by Maira Dawn
There weren’t enough experienced scavengers left in the camp to send. And each person was needed here. The sparsely protected town couldn’t be thinned out even further. Each lookout was crucial.
Paul pursed his lips as he ran Dylan's treatment through his mind. Twenty-four hours. That's all the time he'd give it.
That's all he could give it if he wanted Dylan to survive.
Thirty-Seven
Baked
Sue Ellen peeked around the door into the room where Dylan rested. She tried to ignore the panic hovering on Skye's face and let her foot scrape against the floor.
When Skye looked up, she said, "Mrs. Gilmore sent over some bread for you with one of the Watch. Do you and Dylan want any?"
The Watch had quickly begun to be used by many as more than protection. When everything was calm, it transformed into a kind of delivery system.
Nodding, Skye said, "Yes, I'd love some, and a slice for Dylan too. He may like it when he wakes up."
Sue Ellen looked at Dylan's sallow face and bit her lip, then turned for the kitchen. She gathered up her curly hair as she went tying it up into a ponytail.
In the kitchen, she cut two slices of bread. After a bit of hesitation, she cut two more.
The loaf of bread had still been hot when Joe had cheerfully brought it in. He tweaked Sue Ellen's nose, and she had giggled because that’s what he expected her to do. Joe laughed back, never seeing the look of dislike covering the girl's face as she turned away.
She patiently waited as Joe headed back to see Dylan. When his visit was over, Sue Ellen's gaze followed Joe as he left through the front door. His head down, he didn't say anything to her.
The instant he was gone, Sue Ellen ran to the steaming bread. She salivated as she cut through the flaky crust to the fluffy, light interior. She ran a finger along the white softness, pulling it off the crust and stuffing it in her mouth.
Cutting herself a thick slice, she loaded it with butter. After watching the pale-yellow, homemade goodness liquify and ease into the chewy fibers of the bread, she stuffed the whole piece in her mouth as fast as she could.
It tasted amazing. So Sue Ellen peeked down the hallway and made sure the coast was clear, then sliced off another piece and another, enjoying the chewy goodness until the loaf was half gone.
As she sighed, the girl buttered Skye and Dylan a piece each, setting two for herself to the side. The bread was barely warm now, but she reckoned by the time she delivered Skye's pieces, the butter would be melted on hers.
Sue Ellen grabbed two glasses of water, congratulating herself that she’d thought of them, and took everything to Dylan’s room. Then she rushed back to the kitchen. Just as she’d anticipated, the butter was melted. She put the slices on a plate and sat in the large, stuffed recliner in the corner of the nature-themed living room and pulled a blanket over her outstretched legs.
She patted her tight, extended stomach. Would she be able to fit in the last two pieces?
As she happily munched on them, she wondered how Mrs. Gilmore was doing.
The old woman adored Sue Ellen, and the girl wasn't about to let such adoration go by without some benefit.
She patted her hair. For as long as she could remember, her wild, blond curls and large blue eyes were as natural a weapon for her as Dylan's bow was for him. She used them as often and as expertly as she could.
Sue Ellen stopped by Mrs. Gilmore's regularly, receiving treats in the form of baked goods every time she did so just for looking like the cute young teen she was.
What surprised her was that she was beginning to like the old woman. She’d even volunteered to do some chores for her. If she wasn't careful, Skye’s perky helpfulness was going to wear off on her.
It was sad how many relatives Mrs. Gilmore had lost, even if Sue Ellen’s patience wore thin when the old lady went on and on about it.
But Mrs. Gilmore’s daughter, Georgia, was nice enough, and her grandson, Travis… well, now every glimpse of him was a good one.
Mrs. Gilmore’s neighbors were interesting. Annette and whatever his name was. A little weird, but Sue Ellen liked watching weird.
The story was that Annette and the man had been passing through Colton, and the on-duty deputy had sent them up here.
But something about them seemed off. The man had been inside more than out at first, except when he was spying on other people. Just when Sue Ellen had been about to blow the whistle on them, she’d spotted the guy outside looking just fine and minding his own business.
The sound of someone whistling brought Sue Ellen back to the present. She paused mid-bite.
Paul walked into the kitchen, his gaze falling on the little bit of bread still left.
"Umm," he said, "I thought I smelled something delicious. Someone send this over for Dylan?"
Sue Ellen clamped her teeth down on her mouthful of bread and nodded her head.
"Boy, he and Skye must have loved it. It's almost gone."
The girl quickly nodded again, sure she was found out.
Paul sucked part of his lip behind his teeth, making a small sound as he stared at the bread heel. "Think they'll mind?"
Sue Ellen swallowed. "Nope, not at all." She gave him a big smile and made her eyes as bright as she could.
Paul returned her smile and cut himself a slice. He buttered it and whistled as he went back to his office.
Sue Ellen got up, looked at what was left, and pouted. It was only the hard crusty end. The girl crossed her arms, then went back and flopped back into her chair.
Maybe if she visited Mrs. Gilmore tomorrow, the old woman would make her cookies.
As if she were able to hear Sue Ellen's thoughts, Mrs. Gilmore smiled. She hummed as she slid another tray loaded with small bits of cookie dough into her cabin's oven. She hoped her electricity would last until she had this last batch through. Baking post-apocalypse could be tricky.
Some people used their solar panels for shows, movies and such, but not her. She used hers for baking. A good, solid book in her hands was better than any of those newer garish programs anyway. And Lord knew, there were plenty of books. The sheriffs and deputies brought up armfuls from the library every week.
The old woman fussed over the chocolate chip cookies. They were light on the chips. Chocolate was getting harder to come by these days. Much of it had been left untended during all the chaos and had bloomed from the heat. And she suspected that a lot of it had just gone willy-nilly down the gullets of many. A little chocolate went a long way toward calming stressed people.
As she pulled another successful tray of cookies out of the oven, Mrs. Gilmore heard the door of the house across the glen slam shut. She peered outside, trying to see through the early evening gloom and an approaching storm bending trees.
The man was out, pulling the porch furniture closer to the house.
Mrs. Gilmore thought about opening her front door and waving, but the two of them had never said more than three words to her.
Annette had introduced herself, but not the man, and that was about it. The two of them had a knack for ignoring people.
It irritated her. That wasn’t the way to treat others. At least not on Cole’s Mountain. Maybe they were from a city. New York even. Everyone knew that city was downright unfriendly to one another.
She straightened and sniffed, biting into one of her warm cookies. The light crunch of the caramel-colored outside, the lightly gooey center, and the liquid chocolate told her she had been successful in creating another perfect batch of cookies. She packed the delicious little treats away into several containers, marking each with the names of the people they would go to tomorrow.
After that was done, Mrs. Gilmore slid into bed and pulled the covers up to her chin. It was going to be a cold night, she could tell. It might even snow. She went from her aching right side to her less achy left. Snuggling down into the soft mattress, she was soon uttering a low, soft snore, which continued until just after daybreak.
; It was the scream that woke her.
Thirty-Eight
Evil
The ear-piercing cry ended on a long, drawn-out wail. Birds startled and dashed away.
Mrs. Gilmore had heard sounds like that before. A loved one was lost.
She dressed as fast as her creaky bones would allow, which wasn't fast at all. But eventually, heart palpitating, lungs begging for air, she opened her front door and scurried to her neighbor's house to help in whatever way she could.
The lights were on in the cabin across the way. For Annette to waste electricity in almost the dead of the night meant things must be grim.
Mrs. Gilmore shot a look at a tiny clapboard cabin to her left. Someone from the Watch stayed there each night.
The door stood ajar. Through the open entry sat a recliner and an open book laying haphazardly on the floor as if thrown.
Good. Whoever was on duty was already with Annette.
She grabbed the stair railing on her neighbor's porch and pulled her arthritic body up the three steps to the top. A loud snap in the trees stopped her. For a moment, she stared into the inky woods before hurrying to the door. An icy shiver ran down her spine as she reached for the silver front door handle and looked again in the direction the sound had come.
Mrs. Gilmore knocked, giving three short raps. When no one came to the door, she walked in.
Inside, Annette wept, uttering lengthy groans and gasps. In an instant, Mrs. Gilmore was transported to the day she'd lost her own dear husband. The sharp ache sliced through her heart almost as fresh as the day he died.
However standoffish Annette had been in the past, Mrs. Gilmore could certainly understand this emotion. "Hello?" She hesitated just a moment in her neighbor's spare, neat living room. They hadn't brought much with them. It made the room seem much larger than her rather over-decorated one even though they were about the same size.
She avoided looking to her right and suddenly realized why. Her subconscious had already taken in the gruesome scene and was trying to protect her from it.
Her gaze dropped to the floor, and she inched it over the fine hardwood boards, closer and closer to the two tan club chairs.
Someone gasped and sped toward her. It was Mark, one of the most diligent of the Watch. "Mrs. Gilmore, you don't need to be here."
She nodded her head but only turned her gaze to Annette.
The weeping woman sat in one of the chairs with her face in her hands and her shoulders shaking.
"I heard—," Mrs. Gilmore said. "I heard—Oh my, how terrible!"
It all rushed to her. The twin to Annette's chair held the man. Unlike the woman's chair, his had a multi-colored footstool where his feet, encased in dark brown hiking boots, were propped.
She followed his jean-encased legs to the hands on his lap. Swallowing hard, she stared.
The man's hands curved like bird claws, at complete odds with his seemingly relaxed lower body. They were not blue, as she had worried they would be, but deeper, darker. Almost black.
One glance at his face, and she stepped back, ready to flee.
"Come on," Mark said. "I'll get you home."
But now that she had really seen the dead man, she couldn't look away.
His face matched his black hands. Not the lovely shades that nature had bestowed on her fellow humans, but something sickly and abnormal.
Black lips pulled back over white teeth in a death grimace, but it was his eyes that truly frightened her. Opened wide, as if he witnessed a more terrifying scene than himself, and what should have been the light color of his eyes was no longer white.
His eyes bulged from their sockets. Every vessel exploded. Any healthy color had been shoved from them and replaced with a bright blood-red.
Mrs. Gilmore gasped, shaking her head. What had happened to this man?
Later, as a quaking Mrs. Gilmore sat on the porch, her arms wrapped around the mourning Annette, she tried to pretend she never saw him. But it didn't help. What she'd seen in that house would never leave her.
Inside, the doctor examined the man Annette called Ethan.
"I should have insisted he see the doctor," Annette murmured. "He said he always gets a cold this time of year. It's a little harder for him to get over because of his asthma. But I never thought—I didn't think he was in danger of anything. It didn't seem that bad."
Mrs. Gilmore patted the woman's back but kept her mouth shut. This seemed way more than some cold or allergy gone wrong. This was something evil.
Thirty-Nine
Disease
"There's nothing you could have done," Paul assured Annette as he pondered the disease. He wasn't sure he would have caught anything odd. Annette said he'd had a cold with minimal coughing, and that he'd seemed better the last couple of days.
His first instinct is that it was not a disease, but since the outbreak of the AgFlu, Paul tried not to assume anything.
Annette seemed as if someone had done this. But how, he didn't know.
From the dead man's posture and face, it was if he'd woke just as he failed to pull in a final breath. This had been fast, lightning fast.
It was odd. Something he'd never seen before. He chewed his lip as he contemplated the next course of action. It was best to be safe and treat it as a disease.
Paul got up from beside Ethan's blackened body and looked out the front door. Mrs. Gilmore and Annette leaned against each other on the porch's wooden stairs. Neither of the women seemed sick, but a simple exam would be in order after they took care of Ethan.
Paul sat down beside the grieving woman and took her hand. "I'm sorry, Annette."
She nodded her head as she held her mouth in a firm line, trying to hold back the sobs.
"Annette, you've been places I haven't been. Have you seen anything like this before? Maybe before you got here? Or heard of one similar to it? I don't know if this is contagious or not."
The woman pushed back some of her graying hair that had fallen forward over her shoulder and shook her head. "I'm sorry, Doc, but I haven't."
"Did he have the AgFlu?"
"A light case of it. Ethan said he spent a few days in bed, but then felt right as rain." Annette shot a look at Paul, then Mrs. Gilmore. "We weren't anything but friends. We met on the road, we each had families of our own then." She bowed her head. "I can't. I can't talk about that right now, but we lost them, lost them all running from Infected until there were only the two of us. We were so happy to find this place. I can't even tell you how happy. I know we stuck to ourselves, but we'd been through so much. We were just licking our wounds for a while before we became sociable."
Annette put a hand to her mouth as she sobbed. "I feel so alone. Like I've lost all of them all over again. There is just me now." Her head dropped to her knees. Paul and Mrs. Gilmore put a hand on her back to comfort her.
Tears swam in Mrs. Gilmore's eyes as she patted her. "You're not alone, Annette, dear. We are all here with you."
"We'll need to have his service as soon as possible," Paul reminded her. Although most cremations happened soon after death since the AgFlu, he was anxious to have this one over with in case it was an infectious disease.
"I understand, Doc."
Word traveled through the community, and soon Mark and Paul had help as they built a funeral pyre of spicy, sweet-smelling red cedar. Once the sheet-wrapped body was laid on it, they lit the wood and stepped back beside Annette and Mrs. Gilmore.
The scent of cedar filled the mountaintop, drawing others to the little glen, and the line of people standing at the treeline grew. Paul said a few words for the man, adding that he hoped to get to know him one day. Annette spoke a bit about the kind of man he was, caring, loved by his family, a great dad to his children.
After she was done, the doctor got the attention of the crowd. "One more thing I’d like to mention. This was something I'm not familiar with. Please, make sure to see me with any cold or flu."
Everyone seemed to shudder before drifting off, some
in groups, some alone.
Paul understood. He hadn't stopped quaking, himself.
Forty
Argument
Jesse walked from the funeral toward Doc’s place. His head down and his fists shoved deep into the pockets of his jeans, he could feel his heart like a heavy weight in his chest.
Dylan had sent for him. He knew what that meant. His new dad was worried he wasn’t going to make it. The little infection had gotten worse.
He clenched his fists tighter. Dylan was going to make it even if Jesse had to go out there himself and get the antibiotics.
His dad would say he couldn’t handle it, that Skye couldn’t handle it. But he was wrong—they could.
And they’d have to since Wade and the others weren’t back yet.
Squaring his shoulders, Jesse readied himself for the fight. Dylan would go for them. He’d go to his death for them. And they would do the same for him.
He threw open Doc’s front door and strode into the house. And came to a sudden halt when he saw Kelsey.
His face turned red even as he berated himself. It was stupid, she was his friend, that was it. They were too young and the world was too crazy to worry about anything else. But his feelings didn’t match up with his brain.
Kelsey made it worse when she rushed over and hugged him. "I'm so sorry about Dylan, Jesse! Paul is trying as hard as he can to cure him."
Jesse allowed the quick squeeze, then took a sharp step backward. Nodding, he found himself tongue-tied and shook his head. This wasn't the time for this kind of stuff.
"Thanks," he mumbled.
Kelsey grabbed his hand and led him down the hallway to Dylan's room. At the door, she quietly said, "I'll be in the kitchen if anyone needs anything." Then she made her way back the way she came, her steps light on the old wood floor.