A soft ripple of laughter trickled through the group, and Steven smiled.
“That’s it,” he announced putting his paper down. “Stay safe, stay breathing.”
As the crowd dispersed, Caitlin furrowed her brow. “What if we weren’t on any of those work duties? Then what are we supposed to spend our time doing?”
Booker shrugged, still drained but coming back to himself. “Guess we get t’go chat with Steve.”
She didn’t move.
Instead, she watched everyone split off into their allotted groups, heading for wherever they were expected to be.
Over a hundred people, most of whom had barely spent any time in the new, broken world. They were scared, ill-prepared, and Caitlin felt utterly responsible for all of them.
“I don’t want to stay here,” she whispered.
“Huh?”
She blinked, shaking her head. “I meant I can’t sit around doing the bare minimum. I can’t just join the cooking shift and pretend I’m content there. I can’t dig post holes for a few hours and call it a day.”
“What’re you sayin’, Cae?”
She glanced up at him. “We’re a great team—you, me, Nicole. It’s a waste of our skills to just fall in line with a work detail.”
“What, you wanna jump up the ladder?” He started to smirk. “Be an elected official?”
“God, no,” she said. “I was thinking we could be some kind of… recon team.”
Booker stared at her, half disbelieving, half intrigued.
“A group this size can’t be nomadic forever. We won’t survive.” She looked over at the clusters of people wandering about. “We already don’t have enough places for people to sleep. We’ll need food and supplies—”
“That’s what the other scout teams are for,” Booker said.
“They’re just band-aiding the problem. We need a place we can build on. Somewhere we can fortify against Geeks and goon squads, if they happen to find us.”
As Booker looked like he was about to fall back into uncertainty, she gripped his hand tighter.
“Be honest. Do you really want to spend every day rotating between supply runs, patrolling, and cooking? Or do you want to be out there—” she gestured to the wide-open horizon. “—using your finely tuned skills, searching for a place we can all call home?”
Ever so slowly, a grin spread across Booker’s face and he held her stare.
“Yeah, I never was much of a home body.”
Caitlin beamed just before lifting onto her tip toes to kiss him.
“We should talk to Steve.”
Booker nodded, hand warm on her waist.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Chapter Four
Oklahoma/Kansas border
Two weeks later
With a mouthful of granola bar, Caitlin propped her feet up on the dash, scribbling notes on the legal pad Max had given them.
A light swat at her knee only made her giggle.
“Show some respect, would ya?” Booker tapped her with the back of his knuckles again. “She ain’t a footrest.”
“I think she likes it,” Caitlin countered, teasing grin curving her lips. “Like when a dog lays its head on your lap.”
“I can’t tell if you’re callin’ her a dog, or yourself, but either way…” He pushed the heel of her Nike sneaker with two fingers.
“Fine,” she sighed, taking her feet down with a noisy thunk in the floorboards.
Caitlin stared out at the landscape ahead of them, frowning in thought.
“How far is Wichita from here?” She asked, pen hovering over her paper.
Brushing crumbs from his hands, Booker snatched the map off his side of the dashboard and read it quickly.
“Forty… maybe fifty miles, give or take,” he said.
“Hm.” She finished writing her note. “That’s close.”
“Yeah, but the soil’s good,” he said. “And that high school we found could be cleared. It’d make a good place to hole up for winter.”
“Trish won’t like risking lives like that,” she told him, glancing over as she took another bite of granola bar. “She’s a path-of-least-resistance kinda gal.”
Booker hummed in agreement, uncapping his water.
Automatically, he looked behind him to the back seat and paused.
“Keep expectin’ her to be back there,” he murmured.
Caitlin mirrored his action, staring at the worn upholstery.
“Yeah,” she said. “But Nicole promised she’d come on the next trip with us.”
When they’d announced to Steve and the others they wanted to go on the hunt for a more permanent place to live, they were met with a flurry of mixed reactions. Most were worried—they didn’t like the idea of them being gone for long periods of time without any way of communicating. Luna was appreciative of their initiative, but she wasn’t thrilled with the implications that they had to find a permanent homestead.
Booker had simply nodded to the flimsy tents and the group of fifteen children and said, “If you want them to survive winter, we’d better find a place quick. Or groaners won’t be the reason we’re diggin’ graves in a few months.”
That had sobered everyone immediately.
Nicole had initially been excited to put herself to work, but Scott’s response had been… stricken at the very least.
They’d just found each other again. He couldn’t bear to have her go off for days at a time, unsure if she’d make it back.
Caitlin understood implicitly. And if Scott wasn’t the Reject’s first and only licensed doctor, she would have suggested he come with them.
But that was a risk no one wanted to
