“That little darling, Kris, has made herself quite comfy in the gardens. We are happy to have her working beside us.”
“I’ve no doubt she loves it,” I said.
She nodded and stretched her neck from side to side. “Still trying to find your place around here?”
With a shrug, I let Zoey get up close to Fern and give her a sniff. “I’ve been asked to join the scouting team. A trial basis,” I said.
“Ah. You’ll fit in there, I’m sure. But I wouldn’t count Keel as much of a ‘team’. He doesn’t really play by the rules, if you know what I mean. Bit of a loner, that one is.” She bent forward and scratched Zoey behind the ears. Satisfied that she had made a new best friend, the dog flopped down at Fern’s feet and rolled over, waiting for a tummy rub.
“Now you’ve done it,” I said. “She’ll love you forever.”
The sigh that came from Fern was sad and hollow, not at all like her boisterous personality. “I used to love dogs,” she said.
“Used to?”
She straightened, much to Zoey’s displeasure. “The day I left my house after my husband died, a pack of wild dogs were on the street, ripping apart the corpse of a young woman. I recognized one of them as my neighbor’s shepherd. Such a gentle dog she’d been before. I mean, that girl wouldn’t hurt a fly before the outbreak. But that soft spirit was gone. They all had this wild fury in their dark eyes, those dogs. Nothing left of themselves but pure animal instinct. Eat or be eaten, I suppose.”
“Wow. That’s…sad. And brutal,” I said.
“Yeah. Brutal is a good word for it. Much of the world has become brutal, no? But this one here, she’s a sweetie. You keep her safe, Riley. She could be the last female of her kind this side of the Mississippi.”
I cleared my throat, trying to get the image of former pet dogs tearing at the dead flesh of one of Fern’s neighbors. “So, what did you mean about the scout guy…Keel, is it?”
“He’s the dangerous kind. Well, and he’s a total asshole.”
Her honesty made me laugh out loud. “Really? Is that all?”
She pointed a finger at me and waggled it. “You’d be better off not trusting that man. Least not without your beau somewhere nearby. He looks at the ladies too long. Thinks I haven’t noticed, but I have.”
The harshness of her tone made her words even more serious. I nodded and thanked her for the warning. “Do you know what happened to the other scout? The one that needs to be replaced?” Zoey was up on all four legs again, sniffing at a hole in the dirt.
“No. And I wouldn’t ask about those things. The leaders try and keep this place running smoothly. Means less attention to detail when it comes in the form of gossip.”
It was an oddly vague answer. Especially after her frank warning. “Is there something I should know before taking the job, I mean…aside from keeping myself from getting locked in a room alone with this Keel guy?” The wind whistled through two nearby water pipes, making me jump. I laughed the nerves away while rubbing at my arm, like the soft touch of the wind itself had startled me, not the screeching sound as it rushed by.
The top of Fern’s tanned and age-spotted forehead wrinkled, and she narrowed her eyes in thought while she carefully considered my question. Eventually her head bobbed slowly. “Yes. I could use a new pack of sewing machine needles. If you happen to stumble upon them, that is.” She smiled, obviously moving the conversation away from a potentially sober one.
“Sewing needles?”
“Yep, sewing machine needles. There’s a big difference, you know,” she said. With an abrupt and small wave goodbye, she scratched one of Zoey’s ears and walked off. Transfixed on the back of her patched up skirt, I watched as it fluttered in the breeze until Fern disappeared behind one of the buildings.
“Sewing machine needles,” I repeated. “Not a bottle of wine. Or a book. Or even a package of chocolate…but sewing machine needles.” I shook my head, wondering how much truth there was in her request, because based on the style of her clothing, and the ragged lines of the seams, I doubted Fern did anything with a machine.
Zoey barked once and I looked over my shoulder to see Drake walking toward us. “I’ve been looking for you,” I said with a sigh.
“Where were you? I’ve checked every corner of this damn place looking for you,” he snapped.
“Don’t be rude. It’s unattractive. Plus, I’ve good news,” I said. “Well, I think it’s good news-”
“Wait. Me first.” His sour expression softened. Not much, but enough that I noticed.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s Skip. Winchester sent me for you. I think it’s time.”
I stared up at him, confused. “Time for what?”
“You know…time.” His boot dragged through the dirt in slow circles. For several seconds, it was the only sound I could hear. The grating grit of shoe on sand filled my head, blocking out the breeze and the soft panting of Zoey as she sat at my feet. Drake’s mouth was moving but I pushed around him before the words could be registered.
My walk started out as a spastic, swaying sort of ramble as my brain tried to remind my feet where to go. And then, I ran. Oblivious to the onlookers I passed, I sprinted toward the only place where I knew a doctor would be, dropping Zoey’s leash at some point. She jogged in place beside me, quiet and obedient and clearly concerned.
I flew into the lobby of the main building, causing an elderly woman to cry out in surprise and drop a box. I bolted around the first corner, knocking shoulders with a young girl carrying a tray of carefully stacked bandages. They flew up into the air, and bounced into the wall furthest from me, but still, I didn’t stop. There were only three doors between me and the nurses’ station when Winchester stepped out into the hall. We nearly collided; had it not been for his outstretched arms to slow me down, we’d have ended up on the floor in a heap of limbs.
“Damn! Win, how is he?” I asked, out of breath. I didn’t wait for a reply, and pushed him out of the way, stumbling into the room with the grace of a drunk during happy hour.
Walking through that threshold jolted me into an out-of-body experience. I took in the small group of huddled people nearby and what each was doing, trapped in a fog that kept my breath stilled and my heartbeat racing. The doctor pulled a white sheet over Skip’s face while Jacks stood next to the hospital cot with Lily in his arms and Kris close beside him. The low lighting of the room cast shadows on everything, making it hard for my eyes to find one thing to focus on for more than a second. But the body. It was impossible to not see the body.
“I’m sorry, but he’s gone,” the doctor said to me with clinical precision.
The room spun like a child’s top and I reached out for the closest object to my left to steady myself. A medical supply cart on wheels went flying under my weight, striking the wall with a loud bang and I landed with an oafish thump on my hands and knees. The noise startled the baby awake and she wailed into the room like someone had dropped her, even though Jacks had her pressed tightly to his chest, more for his comfort than hers.
“No.” It was a raspy whisper, my voice. “No.” It was the only word I could utter.
From behind, Winchester wrapped both his arms around my upper body. We stayed like that for so long that our tears dried on our faces with salty streaks. I kept my eyes on Skip’s covered feet, waiting for them to move, for him to sit up and laugh and tell us all that he got us good. But Skip never moved again.
The heart of our little family had gone cold.
* * *
“It was a lovely funeral, dear,” Fern said from over my right shoulder.
With a small lift of the arm, I shrugged at her. The others had left at least an hour before, yet I couldn’t bear to walk away from the small grave at the back of the property. Atop the mound, several large rocks were packed, propping up a small cross, per Leader Amanda’s insistence. It read simply, ‘Skip, of California’.
“We didn’t know his last name,” I sig
hed.
Fern made a soft grunting sound. “Only time that last names matter now, is if you have two Johns or Janes in the room.”
“But our name is our identity. It’s where we came from.”
“No, child.” Fern turned me around to face her and wiped a tear off my cheek. “This is who you are, standing right here. Whether you’re an Adams or a McClintock or a Stein makes no difference in this world. You are a friend. Standing here at dear Skip’s side, even in death. That is who you are.”
She gave me a quick peck on the cheek, wiped away another tear and squeezed my upper arms before leaving me alone at Skip’s grave.
“Is this true?” I asked the wind. Even with my hands stained with the dirt that covered his body, I dragged my fingers across my cheeks to wipe them dry. “Is it true that who we were no longer matters, that only what we are now does? If you were here, would you answer me this?”
Death, an eager and often times rash assailant, had taken another friend away from me. Too many graves. Too many bodies. And there would be more. I felt it in my bones like I felt the impending rain.
With a deep breath, I crouched down to touch the soil, and reached into the soft earth as far as my hand would go.
“Please don’t come back to us, Skip. Be free and at peace. Move on to whatever is next. Don’t come back here, Skip. Don’t come back.”
* * *
I saw him in my dreams every night that week, at least once. Sometimes the dreams were more like memories - flashbacks of things we’d done together, or talks we’d had. Other times the dreams would wake me up in a cold sweat with my heart pounding, my eyes searching the room for any signs of an unwelcome presence. For him, returned. Regardless of which kinds of dreams they were - Skip was constantly on my mind.
And I wasn’t the only one hit hard by his loss.
Kris slept in her bed those recent nights. She seemed reluctant to get too far away from me or the others, and only once did I see the boy, Colton. We’d all lost everyone during the outbreak, but to lose another survivor, someone who had been through the same hell and back like we had…well, none of us wanted to accept that. Even though he went as peacefully as he could, on his own terms, I couldn’t process it the way I had my mother, or my own children. Skip’s death wasn’t traumatizing like the others. He was there one day, and just gone the next. I didn’t know what to fill the hole with when he left us. It made our survival in the post-pandemic world seem more fragile. There were still plenty of ways we could each die. Something as simple as an infection could drop an otherwise healthy man to the ground if he happened to be without an adequate form of treatment. The Ark provided this. So after Skip’s passing, Jacks, Kris and even Winchester seemed to make it clear - they had no intention of leaving any time soon.
The only way I could handle Skip's loss was to deny its existence. To just stuff it away in a dark corner of my mind and let it collect dust there until I was good and ready to confront it. I’d become exceptionally skilled at compartmentalizing my emotions, at least as far as death was concerned. I put my energy into other things, like randomly walking the grounds and checking the perimeter. Just me and Zoey, on our own for the longest hours of the day, until each day blended together.
On a Wednesday morning, Ryder came to our door early and knocked on it with the flair of someone in a hurry, murmuring greetings through the cracks. Drake rolled over in his bed and folded his pillow around his head to block out the persistent tapping, so it was left to me to get up and let the man in.
He wasn’t expecting me to answer the door in just a sleep shirt, but at that point, with perhaps only five hours of rest from the night before, I didn’t care how much of my legs Ryder saw.
“Riley. Uh, good morning. Sorry, did I wake you?”
I answered by rubbing my eyes until I saw black spots break across my vision. Drake spoke gruffly through his pillow, and though the words weren’t understandable, I doubted it was a friendly morning salutation.
“Gosh, I really do apologize. I know it’s been a tough week. I’m sorry again about your friend.” He offered a weak smile.
“What do you need, Ryder?” The door frame held me up as I slumped against it and crossed my arms over my chest. The movement hitched my shirt up an inch or so, exposing more of my upper thigh, and Ryder, having been caught staring, turned crimson.
“Running,” he said, choking the word out.
“What?”
A blush bloomed up his ears, and for a moment I thought they resembled sliced-up over-ripe tomatoes. “Scouting. I mean…are you still available for today’s scouting run? Seems some of the supplies were incorrectly cataloged last weekend and we’re dangerous low on a few essentials. I’d have put them on the list earlier this week, had I known before this morning’s count.” He let out a huge breath, satisfied that he’d finally been able to speak a full sentence. Women obviously made him nervous. To save him further embarrassment, I tugged my shirt down and turned around to look at Drake, who was still in his bed.
“Uh. Sure. We’re awake, sorta,” I said. “We’ll meet you upstairs in ten, okay?” Before Ryder could answer, I shut the door quietly in his face and padded across the room to Drake’s bunk. Kris was stirring, but had also buried her head under her pillow.
I nudged the massive upper muscle of Drake’s leg. “Up. You’ve got ten minutes.”
He kicked out at me, missing completely. “Go away,” he grumbled.
Jumping into a pair of jeans, I pulled the sleep shirt over my head and tossed it onto my unmade bed. I dug around the dresser until I found a clean top and a thick pair of socks to wear before nudging Drake a second time.
“You now have nine minutes. If you want to pillage the local towns for a bottle of alcohol, now is your chance, but you’ll have to get up first.”
I left him moaning in loud protest on his bed with Kris complaining above him to shut up, while I used the restroom and brushed my teeth. After splashing water on my face, and drying my hands, I slipped the folded photo of the kids into my back pocket. They went with me everywhere.
Drake cursed and something heavy flew across the room, so when I opened the bathroom door, I poked my head out carefully. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, a pissed off look on his sleep-deprived face. His hair, having grown out some over the last month, was flattened on the sides and wild on the top. When he caught me staring, he ran his hands across his head, and shook out the remnants of a fitful night of sleep. It didn’t help at all.
“I told you last night to take something to help you rest – you should have listened to me. You look exhausted.” I sat down on the edge of my own bed to pull my boots on, and laced them up to the ankle.
“Find me a bottle of something stronger than fermented orange juice, and I’ll sleep like a baby tonight.”
We weren’t allowed to drink alcohol on the premises. It was one of the biggest and most controversial rules that the Ark had, at least according to those who talked about it, which was really only a handful of people. It made sense in some ways – sober members of the community didn’t tend to get as out of control as intoxicated ones – but it still sucked. In a way, our police state had taken away much of the coping vices we had come to rely on since the virus did its best to wipe humanity off the map. Drinking the nightmares away was only one of many coping mechanisms.
Drake cursed as he stood, stretched until his back popped, and crossed the room to retrieve the boot he’d thrown earlier. He had finished dressing by the time I had pulled my hair back and smoothed it into a low ponytail.
“Ready?” I asked.
“To get out of here for the day?” He covered a yawn with the back of his hand. “Hell, yeah.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The sun was barely awake when we made our way topside and out to the waiting truck behind the main building. Keel, the scout who had somehow ‘lost’ his partner, sat behind the wheel, tapping his knuckles against the driver’s side window. When he saw us approach, he s
neered at me, glowered at Drake and snapped at us to climb into the cab of his truck before he took off without us.
The ride off the grounds was uncomfortably quiet. Drake and I sat smashed together on the bench seat of Keel’s pickup and hit the highway just as the sun rose above the highest mountains east of us. With the CD player turned off, the only sounds were the hum of the engine and rattle of the truck bed for the entire time through the compound grounds. When we reached the front gate, something neither Drake nor myself had seen since we were escorted directly to the Tank via the airport to the east, Keel slowed just enough for one of the guards to open the gate and let us through. Keel kept his right hand on the steering wheel and his left elbow propped out his open window in what I assumed was his usual driving position. Once the sun broke clear of the mountain tops, the blush of early day faded away with the dawn, and he hit the open road like the devil himself was chasing us.
Drake made it to mile seventeen before he couldn’t handle the silence anymore. “So, what’s the plan for today, if there is one?”
Keel spit out his window and I winced, waiting for the spray to come back and hit me in the face. Lucky for him, I stayed dry.
“And what plan would that be?” Keel asked.
Drake’s abdomen stiffened beside me and he began bouncing his right knee up and down. I took that to mean he’d lost his patience with Keel, what little he had reserved for the odd man. Knowing we’d be spending the day with Keel made Drake more irritable than his usual peevish self.
I swallowed loudly, and turned to face our driver with a fake smile. “I think he just meant he wants to know where we’re headed and what we’re looking for,” I said, hoping to diffuse the situation before it became one. Slowly, Drake seemed to relax against my side.
“We scavenge. It’s not hard to do. You have your list in your pack and I’ve got mine,” Keel answered, without taking his eyes off the road. Other than my own random walks, we had only scouted the gated and locked perimeter of the compound a few times with another scouting team. They’d taken us less than an hour’s trip around the property on foot. It was basically a fence quality search. Checking to make sure no strangers were camped out on the compound’s furthest corners, or weather hadn't damaged the structure. Being beyond the gates again was exhilarating.
Find Me Series (Book 3): Finding Hope Page 6