by K. M. Fawkes
Ben eyed him skeptically for a moment. “That’s not what I’d do with a day off if I earned one, that’s for damn sure.”
“You’ve never gotten one?” Brad asked.
“No,” Ben said flatly, putting the feed bucket down and snapping the lid onto it. “You earn them when you do something for the good of the whole community.”
“Keeping the animals fed doesn’t count?”
Ben snorted and then glanced around quickly. Brad thought that he saw worry flash over the other man’s face. “Listen, it’s whatever the Major decides, okay? And that’s fine.”
“Sure,” Brad said. “Sure, okay. Hey, Ben?” The other man was gathering his supplies, clearly getting ready to leave.
“Yeah?” he asked gruffly.
“How long have you been here?”
“Since summer,” Ben said. “I was one of the first civilians in the place.”
“Oh, really? Do you know what happened to the residents?”
Ben’s face was drawn when he looked back at Brad. “The Major never said. I don’t ask questions. And I’ve got to go.”
“Just one thing,” Brad said quickly.
Ben sighed and hefted the feed buckets. “What?”
“Do you know Caleb? You know, since you—”
“I said I have to go.” Ben turned on his heel and walked away, leaving Brad standing by the fence.
The man hadn’t answered, but Brad had seen recognition on his face. And hell, there was no way that he hadn’t known Caleb, anyway. It had been a stupid way to ask, but it had been an even more ridiculous way to answer. All Brad had wanted to know was if Ben had seen the hunting crew member yesterday. With a sigh, he headed back home.
The trouble with the facility being so well organized, he thought as he walked, was that no one needed his help with their chores. The animals didn’t need anything. There were no building projects going on, obviously. From the smoke rising and the scent in the air, the cooks were already hard at work in the dining hall. The fence sections he checked on the way back were fine, too. There was just nothing he needed to do.
“What are you doing out and about?” Neal called with a smile as Brad came back home.
Brad shrugged. “I guess I’ve just got a little bit of cabin fever,” he said. “I’m not used to having a day off.”
“It can be a hard thing to get used to,” Neal agreed. “After the virus hit, there was always something to worry about. There was always something to look out for, to test for, to avoid. Now things are easy, but it takes your body a while to slow down again.”
“I guess so,” Brad said.
Neal zipped up his jacket and pushed his hands down into his pockets. “I’m headed to get my own orders for the day,” he said with a grin. “I guess I’ll see you at dinner.”
“Yeah, sounds good.”
Brad pushed the key into the lock and opened his door. With a heavy sigh, he went over to the bookshelf. Even a long day filled with reading was better than a long day filled with nothing at all.
And he did enjoy reading. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was the buzzing in his intuition. The feeling that something just wasn’t right.
Brad shoved the feeling away and began looking at the book selection. Mysteries, gentle romances and health magazines were all stored neatly on the shelves. He was on the verge of reading an article that would tell him “10 Surprising Ways to Lower Your Cholesterol” when his gaze fell on something else. He tugged it free. The Farmer’s Almanac!
He grabbed the book and then dug through the next shelf for the empty notebook he’d found there a few days before. The extremely tidy junk drawer in the kitchen yielded a pen and Brad sat down at the kitchen table to draw up a calendar. It wouldn’t be very pretty—Brad didn’t really have an artistic bone in his body—but it would be accurate and that was all that mattered. He needed a calendar the way he needed water to drink and a roof over his head.
He’d asked around for one the day after he’d gotten to the facility, but he’d been met with either blank looks or shrugs. It seemed like no one here had any interest in knowing what the date was. “I mean, what difference does it make?” Charlie had asked when he’d questioned her. “Did you have somewhere to be?”
Brad had smiled and allowed the subject to change to other things rather than try to explain, but he really didn’t understand why they didn’t care. Dates were important.
For one thing, they would help him mark how long he’d been here. From his own careful timekeeping, he knew that today marked his sixth day in the facility. And he also knew that he hadn’t heard a thing from Walker in the last five days about going to look for Anna and the kids. Or anything else, for that matter. Caleb’s words rang through his mind.
“I thought that I could trust Major Walker. But now…”
Now what, damn it? He still hadn’t managed to figure it out. Caleb had avoided him the next two hunts they had gone on, keeping his distance so pointedly that it would almost have been funny if it wasn’t so blatantly obvious that the man was terrified. He might as well have carried a sign that pointed out that he and Brad weren’t friends. Brad hadn’t seen him on the hunt yesterday, but it hadn’t bothered him at the time. He hadn’t really wanted to seek him out, anyway. Caleb was a nervous guy and Brad didn’t exactly need any more stress in his life.
On the other hand, Brad would have assumed that Walker would have wanted to interact with him a little more, considering how new he was to the place. But in fact, he’d barely seen the man at all since he’d assigned Brad his duties. At first, it hadn’t bothered him too much, even with Caleb’s suspicion. Like he told himself, Caleb seemed like the type to be suspicious of everything.
He’d planned to simply corner the Major at a meal and relieve himself of his lingering worries in the wake of his conversation with Caleb, but it turned out that Walker took his meals in his office. When Brad had asked why, he was told brusquely by Mason, the leader of the hunting party, that it was because he worked so much. Then, he’d told Brad to shut up and hunt.
Brad had ignored the last part, his mind going to work on the first bit of information he’d gleaned from any of the soldiers. So, Walker had to take breakfast, lunch, and dinner in his office because he was so busy. Okay. But what the hell was there for him to do all damn day? It wasn’t like he worked under anyone else’s command. He had no superior officer to report to, nothing he had to make sure was in order before he handed it in. And he certainly didn’t have a massive amount of paperwork to file.
In fact, when it came down it, everything ran with very little input from the soldiers or the Major himself. Chores were divided pretty evenly. In Brad’s opinion, there should be a little more variety. He would have trained everyone to do everything as much as they could, but since no one had asked him, he hadn’t mentioned it. Everyone in the place knew what they were supposed to do and they simply did it.
Brad was actually surprised at how seriously the people here took their jobs. They didn’t seem to see it as anything different from the jobs they’d probably worked for paychecks before everything fell apart. Hell, even the kids did as they were told without complaint!
He wondered what it would have been like to have that level of cooperation when he’d had the cabin. Then, he smiled and shook his head. No, he wouldn’t have wanted that. He’d always liked that Anna had challenged him and that Sammy came up with his own ideas so frequently. He had a feeling that if there had been time, Martha would have come out of her shell as a rampant individualist, too. It would have been boring if they’d been like the people here.
A deep sense of loss ricocheted through his chest and he pushed their memory away. It didn’t do any good to think of them now. He was stuck in the facility for the time being and he would only succeed in driving himself crazy with what-ifs. It was better to keep them as far in the back of his mind as he could get them. That way, he could focus on one thing at a time.
Like Major Walker. He got b
ack onto his original train of thought. The facility ran smoothly. Brad would even go so far as to say that maybe part of that was due to administration, but surely not that much now that everyone had settled in.
There wasn’t a massive influx of people coming in every day. Brad had been told that he was the first new citizen in at least a month, meaning Walker should know the other residents pretty well by now, but he didn’t seem to. Most people seemed to have an idea of him, but no real interactions to back that idea up.
Caleb’s words came back to him again. He’d thought that he could trust Walker. Brad would have said the same thing. The man seemed warm. Caring, even. But what did he really have to base that on? The fact that he’d given him soup? The fact that he’d let him stay in this facility? The fact that he’d been…human? Before the EMP, before the virus, it was what he would have expected of anyone. Brad hadn’t been the most social guy, but he’d always carried the belief that humans—at their core, at least—were basically good. Almost everyone he’d met since then had challenged that assumption. The power-hungry soldiers. The insane “Family.”
Had he simply been so relieved not to be killed in cold blood that he hadn’t noticed anything else? Or was the Major simply very good at hiding the weirdness?
“Or maybe he’s not weird, you paranoid jerk,” Brad sighed. There was no point in continuing this line of thought. Not until he had more information. There was also no point in ruining the good thing that he had going based on a bunch of theories and speculation.
He stuck his calendar up on the fridge and stood back, admiring that small symbol of order in the universe. At least one thing was still the same. The passage of time was reassuringly steady. Today was November twelfth.
Not that it mattered at the moment.
With a sigh, Brad thought forward to what he needed to do. Tonight, for instance, he had a very important question to bring up with his neighbors. He would have to go easy, especially given Ben’s reaction that morning, but he was pretty confident that he could manage.
He’d made friends here. He’d make sure to use them to his advantage. It wouldn’t hurt them to answer a few questions. And maybe he could set his mind at ease. Until then, he was left with the exciting option of napping or reading. He opted for the latter, knowing that it would probably lead to the former before the afternoon was over.
Chapter 10
Walking into the dining hall, Brad inhaled appreciatively. The smell of roasting meat never failed to whet the appetite, and he had to admit that the excited chattering from the other residents made him feel good.
After going through the line and getting his share of moose meat along with sides of green beans and potatoes, he took his plate and sat down. Jack and Charlie walked in a few moments after Brad had taken his place. Jack waved at him from the line and Brad waved back. The mechanic and his wife would probably be over to join him in a few minutes. He was fine with that. In addition to wanting information, he actually really liked Jack and Charlie.
He wasn’t so sure he felt the same way about the meat on his plate, in spite of his pride in being the one that had shot it. He’d been afraid that there wouldn’t be enough to go around when they’d brought the scrawny creature in. It looked like they’d managed it—the portions were fairly decent—but he had a feeling that it wouldn’t be the best thing he’d ever put in his mouth.
“Well?” Jack asked when he sat down and poked at the stringy meat. “What do you think?”
“I would have thought that any protein was good protein,” Charlie chimed in. “But this might just prove me wrong.”
Brad grinned and took a bite. It was stringy. It was tough. He chewed with determination.
“I’ve had better,” he admitted when he’d finally worked the first bite down. “But I’d rather eat it than starve.”
“Good enough for me,” Jack said, forking up a bite of his own. He made a face as he chewed. “Damn, it’s just like leather. Are you sure this was the moose and not one of those boots you wore into the ground?”
Brad laughed as he scooped up some vegetables. “Now that you mention it, maybe that’s how they stretched the meat far enough to feed all of us.”
At Jack’s reminder, Brad glanced down at his new boots. He’d had them for a few days now—since Neal had seen his beat-up old boots after the first hunting trip and handed him a new pair the next day—and they never failed to make him smile. In addition to being pleasingly shiny, they had the advantage of being warm and waterproof, which helped in keeping his feet happy whether he was working as a veterinarian or a hunter.
The vet part had been pretty easy with such a small number of livestock to take care of. He worked with them diligently, though, partly out of dedication and partly out of boredom. If he could get the animals through the winter, there was a huge potential for breeding the cattle and raising a more stable source of food.
A few people also had dogs that they’d managed to keep with them and Brad had been around to check them out as well. That was the part of the job he’d enjoyed the most. It wasn’t that he didn’t like farm animals, it was just that dogs were his absolute favorite creatures on Earth. Humans included. Jack and Charlie shared their apartment with a male golden retriever named Remington that Brad routinely dognapped to hang out with in the evenings. The creature was a little thin, but Brad was working on that, much to Remy’s joy.
And Jack and Charlie, in addition to having a dog that they shared freely, were simply nice people. Jack had been a mechanic before the EMP rendered his job mostly obsolete. Charlotte had worked in a day-care center. She was teaching some classes to the kids in the compound. She’d had Brad in yesterday to talk about safety around the livestock. It had been kind of fun. If Brad had to socialize, he preferred the under-ten set. Kids had the best questions and they were refreshingly honest.
But even more important than those traits, Jack had promised to help Brad search for Anna and the kids at every chance they got. The chance hadn’t come up yet, and Brad would have been lying if he said that it wasn’t starting to eat away at him. He was here, in a comfortable apartment with a fireplace and a bed, and they were struggling to survive in the snow. If they were surviving at all. He pushed that thought away. They had to be alive, still. They just had to.
Caleb’s suspicions came back when Brad thought of how no moves had been made to form a search party. Was the Major simply placating him? Using him for the things he was good at without ever planning to waste resources on looking for Brad’s people? He reminded himself to bide his time. He would get his answers, but it was hardly something he could ask bluntly.
“I told them that I think it’s crazy to leave the keys in the trucks,” Jack said. “But they said no one would be dumb enough to try to steal one of the things.” Jack took a drink of his water. “It just seems wrong to leave them like that, though. Even though I know they’re right.”
“Yeah, it goes against everything we remember as normal,” Charlie said, making a face as she swallowed. “Sort of like eating this meat.”
Brad grinned. “Hey, speaking of meat, have any of you seen Caleb lately?” he asked. After his nap, Brad had walked around the facility once more, and made no sighting of Caleb. Not to mention the fact that he hadn’t seen him at any of the meals today. With such a limited amount of food, no one missed meal times. Even chores and missions out were scheduled around them.
“Caleb?” Charlie asked, slipping a bite of meat to Remington who took it gently and then wolfed it down.
“Yeah, he’s on the hunting crew,” Brad said. “I’d say he’s close to forty years old. I’d guess he’s about five nine. He’s got dark hair. Um…he wears fatigues.”
Charlie looked blank; the hunting crew and the childcare crew didn’t spend a lot of time together, after all. Luckily, Vance—who hunted when he wasn’t helping with house maintenance issues and lived on the other side of Jack and Charlie—had joined them and he stepped in with the answer.
“He’s got the flu,” he said in his low, southern drawl as he took a big bite of meat. Vance had come to Maine for a construction job, but he hadn’t been allowed back into his home state of Georgia after he couldn’t guarantee that he hadn’t come into contact with the virus. So, he’d come back to Maine. No one complained about the cold more than Vance. “Which is probably for the best,” he finished. “It saves him from having to eat this. What is it? Rehydrated jerky?”
“Moose. Bon appétit,” Brad countered. “And you’re sure he’s sick?”
“Sure, I’m sure,” Vance said. “Mason said Caleb got sick yesterday morning. That’s why he didn’t go huntin’.”
“Oh, no,” Charlie said, shaking her head and sighing. “That’s too bad.”
“You just said you didn’t even know him,” Jack said with a grin as he pulled his wife against him and dropped a kiss on top of her head. “My little bleeding heart.”
“Shut up,” Charlie said with a smile as she looked up at him. “I don’t have to know someone to be worried that they’re sick!”
“Poor guy,” Brad said casually, trying not to show how his heart rate had increased. It was too damn much of a coincidence that Caleb had gotten sick after giving Brad information he hadn’t even wanted to give him. Maybe they were holding him somewhere. Maybe there was still time. “I should drop by and see him after this,” he went on. “It might be good to take him some soup or something. Do you guys know where he lives?”
“Across the way from us. But if he’s sick, he won’t be at his house,” Jack said, shaking his head.
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah, he’ll be down in quarantine,” Vance said. “And they’re really strict. They won’t let you in.”
“Who won’t?”
“The soldiers. It’s to keep us safe,” Charlie added when Brad raised an eyebrow. “A community this small…any disease would spread really fast. It would be like…” She gave a quick, embarrassed laugh. “Well, you know what it would be like, I guess.”