Alex groaned out a few curse words and Dara hammered him in the arm with a punch before going to help clean up the sick. Josh rubbed the ache in his arm before turning to Leslie.
“Quinn and I were talking about a fallback location. We don’t think the ones who stay back here would be safe in the building with just Quinn on lookout. Is there a place nearby or in the building that they could hide out and defend if necessary?”
She frowned at him but nodded then walked over to check Alex’s eyes and bandage. Once she finished with Alex, she crossed over to Lisa to check hers.
“Albert prepared a place for us to go if we had to evacuate. We can go there. Or, I mean…Alex, Quinn and the kids can.” She blew out a breath. “I can’t believe after all this time I’m going to lose them.” She looked down and repeatedly smoothed the sheets over Lisa’s leg.
Josh cleared his throat. “Not necessarily.” When all eyes swung his way, he held up his hand. “Cooper and Lisa will be with you and after…err…when you’re ready I mean, it would be a good idea for all of you to head back to our place.” Everyone looked away when they realized he meant when the sick children all died. “The Zoo is a good fix for the rest of winter, but now that they know about Red Deer, I would guess at least half of them will bolt there as soon as the melt comes. There’s just no way they can sustain the place and guard it against all the crazies they say are still running around the city if they lose that many people. Lisa should try and convince her dad and his girlfriend to come too. I’ve already given Cooper my take on it and he agrees. He’s going to look for another trailer for the sled or some other means of transportation so you can all head our way right before the snow melts. The other option is to wait and find bikes for all of you. However you do it, don’t stay after people start leaving.”
Lisa nodded from her bed but Leslie seemed unconvinced so he left it at that. There was only so much he could do.
“So, where is this fallback Albert set up? The sun’s about to drop behind the mountains and we need to start moving.”
Leslie patted Lisa’s leg one more time and turned to Josh. “It’s right across the parking lot. The Ronald McDonald House. We don’t think anyone would bother with it. If they come all the way up the hill, they’ll go straight for the hospital, at least at first. We’d have time to get away while they search this place.”
Josh turned to Quinn, who raised a shoulder in a shrug. “Yeah, that makes sense to me. Raiders would go straight for the drugs and medical supplies in the main building. We’ll just keep a low profile and it should be ok.”
Josh nodded and looked to each of his friends. They were about to split up and spend the dark hours of the night in possibly dangerous situations. They had learned the hard way today that they weren’t invincible and any one of them could be injured or worse. He took a deep breath and squared his shoulders, all traces of goofiness now gone.
“Everyone still in?”
As one by one, his people gave firm nods of commitment, his nerves got tighter but it didn’t stop him from nodding in agreement.
“Go time.”
Iced
Book Six
Prologue
The woman struggled to keep upright, stumbling when the toe of her boot caught on the crusted edge of the snowdrift she was trying to navigate. She felt herself falling face first towards the snow-covered ground but was saved when the men she was traveling with grabbed her arms from either side and steadied her. She sent them both a weary smile of thanks for the help and looked ahead, past the snow-filled field, to the cleared road. Walking would be easier once they reached it. Her calves and thighs burned from the unaccustomed exercise but she ignored it and focused on being grateful for the chinook that brought the arctic temperatures up to survivable levels and allowed them to escape from the death trap their home had become.
When the town council had posted notices of a forced quarantine on everyone’s door, she had been slightly relieved. The sickness burning through the population terrified her. Knowing that they would now be forced to stay away from others, locked in their homes, had given her a sense of protection. Every time she or any of the others that lived with her went out, there was a fear that they would bring the sickness back with them and infect everyone in the house.
It was the same day the notices went up when one of their roommates started to cough. That barking noise had frozen all eight of them with terror. Food and water were hastily gathered by each of them and then they all went to separate areas of the house in hopes of isolating themselves from the contagion.
The two men who chose the basement rec room with her were long-time friends from before the lights had gone out and had been kind to her from the start as they settled into the new living arrangements. They divided the basement room into three quadrants, settled in, and then waited to see what would happen with their sick roommate. They passed the time bundled under blankets to stay warm and talking about things they missed from the old world while trying to stay calm about their situation. All three were losing the battle when, on the second day, the basement door was opened and a voice yelled down to them.
“Two dead, two more sick! If you are all still healthy, don’t come up!”
All three of them looked towards the ceiling with fear. How could this infection move so fast? People were dying just a few short hours after symptoms appeared.
One of the men finally yelled back, “We’re all fine down here but we will run out of food and water in the next couple of days.”
There were a few moments of silence from the top of the stairs before she heard a thump on the steps and the voice called down again.
“I’ve left you some supplies on the steps. Wait until I’ve closed the door before coming up to get it. Good luck!”
The door slammed shut and the three stared at the steps leading to the main floor. Eventually, the man closest to the stairs threw back his blankets and pushed to his feet. He stood at the bottom of the stairs looking up in thought. He eventually turned back to his area and rooted around until he found a spare shirt that he tied around his face like a mask. He climbed the stairs slowly until he was high enough to reach out and snag the cardboard box that rested on one of the top stairs and then made a quick retreat back down. He set the box on a desk by the stairs and turned to look at the other two.
“One at a time we can come take what we need. As long as we stay at least ten feet apart, we should be ok.”
When they both nodded their agreement, he reached into the box and took a few items before carrying them back to his area. The woman went next and then the other man. They were all relieved that they could now stay in the basement for a few more days without having to go up for more supplies and risk infection. None of them considered that the supplies might have the deadly germs on them. None of the roommates realized that the last supply run to the community hall had been done by the roommate that had first come down with the illness and that he had brought the infection into the house. They didn’t consider that the ones he had infected had also contaminated the supplies in the kitchen.
It was the next day that they started talking about escape. She posed the question first.
“What do we do if they all die up there? We can’t stay trapped down here. We’ll run out of food and water, not to mention the cold! If no one’s left to keep the stoves going then the little bit of residual heat we get will disappear and we’ll end up freezing to death.”
There was silence from the two men before one of them started nodding.
“She’s right. We have to get out of here. We should leave and move into one of the empty houses.”
The other man shook his head. “That doesn’t solve the supply or heat issue. We’d have to go to the community center for everything we need to survive and that just exposes us to another chance of infection.”
The three roommates sat in brooding silence, wrapped up in their own desperate thoughts. It was another hour before the woman spoke up again.
“We need to get out of this town! The council said the farms haven’t been exposed and they were still bringing food to the roadblocks so we could go there and ask to be taken in until this illness passes.”
Hope briefly flared on the men’s faces but was quickly replaced by despair as the reality of their situation re-asserted itself.
“We would never make it. The temperature is just too low to survive the walk.”
She threw up her hands in frustration. “So, we stay here and die or try to leave and die? If that’s all we can hope for then I say let’s go while we are still strong enough to have a chance on success.”
Her declaration was met with reluctant nods of agreement from the two men.
On the fourth morning since the plague had come into the house, they dressed in every piece of clothing they could find in the basement, pried open a frozen window that sent a small avalanche of snow into the room, and one by one crawled out into the front yard. Two things greeted them. An utter silence and lack of movement in the neighborhood and warmer temperatures then what they expected. They worked their way through the walkways and alleys, trying to keep out of sight until they reached the first open field. Halfway across it, two of them started to sweat with fever but chalked it up to exercising in so many layers of clothing. The cold and exercise had them all thirsty and they went through the little water they had brought quickly so when they started coughing, they assumed it was due to thirst. In their quest for survival, not one of them ever entertained the thought that they might already be sick as they trudged towards the distant farms.
***
David Perry leaned his back against the gate that was blocking the main driveway of the Green farm and adjusted the rifle sling on his shoulder in annoyance. Everything seemed to annoy him since his friends had left the day before to find medicine. He just couldn’t understand why they would want to throw themselves back into the danger they all knew was out there. Making it home from California after the lights went out had been a terror-filled journey - not to mention the battle to free the town. At least they hadn’t had to do too much once the first group of adults had been freed. The adults had taken over the fight and he had stayed out of it.
David knew that most of his friends had been forced to kill in defense of themselves or others, but he was lucky enough not to have been put in that position. He kicked at the softening snow under his boot and thought about the look of pride in Mr. Green’s eyes when Josh told him they were going to search for medicine. Josh’s dad hadn’t even objected once to his son running off to play hero. David just didn’t understand. Why couldn’t some of the men go instead of a group of kids?
When Alex and Emily’s parents had shown up yesterday in a panic after they discovered that the girls had gone too, there had been a full-blown argument between the adults. When Alex’s brother weighed in on the side of the teens, David was furious. Here was a former police officer giving his approval of their quest and he used their experiences crossing the country to justify that they stood a good chance of succeeding.
In David’s opinion, that was one of the biggest reasons that they shouldn’t have gone. Hadn’t they been through enough already? Why couldn’t they just stay safe and let the adults handle things? He didn’t want to be a soldier. He had seen the effects of that with his father and how it had destroyed his family. The hardest part of not agreeing with his friends was the distance it had created between him and Emily. She wasn’t interested in his opinions on the matter and every time he brought them up, she would just dismiss his concerns without even trying to listen. She hadn’t even said goodbye to him when the girls had picked up the trailers that they were taking. Just a quick wave and she was gone without a backward glance.
He shook his head and shoved away from the gate. Was it really so bad that all he wanted was to stay here with his mom and little sister? To just be safe and not have bullets flying at him or have to shoot people? He just wanted to live his life as close to how it used to be before the lights went out. He didn’t think that made him a bad person.
He was so deep in his thoughts that he didn’t hear the crunch of snow under boots coming from the other side of the fence. It took the bark of a cough and a voice calling out for him to spin around in surprise.
“Thank GOD! We didn’t think we would make it!”
David’s eyes widened in surprise at the three people approaching the gate but it was the way the trio staggered and swayed that had him taking a step back in concern. When the woman between the two men doubled over with a coughing fit, his concern turned to fear and he took three more steps back and held up his hands.
“Stop! Don’t come any closer! Where…why did you come here?”
With glassy eyes, the taller man looked past David, toward the farmhouse.
“We need help. I worked for Mr. Green during the harvest.” His eyes tracked back to David. “Do you have any water? We ran out halfway here.”
David spun around and searched the yard for someone to help him but there was no one in sight. He spun back when he heard the chain on the gate clang against the metal post. All three had moved up against it and one of the men was trying to unwrap the chain that held it closed.
David’s heart was pounding in fear when he asked, “Are you from town?”
The woman gasped out a breath against another cough and nodded.
“Yes, we had to get away. Everyone is dying! Please, do you have water?”
David shook his head violently.
“You’re sick! How could you bring that here? You’re going to infect all of us!”
The woman was shaking her head in denial when the sound of the front door to the house slamming shut rang out. He was filled with relief that one of the adults was coming to help. That relief turned to terror when his little sister, Emma, called out.
“Davy? Are we having visitors? Did they bring any kids to play with?”
David was frozen in fear when one of the men raised his boot and put it on the middle crossbar of the gate to pull himself up so he could climb over.
David finally found his voice and screamed out, “Stop! Emma, get away from here!”
He could hear her small footsteps squeaking in the snow as she moved closer.
When the second man raised his foot to the gate to try and climb too, David’s mind was flooded with the words Quinn had fired at him in contempt when they talked about the threat of sick people showing up at the farms.
“It’s no different than them pointing a gun at our family!”
Too much was happening at once. Emma was right behind him asking who the people were. Both men had reached the top of the gate and the woman was doubled over again in a coughing fit.
There was nothing he could do. They were going to kill him, his sister, and everyone on the farm.
The rifle sling slipped easily down his arm with a jerk of his shoulder, letting the gun drop into his waiting hands.
He breathed out and whispered to his sister, “Close your eyes.”
As he pulled the trigger from a distance where he had no chance of missing the three from town, he closed his own eyes.
Chapter One
Josh and Quinn took one last look around the fallback location in the house where Quinn, Alex, and the remaining kids would hide out for the night and nodded. It would have to do.
Josh peeled back the heavy blackout curtains that covered the main window of the family suite they had picked to hide out in and looked onto the parking lot that faced towards the hospital. He looked for any sign of movement in the day’s last hour of light before dropping it back into place, leaving the room in almost complete darkness. He turned back to Quinn.
“This will work. As long as you all stay as silent as possible, no one should even look this way if they come to attack the hospital again.”
He waved Quinn out of the room toward one of the main living areas, where there was more light, so they could go over the plan one more time. Once they c
ould see again, Josh looked around the room and shook his head.
“Seriously, this place doesn’t even look like it’s been touched since the event. Other than the supplies Albert brought in, I doubt anyone’s even looked at this building. Once everyone’s over here and settled down, light a few candles and do a perimeter check to make sure no light can be seen from outside. After that, just hunker down and wait for us to get back.”
Quinn nodded slowly with a grim expression. “I hate leaving you guys to do the dangerous work but you were right about me needing to stay here to protect Alex and the kids.” He rubbed at his tired face and then set his expression in a hard look. “What do we do if you guys don’t make it back?”
Josh looked down and used his boot to rough up the flat and dusty carpet before replying.
“You take the meds we got from Leslie, load up Alex and the kids, and go.” His head came up to meet Quinn’s protest filled eyes. “I’m serious, Quinn. This trip has to be worth it. If for some reason we don’t make it back here by noon tomorrow at the latest, you have to go. This chinook is going to flip and it’s going to be soon. If you stick around here waiting for us, you’ll all be trapped by the freeze and then everyone here and at home will probably die. You have to promise me that won’t happen! I’m counting on you to see this through no matter what.”
Quinn looked away with a conflicted frown but nodded sharply. “Just don’t let it come to that, man.” With a fierce expression on his face, he lifted his eyes to meet Josh’s. “I’m serious. If it takes every bullet we have, you stop anyone who gets in your way!”
Josh’s expression was just as hard when he replied. “We’ve always tried to keep a balance between doing the right thing and our survival, to get this far. From this moment on until we get home, I’m throwing the rule book out the window. We have an entire town, our families, and all these kid’s lives in the balance. If I have to kill anyone in the way and let God sort it out later, then so be it. I’m willing to live with that if it means saving the people that are depending on us.”
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