Divided

by Kimberly Montague

  The next day, I checked the thread I'd posted on and found several responses.

  Rylander87 wrote: You were in Bishop? That's like the originating location. Has it swept back yet?

  The thought that it would sweep through Bishop again made me nauseous.

  RepekahRUThere wrote: Sorry to hear you had people taken from you. Do you know anything about why they didn't turn into murderers?

  I really wanted to answer. Dev had told us so much, but I knew I could get yanked from the message board if I posted the information he'd given. I hadn't seen anyone get the answer to this question right in any of the threads or websites I'd been to.

  ChicagoPlaya7 wrote: Small town. You should see what it's like in a real city. Magnify what you had by a hundred.

  I did reply to this post. I saw plenty, but I can imagine the hysteria it must create in a large city. It's an awful situation for any of us to be in regardless of where you live.

  There were also three posts that had been removed and a response from Lara2015:

  I haven't heard from my friends, but I watched them take them away. I miss them. I tried to post their pictures and names, but they always remove my posts. Maybe our friends are together, keeping each other safe?

  I felt awful for her. She just wanted some hope that the people she cared for were okay. I replied, I'd like to think that. My fiancé was taken. I miss him every single day and can only hope he's safe.

  It was the middle of the third week of my quest for a location when a thread appeared on Beyond the Secrets that caught my eye. I was sitting in my room alone since Sonya had gone to Gary's to take his horses out for a ride. I had already yawned my way through several new sites and was thinking of taking a nap when I hopped onto the message board. The subject of the thread was "Looking for green-eyed good guys." I didn't immediately jump on the topic because I'd had my hopes dashed far too often. Either the thread was swiftly removed or it had no real information, just people guessing. But this was what researching was all about—trial, error, and you keep going on.

  The first thing that opened up when I clicked on the link had me sitting immediately upright. Staring at me was a picture of Harm as big as life standing in the sunlight. He looked good, not happy, but not unhappy either. He was wearing his helmet and fatigues, but he didn't have the sunglasses on that I knew he always preferred. I was glad for that because I could see his eyes and know that it was him. He had a long gun ready in his arms and was staring intently at something beyond the edge of the picture. Behind him were two women in fatigues. They were much smaller than Harm, and I could make out their shapes even though their helmets and sunglasses made it impossible to guess whether either of them was Kim.

  I immediately saved the page to my hard drive. If the picture didn't have me going crazy enough, the post beneath it made my heart stop:

  I owe this man my life. Earlier today, this brave man saved me and my family. We're just outside Pueblo. I thought we were far enough from the real fighting that we would be okay. We spent two and a half weeks in our storm cellar, but I thought it was safe enough to come out. Three Infecteds were in our house and attacked my fifteen-year-old daughter. My seventeen-year-old nephew stopped them. They were going to kill him, but this man must have heard my wife screaming and came barging in alone. He opened fire on the Infected holding my nephew and was attacked by the others. Two women came in and threw the Infecteds off him like they was nothing. It was terrifying. The man stood between my family and the Infecteds protecting us. I've read a lot on here about the special team—I think he has to be part of it. Whoever he is, I want to thank him and the women for saving us.

  I closed the lid on my laptop and ran into the hallway. "Gabriel!" I rushed to the living room, but he wasn't there. "Gabriel!" I shouted again, but he didn't answer. I ran down to the den, but no Gabriel. Even the kitchen was empty, but I just caught movement out back and saw him sitting at the table, staring at the pool. I fumbled with the sliding door and finally got it open. "Gabriel, you have to see this post. Pueblo. They're in Pueblo!"

  "Okay, calm down." He tried to soothe me. "Take some breaths."

  I was smiling and panting and shaking as I put my laptop in his lap and tried to bring up the website. Not surprisingly, I was greeted with an error telling me they'd already removed the post. "Damn, they're fast. I just had it."

  "Must be big to have you all crazy like this and have them remove it so quickly."

  I went to my files and pulled up the page. "Look! That's Harm!"

  He sat up straighter and studied the picture before scrolling down to read the post. He looked up at me, his eyes wide, then looked back at the screen and read the whole thing again. "Pueblo, wow—" He looked a little sick to his stomach. "That's—north." He shook his head, making me feel incredibly uneasy. He looked pretty uneasy himself. "It's already in Colorado. Okay, so you know where they're at, or where they were when that was posted." We looked at the posted date and time—three hours ago.

  "I—I have to get on a plane. I can't lose them." I turned toward the door.

  "You can't just go charging off to Pueblo yelling his name in a warzone as they fight. Pueblo is huge, but even if it were the size of Bishop, imagine roaming around trying to find him here."

  Crap. He was right. How was I ever going to get to him? I fell into the chair next to him. "So it's hopeless? I can't accept that. I'll go there anyway and see if I can find more information."

  "No, Evie, just send this guy a private message. Ask him if they're still fighting there. Find out if they've moved on yet."

  I took my laptop from him and navigated to the website, locating the information for AlienRockie919. I typed frantically.

  AlienRockie919. The man you were thanking is my brother. Can you give me more information? Where are you located? Have they moved on? Is there still fighting in your area? Was there anyone else with him besides the two women? Did he look healthy?

  Gabriel put his hand on my shoulder and shook his head. "Evie, you can't say any of that."

  "Why not?"

  "They monitor private messages too. The administrators will shut you down if they think you're tied to Harm. You'll get them in trouble. You have to be more careful."

  My shoulders fell. "How am I supposed to ask him for information without asking him?"

  "Create a new email address and give it to him. Ask him to contact you. I don't know that he will, but the site can't monitor your private email. However—" He paced beside the table. "We need to be more hidden about this. They could be monitoring our IP address, looking at our activity. We need to use a different IP address."

  "Gary showed me how to look for insecure wireless. Would that work?"

  He smiled at me. "Unsecured wireless, and that would work. Take a look and see what our options are."

  I did, and it showed several wireless networks in the area. Most of them had very poor signal strength, but someone nearby had an unsecured network I was able to connect to. I created a new email address and navigated back to the private messages and sent AlienRockie a message asking him to contact me at my new email address.

  I spent the rest of the day staring at my email inbox and biting my nails.

  Despite my wishes, hopes, and prayers, I didn't get a response from AlienRockie919 that afternoon, or that evening, or even the next day. I researched the infection in Pueblo as much as I could, but it was the same as I'd found before—everything in the city shut down two weeks earlier and hadn't started back up again. I looked for news about the surrounding areas thinking it might be spreading, but I couldn’t find anything to support that. In the more rural areas, the news just wasn't as thorough as in the big cities, which meant it was easier to hide.

  A few days later, when I logged in to check on the happenings on Beyond the Secrets, I had a private message waiting for me.

  Butcherloves21,

  Please contact me at my home email address LaraFinney@mail.com. I'd really like to talk to you.

&
nbsp; Lara

  I opened up my new, generic email and sent her a quick hello. By the time I'd gone to the kitchen for a glass of water and come back, she'd replied.

  They won't let me post this on the message boards, but I try to contact everyone just hoping someone knows something. I've attached pictures of my friends that were taken from me. The first picture is of Brodie Decker and his girlfriend Risa Neely. The second is my boyfriend, Sammy Purcell. They were injected with a vaccine for the virus, but it made them sick and they became infected. They aren't dangerous at all. They saved my life and so many others. Please, if you see anything or hear anything about them, I just want to know they're okay.

  Lara

  Poor girl. I very truly felt her pain. It made me angrier at the military. Why couldn't they just let people know that their loved ones were okay? But realistically, I knew they couldn't do that or they'd have to admit they were holding them prisoner.

  I stared at the picture of her boyfriend. He looked like a nice guy. He had a goofy smile like Gary's. It made me so sad for her. Her other friends broke my heart completely. They looked so in love. The guy had dark-hair and a lopsided smile. His girlfriend looked like someone Sonya and I would be friends with. She had blonde hair and bright blue eyes. He had his hand on her cheek and was staring so lovingly into her eyes the way Dev stared into mine. I couldn't look at them anymore.

  I stared at my email screen for a while, trying to think of something encouraging to say. I had nothing, though. Finally, I just sent her a message telling her how sorry I was both that I didn't have any information for her and that they'd been taken at all.

  E.T. Phone Home

  I'd spent almost a solid week at home with my eyes on my computer screen when Evelyn and Gabriel started dragging Sonya and me out to look at houses for sale. Gabriel insisted we had to make it look like we were planning to buy a new home in the area even though he had every intention of moving as far away from populated areas as possible. He'd been looking at property in North Dakota.

  When I wasn't glued to my laptop, I was helping to sort everything into three piles: necessities, special items, and things we were just sad to see go. I didn't have much, so most of my items were in the necessity category and that really just included clothes, Butcher, and my laptop. Pictures, papers, pictures of things I liked, but couldn't justify keeping—all of it was stored in my laptop and backed up on a secure cloud server out in internet-land. In fact, I could get everything I really needed into one duffel bag including Baby Butcher.

  Sonya was a fairly easy-going packer, too. She didn't keep much in terms of sentimental items. She did what I did and took pictures of what she wanted to remember. I kept a file of those pictures on my hard drive for her, so she could have access to them whenever she wanted.

  When the sale of the house finally went through, Gabriel rented a small house closer to Gary and Dev's parents. Sonya and I had to share a room, but it was larger than the dorm we'd shared, so it wasn't a big deal. Since the house was furnished, Gabriel rented a moving van and kept it parked at Gary's house with all our "wants" in it. Gary was able to ride his horse over to the rented house, but Gabriel had a fit the first time Boomerang, his very large horse, took a very large and smelly dump on the driveway. He drove over after that.

  I still carried my prepaid phone with me everywhere I went, but my hopes of hearing from Dev seemed to be fading. My worry, on the other hand, had strengthened with each passing day. The message boards were talking about how the infection was spreading up into Wichita, and I was dreading the report of a quarantine there. The Infection had stayed mostly true to its movement east along the major highways with the exception of Pueblo, but if it started spreading north again—I didn't want to think about that.

  I was seriously ready to pick up and head east just to be closer to Dev, but I didn't have enough information. The last sightings of the Special Team had been in Pueblo and Oklahoma City, which led me to think it would spread to Tulsa next. But then there was talk of Wichita and even more talk of Memphis. As anxious as I was to get to Dev, I just didn't have enough to go on. The area was too huge.

  My frustration at having all this information and it still not being enough started to take a toll on me. I went running a lot to try to calm myself down or tire myself out enough to sleep. If I didn't run at least two miles a day, I would just lie in bed and stare at the ceiling for hours. The day I'd been angry enough to push for three miles made me realize I needed a better coping strategy for the seriously hot days of summer. Shaking, I slowly got myself through a bottle of water and a sports drink, but I was so exhausted, I thought I'd lie down for a while. The second my head hit the pillow, I was out like a light.

  The annoying sound of an alarm clock siren woke me up, and I cursed Gabriel for his practical jokes. Unfortunately, I had no option but to get up, which is when I realized it wasn't an alarm clock. Sitting next to me on the bed was my prepaid phone ringing as loud as it could.

  I could hardly pick up the phone I was so shaky with adrenaline. "H—Hello?"

  "You don't know how good it is to hear your voice, baby."

  My knees shook. His voice was incredible. Goosebumps erupted across my skin, butterflies attacked my stomach, and tears started a mutiny in my eyes. I couldn't get my voice to work.

  "I don't know how long I have," he continued. "I'm on a stolen cell phone. They think I'm unconscious right now, but the fighting is so bad that no one will come for me for a while."

  I swallowed hard and closed my eyes. "I miss you so much, Dev." My voice shook.

  He sighed loudly. "I can't get through an hour without thinking about you; it's obsessive, baby. If I could just kiss you, just hold you for one more minute—"

  My courage and strength had returned. "Where are you? I'm coming after you—right now." I stood up, ready to move toward a car, a plane, whatever I needed.

  "Come after me? You can't, Evie. It's too dangerous. I don't want you anywhere near here."

  "You can't stop me. I'm done waiting around to hear that they've finally thrown you into a fight the Special Team can't get out of. You nearly died in Amarillo. With or without your information, I can find you."

  "No, Evie. I'm serious."

  "So—am—I," I cried before taking a deep breath to calm myself. I could hear gunfire in the background, but it sounded distant. "What area of Memphis are you in right now? Or are you in Wichita?"

  He was silent for a moment, telling me I'd guessed correctly. I just didn't know which guess had been the one I should move on.

  "Evie," his voice was softer, but more panicked. "I can't have you out looking for me. You'll get me killed worrying every girl is you. We have a plan—Harm and I—you just have to be patient and wait for us to make it work."

  "And how long will that take?"

  "I don't know. There are more sympathizers now—they see that we're just getting picked off one-by-one and want to help us get out of this. Maybe a month or two?"

  "Are you serious? You'll be dead in that amount of time, and you know it. Tell me where you're at right now," I begged.

  "By the time you get here, we'll have moved on again. Besides, you need to focus on getting out of there. Get everyone out of there. Projections show it'll sweep through Northern California and down to hit Bishop again in the next month. Get my parents out of there. Please, baby. Focus on that, not on trying to find me."

  "Are you in Tennessee?" I demanded.

  "I'll tell you where I am if you promise not to come here."

  I took in a deep breath and tried to steady my voice. "Okay, I promise not to go there." It wasn't a complete lie. I had no intention of going where he was at that moment because, like he said, he'd be moving on.

  "We're in Memphis, you're right about that. But we're not heading to Wichita. That's all I'm saying. How did you figure it out, anyway?"

  I couldn't believe he was surprised that I'd find a way to hunt him down. "Message boards online, and it's pretty predictabl
e—following the major highways. I'll get everyone to leave Bishop, but I don't know where we'll go. We—"

  "Montana. Go to Montana. Harm says it has the lowest population by density. Infecteds are drawn to other people. They only seem to want violence and to kill people. But don't be too obvious about leaving. You're all being watched. Please don't come after me. I can't imagine you in one of these cities, baby."

  "I'm not gonna let them get you killed, Dev. I need you too much. I'll give you two weeks to come up with a plan, but that's all. Then I'm coming after you whether you like it or not."

  He groaned. "Evie, I need you too, but you can't—" The sound of gunfire got much louder, making my heart beat frantically with worry. "Shit. Have to go. I love you."

  "Dev, wait—" I was left staring longingly at the "call ended" screen once again.

  I allowed myself ten minutes to really lose it and cry my eyes out before I put my big girl pants on and pulled it together. There was so much to do.

  I picked up my phone and called Gary. He picked up on the first ring. "Well if it isn't my favorite best friend."

  "Speaking of your best friends, can you come take me for a ride on Boomerang? I could use some air."

  "My—yeah, on my way," he said quickly, not even pausing to add a goodbye. Gary always understood what I was thinking or trying to say, so it really wasn't a surprise that he picked up on my mention of his best friend, Dev. I loved him for the urgency in his voice.

  Ten minutes later, he knocked on the door. "Where are the others?" he asked as he looked around the living room.

  "Sonya and Evelyn are at the grocery store. Gabriel's still at work. You want something to drink or can we go?"

  "No, I'm good—let's go."

  On the back of Boomerang, I felt safe enough to tell him everything. "Dev called. He's in Memphis. It's bad, Gary. He says we have to get out of here. It's gonna sweep through Northern California in the next month and back down through Bishop. We need to leave, but he said we're all being watched. I don't know what they're watching, but I didn't want to take any chances."