Shore Haven

by Reynolds, Jennifer

  “I think I love you, now get some sleep. We can have this conversation later.”

  “But…”

  “Sleep,” I said, reaching to tuck her blankets higher up around her and kissing her forehead.

  “I don’t want to sleep.”

  “I know you don’t, but you need to. Besides, I’d rather have this conversation when you’re conscious enough to remember having it.”

  “I’ll remember,” she said, her words slurring as she fell asleep.

  “Is she all right?” Tera asked from over my right shoulder.

  I jumped slightly at Tera’s words. My movement jarred Samantha a bit…enough to cause her to open her eyes and smile up at the woman.

  “Sorry,” Tera said with a wince.

  “Tera,” Samantha said, drawing out the word.

  “Hey, how do you feel?” Tera asked.

  “Tired. Jason won’t sleep with me,” Samantha said, and I felt my face flush in embarrassment.

  “I’m sorry. I bet he will once you’re better,” Tera said, and I could hear the laughter in her voice.

  “No, he won’t. He says we have to wait until Ashlyn. I don’t think he likes me,” she said, and a single tear rolled down her face. I wiped it away and kissed her cheek.

  “I know that isn’t true,” Tera said before turning to me. “What did Katrina give her?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing harmful, I don’t think. It’s the fever talking.”

  Samantha promptly fell asleep.

  “That might be so, but when she’s no longer sick, you need to let her know how you feel about her.”

  I opened my mouth to argue, but Tera cut me off.

  “Before Ashlyn.”

  “But her husband…” I started to say.

  “Her husband is exactly why you have to tell her. She needs to know she has you in case he is still alive. You don’t want her staying with him because she doesn’t know you want her.”

  I nodded but didn’t reply. Tera was right, but I felt as if I would be betraying the other man if I did. He was a cheating bastard, but he was still her husband, and I needed to be the better man. I had to give her time to deal with her husband and grieve for him if she needed to do so.

  I didn’t want her staying with me out of obligation either. If she still loved her husband and intended to be with him, I didn’t want to stand in their way.

  Samantha woke on and off for a few hours until her fever broke, and she started to feel better. Tera and Kayla stopped by a few times to check on her and me, but for the most part, people stayed away and stayed quiet.

  Those that hadn’t gotten sick mostly sat around talking about the vaccine and its implications. The group at the boarding school hadn’t tried out the theory that zombies could no longer sense those who’ve received the vaccine. No one in our group but Trevor seemed to want to either. That didn’t mean we weren’t going to eventually test it. We would have to when we left Shore Haven again.

  While Samantha and the others were recovering, we began to make plans for what to do now that we had a vaccine. The rest of the world would need it, but the scientists couldn’t leave the lab.

  The first thing I planned to do was take Samantha to Ashlyn. Samantha wasn’t the only one in the group who didn’t know what had happened to her family, but those few had no desire to leave Shore Haven to find out about theirs.

  The next move for the rest of the group was to distribute the vaccine. Some people didn’t want to leave Shore Haven and were vocal about it. That was all right with me. We would need people to stay in the compound while the rest of us were gone to protect it and maintain the building’s upkeep.

  The final assignments had Samantha, Katrina, Greg, and I going south to Ashlyn to give Samantha closure while a group led by Tera would go east to distribute the remaining vaccines. Russ would take another group southwest to the lab to see if they could get more after which they’d go north with them. We mapped out the areas each team would cover on that trip and planned to meet back in a week to hopefully get more vaccines and prepare for future trips.

  By the following morning, everyone was well with no other reactions, so we went our separate ways, officially tired of each other. Samantha was still a bit sleepy, so she and I went back to our apartment to relax until the next day.

  “Are you ready?” I asked Samantha before we could leave our apartment the next morning. We didn’t talk about anything the day before. I didn’t mention our conversation while she was running a fever. She didn’t say anything about it either.

  “I’m more than ready. I know that we don’t know for sure if this works,” Samantha said, patting her arm where the needle had gone in, “but right now it’s giving me confidence in what we’re about to do—that and having Katrina and Greg along.”

  I was slightly offended by her words. Did she not think me capable of taking care of her?

  “I’m not saying you aren’t enough for me,” she said, touching my upper arm as if she knew what I was thinking. “You are, but I like knowing that we’ll have other people with us to help watch our backs. If you weren’t going with me, no matter who else was, I wouldn’t be going. I can’t do this without you.”

  She slipped her arms around me, and we held each other for a long time. We didn’t let go until Katrina knocked on our door. I should have told her right then how I felt.

  I pulled away slightly, to tell Katrina that we were on our way. I kissed Samantha on her forehead and asked again if she was up to making the trip. She smiled at me and nodded. I took her hand and led her out of our apartment, praying we would see it again soon, and that she wouldn’t change her mind about us if she found her husband alive.

  We didn’t let go of each other as we made our way to the main entrance where our packs and weapons waited for us. Tera smiled behind Samantha’s back at the sight of our hands but didn’t say a word. Kayla didn’t look happy, but she’d started getting over her jealousy—or whatever it was—of Samantha, so I didn’t think she was angry at our holding hands. What Kayla was feeling, I didn’t know. She probably didn’t even know. Being a teenager was hard with the crazy shifting emotions and hormones under ideal situations, add them to the horrors of the zombie-infested world, and there was no telling what she was thinking or feeling at any given moment.

  Finally, Kayla gave me a small smile and a hug before we exited the building, telling me to be safe. Reluctantly, she hugged Samantha as well. I heard Samantha tell her, in a low voice, that she would do her best to bring me back to her. Those words made me love the woman even more.

  The island outside of Shore Haven was dead and smelled like it. We’d made a few trips out to remove the bodies surrounding Shore Haven, but so much had been going on that we hadn’t been able to do much. Aside from the random zombie that came across the bridge or we found locked away, the island was clear of them. Everyone was on edge despite knowing that the chances of a zombie jumping out at us were slim.

  When we were on our way off the island, Samantha asked to stop by her sister’s grave for a few minutes. I thought the others would complain or refuse, but they stopped without commenting. Katrina and Greg waited on the outskirts of the park while Samantha and I went to the burial site. We hadn’t had time to make a marker, and I made a mental note to make one when we returned. The mound was still prominent, so the spot wasn’t hard to find, not that Samantha would ever forget where we’d buried her sister.

  She didn’t speak while we stood over the site. We hadn’t brought anything to put on the grave. I held her close to me as she cried. Once she was done, she let me turn her away and lead her back to the others.

  No one spoke until we were off the island a good hour or so.

  “How likely do you think it is that we’ll find survivors? We saw no one for days before we had to stop due to the sickness, and we only saw the kids afterward,” Katrina said.

  We’d all been on the lookout for signs of life, but we saw nothing.

  “This tim
e around, slim to none. A month or so from now when more of those things are dead, and when rumors of a vaccine start circulating, people will come out of hiding,” I said. “We hope.”

  “How many of us do you think are left?” Greg asked. That question was a common one, and no one got tired of speculating about it.

  “More than we think,” I said, watching Samantha for a reaction. She didn’t do anything more than keep an eye on her surroundings.

  “You really think there are that many people out here?” he asked.

  “I do. I believe we are a resilient race. Humans always find a way to survive, and so does nature. I bet a small portion of those of us left are immune to the virus,” I said.

  That comment did get Samantha’s attention.

  “You think so?” she asked.

  “Oh yeah. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of something like this—not that there has ever really been something like this—having a one hundred percent kill rate,” I told Samantha, giving her my biggest smile.

  “That means my parents might be alive,” she said almost to herself.

  I hated to get her hopes up. The chances were higher that her parents were dead, but if thinking that they might be alive helped her along the journey, I wouldn’t dissuade her of the notion.

  Greg, on the other hand, started to say something in contradiction, but Katrina shut him up before I could. Samantha didn’t seem to notice. She was lost in thoughts of her family. I just hoped she wasn’t too lost not to be on the lookout for an ambush by either zombies or humans.

  We made it through the first day without incident—no humans and only about a handful of zombies. We did come across a small group of newly dead survivors. A horde or another group of people had come upon them the previous day or the day before that and slaughtered them. For a second, we thought about building a pyre for them and burning them, but we didn’t want to attract whom or whatever had killed them, and we didn’t want to waste time. We left the option open for the possibility of doing it on our way home…if their bodies were still there.

  I didn’t mention that there was more than a good chance of animals dragging them off in the meantime. I knew Samantha wanted to get home, but if she thought of animals eating those people, she might insist on us taking care of them right then.

  The next few days went about the same with only minor things halting our journey. Between Shore Haven and Ashlyn, we only ran into one small group of about ten survivors that we almost couldn’t get to stop and talk to us, even after we mentioned the vaccine.

  Katrina was the one that saw the child run behind a house. Fearing that he or she was alone, we’d detoured to investigate. When we got to the house the child had ducked behind, we came face-to-face with a rifle barrel. Our group of four outnumbered the woman holding it and could have killed her before she’d gotten a shot off, but we threw up our hands in a surrendering gesture, even though that was not what we were doing.

  No one else came out of the shadows, making me assume that she was the leader of the group or that it was just her and the child. The former was true. Jada, the woman with the gun, was in her forties, and she was in charge of three children, two elderly people, both of which I’d found surprising, as I hadn’t seen anyone under fifteen or over sixty since the outbreak. People the same age as those in our group made up the rest of hers.

  “What do you want?” the woman asked, poking the gun at me, as I was in the lead.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Then why follow the kid?”

  “Why wouldn’t we?” Samantha asked, stepping up beside me. “We would have been horrible people if we’d seen a child running around alone out here and not stopped to check on him or her.”

  The woman nodded in agreement, then said, “Well, she’s with us so you can keep going.”

  “Okay,” Samantha said. “Before we go, though, we should tell you that we have a vaccine and we have a safe place you can go if you want.”

  “Vaccine?” Jada asked, sounding intrigued, but not willing to let down her guard.

  “Yeah,” Samantha said, smiling at the woman.

  Katrina and Greg kept an eye on our surroundings while Samantha told Jada all about the vaccine, about how we’d found it, what happened when we took it, and what’s happened since.

  Katrina then told the woman about Shore Haven and the private school, though it was a longer journey to the school from where we were, but we wanted the woman to know that she had options.

  Jada took the injections from us and said she would go to Shore Haven, but we wouldn’t know if she took them or went to the compound until we returned home.

  Chapter 27

  ~~~Samantha~~~

  We camped the final night before entering Ashlyn about two hours from the city in the garage of a body shop. Jason tried to get me to go on into Ashlyn, but I refused, insisting that we stop for the night. Fear of what I would find was the main reason I didn’t want to proceed, but the other was that I needed to see my city in daylight to get a full view of what happened to my hometown. I wanted to have time to investigate every inch of my parents’ home when we got there in case we didn’t find a body.

  I knew Jason worried that part of my hesitation was due to fear of finding my husband. To an extent, that was true, but not for the reasons he probably thought. I dreaded telling the man I was leaving him. David worked on two extremes. He either wouldn’t care, or he would go all caveman on me and start beating his chest and bellowing that I was his woman. I think the first reaction would hurt me, not because I still wanted him or anything but because it would be a sign that he honestly hadn’t cared about me.

  Ashlyn, like every other city we’d seen on our journey, was empty. We could see that the instant the town came into sight. If people were living in the area, they were hiding well.

  As we crossed the city limits and started passing stores and homes that I recognized, tears began to slide down my cheeks. I wasn’t crying loud sobs, but silent tears that occasionally hitched my breath. Jason switched his rifle to his right hand so that he could hold mine with his left. The others purposely didn’t acknowledge my tears.

  The closer we got to my parents’ home, the slower my steps got. Jason tried to encourage me to walk faster, but I fought his urges. I knew he wasn’t trying to rush me into a situation that we knew was probably going to be traumatizing. He wanted us out of the street as quickly as possible. We hadn’t run into any zombies since entering the city, but we didn’t want to take any unnecessary chances. I understood that fact, but the closer I got, the more I didn’t want to know the fate of my family. I was changing my mind. I wanted to live in blissful ignorance.

  When I’d all but stopped walking, Jason asked the others to go ahead and scout the area while I composed myself.

  “We don’t have to do this. You know that, right?” Jason told me, turning me to face him.

  I wiped tears from my cheeks and nodded.

  “We can turn back right now, or the others can go and find out for you. Whatever you want to do,” he said.

  “I know,” I replied. “I want to see my parents, but I don’t want to at the same time. If they’re alive, I want to know, but if they’re…”

  “The only way we’re going to know either way is to go inside. You just have to tell me what you want to do.”

  “I don’t know.” I didn’t. I couldn’t make my body do anything.

  “All right, I’ll send Katrina and Greg to look for you, that way once you know, you can decide how to go forward.”

  I nodded. I was a coward, but I couldn’t be the one to find their bodies. I just couldn’t be.

  Jason stepped away from me and spoke into his com-unit, then stepped back to me. He took me in his arms and held me while we waited…and waited. After a while, I grew impatient for news. I stepped out of his arms and spoke into my own earpiece.

  “Katrina, what the hell is going on,” I asked, hating that I sounded so pissy.

  “Not
hing,” she said back. “We’re still looking.”

  “What do you mean, you’re still looking?” Jason asked.

  “I mean, no one is here. We’ve searched the house and nothing. No signs of what happened. No notes for Samantha and her sister, nothing.”

  “Did you check the basement?” I asked, starting in the direction of my parents’ home. My fear of seeing their bodies had dissipated.

  “Yep. We’ve checked every corner. There is no indication that anyone has been in this house for a while...no blood, no cold medicine...nothing. Where do you want us to check next?” she asked.

  “Mom’s friends with a woman named Lidia who lives two houses down—the blue two-story. They might have gone there for some reason,” I said through heavy breaths. I was running by that point.

  I met up with them right as they were entering Lidia’s house. The smell that wafted out of the front door when they opened it hit us all like a blast of flames, causing us to stumble backward.

  Once I’d recovered my breath, I began to cry again. I knew my parents were in there. That smell came from multiple dead bodies, and Lidia lived alone. Jason pulled me to him and hugged me tightly for a long moment.

  “We don’t know they are inside,” he said into my ear when I showed no signs of calming.

  “But they have to be,” I replied through hitched breaths.

  “No, they don’t. Anyone could be in that house. Do you want to find out or do you want to assume they’re dead and go home?” he asked.

  No one had entered the house yet. They were waiting for me to make the decision. They were also waiting for the smell to dissipate.

  “I want to go in. I need to know,” I said, forcing myself to calm down.

  “Okay,” Jason said.

  “I’ll go open the back door,” Katrina said, coming off the porch and heading for the backyard. “Maybe that’ll help air out the place enough for us to search it.”

  “Thanks,” Jason said in appreciation. “We’ll take a breather before going inside.” He said those last words to me.