It didn't take them long before they returned to their temporary place of stay. Chris and Daniel received them outside as they stopped in front.
Daniel saw that they didn't bring Nick but a woman, who by looking at her uniform, he already knew was from the vineyard. "What happened?"
"We didn't find Nick or anything that could tell us where he is. But she may be able to guide us to where he could be." Claire answered him.
"Yeah. It's better than to keep looking in the dark. Tomorrow morning, we will leave for the place she heard the rest of the workers will regroup before parting ways to different places." Paul said as he descended the truck and moved to the side of the building, intending to pee.
As he pulled his dick out to pee, he felt a hand wrap around it, shaking him a few times before breathing in his ear. "Brother, you didn't let me ride you when you were a wolf," Claire said as she licked his earlobe.
"Claire, I didn't know I would be back as a human after a while," Paul said while he started peeing after she pumped his cock a few times, still guiding his dick with her hand as he peed.
Paul relaxed in the pleasure of peeing and his sister's hand, enjoying the sensation, as he emptied his bladder all he could while getting a hard-on in the process because she kept pumping his cock.
"Big sister, you are getting so naughty lately," Paul said as he turned around and grabbed her tits, pinching her nipples, making her moan in his mouth as he kissed and played with her little tongue.
"Aahnn...Brother," Claire moaned as she kept pumping his cock in her hands. "You made me like this. It's your fault. You need to take responsibility."
"I will, baby girl. After all, you are mine to enjoy. I love you as you are, and the more naughty, the better," Paul said as he separated from her plump lips, leaving a line of wet saliva between them.
Paul caressed her lips with his finger as he looked into her cloudy eyes. "I want you to taste the fruit of your work," Paul then pushed her onto her knees and pushed his cock still with traces of his recent activity against her lips. "Lick it clean, love."
Claire almost by inertia wrapped her lips around his cock, not even thinking that he had just a moment ago peed, she sucked and licked him all around his cock of anything, leaving him clean. Paul was so excited at the raunchy scene and the lewd look on his sister that it didn't take him long to cum all over her mouth, filling her with a bucket's worth of cum, making it hard for her to drink it all, spilling from the corners of her mouth.
"Good sister, Claire," Paul said as he petted her head while relaxing with closed eyes.
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The next morning, everyone left the place with everything en route to where Sonia was pointing them. Liza healed her feet, got fed, and rested with them, making her anew after her dilemma.
As the sun began to set, casting an orange and pink glow across the sky, Sonia led the weary group down a dusty road lined with crumbling rustic brick houses.
They drove in silence, each lost in their own thoughts and fears.
Finally, they reached a small house on the outskirts of town with a car in the driveway filled with things, as if someone was ready to depart from this place for good. After the group left their cars while looking around alert for anything, Sonia knocked on a rustic metal door that was locked with a latch from the inside. After a moment, there were sounds from inside.
"Who is it?" A woman with suspicion and alertness in her voice asked from inside.
Paul looked at Sonia and gestured for her to do the talking. Sonia, having no choice, started the conversation.
"Sofia! Is that you? It's me, Sonia." Sonia hesitated for a moment after hearing the woman's voice.
"Sonia! You don't stay to be part of your new beginning?" Sonia asked with doubt, now more alert than before.
"I tried, but I... I couldn't do it," Sonia said in a low voice, while suppressing her surging emotions. After all, just a couple of hours ago, she had wanted to take her own life. "I don't want to die anymore. I don't want to give up just yet. I hid in the crumbling storage building beside the house."
"Hide, Juan," Sofia whispered to someone beside her. Paul, from outside the house, got to hear her say that, knowing she said it to the kid with the football, Juan.
Sofia opened the door, which creaked as it opened, and at the same time, she spoke. "Sonia, it's okay. Not everyone has that kind of determination to sacrifice for their faith."
When she took notice of Paul, Madison, and the rest armed and pointing at her, she yelled. "Sonia, what did you do? Why are they here?"
"Sofia, don't do anything. They will not harm you; they helped me, and I'm helping them in return," Sonia quickly said to her, trying to de-escalate the situation.
Sofia, hearing her say that, was just a little bit more at ease, now knowing how she was still alive and got out of the vineyard and why she was with them and guided them to here. Then, she looked at the group. "Don't shoot; I'm not armed. Why are you people here? Wasn't enough with destroying our home?" Sofia spoke with hatred as she looked at them.
"Victor Strand, you destroyed the house of the Abigail family that was there even before you were born. Don't you feel sad for Thomas?" Sofia, with despise, said to him. "And who knows what you did to Celia."
Strand didn't answer her, as if not interested in it anymore.
"Stop yelling; let's calm down and talk. We are not here to kill you or do something bad; we are looking for answers," Paul said to her while still pointing at her. "But only you can decide if you want to answer them willingly or not."
"You guys forced our hand back in the vineyard; we had no other choice," Paul calmly said to her.
"Celia is now living her new life. Don't you lot preach that they are not dead while still roaming around in that way?" Paul smiled at her. "We can help you to transition to that."
Sofia's face changed, but she didn't comment about it. She doesn't fear them, but she's not looking for them to become one of them either. When her time comes, she will naturally have no problem, or at least she hoped. Also, she still needed to help Juan. "What do you want?"
"My son; we are looking for my son," Madison said with a tingle of desperation and worry. "He...is confused and ran in the middle of the night. We have been searching for him since yesterday, and we still are."
"We followed his tracks into the vineyard," Alicia also spoke, adding what they knew. "We need to know about our brother."
"Look. We just want to know about Nick, and you were there in the vineyard when he left us." Paul says as she sees her every reaction at the mention of Nick. Capturing her subtle facial expression changes.
Sofia's eyes dart between the barrels of the guns still aiming at her, her lips pressed together in a thin line. "I don't know anything," she spits out, her voice laced with lies. "I don't know where he is."
Paul softened his grip on the gun, letting it hang in front of him with the 3-point sling, the metal glinting ominously in the sunlight. "We both know that's not true," he growls, taking a step closer to her and then pointing with a finger inside the house. "You're going to tell us where Nick is, or I'll go inside and grab Juan, and we'll see if you will tell us then what you know and if that doesn't work, I will make you spit it out of your mouth or Daniel will.
"Don't make things hard, I don't want this to get bloody. I'm tired, we are all tired of looking around for him." Paul says to her with his patience already wearing thin with her and Nick's situation too. If it wasn't because Nick could die somewhere and they will never know if he is alive or dead he would let him go wherever he wants and don't give a fuck if he dies someday. But now with these times, they will be uncertain all the time about his whereabouts.
A flicker of fear crosses Sofia's face before she composes herself, her jaw set in frustration.
Madison stepped forward seeing that the woman was still hesitating to talk, her eyes pleading with Sofia. "Please, Sofia, we need to find Nick. He's my son, and he's out there alone."
Sofia's resolve crumbles under Madison's emotional appeal. She swallows hard, her gaze dropping to the ground before she speaks. "Nick is not here anymore," she said finally, her voice barely above a whisper. "He's gone."
"What do you mean with that?" Claire loudly asked her.
Madison's heart sank, and she felt the world around her tilt. "What do you mean, he's gone?"
"He's gone from this place. Not that he is dead." Sofia quickly answers seeing them misunderstanding her words.
Sofia hesitated, her gaze darting between Paul's gun and Madison's desperate eyes. "After the vineyard burned down, the rest of us that were still fine and alive left together to here, Sonia decided to stay there because of her injury not knowing what would happen on the way to here. We respected her determination and left. We found Nick as we were leaving. Because he was like us and Celia liked and favored him, we took him in with us on our way to here."
She pauses, her voice trembling as she continues. "But this group was just temporary, we were all prepared to leave this place and look for our families or go to other places to live. He wanted to be with people like us, like him.
"So, I told him that the others were leaving to find their families and that I was taking Juan south to La Paz to find his father and mother, I owed them before. I gave Nick some supplies for the road and told him to keep heading north, to find a place where the dead aren't seen as a threat. There are many groups like us, but I heard about a community in Tijuana, a big group of people who think like us, and do like back at the vineyard."
Sofia's eyes meet Madison's, her expression softening with understanding. "He left yesterday morning, Madison. He's gone to find his own way, different from yours or mine or anyone else's. You need to let him go."
Madison's heart hurts as she listens to Sofia's words and feels her knees buckle, and Alicia rushes to support her. "He can't be gone," she whispered, her voice choked with emotions. "He can't leave us. Not again."
Strand places a comforting hand on her shoulder, his voice low and soothing. "He's gone, Madison. There's nothing more we can do."
Paul's hand tightened into a fist, its knuckles whitening by the force, his eyes turning into a glowing yellow as he bored into Sofia's. "Is that all? Is that the whole story?"
Sofia nodded, her eyes filled with a mix of fear and confusion as she saw what was happening before her eyes. How his eye color changed. "That's all I know. I swear."
Paul lowered his head slightly, his jaw clenched with frustration. "Let's leave," he said resigned, his voice tight and disappointed. "We need to regroup and figure out our next move."
"But... Nick." Madison says a little in anguish
"Mom, you heard her. It's been more than a day since he left this place and us behind, he already chose what to do. We're never gonna find him like this." Alicia says to her, sad but also knowing that there was nothing they could do.
"But, he always comes home..." Madison says a little hesitant.
"Mom, it's you and me, Claire and Paul now, whether you like it or not," Alicia says, looking at her eyes in distress.
"Okay," Madison sighed and said quietly while looking in the distance. She knew Alicia was right, but the weight of Nick's absence hurt her a lot, she was his mother, after all. How could he go on without them? but she also needed to think about her other children.
As they walked back to the car, Claire helped her mother, her hand finding Madison's and giving it a gentle squeeze. "Mom, We'll find him later," she said softly, her voice filled with a quiet certainty that Madison envied. "He did this all the time. He'll come back to us."
Madison managed a weak smile, as she embraced her daughter, but her heart felt heavy in her chest.
Back at the car, the group gathered around, their faces etched with exhaustion. They had spent the better part of the day yesterday until now searching for Nick, only to find that he had already left them behind. The disappointment and frustration hung heavy in the air.
"What now?" Ofelia asked, her voice barely above a whisper. "Where do we go from here?"
"We need a place to stay, to rest more comfortably than just the floor." Strand, who had been quietly observing the scene, stepped forward.
Alicia speaks up, her voice filled with determination. "That hotel up the beach, in Rosarito. We can go there, it was the plan all the time before we started looking for Nick."
"Come on, let's go," Daniel says from inside the pickup.
As they piled into the cars, each lost in their own thoughts. Madison leaned against Paul's chest in the back of the truck, who was comforting her with caresses and words as they made their way to the hotel. They had fought so hard to keep their family together, to survive in a world that wanted nothing more than to tear them apart. But now, with Nick's departure, it felt like they were losing the battle.
Sonia stayed with Sofia and Juan, intending to leave with them to the south.
Madison turned to Paul, her eyes searching his. "What are we going to do now?" she asked, her voice trembling. "Nick's gone. He left us behind."
"I do love him you know, he is my brother. Part of me wants that...he was different, more normal, so I tried, I fuckin tried so hard with him. But he's not going to change, we need to do something else now and it's not just keep looking for Nick." Paul sadly says as he caresses her face. "We have to let him go. We need to do that for him."
Madison nodded, as Paul wiped away the tears that streamed down her cheeks.
"Mom...I'm not saying we should give up on Nick, it's just that he is already a big man and we are already tired of going after him all the time," Paul says as he keeps caressing his mother as she is in his embrace, leaning her back against his chest while being between his legs. "You need to rest too. You did everything that you could, you fought for him, you looked for him, you killed for him. You did the best you could."
"Paul..." Madison didn't know what to say, she didn't want to think anymore about anything by now, mentally and emotionally exhausted. "At least I have you. Then and now, you are there to comfort me, you are the best that motherhood gave to me." Madison then moved around and faced him, as she took his face into her hands and kissed his lips in a slow and loving way, pouring all her feelings into that kiss.
Paul also embraced her as he kissed his mother, playing with her little tongue inside her mouth, she was looking for the release of her pent-up emotions. So he got frisky with her, touching her all over as he kissed her. Then he pushed his hands inside her clothes, with one massaging her ass and the other already circling her little pussy, pushing his fingers inside her, as she moaned into his mouth. It wasn't long after playing with her that she came into his hands a little more relaxed. Paul kept pleasuring her all the way to the hotel, making her climax a few times to make her release tension, and he also enjoyed her body to relax.
The drive to Rosarito was a somber affair, the weight of the turn of events hanging heavy in the air. The beachfront hotel loomed before them as they approached, a once-grand structure now starting to seem dead and lonely, as were the rest of the buildings around it and the city.
Strand led them through the beach, which was filled with walkers around it, that moved in their direction attracted by the loud engine sound of the cars before finally, they came to a stop beside the beach sports fishing pier that started from one of the side buildings of the hotel.
They descended from the cars and killed the few walkers near them until the others in the distance didn't bother with the group. The morning was with a cloudy sky and with fog all around; it was a little difficult seeing far away.
"Nothing's moved," Madison says as she is leaning against the pickup, looking at the hotel in the distance.
"It seems so. I don't spot anything," Andrea says after a while of looking through a binocular, as simply looking like the rest made it difficult with the fog.
"It's a big beast, it must have around 400 rooms more or less," Paul comments as he sees the building. "Not counting the other two towers with rooms too. It's a big resort this place."
"The place will be picked clean," Strand adds after he saw for a while.
"It could be crawling," Ofelia says, not sure about it.
"Better indoors than out," Alicia says as she leans against Paul, warming with his body as it is cold out here.
Ofelia didn't say anything more; she too was feeling cold and Daniel saw it. "Alright, let's move."
The group got back into their cars and left the beach after driving for a while as they exited further down the road, as the beach didn't have a road to the street where they were in the back of the hotel, also it was fenced off.
Driving on the street beside the beach and the resort, there weren't too many walkers - just a spare few roaming far away and not bothering with them as they drove along the street. They entered along the road leading inside the resort grounds and came to a stop before one of the connected buildings to the hotel, which also led inside it. Being beside it, it looked like a behemoth of concrete straight into the sky.
They descended from the cars armed with the same gear they had before they moved to search for Nick. Paul also took one of the machetes they got back from the pickup.
"Bienvenidos," Paul said as he looked at the reception entrance sign.
Looking around the area, he noticed that there were many stores across the road. Seeing the site so clean with no walkers around made him confused. This was a big place, and given the big design of the place and its taken care appearance, he was sure there must have been filled with guests before the outbreak happened here too. So it was something natural that there should be a lot of walkers roaming about or something.
"We'll see about that," Paul comments, his eyes alert as he moves around.
Strand opened the double front wood doors with a crowbar. They were also blocked with a pile of chairs and tables for reinforcement. Then, they made their way across the lobby as Strand pushed aside the things that were in the way, making clattering noises as they fell to the floor.
"Someone locked this place down," Madison commented, seeing the quiet lobby, except for the noises Strand made as he opened his way.
"Where are they now?" Alicia asked quietly.
"I don't think it will take us too much time to find them, little sister," Claire said while looking around, waiting for a walker to appear.
"Can't we find a place anymore without them around?" Amy asked a little exasperated.
"No, we can't," Andrea said to her sister. "That's why, stay alert waiting for anything to happen."
"Guys, talk more quietly please," Liza said in a whisper. Already imagining in her mind a nice bed to rest in one of those rooms.
"Ofelia, stay closer," Daniel said to his daughter.
"This place is big," Paul said as he looked at the displayed mockup of the resort and its grounds. "The other two buildings with rooms beside the beach are also part of the resort. The beach and the pier are included, along with pools and various activity fields."
*Tin* *Tin* *Tin* *Tin* *Tin* *Tin* Suddenly, a sharp noise reverberated in the air.
"Are you out of your mind?" Madison said as she saw Strand push the reception bell with a bewildered look.
"The service is subpar," Strand gave a small mocking chuckle while looking at her, after seeing that nothing happened or something came their way.