Chapter 30 - Keeping my life was worth more than the cards

  "They are giving out some chow at the kitchen tent, if you are not too picky," Jeff suggested.

  "We should all eat something. Do you think Liv's alright staying here on her own though? Maybe we leave her a note?"

  Jeff nodded, and we did just that.

  He used a makeshift walking stick to get out of the tent, and I helped carry Tim. In this manner, we slowly walked towards the kitchen tent. It was well past noon, and the tables beside it were sparsely occupied. There were maybe ten people milling around altogether. In the full daylight, he looked gaunt in a way I hadn't quite registered before. His clothes hung off his frame, two sizes too big at least.

  "What do people usually do here?" I asked.

  "Hunt, do provision runs; some are on monster extermination duty. And as at any camp, there are millions of small things to do around: clean, laundry, security…" His eyes were red-rimmed, his tone lifeless. Yet he was holding together far better than I'd expect from someone who'd just lost their life partner.

  I looked around, thinking of something else to say to pull his mind elsewhere.

  "Is there anyone else, like Iris?" I finally asked.

  "There's a nurse helping out with the patients in the tent," he offered.

  "Okay, but what about her, you know, otherworldliness? You must've picked up on something, spending all that time in the tent."

  "I mean, yeah. But nobody's pushing it. She's keeping people alive, teaching the others what she knows. She's pretty much irreplaceable. People just kind of tiptoe around her, keep her happy. Ask too many questions, and she shuts you out. And the nurse she's training isn't much better, barely says a word. Honestly, you hardly see either of them outside the tent. They eat, sleep, and work in there. The patients just never stop coming."

  We finally reached a table with a few empty dishes, where I spotted Maria from Glendale farm. She wore an orange vest, stirring something in a large pot on a gas stove. There was no real reason for it; she wasn't family, wasn't even someone I knew well, but seeing her standing there, alive and unharmed, made me unexpectedly happy.

  A small station nearby held plastic cutlery and a water canister with a spout. It was remarkable how they'd managed to pull all of this together in the middle of nowhere.

  "Excuse me, ma'am? Are there any leftovers from lunch?" Jeff asked.

  Maria turned at the sound of his voice, and her face brightened the moment she saw me. "Chloe, isn't it? I'm happy to see you've made it." She was already reaching for a bowl. "Yes, we still have plenty. And I believe we even have some fruit for the little one."

  "Maria," I nodded back at her in greeting. "I thought you'd stayed on at the estate. It looked safe enough."

  "As did I, for a time." She ladled the stew carefully. "There was an attack. The guns stopped working, and there simply weren't enough people left to hold the perimeter. Ms. Glandale and Noah have gone to her parents' farm. It's much better equipped out there. I chose to stay and be with my family."

  "I'm sorry it came to that. I hope they made it safely." I paused. "Is your family all right?"

  "We were fortunate. We managed to get here by car while they were still running." A small smile crossed her face. "I'm glad to see you made it as well."

  My stomach growled, right on cue. Maria slid two full bowls across the table toward me: one for me, one for Tim.

  "You were with that man, Andy, wasn't it? I thought I saw him earlier. Did you arrive together?"

  "No, we got separated." I looked down at my bowl. Beans, rice, vegetables, and something leafy I couldn't quite identify. It wasn't exactly appetizing, but I was far too hungry to care.

  "Don't let me hold you," Maria waved us off gently. "We can catch up once you've had something. Go on, now."

  We took an empty plastic table near the edge of the forest. Jeff helped Tim with his food with practiced ease. I scraped the bowl clean in minutes and still felt hollow. I was starting to wonder if the nutrient drain from the hand regrowth would ever level off.

  I remembered my supplements and dug the bottles out of my bag, shaking a few pills into my palm. A quick glance at the dosages, and I slid the Calcium and Vitamin D across the table toward Tim. Jeff accepted them with a grateful nod.

  "So," he said finally, turning his water cup in his hands. "Can you tell me what happened? All of it?"

  I looked down at my empty bowl. I'd known this was coming. And if the situation were reversed, if I'd just lost a husband and someone else had been there, I'd want to know, too. Every detail.

  I started with the HOA drama, then the escape, and finally the fight at the clearing. I kept my tone steady and my words plain, but Tim began to cry somewhere in the middle of it, and I did my best to move through the rest of the story as quickly as I could.

  Jeff was quiet for a moment when I finished.

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  "You covered her," he said. It wasn't quite a question.

  "I couldn't give her a proper burial, not with everything happening, and with Liv the way she was." I shook my head. "I did what I could."

  He nodded slowly. "Can you tell me where she is?"

  "I left a map in one of the bags at the med tent. I can mark the spot for you."

  "Thank you." He was quiet again for a beat. "And for giving Liv your card. I know how much those are worth right now."

  "Anyone would have done the same."

  He looked at me. "You'd be surprised."

  "What about you?" I asked. "How'd you end up here?"

  Jeff leaned back slightly, as if deciding where to begin. Beside him, Tim had gone still, staring at what was left of his food.

  "I didn't get far. The grocery store a few blocks over turned out to be a breeding ground for giant spiders." He let out a short, humourless chuckle. "I went in looking for food. It was so dark inside. I've never realized that grocery stores have no windows. Anyway, my flashlight died on me the second I got inside. I was grabbing whatever I could reach off the nearest shelf when the first one showed up." He paused. "The spiders were smart about it, or they'd done it before. By the time I noticed, the creatures already blocked the exit."

  He told it methodically, sparing the worst details for Tim's sake. After killing two of the smaller spiders, the pop-up screen flashed across his vision at the worst possible moment. He'd heard about cards through Amanda's brother, and chose one at random just to make it disappear. The skill on the card helped him reach the store office near customer service, where he locked himself in and waited.

  "I sat there for a full day. There was water, but no food. There was a small window, but I couldn't fit through it. I'm not sure what I thought was going to change." He shook his head. "The next morning, I figured out nobody was coming. And if I stayed much longer, I'd be too weak to fight my way out."

  "I got past a few of the smaller ones on the way out, but then—" he paused. "There was one the size of a German Shepherd waiting by the door. It got me before I could react. The bite was bad. After that, I don't remember much clearly. It was raining a lot, and I think I was walking. Toward the hospital, maybe, or back home. I'm not sure. At some point, a group of people showed up."

  "They said if I handed over my cards, they'd help me." He shrugged. "So I did. I don't remember much of the rest. But they got me here." He glanced briefly at Tim before continuing, lowering his voice slightly. "Iris said the leg was fully necrotized by the time she looked at it. She had to amputate."

  Tim didn't look up.

  "What assholes," I said. "The people who'd found you, I mean. Who ransoms people on the verge of dying?"

  "Keeping my life was worth more than the cards." He said it simply, without bitterness.

  It struck me, not for the first time, how few people seemed to grasp what the cards actually were. Not currency. Not leverage. A lifeline. I looked around the camp and realized I hadn't seen a single person use anything resembling magic since we'd left the tent.

  That's when I noticed Andy making his way toward Maria's table with a group of two men and a woman, all of them laughing like old friends. I looked away before he could spot me.

  "Anyway, that's the whole of it," Jeff said. "I was planning to head home once I recovered. But, well— "He pulled up his pant leg. The limb was skeletal, skin pulled tight over bone with almost nothing underneath. Rebuilding that kind of muscle mass would take years. I took out the remaining vitamin bottles and slid them across the table toward Jeff.

  "Here, keep these. You'll need it. What does Iris say? If you're healed, why are you still in the tent?"

  "She says her aura helps me recover faster: weeks instead of months." He paused. "She also keeps giving me this water that tastes absolutely terrible."

  "Like seaweed and nuts?"

  "She gave it to you, too?"

  "Welcome to the club." I waved my freshly grown arm in front of him. Whether the arm had taken less material to regenerate, or Iris had given me more of whatever that substance was, I couldn't tell. That just made me realize how good I got it with only a few pounds off my frame.

  "What are your plans after?" he asked. "You mentioned marking Amanda's—" he stopped, swallowed, then continued. "Her location on the map. Are you leaving after? You're not going to stay at the camp?"

  "I don't think it's wise. I want to keep heading inland. Find a farm somewhere, maybe Idaho." I shrugged. "I like potatoes."

  He laughed: a real one, brief but genuine. "Who doesn't. I don't know if you knew, but we were already planning to head toward my family's farm before all this. You'd be welcome to come. I am hoping to convince a few others from the camp. Without any machinery, farming is going to be brutal work. More hands would help."

  Across the camp, Andy's group had finished loading up their plates and were scanning for a table. We were tucked far enough away, but the last thing he'd said to me was that he never wanted to see me again. He already had friends in the camp. I had just arrived and had nothing close to goodwill built up yet. A public confrontation was the last thing I needed.

  "I'll think about it," I told Jeff. "I need to find the bathroom and clean up a little." I gestured vaguely at my face.

  "Right, of course. There's a bathroom with showers closer to the river. They keep tanks filled on rotation, so you might even get a proper shower. Cold, but—"

  "That's fine. Thanks." I gathered my things off the table and stuffed them into my bag. "I'll find you in the med tent," I said, sliding off the bench and turning away carefully, making sure to keep my face angled from Andy's direction as I went.

  The path to the bathrooms was paved with rubble, and the heavy rain from the day before hadn't done it any favours. When I reached the building, there was a line, and a woman in an orange jacket explained the situation flatly: demand outpaced capacity, and it was self-serve. Anyone who wanted to shower needed to haul at least three five-gallon buckets up from the river first. The path down to the shore was steep and churned to mud. I refused to leave my backpack unattended, so I made the trips with it strapped to my back. By the time I was finally allowed inside, I was soaked through with sweat.

  They had soap shavings available at the door, but I used my own small bar instead. I didn't trust unknown substances on my skin right now.

  The time limit was fifteen minutes, and I used every second of it, scrubbing through layers of grime and caked blood under water cold enough to make my hands go numb. I couldn't quite tell if I'd rinsed all the soap off, but I was significantly cleaner than when I'd walked in.

  Pulling leggings onto wet feet was its own ordeal. They were the only pants I had left: my pants had been ruined, blood-soaked and torn. At least my hoodie was long enough to cover my ass and helped shield my wet hair from the evening wind coming off the river.

  I caught my reflection in the mirror under the thin light filtering through the small window near the ceiling. It was strange what a single week could do to a person. Last Friday, I had been filming a workout video for social media: full makeup, hair in an elaborate braid, skin carefully maintained. Now I was calculating whether I had enough moisturizer left to bother with my neck, or whether I should save it strictly for my face until I could find more.

  I pulled my hair up and noticed a few bold spots and the roots coming in. I had always kept them touched up. It didn't matter now: there was no internet, no one to accidentally recognize me, no former self to protect. The dark blonde growing in beneath the chestnut made it look almost like I was going bald. And with all the hairfall, I might as well. I turned away from the mirror. There was no fixing any of this. Scarred face, hair, and whatever else this new world decides to take from me next.