Succinct (Extinct Book 5)

by Ike Hamill

  “Anything else while I’m up here?” Tim asked. His voice was muffled by the mask.

  “Just be careful. You don’t want to put a foot through the ceiling.”

  Tim was so focused on the advice that his hand slipped when he was trying to lower himself down. His foot banged into the ladder at a weird angle and Tim began to fall. The injury from the jungle flashed through his mind. There was just enough time for him to brace himself for impact, thinking about how much it was going to hurt, when Ty caught him around the waist.

  Ty lowered him gently to the floor.

  “You okay?”

  “I think I twisted something in my ankle, but yeah,” Tim said. They were face to face, looking at each other in beam of the flashlight.

  “Come on,” Ty said, propping him up under his armpit and walking him to an exam room.

  “You hurt yourself,” Ty said, cupping Tim’s foot in his hands. He rotated Tim’s ankle, careful when he got to the spot where there was resistance. “I thought I saw a hitch in your gait.”

  Tim nodded. “Yeah. On our expedition.”

  “I’m going to give you some stretches and mobility exercises to do. If you stay on them, you’ll get your range of motion back.”

  “Okay,” Tim said.

  “We’ll do them every morning,” Ty said. “It will help you to…”

  “Ty?”

  He stopped and looked at Tim. With the candles and the way that Ty was kneeling in front of him, cupping his foot, it was almost like Ty was going to propose and put a ring on his big toe. The idea almost made Tim smile.

  “I’m going to go back south,” Tim said.

  Ty was silent for a moment as he looked away. When he looked back, Tim didn’t want to look him in the eyes. He forced himself too anyway.

  “Why?” Ty asked.

  After a deep breath, Tim answered the question with one of his own. “Why didn’t you obey the mandate?”

  “I can’t,” Ty said. “I’m infertile in a way that Dr. Matthew wasn’t able to correct. There was no way for me to father children.”

  “You could have raised them.”

  Ty nodded. “I thought it was better for me to focus on the community as a whole. Dr. Matthew handles the big stuff and I take care of everything else. It’s a good system, but it wouldn’t work as well if I were spending my time on raising children. That’s a full-time job.”

  Ty studied him for a moment. Tim thought he was going to ask his question again.

  Instead, Ty said, “We need you here, Tim. I need you here. But if you think the Outpost needs you more.”

  “No,” Tim said. “They don’t.”

  “Then why don’t you stay?” Ty asked. He picked up the sock and slid it back over Tim’s foot.

  “Will you stay?”

  “Yeah,” Tim said. “Yes. I will.”

  It wasn’t everything in the world he could hope for, but it was better than anything else.

  “Good,” Ty said.

  Chapter 120: Brad

  Brad leaned against the hood of the car and folded his arms. The kids were rushing around at breakneck speed, moving the limbs and tossing them to the sides of the road. When Romie honked the horn, Brad barely blinked. His focus was far away. He was trying to see the world as they had left it. He was trying to see beyond all the chaos, back to the Gladstone they had left behind.

  “Tell them that’s good enough,” Romie yelled through the window. “We’ll fit.”

  Brad only shook his head. It was certain that Robby had a good reason for moving the tree trunk well off the road—it was best to let him take care of it.

  He heard the passenger’s door open and glanced over to see Lisa. He gave her a smile as she leaned against the hood next to him.

  “She’s going to stay up all night trying to put the house in order,” Lisa said.

  Brad chuckled. It was wishful thinking. They had left in a hurry and there was no telling if there would still be a house there. It was more than likely that a spark from the stove had burned the place down. That was the only image of the place that Brad could conjure.

  “Maybe we should have stayed in Donnelly,” she said.

  Brad shot her a look. They had taken a week to make that decision. It was counter productive to start debating it again now.

  Lisa saw the look in his eyes. She turned away and folded her arms, mimicking the way that Brad was standing.

  “One, two…” Robby said. On three, he and Ashley rolled the trunk of the tree toward the ditch. Jim added his weight to the effort when it hung up on a branch. A moment later, the thing was tumbling down the hill.

  Robby clapped his hands and gathered his children back toward the car.

  “Ready?” Robby asked.

  “Finally,” Romie yelled through her window. She started up the vehicle as everyone piled in.

  Down the hill toward the shore, Romie drove fast. Brad glanced around as they turned onto Cove Street. Everyone was holding their breath. The house on the corner had caved in. It didn’t look like anything had hit it or it had burned or anything. It had simply crumbled from the elements. Maybe a window had been cracked and rain had leaked in, causing rot. That was the way of things—with nobody around to fix the small issues, they turned into large ones over time.

  “It’s there!” Janelle shouted.

  The whole front yard had gone wild with honeysuckle and lilac bushes, but the peak of the house was still visible over all the vegetation. The center house was intact—at least the roof.

  Romie stopped in the middle of the street. The sidewalk had been broken up by frost heaves and washed away. Before Romie could shut off the engine, they were all piling out.

  “You be careful,” Robby said. “Treat it like any other ruin.”

  “Okay!” Janelle said. She was the only one to respond. Ashley and Jim were already picking their way through the brush to go to the house.

  Brad looked at Robby. He was just standing there in the street, looking toward the house.

  “We’ll figure it out,” Brad said.

  Robby nodded. The network of houses had been his dream, back when he was younger than Ashley. Robby had waited years before starting work on the settlement. He had waited until he deemed himself old enough to ask Martina to marry him. At the time, Brad had been astounded by his patience. It was no wonder that he was so sentimental about the place.

  “Don’t just stand there,” Romie said. “There’s work to do. What did you do with that saw you found? Start cutting down these damned trees.”

  She stomped viciously at the stalks that were in her way.

  Lisa went to break her own path through the leaves.

  “Dad!” Janelle called from deep in the growth. “Come look!”

  Robby sighed.

  When they first entered, Brad thought there was no chance they were going to stay. The smell was the biggest issue. It was a mixture of damp, fetid odors. Some animals had nested in what they called the office. Romie and Lisa had carried the mattress of the daybed out through the patio door and tossed it on the old mulch pile.

  In the basement, Robby had found a worse problem. The sewer pipe had broken and foul liquid had backed up into the house. Robby had made a ramp up through the bulkhead door and he was shoveling sludge into a wheelbarrow for Jim to push out.

  Ashley and Janelle were working in the kitchen of the center house. They were boarding up some windows and replacing the glass in others. It should have been the worst part of the house, but Brad thought it was coming along nicely. They might all end up sleeping in there for the first couple of nights.

  Nobody talked about whether or not they should bother trying to fix up the houses. They all just threw themselves into the work, assuming it had to be done.

  Brad was trying to get a grip on the utilities. With a few panels working, they might produce just enough electricity to pump water. That would save them a lot of trips. They didn’t have fuel to waste on hauling water or running generators.
Every drop was allocated to getting them back to Donnelly, in case they decided to go.

  They had spent days on the road, hiking in a long line to get everyone from the bunker to Donnelly. There was one working vehicle and enough fuel to get it back to Mike’s garage, but it was decided early on that all fuel would be rationed. When they could walk, they would walk. The long trip from Donnelly to Gladstone was granted fuel only so they could get their lives set up before winter came.

  “Assuming winter comes,” Corinna had said. She had been going on and on about how the sun was going to scorn them and never set again. It proved her wrong every evening.

  Their first few days back in Gladstone consisted of nonstop work. When Brad went to bed at night, there was always at least one person still finishing a chore. Robby and Lisa were hanging new windows that they had found and walked over from a warehouse. The plastic had long ago melted to the panes and took forever to scrape off. One window in the dining room had “484” stained on it from a piece of paper pressed against the glass. No amount of cleaning would remove the numbers.

  The first night that Brad slept in his own bedroom was bittersweet. It was good to have privacy once again, but he missed feeling everyone around him, packed into a small space. The next morning, he woke up to the sound of the kids down in the kitchen. The morning was chilly. Pulling a dusty robe around himself he descended slowly and found the kids with their heads in the lower cabinets.

  Janelle screamed something and scrambled back.

  “Got it!” Ashley yelled. She came out from the cabinet with a wriggling bag in her hand. She shook it to keep the animal inside from climbing up and trying to bite her through the cloth.

  “We caught him,” Janelle said, beaming.

  “We got up early to fix the hole before it came back inside, but it was already back,” Jim said.

  “So we had to catch him,” Ashley said. She headed toward the door. Whatever was in the bag, it was a good thing that the kids had caught it. Romie or Lisa would have drowned it in the bag. At least the kids would walk it away from the house and let it go.

  Brad let out a grunt as he eased into one of the kitchen chairs slowly. His back was still trying to get used to the idea of a mattress again.

  “Did you sleep well?” Janelle asked. She brought him over a hard boiled egg. They hadn’t tamed any of the local chickens yet, but Ashley had gotten good at stealing their eggs. Brad cracked it against the table while he considered his answer.

  “My door was open,” he said, suddenly making the realization. “Who opened my door?”

  “Sorry,” Janelle said. “It was me. I couldn’t hear you snoring from over in my room. I had to open your door so I could get to sleep.”

  Brad smiled. He had thought it was a joke when Janelle said that she needed to hear him.

  They heard Robby come down the stairs. He clapped his hands together as he entered.

  “Where’s Lisa?” he asked, scanning the room.

  Brad hadn’t even thought to ask. She was usually up before any of them.

  There was a tap on the window and they all turned. Brad didn’t see her until her silhouette blocked out the sun. That’s when he finally realized that the sun was streaming through the window over the sink again. They used to get a ton of morning sun through that window, but they hadn’t since the trees had grown up.

  “Wow,” Robby said, moving to the window. “Looks great.”

  He lifted the sash and put his head through.

  “Did you see how much Lisa has cut down?” Robby asked, pulling back in to look between Jim and Janelle.

  They both nodded. Jim yawned.

  “Maybe we should go help her move all that brush before we sit down for breakfast.”

  Janelle was careful enough not to moan at the idea. Jim rolled his eyes and sighed. They followed their father obediently as he went to the door. Brad was alone with his egg for a few seconds. In the sun, the kitchen was warm and he was beginning to sweat under the robe.

  “Is that still good?” Romie asked.

  Brad turned to see what she meant. She walked by him, pointing at the egg in his hand.

  “Seems okay,” Brad said.

  Romie was paranoid to eat anything that hadn’t been “properly refrigerated.”

  They didn’t currently have enough power to run the refrigerator all night.

  Brad smiled to himself.

  “What’s so funny?”

  Romie got one of the eggs from the lukewarm refrigerator and sat down across from him. She had her outdoor clothes on. Perhaps she had woken up with the same intention as Lisa. If the sun stayed out, it would be a good day to work on the grounds. There were still plenty of days for outdoor crops before the cold weather set in, assuming they could get the area cleared.

  “We don’t currently have enough power to run the refrigerator all night. Get it? Currently?” Brad asked.

  Romie’s expression remained flat. She hated puns.

  “What’s on your agenda today?” she asked.

  “School,” he said.

  “Nobody will use it,” she said.

  “Still. We promised,” Brad said. “The gym and auditorium are in good shape. There’s room for refugees, if they can’t find houses. I’ll pump enough water up to the tank and make sure that they have basic supplies.”

  “How many workers you need for that?” Romie asked.

  “Just me and Janelle can take care of it.”

  She nodded.

  “Can you finish up in time to get some fishing in?” Romie asked.

  Brad raised his eyebrows. He had forgotten about the task. It seemed more like a leisure activity than a productive chore, so he had pushed it to the back of his head.

  “I will,” he said.

  “Good. We need the protein,” Romie said. “I’ll remind Robby to get some more panels going. He promised me all night refrigeration yesterday.”

  Robby’s shouted response came through the open window. “I will.”

  Romie smiled and salted her egg.

  While he and Janelle were still pumping water up to the tower, people began to arrive. They had stayed on schedule, coming down from Donnelly on bicycles that were loaded with supplies.

  Janelle spotted them first, coming over Terrace Hill on their bikes. She ran up the stairs to the observation tower, jumping up and down and yelling into the wind. Brad didn’t want to go up there. He didn’t want Janelle up there either, but he wasn’t about to tell her about what he had seen the last time he had climbed those stairs.

  A few seconds later, he heard the wisps of cries from the returning residents of Gladstone. They were yelling their response to Janelle. He wondered how many would make the journey. A lot of families had been on the fence. Some were eager to get back to their homes but others refused to make the trip without some assurance that there was still a Gladstone to return to. While they were down in the bunker, a fire or a major storm could have wiped out the place.

  “How many?” Brad shouted up to Janelle.

  She leaned over the railing.

  “At least a dozen,” she said. “So far.”

  Brad nodded and thought, wondering if it would be enough. If Gladstone didn’t attract enough people, Brad knew that Robby would start lobbying them to move back. Regardless of his attachment to the house, he would want his kids to finish growing up around other people.

  “There are more!” Janelle shouted. “More are coming.”

  Her feet pounded down the stairs and she came around the corner practically floating with excitement.

  “Let’s go meet them!”

  “They’re coming here, I believe,” Brad said. The plan had been to check in at the school first. That was one of the reasons Brad had waited until that day to work on the water tank. Janelle took his response as assent. She ran for the stairs to descend into the school. Brad followed at his own pace.

  The world had aged a lot since they had left Gladstone. It looked like a different place eve
n though Brad could still remember clearly how they had left it. He wondered if the other families would have the same issues—seeing the ghosts of Kevin, George, Mandy, and Pam. The blood had dried and disintegrated into unidentifiable stains long ago, but Brad could still see them.

  He got to the doors that Janelle had propped open. The first to arrive were Wesley on a bicycle and Tank padding alongside him. The dog ran toward Janelle and she greeted him with open arms. He sniffed at her wagging his tail.

  Wesley rode up to Brad before slinging his leg off of the bicycle.

  “How is everything?” Wesley asked.

  “Seems normal,” Brad said, trying to guess at what Wesley was asking. He thought that the man was trying to gauge if it was safe again in Gladstone. They all wanted to believe it. They wanted to believe that the reasons they had left were all in the past—a dismissible nightmare.

  “You guys are settled in?” Wesley asked, glancing through the door at the dim hallway of the school.

  “We’re actually back at our houses,” Brad said. “They required a lot of cleanup, but they came through okay. We’ve toured around a bit. Your house looked okay, but the garage fell in. You’ll want to be careful when you go back. Don’t trust any of the framing until you’ve explored a good bit. We found more than one place where the floors looked okay but they had rotted out from small leaks.”

  “Got it,” Wesley said. “We talked it over as a group and a bunch of us have pledged to stay together until we get the houses ready. We grew accustomed to living in the barracks, you know? It’s nice to have people you can count on close at hand.”

  Brad nodded. Back in Donnelly, it had been interesting that the clusters that had been formed by proximity had stuck together. Life in the barracks had welded the families into larger units. They still made decisions in their clusters even though they had no concrete allegiance anymore.

  “You’ll find water and food in the gym,” Brad said. “It’s not a ton, but we put together enough for a few days at least. Ashley has been working constantly to forage. In fact, she should be by again later this afternoon with another drop.”