Sympatico Syndrome Trilogy Box Set

by McDonald, M. P.

  He was tempted to let Jake shoot, but he still hoped to get out of here with no bloodshed. “Wait, Jake.” Cole stepped forward, sending Sophie towards Hunter as he did so. “Mister, we’re leaving. End of story. Jake and Sophie are with us. Now get out of our way.”

  “Leave them, and you can go. At least leave the girl.” The man smirked at Sophie and Cole’s finger twitched on the trigger as his jaw clenched.

  “Come on, guys. Let’s get out of here.” Cole took a step forward, glancing to the side when he sensed movement. Two more men stood at the bottom of the hill he and Hunter had descended, rifles aimed at them. Trying to stall to think of an escape, Cole turned to the man in the front. “What do you want them for?” Not that it mattered. There was no way in hell he would abandoned the teens to these people.

  The man stepped forward. He wasn’t more than sixty and appeared fit. Not a pushover by any means. “We’re old. The boy can do the heavy lifting, and the girl… well, she can help carry on our families.”

  “You sick old bastard.” Hunter lunged past Cole, firing off a shot that went wide, lodging into a support pole beside the man’s head.

  Cole didn’t blame Hunter, but he needed his son to stay level-headed. At a sound, he turned to find the two men Hunter had been holding at bay make a move towards their discarded rifles, and reacting on instinct, Cole fired.

  One man staggered, the other dropped like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Screams sounded from within the house, and his stomach clenched. What had he done? Should he have held his fire? There was no time to think and nothing he could do to undo his actions. The men shouldn’t have reached for the guns. Their action justified his reaction but didn’t make the sick knot in his stomach dissolve.

  “Let’s go!” Cole turned and squared his shoulders. He didn’t want to fight his way out, but they had been left no choice. The man in the front leveled his gun at Cole, and not waiting for the other man to shoot first, Cole fired yet again. He missed but the man dove to the side. Cole mentally tallied his shots. Was it five already? That left ten in the magazine.

  He shoved Hunter and Jake ahead of him with Sophie between them. “Go! Go!” He turned and fired cover rounds in the direction of the corner where the other men had been, and dashed after the kids.

  A round hit the ground in front of him, sending sand spraying in his face. Running in sand sucked, but it also made them all stagger a bit, giving the men with rifles difficult targets to hit. Another round whistled through the fabric of his coat, tugging at his sleeve. Cole turned and fired a couple of more rounds. The men crouched and Cole put on a burst of speed. When the kids got to the edge of the water, the sand was hard packed and they picked up speed, turning north.

  Cole cut the edge, making up ground. He looked over his shoulder and only the man from the front of the deck was giving chase. Pausing, Cole turned and fired at him, not waiting to see if he’d hit the man, but whirling and taking off again. They didn’t slow down until they were almost a mile away, and veered up the hill. From the top, they spotted the man walking back to the compound.

  Sagging, Cole braced his hands on his knees as he caught his breath. “Everyone okay?” He reached into his pack and handed Jake and Sophie masks. He and Hunter still wore theirs from before they entered the compound. “We’ll take turns wearing them as we walk and eat so we can all have breaks.”

  Jake nodded, took a mask and handed the other to Sophie. “Yeah. I’m good.” After looping it over his ears, he turned and said, “Hunter? You okay?”

  Hunter lifted a hand in acknowledgment. “Fine. Sophie?”

  Sophie stood watching the man on the beach. “I hate him.”

  Hunter stepped close to Sophie. “Did he…?”

  “No, Jake stopped it.” She shuddered. “He would have though. The others weren’t so bad, but I wish you’d have killed him instead of the other two, Cole.”

  Cole thought of the two men he’d shot and felt his stomach churn. He closed his eyes, seeing again the one man drop in a boneless heap. His mouth flooded and he felt like he might vomit.

  A hand pressed between his shoulder blades, rubbing awkwardly up and down. “Dad, it’s okay. You didn’t have a choice.”

  Hunter stuck close to Sophie wishing she would open up to him, but so far, she had remained silent after her earlier declaration. When he tried to hold her hand, she flinched away.

  Jake plodded along on Hunter’s other side. He didn’t say much either. Every so often, he hitched in a breath and gasped, clutching his side. When Hunter asked him about it, all he said was that he’d been kicked a couple of times. No matter how much Hunter prodded, Jake remained silent on the topic.

  All of them were tired and hungry. They retrieved their packs but left the tarps. Hunter shared his water with his dad, while Sophie and Jake shared the other one. Since they had both been exposed at the compound, they would have to go into the modified isolation on the island. Hunter frowned as they trekked through the forest.

  Hunter checked behind him, worried about the path they were leaving. A toddler could follow it without even paying attention. He breathed a sigh of relief once they hit the road.

  “Let’s stick to the shoulder of the road in case they come after us in one of their vehicles. Everyone make sure your firearms are ready.”

  Sophie had been given his father’s extra gun and had it tucked in her waistband. Her hand never strayed far from it.

  His dad waved Hunter, Sophie, and Jake ahead of him and to the left side of the street, as he took up the rear, turning to walk backwards and inspect the road behind them every hundred yards or so. Hunter offered to take his dad’s place since it had to be more tiring, but his father waved him back, mouthing Sophie’s name. He nodded. Sophie’s silence worried him, too.

  After they had walked for about an hour, they cut west on one road, then back south with the plan to make it back to their town.

  “Hold it, guys.”

  Hunter stopped and turned to his dad. The other two did as well.

  His dad waved a hand towards the side of the road. “Keep an eye out for water—a stream or a pond.”

  In the still woods, he heard a stomach growl and it wasn’t his own. He glanced at Sophie as she rubbed her abdomen. “Should we go into another house, Dad? Maybe there’s food somewhere.”

  His father looked up and down the road, his brow knit. “Not yet, but maybe in a bit. I don’t know how many miles we have until we get back to the dock. I’m estimating we’re at least ten miles north, and maybe two miles west.”

  Jake groaned, his knees buckling for an instant before he straightened and started walking with the rest of them.

  His father hurried to Jake’s side. “Do you need to rest? It looks like you took a helluva beating.”

  Jake shook his head. “It probably looks worse than it is. I’m just hungry. And thirsty.”

  Concerned, Hunter glanced over at him. “Didn’t they feed you guys?” While Jake had inspired the question, he looked at Sophie.

  She shrugged. “They fed me. I don’t know about Jake.”

  “I got a Pop-Tart yesterday morning.” Jake sighed. “I love Pop-Tarts, but one wasn’t enough. I could have eaten a whole box of them.”

  “A Pop-Tart?” His dad shook his head. “And that’s all since?” He paused, his glance moving between Sophie and Jake, clearly puzzled. “It’s odd that they would be eating that kind of food. I would have thought, with the kind of compound they created, that they would have had something more like venison, fish, or garden vegetables on hand. Did they all eat Pop-Tarts?”

  Sophie nodded. “I got three of them. One at each meal. The man, Dennis or Dale, I think his name was, said they’d found a whole truckload of them on the interstate back when the virus hit. But neither of us had eaten yet today before you guys came and found us.”

  While Hunter was also hungry, he’d at least had something this morning. He wished he’d saved some of the olives for the other two.

&n
bsp; Still, the topic of Pop-Tarts made his mouth water. He had kept a supply of them at college, much to his dad’s dismay, but they were an easy and quick breakfast and a great study snack, but the envy he felt for the other two getting to eat them dissipated as Jake sucked in a breath when his foot landed in a pothole, no doubt jarring his ribs. Jake had paid a high price for one rectangle of pastry.

  “Are you okay?” He suddenly remembered the ibuprofen he kept in a pocket of his pack and found a couple wedged into a corner. They were a little fuzzy with lint, but that probably wouldn’t hurt anything. He offered them to Jake. Sophie handed Jake the water bottle and he downed the pills, apologizing when he had to use the last of the water in the bottle to get the medication down.

  His father gestured towards the roadside. “I guess we’ll have to check out some of the houses we pass.”

  Jake’s head hung. “Sorry, Cole, we don’t have to stop. I’ll be fine.”

  His dad rested a hand on Jake’s shoulder as he passed him. “No worries. I’m kind of hungry too.”

  It was always risky going into a home. There could be people living in it who would fire first and ask questions later, if at all. Or there could be bodies. Bodies could be infectious. His dad didn’t think the virus could survive more than a few months, and then only if it was still wet but a decomposing body would be wet for quite a while. His father didn’t want to take any chances so they all had gloves and masks in their packs. They never went anywhere without a decent supply of them, but eventually, they would run out of them so they tried to avoid having to use protective measures—which meant avoiding most homes.

  He was surprised his father had gone in the one last night, but they had known they would be away from the island at least one more night, and needed to look for some supplies. Now they were in the same situation.

  Hunter missed the island already and couldn’t wait to get back. It had only been a few days, but felt much longer. In the months since they had lived there, it had become the one place they could relax the precautions. He glanced at Sophie, dying to speak to her without the other two present. She caught his gaze, held it, her eyes clouded with worry.

  He slowed, allowing his dad and Jake to move several feet ahead. Sophie took a deep breath. “I have something I need to tell you—”

  21

  With the forest a few miles behind them, Cole was uneasy about being out in the open with no cover. He turned to find Hunter and Sophie stopped. He halted and took a few steps back towards them as Sophie reached for Hunter’s hand.

  “I have something I need to tell you—”,

  “Hey, Hunter. I hate to break up the conversation, but let’s go! We have to stay together.” He understood their need to talk, but they had to get to safety first. Cole waved his arm for them to catch up, then urged everyone to pick up the pace. While it seemed as though they should be far enough away to be safe, in actuality, they were probably only about fifteen minutes by vehicle from the compound, and he knew they had vehicles.

  Sophie’s voice carried to him. Something about talking to Hunter later. Good. They had all the time in the world to talk once they reached the island.

  After another mile of flat country road, Cole pointed to a home set well off the road. It wasn’t a farm, but a small barn with a paddock behind the home, and more importantly, there was a hand-pump at one end of a trough beside the barn. It might not work, but he directed everyone to it. They could probably rest in the barn if there weren’t dead horses in it.

  The pump handle moved loosely and no water came out. Dammit.

  “Hey, Dad, I’ll go check out the garage. I bet they have some tools in there. I can get in through the window if Jake gives me a boost.”

  Cole shrugged. “Okay.” He didn’t know if the pump was permanently broken, but they all needed a short break and rest. He turned to the house. Was exploring it worth the risk? They were hungry and thirsty, and houses were few and far between here. He didn’t even spy a meandering creek between fields.

  “Sophie, can you keep an eye out for anyone and holler if you see anything? I want to check out the house.”

  “Sure. I’ll wait right here.”

  Cole donned gloves and a mask before he headed for the side door of the home. There had been no sounds from the property, and as they had walked up the driveway, he’d scanned for any signs of life, the process becoming automatic. There had been nothing. Whether the place was abandoned or the owners had died were questions he couldn’t answer. And he really didn’t care at this point. He just wanted to find some food.

  The door was partially open, and Cole hesitated, drawing his weapon before entering. It took only a few steps in to see that the home had been ransacked, but from the droppings and rank scent, he thought raccoons might have been the culprits. Possibly even bears had joined in. He’d seen signs of bears even in Oconto over the last part of the summer. Presumably they were all in hibernation now, or would be soon if they weren’t already. He paused at that thought. Would a bear hibernate in a man-made house? He didn’t know and the thought almost made him back out of the building. What were the chances of food being in here after raccoons and bears had ransacked it?

  The kitchen was a disaster, and Cole would have turned and left but a door off the kitchen was closed and scratches on the wood, along with droppings and urine stains told the tale of animals trying to get it open but they had been unsuccessful.

  Cole opened the door to find steps down to a basement. He stopped to listen before descending. He sniffed, knowing the stench of death would penetrate even through the mask. It was present, but not overpowering.

  He took his flashlight out, and flicked the switch, sweeping the light around the room. The beam illuminated a finished basement. On one side was a rec room with a large screen television, leather sofas and a bar. The other side had a ping-pong table, and in a corner, an old refrigerator. The door stood ajar and Cole gagged as he neared. This was the source of the rotten smell. When power had been lost, the door must have lost its seal and popped open. He skirted the fridge and went through a door to a laundry room. He was about to leave when he spotted a shelf.

  The owners of the home had apparently been fans of the bulk discount warehouses. Large bundles of toilet paper, paper towels, and paper plates sat on the shelf. If he’d had a way to carry them that wasn’t awkward, he’d have taken them, but he barely gave them a glance when he spotted two large jars of peanut butter shrink-wrapped together. A party sized box of butter crackers, another of saltines and individual cups of mandarin oranges, sold in packs of six, were bundled in a four pack. Grinning, he grabbed it all. They would eat like kings today.

  Triumphant, he juggled his find, dropping it all on the ground beside Sophie. “Voilà! Tonight’s dinner.”

  Sophie smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. She eyed the crackers though, and so Cole tore open a box and handed her a sleeve of the squares. “Go ahead and eat. I’ll leave my mask on.”

  Instead of ripping into them like he expected, she took one and merely nibbled on it, and held her hand out, shaking her head when he offered more. “Not yet. My stomach is kind of queasy.”

  Her confession set off alarm bells. “Queasy?”

  “It’s not what you’re thinking. I don’t believe any of those people ever got near anyone with the virus. It’s like they all were recluses. From what I heard, they didn’t form their group until a few months ago, and only did it then because they were running out of supplies.” She closed her eyes for a moment, resting her hand on her abdomen, taking a deep breath. “Anyway, if you didn’t notice, they were all pretty old and thought they’d have a better chance of surviving as a group. Then they found the Pop-Tarts.”

  Her report made him feel a little better, and together with the hostile behavior they’d encountered, he was ninety-nine percent certain the old folks hadn’t been carrying the virus. He glanced around.

  “Hunter and Jake are still in the garage?”

  She
brushed crumbs from her fingers and nodded. “Yeah, but Hunter hollered about finding something great. I’ll go see what’s taking them.”

  His concern eased, Cole looked as far as he could see down the highway, relieved to see there were no moving vehicles. With a sigh, he lay back on the grass. He felt as if he could sleep for a week. The surge of energy that had carried him through the confrontation had ebbed, and the lack of sleep, lack of food, and the miles they’d covered suddenly caught up to him. Closing his eyes, his body relaxed.

  “Cole?”

  Startled, he opened his eyes and turned his head to find Sophie sitting cross-legged on the ground, plucking at yellowed grass. How had she gone and come back so quickly? Had he fallen asleep? He rolled to his elbow and glanced down the highway again. He should have been keeping an eye out but nothing seemed amiss. He yawned. “Yes?”

  “I’m sorry I wished you’d killed that man.” Her eyes brimmed when she lifted her head.

  “Shhh… it’s okay.” He rose to a sitting position and reached out, touching her shoulder. Suddenly, a thought almost as bad as the virus entered his mind. “Did… did they hurt you, Sophie?”

  She shook her head as tears dropped onto her hands. “No. But they beat Jake.” The tears spilled from her eyes. “They kept questioning him, wanting to know who we were and where we came from. Mostly they wanted to know about what kind of food we had.”

  Cole cast another glance down the road as the urge to jump up and herd them all as fast as they could to the island to warn the others kicked in. Hell, the kidnappers didn’t need to follow Cole’s group—they could just head right to the island. Boats were all over the place if they had some gas for them. “What did you guys say?”

  “I didn’t say anything. I was just crying. Then when he wouldn’t talk, they started beating him.” She sobbed and gulped a few breaths. “They made me watch, Cole. It was awful.” She covered her face, her shoulders heaving. “He still wouldn’t tell them about the island—not until that man pushed the woman who was holding me by my arm away, and started to grope me.” She shuddered.