What Survives of Us (Colorado Chapters Book 1) (6 page)

“I really am sorry, Noah.  I shouldn’t have teased you.”

              Noah shrugged.  “It’s okay.  But if you don’t mind, I’d rather change the subject.”

             
And so they had.  As predicted, Noah had spent much of their two week confinement talking through the rest of the list.  In addition to Ruth the medic, there were two arms experts, one of whom was Levi, two field survival specialists, a communications specialist, and a mechanic.  Everyone had a specific role to play, and most of them had cross-over training in other skills – Levi and Tyler Kelly, the mechanic, were also the group’s cooks, and Noah, she was surprised to learn, had been trained as an EMT – his father intended him to serve as backup for Ruth.  Finally, there was Brody Sanders, who was a tactician like Noah’s father.

             
“Sanders is the son of a guy my dad served with in the Marines,” Noah explained.  “He’s only a few years older than Levi, so early 30’s, but he’s totally old-school.  He’s fourth-generation Marines.  His dad lived in Walden until he died from cancer a few years back – he was one of dad’s best friends.  Dad felt like it was his duty to look after Sanders, but neither Levi nor I like him much.”

             
“Why not?  Were you jealous of your dad’s attention?”

             
“No, nothing like that.  It’s like I said – Sanders is old school.  He fancies himself a real hard-ass, and in a way, he is – he thinks qualities like compassion and mercy are weaknesses.  And he can justify anything.  I’m pretty sure he’s the only man on Earth I’m afraid of.”

             
That surprised her.  “You’re not scared of your dad?  Or Levi?”

             
“No, not at all.  I wouldn’t want to face either one of them in a fight, but if I did, at least I know they’d fight fair.  Even if you beat Sanders fair and square, you could never turn your back on him again.  He’d put a knife between your ribs and you’d never see it coming.”

             
On the 5
th
day of their isolation, Noah’s father died.  Levi came to the clearing to tell them, his face lined but controlled.  He looked a decade older than the first time Piper had seen him.

             
“He fought hard, Noah.  It gave him a lot of comfort to know you were here, even if he couldn’t see you.”

             
Piper rested a hand on Noah’s shoulder.  His face was locked tight, but he couldn’t hide the misery or the sheen of tears in his eyes when he looked at her.  He rested a hand over hers for a moment, then turned back to his brother.

             
“And Karleigh?  How is she?”

             
Again, Levi didn’t hesitate with harsh truth.  “She’s not going to make it.  Lucas is sick, too.”  This time, Piper didn’t have to guess at what Levi was feeling – it was all over his face.  He was grieving for his niece and nephew and didn’t feel a need to hide it.

             
“Jesus, they’re just babies.  Karleigh is what – 3?  And Lucas will be 9 next month, is that right?”

             
“If he makes it.  It’s bad, Noah.  Jenny is crazy.  We can hardly get her to eat or sleep.  She made Aaron take Caden to one of the remote cabins – they’re both fine so far, but Aaron is just totally out of it.  That little Karleigh, she’s the apple of his eye.  I took Max out to stay with them until it’s over, one way or the other – he’s got a comforting way about him, and he’ll make sure they both eat and rest.”

             
Noah’s hands clenched into fists.  “How much longer do we have to stay here?  We haven’t had contact with anyone but each other for six days, and neither one of us is sick.  We should be doing something to help.”

             
“I told Sanders you’d feel that way, but he says two weeks.  Before Dad died, he asked me to abide by Sanders’ decisions.  For now, that’s what I’m going to do.”  Grief flashed on Levi’s face again.  “And Noah, I’m sorry, but we can’t wait to bury him.”

             
“I understand.”  It was all Noah could get out before he turned his back on both of them and stood there for a moment, hands on his hips.  His shoulders shook once, and he walked swiftly back to the cabin without a word to either of them. 

Piper turned back to Levi, and their eyes held as they measured each other without the buffer of Noah.  When Levi spoke, his voice was low and gravely with emotion.

              “It’s harder for him.  Noah.  He and Dad didn’t see eye to eye, and Noah puts a lot of stock in agreement and getting along.  He’s a peace-keeper, always has been.  It’s going to eat at him, that he and Dad couldn’t talk before he died.”

             
“Yes, it will.”  Piper rubbed a hand over her heart, feeling the mother-bond she could never quite sever, no matter how disgusted she got with her Martha-Stewart-wanna-be mom.  She would give anything – anything at all – to feel her mother’s plump arms around her right this minute.  “I understand exactly how he feels.  I’ll do what I can to help.”

             
“Are you sleeping together?”

             
“None of your business.”

             
“So, no.”  Levi shook his head.  “You’re trouble, Piper.  When you join the group, you’re going to want to tread careful.  You’re too young and too pretty.”

             
His words were not a compliment, and Piper didn’t take them that way.  “Noah has been filling me in.  I’ll watch my step.”

             
“You’re going to need to do more than that.  Lay off the make-up.  And do you have baggier clothes?”

             
Piper felt heat creep along her hairline.  In spite of her best efforts, he was getting under her skin.  “I’m not wearing make-up.”  She held her arms out, and looked down at her baggy UNC sweatshirt and utilitarian jeans.  “And what would you suggest?  A snowmobile suit?”

             
“If you have one.”  He didn’t laugh, and there wasn’t even a hint of humor in his eyes.  “Wear a pair of Noah’s jeans.  And a baseball cap.  Josh is in contact with a ham operator in the Springs – we’ll see if he can get any information about your parents, and we’ll figure out how to get you to them as quickly as possible.”

             
Piper had had just about enough.  “Wow.  I apologize sincerely for neglecting to bring my burka.  Any other orders you want to bark at me before I head inside to ritually disfigure myself for the good of the group?”

             
Levi didn’t even acknowledge her sarcasm.  “Yes.  When you and Noah join us, don’t make eye contact and keep your head down.  Don’t speak to any of the men unless it would be rude not to.  Answer briefly, then walk away.  Don’t engage in conversation with them, don’t laugh, don’t smile.  Any of those actions will be taken as an invitation to pursue.”  His eyes narrowed.  “Unless you want to be pursued?”

             
“Hmm, let me think.”  Piper tapped her chin with her index finger.  “Do I want to be pursued by a group of backwoods military knuckle-draggers?  So I can – what – fulfill my life’s ambition of being a womanly little bed-warmer, maybe with some campfire cooking and cabin-floor-scrubbing thrown in for funsies?  Golly, tempting as that sounds, I’m going to have to give it a ‘Hell no.’  Wait!”  She held her hand out to him excitedly.  “Unless you throw in latrine duty.  I just can’t say ‘no’ to latrine duty!”

             
“Shit.” 

Levi hung his head, and for a moment, Piper thought she was going to receive a well-deserved apology.  She was decidedly wrong.

“Look.  I get that you’re real smart, and you’re pretty quick with that wit.  Noah has been talking about you for almost three years, whenever he bothers to come home.  You’re both into that sociology shit, studying different cultures and mores and what-not.  Well, now you get to find out if you’re life-smart, not just book-smart.  You break the rules at UNC, you get a little paddy-slap, maybe a call to mommy and daddy.  You break the rules here, and you are out the door.  I won’t have Noah put himself in harm’s way trying to protect you, and I won’t tolerate the danger to what’s left of my family if you get this group all stirred up.”

She would be good and god-damned if she’d let this guy run her over.  Guest or not, there were some basic rights she was not going to cede.  “So you’re the big boss of the group now?  What about Brody Sanders?  Given your attitude, I can see why your father left him in charge.”

Levi’s face went still and blank – it appeared the Ramsey brothers shared a talent for poker-faces.  “Like I said, you’re quick.  And you’re not afraid to take a shot when you see it.  You think I’m some kind of Neanderthal, some kind of chauvinist jackass, but I’m trying to help you.  You can either figure out the new rules and abide by them, or I’ll personally toss you out on your clever little ass.  Are we clear?”

“Crystal.”  She hissed the word at him.  Spinning on her heel, she marched said ass back to the cabin, feeling his eyes on her the whole way.  At the door, she turned to stare him down.  She was surprised to find not anger but despair and resignation written plainly on his face.

“Christ.”  He heaved a deep sigh.  “We are so fucked.” 

With that, he turned and headed back the way he’d come.  They hadn’t spoken a single word since.  Noah, being Noah, had noticed the strain between them whenever Levi visited the clearing, but he didn’t ask and Piper didn’t fill him in. 

The remainder of the two weeks had crawled by, punctuated by the deaths of little Karleigh and her brother Lucas a few days later.  Levi reported that their sister was wild with grief; she had joined her husband and surviving son in the most remote of the cabins, and he wasn’t sure when the bereaved family would be returning to the group.  Max, one of the field survival specialists, was still with them, making sure they stayed fed and safe.

Jenny and her family still weren’t back when Noah and Piper’s quarantine ended.  Within 24 hours of joining the group, Piper determined she had a problem.  Rather, she had four of them.  As it turned out, the chauvinist jackass Neanderthal had been right.

Ethan Torres and Adam Peterson, field survival specialist and sniper respectively, were openly vying for her attention.  It took her almost a week to remember which name went with which man because they were always together, always flanking her whenever she left the kitchen, where she had been put to work washing dishes and helping with food prep, or when she sat down to eat.  Josh Bennett, the communications specialist, was slightly more subtle, but only slightly; he updated her hourly on the news from Colorado Springs, whether there was news or not.

Worst of all, though, was Brody Sanders.

He never spoke to her and he never stopped watching her.  The feeling of his eyes on her had become distressingly familiar, and she was pretty sure he had started following her to and from the cabin she still shared with Noah – either that, or she had crossed the line into full-blown paranoia.

To a certain extent, Piper had taken Levi’s advice.  She had kept quiet and kept her head down while she studied the group, trying to learn the lay of the land.  She had always prided herself on her adaptability, on her ability to get along with many different types of people and social groups, but this collection of steroid-fueled good ol’ boys was beyond her capabilities to adapt to.  Worse, she didn’t even want to.

If she had to pretend to be amused by one more juvenile, risqué joke, or listen to one more exaggerated story of battlefield ass-kickin’, or bite back one more grammatical correction –
“You ‘don’t got none?’  Are you serious?  Don’t you mean you ‘ain’t got any?’”
– she was going to suffer some kind of aneurism, she was sure of it.  There was a limit to how far she was willing to contort herself to fit in.  And she had just about reached it.

Leave, Scott had told her.  Take Macy and get to the cabin.  Leave the city, avoid people, don’t draw attention to the fact that you have food and water.  Over and over he had repeated the same instructions.  Towards the end, his ramblings had taken on a desperate edge; he had known, Naomi was certain, that he wouldn’t be with them.  She couldn’t count the number of times he had made her promise – “Say it, Naomi, say you’ll go, say you’ll take her and get to safety, promise me!” – which made her failure to act all that much more painful now.

Naomi leaned her head on the front door and shut her eyes.  “Open it,” she whispered to herself.  “Just open it.  Just start small.”

She put her hand on the door knob and went light-headed with terror. 
Danger
.  Danger everywhere outside that door.  She could feel it, as surely as she felt her heart booming against her ribs.  She stepped back, and looked down at Persephone, who was looking up at her patiently.  The little dog scooched over until she was resting against Naomi’s leg, a gesture of support rather than of demand.  Naomi reached down and scooped her up, and together they headed for the sheltered back deck, where Macy was resting in the early May sunshine.

She had fallen asleep, Naomi saw as she stepped outside, halfway through a stitch on her embroidery sampler.  Naomi lifted the embroidery hoop free of Macy’s hands, tiny, white and spider-like in the wake of her illness, and completed the stitch before setting the sampler aside.  She tucked Macy’s blankets more snuggly around her, then sat down on the other lounge chair to watch her baby sleep and think through her options.

She didn’t want to go.  This was home, security, safety.  They had enough food to last several more months, and summer was coming – she could garden to supplement their canned and dried stores.  Power and water were her biggest concerns – the lights had been flickering for days, sometimes going out for hours at a time, and every morning, she heaved a huge sigh of relief when the tap responded and the toilet flushed.  The failure of both systems was simply a matter of time.  She had a back-up generator, but Scott had warned her about the dangers of using it, how the noise might draw attention she didn’t want.

It was tempting, so, so tempting, to plan to hunker down here.  To ride it out until the plague had run its course and the world began to recover.  Scott knew her homebody self well, knew she’d feel that way – hence his demands for repeated promises to leave.  Staying in the city, he had insisted, was far too dangerous.  Looters, gangs, rioting and fires, secondary diseases from the lack of sanitation and unburied bodies – over and over, he’d listed those dangers.

Naomi hadn’t had contact with anyone other than Scott or Macy for over a month, and hadn’t heard any current news in almost that long.  She had stopped trying Piper’s cell, though she kept the phone nearby, just in case.  She had no earthly idea what was going on out there.  Yesterday, she heard what sounded like distant gunshots, but how could she know for sure?  In the early days of their marriage, she and Scott had lived down by Fort Carson – she had heard automatic weapons firing on the practice range just about every day, and had become used to the sound.  The city was so quiet now – was she hearing training exercises from Fort Carson again?  Even as the thought crossed her mind, she recognized the desperate rationalization in it.

She needed information.  In the absence of TV, radio and internet, there was only one way to get it.  She needed to go out there.  Out the front door.

She stood up and put Persephone on a stay, leaving her to watch over Macy’s sleep.  The little dog was more reliable than a monitor for letting Naomi know when Macy needed her, racing to find Naomi when Macy wanted help getting to the bathroom or a drink of juice – Naomi wasn’t sure what she’d do without her at this point.  She more than earned what little food she consumed, and in spite of her promise to Scott about the pets, Persephone would be staying.

Of the other animals, Ares was the only one left.  When the weather warmed up, she had released all three cats into the back yard.  She had put out food for a few days, then every other day.  Cats, she knew, were brilliant at learning to fend for themselves.  Artemis had vanished almost immediately, and she had only seen Athena a few times before she, too, disappeared.  Naomi had no way of knowing whether the cats had headed for richer hunting grounds or had become prey themselves, but her heart was peaceful over it.  She could not bear seeing an animal neglected or abused by humans, but the natural cycle of life and death was a different matter.

Ares, though, had been coming and going with regularity.  Sometimes, she only knew he’d been there by the gifts he left on the deck – dead squirrels, chipmunks and birds.  Some nights, he yowled to be let in at the door, which invariably signaled a change in the weather.  She had started watching the sky, noticing the direction and strength of the wind, and she was getting pretty good at predicting when he’d show up.

Tonight probably wouldn’t be one of those nights, she mused, as she retraced her steps to the front door.  The day was soft and clear, a gentle spring day in the Rockies, without even a
hint of clouds building over Cheyenne Mountain.  A perfect afternoon.  Just right for a short walk around the neighborhood, to see what was what.  She reached for the front door again.

Danger
.  Naomi stood there, hand resting on the door knob, torn between frustration and fear.  If she couldn’t even open her front door and step out onto the stoop, what hope was there, long-term, for her and Macy? 

“Get over it,” she ordered herself in a soft mutter.  “Stop being such a coward.  Open the damn door.”

She sucked in a deep breath, and twisted the knob with sweaty fingers.

The front lawn was overgrown in patches, and brown where winter-kill hadn’t been treated.  Naomi stepped across the threshold and broadened her perspective to the neighboring houses, and the houses across the street.  The signs of trouble were like repeated slaps.  She should have expected to see them, but they shocked her just the same.

Across the street, the Sullivan’s front door was wide open.  She could see boxes and suitcases stacked just inside the door, but leaves and trash had blown in to rest against them.  The door had been open at least a few days, maybe longer.  Naomi stepped onto the front sidewalk and took a few steps, reaching towards the Sullivans’ home with all her senses.  It felt still, completely still.

When she reached the end of her driveway, she stopped, examining each house from where she stood.  Garage doors stood open that were usually closed.  One house had all the front windows boarded up with plywood.  And was that…a body?  Naomi strained to see, and forced herself to move closer, shuffling sideways down the street, ready to run in an instant. 

It was a body, a woman – she knew the family by sight, but didn’t know their names.  She was curled on the ground between what had to be graves, two mounds of dirt scratched in the front yard – her children?  A mottled gray arm was flung over one of the mounds, as if embracing a sleeping child, and Naomi could see where the woman had hemorrhaged, coughing her life out just as Scott had done.

For a long moment, she stood there, waiting to feel something.  Shouldn’t she?  Wasn’t she supposed to feel shock, sorrow, horror?  There was a woman dead in her front yard, her body slowly dissolving back into the earth, a woman she had known well enough to wave at when they passed in the street.  Had she spent all her grief on Scott, that she had nothing to give this quiet corpse?

She moved to the middle of the street and scanned both directions, looking for any signs of life.  From her vantage point, she could see about 20 homes.  Down the street, a cat scooted across the asphalt and disappeared into the weeds.  Other than the soft, rise-and-fall shush of the wind and the occasional call of a bird, the world was absolutely silent.  Naomi glanced back at her house and decided to check one block deeper into the neighborhood.  She didn’t want to be gone longer than a few minutes.

Hunching her shoulders, she crept along the side of the road, wincing at the loud crunch of gravel under the sandals she’d slipped on.  Silly, pretty, strappy sandals adorned with beachy blue and green beads.  Stupid shoes for this task – she had to start thinking such things through.  She didn’t know what was worse – the houses where nothing looked amiss, or the discrepancies that signaled trouble: a minivan with all the doors flung wide, just sitting in a driveway; another home with two bodies in the front yard, tangled together in death like lovers; several vehicles parked in driveways with a driver slumped motionless behind the wheel.

And every time the breeze lifted, it brought with it the scent of rot.  She knew, of course, what the source of the smell was, but she didn’t want to dwell on it. 

As soon as she had been able to leave Macy for any length of time, she had moved all her belongings out of the bedroom she’d shared with Scott, and had sealed the door shut with layer after layer of plastic and tape.  When Macy could leave her bed, they’d had a ceremony, there in the hall, in front of the bedroom door.  She had calligraphied his name on the wall beside the door, as well as the dates of his birth and his death, and Macy had used some of her precious strength to embellish her father’s memorial with glitter and stickers.  Scott’s remains would have to rest in his unorthodox tomb for the foreseeable future, and Naomi knew he was one of the lucky ones.  So many, so very many dead, and no one to care for them.

The breeze also stirred the trash, which was everywhere in what had once been a pristine neighborhood.  Animals, she guessed.  There hadn’t been any trash pick-up since the start of the quarantine, and animals would certainly have been drawn by the smell.  Maybe pets, who had escaped from their homes or been set loose, like Artemis and Athena.  Dogs would have the worst of it, she pondered as she trudged along.  Cats retained their hunting instincts no matter how domesticated.  Dogs, for the most part, were more dependent on humans, and would have to overcome more conditioning to kill for food.

As if she’d conjured him, she heard a low whuff from the doorway of the house she was passing.  Sitting on the front porch, still and watchful, was one of the largest Rottweilers she had ever seen.  When her gaze met his, he whuffed again, ears alert.  She stopped walking, and he cocked his head to the side, studying her.

Anxiety
.  Not hers, his.  It rolled off him – that, and
hunger
.  Naomi blinked, startled.  She had always been good at reading an animal’s body language, especially dogs.  It was a knack she’d simply always had, and that knack had been further honed by her years of work with rescued animals.  But this was more than reading posture, gaze and ear position – it felt like his thoughts had touched hers. 

She wasn’t scared of him, not for an instant.  She kept her body turned to the side – to face him fully might telegraph a challenge – and he rose to his feet.  For pity’s sake, even lean as he was, he had to weigh 150 pounds.  He turned, looked over his shoulder at her, trotted through the open door, then turned to look at her again.

Naomi surprised herself with a rusty chuckle – it had been a long time since she had felt amusement of any kind.  The big guy was exhibiting what she had always called “Timmy’s in the well!” behavior – he so obviously wanted her to follow him, it was as if he could speak.

“I’m coming, boy.  That’s a good boy – I’ll follow you.”

She paused in the doorway, seriously doubting the wisdom of what she was doing.  The door had been gnawed and dug open – the dog’s strength and determination to be free awed her.  Surprising, then, that he hadn’t taken off.  She heard the click of his claws on the hardwood ahead of her, and crept farther into the dim house.

She smelled them before she saw them.  The man was lying on the couch, the woman slumped on the floor beside him.  Both dead, and had been for some time.  Naomi lifted the neck of her t-shirt over her nose and breathed through her mouth.  The dog stood by them, anxious, vigilant, and whined softly. 
Help
.  His eyes were liquid with sorrow.

Naomi shook her head.  “I’m sorry, boy.  I can’t do anything for them.”

The dog’s ears pricked at her voice, and he whined again.  He padded away from the couple, leading her up a half-flight of stairs to what appeared to be bedrooms.  He bypassed the first, entered the second.  From her vantage point, Naomi could see soft lavender paint on the walls.  She edged closer, glimpsed the corner of a white crib with frilly white bedding, and flattened herself against the wall.  No.  No, she could not go in there.  Could not.

The dog re-emerged and stared at her until she met his gaze, then tried his “follow me” behavior again.  Walk away, look back, whine. 
Help
.  His distress was a pressure in her brain.  She shook her head.  “I can’t,” she choked, as if he could understand her.  “Please, I can’t.”

He whined again, softly, and disappeared into the bedroom.  Naomi shut her eyes and tilted her head back against the wall.  She had to get out of here, had to get back to Macy.  But what if the baby in that room was still alive?

She didn’t give herself time to think or agonize, just pushed away from the wall and swung into the room.  The dog was sitting beside the crib, vigilant once more.  Naomi smelled blood and corruption, and she knew, even before she saw the tiny, chubby arm, out-flung and discolored, saw the slitted, staring eyes.  She reached into the crib and pulled the soft, fluffy afghan over the baby’s face, tucking it gently around her still form.  Then she looked at the dog.