Haven Chapter 14

            Chapter 14

            After that she quickly began to trust us. She told us about how she ended up here, she was alone at a bus stop when the commotion started, but unlike others who stayed at home or ran to what they thought was safety she hid in the abandoned cars, only moving to find food when she was starving, or to change locations to avoid encountering the dead.

            Then one night while she was sleeping in a van, a group of men found her while siphoning fuel from the engine. While keeping her at gunpoint the stole all her belongings, food she had gathered, weapons she had made in case of emergencies. And lost among those things was sharks tooth necklace. ‘It was my brother’s,’ she explained emotionally, by this point it wasn’t about telling a story, for her it was reliving those events, making sure they were real, ‘He died before… before all this happened.’ Everyone was grim and silent, we had all gathered to hear her story but now I wondered whether it was such a good idea to crowd her.

            But Lauren came over and put an arm around her shoulder, that seemed to bring Emma back to her reality, and she continued her story. ‘I knew it was stupid but I wanted to get it back,’ she said bitterly, annoyed at her failure

            ‘It’s not stupid,’ Will reassured her, ‘it’s a memory of what you lost, those things are important’

            ‘Still I shouldn’t have been so reckless I’-

            ‘It’s all right,’ I interrupted, clearly she had had this argument with herself many times before, ‘just tell us what happened next’

            ‘I followed them, the stopped for the night not far away from where they robbed me. I snuck into the back of the car that’s outside here, when they stopped I thought we were at their, but soon they ran out screaming.’ I was surprised at that, I thought she hadn’t been here when we first arrived but apparently not.

            After a glass of water she began again, ‘I hid in the car again, I heard gun shots and a bunch of footsteps. I must have been in their for hours before I left,’ we all felt sympathy for her, we had all been in that situation, terrified of the dead, wishing you were anywhere else but being too afraid to leave. ‘When I did get out there was a body hanging against the door, and I could see the dead chasing two others away in opposite directions. I found a few bodies of the men inside’-

            ‘Marauders,’ Daniel corrected her

            ‘What?’

            ‘Marauders we’ve been calling them… marauders,’ Daniel realised how stupid he sounded and stopped talking.

            After a long awkward pause during everyone looked oddly at Daniel she finished her story. ‘I searched their bodies, and their stuff but I couldn’t find my brother’s necklace. But the time I realised it wasn’t there and went to find the two that got away I saw some cars coming and hid in the ventilation,’ she finished and Connor spoke after

           ‘That was us,’ he explained, ‘we actually found one of the marauders that got away’

           ‘What?’ she span around quickly, startling Connor, ‘did he’-

           ‘Not that we saw,’ I answered before she finished

           ‘That leaves only one other person,’ Nicole sighed

           ‘Anthony, they’re leader,’ Monica said sternly.

           Emma wanted to go after him, she even threatened to leave on her own, but Lauren, Will and a few others convinced her to stay. There was no way we would ever find him after all this time anyway. She calmed down after that, but she seemed to lose some of her spirit and barely spoke or reacted when Andria showed her, and those of us new to the new structure, around the warehouse. The only time she did seem to react was when she volunteered to help Lauren and Nicole with first aid and supplies. I think she felt guilty about her involvement with Malcolm’s accident.

           Malcolm had recovered a lot, and in a few days he was on his feet. The rest of us got more comfortable in the new space, and revived from their depression everyone got to work. Daniel hooked up the generator, but we never used it, but in an emergency we could use lighting in the first aid area, or the heaters on an especially could night. The strange thing was that we weren’t working towards anything. I realised after watching everyone train with a gun, or learn how to bandage a wound properly that we still had no goal. Nothing to look forward to.

           I knew I had to find something, or this new enthusiasm for training and preparedness wouldn’t last. But try as I might I couldn’t think of anything. One night I sat around a fire with Will, Nicole, Jade, Brooke, and Connor, talking about this topic. ‘You’re right,’ Nicole agreed, clearly she’d been thinking about this too, ‘without a goal this burst of energy will fizzle out eventually’

           ‘I’m not so sure, we haven’t seen any groups of more than 2 undead in ages,’ Jade spoke up happily, ‘why risk spoiling a good thing?’

           ‘Because eventually the dead will come,’ Brooke answered dismally

           ‘Or the living, we don’t know if Anthony is the only marauder left, or if there aren’t other groups out there that would kill us and steal our supplies without a second thought,’ Connor said, adding to the depressive mood.

           Not for the first time I wondered how many other groups were out there, struggling to survive. Some would be like the marauder’s yes, but others may be like us, trying to maintain our morals and sanity in these maddening times. ‘Maybe we should start scavenging again?’ Will suggested

           ‘Because that worked so well last time,’ Jade answered sarcastically

           ‘No I mean it,’ Will insisted, ‘we may have enough food to last us a while, but now that we’re in a defensible position, why shouldn’t we try to improve that position, and our quality of life at the same time?’

           ‘He’s right,’ Connor said all too quickly and I wondered how often they’d spoken of this before, ‘if we can find a good refrigerator we might be able to actually get some fresh meat in our diet’

           ‘Most meat would’ve gone off by now,’ Nicole said confused

           ‘He means we’d hunt for it,’ Brooke said matter-of-factly.

           ‘Maybe not,’ I disagreed, ‘I mean if we had an infinite amount of power and ammo then yeah sounds great but what if when he bad guys get here we have no petrol for the cars and no ammo for our guns?’ Everyone who had liked the idea quickly returned to their morose moods. I sighed and relented, ‘but maybe we can find new foods that don’t require power,’ Will smiled thankfully, ‘and along the way some creature comforts.’

           Everyone seemed to like the idea, and quickly word spread to everyone else about the new scavenging operations that would be happening. Eventually without even asking I had a team ready to go: Chris, Jade, Brooke, Monica, and Connor. Emma had made a strong case to come along, Malcolm too, but I shut them both down, out of concerns for Malcolm’s health, and Emma’s age. Deep in my gut though I had a bad feeling, that leaving the safety of the warehouse was a bad idea. But I knew even that feeling of safety was a lie, we were no safer here than we were outside. So we might as well leave, and try our luck raiding.  But still, I always made sure to go with them, just in case.