I woke up the next morning hot and sweaty so I went to take a cold shower to cool off. I finished a short while later, but as I was walking out, Isis ran out of the women's bathroom right into me, with nothing but a towel on. "Did you use all the hot water?" she asked accusingly. "There isn't any since the power's out, remember," I replied while trying to overt my eyes from the site of Isis sitting on top of me. It took her a moment to recall what happened last night and another to feel a poking sensation beneath her. She finally realized that she was straddling me in the nude while I was only in shorts, upon which she gave a squeak before jumping up and grabbing her towel as she ran back into the bathroom. I walked back to take another cold shower to calm myself down. Throughout breakfast Isis did whatever she could to avoid my gaze, we didn't have to worry about using electricity to cook since the outdoors section had portable stoves. Which is a blessing, considering the only thing keeping me sane was the taste of fresh coffee.
After we finished Frank got to work attaching the generator to the main power box while the rest of us went to see what else we find to add power. We were able to find a few solar panels in the back which they took to the roof to setup. I found about a dozen windmills and got down to the task of attaching alternators to them. They wouldn't produce as much power as the generator and they weren't as efficient as the solar panels, but something was better than nothing. The other's had finished setting everything up by lunch time while I was on the fourth. "Where did you learn to do this?" Isis asked looking at the one's I had finished. "That's classified," I said. "What, so you'll have to kill me if you tell me," she replied. I nodded while smiling up to her before saying "And that would be a shame, believe me." That caused her to blush and looked away for a moment before she turned back, leaning in to kiss me. We were a second apart from kissing when Lilly pounded around the corner being chased by Zack, making her jump back quickly. After they had gone she gave me a wink before walking away. "By the way lunch is ready," she said leaning back with a smile before turning the corner. When she was gone I shook my head at her antics before turning my attention back to the task at hand. I finished the fourth before heading to eat.
"I hear your making windmills, can they replace the generator?" asked Allison. "Only if we get a good wind blowing," I replied, "otherwise their pretty useless. The upside to them though is that they'll work at night and during a storm." I looked to frank before asking, "Do you think we can setup a second generator for the hot water heater since it won't be on all the time?" He looked in thought a moment before saying, "Once we connect the solar panels and your windmills it should produce enough power without draining extra fuel if we did." "We're going thru the dairy and juice at a good pace, but we should look into smoking some of the meat or we will spend all of the fuel keeping the refrigerators going," I said. This brought nods from the people at the table, they were probably getting ready to resign themselves to a life without hot water. It didn't matter to me since I was already taking more cold showers then hot ones lately, but I knew it would be a morale booster if they had such a luxury. I smiled before saying a little louder than necessary, "So we'll have to stop using the TV's, then." This brought a round of groaning and whining from the kid's while the older people just shook their heads with sheepish looks on their faces.
After we were done eating I got up to finish the rest of the windmills while Frank splice the finished one's with the solar panels before being connected to the power box. Since the TV's didn't work the kids gathered around me while I worked like I was putting on a showcase or something. Most eventually wandered off, but Lilly remained, completely enthralled in watching me work so I showed her how to do it herself. We were so into talking about how everything worked, what they were for and what they did, that I didn't notice the adult's start to gather and watch me as well. I set Lilly up to do one herself when Frank asked, "Wouldn't wiring it that way cause a feedback on the buffer?" I took me a moment to get over my surprise before I could register his question. "That's the point, instead sending trickles of power down, doing it this way would act like a pressure release valve only sending power when enough had built up to be of use," I replied, "this will also prevent a sudden surge of power from the weather from tripping the breaker."
Frank nodded his head in agreement with Lilly while the other's continued to stare at me with puzzled looks on their faces. I got up and went for a walk leaving Lilly to finish the last one while going over what I had taught her with the others. "I thought you couldn't tell people how to do that?" Isis asked suddenly behind me as I rounded a corner. "What I said was that I couldn't tell you where I learned it from, I never said I couldn't teach you how to do it," I replied as I turned around to face her. She smiled at me before pushing me against the wall wrapping me up in a deep kiss, our tongues wrapping around each other's, trying to devour the other. After a while we broke it off for a breath, that's when I noticed Julia standing there staring at us with the 2 year old boy in her arms. As the glared at each other, Isis with a pleased look and Julia with a look as if she was trying to decide who to slap first. I took this moment to slip from Isis's arms to play with the little one. When it looked like neither of them were going to do anything I knew I had to break the tension so I asked, "Have you named him yet? We can't go around calling him, hey you."
My reward were blank looks from both of them, before they turned to look at the laughing boy in my arms. "I hadn't thought about it," Isis said looking ashamed. "Why don't you name him? You two practically look alike, you could even adopt him," said Julia with a warm look in her eyes. "I don't know about the whole adoption thing," I replied shaking my head, "I wanted kids before but with the way the world is now I'm not sure. But as for naming him, how does chubby sound." "You can't call him that, he'll be scarred for life," Isis said with a look of shock on her face. I took a moment to seriously think of a name, upon which I said, "I here by name you Titus." "Why Titus?" asked Julia. "No reason, just felt right. If you want to name him something else, go ahead," I replied as I shrugged my shoulders. They both shook their heads in way of accepting the kid's new name. Then we went our own direction's, I was grateful to get out of that situation with nothing more than a dirty look.
It seemed to get dark earlier today, I guess since we only had few lights, so we decided to setup the rest of the windmills tomorrow. As I settled into my usual seat Isis came over and setup a high chair next to me before putting Titus into it and telling me to keep an eye on him while she got dinner ready with a smile on her face before walking off. Needless to say this brought on a new round of looks from the others, to which I replied with a sigh of exhaustion on my part before proceeding to play with Titus. Eventually Julia joined me in keeping Titus entertained with a same smile on her face, I didn't have to turn around since I could feel the stares double. After Isis finished serving the others she sat down next to Titus to feed him. Chloe and Lilly, feeling left out, nudged their way onto our table where Lilly sat on Julia's lap to eat while Chloe sat on mine. My embarrassment gauge already overloaded, broke, upon which I no longer even noticed that there were others at the table. At some point I found my way to my bed and fell asleep. I woke up the next morning feeling exhausted and sweaty, so I took a shower to cool myself down before heading out for breakfast. I was the only one there so I poured myself a cup of coffee and fingered through the DVD's. After a while the other's showed up carrying another table, Frank looked at me with a smirk before saying, "For the happy family." Allison proceeded to smack him in the back of the head even though she herself was laughing. I made to put down my cup, but the last thing I saw was the floor coming up to greet me before I blacked out.
I opened my eyes to look at an odd ceiling, it was odd because it was unusually high. I tried to sit up but my body hurt too much to move. Looking to my right I noticed an IV drip connected to my arm. Went to move my left hand to take it out but felt it being held down, I look to see the first familiar site since opened my eyes. Isis was sitting next to me holding my hand with her head rested on my lap. I went to remove my hand causing her to wake up, I could tell she had been crying since her eyes were red and puffy. When she was fully awoke a smile came to her face, but it never lost its sadness. I moved to sit up, but she held me down. "Rest, you've been out for a few days, and your fever only broke last night," she said before tucking me back in. "What happened? The last thing I remember was getting ready to eat breakfast," I asked her. "You had a high fever, I don't know for how long, and your body just shut down I guess," she replied, "let me get you some water and something to eat, just stay in bed." With that she left but came back a few minutes later with a bottle of water and a bowl of chicken soup. I was too tired to move so she sat next to me as she fed me. When I finished I asked her to bring me up to speed about what has happened, but she shook her head before saying, "Later, when you are feeling better." So I let the matter go, "Their adult's, they will be able to make do until I'm ship shape," I thought to myself.
By the following day I was bored out of my mind, I could move now but Isis demanded that I stay in bed. "I'm surprised no one else has come to see me," I said after finishing lunch. "What? Is my company not enough," she said before playfully slapping my arm. But she got serious for a moment while saying, "The other's felt it was for the best to separate you from the rest of the group in case you could pass it on." I nodded my head in reassurance before replying, "That was the right decision, if it was someone else laying here I would have done the same thing." Hoping this would give her some comfort, but she left with a solemn look on her face.
The next day she let me walk around, but told me not to do anything strenuous even though she stayed glued to my side looking at me like I might collapse at any moment. When the other's tried to approach to talk she sent them away with a look, the kids were even behaving but she would shoed them away. I sat at the dining table before saying with a laugh, "I'm not a cripple you know, you don't have to hover, I was just a little sick." But her face remained unchanged as she made me something to eat, and I couldn't shake the feeling that something was missing. The following day after dinner I had had enough, so I looked at the others with a serious face and said, "What's up with all the frowns? I was just a little sick, but I know that's not the reason. It doesn't look like we've been raided or had infestation, so fess up, why is everyone pouting. And another thing, where's Julia?" This brought a hush to an already silent table, after looking amongst themselves the women went to put the children to bed as Jim and frank showed me to the roof. "Want a beer?" Jim asked when we arrived. I nodded my head and took one from him while frank motioned for me to take a seat.
We took a few sips of beer before frank started, "The day you passed out the women were the first to jump into action with worry, while they were trying to decide where to move you to, Jim and I thought you might be contagious so we had you separated from the rest of us," he paused to take another sip, "Everyone else agreed with the idea knowing that that is what you would have done. Julia on the other hand became livid, but even she soon conceded to the plan. Things went well enough until we realized that we had no why to feed you the medicine we have here." Frank stopped to take another sip and to catch his breath before continuing, "So we decided to head to the local pharmacy to get medicine and to stock up on supplies. She was the first to volunteer, along with others, but it was decided that Julia, Jim and I would make the run the following day. Left on the bikes since they were quiet, it took us two hours to get there, but the pharmacy had already burned to the ground, so we made our way to the hospital which took us three more hours. When we did, the site we saw was like hell on earth, there were at least a hundred of infected on the property alone, and we had no way of knowing how many more where inside. Jim and I wanted to try for somewhere else, but Julia argued that with so many infected around nobody had looted it yet so it would have anything we would need"
My mind knew where he was going with this story, but I my mouth wouldn't move, all I could do was wait until he finished before I could come to a decision of what to do next. When I didn't say anything Frank continued his story, "We didn't want to attempt it, so we turned our bikes around and road in another direction, it was a few minutes before we realized she wasn't with us, so we headed back hoping to stop her. When we got back we didn't see her anywhere, so we waited until we saw her. After an hour the fourth floor window was broken, drawing the infected inside, and saw her lowering a bag from it. But by the time we reached the bag she was nowhere to be seen again, so we decided to wait for her until sunset. And when she didn't show we came back, that was almost three days ago." Frank and Jim had looks of both exhaustion and shame, but I was too caught up in my mind to pay them any mind. After I a while I stood up, finished my beer, and dusted myself before saying, "Well, I'm going to go after her. I need to see for myself what happened and find out whether she is dead or infected. Either way I'm giving her a proper burial." "And if she was eaten?" asked Jim. I looked at him with a blank expression before saying, "Then I'll put her down and bury her." And proceeded to head back inside to formulate a plan.
I was lying awake in bed thinking about what to do when Isis came in, but being that I was deep in thought I didn't hear what she said, and when I didn't reply she eventually left. "The best way in and fastest way of finding her would be through the window that she had tossed out the medicine from, but it was on the fourth floor, how do I get up there," I thought to myself before letting out a sigh. That's when I sat up in bed remembering that ninja's sometimes used grappling hooks to scale buildings.
So I got up and went through the store looking for what I needed, which wasn't much. The first thing I found was a hundred feet of nylon rope, it was light weight but strong, exactly what I would need to throw the hook. Unfortunately no matter how much I couldn't find a grappling hook, I was about to give up hope when while going through the back storage I came across a section that said "Special Orders". Going through it I found something else of use, it wasn't a grappling hook, but close enough. It was a gas powered harpoon for spear fishing sharks, so when it pierced into the skin hooks came out to grab hold. It wasn't what I was looking for, but it would work just as well. Afterwards I grabbed a portable medical kit just in case, some food and water, putting everything in my room so I could leave first thing in the morning.
When I woke up I went to take my usual morning shower and was surprised to find that we had hot water. "Obviously they kept busy while I was out," I thought to myself as I finished up. I sat at the table with everyone else when breakfast was ready and enjoyed my cup of Joe, because for me, nothing is better than having a cup of fresh brewed coffee first thing in the morning.
After finishing my breakfast and coffee I said, "I'm heading out to look for Julia." Nobody was surprised that I had come to this decision, it's probably why they waited to tell me. "Frank and I are coming with you, we're the ones who left her behind so it's only right that we go too," said Jim while looking at his wife.
I thought about letting them come, but I just shook my head. "No, you need to stay since we don't know when something or someone will try and take this place for themselves," I said. They thought about what I said for a moment realizing that if they did come with me it would leave the others virtually undefended. There were now more kids then adults and teenagers combined. The remaining adults and teenagers in the group even though they were getting practice shooting have yet to be in a life or death fight, so they might hesitate when the time came to pull the trigger whether it was an infected or another person. I left after grabbing the supplies I had set aside, I hopped on the bike and headed out. I knew where it was and how to get to it since it was the only hospital in town, but Jim had given me a map to show me from which direction they had approached it and from where the best vantage point to see the window was.
I took a direct path to the hospital before turning off and taking the road that Jim marked on the map and said rose to a hill that overlooked the area. I saw a few infected as I rode along but I just went around them before continuing on my way. After almost 2 hours of riding I reached the hill marked on the map I stopped and took out some binoculars I had brought with me. From what I could see there were about 3 dozen infected milling about outside the hospital, fewer then Jim noted, but they could have moved inside or wandered off. "If there were more back then, how the hell did she get inside," I thought to myself.
That's when I noticed the wall in front went and connected to the hospital underneath an overhang that wrapped around behind it. "Damn, she has bigger balls then most men I know," I said to myself while shaking my head. I was more confident about my physical prowess since this began, but I also knew that with my coordination I'd fall off the wall long before I reached the hospital into the hungry mouths beneath. My only option was to find a way to lure away the infected so I could scale up the side of the building like I originally planned. I wasn't confident enough that I could sneak past them far enough that I could use the harpoon so I looked around. The first thing I noticed was an ambulance down the hill that had been run off the road that I could use the sirens to lure the infected from the building.
Unfortunately it would do two things, the first was lure in more infected from the surrounding area which would make getting out of here harder. The second was that it might also draw infected inside of the hospital to the window in needed to climb through due to the ambulances location. That's when I noticed that there were still cars in the hospitals parking lot off to the side beneath the hill. The hill was on a short road, but steep incline that I didn't have to get too much closer and throw rocks at the cars. Hopefully one of their batteries still had a charge in it to sound the alarm, even if for a little while, since normally car alarms shut off after a few minutes. Deciding to try my luck with the cars I picked a spot on the hill and started throwing rocks at them. Every time I would hit one it would draw only the nearby infected to it. After I had hit the fifth car's windshield and the alarm didn't sound I thought that my luck had run out, that was until an infected that moved to the sound bumped up against the car next to it triggering its alarm.
It didn't take five minutes for most of the infected to be drawn to it so I started my way down the hill on foot. By the time I had reached the hospital the area was clear of them. I pulled out the harpoon and took aim through the window, squeezing the trigger I was surprised by the kick it had that it went high sinking into the outside wall above where I was aiming. I tugged on the rope a few times first to make sure it was secure before I started my climb.
I reached the window as the siren stopped ringing. "Great, now I can hear the infected, but they can also hear me," I thought to myself grimly. I slowly peaked over the ledge into the room, it was like any another hospital room, except for the door leading to the hall was hanging on a single hinge and the room looked like a hurricane passed through it. I climbed in as quietly as I could, glad that most of the glass had fallen outside. As soon as I was in I pulled out my machete from the pack and checked the hallway. The hallway was in the same state as the room with various beds and wheelchairs littering the hall. There were smears of bleed everywhere and the occasional dead body but it was hard to tell whether they were people that were killed or infected that were returned to the afterlife.
I went back into the room since it was the last place they saw Julia. I couldn't find anything strange in the room so I made my way to the bathroom, I pulled on the lever. I yanked the door open with the machete raised to strike out if anything jumped out. But the bathroom was empty, making my way inside I noticed there was some debris on the floor but the walls were fine. That's when I looked up and smiled. There was a hole in the ceiling tile to the bathroom just big enough for someone to get through.
"Clever girl," I thought to myself, "after throwing the medicine out the window she probably couldn't get out of the room so she came here and climbed out through the ceiling." So I sheathed the machete and climb up through the hole since it was the simplest way to tell where she went after this. My guess is that she came in through the ledge behind the hospital so that would most likely be where she would make her way back to and started in the general direction.
It was a simple path to follow, I couldn't crawl on the tile since they wouldn't support any weight, so I made my way on top of a row of pipes that are held up wires. I went along slowly for about 30 minutes, wondering if it would hold my weight when I came to a dead end. The catwalk continued on at a cross section, but the one that went to the back of the hospital was blocked by tubing going across it. There wasn't enough room for me, much less Julia to get through, not seeing any broken tile around where she would have made her way down, I took the other path. "She probably followed this one hoping that it would come to another intersection so she could double back," I thought to myself as I made a left.
After an hour my shirt was soaked through in sweat, I guess wearing a black leather biker jacket with black gloves wasn't such a good idea, sure it would protect me from being bitten, but the heat from wearing it and also climbing through a ceiling in a building without a/c, it gets hot. Eventually I came to a tile that was pulled up into the ceiling instead of having been broken, looking ahead I saw that the catwalk ended and the piping went through holes in the wall. Figuring this is probably where she went down I took a look at what was beneath. It turned out to be a broom closet with the door closed without any infected inside, so I made my way down using the shelves as a ladder. Once I was down I listened at the door to see if I could hear if any of the infected were nearby. Not hearing anything I pulled out the flashlight from my pack and looked around.
It looked like your average broom closet with nothing interesting in it, so I sat down to cool off for a minute and also to take a drink of water from what I brought. I was about to leave when I noticed something on the wall next to the door, it was a map of the emergency exits in the hospital. According to the map, just right down the hall would be a stairway letting out behind the hospital. "If she made it this far then that means she never made it out of the stairwell," I thought to myself. I shook those thoughts from my head since I needed to focus on continuing on. Taking out the machete again, I slowly opened the door and made my way down the hall. There were a few dead lying around that I had to side step as I walked to the door that lead to the stairwell, but before I reached the door an infected walked around the corner and came right to me.
It looked like a doctor who had just gotten out of surgery, except for the fact that he had no lips, I probably would've thought he was human. I know I didn't make any noise so my guess was that he smelled the sweat on me after being in the ceiling for so long. I raised the machete to kill him when I noticed more infected making their way down the hall, their numbers increasing by the second. Half dozen, dozen, two dozen, that's when I decided to just turn around and go down the stairs. So I rushed into the stairwell and started making my way down as fast as I could since the doors opened inward they would be on me in no time. I had to hop over the dead infected in the stairwell as I went but I made sure to give a double take to any females just in case, as I came to the second floor door it was starting to be pushed open by an infected. I wasn't about to slow down so I slammed into the door, throwing the infected back and shutting the door again. As I reached the ground floor I burst through the exit, shutting it behind me and then leaning against the door to catch my breath.
"Well, I didn't see her in the stairwell, so she must have made it out," I thought to myself while looking around, "but now is when it gets difficult, because from here she could have gone anywhere." After taking a few minutes to catch my breath I started to hear the infected coming down the stairs inside, so I decided the best thing to do was to head into the forest directly in front of me hoping she went in this direction. I started off jogging to get some distance from the hospital, it was at least ten minutes before I slowed to a brisk walk. "It was two o'clock so I have at least 4 hours before the sun starts to set," I thought to myself.