State of Decay✔️

Chapter 32: From the Ashes

The next two days passed slowly, painfully.

Everyone awoke the next day around noon. Outside, it was gray and rainy and unchanged from the previous night. One of the first real discoveries that was made, as they set about cleaning out and straightening up the truck stop, making it their home, was that the bathroom attached to the bedroom worked.

They learned that the truck stop had its own supply of water and its own filtration system. It wasn't perfect, it wouldn't last forever, but the tanks were buried in the ground beneath the truck stop and they were enormous and almost full. More importantly, the water was clean. They also didn't rely on electricity, but rather used natural gas to heat them. All they had to do was relight the pilot light. At that point, everything stopped.

Every single person took a nice, long, hot shower in the two shower stalls. Although it was later decided that you got half an hour shower time for each week, to be divided up at the user's leisure, everyone was allowed to shower for at least half an hour. Everyone washed up, taking their first real showers in a month. Everyone then changed into new clothes and then decided they needed to have a group meal together.

They gathered in the L-shaped room, which looked like it had been an area to eat and make food in, as one part of it was dedicated to counters, a sink, dishwasher, stove and fridge. There was nothing of much real use in the kitchen area, but they broke out what food they had between them and everyone sat down together and ate. The conversation was slow at first, but eventually Lily and Jacob started relaying a story of a crazy fight they once got into over who got to watch TV, during which they started wrestling over the remote, which resulted in several broken dishes, a broken coffee table and the neighbors calling the police.

That seemed to get things going. Marcus talked about the time he very nearly got caught skinny dipping in a rich neighborhood while he was in high school. Karen even talked about the time she'd very nearly got caught screwing in her high school bathroom. They all told stories from their past about the stupid shit they did.

When they were finished, Marcus noticed something. It was almost imperceptible. The showers, the meal, the new place...it didn't make what happened right, it didn't cure their depression, their horror, their anxiety...but it was a step in the right direction. Possibly most importantly, it was the first step on the path to recovery.

To happiness.

After the meal, everyone moved with a bit more sense of purpose. In the L-Shaped room, they cleaned and straightened up and found another radio rig with a store of industrial batteries that Lily could use to reach out over the airwaves once more, as she had grown so fond of doing. On the wall, Marcus pinned his copy of the valley map that he'd been updating with black xs, to replace the one that had been lost in the fire.

The smaller bedroom, it was decided, would belong to the couples, for the sake of sanity. They would switch out every night. Marcus and Maya would get the first night, Lily and Ed the second, Logan and Daisy the third, and this pattern would repeat. The main bedroom already had four beds in it, which became six uncomfortably close cots when they took the two extras out of the smaller bedroom. They made plans to set up a second sleeping area in the main room and also try to find some bunk beds, since they'd worked so well in the past.

They decided that the open-faced room next to the machine shop, overlooking the primary repair bays, would serve excellently as an infirmary. While Marcus, Lily and Jacob set to work on getting it cleared out and set up, Maya, Ed, Logan, Daisy and Karen began gathering materials and starting construction on what would be their new watchtower, to be set up just to the left of the main entryway in the fence.

Work proceeded fairly smoothly.

The first day came to a close. The infirmary, bedrooms and Lily's workstation had all been set up. Everyone went to sleep, with Ed and Karen agreeing to take night watch in shifts. When the second day came, it was just as gray and rainy as before, but Marcus noticed that everyone moved with a certain energy that hadn't quite been there the first day. Everyone worked, more or less without serious breaks, for thirteen solid hours.