them that you lied about the shop, about Ephraim, then whatever you earned tonight by killing that gnoll goes with it. Best case, they keep you around and stop taking anything you say seriously. Worst case, Irvin pushes to have you out, and with how thin things are right now, Anton might not fight him on it."
Dion didn’t argue. All of it was true after all. The only thing that he thought about was perhaps his unfortunate luck to have actually met someone that knew Ephraim.
"So I’m not going to tell them," Basil finally said, looking back at him, "But I need something from you in return. Not just fighting when the occasion calls for it. These people need someone strong from you awakened checking on them, carrying water, sitting with the ones who can’t sleep."
He held Dion’s gaze, and his voice was quieter when he finished.
"You do that, and as far as anyone needs to know, Ephraim’s nephew is welcome to stay."
’He’s being a lot fairer about this than I thought he would have... and more than I deserved perhaps.’
"Considering that you knew him," he said, "were there any other gun shops around here? Ones Ephraim might have mentioned."
Basil thought about it silently for several moments.
"There’s one about six blocks west of here, but that whole stretch has been crawling with zombies since the second night. We had tried to go there first, but couldn’t get through safely enough."
He rubbed the back of his neck, sighing a little.
"Then there’s a hunting and sporting goods place further north, not too far from Horizon Park, and it’s packed with more rifles and shotgun shells than pistols. And then there’s one past the industrial stretch, deeper into the city, but that’s too far to realistically get to and back in one night. Not with how things are out there."
Dion nodded faintly, continuing, "...Do you have a gun yourself?"
"A CZ 75, yes." Basil’s hand went briefly to his waistband. "But I ran through the last sixteen rounds of my magazine last night."
Basil stood there for another moment, then tapped the windowsill once with his palm and walked back toward the partitions, leaving behind his regards.
"Thank you for the help."
Dion stood by the window and watched him go.
The floor had gone quiet, with even the restless finally asleep.
Then a few minutes later, more than a single set of footsteps then began to come up the stairwell.
Anton appeared at the landing with Irvin and Yara behind him.