Authors: Lori Whitwam
Ty unlocked the door, and in minutes we were snug in the bed, his arms around me as we drifted off to sleep.
The next morning we all trekked into the forest and buried Cody in a lovely little glen by a stream. It seemed like a pointless thing to do, maybe, but it made us feel a bit better. Marcus gave a short but heartfelt speech about Cody and all he’d meant to the team, and how his final act had been to help us foil Gil’s plans and save us from being intercepted by marauders. I glanced across at Melissa, sick at the thought of what being a captive again would do to her. To us.
We tossed Gil’s body in the dumpster behind the motel. It was more than he deserved.
When Ty and I had woken that morning, we lay in bed a while, just talking. It was strange, and not something I’d ever experienced. My few encounters in college had been in dorm rooms, where the visitor had to be up and gone well before morning. And though all Ty and I had done was sleep, there we were, still together in the morning.
Though I thought it might feel awkward, I was surprisingly comfortable in Ty’s arms, our heads on adjacent pillows. I wondered if it would have been like this with Quinn, then gently put that thought to rest. That was then, this was now, and though I’d always wonder a bit and miss Quinn, he’d told me to live…and now I might just be ready to try.
I felt strangely safe with Ty. For the first time in too long, I trusted someone. I even told Ty a bit more about my captivity and the baggage I was hauling around, and why I might have issues from time to time. He said he understood, and it was fine. He’d wait.
I believed him.
As we loaded up for the last leg of the road trip from hell, people started asking Marcus to finally reveal where we were going.
“Hey, hey,” he said, grinning, “we waited this long, so how about we let it be a surprise?”
There were some grumbles, but Marcus looked happy, so in the end we let him have his way.
An air of excited anticipation reigned in the van as we departed. It sure was a far cry from the tension of the previous day, followed by the near-miss at the mansion, and the outright horror of last night. Still, I kept an eye on the road.
After a while, I began to relax. I saw zombies, of course, but nowhere near as many as the last two days, and they weren’t acting as strangely. That could change at any minute, but for now I chose to be hopeful.
Melissa and Faith were sitting behind Patrick again, giggling and making guesses about our destination.
Beside me, Ty squeezed my hand, and I thought again about our almost-kiss the day before. And I thought about…more. I’d get there, eventually, I knew, and I wouldn’t wait too long, because as Rebecca had pointed out, the world was a very uncertain place now.
About three hours later, we turned onto a side road and started down an incline. I saw a sign and caught my breath. I pictured what I knew of the place as speculation broke out around me, and thought Marcus might just be taking us home.
We pulled into a lot at a boat launch, and a massive reservoir lake spread out before us. But…where exactly were we going? The place was enormous, the far shore hazy in the distance, and stretching out of sight on either side. We clambered from the van and gathered with the rest of the excited team and waited for Marcus.
He walked around the back of his SUV and approached the group, looking smug. “Well, folks, this is it.”
“Yeah, it sure is,” Patrick said, “but where in all this are we going?” Other curious murmurs arose asking the same thing.
Marcus gestured far offshore and slightly to our right. “There,” he said. “See that island?”
An island? Really?
He looked at us one by one, enjoying the ‘big reveal.’ “On that island is what was known as the Kent-See Lodge.”
Davey gasped and said, “I read about that place. It was a fishing resort, real high-end. Opened up maybe five or six years ago.”
“You got it, Davey,” Marcus said. “Our scouts found it late last summer, abandoned. The season hadn’t quite started yet when the outbreak hit. Looked like a few people tried to make a go of it early on, but it was empty when we found it.”
Monte stepped in with more of the story. “Me and Phil, and a couple of council members, have been coming down here every so often ever since, getting the basics set up and bringing some supplies. Between that and what we’re bringing, we should be set for a while.”
Marcus slapped him on the shoulder. “I ain’t been on the island yet myself, but I hear they did a fine job. But remember what I said back in training. We’re hard as hell to get to, but if people are around, they’ll figure out we’re there. Smoke, noise, whatever, somebody will know. So we come and go as little as possible, try to keep our activities, numbers, and assets as down-low as we can. Such shore excursions for hunting or supply runs will be made as discretely as possible. At night, in fog, whatever we can to conceal what we’re doing.”
“How do we get out there?” Melissa asked. Good question.
Monte waved down the bank from the boat launch. “Down that way, we got two big-ass pontoon boats hidden. And we have some inflatable rafts in the cargo truck. It’ll take a few trips, especially with the horses and goats, but we can have everybody across before long.”
“What about the trucks?” Ty asked.
Marcus took the question. “We got places nearby, spread out, to hide the livestock truck and vans. I guess one of the SUVs, too. We don’t need ’em all right now, but we’ll keep an eye on everything, check them to keep them running. The escorts will take back the cargo truck, and Javier is gonna drive back one of the SUVs.”
Javier wasn’t staying?
“Javier’s not staying?” Rebecca asked, her voice showing more emotion than I’d have expected. Hell, I wouldn’t have expected her to even notice. Could she and Javier…? No. No, really? Maybe she’d decided to take her own advice.
“He’ll go back,” Marcus said, “and submit a detailed written report. We couldn’t relate all the details on the radio.” Knowing there were marauders out there hoping to guess our location—though they were currently on a wild goose chase—I totally understood that point. “He’ll come back in a couple weeks with more supplies and any updated information. He and Davey be making these runs every month or so.”
“And while I’m out, I can probably get some huntin’ in,” Davey said happily.
“But first,” Marcus said, “we need to clear the island, make sure no dead found their way there since we were here last, floating on debris or something.”
A Zodiac was unloaded from the truck and inflated, and Marcus, Ty, Theo, Rebecca, Anton, and I climbed aboard. It seemed as if we glided just above the surface of the beautiful, still lake as the wooded island grew steadily larger before us.
As we neared, Marcus swung to the side and into a sheltered inlet. “We have a couple of folding docks in the bushes over there. Don’t want to make it obvious how to get on and off here.”
“We could rig up some underwater obstacles for more obvious approaches,” Anton observed.
“John’s already working up some plans,” Marcus replied. “He didn’t know where we were going exactly, but he was asked to think up some submersible barriers, things like that.”
Anton nodded in approval as we pulled up to the bank and climbed out of the boat.
We walked up a narrow trail through a thick stand of trees, until it opened up on a large clearing which was probably once beautifully landscaped, but now had a rustic feel. My jaw dropped as I took in a sizeable central lodge, with several cabins beyond. As we moved across the clearing, I saw pens already built for the animals, a chicken coop, and some outbuildings. Inside, Marcus told us, were equipment and supplies, and the larger metal building held the stockpile of supplies meant to be held in reserve for the rest of our community, should an evacuation eventually become a reality.
We covered the grounds and the interior of the buildings, not finding a single dead surprise. We were off to a great start.
Before we left to start bringing the team, the animals, and our supplies over, Ty drew me aside and into a hug. “So, what do you think?”
I hardly knew what to say. “Um…it’s amazing.”
He gave me a squeeze. “It sure is.” He leaned back and looked into my eyes. “I never thought I’d find a place like this again. I can do a lot here. I see where my shop needs to go, I even see where we could build a kiln.”
I was still struggling to take it all in. “It even has a library,” I said, pulling back and poking Ty in the ribs. “It has everything we could possibly need.”
Ty grabbed my hand and leaned down, and my heart nearly seized as I read the intentions in his eyes. I felt like he saw past the surface, all the way down to the real me, the person I’d become through circumstance, but who had maybe been there all along. Part of me was terrified, but then I remembered I wasn’t the weak girl who hid from everything that scared her. And I wasn’t afraid of Ty; if anything, I was frightened by the intensity of my own response to him.
When his lips met mine, I brought my arms up around his neck and let myself relax into the heat of his kiss. He was assertive yet gentle, the bristle of his short beard rasping at my chin and around my mouth. It felt so wonderful to experience this attraction, this connection to someone after so long. It felt even better to trust someone. It made me feel…alive.
After a moment, Ty broke the kiss to whisper in my ear, “This island has everything I need…now.”
My stomach fluttered at his tender words, but the moment was shattered a second later when Rebecca shouted, “Hey, you two, break it up. Let’s move it!”
I chuckled and turned to Ty, taking his hand. We started walking, and I said, “Yeah, come on, Ty. Let’s go bring our family home.”
THE END
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I work with a great team of people at Limitless Publishing, especially Jennifer O’Neill, who took a chance on the zombie genre and published the first book in this series,
The Dead Survive
. Thank you for your trust and encouragement.
In my role as Managing Editor for Limitless, I work with some brilliant, dedicated editors. They teach me something every day about the beauty of well-structured prose. Thank you, Rosa Sophia, Toni Rakestraw, Tiffany Cole, Rachel Whitwam, JoSelle Vanderhooft, and my editor for this series, Darryl Cook.
Ashley Byland of Redbird Designs is an amazingly talented graphic artist, and I’m so fortunate to have her designing the covers for this series. Fabulous work, Ashley!
Thank you to Joshua Guess, whose
Living With the Dead
series spawned The Dead Survive. He dragged me, shambling and groaning, into the zombie apocalypse world, and I’m so glad he did.
When
The Walking Dead
is airing, I host a live chat on a private Facebook group, Lori’s Dead Talk, with friends who share my love for all things zombie. Thanks especially to Melissa Jensen and Lisa Shackleford for supporting me in this craziness.
Thank you to Tiffany Elmer for suggesting the perfect name for a character I had to kill. The character wasn’t an arrogant jerk, but I figured if I had to do him in, he should have the name of one.
Big thanks to my beta readers, Heather Whitehead, Theresa McClinton, and Olivia Snow. Having intelligent, thoughtful people read a story before I commit to editing helps find those places that made sense in my head, but won’t make sense to anybody else.
And thank you to all my wonderful editing clients. Working with you makes me a better writer, as each of you sets the bar for excellence higher and higher with each book.
As always, thank you to my readers. Your comments and support mean the world to me, and give me the motivation to keep writing.
About the Author
Lori spent her early years reading books in a tree in northern West Virginia. The 1980s and 90s found her and her husband moving around the Midwest, mainly because it was easier to move than clean the apartment. After seventeen frigid years in Minnesota, she fled to coastal North Carolina in 2013. She will never leave, and if you try to make her, she will hurt you.
She has worked in public libraries, written advertising copy for wastewater treatment equipment, and managed a holistic veterinary clinic. Her current day job, conducted from her World Headquarters and Petting Zoo (her couch) is as a full-time editor for indie authors and small publishing houses.
Her dogs are a big part of her life, and she has served or held offices in Golden Retriever and Great Pyrenees rescues, a humane society, a county kennel club, and her own chapter of Therapy Dogs International.
She has been a columnist and feature writer for auto racing and pet publications, and won the Dog Writers Association of America’s Maxwell Award for a series of humor essays. In addition to zombie apocalypse stories, she has released a contemporary romance novel,
Make or Break
.
Parents of a grown son, Lori and her husband were high school sweethearts, and he manages to love her in spite of herself. Some of his duties include making sure she always has fresh coffee and safe tires, and convincing the state police to spring her from house arrest in her hotel room in time for a very important concert. That last one only happened once—so far—but she still really, really appreciates it.