by Woods, Shane
“Sounds like work,” I opined. “I’ll make my rounds and come back to see if you need help later.”
“Sounds good to me, my friend!” he replied in kind and returned my handshake.
I had scaled the steps to the second floor, our medical floor, and went straight to the first room to meet Shannon and see if Ashley was around as well.
The second floor had come around as well as the rest of the compound. It was barely even recognizable as having once been apartments. The first room doubled as an office and intake area. Each room after that was either exam rooms, short term recovery, or one of the two operating rooms we’d managed to cobble together. Nothing was exactly Grade A, and every day there was a need for this or that, but the girls did their best, and we did the best we could to accommodate them.
“Hey Shannon!” I called as I entered the office.
“Oh, hey Scott!” she replied, smiling. Shannon was short to say the least. She says five-foot, we give her four-ten at best. At any rate, she was nearly perpetually friendly and pleasant to deal with. A bit spacey at times, but that was just her personality. The girl was ungodly smart, and most of the guys didn’t mind seeing her if they were sick or injured. There seemed to be an unspoken poll as to which one was better looking, Ashley or Shannon. Either way, I was happy to have them. Both were smart, hard-working, and very useful practicing medicine here.
Practicing, however, was not just a term to use lightly in this case. They each carried medical experience, but neither was a full-on doctor, and many times their work was learning as they went. Nevertheless, they made an amazing team and usually so with my wife as a third, doing her level best when she was needed or at least not busy elsewhere.
“Is, uh,” I began, and she finished for me.
“Yeah, he should be awake, I haven’t gone up to check,” she replied.
“Okay, cool,” I replied, smiling genuinely. “I’ll make sure he’s ready at least, maybe five minutes?”
“Works for me!” she answered before going back to what seemed to be a collection of medical seminars in print. Always learning, I admired that.
I turned and left her office and went up to the third floor. These apartments were kept mostly spartan, and two to three beds usually placed in each one, they were set up for more long-term care of patients.
I reached the last one and listened. I could hear some rustling and movement through the door, but just in case the occupant was still asleep, I pulled the door in tight before working the knob and easing it open slightly. The door mechanism made a barely audible *tsk* as it moved.
It only took a moment to regret my decision. I could make out the bed in the far room, the only one occupied here. A pair of bare legs, upon which rested a laptop. And, of course, on the laptop was the image of two very nude people in compromising positions. Shit.
Before I could subject myself to any more of the view, I quickly eased the door closed. I took a step back, gave it a moment, and figured ‘what the hell’, and knocked three times followed by, “Hey, dick, you decent? You awake?”
“Uh, yeah one second buddy!” came his response, and a moment later, “Okay man, I’m cool.”
I opened the door and eased my way into where Tony had been kept for the last few weeks. His skin was flushed, and I latched onto that to torment him. It was a tough choice to make as I could have very easily started in on the decorative frilly throw-pillow he held tightly over his lap, pressing the covers into place.
“You look red, dude,” I began, trying to mask my internal laughter with false concern. “Has she checked your vitals today? You look almost flushed, you’re not having a reaction or anything, are you?”
“What?” he explained. “Nah man, just a little pain in my chest still. Still rough to breathe and all that.”
“Well I mean you got lung-shot, dude,” I reminded him. “You’re lucky to even be alive given our resources. I’m still convinced we lost you and you’re just a ghost filling in.”
“No ghost here,” he replied. “Hey, do you know if one of them are coming up soon?”
“I’ll tell you,” I began, “if you tell me how you’re so lucky to have porn with no internet.”
“I found a laptop that ended up being filled with it,” he answered, reddening more deeply, then added a greedy, “And it’s mine. Man.”
“Yeah, I’m not touching it after you,” I laughed. “Keep it hidden better though. And keep your little lacey pillow there tight, I’ll send Shannon in.”
“Okay dude,” he offered. “Oh hey, they said I’ll be cleared for light duty in a couple of more days. They don’t know why my healing is taking so long, but...” he shrugged.
“Yeah,” I replied, “just don’t let the milk spoil.”
I turned, leaving Tony laying there propped up and looking confused, and walked back out to the hallway where I nearly collided with Shannon and Ashley.
Ashley was a bit taller, but not by a whole lot. She had darker hair, and a similar round face with hazel eyes, instead of Shannon’s green eyes, but aside from that they could have almost doubled as sisters. Both pale, round faced, pleasant demeanors and they nearly even dressed the same.
“Hey, he’s up,” I informed them, then said just loud enough for Tony to hear, “he did complain about some kind of sharp groin pain. I don’t know if that’s anything related, but he said it’s pretty persistent. Might want to check that out.”
Before either woman could reply, Tony’s voice called out above all of ours.
“That man lies!” he proclaimed. “There’s nothing! I don’t need my groin checked!”
I shrugged and walked past a pair of very confused ladies and made my way to the stairwell again.
I’d finally cut back smoking enough to where I wasn’t ready to keel over dead by the time I reached the ninth floor.
That being said, I was only mildly panting by the time I reached the command room. The whole floor, the ninth floor, was the highest in either building, and was referred to as the ‘Command Floor’, or just simply ‘Command’. It was also the floor I lived on, my family and I the only residents here but I liked it that way, it gave us some extra separation but also allowed me to be quickly on hand if something happened that required my attention.
This space had transformed the most in the past few weeks. One whole side of the floor had been turned into a two-part command center. One section, perhaps a third of the space, had been opened up and given seating for meetings. We could stuff every person in the compound into this room and still have room, but mostly it was relegated to department heads such as myself, Henry, Shannon, and others.
The rest of the space was accessible through a doorway in the conference room, or another near the end of the hallway. I took the shortcut through the conference area.
Opening the door, I walked into a slightly smaller space, but with much more going on in it.
The open light-giving windows had all been covered over. The inside of the windows first painted white and baby blue to reflect sunlight, then backed with jet black to block the rest of the light filtering through. This was then backed again by another coating of white to brighten the interior space and allow the bare minimum of light to be as efficient as possible.
The lights were mostly kept off as well to save power, leaving the area darkened save for the blueish glow from the banks of several monitors arrayed against the interior wall.
Two desks sat against that wall, each surrounded by a mass of monitors arrayed concavely to allow each to be viewed. One desk held a view over the main compound. The monitors screens divided into six to eight panes showing the entire main compound. The other desk held a watchful dominion over the outer wall, sentries, entrances, river, and any land between the two walls. Thanks to a couple of good scavenges, both stations were run by state-of-the-art PCs and all operations were controlled by separate twin-monitor setups. It was a computer nerd’s wet dream.
Speaking of computer nerds, I had just walked
in on our two best. And they were in the middle of a Nerf gun battle. Of course.
Rob, our resident computer expert, had moved all the surveillance and scouting tools off of one table and onto another and had the table flipped on its side, hiding behind it the best his squat frame would allow. Despite the wall mounted air-conditioner, he was covered with sweat, his short, curly dark hair matted to his head and his glasses slightly skewed as he returned fire to Ryan.
Ryan Boyd was one of our new additions that came into our little community. He came up as a computer hobbyist when he went through intake. Whatever that was, he was damn good with the things. He too was shorter, close to Rob’s five-and-a-half feet tall, but he was much thinner. Athletic build, short cropped haircut, and a nose meant for a much larger person, but he was respectful, diligent, and worked his ass off for us.
Ryan had taken shelter behind the sliding screen doors used to cordon off the power for the entire compound and the actual command area. They’d been brought in from the balconies to provide a divide and served him well at deflecting the foam darts.
Neither man noticed my entry in the least, and they continued on for another minute until I reached up and grabbed the tie for the blackout curtains between the monitoring stations and the rest of the area. The curtains fell and the room went dark, save for my shape silhouetted in the doorway I stood in, and their whoops and shouts at each other ceased.
I could just make out where Ryan was because the lights on the various electric equipment would disappear when he moved. Just before I opened my mouth to say something witty or derogatory, it happened. A series of soft pops broke the new silence, and it came from both ends of the area as my form in the doorway was pelted with a hailstorm of high-speed foam darts.
“DIE FUCKER!” came from Ryan’s area as Rob followed with “They’re retreating! Press the attack!”
I fell back around the corner laughing and yelling back at them as they rushed the doorway.
“Shit heads! It’s me!” I called. “It’s Scott! Cut that shit out!”
My authority was undermined by another hearty chuckle as the darts stopped flying and the other two joined me in laughter.
“We knew it was you,” Ryan said through his laughter, “been tracking you since the far side of the overpass!”
“We got cameras that far now?” I questioned, a bit surprised.
“Not yet,” Rob explained, beginning to calm himself, “but we’ve got driveway sensors across all the roads within 6 blocks approach from the wall. We knew you were there before you could even see the furthest reaches of the compound. Ryan actually set them up.”
Rob motioned to the wall as he raised the curtains and pinned them back up. On the wall was a pegboard laid out with all the streets like a map. On each street was a single LED light with a label and on the bottom corner of it all was what I’d recognized as a piezoelectric speaker. I studied the board for a moment before turning to Ryan, his expression clearly seeking a response or reaction from me.
“How are they all connected?” I asked.
“Oh,” he began, “they’re all wireless, but they’ve got good range, so we sent a car out and radioed when we lost signal on one, and then set it a half block inside of its range. All the roads are covered for a half-dozen blocks in any direction, even got a couple across the river.”
As if to emphasize the lesson, an archaic mechanical buzz resounded loud and clear as an LED on the board lit up for a moment, went out, then lit again and held steady. Ryan reached past me and pressed a button, shutting the warning off completely as both of them took individual seats and began inflating screen sections in the direction of the alarm. Ryan picked up the incoming traffic first.
“Got ‘em,” he stated calmly, then picked up his radio from the desk and spoke into it, “Southbound, this is Central, over.”
A woman’s voice crackled over the handset, “Southbound here, over.”
“Southbound, you have incoming friendlies, over,” Ryan informed the voice.
“Incoming on Southbound, copy, over,” the voice came back.
I held my silence and observed. Ryan pulled up the vehicle as soon as it came into range, a long black crew cab cruised casually in our direction, with something in the bed of it and a trailer loaded with supplies. It approached Ryan’s camera and passed by, where it was picked up on the next screen, then eventually to the outer gate’s southern intake.
I could make out Dave driving the truck. His lanky form covered in tattoos, long dreadlocks hanging from under a ball cap made it all but impossible for me to mistake him for anyone else. I’d known the guy for years. The mop of red hair and dark sunglasses of Rich could be seen next to him. In the bed of the truck, however, was a sight to behold.
We didn’t expect the level of crazy we’d get when the guy finally got comfy and opened up, but Cody was something else. Not bad crazy. Not scary crazy. But, if you wanted a friend when you were growing up that would window surf on your car at midnight on some backroads while shooting at every road sign you passed, it was probably Cody. He was currently sitting on what appeared to be a lawn mower, his feet up on the steering wheel, and a beer in his hand. A cowboy hat and a tank top that proclaimed ‘YEET’ in big bold letters across the front.
The vehicle passed into the inner portion of the outer compound where Ryan’s cameras followed it until Rob’s picked it up, then his electronic eyes followed the vehicle into the compound where it stopped. The guys in and on the truck and trailer dismounted and started unfastening supplies from both as yet more people came from different areas to help carry things to wherever they belonged.
“Okay, looks like y’all are doing well up here, keep up the good work!” I commended as I turned to leave. They both thanked me, and I departed for my apartment to grab a cup of instant coffee and head to the rooftop.
Jennifer was up top and busy helping a handful of others with building a rain cover over the roof of the building. Enough solar panels had been brought in and installed at this point to nearly obscure the view from all sides. Between these, screens and heavy netting were installed. We nearly all agreed it was better to sacrifice most of the view from this building after Tony fell to unknown gunfire during what should have been a celebration.
This was capped across the rooftop with a huge quilt of tarps. They’d been sewn together with everything from 550 paracord to old shoestrings, but the setup looked strong. It was all backed by steel cable looped through reinforcing rings and anchored to the roof to hopefully keep the whole assembly solid. With a little luck, it will hold tight. The real test would be the coming winter winds.
Looking at the new rooftop shelter and thinking of the drops in temperature we’d be experiencing, I started making more plans. It seemed as though there would never be a shortage of needs and wants for the community.
“Hey! Bri!” I called across the rooftop to where our supply floor lead was working.
“Oh, hey Scott!” she returned, standing and moving to head my way.
Bri was a slightly heavyset blonde in her mid-twenties. She had been appointed as the lead of Floor Eight, which was our designated supply floor. Everything we could need that wasn’t earmarked for Shannon’s medical needs, Henry’s garage or Rich’s armory went through Bri. The woman loved it and kept steady track of what supplies came in and what went out. Her and Dave had been an item since early in our adventures, though their relationship wasn’t overt. They’d spend quiet parts of days together. Dave had even mentioned maybe moving into her apartment.
“What’s up?” she asked as she approached.
“I need you to take some items down for future scavenging runs,” I instructed, watching as she retrieved a pocket notebook and pen.
“Okay, shoot!” she directed.
“Check the storage areas of bars, mechanic shops, and private garages,” I instructed. “Any kerosene heaters, or even better the tall one’s bars use for smoke pits. Maybe even wood stoves if they can, we’ve removed a
lot of trees, but that wood will need to season for a year or so first so have them watch for split woodpiles too.”
“Okay, anything else?” she asked, eager to assist any way she could. I liked that quality, such a contrast from Katie and Parker.
“Just the usual,” I said casually. “How are we on food?”
“Uhm not bad,” she replied, recalling her figures on the fly, I was sure. “We look like we’re set up until about mid-February, I’d say? We’ve got the three chest freezers running now but James wants to use some of the new power we’re making to put some more in. The hunts are really helping, so is the scavenging, of course.”
“And every person we add to our home increases the strain,” I observed. “I’d like to pull some people from work parties and start sending more or larger scouting and scavenging groups.”
“Sounds good to me!” she replied, a grin still stretched across her round cheeks.
“Got your radio?” I asked, and nodded when she removed it from her side. “Good, call James and Rich up here, I want to get a feel for taking a run tomorrow with them.”
She nodded in the affirmative and did as I instructed. We parted, her heading back to work, me moving over to where my wife was.
“Somebody actually convinced you to work?” I said, teasing.
“Oh, shut up!” Jennifer replied, reaching back and tightening the dark blonde bun on her head and wiping sweat off her forehead.
“Looks like everything is almost done up here?” I inquired.
“Mostly,” she replied, then, “How was the hunt? Get anything?”
“Revenge,” I stated. “They took my deer, I took their dignity.”
She didn’t reply, just looked at me with her ice blue eyes like she was trying to figure out a puzzle.
“Boss!” I heard a familiar voice call.
“You called?” Rich’s much raspier, lower voice chimed in, and I turned to meet my friends as they approached. The two couldn’t have looked any different. James’s average height and lean build, his dark skin and eyes, all in contrast to Rich’s shorter stature and bright red hair and pale, freckled complexion. An odd couple if I’d ever seen one, but they got along amazingly. And truth be told, I liked the both of them a whole lot. They’d been instrumental in our success thus far.
