“Alright then,” Jenny said, clapping her hands together in delight, “You two stay here with the kids, let them have their fun. I’ll go get to work on the cake.”
Jenny pushed herself up from the chair, groaning as she awkwardly got to her feet.
“You sure you shouldn’t be resting?” Raquel said. “I can go to the lodge.”
Jenny waved away her concern. “I need to stretch my legs. Plus, I like baking.”
She left them on the beach, a smile playing on her lips as she walked to the lodge. She was more than happy to be the one baking the cake. Travis had always been a fan of her chocolate cake.
Every year she had been the one to bake his cake when the family celebrated his birthday. She liked the idea of keeping that tradition alive. Of course, the cake wouldn’t be quite the same since she was relying on a box mix but she could tweak it. Besides, the icing was what made her cakes special and she was pretty sure that they had all the ingredients in the pantry.
Raquel was right about the decorations too. Flower centrepieces would cheer up the lodge, its wood and stone hunting motif a little dreary.
There were strings of multi-coloured lanterns that had been in a box in the pumphouse. They could string those from the rafters, give it all a more festive look. Maybe they could even leave them up there all the time to make the place a bit more homey.
She laughed out loud, shaking her head at her thoughts. She was nesting. It made sense, she didn’t have too much longer before this little one would be here.
She wanted to make sure that this place was a good home for her daughter. She didn’t want her daughter to know any of the horrors that were in the rest of the world. This would be a happy place for her little girl.
Subject File #750
Administrator: She has volunteered on a recon mission to one of the islands. It’s a test for her. There have been no further incidents with her over the last month. Mendez has agreed to report her observations of Veronica when they return and I will add them to her files.
As they skimmed along the water, Veronica sat perched in the bow of the boat, keeping her eyes on the horizon. She still wasn’t used to being on the water and her stomach was queasy. Audrey was beside her, fiddling with the knife on her belt, and Veronica focused on her to distract from the nausea.
“You remember the rules, right? You listen to everything we say. You always stay in direct sight of the group.”
“And I keep the sat phone on me at all times,” Audrey finished for her.
Elaine had given it to them as an extra safety precaution. With it, Elaine would be able to track where they were at all times. If anything happened to separate them, they’d be able to find Audrey. “I know all the rules, Veronica. I’m not going to screw this up.”
“I know you won’t,” Veronica assured her. She didn’t doubt her. Audrey would be on her best behaviour today. She had learned for her little grounding stint.
During the two weeks of her punishment, she’d obeyed their rules and did the chores she was assigned without complaint. She had matured from the whole experience and when they had allowed her to return to her lessons with Mendez, she had committed wholeheartedly.
She’d spent hours practising her aim with the pellet gun she had been given. When they had their hour a day with live ammunition, she’d done well with her targets. She was ready for this.
They were all ready for this, even herself. At least, Veronica hoped that was true. She was starting to have some real doubts.
Audrey is ready. This island has already been scouted. We’re armed and well trained. We have the sat phone. Lorraine is waiting as back up if we need rescue.
She had to keep repeating the reasons why they were prepared to stop herself from throwing up. She was scared, there was no denying it, but she needed to do this. She had given valid reasons for bringing Audrey along but she hadn’t voiced her biggest reason.
This was a test for herself. She needed to know she could control herself when Audrey was at risk. It had been easy on the island where it was safe and they didn’t need to constantly watch their backs. Out here though, it was a whole different ballgame.
“You doing okay?” Claudia asked from the other side of the bow.
Veronica nodded and managed a smile. “Just a little seasick.”
“It’s going to be alright.”
“I know. I’m just nervous. I barely slept last night.”
“Was it because Jackson was snoring again?” Audrey asked. “He’d do that when we slept in the tent. I’d just kick him and he’d stop.”
“Wait, was Jackson sleeping in her bedroom?” Claudia asked and Audrey nodded.
“He’s been sleeping in there for weeks.”
Veronica felt heat rise to her cheeks as Claudia turned to pierce her with accusing eyes. “You’ve been sleeping with Jackson and didn’t tell me?”
“Not that it’s any of your business,” Veronica said, eyeing Audrey before she lowered her voice and whispered to Claudia. “We’ve just been sleeping, nothing else.”
“I’m not deaf you know,” Audrey said and Veronica’s cheeks burned.
“You haven’t heard anything,” she told the girl before turning back to Claudia, who was grinning like an idiot. “She didn’t! There wasn’t anything to hear.”
“I meant I just heard what you said to Claudia,” Audrey said, confused. “What else would I hear?”
“Nothing!” Veronica replied quickly. “Absolutely nothing.”
“I’m still trying to figure out why you two are having sleepovers in your room,” Claudia said and Veronica glared at her. This wasn’t an appropriate talk to have in front Audrey.
“Why don’t you go check over your gun with Mendez?” Veronica told Audrey who rolled her eyes but still got to her feet and headed to the back of the boat, leaving her and her sister alone.
“It’s not a big deal,” Veronica said. “I was just feeling lonely and scared after what happened with Audrey and Harold. I wanted to be held and he obliged.”
“And he’s been sharing your bed ever since,” Claudia said and Veronica nodded. “But nothing’s happened between you two?”
“Nothing more than sharing the same bed.”
Not that she hadn’t given Jackson signs that she would welcome him. She would always kiss him goodnight and there had been times when their kisses had grown passionate but he would always pull away and say they needed to sleep.
“So are you two together and just taking it slow or what?”
Truth was, she wasn’t quite sure and she’d been afraid to ask.
She was ready to go all in with Jackson but she knew he was still hesitant. He had told her he cared for her but beyond a few kisses, he wasn’t ready to take that next step forward. She knew they were due for a talk about whatever it was that had him holding back but she was scared to have it.
Having him beside her when she slept made her feel safe. She didn’t want to chance losing that if she pushed him to give her more than he was ready to give.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “I think so. We have to talk about it but I’m not ready yet. Maybe after we do this and I know I’m solid again, I can get up the courage to talk to him.”
Claudia reached out and took her hand. “You can do this.”
She took her sister’s belief and held it tight. She didn’t have much faith in herself but if Claudia did, one of the only people who really knew her, it was enough.
Subject File #760
Administrator: Why did you volunteer to go to Port Meyer?
Subject: Curiosity. I want to see what they’ve built. On the road, I saw places that tried. I want to see one that made it.
It hadn’t taken long to get to Port Meyer, only a little over an hour since they left the marina, but it felt twice as long to Travis. The drive to Port Meyer found him staring out the window anxiously, his eyes peeled for any signs of an ambush.
It was leftover anxiety from the attack in Marysvill
e and his time on the road. It had hit him when they had docked at the marina. He'd considered bowing out and staying with Lorraine, who would take the boat back out on the lake to fish and wait for their pick up call. Setting foot on the mainland again suddenly seemed like the most terrifying prospect in the world. He had fought so hard to make it to the island and now it seemed batshit crazy to want to go back there.
It had been Javier’s reassurance that it would be okay that had convinced him to go. Javier knew what he was feeling and yet he was still ready to get out there. Besides, Travis wanted to see this town for himself.
On their way north, they had seen the many attempts made to stake out a safe place to live but, by the time they had reached them, those attempts were already failures. There were only the ruins of the camps to tell them what had happened. Fallen fences or overturned barricades or the charred husks of camps that had somehow burned down.
His memories weren’t pleasant ones but he couldn’t make them stop coming back as they drove to Port Meyer. It had made the ride feel much longer and he was glad to see that they were finally at the end of it.
Buildings began to appear on the side of the road, replacing the fields that had surrounded them for most of the trip. Malcolm turned them onto a street with a pizza parlor on the corner and pulled into its parking lot.
“This is where we met him the first time,” Malcolm said after he put the SUV in park and killed the engine. “They’ll find us. Let’s get out and stretch our legs.”
When he got out, Travis turned in a circle to take in the neighbourhood around them. There was a bar next to the pizza place and a bank on the opposite side of the street, a florist shop beside it. There were benches on the sidewalks, small trees planted between them with little pink flowers blooming around their trunks. It looked like the shops would be ready to open any minute and people would be coming up the sidewalk to use them. It seemed untouched, a little slice of small town America.
Then again, Marysville had appeared the same and look how that turned out.
When he had been heading north with the Reyes family, he had hated the times they had been forced to venture into a town. They had tried to keep their visits to a minimum but gas could rarely be found outside town limits. There had also been the time that they had gone to a hospital to get antibiotics after Javier had cut his arm when they were scavenging a car accident and ended up with an infection.
Travis had been terrified each time, flashbacks of Marysville haunting him, but when he had seen the towns had been looted and burned out, he had felt better. Those weren’t the kind of places people stayed in to make a home to protect. But this...this was a place to stay and protect.
“There they are.”
Malcolm pointed to the opposite street where three people were walking towards them, one of them waving. “It’s Darren.”
When they were close enough, Travis took their measure. They were all dressed in muted colours and camouflage, rifles in their hands and handguns at their hips.
Darren walked with a confident strut, a salt and pepper beard thick on his jaw, a smile turning up his ruddy cheeks.
The man on his left was younger but taller, all gangly limbs that went with the shaggy mat of brown hair. His beard was just as shaggy, looking a bit auburn next to his tanned skin. The woman on Darren’s right looked to be around his age, her black hair showing strands of grey in the ponytail she wore, her almond shaped eyes shrewd as she looked them over.
“It’s good to see you guys,” Darren said, all smiles as shook Malcolm’s hand.
“It’s good to see you too,” Malcolm replied. “Everything alright?”
“It is,” Darren said. “You guys doing alright?”
“We are,” Malcolm said. “We lucked out and had a friend we thought we lost come back to us. That’s Travis and Javier, who came with Travis and brought his family.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” Darren said, holding out his hand and Travis and Javier took turns shaking it before Darren turned back to his companions. “This is Alex and Soomi.”
They all exchanged greetings and Darren gave Quinton a clap on his shoulder. “You’re going to be put through your paces today, Doc. Your patients from the last visit were talking you up to the others. There’s a lot more people wanting to see you now.”
“Are there a lot of people sick?” Quinton asked, his brow wrinkling in concern.
“Nah, not sick, sick,” Darren said. “Just a lot of people worrying themselves over rashes and new aches and pains. Now, I’m not saying they’re hypochondriacs but you’re bound to freak out over every little bruise when you know there isn’t a hospital around. I think a little reassurance from a professional that it isn’t serious will go a long way.”
Quinton gave a knowing nod. “I’ll do my best to lay any worries to rest.”
“Appreciate it,” Darren said, “And you’ll be glad to know that the chickens are thriving and we’ve picked out some quality ones for you to take back.”
“We appreciate that,” Malcolm said. “We’ve also brought some food for you. Our garden has been doing well and we have some extra green beans. We’ve got some boxes of MREs too. We were hoping we might be able to work another trade.”
“What do you need?”
“We’ve got solar power on the island and Javier thinks he can do some work on the system to make it more efficient,” Malcolm explained, “But we need some parts. We were hoping you might have them at the mall.”
“Well, I can’t give you the guarantee right now that we’ve got what you need. We’ve barely started inventory on that place but you’re welcome to them if they’re there,” Darren said. “We might as well head there now.”
They all loaded up in the SUV and soon they had left the idyllic peace of the street of shops for the sad remnants of the residential neighbourhoods. Dozens of houses had burned here, the charred ruins and scorched grass a depressing sight. There were some houses still standing but their windows and doors had been boarded up with sheets of plywood.
“Are people living in those houses?” Travis asked.
“No,” Darren said. “Everyone is at the mall. We’ve had a problem with infected sneaking by the guard lines and squatting in the abandoned houses. So we started boarding the houses up to keep them out. Also works if any humans sneak through. They’ll have to pry them off and leave us a nice We’re Here sign.”
“Have the infected been behaving strangely?” Quinton asked.
“You mean besides trying to rip our faces off? Nah, they’re the same as they’ve always been. Though, now that I think on it, there were a couple we found in Old Lady Kern’s house last week. We killed them without any problem but when we searched the house for any stragglers, we found something strange. They must have been holed up in there a couple days and from the look of it, they’d been sleeping in Old Lady Kern’s bed. I’ve seen them sleep in closets and other small dark places, even found a couple nests they’d made out of blankets, but I’d never seen them sleeping in a bed. Is that what you mean?”
Quinton nodded. “Did you notice anything else? Any other signs that they might have been behaving a bit more human-like?”
“You really think sleeping in a bed is human-like though? I mean, most dogs will pick to sleep in a bed if given the chance. You don’t have to be human to appreciate comfort.”
“That’s true,” Quinton conceded but the conversation was cut short when they turned onto Port Meyer Mall Road and Darren grabbed the radio on his hip.
“Jason, I’m rolling up on you with our friends,” he spoke into the radio.
“Roger that.”
“We made some improvements on the fences,” Darren said, nodding up ahead where a chain link fence stretched before them across the street.
Large cube vans and tractor trailers were parked on the inside of the fence, their hulking masses blocking what lay beyond. They drove up to the gate, black tarps covered it to block out any view behind it, and it opened
for them. Two men manned the gate and waved to Darren as they drove through and then quickly shut it behind them.
The mall itself stood in the centre of the parking lot, a long line of stout concrete walls with two large stores anchoring each end of it. A row of greenhouses was set up on the east side of the parking lot, bags of potting soil and fertilizer stacked in large piles beside them.
There was a small courtyard in front of the mall’s main entrance. Most of the courtyard was taken up by two large water trucks that had been parked there.
The trucks and the greenhouses weren’t what caught Travis’ eye though. It was all the people that were filling large bottles from the water tankers and hauling soil into the greenhouses. He tried to count them as they drove up the laneway but he lost count after he hit forty.
“We figured out a solution to our water problem,” Darren said with a grin. “Those trucks can hold 4000 gallons each. No more running to the river every day to fill up that dinky tank we had before. It’s how we’ve been able to start up the gardens. We built the greenhouses and we’ve been transplanting plants from gardens around town.”
“How many people do you have here?” Javier asked, his voice filled with awe as watched the people at the greenhouses.
“One hundred eighty four,” Darren said and Javier let out a low whistle. “We’re able to get a lot done fast but it also takes a lot of food and water to keep that many people going.”
“Were you able to find any distribution warehouses?” Malcolm asked.
“We looked through files from the stores and found a few that are in state,” Darren replied as he pointed out a parking spot for Malcolm to pull in. “Two groups left this morning to check them out.”
They all climbed out of the SUV and Travis glanced up at the roof of the mall where he could see people. They were heavily armed as they patrolled along the edge of the roof, watching over everyone.
Darren noticed his gaze. “Even with the guards posted out in town, we still keep a full time watch shift on the roof, just in case.”
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