Sympatico Syndrome Trilogy Box Set

by McDonald, M. P.

  “I thought about it.” Jenna chuckled. “But, it wasn’t a very big can of hash to split three ways, and Mike needs to eat so he can heal quickly.”

  Sean shook his head. “You’re helping them for free. The least you could do is take a meal.”

  “Sean, I wasn’t expecting payment. I helped because that’s what I do.” Jenna slanted her husband a glance. Elly looked away, uncomfortable with their more and more frequent arguments.

  After eating the last bite of her pear, she tilted the bowl and drained every last drop of juice. She would have scorned canned pears a year ago, but now they tasted like sweet nectar from the gods. While Sean had sounded harsh, Elly found herself once again agreeing with Cole’s brother. “You know, Jenna, I understand your altruism, but Sean has a point. You have a valuable skill. In the coming days, you could barter it for things we need. It would be a good idea for all of us to learn skills that can be used as a form of currency if we meet more people.”

  Hunter nodded. “That’s a good idea, Elly. I don’t know what I can offer but I’ll think of something.”

  “I know about foraging in the wild, but only around here. Cole mentioned heading out to Nevada. Does anyone know anything about growing food out there?”

  Sophie looked at Jenna, who was also basically the chief gardener.

  “I don’t, but I guess I can learn.” Jenna looked uncertain, her brow furrowed as she caught Elly’s eye. “Has Cole thought this through?”

  Surprised to be asked as if she knew Cole’s every thought, Elly threw her hands up and shrugged. “It only came up for the first time last night. I don’t think Cole has decided anything yet.”

  “Who died and put him in charge?” Sean grumbled as he rose and put his plate in a bin of hot, soapy water Hunter had prepared before the meal. He turned. “Dinner was good, Elly. Thanks.” Then he stalked from the room.

  Stunned at the anger in Sean’s initial outburst, Elly could only nod at his compliment, but he had already turned his back and she doubted he’d seen it. Cole and Sean always had a bit of a prickly relationship and it puzzled her. She had no doubt Sean would give up his life for his brother without hesitation, and Cole would do the same. It was the small stuff that drove a wedge between them—little things such as when to hunt, what project was the best use of their time and even what would be the priority on any particular day. It all came down to power. Cole had it and Sean didn’t.

  It wasn’t that Cole had ever claimed to be in charge—he just naturally fell into the role. If Sean wanted to be the leader, then he needed to start acting like one. That’s all there was to it.

  Hunter washed the dishes after breakfast and set them in a rack to dry. Everyone had gone off to work on various tasks. Elly had taken the kids into the living room to give them some lessons in reading and math. He chuckled as he remembered Lucas’s grumbling, but Zoë had been eager. She had gone to preschool, but not a real school. Of course, that would probably never happen now.

  Jake took off to shovel paths to the other cabins and to the animals and Piper had joined him. They were also going to clean pens the best they could. Straw was running low for bedding, but feed was a bigger concern. His dad had brought some back with him so at least there was enough for a few more days. They would have to find some more soon or they would have to ration the little left. At least the horses were good at pawing through the snow, but it was so deep, even that has become difficult for them. He hoped they were getting enough to eat.

  The interior of the island had a few clearings and he considered taking all the animals there for a few hours of foraging. He and Jake could take a few shovels and clear some of the snow away to allow the horses, goats, and chickens to get to the dead grass and weeds beneath it. With no fences Buddy would be in heaven herding the goats. He must have had some training before Hunter had found him or else he was just a natural, because when the goats were out, Buddy’s demeanor changed. He was suddenly a working dog, alert and watchful, nipping any goat that strayed beyond his perceived boundaries.

  With the dishes done, Hunter found Sophie in one of the storage cabins. She had insisted she was tired of lying around in bed, and was going to go through the bolts of fabric he and Cole had gathered. She wanted to cut and sew diapers. That was one item they had not scavenged, although he was pretty sure they could find some warehouse and get a lifetime supply of disposables—but it would be good to have some cloth diapers on hand too, just in case.

  “Hey, Soph, do you need a hand?”

  She turned from looking at a bolt of soft, pink flannel, her eyes shining. “Look at this! Isn’t it pretty? Feel it.” She stepped towards him, bolt extended. He pulled off his glove and dutifully touched the cloth.

  It was soft, he’d give her that, but was she implying the baby was a girl? Did women know these things? He didn’t care if the baby was a boy or a girl, but maybe Sophie wanted a girl deep down. Before he voiced any opinion, she turned and found a satiny soft bolt of sky blue material. “And this one. I want to make a blanket but can’t decide which to use.”

  Out of his element, Hunter shrugged. “Use both.” What difference did it make? The baby wouldn’t care.

  Sophie gave him a wide smile. “You’re a genius, Hunter. I can make the blanket out of the flannel and use the blue stuff for the trim.”

  He wouldn’t turn down a compliment and grinned. “That’s what I was thinking…about the blanket I mean, not that I’m a genius.”

  “Here, take these two. I’m going to grab a few more things.” She handed him the bolts, and turned to add a package of needles, threads, scissors, a thing that looked like a bracelet but with a cushion on it, and box of pins, putting those items into a basket slung over her arm.

  After leaving her to sew, bored, Hunter put the dishes he’d washed earlier away in the cupboards. Free time, once something used to watch videos on Youtube, or to click away on social media, now made him restless. He couldn’t just sit around. In the other room, Elly was giving Zoë basic reading instruction while it sounded like Lucas was helping his little sister.

  Sean and Joe had gone to the storage cabin to check out some of the parts Hunter had brought back in the fall. Sean thought some of them would turn out useful in some way. Hunter was going to join them soon, but he wanted to speak to his dad first.

  As he put the last dish away, he heard the door to his dad’s room open. After a brief stop in the bathroom, his dad appeared in the doorway of the kitchen.

  “What time is it?” He yawned and rubbed the back of his neck.

  Hunter glanced at the clock on the wall. “Just after ten.”

  “What? Half the day is gone! I have to go see how Steve and Mike are doing. And go get the deer I stashed, and—”

  “Relax, Dad. We can drive over tomorrow to get the deer. We have fish for dinner tonight. And Jenna checked on the guys. They’re fine.”

  Twisting at the waist, his dad sighed. “I suppose we can wait until tomorrow then.”

  “Is your back bothering you?” It had looked like his dad was trying to work a kink out.

  “Eh, just a little sore. Every muscle in my body aches, but I’m fine.” His brow knit. “What about Joe?”

  “He’s better too.” Hunter hedged on this. While the older man had said he was feeling better and had shown up to breakfast, he hadn’t looked well to Hunter. He was gaunt and had coughed a lot. “He even ate here this morning.”

  “Excellent. And Sophie?”

  “Stir crazy. She snuck over to the supply cabin and got material.” Hunter grinned. “She’s going to sew baby stuff today.”

  That comment elicited a grin and chuckle. “Oh yeah? Wow. I still can’t believe I’m going to be a grandpa soon.”

  His dad appeared fit and healthy, not at all like a grandpa except for the touch of gray in his dark hair. Before, he’d always gone to the gym and had been in good shape, but now, the months of hard work and lack of junk food had benefitted them all and his dad was no exception.
He was probably as fit as he’d ever been in his life.

  Hunter wiped the small counter beside the stove, cleaning up a few drops of gravy. “Yeah, I’m still a little freaked out I’m going to be a dad.” Just saying the words aloud made his heart pound. He shook off the trepidation. “Are you hungry? Elly set aside a plate for you. It’s staying warm on the back of the stove.”

  “Starving.” He moved over to the stove and took the plate, releasing it immediately with a faint curse. “Damn. It’s hot.”

  “Here.” Hunter whipped the dishtowel from his shoulder and held it out to his dad. “Want some tea?”

  Carefully carrying the plate, his dad sat at the table. “Sure. Hey, could you hand me a fork?”

  Hunter handed him the fork and poured hot water into a cup, digging out the least used looking tea bag and dunked it in the water. “Sorry. It looks pretty weak, but Jenna said there’s some dried mint we can add to it.”

  “No, save it for later. This is fine.” He took a bite of the potatoes. “Mmm… it sort of tastes like hash.”

  “Yep.” Hunter sat opposite his dad. “Hey, so tell me about your hunting trip. Anything exciting happen?”

  Shrugging as he swallowed, his dad took a sip of the tea and said, “Other than the actual hunt, not really. Didn’t see anyone other than the group that Steve and Mike were with. Why?”

  “Oh, no reason. Just wondered if you had seen something. It sounds like you covered territory we hadn’t yet.”

  “I did. I was further southwest than we’ve been, but other than an empty barn, I didn’t see much except snow. A lot of snow.” He chuckled. “I spent the night in the barn, found the feed and then came back here. But that horse of yours saved my butt. I don’t think I’d have found the barn without Red.” He stirred the tea and took a sip.

  “Yeah?” Hunter smiled. “He’s a great horse.”

  “Anyway, other than almost getting lost, it was pretty uneventful.” He scooped up a forkful of potatoes and stared at it for a moment as though lost in thought before eating it. After he swallowed, he went on, “I think the worst thing was how dark everything was. Being on the island, we expect it, but for some reason, I didn’t count on it being so dark on the mainland. I still expected to see the orange glow in the sky from streetlights, or the beam of a car’s headlights coming down a road. I want to say it was unnatural, but actually I guess it was completely natural like it hasn’t been for a couple hundred years.”

  Hunter nodded, his throat tightening when he thought of the baby. What kind of life would his child have? What if having a baby was a huge mistake? He cleared his throat and scratched at a ragged cuticle on his thumb. “Uh, Dad, do you think it’s a bad idea to have a kid now? This baby won’t know anything of the world before.”

  His dad scraped his fork over his plate, getting the last mouthful and ate it before he replied, “I think this baby will do just fine in this new world. You’ll be a great father and Sophie will be a fantastic mother, so there’s no worry there.”

  Hunter bit his lip to hide his pleasure at the comment. “Sophie’s super excited. With her own family gone…I don’t know…she just wants this baby so badly.” He did too, but he was almost afraid to think it, let alone say it. It was as if saying it aloud would curse the precarious pregnancy.

  “And she’s okay now?”

  “Jenna thinks so, and she’s nearing four months along. Jenna said the due date would be around the beginning of July.”

  “That’s a good time of year.” His dad sipped his tea. “Sophie deserves to have some happiness after all she’s been through.” He drained the cup and stood, taking his plate to the sink, and washed it, setting it in the rack to dry. “You and I…we’ve been lucky. We’ve been spared most of the devastation. If only Trent…” His dad trailed off and glanced out the window across the flat expanse of ice as far as the eye could see on this side of the house.

  He knew his dad still blamed himself for Trent’s death even though there was nothing he could have done to prevent it—not without being psychic. Hunter sought to change the subject. “I guess I just think the baby will miss everything I took for granted, like cellphones and microwaves, and…” He tried to think of something else that he really missed. If he was honest, he liked the simplicity of this new life and he found he enjoyed the physicality of it. When something needed to be done, there wasn’t some service to call or machine to do it.

  His dad cut into his thoughts. “He or she will probably do better than any of us dealing with this new world. It won’t be new to them. It’ll just be normal—it’ll be all they’ve ever known. Besides, what’s the point of surviving the virus if we don’t have children?”

  Hunter thought on that. His dad was right. “Yeah. I guess. It would be really weird to live in a world without children.” He envisioned growing old and being one of the very last people alive on the face of the Earth, and shivered. The loneliness of the scenario was too horrible to think about and he rejected it. His father was definitely right. They needed children. All of them did.

  3

  Cole drove across the ice with Hunter beside him in the SUV. With the deer stashed in a garage on the mainland and no need to go beyond the town there was no reason not to take the car except it used some gas, but he’d trade a little gasoline for the chance to get the short trip done in a matter of an hour or so. He’d had enough of traipsing around in the snow and the warmth of the SUV felt like a luxury. He shook off the guilt of using precious fuel and reasoned there were still untapped potential sources nearby.

  He was certain there were vehicles in garages and if they could get into a gas pump at a gas station, they might find a bonanza. Sean had mentioned using a generator to get a pump going, but there needed to be some kind of switch, but he was confident he could put one in if he had the switch available.

  His main worry was whether there would even be gasoline in the storage tanks at gas stations. He remembered everyone filled up their tanks in the last few days when panic set in. Lines for fuel had wound around blocks, it wouldn’t come as a surprise if many stations had run out of gas. The virus hit so hard and so fast most of the suppliers would have also succumbed to the virus. Hell, there had been stations where customers had died with the pump in their hands.

  His mind wandered as he drove over the ice, scanning ahead to find the best place to leave the lake and drive onto shore. What would be fantastic would be finding a tanker truck full of gas. It would be like hitting the motherlode. If they found one, they would have plenty of gasoline to take them wherever they wanted to go. He made a mental note to keep an eye out for one.

  None of them knew how to drive a semi-truck but they could worry about that if and when they found one. Of course, these days it was mostly a matter of just getting it going—there was no worry about rules of the road since traffic was a thing of the past. But, all of that was a job for another day. For now, the SUV had enough gasoline for a few trips back and forth from the island to the mainland. In a few weeks they’d have to drive the car back over and store it onshore when the weather warmed.

  “After we get the deer, I want to drop by the house where Steve and Mike’s friends are staying and give them an update. It should be easy to find. Steve said he plowed a route there.” Cole gritted his teeth when the vehicle hit what must have been a chunk of ice beneath the snow. The path Steve had plowed was only a faint outline with the way the wind had blown. It was still better than the surrounding ice though, so he took the path straight onshore a little farther north than they usually went. The docks were farther south and so that was the spot they had grown used to entering the town.

  Cole scanned the houses, recognizing a pale blue home as being one that marked the edge of town with the houses spaced farther apart. Lucas and Zoë’s was a block south. He supposed they should stop and check if their dad ever came back. He didn’t hold out hope, but they had promised the kids they would check regularly. The last time had been before Christmas, so Cole
made a mental note to stop on the way back to the island.

  Even though he was coming from slightly north of where he left the deer, he had no trouble locating the home. It seemed odd that with the world so different now, that finding an address was still just a matter of following the streets and house numbers. He supposed that would change in the coming years until some new rendition of a mail service started up again.

  “Wow, Dad. He’s a beauty!” Hunter held the rack of antlers. “We’ll get a lot of meat from him.”

  “I sure hope so.” The buck was frozen solid, which was a good thing as far as the meat was concerned, but they had to tie him to the rack on top of the SUV, one leg sticking up at an odd angle.

  Hunter prowled the garage and found a few items they could use, mostly tools, but also a hose. “We can always use more hose for the garden.” He tossed it in the back of the SUV.

  Cole nodded, and approached the door from the garage into the house. He’d wanted to explore it when he’d left the deer but there was no time. They’d taken to marking an X on houses that they had checked already, usually leaving the mark on the front door. Hunter had run around to the front and reported no X, so they donned masks, and checked their weapons. Cole had a handgun and a rifle; Hunter just his pistol. They hadn’t heard a thing since entering the garage, but they were taking no chances.

  Hunter had found a crowbar hanging on a hook in the garage—another sign of the low likelihood of anyone being around. Survivors wouldn’t have left a tool for breaking and entering so readily available. While his son pried the door open, Cole scanned the garage, noting a twenty-pound bag of kitty litter. He made a note to take it with them thinking it could come in useful if they got stuck in a ditch somewhere.