Chapter Three
With nothing to do except wait and grow anxious, Chloe decided to explore the house, which, up until now, she’d been hesitant to do out of good manners.
A guest did not paw through her host’s private stuff.
However, the real homeowners were dead, and the post-apocalypse squatters wouldn’t care, having demonstrated little attachment to the home.
Besides, they wouldn’t notice anyway. Caleb was zoned out on video games, and, judging from the gasps and groans, Zack and Sandy were once again swapping bodily fluids.
She peeked into the master, claimed by Caleb. Even from the doorway, the rumpled sheets on the king bed looked nasty. Had he ever laundered them? She shuddered, shut the door, and headed upstairs.
The second level had two guest bedrooms, an office, and a den.
From the home and the personal effects, she’d deduced a family of five had lived here.
Mom, dad, two daughters—one a teenager, the other a preteen—and grandma.
The office and den were filled with photos of the smiling, happy family.
Seeing them caused a wave of grief so intense, it felt like her parents, siblings, and boyfriend had perished yesterday, and she disintegrated into a body-wracking, ugly-cry.
In an act of lunacy, she proceeded to swipe through the pictures on her phone and cried harder.
When the weeping ceased, she felt drained, wrung out, but better. I needed that. She hadn’t realized how much tension and grief she’d bottled up while on the run.
Grief she could suppress, but the fear never went away. Fear kept her moving. Sometimes, it clawed at her throat; other times, it receded to a dull ache, but it never fully dissipated.
She doubted she would feel safe anywhere, but she felt safer being in a group.
People were not meant to be alone. After months of solitude, worrying that she might be the sole survivor, she had rejoined the living.
Tonight, she’d reunite with four more people.
But she couldn’t let elation distract her from vigilance. I must stay alert.
At the first hint of danger, she would make her own decisions, regardless of what the trio did.
It concerned her a bit how chill they seemed sometimes.
While vetting her, they seemed oblivious to the continuing threat.
Just because no Progg had been spotted lately, didn’t mean they weren’t out there.
For the time being, she could take a breather and give her body a rest. She’d walked an average of twenty miles a day for months.
Here with the trio, she had a roof over her head, a comfortable bed, warm showers, and air-conditioning.
She’d been able to charge her phone, enabling her to view her photos and read the books she had downloaded before the apocalypse.
I always wished I could finish my Tbr list. Now I can. Be careful what you wish for.
After she finished her books, she could read the homeowner’s.
She’d found the woman’s eReader and plugged it in to charge it.
The lady of the house had liked romance novels, alien romances in particular.
Bet she wouldn’t like them so much now! Real aliens were ruthless killers, not noble hunks as portrayed in fiction.
Chloe returned to the outer room to check on the trio. Caleb remained glued to another video game, but after heating up the sheets, Zack and Sandy were heating up lunch for themselves—canned chili with Vienna sausages added in.
“You okay?” Sandy peered at her. “You look like you’ve been crying.”
“I was thinking about my family. Looking at pictures.”
“It’s hard,” Sandy said. “You have—had—a big family?”
“Parents, an older brother, a younger sister, and a boyfriend.” And a cat. Poor Midnight.
“Same. I had an older brother, younger sister, too. Mom and Dad.”
“I lost my mom, granny, and a sister,” Zack said. “Caleb had a wife and a new baby.”
“How awful.” Losing a child had to be devastating, unbearable. She eyed Caleb, oblivious to the conversation. Maybe he uses video games to forget. With a surge of empathy and compassion, she realized he probably hadn’t always been game-obsessed. “What kind of work did Caleb do?”
Nobody answered for a long moment while Zack and Sandy looked at each other. Had they never talked to Caleb? Finally, Zack said, “He counseled at-risk youth.”
She winced, envisioning Caleb grieving for the kids he’d tried to help who were now dead. That was atop the loss of his daughter and wife. “Rough.”
Until now, she’d pegged Caleb as an aimless, unemployed, entitled man-child of wealthy parents who couldn’t find a job paying the high salary his specialness deserved. Judgmental much? He’d been trying to compensate for a devastating loss. She was ashamed of herself.
“What did you two do?” she asked.
“I worked at a day care center for low-income families,” Sandy said.
“Attorney—don’t hold it against me.” Zack raised his hands in self-defense. A glossy-red star-shaped scar marred the inside of his left wrist. A burn maybe? “I worked for legal aid if that mitigates it,” he said.
“Changes everything,” she said with a grin. The three of them had tried to make the world a better place—as had billions of other people, whose lives had been cut tragically short.
“What about you?” Zack asked.
“Veterinary assistant. I would have started veterinary school in the fall. I did mobile dog grooming on the side. I had my own business. Waggin’ Wheels, I called it.”
“You like animals.”
“A lot.” She nodded.
“When we met, you said you were wandering.”
“Passing through. Checking out the towns. Making my way to the Springfield area.” She’d had a vague notion of checking out the town of Big Creek on the outskirts of Springfield.
Her mom had had a childhood friend who’d moved there.
Nestled in the Mark Twain National Forest, the town was supposed to be picturesque and quaint.
There was no real reason to go there, except it provided a destination, a goal to focus on besides the ever-present threat and the bleakness of the future.
What if the Progg intend to colonize Earth? She shuddered.
“You want some lunch?” Sandy asked. “We don’t have enough chili and Vienna sausages to share, but you can help yourself to whatever’s in the pantry.”
Out of necessity, that’s what she’d been doing. If she’d waited for an invitation to raid the pantry, she wouldn’t have eaten in three days.
“Thanks. I saw some microwave mac ’n cheese,” she said.
“Caleb ate it.” Sandy gestured to two empty, orange-smeared paper bowls on the counter.
Of course, he did, she thought, and then mentally smacked herself for being irritated. “I’ll find something else.”
She rifled through the shelves. Everything packaged and processed was gone. No soup. No tuna. No cereal. No mac ’n cheese. She could have plain pasta, plain rice, or dried beans. She could have cooked something with the beans, but dried ones would take too long if they weren’t soaked overnight.
“I know it’s not much.” Sandy said. “We need to replenish—sorry.”
Only flour, sugar, and cake mix remained—besides the dog food. Not ready to eat dog food yet.
Sandy and Zack could have saved the Vienna sausages and just eaten chili. They could also have added pasta with the chili and had chili mac, stretching it so there would be enough for everyone.
They didn’t think about it.
Frustrated, she pushed aside an empty box of pancake mix and found a can of red beans and one of diced tomatoes. “Score!”
“Did you find something good?” Zack’s voice.
“Good enough.” Clutching her bounty, she exited the pantry. The family had a whole drawer of spices. She could fix red beans and rice or a close facsimile.
Sandy eyed her items. “That’s all you found? Sorry.”
“It will work. After I eat, I’ll run to the grocery store where we met and pick up some stuff.” She’d load up a cart and wheel it home. Her contribution. They still hadn’t said if she could stay. “Could you hand me a couple of saucepans, please?”
“Big? Small?”
“Medium.” She guesstimated how far she could stretch a single can of beans with the rice. She’d make enough to feed all of them. Another bribe to show her worth.
“Here you go.” Sandy held out a lidded pot.
“Thank—you.” She riveted on the red starlike scar on the woman’s inner left wrist. Sandy passed her another saucepan. “These are perfect. Interesting scar you got there.” Same shape, same place as Zack’s, appearing about the same age.
“Oh, uh, yeah.” Sandy dropped her arm. “Scratched myself.”
Zack’s hands were clasped behind his back, so she couldn’t take another peek at his wrist.
What a coincidence they had the same scar. She eyed Caleb. Wearing a virtual reality helmet, he punched at the air. It would be really weird if he has one. Maybe the trio took a blood oath—one for all and all for one?
If she had to engage in a childish blood-letting initiation rite to join their club, that would be a deal-breaker.
She scooped enough rice for four people into a pot, added double the amount of water, covered it, and set it on the electric stove to cook then gathered the spices: dried minced onion, minced garlic, paprika, cayenne pepper, oregano, thyme, and salt.
“There isn’t time to go to the grocery store and get back to go with us to meet the people,” Zack said.
“I doubt there’s a long line at checkout,” she said.
She opened and drained the beans, poured them into a pot, added the tomatoes, a little water, and the spices, and set it to simmer.
“It’s a twenty-minute walk. I could go, shop, and be back within an hour, hour and a half tops.
We’re not leaving until 6:45, right? That’s three hours and fifteen minutes from now.
” She didn’t relish venturing out during the hottest part of the day, but she’d also like to have breakfast in the morning.
“It’s not safe to be out by yourself,” Zack said. “There’s a Progg camp in the area.”
“What?” The spoon she’d been holding clattered to the floor. “You never told me that!” She’d assumed the trio had settled in St. Louis because there had been no sign of the Progg. She wouldn’t have stuck around if she’d known.
“I’m telling you now,” he said.
She picked up the spoon and rinsed it off. Fear loomed big and menacing again.
“Are you all right?” Sandy asked.
The rice was bubbling, cooking too fast. She lowered the heat. Appetite lost, throat spasming with fear, she doubted she could eat.
“No, I’m not all right. I wish you had told me. This…changes things a bit.”
“You’re not thinking of leaving, are you?” Sandy asked. “We don’t want you to leave! The situation isn’t as bad as he makes it sound.” She glowered at Zack. “They’re occupying the museum under the Gateway Arch. That’s miles away. We’ve never seen any in this neighborhood.”
The Gateway Arch was the tallest monument in the United States.
On one family vacation to St. Louis, Chloe had ridden up to the viewing chamber at the top.
You could see thirty miles in all directions.
Who knew what kind of telescopes or scanners the Progg had?
They could be peering into the kitchen right now!
The hair on her nape prickled, and she had the urge to duck beneath the counter.
In a city gone dark, the house was a beacon of light at night, thanks to the generator.
Jesus.
“They may not even be there anymore. We noticed them when we first arrived, and we steered clear of them. Haven’t seen or encountered them since,” Sandy said.
If they had, they’d be dead.
“Sandy’s right. They’re probably long gone. I’m sorry for scaring you,” Zack said.
“The people you found—they’re not close to the Arch, right?”
“No. They’re not close at all,” he said. “They’re a few blocks from us.”
“I guess I won’t go grocery shopping today.” Or any day.
“For now, maybe you could go to the house two doors down?” Zack suggested. “That’s what we’ve been doing. If we’re in town, we’ll stop at a grocery store. But mostly we’ve been raiding the other homes for food.”
“We pretty much cleaned out the houses on both sides of us. But the next ones down should be fine,” Sandy said.
“I’ll do that.” She didn’t feel like going out at all, but she had to get food and water before she left. The trio could stay here, but she was not sticking around so she could be vaporized.
“You should go with her,” Zack urged Sandy.
“She doesn’t need to do that. I’ll be fine.” Having decided to leave, she’d be grabbing food she could eat on the run rather than cooking. She didn’t wish to signal her plans. A gut feeling urged her to keep her intentions to herself.
“I don’t mind. It will be fun!” Sandy said. “Like a girls’ night out! Girls’ afternoon.”
“Great.” She forced a smile.
“You’re still going with us to meet the new people, right?” Zack asked.
“Yes.” She hated to venture out, but she felt obligated to warn the new people about the Progg. The trio might not care, but she’d bet the others would.
Rice done, she added it to the simmering bean mixture and stirred it all together. She forced herself to eat a small bowl. It would be her last hot meal for a while.
First thing in the morning, she’d leave St. Louis.