Sonya was a caretaker, too. She took care of the kids. When they had started asking for volunteers for the different duties, she had seen surprise in her friends’ faces when she said she would help in that area. At first, she had just done it because it was something she knew she could do. She wasn’t a hunter, and she’d had enough of scraping around the countryside. She wasn’t a carpenter, and she wasn’t a good cook, and she didn’t have Chase’s knack for seeing possibilities. Then, after she had done it for a while, she realized that she really liked it. The kids were great, and they challenged her every day to try to make herself a better person. They pulled her out of herself and allowed her to open up and interact in a way she never could with people her own age or older. And she thought her opening up with the children was carrying over to her interactions with the adults in the camp. Of course, it didn’t hurt that she and Chase and Marilyn kind of enjoyed a special status with the originals, the people from the church and the people from the facility in Florida. Some of the newer people, the latecomers, didn’t really understand why, but after it was explained the three were regarded with a little more respect, and to their embarrassment, a little more deference. Chase and Marilyn continued to earn that respect daily with their continued contributions. They often got the glory. Sonya didn’t mind. She liked what she was doing.
She turned back to the children to see how they were getting along. The kids were collecting charcoal for a water filter Chase was trying to set up, a filter large enough to meet their needs. Their hands were black, and they walked from cook fire to cook fire, cabin to cabin, sifting through cinders and placing the charcoal into plastic five gallon buckets.
There were eleven of them now, from two years old to twelve. Anyone older than twelve was considered an adult and expected to do an adult job. With help, of course. Even the adults looked out for each other. Bob had said early on that the buddy system was a good policy, and not just for school field trips. Four eyes and four ears and two noses were more likely to detect creepers. She paired up her kids, too. She watched the ten-year-old Luanne, her oldest, helping two-year-old DJ, the youngest. Luanne praised the toddler for everything he dropped in the bucket. Sonya made a mental note to go through the bucket herself later and clear out anything that wasn’t charcoal.
Sonya couldn’t wait for the new water filtration system. The people of the camp were boiling their water now, but that only took care of the germs. Important enough, but the water itself tasted terrible. She thought about Tina, who had fallen to bad water. Tina had thought she wanted to be a hunter, but she got lost in the woods and ran out of water. When they found her, she was okay, but the next day she was sick. She told them she had found a clear stream and drunk from it. Marilyn did a little scouting around and found a dead fox just upstream from where Tina had taken her drink. They hadn’t been able to do much for her once she started wasting away. They didn’t have a medical person at the camp then, and might not have been able to save her anyway. They had someone now, a nursing student. Lauren was smart and she did the best she could, but she wasn’t a doctor. She would soon probably have equivalent knowledge, though. She spent day and night with the medical books, poring over them and treating ever minor malady in the camp with all the seriousness and attention she would give a severed limb or deadly disease. Thinking about doctors made Sonya think about the last doctor she had known, Dr. Rogers. They had left him sitting in the clearing above the underground base. He had asked for a gun, but Chase hadn’t given him one, had told him to go find his own. Rogers had shrugged and just walked into the brush. It was strange to leave him there, but he was a walking dead man already. There was nothing they could do to save him.
Thinking about Dr. Rogers made her think about Audrey, the reporter they had pointed to camp. Bob said she had never made it. Sonya hadn’t liked her, but hadn’t wanted her dead, either. She knew there was a very good chance Audrey hadn’t even made it out of Florida, but sometimes she hoped the pretty, shallow woman had just decided to keep going, back up to somewhere near Chicago. There had to be groups up there who were doing what they were doing down in Alabama. Maybe even doing a better job of it.
Sonya watched her father and Chase as they stood, having finished attaching the four sides of the box for the raised garden. There was a strong mutual respect between them, and why not? Sonya thought the world of both of them, both for what they could do and who they were. Sonya and her father lived in a cabin he had built, but maybe not for much longer. Her seventeenth birthday was coming. She and Chase had discussed it. They were going to talk to her father, ask him to build them a cabin of their own. Chase had been reluctant at first. He wanted to wait. She had asked him, “Wait for what?” He hadn’t been able to come up with anything.
Once upon a time, she might have gone to college. Once upon a time, she might have waited for a career, or waited to make sure he was the right one. But in this world after everything else, waiting was pointless. What they had been through, what had happened to the world, had highlighted for her how short life could be. Things were okay now. Not great. There were a lot of problems they didn’t have solutions for yet. But she knew solutions would come, or they would learn to live with the problems. She could see a future, and she wanted to spend it with Chase. Back in the old days, she hadn’t always been sure what might be coming next. There were so many possibilities. Those possibilities had been limited now. There was survival and failure to survive. That was pretty much it.
Chase would be a good husband. They would survive. And someday, there might be children. They had even talked about that one night walking by the lake. He had said he wasn’t sure he would be a good father. He sure hadn’t learned anything from his. But he was learning now from her dad, so maybe it would be okay. And there was Marilyn. Even without Chase’s wonderful capability, her baby would never want for anything with Marilyn as godmother. Not to mention the rest of the community.
Maybe this wasn’t the world after everything else. Maybe this was the world before the new beginning.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Part One: Worthwhile to Live
Chapter 1 – Chase
Chapter 2 – Marilyn
Chapter 3 – Sonya
Chapter 4 – Chase
Chapter 5 – Marilyn
Chapter 6 – Sonya
Chapter 7 – Chase
Chapter 8 – Marilyn
Chapter 9 – Sonya
Chapter 10 – Chase
Part Two: Improved MeansOur
Chapter 11 – Marilyn
Chapter 12 – Sonya
Chapter 13 – Chase
Chapter 14 – Marilyn
Chapter 15 – Sonya
Chapter 16 – Chase
Chapter 17 – Marilyn
Chapter 18 – Sonya
Chapter 19 – Chase
Part Three: Ideas So Wrong
Chapter 20 – Marilyn
Chapter 21 – Sonya
Chapter 22 – Chase
Chapter 23 – Marilyn
Chapter 24 – Sonya
Chapter 25 – Chase
Chapter 26 – Marilyn
Chapter 27 – Sonya
Chapter 28 – Chase
Chapter 29 – Marilyn
Chapter 30 – Sonya
Chapter 31 – Chase
Chapter 32 – Marilyn
Chapter 33 – Sonya
Chapter 34 – Chase
Chapter 35 – Marilyn
Chapter 36 – Chase
Sonya
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After Everything Else (Book 3): Creeper Revelation Page 26
