Survivors (21 page)

Directly below the watchmen, other survivors were beginning to stir. Thomas was the first to emerge from the rec room, where he bunked on the couch. Though he was of average height, his perfect posture and confident, purposeful way of moving made him seem inches taller. A perpetual scowl was etched on his face. He was dressed in a neatly ironed pair of jeans and a tucked-in, button-up shirt. He wore a pair of scuffed, well-used combat boots, and as he strode down the hall toward the Fac’s makeshift kitchen they clomped and clicked and echoed off the concrete walls. No one ever dared tell him to his face, but Command Sergeant Major Thomas and his boots were the group’s collective alarm clock.

If they had told him, however, they might have learned that Thomas was well aware of what he was doing. A smug smile threatened to ease the scowl as he marched along. The sound of muffled groans reached his ears. The veteran could imagine the sleepy survivors pulling pillows over their heads and retreating farther under their blankets. As for the sergeant major, Thomas just wasn’t the type that enjoyed lounging in the sack. Sleep was a chore to be taken care of once a day. Then it was back to business.

Even so, there were some luxuries Thomas allowed himself to indulge in. One of the few was his morning cup of coffee. He had gotten into the habit of brewing a pot first thing every day, extra strong. The Fac had a break room just past the lobby, and the group had turned it into a functional, if Spartan, kitchen. A line of cabinets ran along the far wall. The only appliance had been a microwave oven, but it had been deemed a waste of electricity. The only electric appliances the survivors used now were a double-burner hot plate and a coffeepot. Jack and Mitsui had just finished installing a cast-iron woodstove against the outer wall, but no one in the group had yet mastered the art of cooking on it. Three round folding tables filled the center of the room, surrounded by metal chairs. A chalkboard on rollers was pushed up against the nearest wall and was covered with a hand-drawn map of the Fac and the surrounding blocks, with every building and alleyway marked. An X was drawn through each building that had been searched and subsequently secured. Only a few, out near the edges of the board, farthest from the Fac, stood unmarked.

When Thomas entered the room, the first thing he noticed was an already-f coffee pot on the counter. The second was a woman slumped over the nearest table, her head resting on folded arms. A Styrofoam cup of the brew sat unfinished next to her. She did not stir as Thomas crossed the room to the counter to check the coffee. He sniffed at it, grimaced, and upended the pot into the sink. The coffee was cold and stale.

There was no fresh coffee left to be had in Omaha, but Thomas had no quarrel with the instant stuff. In fact, he preferred it. They didn’t pack gourmet blends in MREs, after all. Thomas reached into the cabinet above him and grabbed a fresh packet. He tore open the foil wrapper, poured in the grounds, and turned on the pot. The hard part done, he leaned back against the countertop to wait. In the meantime, he studied the room’s other occupant.

The woman at the table still hadn’t moved. If her back hadn’t been slowly rising and falling with each breath, Thomas might have mistaken her for a corpse. He considered waking her, but decided against it. She was probably exhausted. Anna Demilio spent most of every day, not to mention many of her nights, working in the laboratories in the Fac’s sublevel. She deserved her rest.

Thomas’s ears pricked up as he heard a soft padding in the hall. A moment later, a disheveled, bleary-eyed young Japanese woman appeared in the doorway. She wore plain white pajamas and a ridiculous pair of pink bunny slippers, complete with little yellow whiskers and button eyes. She stretched her arms above her head and sighed.

“Good morning!” Juni said, and only then noticed the sleeping doctor. She clapped a hand over her mouth. Dr. Demilio shifted and murmured in her sleep, but didn’t awaken. The girl slowly and silently wound her way across the kitchen to Thomas. In a much lower voice, she repeated: “Good morning!”

“I heard you the first time,” said Thomas. He didn’t bother whispering.

Thomas’s brusque manner was only off-putting to strangers. Junko Koji, cooped up in the same building with the man for months, wasn’t daunted in the least. “Do you know if we’re still going out today?” she asked in the same low voice.

Thomas shrugged.

“Did Frank tell you if he’s going to let me go this time?” Juni pressed.

Thomas shrugged again and glanced at the coffeepot. Only half-f.
Or half-empty,
he thought,
depending on how your philosophy bends itself
.

“I’d really like to go,” said Juni.

Thomas relented. “General Sherman doesn’t like sending untrained people into dangerous situations when he has other, better options,” Thomas said.

“I survived for months out there!” protested Juni. “I’m as tough as any of you.”

“You wear pink bunny slippers,” deadpanned Thomas, glancing at the girl’s footwear.

“That has nothing to do with it!” Juni said, her voice rising, forgetting about Anna as she stamped her foot on the ground in protest.

A groan diverted their attention to Anna. She had awoken during the brief conversation, and was rubbing the back of her neck, head still on the tabletop. “Oh, God, I did it again,” she lamented. “My neck feels like concrete.”

“Sleeping on a table will do that,” said Thomas. Behind him, the coffeepot burbled and clicked, cycle complete. He turned to fetch a cup from an overhead cabinet. “You have a bed. Sack out like the rest of us. You push too hard, you start getting sloppy. We need you sharp.”

As Thomas set about pouring himself a cup, Juni walked over to Anna and plopped down in the chair beside her. She rested her elbows on the table and her head in her hands, smiling at the Doctor. “He’s no fun. Another late night?”

Anna repeated her groan. “I came up at five to get something to drink, but I must have fallen asleep after I sat down. What time is it now?”

Juni glanced at a clock on the wall. “Seven-fifteen.”

Doctor Demilio gave an exaggerated shrug. “Two hours of sleep sounds about right. Guess I’d better get back downstairs.” She picked up the cup sitting next to her, took a swig, and quickly spat it back with a sound of disgust. “Ugh. Thomas, I’m going to steal some of your coffee, if you don’t mind. Mine’s gone stale.”

Thomas didn’t reply. He was staring out the kitchen’s only window, feet set shoulder width apart, one hand tucked behind his back while the other swirled around the steaming contents of his mug.

More sounds from the hall—a slamming door, rattling drawers, and muffled conversations—meant that other survivors were up and about. Today was another big day for the group. Dwindling supplies in their pantry meant yet another supply run was in order. Sherman had already told everyone to prepare for it. Every foray took them deeper into the city, and they’d been coming more often. The Fac now stood in the center of a four-block radius that had been picked clean of nonperishable food items and infected. The worst part, in Thomas’s mind, was the frequency of the trips. If they had a truck to load up, it wouldn’t have been so bad, but loading up with food one backpack at a time was hardly enough to feed fifteen mouths for very long.

But the same nagging worry tugged at the back of everyone’s mind: that sooner or later, they’d kick in the wrong door and stir up a hornet’s nest.

On scavenging days, everyone was on high alert, even the ones who stayed behind to hold the fort.

Anna Demilio poured herself a cup from the fresh pot and spooned in a heap of sugar, paused a moment, and added a second spoonful.

“You’re just asking for a crash,” grumbled Thomas, looking sideways at Anna.

“Preaching to the choir, Thomas,” was Anna’s riposte. She blew on the coffee to cool it as she took her leave, patting Juni on the shoulder as she passed. “Good luck today.”

“Oh, I’m just guarding the kitchen again,” pouted Juni, frowning at Thomas’s back. “Apparently people with pink bunny slippers can’t shoot straight.”

“Either way, you know where I’ll be,” Anna tossed over her shoulder. She headed for the rear of the building, to the stairwell that would take her to the basement. In a lower voice, she murmured to herself, “Back down in the dungeon with a laconic Austrian, a curious medic, and about fifty million bugs that want to kill me. I should have been a pediatrician.”

“A pedia-
whatthefuck
?” came a sudden outburst from the room to Anna’s left.

Without slowing, Anna shot back: “A
pediatrician,
Brewster. Greek. For a kid doctor. You know. The kind you’d go see if
you
got sick.”

A face framed by a shock of tangled brown hair poked out from the side room, looking indignant. “Yeah? Well, you’re . . . you’ve got
poor fashion sense
!”

Thomas caught laughter from across the hall as another pair of survivors left their respective rooms. He turned to see a man wearing a dirt-stained pair of coveralls shake his head. “First round of the day to Dr. Anna Demilio. She shoots, she scores!” he joked in a passable impression of a sports announcer. The other, a short, paper-thin Asian man, chuckled at the disappointed look on Brewster’s face.

“What do you want from me?” demanded Brewster as the pair passed by. He threw his arms wide. “I just woke up. I’m not on my game, yet! Hey!” Brewster struggled after them, stumbling and trying to pull on his boots as he went. “Come on, guys! Jack? Mitsui? Wait up! Give me a chance, here! What if I said something like, uh, she needed to go to a proctologist because she’s—”

“Too late,” interrupted Jack. When he noticed the soldier was following them, he added: “Mitsui and I are going to the roof to take over for Krueger and Denton. You should head to the kitchen. Frank said he wanted to get started early today.”

Brewster grumbled, but assented. By the time he had settled into one of the kitchen’s folding metal chairs and finished double-knotting his bootlaces, everyone had assembled. Several conversations kept the room humming.

At the table farthest from the door sat Mbutu Ngasy. Across from him sat Gregory Mason, late of the U.S. National Security Agency, or “No Such Agency,” as it was often jokingly referred to by the other branches. Every now and then, Mason would wince and unconsciously put a hand to his chest. He was still recovering from a serious wound received when the group had seized the Fac from its former hostile owners. A pistol round had punctured his lung and shattered a rib, and it was only through intense effort on the part of Anna Demilio, and continual observation by Rebecca Hall, that he had lived.

A virologist was no substitute for a trauma surgeon,
Thomas thought. Anna had given Mason strict orders to take things slowly. She was unwilling to put her patchwork repairs through any stress tests.

Mason and the Kenyan were talking security, with Mbutu describing how the Mombasa airport had run things, and Mason pointing out where they could have made improvements.

Krueger and Denton wandered in a few minutes after Brewster, helped themselves to the last of the coffee, and leaned back in their chairs, looking drowsy. Thomas couldn’t blame them. They had been up all night, and they would have to stay up a while longer, at least until the foraging party returned. It was safest to have every rifle on the battlements in case things went south. In a city the size of Omaha, trouble was always just around the corner. All it would take to spark an engagement would be a single mistake—opening a strange door too hastily, or even speaking out at the wrong time in the wrong place could bring dozens of infected down on the survivors.

Brewster sat with Junko to his right and Trevor Westscott to his left. The pair were engrossed in an animated discussion about the etymology of names. Juni was a prodigy with languages. She spoke several fluently, and enjoyed learning new words and new phrases. She actively collected colloquialisms in each of the languages she spoke, worked hard to master accents, and made a hobby out of understanding names. It had taken Brewster three weeks to figure out she wasn’t American. No one would let him forget it, either. She had been using a student visa when Morningstar struck, stranding her in the United States.

“What about Mason?” asked Brewster, pointing over at the NSA agent. “Where’s his name come from?”

“Jeez Louise, Brewster,” sighed Juni, using one of the colloquialisms of which she was so fond. “That’s the least interesting one in the room. Mason comes from mason—you know, a stonemason. An ancestor of his was one, probably. Just like Smith, or Baker. Those are common names for you guys, right? No big mystery.”

“So what was their last name before they were a smith or a baker?”

“Well, a lot of the time Europeans just used their first name plus where you were from, if it wasn’t your profession—but only if you were somewhere else,” Juni said.

Trev and Brewster glanced at one another in confusion.

“You’re following me, right?” Juni asked. Both men shook their heads. Juni looked exasperated. “Okay. Take Leonardo da Vinci. What’s his last name?”

Trev and Brewster answered as one: “da Vinci.”

“No! He had no last name. He was a bastard,” Juni exclaimed, looking positively scandalized. “How can you two not know this stuff?”

“Well, uh, I volunteered for the infantry. I don’t know what Trev’s excuse is,” Brewster said with a grin.

“Go on,” prompted Trev, ignoring the soldier.

“He was a bastard, so he couldn’t take his father’s name. So he was called ‘da Vinci,’ which means, ‘from Vinci.’ So his name is actually ‘Leonardo, from Vinci,’” Juni finished. She sat back in her chair and crossed her arms, an impish grin on her face.

“I wonder what mine means,” mused Brewster.

“I don’t even know why I try,” said Juni, throwing her arms up in the air. “I just explained it.”

“Someone in your family was a brewer, Ewan,” said Trev.

“Oh,” Brewster murmured. After a moment, he grinned. “Well, that figures, doesn’t it?”

The staccato click of boot heels coming together made everyone look up. Thomas, still standing near the window, had snapped crisply to attention, eyes front.