She handed him the beans, dried beef, and a couple of cubes of chicken bouillon he’d taken from the farmhouse. He dumped it all in the water. He’d add the rice later. He wasn’t the best of cooks, but after a long day, he and Sophie would eat just about anything.
“My parents were both at work when they got sick. I guess I missed out because I was mad at my mom and had gone up to my room the night before.”
“What were you mad about?”
Her lip quivered as she lifted one shoulder. “It’s so stupid now. I wanted to go with my friend’s family to their summer cabin over Memorial Day weekend, but my mom said no, that I had to go to my brother’s eighth grade graduation instead. I was so angry. I called my brother a spoiled brat and stormed up to my room. It was the last I ever saw any of them alive. I was supposed to go to school and pretended to, but skipped instead and hung out by a lake near my house. I didn’t go home until late at night because I met a guy there. He had beer, and we ate a couple of hot dogs.”
He wanted to ask if the man she’d met had been one of the guys they had killed, but didn’t interrupt for fear she would clam up again. This was the first time she’d said anything about her family.
“Obviously, I couldn’t go home drunk, so I called and left a message that I was spending the night at my friend’s house.” Her hands were clenched in her lap and every few seconds, she twisted them a tiny bit. “I thought it was strange that nobody answered their phone. Not my mom. Not my dad. Not even my brother. I guess I passed out from the beer because next thing I remember was the guy trying to get my jeans off me.”
She paused, her hands twisting tighter. He feared for her wrists, but she cleared her throat and continued, “I freaked and hit him with a beer bottle, and I thought I killed him, but then I saw he was breathing so I jumped on my bike and went home as fast as I could pedal. I think it was about one in the morning by then, and I was still kind of drunk and freaked out about the guy. I never even realized nobody was home. I was just relieved I didn’t get caught.”
“Were you okay? The guy didn’t…he didn’t…” Hunter stumbled over the word, not knowing if he should ask, but she seemed to trust him. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”
She shook her head. “No, but I was pretty shaken. The next day was a Saturday, and I slept late. It was about noon when I woke up.”
Her hands stilled, and she stared at them for a long moment. “The house was so quiet. I’ll never forget that. I jumped out of bed. I just knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know what. My parents’ room was empty, the bed made. I couldn’t tell if my brother had been there because his room is always a mess, but I didn’t see him, and his computer was off, and he only did that when he was leaving for school—I think.” She gave a soft laugh. “Anyway, my mom left a rambling message on our voicemail, and there was a message from a hospital about my brother. I didn’t know what to do because my mom still didn’t answer her cell and none of my friends did either. I turned on the TV just to hear another voice, and that’s when I learned about the virus. I waited at home for days, but never heard from my family again.”
A knot formed in Hunter’s throat. He tried to speak through it. “I’m sorry, Sophie.”
“Yeah. Me too. My mom had left a message on my cellphone earlier on the day I skipped school. I never heard my phone ring when she left it.” Tears streamed down her face, tracing around her nose and dripped onto her hands. “My mom sounded normal then—not like in the rambling message. I listened to it over and over until the phones stopped working. Anyway, she apologized and had offered a compromise on the weekend. If I went to the graduation ceremony on the Friday night, I could skip the party on Saturday and go to the lake house.”
She brought her hand up, using the back of her wrist to swipe at her nose as she shrugged. “So, you see, everyone I love is dead, and I should be too. I would be if I hadn’t been a terrible daughter. I’d be with my family.”
He wanted to tell her that he was glad she wasn’t with her family, but he couldn’t squeeze the words out. Instead, he reached for her hand, not caring about the tears or anything else that might be on it. He rubbed his thumb gently across the back of it.
Her breathing shaky, she added, “I guess I’m lucky in some ways.”
“How’s that?” He couldn’t see how she could consider herself lucky.
She gave his hand a return squeeze. “Because you found me before the guys who had me could… do anything. They were waiting to see if I would get the virus first. They didn’t care if they had it and could give it to me, of course.” She shook her head.
Cole cleaned Trent’s body, arranging his limbs, so he appeared to be sleeping. They couldn’t wait too long to dispose of the body and not just from a contamination aspect. The weather had been hot for so early in the summer. He left Trent in the clothes he’d been wearing and just wiped his face free of blood as much as he could, but his lips were torn, and the cracks contained dried blood that wouldn’t wipe away—not unless he wiped harder than he dared.
He rolled his nephew onto a large, clean sheet, leaving a space for his head. As he performed the heartbreaking task, a memory popped into his head of how when Hunter had been born, the nurse had wrapped him like a mummy. It was a precious memory that he tried to push away to keep from tarnishing it, but it played out in his mind and it helped get him through the horrible job.
When he had learned the art of mummy-wrapping his son, it had given him joy. Often it was after giving his son a bath, drying, powdering, and diapering the baby. It was their special time, and it gave Brenda a solid hour to sit and relax in the evening. He’d present his wife with the sweet smelling, sleepy bundle who needed just one more feeding before going to sleep.
The memory gave him a brief mental respite, but dealing with Trent’s remains was an exhausting job, especially while dressed in a full biohazard suit. He sat back on his haunches to catch his breath after getting the sheet tucked in. He had a plastic tarp to take the body to the funeral pyre, but he couldn’t bring it in until he had disinfected the room. He spent the next hour spraying the room down with a mixture of bleach and water. It meant moving Trent yet again once he had the tarp in place. Grunting, he rolled Trent one more time, then stood bent at the waist as he caught his breath.
Dammit. Trent’s eyes wouldn’t stay closed. He’d tried to close them to make him appear to be sleeping so Sean, Jenna and Piper could see Trent one last time, ideally looking peaceful. Reaching down, he tried again, gently closing the eyelids, but gave up after a few attempts. He wasn’t a mortician and didn’t know the tricks to keep the lids shut for open casket funerals.
“Joe!” Sweat ran into his eyes, but he couldn’t wipe it away since the suit had a full hood—not that he would have touched his eyes anyway, but the sweat burned, and he blinked hard to clear his vision. “I’m ready for your help now!”
“Coming in.” Joe opened the door and glanced around the room before his gaze landed on Trent. He made the sign of the cross, his eyes closing briefly as his mouth moved. Cole waited, touched by the other man’s behavior.
“Are the others getting gear on?” Cole sat on the bench for a moment, the heat from the suit and his exertion making him light-headed for a few seconds. He longed for a drink of water.
“Yep. I told them a few minutes ago that it was almost time. They’re waiting by the spot.”
“We’ll light the fire after they get a look and say their goodbyes, but tomorrow we’re having a more formal ceremony when we don’t have to wear all this protection.” He gestured to the suit. He was finding it difficult to mourn his nephew while also playing the role of undertaker.
“Good idea.” Joe knelt, taking the head of the tarp. “I’ll take this end. You look a little shaky.”
“It’s the heat.” Cole drew a deep breath. It had to be over a hundred degrees in the suit.
“I feel like a piece of cod in a fish boil myself.”
Cole gave a wan smile and nodded. �
�Okay. Let’s get this over with.”
26
Elly jumped onto the dock and looped the rope around a cleat. They were at the end of the shipping channel in Sturgeon Bay, according to the map. After this, they would be in open water in Green Bay so they had to make sure to top up their gas tanks before they crossed the bay. She hoped she could find the island. Cole had told her the name of the town the island was offshore from, but the town was on the other side of the bay. He said it wasn’t more than a mile or so out, so at least they could get to the other side. Then, they could follow that coast and check whatever islands they came to.
They had passed a few boats and were both wary and hopeful, but the boats had turned out to be drifting. Jake had tossed a can of soda into one to get the attention of anyone who might be in the cabin, but their shouts didn’t get a response, and a cloud of flies rose in the air.
After that, they just watched the other boats float by, neither of them speaking. Even the Coast Guard station at the entrance of the channel had shown no signs of life. They had blasted their horn a few times to no avail.
They had decided one of them would stay with the boat while the other ventured on shore a little way to see if there were any supplies to be had. They had enough, but she thought they shouldn’t show up at Cole’s island without something to contribute.
“I’ll be back in twenty minutes, if not sooner.”
“I’m going to see about getting gas from these other boats.”
“Be careful.”
“Okay… Mom.” Jake grinned.
She narrowed her eyes at him before chuckling and heading towards shore. Technically, she was old enough to be his mother if she’d been a teen mom, but she didn’t feel old enough to have a child in his late teens. Still, she couldn’t help uttering the directive. It just came naturally. She wiped her sunglasses on her shirt and put them on, scanning the shore as she strode down the dock. A bridge was on her left, but on the other side was a large, red boat. Stenciled on the side, it claimed to be a fireboat that offered rides. It looked cool and any other time she would have been drawn to it, but she didn’t have time to explore. A café on shore drew her. She hoped there would be stores of food inside.
At a couple of other harbors she had explored and found most places ransacked, but with the rate at which people died, there had to be a few places that hadn’t been touched.
She had both her own backpack and carried Jake’s, both empty now. She hoped she could fill them with something. She pulled her mask on and donned gloves, stretching the blue material over her hands, inspecting them for any holes. With her supply limited, she couldn’t afford to toss them out and had been washing them in soapy water with a touch of bleach. She worried the bleach would weaken the rubber.
The café had a broken front door, and she peeked in, nudging the door wider with her toe. A glass bakery case at the front was broken and a cooler that probably normally contained cans or bottles of soft drinks for purchase, was empty, the door hanging by one hinge. On a positive note, she didn’t see any bodies, and while her mask blocked mild odors, she didn’t detect the heavy stench of death.
Venturing farther in, she paused at a door that she hoped led to the kitchen. Listening for anything, but all she heard was the faint sound of the boats outside bumping against the docks as the waves lapped at their hulls, and seagulls. Inside, there was nothing except a few papers blowing across the floor.
She pushed the swinging door into a kitchen that, while not in great shape, didn’t look totally trashed. A bag of flour lay on its side on a stainless steel table, the contents spilling out onto the table and the floor. Rodent droppings and little footprints let her know that bag of flour was contaminated, but she spied large plastic bins on the lower shelf of a metal shelving unit. Crossing to it, she pulled the first bin out and found a couple of twenty-five pound sacks of flour. That would make a lot of bread. She wouldn’t be able to carry it herself, but one of the smaller worktables had wheels. She was going to load the table in the kitchen but thought of the threshold of the door to the outside. The wheels were small and probably wouldn’t handle the bump well when it was fully loaded. Instead, she wheeled the table outside, lifting it slightly to get it over the bump. Returning to the kitchen, she lugged the sacks of flour.
One bin held three sacks of sugar, but two had been gnawed into by rodents, the contents leaking out, but the third hadn’t been touched yet.
On the top shelf of the unit, she found a container holding three two-pound bags of dry yeast. It was untouched, and she considered it her best find. Thrilled, she put those in her backpack along with a five-pound bag of bread flour and a small box of salt. Glancing at her watch, she realized her time was almost up.
She wrangled the make-shift cart down the sidewalk and across the street. There was a ramp down to the harbor, but with nothing holding the sacks on the slippery metal, she worried about everything sliding off, the bags breaking open on the concrete. Deciding to stand in front of the cart and reaching her hands around to grasp the legs of the table, she could keep the cart from going too fast.
“Hey!”
Elly whirled, catching the cart before it could send her crashing down the ramp. The voice was too deep to be Jake’s. A large man carrying a shotgun strode down the sidewalk towards her. She froze at the sight of the weapon.
“That belongs to me!”
“I’m sorry. I thought everyone was… gone.”
“You thought wrong. Everything in this town is now mine. Get the hell out of here. And leave the table.”
If she walked away from the table now, it would careen down the ramp. “I can’t.”
She didn’t mean she wasn’t going to leave, just that if she abandoned the cart, the flour, sugar, and yeast would probably break open when it fell from the cart.
The man hitched the gun up, bringing it to bear on her. “Step away right now.”
Shrugging, she raised her hands and stepped to the side. She hated to see food going to waste, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it. It would have been comical watching him chase after the cart, his mouth open in surprise, but Elly bolted the second he was past her. She had come up via steps farther down and found them. Praying Jake had all the gas they needed, she raced down the pier and spied Jake, his back to her, a gas can tilted as he filled the tank.
“Jake! Start the boat!”
He turned, confused at first, but then he set the can down and jumped to start the boat. As she raced down the pier, she felt the vibration of another set of feet pounding after her. She was never going to make it.
When she reached the cabin cruiser, she leaped in and reached for the rope in the same motion. Glad she had tied a quick-release knot, she yanked on the end just as the boat lurched in reverse.
“Get down!” Jake ducked.
Elly didn’t ask why, but before she could follow the command, she tumbled backward, landing on the yeast and flour in her bag when the boat jerked forward. Stunned, she flinched at the sound of a shot, instinctively covering her face when she saw something falling on her like confetti.
Turning over, she crawled to Jake, who was trying to maneuver the boat from a crouching position. Blood ran down his face. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Not sure what hit me, but it was small. Probably a piece of plastic from the boat.” He nodded towards the railing in front of him. A good-sized chunk of fiberglass was missing, and the railing hung loose. Another shot made them both duck, but this one didn’t hit the boat.
“Did you get enough gas?”
“I was just topping it off when you hollered. I have the other can full, so yeah, I think so.”
As the harbor receded, Elly eased up to stand, slinging off the backpack as she watched the man on the pier. He shook the weapon and shouted something, but between the distance and the boat’s engine, she couldn’t make out what he said.
Jake swiped a streak of blood from his face and wiped his hand on his cargo shorts. “So
what happened?”
Elly sat on the seat next to the captain’s seat and unzipped the backpack, hoping the bags hadn’t exploded when she landed on them. “I found a café with a bakery. The front was trashed, but the kitchen wasn’t in bad shape and I had bags of flour and sugar loaded up to bring back to the boat when that guy showed up.”
The yeast looked okay, but the bag of flour had a tear in it. She left it in the backpack. They could deal with it later. “All I ended up getting were a few bags of yeast and a small bag of bread flour.” She lifted one of the bags of yeast.
“The yeast is a good thing, right? I mean, you don’t need much to make bread.”
She raised an eyebrow. “How do you know that?”
“Hey, just because I’m a cool guy doesn’t mean I don’t know how to bake.” He grinned. “Okay, I’m not exactly a baker, but my mom used to bake a lot, and I’d help her when I was little.” His smile faded, and he turned away from her. “My mom always gave me a bit of dough to knead.” He didn’t speak for a few minutes, just stared ahead. “I don’t remember the last time I baked with her.” His voice twisted on the last bit, and he cleared his throat.
Elly patted his shoulder as she carried the backpack and yeast into the cabin. When she returned, Jake had schooled his face into his normal grin, asking if they could make beer with the yeast, but his eyes still held a hint of sadness.
“When we get to the island, we’ll suggest it. If I remember right, Cole liked a cold beer now and again. He’d probably like that idea. I’m sure his son will go for it.”
“His son?”
“Didn’t I tell you about Hunter?”
“Not that I remember. Maybe you did when we first met. That seems like a long time ago now, doesn’t it?”
She agreed that it did and told Jake as much as she could recall about Cole’s son which wasn’t much since she’d never met the young man. “I hope he’ll be there too.”
“Yeah. Who knows? We could get there and find it deserted.”
Sympatico Syndrome Trilogy Box Set Page 24