by Schow, Ryan
When Bailey was safely loaded inside, Jill said to Marcus, “We’ll meet you at base camp. I want to see you and Nick in the infirmary as soon as you arrive. We have to get you fed, hydrated and checked out.”
“Yeah, sure, no problem,” Marcus said.
When the truck took off, Marcus just stood there, Amber hugging him and finally crying into his chest. Abigail was holding Corrine’s hand, and they were both crying, too. Nick, however, stood all alone, a wraith, looking at all those people. None of them looked as emaciated as him, although they were in a rough state from being caged for so long.
When Abigail reached up and took his hand, he looked down on her, a strong almost jarring memory bowling over him. For a second, and maybe it was his delirium, he looked down and saw Indigo when she was that age.
He blinked a couple of times and started to wobble on his feet. Corrine moved quickly to his side, wrapped an arm around him and said, “I got you.”
“Indy?” he said, looking down at the girl.
“Abigail,” she said, suddenly nervous. She let go of his hand and went to her mother. He didn’t blame her.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “I knew that. Abigail.”
“We’ve been rescued, Nick,” Corrine said. “We’re being rescued.”
“I know,” he said, patting Corrine’s arm where she held him. Then looking down, knowing he must be a sight, he said, “Are you okay?”
“I will be as soon as you and Marcus are fire-hosed down, because holy crap, you two stink.”
“Had unflushed toilets for air fresheners.”
“Yeah, it smells like it.”
Chapter One Hundred Forty-Four
Corrine bit back the tears. So rich was her emotion, it continued to well up inside her, her memory producing replay after replay of this morning’s events. She couldn’t stop seeing all of Bailey’s bones. Or Nick as he looked on in horror. The pain in his voice, the texture of it, how there was so much fear just churning beneath the surface of each word, haunted her.
And Marcus…
The man barely said a word. Looking at him, he almost seemed to revel in it. Like he could have taken another month. Like maybe he wanted another month just to prove he could have lasted that long.
She blinked away the memories, suddenly aware she was looking at Marcus and he was looking right back. He was like that, able to sneak up on you, almost like nothing he did so much as even stirred the air between them.
“Your beard has become its own animal,” she said with a slight smile.
He snorted out a weak laugh, then followed with a curl of the lips so slight she had to look closer to tell if he was smiling at her or bemoaning his condition. It had to be a smile, because men like Marcus don’t complain, or bemoan anything. After a moment, his eyes went vacant. Like his soul was taking ten.
“You guys ready?” one of the rescuing soldiers asked.
Marcus’s eyes cleared and he said, “We are.”
“I have strict orders to get you and this gentleman to the infirmary.”
“He needs it more than me,” he said, giving a head nod Nick’s way. But Nick was zoning out. Just standing there taking it all in. All those people, hundreds of them, being organized, matched with others, put in lines.
“They all coming?” Nick asked.
“No.”
“What about the kids?” he asked, cognizant enough to be concerned about others. Corrine liked that about him. He was a different kind of man than Marcus, strong in his own ways, caring in places where Marcus couldn’t be.
“We have people who will take the kids. A lot of our women are mothers who lost their kids, and though there is no replacing a child, we’re going to need experienced women to love and care for them.”
“What about the men who lost their kids?” Nick asked.
“You a father?”
“I am,” he said, his eyes finally clearing.
When he zeroed in on the soldier, there was life in those eyes once again. There was also that dark thing residing on the outer edges, that part of him that was holding out hope that his daughter was still alive, that he could find her, that he wouldn’t be left with the not knowing.
“The not knowing,” he’d told Corrine before all this, “is every parent’s worst nightmare.”
“Is your son or daughter here?” the soldier asked Nick. “At this facility?”
“San Francisco,” he replied, weakness overtaking him. “Where we’re going.”
“Well I hope she’s okay, and I hope you find her. First we need to get you checked out, get you your strength back. You’re looking like you’re on your last two drops of gas.”
“I am.”
The man was starting to leave when Nick took his arm and said, “Do you guys have razors there?”
“Yeah,” he said with a reassuring smile. “We have most of what you need.”
“Thank you,” he said, patting the man’s shoulder, the gratitude laid bare in his eyes.
With that, looking at Nick and seeing he was functional, but barely, and that Amber was looking after Marcus, Corrine said, “You have a big heart.”
Nick stood there and looked back at her, his face so gaunt, his hair long and his stare tired. “I lost hope at the end,” he finally admitted. “Didn’t know I’d have to come back to the living.”
This caught her off guard.
“You wanted to be rescued though, didn’t you?”
“Not at the end.”
She didn’t know what to say.
The five of them, with their paramilitary escorts and a few other weary looking strangers crammed into the Humvee, navigated their way through and around the sporadic freeway messes for about thirty-five minutes. They got off the freeway and took the Horseshoe Bar Road exit.
They meandered through a few winding, country roads, took a left and a right, then drove a little further and that’s when he saw it.
Their community.
Abigail seemed the most excited about the new location. All Corrine wanted was a bed and a chance to be alone with her emotions.
The large sprawl they entered seemed to go on forever. The guy driving said it was five acres, roughly, but that they were preparing more land for more people.
Corrine saw tents everywhere, campfires going, people milling about and several old Humvees like the one they were in. There were also several other trucks, all old, and a pack of motorcycles, the classic kinds you see only a certain kind of biker riding before the war.
“I’ll take these two to the infirmary,” the passenger said. “Won’t take long, then we can head back.”
“Roger that,” the driver said.
The passenger then looked back at them and said, “How do you feel about sleeping under the stars until we can rustle up a few tents?”
“Better than a cot in a cage,” Amber said, smiling, holding Marcus’s hand, her other arm locked in with Abigail’s arm.
“Is there a place we can bathe?” Amber asked. “It’s been awhile.”
“Down by the lake. They’ve got soap and towels. We can have someone show you to the women’s side.”
“They’re separated?”
“Yeah.”
Corrine got it just after Amber did. With no running water, there were no showers, only baths and the bath was the lake. Meaning you did it naked. She thought about this for a long moment then decided it didn’t matter. If they were going to get used to this new life, then being naked around a bunch of other women was pretty much the same as showering with the girls after volleyball practice or sixth period gym.
“Can we see her?” Abigail asked the man. “Can we see Bailey?”
“The woman we took out earlier? The one with Jill?”
“Yes,” Amber said.
“Yeah. She’ll be in the infirmary, as will your friends.”
Chapter One Hundred Forty-Five
The compound had been constructed around a very large house on what was once manicured land. The grass a
nd shrubs had grown in since the collapse, and even though it was a bit unruly, Amber could tell it was being somewhat maintained. Not to the degree she imagined it was before, but still, it looked nice. Peaceful.
Inside the home, all the rooms had been converted into one thing or another, but no one was living there. There was a dining room table that looked like a war room, and a room for medical supplies, blankets and pillows, and there was a pantry for what looked like a month’s worth of food for everyone. They walked past the kitchen where there were a half dozen water tanks, all set on a intricately constructed framework that looked like it was solid enough to hold them through an earthquake. On each of the fronts of these water tanks were orange plugs. Rubber stoppers. Or foam, perhaps.
“Earplugs from a firing range nearby,” a nice looking woman said as she saw Amber looking at them. “We tried using shell casings at first, but these work better. Helps us measure the water levels.” The last plug sat at the bottom of the tank and there were drip pans beneath.
They walked back to what was most likely the master bedroom only to find a very nice infirmary where Bailey was being attended to. She had drip lines in her and was getting cleaned by two women with washcloths and a small bucket of water.
“Is she awake?” Abigail asked.
Both women turned, and both smiled. “No, sweetie. Fortunately she was able to fall asleep.”
“Will she be okay?”
“She will. She just needs rest, liquids and in the next few hours we’re going to introduce her to foods. Do you know what her condition was before this?”
“About thirty pounds heavier than that and healthy.”
“I bet she was beautiful,” one woman said. She had a homely look about her, but a pleasing look, like she’d take care of you twice before even tending to herself and it would be no bother.
“She was,” Nick said from behind Amber.
“We’ve got two more,” Bartholomew said.
“More like one,” Marcus said. “I just need some water, something light to eat and a bath.”
“Well we’ll check you both for any infections first, then get you hydrated and cleaned up. Looks like you could use it.”
“So we’ve been told,” Marcus grumbled.
“Where’d they find you at?” the other woman asked.
“In a dirty toilet,” Marcus said under his breath.
Smiling, trying to compensate for Marcus’s overly honest response, Amber said, “We were in an interment camp on the edge of town for the last two months. These three were apparently held in solitary confinement and not fed or even looked in on for the last three days.”
“You were all healthy before this?”
“Marcus was buff,” Abigail said. Then looking at Nick she said, “And he was pretty, like Bailey, but for a man.”
Everyone but Marcus and Nick laughed, but it was a sad laugh. The way you used to laugh at how your youth was now gone, your freedom was now gone, and how you used to be such a fun person before life got a hold of you and choked out the last measures of happiness.
Yes, Amber was thinking of her husband, how he cheated on her, how he left her with the duty of explaining things to Abigail. She still loved him, even though he’d hurt her, and that was going to be her burden to bear.
Then she met Marcus.
He was a nice man, but not nice at all. For whatever reason, she found herself attracted to men like this, but Marcus was careful with her in a way that other men had not been and she appreciated this. Plus Abigail liked him.
That was a big plus.
He already said he wasn’t the dating type and she knew that in this world, she’d need someone like him around to keep her safe, teach her the ways of survival, but she also wanted a man in her life that was hers, someone to talk to, to confide in, someone to love who would love her back.
It wasn’t hard for her to fall for a person, but keeping them, holding their interest longer than she’d held her ex-husband’s interest, that seemed to be more important than anything. She could tell he liked her, but the man had demons.
Don’t we all, she thought.
Don’t we all.
Over the next few days, they were introduced to the community, a great group of survivors who had their own happy, calm, devastated and destroyed faces. The overall mood was uplifting. There was, however, an undercurrent of sadness, or grief for those they lost, for the world they lost, for the lives they once knew and had so painstakingly crafted for themselves.
When Amber finally broke down and asked Jill how they coped with this new world with such stark and sometimes impossible stoicism, she said, “We lose ourselves in our tasks. There is a lot to do here, and though we haven’t been attacked, or overrun, we manage things tight and everyone has a job to do.”
“Did you lose anyone?” Amber asked her.
“I did.”
Amber slowly took this in, nodding her head, and then she drew the woman into a hug and said, “You saved us. You saved Bailey, Nick and Marcus and for that I am grateful.”
“At least you have each other,” Jill said, a haunted look in her eyes.
“None of us knew each other before this happened. We all lost people, gave up people and are trying to get back to people, but it’s people like you that we’re meeting along the way that give us faith in humanity.”
“I wouldn’t rest too hard on that faith,” she warned.
“Because of the people here,” Amber asked, “or because of the world out there?”
“The world out there.”
“I’m not immune to its charm,” Amber replied with a grin.
“Good.”
Amber and Jill had become friends, their bond instant and welcome. As they stood outside later that night in air tinged with the campfire smell, Amber said, “Do they boil these big pots of water every night?”
Large pots were sitting over fires on makeshift metal grates.
“We’ve got a filtration process that’s a lot better than before. The water’s from a nearby stream, certainly not the lake, but it still needs filtering and boiling otherwise we run the risk of ingesting parasites and microorganisms, or worse. Things like E. coli, Cholera or even things like Typhoid fever. And that’s just under normal conditions.”
“What do you mean?” Amber asked.
“If someone died upstream and fell in, or if an animal eats a dead body then defecates in the water, you’ve got an amplification of a problem that’s already worth noting. So we be extra careful. We have to.”
“Has this happened at all?”
“A couple of kids got diarrhea pretty bad when they first got here. When we questioned them on their activities, they said they were playing and went for a drink in the stream. We almost lost one of them.”
“Wow,” Amber thought.
“We took for granted all the dangers others helped us avoid in the civilized world. Now that we must fend for ourselves, we need to be vigilant. That’s why having a large community with a wide variety of experience is necessary if we want to stay alive.”
“We have warriors like Nick and Marcus, and fighters like Bailey, who’ve come through for us in a pinch, but none of us are scientists, or biologists, or whatever.”
“That’s why you can’t do this alone.”
“What are the plugs in the water tanks for?” Amber asked. “Someone said it helped measure water levels.”
That made sense. Still…
“Lowering water levels. We spout each hole until that level is drained, then we go down all the way to the bottom where a final drain plug sits.”
“So you haul the water in from the river, what, by hand?”
“We have a few of these larger tanks we’re able to fit on a trailer. We fill those at the river, then bring them here by horse.”
“You have horses?” she asked, beaming.
“A few of them. It was one of the big draws of this area. We found a half dozen thoroughbreds that survived,” she continued. “We
nursed them back to health and now they’re part of our family here.”
“Are we going to be able to stay?” Corrine asked.
And this is where Jill dropped the bomb.
“I’m sorry, Amber, but no. Not here at this camp. But we’ve got folks who are helping establish a new camp up the road. Volunteers from our camp have been getting everyone set up who wants to be set up. Your friends will be safe here for now. And we’ll care for them. But when they’re well again, they’ll have to go. Either on their way, or to the next camp over, if there’s still room.”
“How long do you think that will be?” Amber asked. “Until they’re healed, I mean.”
It had been a few days and already Marcus was back to his old self, helping around the encampment, but saying very little. Nick was close to being released, but he was still weak. Both men were putting on weight fast, which was assuring. Bailey, however, was making a slow, painful recovery.
“As you know, we’ve got a couple of doctors on staff, and an RN who just might know more than both doctors combined. Their collective opinion is a few more days for Nick and maybe another two weeks for Bailey, so long as she doesn’t have any setbacks.”
“What do you need us to do in the meantime?”
“Well Marcus is already working with the group to set up the second encampment, and you and Abigail are helping around here, so that’s good enough.”
“What about Nick?”
“When he’s well,” Jill said, “we’re going to get you set up at the other encampment where you can help build there. If you’d like, everyone loves you guys, so maybe instead of heading where you were, you could stay, be a part of our extended community.”
Amber felt herself smiling for the first time in a long time. She wanted to be with Marcus and Nick, to have their protection, and she was attracted to the old version of Marcus, not this extra quiet, overly efficient version of him, but maybe that time had passed. If she thought about it, she could see herself and Abigail making a life here.