Drew fairly bounced up the stairs after his dad sat up on the couch and thanked him for getting all the supplies. The giddiness from getting the rare praise from his old man lasted until he realized the grey mushy stuff that he was picking out of his hair must be brain matter from the guy he’d shot in the U-Haul. Nothing like finding pieces of some dude’s brain in your hair to kill the mood.
Chapter 13: Fort Russel
“That cops going to get his friends and come find us.” Bart said from the couch. His words were slightly slurred from the pain killers. He was insisting on taking just enough to take the edge off the pain without making him loopy. He was convinced they’d be attacked before the day was out.
“Not if he tries calling them, we won’t.” Yue said holding up her phone sadly. A desperate looking LeBron started shaking his phone like it was an etch a sketch.
“I don’t think shaking it will get the tower back.” Drew said irritably. He was covered in sweat from going up and down the stairs with the supplies. The crew that’d loaded up the U-Haul had done an excellent job clearing out the drug store. They now had a veritable ton of supplies that should see them through a month or two of sitting in the house without having to even ration them.
They had so much stuff that storing it was an actual problem. They’d mostly solved the problem by emptying out their closets and designating those as storage pantries. There was still going to be a ton of stuff just sitting around. Their living room liked an episode of “Hoarders” with a medical spin. Yue and Nancy were covered for pretty much any feminine hygiene issue they could dream up.
“I guess we were lucky it lasted this long.” Yue said dejectedly. She slid her phone into her pocket and grabbed a plastic bag filled with candy to shove into the pantry.
There was a loud knock at the front door. They all froze staring at one another. Yue pulled her phone out before realizing without WIFI and the internet she wasn’t going to be able to see the video of who was outside. Drew sat down the bags of assorted stuff he was about to carry up the stairs and picked up his rifle instead. Nancy stood up by the couch with her shotgun in her hands. Yue went to the window by the front door and peeked out the hole in the plywood to see who was on the porch.
It was an old woman shifting nervously from foot to foot waiting to see if they’d answer the door. She had a paper sack in her hands. Yue looked but didn’t see anyone else. LeBron had circled the house looking out all the peepholes and not seen anyone either. Bart asked them to turn out all the lights before opening the door to talk to the woman. With all the lights turned off Yue answered the door.
“Hi. I’m from down the street. We saw you unloaded a bunch of supplies earlier. It looked like some might be medicinal. My husband has a condition and needs Apixaban or Heparin to survive. He has some but it’s only going to last another week. I was hoping you had some you didn’t need. I have money.” The old woman opened the paper sack so Yue could see the crumpled bills that’d been shoved into it.
“Money’s useless. What else do you have?” Yue asked. She knew they probably had the medicine and none of them needed it. It was going to be a very valuable commodity here in the near future though as people started running out. A light went on behind her and she heard someone sorting through the piles of medication they had lined up all along the kitchen counters.
“We have a little bit of food and water.” The woman said hesitantly.
“How about weapons?” Yue asked. The woman shook her head sadly.
“Here. This is all I could find. Don’t come back. Don’t tell anyone where you got it from.” Nancy said squeezing past Yue and handing the old woman a Ziploc bag with ten pills in it.
“Thank you! Bless You!” The woman said happily eyeing the ten tiny little pills. She was mentally adding them to the ones still in the bottle at home to see how long until her partner of fifty years was going to die.
“She’s going to either tell people or come back.” Yue said admonishing her mom.
“If she’s coming back, she better hurry.” LeBron said from the other side of the house.
“Why?” Drew asked looking over at his younger brother. Everyone had turned to face that direction to hear the response.
“I’ve been looking up videos and pictures of the infected people have been uploading. There’s a video of the infected tearing through Jacksonville. If they’re that close, then they’ll start showing up here anytime now.” LeBron said. All of the main websites had started going offline soon after the President’s speech. The ones that remained hadn’t been updated very often. All of the main social media sites had gone offline except for some video sharing sites like YouTube.
“The crawlers are going to have to hurry if they want to kill us. There’s two police cars and a big SUV coming down the road now.” Drew said walking down from the loft where he’d just gone to drop off another batch of supplies.
“They don’t know which house we’re in.” Yue said.
“They’re talking to that
