Sixteen people took the same set of drugs that Bill did. And they hadn’t checked the other drugstores yet.
Coru pulled out the map, and together, they marked off the houses — if they were still there — that had the potential to have Bill’s medications in them somewhere.
Once they were all marked, Coru drew a jogging line from the drugstore to Wren’s father’s house that included four target addresses. “If we move now, could we make it through four houses and still get to your father’s house before four?”
“Not on foot.”
“If we run?”
She looked up at him. Coru’s eyes were glowing with energy. He believed that they could.
She blinked, looked around. They were safe where they were. Light would be coming in … She glanced at her watch. 1:40 a.m. If they didn’t make it to her father’s house, which she had no way of knowing was safe or not, they could hunker down in another empty house, couldn’t they? She closed her eyes and scanned as far as she could, stretching her mind to its limit. A few murmurs, someone working out a plan to… she lost them. Now two men arguing. They were drunk arguing — no threat. Visions flashed at lightning speed — a woman, closer, dreaming. No one was awake, close by, interested in her and Coru.
And she’d already decided she believed in Coru.
“Okay. Quick bathroom break, water, from the sink if we can, to save on what we’re carrying and we book it.”
Coru smiled, his eyebrows bunching in puzzlement at the same time. “Book it?”
She rose and sped toward the washroom behind the counter. “Pee first, explain later!”
THE FIRST HOUSE WAS GONE — a burnt out shell. The second had someone, more than one someone inside, sleeping; Wren guessed three men by their dreams. They gave this place a wide berth and tried for house number three. This one was still standing, and was unoccupied, but for good reason. There was a huge hole in the roof, where embers from the fire that had destroyed the next house over had landed, burning part of this building before extinguishing itself. They went inside anyway, surprised to find everything undisturbed, save for considerable weather damage. Because it looked so bad from the street, scavengers must have passed it by. The house system was not functioning, so voice recognition was unnecessary to gain access through the back door. Perfect. The smell? Not so perfect. They started in the master bedroom, discovered the remains of the owners, a couple, it seemed, their arms around one another in death, their bodies decomposed, melted into the mattress, now drying. They must have committed suicide together. Wren was both horrified and happy they had one another at least.
Coru nodded her toward the master bathroom, while he took on the task of searching the bedside tables.
She escaped the sight, and inside the bathroom cabinet found the two containers of pills, both full. Her heart tripping with excitement, she counted them out—three months’ worth of life for Bill, right here. She clutched the tablets to her chest and closed her eyes, wanting to sob with relief. Catherine’s plan was a good one, and they’d only just started their search. She tipped her hand, letting the tiny tablets trickle back into their containers and sealed them tight. She searched for other meds, found pain meds, some sleeping pills, a jar of muscle relaxant cream and an anti-fungal cream. She grabbed them all and met Coru at the door. “Got both. Three months.”
Coru grinned. “Catherine — you are brilliant!”
“And we have to get out of here. We’ll throw her a party when we get back.”
“I have a better idea.” He snatched the window-bots from the bedroom, kitchen and both living room windows. “Let’s bring her a present. She’ll never wash the cabin windows again.”
“It’s the little things that say ‘I love you’,” Wren said with a whispering laugh. “Perfect!”
He stopped her. “You’re jingling. Wrap those pills.” She let her bag slip from her shoulder and secured the meds, stuffed them into the bottom of her bag, then did the same with the window-bots. They took off toward house number four. The sun was beginning to peek out along the horizon.
House number four was also occupied, this time by raccoons. Coru and Wren scooted them away, received loud chattering in protest, but the animals did concede. They found the meds they were after—an entire year’s worth—in the living room, in a drawer containing the television remote and a bag of caramels and a stack of old ‘Milton, the Reluctant Hero’ comic books. They joined hands and literally danced around the room.
“A year? A whole year? Could we get this lucky in one day?” Wren rubbed at her cheeks — they literally hurt she was grinning so much.
“We leave tonight. We’re done.”
She sobered. “We stop looking? There are others we haven’t even searched.”
“He’s got 15 months of meds now. That’s more than I expected, frankly. But, there’s a point where it isn’t helpful anymore. Medications have expiry dates for a reason. Would medications over a year old still be safe?”
“Safer than no medication.”
“You’re right.” Coru looked grim, considering her words. “Let’s do this. We’ll take shelter at your father’s house before it gets light, plot out as many addresses as we can safely search between there and Beastette tomorrow night as soon as it’s dark, and leave by one a.m. That gives us over two hours of searching and enough time to get back to D.O.A. under the cover of darkness. If we find more of Bill’s prescriptions, we’ll take them and leave it up to him if he wants to risk old meds.”
Wren nodded. “That’s fair. Give Bill the choice.”
Coru broke into a grin. “I think he’ll risk it.”
“Me too.”
Coru’s grin softened into a gentle smile. “And a year from now — things will be different. Some sort of order will be restored. Let’s not give up on civilized society yet. Yes, people died, but the human spirit is strong — all the pieces are still out there, ready to be picked up and restarted.”
A vision of the power poles and their macabre display along the Alaska Highway flashed into her head. She shoved it away, slamming the door shut. Coru’s belief in a brighter future was the vision she would focus on.
She bundled the pills into her pack, safely nestling them into a flannel diaper first. One day, when Annie’s baby was older, she might tell her, or him, this story. She pulled the comic books and caramels from the open drawer. “The kids are going to be over the moon when they get these!”
His eyes twinkling, Coru took the bag of caramels from her hand and ripped it open. “We should test these—just to be sure.”
Wren laughed softly. “Dirty job, but somebody has to do it, right?”
They each unwrapped a candy and tested it. Just to be safe, they tested a second. Had there ever been a more delicious candy in the world?
“It’s getting light,” Coru warned. Galvanized, they drank again from the tap, used the facilities and headed back outside.
The sun was getting dangerously bright, rising faster than she’d expected. They exchanged worried glances and picked up the pace, keeping in back lanes, moving from cover to cover, avoiding open areas and working their way east and out of Rushton proper. Wren stretched out her sensors and swept the area all around them as they ran. People, many people, more than when she’d been here last, were now in Rushton, and they were waking up. Their jumble of thoughts made her run harder, faster, needing the shelter of her father’s house.
Coru sped up as well, his expression concerned when he saw her face. “What. What are you hearing?”
One name flashed in these people’s thoughts again and again, and it wasn’t with affection. Everyone was terrified of this man.
“Curtis… Mathers,” she gasped, her lungs bursting, her legs burning, fear more than willpower fueling her flight. “The guy in charge here… the guy behind the warnings strung out along the highway. His name is... Curtis … Mathers.”
25
GREENER GRASS
“You all have a good time!”
Annie waved from the porch door, turned, went inside and closed the door soundly. Good riddance her actions said.
Nicola tossed another blanket into the back of the Beast, tucking it securely around the massive picnic basket Catherine had packed and laughed under her breath, “Good riddance. Ha. That’s a good one, Annie.”
Mattea glanced at her with amusement in his warm black eyes. “Don’t hold back, Nicola. Tell us how you really feel.”
Bill, who was already seated in the back, studying Wren’s indigenous plant book, his constant companion lately, looked up. “How does Nicola feel?”
“Nicola has had it up to here with Annie.”
“Join the club,” Bill murmured.
They climbed into the Beast and started across the meadow toward Dewdrop Hill, where the others, all on horseback, and trailed by the four dogs, had disappeared. Nicola smiled at him. “Today’s going to be an awesome day. Catherine is brilliant.”
“Catherine is tired,” Mattea countered. “The only way she’d get a decent break would be to declare a national holiday.”
Nicola giggled. “National Dilly Bean Day? She’s a hoot.”
“Nobody’s arguing. We all need a break.”
Not driving, Nicola relaxed and took in their surroundings as they climbed Dewdrop Hill. At the top, instead of turning right to travel to Dan’s farm, or left to travel toward the grazing land of the acreage next door, they jogged on the road, a bit to the left for about thirty feet then dove back into the trees on the other side and continued to climb through the thick forest, following the trail the horses had taken. Sean and Dan told them of a small protected meadow they’d found up from the Drop Out Acres’ homestead. It boasted a small spring-fed pond and an open area for the children to play. It was hidden, and safe, and more importantly, had no chores needing to be done.
When Mattea and Nicola arrived, the horses had been hobbled and were nibbling on fresh green grass, and the children were already dodging in and out of the trees, playing tag with Sandy, who seemed to make every day joyful for them. Catherine was seated on a fallen log watching them, her shoulders sloped, a tired smile on her face. Dan and Sean had their heads together, plotting and planning something dastardly, no doubt.
Mattea glanced at Nicola and nudged his head toward the two and grinned. She returned his smile. Mattea could convey so much with just an expression. Inscrutable Indian? No way with Mattea. With Mattea, she felt dialed in; in the know. She knew exactly where Mattea stood on all issues, no question. He was her rock.
They parked the Beast under the trees and unloaded. When Catherine made to get up to help, Nicola waved her away. “You — sit yourself down. This is your day off. Mattea and I are in charge now.”
Catherine’s expression of grateful relief twisted Nicola’s heart. She hadn’t realized just how wrung out Catherine was.
Bill climbed out from the backseat, moving slowly, and ambled toward Catherine, a gentle smile on his lips, the plant book clasped against his chest. The pair had grown close with Bill’s confinement to the cabin. Nicola knew half of Catherine’s exhaustion and worry was about Bill’s heart condition, and the weight of keeping secret Coru and Wren’s search for his meds while in Rushton. Like Nicola and Mattea, Catherine knew the real stakes of the Rushton trip. Bill worried along with them, about the dangers the pair were facing, having seen firsthand the town’s descent into hardscrabble survival. Late one night, when the children were asleep, he’d described what had happened in his beloved town, how it had succumbed first to the disease, then to a desperate hand-to-mouth, day-to-day existence. Nicola had missed all this. She and David had been staying at Swan Lake, in the Zamora family summer cottage. No one had asked her why they were there, out of season, and all alone, and she’d never explained. That was another story, one that never needed to be told.
Then one night, Bill told them how he’d come to have Little Rhea and her brother Wyatt.
Nicola had wondered about this often, but could not bring herself to inquire. So many members of their little family here at D.O.A. had heartbreaking stories, and she hesitated to bring the children’s up for fear of traumatizing them further in the retelling.
The adults were gathered around the wood stove in the main cabin with late night cups of peppermint tea when Bill had opened up about the children. He’d been trying to explain Wyatt’s reluctance to trust people, why it was understandable and how he hoped one day, the boy could grow to trust people again. Bill was out, scouting the neighborhood, armed of course, looking for survivors. He’d been alone for a long while. Ambulances had stopped coming, the police, or any representative of authority had also disappeared. This was after the houses were marked for death with black X’s on their doors, and after the burnings, which changed nothing. The town looked and felt like a ghost town, but he knew there were people still out there, maybe people in trouble.
He was attracted to one little house on the edge of town because he thought he heard a young child crying inside. Was the child alone? A sole survivor, unable to care for himself? He’d approached the house with caution. The door was marked with the black X of death, but he knew now that he was immune, so wasn’t afraid to enter on that account. What did make him afraid was the fact many of his neighbors were also armed — and dangerous. But that child’s cry compelled him to risk entering.
He was unprepared for the scene inside. A man stood in the middle of his kitchen swaying drunkenly back and forth, his shotgun pointed at a huge white fridge and the young boy who stood before it. The boy faced his father while shielding a tiny little girl with his skinny arms. “Don’t do it, Dad. You know mom wouldn’t like it if you killed Rhea. Dad. You don’t want Mom to see you do this.”
The man was crying, same as the little girl, only his cries abruptly broke out into a loud, braying sob. “I have to. You need to go to Jesus now! You need to be with your Mom with Jesus.” He loosened one hand from his shotgun, the barrel swinging toward the ceiling and palmed away snot.
That’s when Bill shot him neatly in the back of his head.
That’s when Wyatt went down in a dead faint.
That’s when Bill put down his weapon, stepped over the man’s inert body and knelt before the shocked silent little girl. “I’m here now, Rhea. I’m here to take you to a safe place.” He opened his arms to Rhea and she ran straight into them and into his heart.
He’d looked around the circle of faces in the cabin and added, “And that’s where she and Wyatt are still. In my heart.”
Mattea nudged Nicola. “Hey — this is supposed to be a picnic. Where’d you go off to this time?”
Nicola blinked away the scene around the woodstove, the scene in Rhea and Wyatt’s kitchen and smiled up at Mattea. “Just thinking how much I love our family.”
He brushed his thick hair back, slung his arm around her shoulders and gazed over at the kids, now digging into a backpack for the swim wear Sandy had fashioned from scraps for them to wear today. “Should we give the pond a go?
“Try to stop me. I’m dying to get into some water, any water, up to my neck.”
He bobbed his eyebrows lecherously. “Got a bikini under those shorts by any chance?”
“Yeah — I popped over to Wally World just this morning and picked up the smallest, stringiest bikini —.”
Mattea was on his feet, unbuckling his belt and walking toward the pond at the same time. “I’ll beat you in!”
She looked after him with affection, watched him strip down to navy boxers, grab Malcolm, still fully clothed, announcing to the other children that Malcolm had been too slow. He then strode straight into the pond. The other children screeched with delight and scattered into the woods with their suits. In only moments, they returned, a motley sight of patched together swim suits, and ran straight into the pond as Mattea had done.
Running the tips of her fingers through the tuft of hair that curled at her temple, Nicola watched them splash in the water, their faces wreathed in smiles. The water spa
rkled in the sunshine, the ripples around the children forming glistening concentric circles. Mattea’s wide, white smile filled her with happiness. Playing in the pond, his wet russet skin glowed and his thick black hair, plastered down his broad muscular back, shone. He looked very… She shied away from where her thoughts were leading her, but did allow that maybe Mattea should be in water all the time.
The children dove in and out of the water, jumped on Mattea, demanding he throw them in, again and again, which he did, tossing Malcolm and Wyatt, the braver of the group into the air so they could backflip back into the water. Now he had Malcolm hanging off one arm, Wyatt off the other, with Rhea on his back, her little arms wrapped around his neck. Rhea was scolding the two boys from the safety of Mattea’s back, demanding they not splash her so much. Deklin swam nearby, grinning at the action, but waved away Mattea’s offer to backflip.
“Where does he get his patience?” Nicola murmured, not expecting an answer. She knew he was a thoughtful and patient man—she’d experienced his patience herself since she’d first met him — well, since she’d risen from her fog and first recognized him as one of her new companions. Watching his playfulness with the kids made her smile. The real, whole Mattea was revealing himself to her more every day, and the more she knew of him, the more she liked.
Catherine said, “He’s good to you.”
Without taking her eyes off Mattea, Nicola answered. “Yes.”
“And you can trust him.”
Nicola nodded, knowing she did.
“Well, you better get in there before they kill him.”
It really was that simple, wasn’t it? She could play, be as lighthearted as the kids, and she’d be safe with Mattea.
She stood up and shrugged out of her outer clothes, revealing a modest suit comprised of cotton shorts and bra Sandy had had some success at dying a kind of browny-green with local plants and tea. She ran toward Mattea and the kids and dove in.
Lost Sentinel: Post-Apocalyptic Time Travel Adventure (Earth Survives Series Book 1) Page 29