by Schow, Ryan
“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 Sixty-Two
The compound had been constructed around a very large house on what was once manicured land. The grass and 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. The
re 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.
“That would be nice, but we’ll see.”
Jill took her hand, looked in her eyes and said, “You’re exactly the type of people we need here. All of you.”
After a few more words, Amber asked if it was alright to see Nick and Bailey.
“Sure,” she said, walking through the camp into the main quarters.
When she went in the room, Nick was asleep, but Bailey was awake, just lying there, zoning out. When she saw Amber, her gaunt face broke into a smile.
“Amber,” she said, some strength returning to her voice.
Amber took her hand and said, “I’m so glad you made it.”
“I thought I died.”
“I know, sweetheart,” she said, brushing her hair back off her head. She leaned down and kissed her cheek, and something in this brought both women to tears. “I was so scared for you.”
“I was scared for me, too,” she said. “How’s Abigail?”
“Doing really well.”
Amber could see the strain their interaction was taking on her friend, so she said, “Do you need anything?”
She shook her head, smiling, and said, “They are taking good care of me.”
“These are good people,” Bailey said. Then: “How’s Nick?”
“He loves you,” Amber whispered low.
This seemed to bring life into the woman, and she said, “That’s what makes me want to get well. I know this situation is really bad, and certainly no reliable gauge of whether or not a relationship will work, but I think I love him, too.”
After awhile, she said, “I wish I had that. What you and Nick have with each other.”
“What about Marcus?”
“He’s quiet all the time,” Amber said. “But I think I can see the anger sometimes.”
“Anger?”
“If I had to guess, I’d say he’s still angry that you were taken. That all of us were taken.”
“Does he talk to you about this?”
“No. But he sleeps near us. He says it’s for our protection. But he curses and growls a lot in his sleep. He wakes himself up punching and kicking his way through his nightmares, and one night I thought I heard him crying.”
“He needs you,” Bailey said.
“I don’t know what to do for him,” Amber admitted in a rare moment of vulnerability.
“Nick says his dad was a terrible man, and his mother died. He’s not sure if she passed away from the fatigue of abuse or if she killed herself. He’d been serving overseas when she died. His father never told him what really happened. He blamed it on Marcus.”
“Jesus,” Amber said. “That explains a lot.”
“It doesn’t look like Marcus. That’s what damaged looks like, and I’m familiar with that as well.”
On the way out, she checked on Nick. He was sleeping soundly, not moving the way Marcus tossed and turned when he slept.
She put her hand on his arm and his body shifted to the touch. Seeing him, knowing he was getting better, she felt a certain affinity for him. He had protected them. He was ready to die to stop those men at the checkpoint from killing everyone. She never knew anyone to behave that way.
Leaning down, kissing his cheek, more tears rose in her eyes as her heart nearly burst with love for what this ragtag little group had become. For some reason, she was holding in all her emotions until they were safe. Now that they were safe, she couldn’t seem to get her bearings.
“He’s going to be alright,” a woman said from behind her.
Startled, but not showing it, she stood, wiped her eyes and turned to see the RN, a woman who was most likely in her mid-sixties.
“We’ve had our eyes on a few open sores that have now closed. He had a fever, most likely an infection from the conditions he survived.”
“It was so bad,” she heard herself say.
“Did you see it?”
“Corrine told me about it. Said they were laying in their own feces, starved, dehydrated, deprived of light and exercise.”
The RN’s jaw tightened and her chin rose, betraying her true disgust for what had been done to Amber’s friends.
“I’ve come to find people are inherently good, but there are a few tainted souls who will embrace the dark sides of themselves as easily as they’d accept a candy bar or a bottle of water.”
“Your people slaughtered them.”
The RN seemed to think about this for awhile before she said, “I’d heard stories.”
“It was a blood bath.”