This Would Be Paradise (Book 3)

by Iverson, N. D.

  Lucas narrowed his eyes at her and if she was intimidated, Rose didn’t show it. Instead she gave him a sarcastic smile.

  “Better watch what you say, leaf-blower,” Lucas growled.

  “That the best you got?” Rose countered. “I woulda thought they taught you some more creative ways to be racist at Hitler school.”

  Lucas’s gun had been forcefully taken from him right after the mercenary incident. He was now weaponless, and kept eying Rose’s rifle. She was practically wagging it in front of him like she was daring him to try. Lucas shifted in his spot, making her clutch her rifle tighter. He smirked at her and she glowered at him.

  “Enough,” I said with a weary sigh.

  I was too tired for this shit. And I’d had enough of Luca’s racist comments. He was lucky I wasn’t willing to waste the energy to pop him one—again.

  They both looked at me and I challenged them to argue with a stern stare. Rose huffed and returned to looking out for infected, while Lucas regarded me for a second longer than necessary before returning to stare blankly out the side of the truck bed.

  After another twenty minutes of driving, with the occasional infected to shoot, the truck slowed down. The brakes for the second truck squealed as they were forced to slow down behind John. Slowly, John took the truck over a set of railway tracks, causing those of us who were in the bed to be tossed up.

  The buildings were starting to get further and further apart—and bigger—unlike in the city where everything was crammed together. There were still infected to deal with but John had been right; it looked like there were less in this area. John slowed the vehicle and pulled to the side of the street.

  “What’s he doin’?” Rose asked no one in particular.

  John got out of the truck and turned to us in the back. “I think this place is as good as any.”

  We looked to the side to see a tacky castle-themed motel situated at the beginning of the industrial area. Kind of an odd place for a motel. It had fake decorations to look like stone walls and towers. There was even a ditch filled with stagnant water that ran around the front by the “draw-bridge” gate to look like a moat. It looked like the kind of place where you slept on top of sheets and pushed a chair up against the inside of the door.

  The sound of Rose’s gun going off brought me out of my critiquing. This place would have to do. I turned to John.

  “How do we get in?”

  The front gate was shut, and after a light investigation by John and I, we discovered that it was also locked. There was a small black pad on a stand beside the driveway that looked like you needed a fob or a card key to get the gate to open. Too bad there was no electricity to make it useful.

  “Care to give me a boost?” John said, pointing to the top of the iron gate.

  “Looks like you’ll get tetanus from those tips,” I muttered.

  “Just don’t drop me,” John said.

  “How about you pop me over?” I suggested. “I’m smaller.”

  I really had lost a lot of weight in the last months. I didn’t think I had ever been this skinny in my adult life; too many Big Macs to eat back then. John looked from me to the gate with his lips twisted.

  “Fine, but just focus on gettin’ the gate open, then we’ll search the place together.”

  I nodded and he kneeled down to give me a boost. Carefully, I pulled myself up and lifted a leg in between the pointed tops of the gate. I managed to get up to straddle the gate and then I looked down on the other side. It was a long way down without help. I took a series of short breaths to prepare me for the jump. I lifted my leg over so now they were both on the same side and slid down while holding onto the top of the gate.

  The ground was hard and I hissed as my ankles—and foot and calf—burned from the impact. I leaned against the surprisingly solid gate until the stinging stopped. I had forgotten about my other injures.

  “You okay?” John asked.

  “I’m fine.” I peered back through the other side of the gate at the two trucks. Everyone was watching me. Great, nothing like pressure to get a person moving.

  Tearing my eyes from the front, I looked around the inside. No vehicles were parked in the small parking lot. There were no infected wandering around the asphalt courtyard either. They must have locked this place up tight after the infection took over. That boded well for us.

  There was a small office to the left with frosted and barred windows. As I approached the office door, I noticed a small sticker saying the cashier had no more than fifty bucks on them. Definitely a homey vibe around here. With my Beretta pointed straight ahead, I pulled on the handle with my free hand. It didn’t open. I scanned the ground around me, my eyes landing on a small patch of green. There were tiny flower beds surrounding the office. All the plants had long since died from neglect but the decorative rocks would prove useful.

  I grabbed one that was painted to look like a lady bug and used it to smash the glass by the door handle. The glass shattered and I cleared away the jagged edges with the rock.

  “Bailey!” John whispered just loud enough for me to hear him from the front gate.

  “I’m fine, just had to break the glass,” I whispered back harshly.

  Unfortunately, there were still metal bars to get past. I felt around the inside of the door as much as the metal screen would allow. My fingers ghosted past what felt like a deadbolt. I strained as I pushed my fingers to grasp at the latch. After a few failed tries, I finally managed to flip it and the deadbolt retracted. I smiled briefly at my triumph and opened the door.

  The broken glass crunched under my feet as I entered. It was dark and dingy inside without the long fluorescent lights to make the tiny room look even more like a place you didn’t want to be after dark. There was a pamphlet display in the corner and that was it. No chairs or pictures on the walls. The scratched up counter was a hideous coral color with boot scuffs along the entire bottom. Behind the counter was a closed door, and all the room keys hung on tiny hooks. They still used physical keys here.

  I approached the side of the counter where you could access the back and let myself in via lifting up the counter. It banged closed behind me. I held my breath, waiting for something to come rushing to the front. After a few beats, nothing moved or stirred. Tucked away on the employee side of the counter were shelves filled with papers and binder. I quickly tried to sort through them to see if anything popped out about the gate. The only thing that caught my eye was the large black flashlight that looked like the ones police used. The heavy ones that could beat a person in a pinch, if need be. I grabbed it and flicked on the switch. The yellowed beam illuminated the dirty floor.

  Turning away from the mess, I aimed the flashlight at the back door. Did I dare open it? It was probably some sort of employee area. There could be something back there that I could use. I swallowed and tried the knob. It was unlocked. The hinges creaked as I pushed the door open. With the flashlight and my gun in the lead, I started inside. The air was stale from being closed up for so long.

  It was a tiny room, with a seating area that consisted of a worn couch and mismatched armchair and then a kitchenette off to the side. A skinny door labeled ‘bathroom’ was immediately off to my right. I slowly opened the door, but nothing was inside. It was about the size of an airplane washroom. I moved onto the kitchenette portion. There was an apartment sized fridge, sink and a hotplate that looked like it came from the seventies. I opened the fridge only to slam it shut again with a gag. Everything inside had gotten way past its expiration date. I breathed through my mouth until the smell cleared.

  The tiny worn couch was facing a wall with an old tube television and a cork board plastered with papers. I walked up to the board. One poster outlined the importance of guest privacy. Another one was a procedure for cleaning a room when housekeeping would find a weapon or drugs. Lovely place.

  My eyes landed on one that was the emergency protocol for the gate not working. Bingo. I ripped the sheet down and walked bac
k out of the small room and the office. John was pressed up against the gate. His shoulders sagged when he saw me.

  “What took you so long?”

  I lifted up the sheet. “Had to find instructions.”

  According to the paper, there was a latch release that unlocked the gate. I examined the gate until I found the large lever and yanked on it. There was a rusty sound of gears moving. The gate fell slack from the one wall. We grabbed onto the bars and pulled. The gate retracted from the one side and disappeared inside the building along the tracks as it opened.

  John jumped back in the truck and led them inside. Once they were parked, we reclosed the gate using the rest of the instructions and locked it back up. I handed the sheet to John. He folded the paper and stuck it in his coat pocket.

  “We better keep this safe,” he said, patting the outside of the pocket. “Now, did you find any keys?”

  “Inside. I figured we should probably scout out the rooms before we start handing out keys,” I said.

  Chapter 21

  I showed John the office and together we grabbed all the room keys. There were twenty in total, all labeled with the room numbers. We didn’t need our people spread out until we could secure the area, so no one would be getting their own rooms tonight. I handed a couple of keys to Rose and Henry for them to search, while John and I took the rest to do a quick sweep. People were starting to get to the point where they would sleep anywhere. I knew I was. Hell, I could probably sleep out on the cracked parking lot right about then, even with being a light sleeper.

  Other than at the gate, we couldn’t see the outside of the motel courtyard. Most people had vacated the vehicles to stretch and were regarding the place with curiosity. A couple of people went up to the pop machine to see if they could shake a few cans loose, but the noise had John telling them to stop.

  The sun was starting to come up, orange and pink light reaching over the top of the castle-themed motel. Chloe and Amanda looked dead on their feet with their eyes half closed. Some people were still streaked with blood and soot from Hargrove. Our group looked like the survivors of a bomb blast.

  “Clear!” Rose yelled from across the courtyard.

  “She needs to be quiet,” John muttered.

  “I think she only has one setting,” I joked, but it was lost on him.

  We examined our first room. There was no one inside judging from our quick sweep—we even checked under the beds. There were two of them inside covered in coral and green comforters to match the decor of the office. I waved Chloe, Ethan, and the others over.

  “You guys can take this one,” I said.

  Chloe and Amanda plunked down on the bed by the window, not even bothering to remove their shoes they were so exhausted.

  “Where are you goin’ to stay?” Ethan asked.

  His head was wrapped in white gauze, making his hair spike up in the middle.

  “I’ll let you know once we get everyone in a room,” I said.

  “I don’t have to stay with them, do I?” Colin asked through a yawn.

  “The last thing we need is for people to be spread thinly while we’re still checking the place out. Suck it up for one night,” I said grouchily.

  Colin looked from me to the bed and the bed won the contest for his attention as he wandered over to it and collapsed. I gave Ethan a curt nod and continued on with John to inspect the other rooms that we had keys for.

  All rooms were clear. There wasn’t a soul staying at the motel. I had a feeling this was more to do with the cheap atmosphere than the infection. Business probably wasn’t good beforehand. We stuffed four people in each room with double beds to make sure we were easily accessed should something come up.

  Lucas was still our prisoner at the moment so I volunteered to share a room with him. John said he would be staying with us too, and then Rose added her name to the rooming list. This was going to be a fun day of trying to sleep. Leo was mad that he had ended up with Henry and two others in the room beside us. He also didn’t appreciate that I made him play messenger boy by going to tell Ethan which room I was in.

  The supplies were packed into our room so that we could monitor the usage. We fed everyone before they went to sleep and it made a noticeable dent in the food we had managed to scrounge up during the evacuation. It would maybe feed the twenty mouths for one more day in total—two if we really rationed.

  I mentioned this to John.

  “We’ll worry ‘bout that once we’ve had some sleep,” he said.

  I pulled back the covers to examine the sheets.

  “Seriously? That’s the last of our problem,” Rose said jumping into the bed, forcing the blanket out of my hand.

  I scowled, but gave up on my inspection. She was right. Sleep trumped clean. We had locked the doors and Lucas was already under the blanket, snoring lightly. I pulled off my shoes and laid down. My eyes closed and sleep came surprisingly easy.

  I was stiff when I woke up. I was still facing the same direction I had been when I went to bed and in the same position. Everything cracked when I rolled onto my back. Rose was gone, but the other bed was still full. I heard rustling in the washroom and a flush.

  “Whoa, it works.” I heard Rose say.

  She walked back to the bed and noticed that I was awake. “If you need to use the toilet, you gotta get some water first.”

  I cleared my throat. “How’s it still working?”

  “You don’t need power to run toilets that don’t flush anythin’ upwards. It runs on a syphonin’ action, but you need to refill the back of the tank everythin’ before you push the lever,” she explained.

  “You sure know a lot about toilets.” I laughed. I don’t know why that was funny. Toilet humor wasn’t supposed to be funny past eight years old. I blamed it on being tired.

  She glowered at me. “You kids these days don’t know how anythin’ works.” She crawled in bed, her back turned away from me as she muttered about ignorant kids.

  I bit my lip to refrain from laughing more. Now, how would we get that much water? I gave up on my wonderings as I fell back sleep.

  John woke me up a few hours later. “Bailey, you gotta get up.”

  My eyes flew open, and then I groaned. “I feel like a bus hit me.”

  “We all feel like that,” Rose said from her perch on one of the chairs in the corner. Lucas was looking bored in the other chair across from her. She was leaning over the round table looking at some papers.

  I ignored her and asked John, “What time is it?”

  “Somewhere ‘round three in the afternoon.”

  I grumbled and pulled myself out of bed. John handed me a granola bar and an opened water bottle.

  “I’m not hungry right now,” I said, pushing the offerings away.

  I was still feeling sleepy and a bit disoriented from the night before. Zoe’s missing. My brain wasn’t going to let me forget; not that I wanted to. I just didn’t want to think of all the horrible things that could be happening to her right now. My stomach was starting to go from indifferent to upset as I thought about my best friend. If only I had done something different in the clubhouse. If I had just been able to get off a shot before I had been smacked in the head, maybe I could have saved her from being taken.

  “You okay?” John asked, dropping to a knee in front of me. He placed a hand on my forehead. “Do you feel nauseous? You were whacked in the head pretty good yesterday.”

  “Don’t throw up in the bed,” Rose added, not even looking up from the table.

  I clenched my hands in my lap. “I’m fine,” I said curtly.

  John frowned and shoved the water bottle at me again. “Just take a sip at least.”

  Grudgingly, I took the bottle from him and had a small drink. I picked up the granola bar John had set on the bed and tried nibbling it.

  “You need to get that down, we got some big plans today,” Rose said, finally looking up from her papers.

  “You don’t even know if it’ll work. I ain�
�t doin’ shit until you prove it to me,” Lucas said.

  Rose glowered at him. “As long as you don’t go stompin’ ‘round, it’ll work.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. I looked to John for an answer.

  “For the record, I don’t like Rose’s plan, but if it works, we could have more food by the end of the night,” John said, avoiding my eyes, “And Bailey’s only goin’ if you can prove it works like Lucas said.” John pointed at Rose for the last part.

  “You’re a bunch of wussies,” Rose muttered. “Fine. Let’s gear up and head out, then I’ll show you.”

  “Okay, I’m even more confused,” I said.

  “Rose here thinks immune people can move among the infected without bein’ attacked by ‘em,” John said, sounding completely unconvinced.

  “It’s true,” Rose said with conviction. “I’ll show you all.”

  She got up, grabbing one of the papers on the table with her. It was a map. Rose stormed out of the room, leaving us to squint into the midday light after she left the door open.

  “You think it’ll work?” I asked.

  If she was right, I could move among the infected. All the times the infected passed me over for someone else sprang to mind. Like when I was fighting off the horde with Zoe. Or when I was trapped in the basement where Riley had found me. The infected chained to the wall stopped coming after me once I had stopped moving around, and then went for Riley’s partner the minute they were in range. It was starting to add weight to Rose’s claim. But then again, there were infinitely more times where I had been running for my life while infected chased me. I wasn’t convinced. John was right; she would have to demonstrate first.

  I went to use the bathroom, then stopped. “Did you guys find any water for the tanks?”

  “Yeah, the ice machine had lots of water. There’s a bucket of water in the bathroom for you to fill the tank,” Johns said.

  Thankful that they had found water, I used the bathroom and then met the others back outside. Most people were out in the courtyard talking. Some were still in their rooms with the doors wide open so we could see them. Rose was jamming some rounds into her rifle. Henry was shooting her weird looks, but let her continue. The guns and ammo bags were open in the middle of the group. As I approached, John handed me a box of 9mm.