by Morris, Kate
“Hi,” Noah said and cast his gaze at the truck’s bed liner.
“Hi, Stephanie,” he said to the blonde, who only inclined her head slightly. “What’d you do to your hand?”
She held up her bandaged palm, “Burned it a little. No big deal.”
“On your crack pipe?” Alex asked as Roman navigated them back out onto the road to head over to Tristan and Avery’s street.
Stephanie just flipped off his brother.
“How?” Elijah asked again.
“Loading firewood into the fireplace,” she explained. “We don’t have heat today, and the basement where I live is cold. Roman’s working on getting that stove thing piped in, but it’s gonna be a while because he needs more pipe vents or whatever.”
Alex blared a little too loudly for the pace of the conversation, “Hey, you!” When he didn’t get a response, he kicked Noah’s foot. “You. Noah!” This time Noah raised his eyes to meet Alex’s cool ones. The meek guy had a full beard going now, which was reddish. “Is that true? She get hurt loading firewood?”
Noah looked at Stephanie as if he didn’t know and offered a weak shrug.
“Where were you when she was loading firewood?” Alex demanded in a hostile tone, surprising Elijah.
“I-I don’t know,” Noah said as if annoyed.
“Next time that job needs done, you do it, ya’ hear me?” Alex demanded. “If Jane’s dad or Roman can’t do it, then you will. The girls in your house don’t need to be taking care of keeping a fire going if you’re home.”
“What?” Noah asked in a softer tone.
“Another girl in that house gets burned loading firewood into an open fire, and I’m coming over there, ya’ hear? No reason for them to be doing that kind of work while you’re sitting around on your ass. That’s your job now.”
Elijah tensed, waiting for a big confrontation. His brother was already in a bad mood. Noah looked startled, and his eyes went wide. He was by no means a small guy, but he seemed defeated by life.
“That’s your fuckin’ job now,” Alex repeated, sitting forward slightly and pointing at Noah. “Do it. If you got a problem with that, me and you can get out right here, right now. Got me?”
Noah nodded and stuttered nervously, “Y-yeah, yeah, I hear you. I got it. Sorry.”
Elijah glanced quickly at Stephanie and found her smiling just a tiny bit from appreciation. When his brother looked back, she turned her head, the smile instantly disappearing.
“We don’t have time for slacking. Every person in these groups of ours will pull their weight,” Alex said. “When or if you can’t, you will be relegated to other tasks like helping in the kitchens or watching kids. Lord knows there’s enough tasks to keep us all asses and elbows from dawn till dusk. There’s no time to be sitting around feeling sorry for ourselves.”
“Right, I agree,” Wren said as Roman pulled down Tristan’s lane. They’d left the flat-bed trailer at Jane’s father’s house near the shed, but they planned on parking it at the farm in their uncle’s humongous barn. There was plenty of room in that massive structure, that much was sure. There was also no sense in returning it to the trailer rental shop since nobody was there, and it had clearly already been looted. They would make good use of a trailer like that and probably often.
The truck slid twice going down Avery’s driveway, but he was still glad to be there as the gate closed behind them. They were greeted with a warm welcome and shown inside. Their uber-cool modern house that looked like something from a magazine smelled like the best five-star Italian restaurant anywhere mixed with the comforting aroma of a wood fire going. His mouth immediately watered.
“Hope everyone’s hungry,” Avery said and instructed her brothers to take their overflow coats into another room.
“Smell’s great,” he said.
Wren added, hooking her thumb in his direction, “He’s always hungry.”
“Good, then you’re in the right place!” Avery said in a cheery manner. She was wearing a printed white apron with Nordic style designs. She walked jauntily back into the kitchen but called over her shoulder, “Roman? Did you get some sleep?”
“Yes, ma’am, I sure did,” he answered as they all went into the home a little further.
Tristan was sitting at the dining table with Avery’s little sister, Kaia, who Elijah was pretty sure was his age, along with Spencer and Renee. Remmie was hanging back, so he went over and said hello to her, too. She seemed shy and not like she wanted to talk to him, so he took a seat at the table since it looked like Tristan and Spencer were planning their mission.
“Since Spence is on sick leave,” Tristan said with a joking smile that was returned by his friend, “I’ll need some people to go with me.”
“What all did you learn from that Jeff guy?” Elijah asked.
“That’s what we were just discussing,” Spencer said and nodded for Tristan to begin.
Roman’s girlfriend, or what he assumed was his girlfriend, Jane, led his little brother Connor away.
“Let’s help Avery and Finnegan in the kitchen, okay?” she said to him and got a ‘thank-you’ mouthed from Roman. Jane was really pretty. She was also quiet and petite and kept a permanent slouch in her shoulders and her head down most of the time. But she was pretty, and Roman really seemed into her, which was strange because he didn’t know Jane, but he remembered seeing Roman Lockwood at parties. He was a very popular guy from his school. Elijah had immediately picked up on that vibe when he’d seen him at those parties. Girls flocked, guys listened, and he just seemed aloof and bored most of the time. He’d not seen Jane at parties, but he knew Lila worked with her and really liked the girl. She’d even hinted a few times that she was going to set him up with her. He’d only smiled indulgently. But a guy like Roman dating a girl like Jane at school would’ve been definitely out of the typical spectrum of what was deemed acceptable by their classmates and social constructs, and Elijah wasn’t sure how they’d made that work.
“Yeah, probably not a good idea to let the kids hear this stuff,” Tristan said. “Jeff was a whole lot of information. After a while, that is. When he did finally talk, he sang. This trafficking operation was going on before all this.”
“Holy shizz,” Elijah said. “Before this virus? Trafficking?”
Tristan nodded.
“Damn,” Stephanie echoed as she pulled up a chair.
Tristan continued, “Yeah, they were running it out of the abandoned Chinese food restaurant and the laundromat in conjunction with the country bar across the street, which had hotel rooms on the top floor. I’d been there. That didn’t seem to be the situation, and I was never approached about girls.”
“Which was smart on their part,” Spencer said. “I wasn’t, either.”
“Yeah,” Wren said, “Probably because you looked like the kind that would kick their asses before you’d buy a girl.”
“I never even knew about it, and Avery and I have lived in the area our whole lives,” Renee told them.
Elijah looked at Remmie, who was staring at the floor as if embarrassed. She slinked away toward the kitchen, and he felt horrible for her knowing that she was trafficked and sexually abused. Even if she didn’t come right out and say it, that much was very obvious. He knew the girl was raped just from the subtle way Tristan and Avery had explained the situation. It made him sick.
“No, you couldn’t have,” Tristan said. “He wasn’t in charge of it back then, either. When the sickness kicked off, a lot of people in the trafficking ring got sick and died. He was a part of the security team. The government agent assigned to this area was the ring leader back then. He died from RF2…”
“Good,” Stephanie said. “Asshole. You can’t trust anybody in the government.”
“Exactly, but like this usually goes, someone new stepped in.”
Elijah said, “Why? Of all the times to do something like this. Here we’re all just concerned with surviving, and people like Jeff are selling and abusing girl
s. I don’t get it.”
“Evil doesn’t die just because the world falls apart, Elijah,” Wren said and regarded him with those aqua eyes of hers that saw straight into his soul. “It flourishes. Without the law to help people, they’ll do whatever they want now.”
Elijah said, “Like Principal Russo.”
Her eyes flashed with anger at the mention of him.
“Who’s that?” Roman asked. “Your principal at school or something?”
“Yeah, he…uh, tried to hurt Wren the same way. We think he was a serial killer.”
“Jane had the same problem,” Roman revealed without missing a beat. “Not by our principal. Sorry, just to clarify. She was attacked by a random stranger that got into her house. Her grandmother saved her but was killed in the process.”
“Yeah, well, our principal’s still out there,” he told them. “Sicko creep. From what we figured out, we think he was very comfortable in what he was doing and probably did it many times before. I was able to break down the door to get to her, and Wren ended up shooting him as he ran off.”
Tristan said, “I think Wren’s right, though. People like this will survive, at least, for a while. This is what many of them have waited on for a long time.”
Avery walked in and said, “Satan works hard on earth. We have to remember that, especially now. The world is in chaos, and this is what he wants. Bad people do horrible things all the time for him. We just have to be extra careful now.”
She sat next to Tristan and looped her arm under and through his. He kissed her hand.
“Avery’s right, too. Evil is still out there. Some people are worse than the infected. But back to Jeff. I found out who he sold Remmie’s sister to and who he sold the other girls to. They’re two different people, two different buyers, both local.”
“Are we going after them tonight?” Roman asked anxiously.
“Yes, I’ll take you, Roman, and you, Alex,” he decided.
“Sure,” Alex agreed.
Elijah said, “We were thinking that someone should go get the rest of that stuff in the semi trailer tonight, too.”
“I think that’ll have to be us, too. Let’s get the girls first and bring them back here. Then we’ll go back out. It’ll be close to dawn by then, and we can switch out people, give the first group a rest. I don’t think it’s a good idea to spread too thin at night. That’s why I’m saying we go in intervals, but not all at the same time.”
“What about you?” Wren asked. “Weren’t you just shot?”
He shook his head and curled his lip slightly, “Nah, I’m fine. Just a graze. Went right through my fat gut.”
Avery didn’t look so pleased with his joke, and it seemed like a sore subject, so Elijah didn’t get involved. Spencer razzed him about being a ‘fatty.’ He was hardly a pound overweight. Actually, Elijah guessed he was really ripped under his heavy clothing. Like Alex, Tristan seemed disciplined about staying in shape. Spencer was, too, but he was just leaner.
“I’d like some people to stay here until we come back,” Tristan requested. “Leaving Ave and the kids alone is dangerous. Spencer’s down. Her siblings are new to shooting and all of this.”
Jane’s father, Gyles, said, “That’s no problem at all, Tristan. After everything you’ve done for us, that’s no problem. You don’t have to leave and worry that something’s going to happen here.”
“Well, I didn’t necessarily mean you, Gyles,” Tristan stated. “You’re just healing yourself.”
“I can try,” her father said.
“I also think we need to make this our main command center. At least, for now. It’s the most fortified, and honestly, this place has the most to lose. We’re a little more self-sufficient. If anything happens to any of your places, Avery and I have already talked about it and decided we’d take you in.”
Alex said, “Thanks, man. I really appreciate that. It’s good to know that if something happens to me, Elijah and Wren could come here for help.”
Jane’s father gave a solid nod and then another when Avery offered coffee.
“We should eat,” she suggested. “Maybe you can finish planning after dinner? We need to be ready to watch the President’s address.”
Everyone helped carry the heaping bowls of spaghetti, meatballs, and fresh-baked rolls to the table. She’d made canned green beans, as well, and it all tasted great.
“These are the best meatballs I’ve ever had,” Gyles remarked with appreciation.
“Thank you,” Avery said. “Abraham suggested using some of the deer meat mixed in with the beef.”
“Good call, bro’,” Elijah praised and dug in for seconds.
“Gross,” Stephanie complained with a wrinkle of her nose.
“Tristan, if you don’t mind me asking,” Gyles said, not missing a beat, “What was your job in the Army?”
Tristan explained it while clearly leaving a lot of the grittier details out: rescue and retrieve style operations. That still left a giant question mark in Elijah’s mind. Then Avery told them how they met at the bar in town. She also told them about her family members that didn’t make it, and Tristan told them he didn’t have any family. After that, each person said a little about themselves, and it seemed that they all shared a common denominator of loss and grief, some newer than others, some more extensive than others, but nobody was getting out of this pandemic unscathed by death’s clutches. He was thankful he still had his brother. When it came time for Remington to share, she actually did, which surprised him.
“My siblings were all adopted,” she explained. “My sister you’re going to rescue tonight was, too. My parents were told they’d never have kids. I was a total accident.”
Avery smiled gently and touched her forearm, “Some of my siblings were also adopted. Kaia is one of them, but she’s my sister, ya’ know? We never looked at them differently. We’re all family, real family.” Avery paused and looked around the room. Then she said, “Now, you all are my family, too.”
Remmie nodded with tears in her eyes and went on to tell them that her sister Clara was all she had left.
“She’s from South Korea, so don’t go looking for someone that looks like me,” she said lightly. “My parents adopted her at three months old.”
“Roman’s one-quarter Korean,” Jane offered.
Remmie smiled shyly and said, “Cool.”
Roman then offered a grin toward Jane across from him, who returned it and looked down quickly.
“And your family, Jane?” Avery asked.
“Oh, it’s just me and my dad. We’re all that’s left.”
“Not exactly,” Gyles stopped her. “Jane’s mother is living at the farm where we’re keeping the animals because she was let out of prison or something. It’s a sore subject. One Jane and I need to discuss later.”
Jane frowned.
“Oh!” Avery exclaimed. “Then I’m glad she’s here. I know they were supposed to be letting out non-violent offenders.”
“She’s not a non-violent offender,” Gyles revealed to a few more ‘oh’s.’ “Everyone should just try to avoid her.”
Jane seemed embarrassed, which made Elijah feel bad for her. A lot of the puzzle pieces about her were coming together. She was shy for a reason. If the kids at their school, especially that school full of snobs in his experience, found out about her mother’s prison record, they would’ve been relentless. He felt sorry for her.
“Oh, well,” Elijah said to lessen her embarrassment. “Doesn’t matter now. We’re all allies, and we’re doing pretty good so far if you ask me.”
“Agreed,” Gyles said with a wink his way.
“Let’s hope this all ends soon,” Renee remarked.
A lot of people echoed her sentiment, but Elijah wondered when the last time some of these people were in the bigger cities like his group just fled. He figured Roman and Tristan knew, but definitely not some of them. It wasn’t better up there. It was actually worse. At least down here in a slightly more is
olated area, they could function a little more successfully. Up there, the ones who weren’t infected were still trying to kill everyone and take their stuff. Of course, today’s events would prove his theory wrong.
“Ave, it’s on!” Kaia called from the other room, and they all stood to the chorus of skidding chairs and utensils being set down.
They piled into the living room, which would normally be spacious, but not with this many people. He stood behind a sofa near the wide sliding patio doors, which also probably provided a nice view, but not anymore with the wood slats nailed over the glass. When he’d come back today, Alex had finished all the windows in the farmhouse, which made it dark and dreary, or even more so. He was glad, however, when Wren chose to stand next to him to watch the broadcast.
On the television, very official-looking men and women were being televised from a boardroom table in a glass-enclosed meeting room.
“Hey, that looks like the pirated video Jane and I watched where they were all sitting around a big table like that,” Roman said.
“Yeah, and some were in white doctor jackets like that, too,” she added.
The camera zoomed in on one of the doctors, who seemed familiar to Elijah.
“Fellow Americans, my name is Dr. Bachmann,” he said, and it clicked that they all knew him from previous broadcasts. He looked a lot older somehow. “We have a monthly update for you on our numbers. I know the updates used to come more frequently, and I can understand your frustration, but this is the best we can do right now for bringing updates.”
“Once a month?” Alex questioned as if he couldn’t believe that. Others agreed with him.
A chart came up that showed the death tolls, survival rates, and percentages of infected versus those who succumbed and those who survived. It was bleak as hell.
“One point two billion dead?” Kaia asked shakily. “Ave, is that right?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Stephanie said somberly. “Jesus. Almost a hundred and sixty million here in America?”
The doctor began again, “We know these numbers are high, but we don’t have good reporting from anywhere in Africa or Australia right now. China and Russia will not give us their updated numbers. We’re adding in a percentage for them based on their population size and the rate of infected here in the United States. When we get communication restored with Australia and certain regions of Africa, we’ll be able to bring you more accurate numbers.”