Merman - Romance

Chapter 9

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Chapter 9

The ‘safe house’ was a small wooden cabin one bedroom and a main room that held a small kitchen and an open space where mats were spread out for sleeping.  There were just six people there when they arrived.  There seemed to be a family; a man, wife, an eight year old boy and a five year old girl and there was the safe house keeper Justin; a large black man and his adult niece.  As soon as Ridec looked at the woman he noted that she had the same ugly orange lines across her face that many of the zombies outside had.

“You two can sleep there,” Kent pointed to two mats on the floor and waved his hand at Linda including Ridec in the gesture.

“I’m not sleepy,” Ridec said.

“You sleep when you have the chance, we don’t know when we’ll have the opportunity again,” Kent advised.  Linda was already dropping to the floor and dragging Ridec down beside her.  She was skinny but she was still pretty strong.

“This is going to be uncomfortable,” Ridec muttered as he tried to make his right hand that was attached to her left hand feel more relaxed.

“Justin, you got anything to eat here?”  Kent yelled to the Keeper.

“Not sure if I can find something; stocks are really starting to run low.”  He turned away and headed into the small kitchen area.  “I’ve been afraid to leave my niece Tori on her own these last few days to try hunting.”

“What’s your name?”  The little girl made her way up to Ridec for the first time travelling away from the corner she was occupying with her family.

“Hold it!”  Kent focused his gun at the child.

“She’s just a child,” the mother said jumping up and gripping the girl to her protectively.

“She’s an unclean, look at her neck,” Mark yelled.  Ridec stared at the little girl; he could see it now the same ugly orange lines that ran across Tori’s face were running along the veins in the child’s neck.  He could hear her mother’s thoughts, wearied and fearful, afraid that the little girl would soon turn, that she would soon become one of the monsters.

“Uncleans become zombies?”  Ridec asked Linda quietly.

“Eventually.  Most of the time a bite changes a human in minutes sometimes seconds, but for some people it takes hours, some days and some years.  You never know if your one that’s going to be immune or not or how immune.  Every one doesn’t get the orange lines; the illness seems to affect people differently once there is some level of immunity.  It helps when they get the lines, then you can see they are unclean from a long way off,” Linda explained.

The keeper returned with what looked like a few long orange organic plants and tossed one to each of the members of the resistance.

“Sorry I don’t have much else; the garden isn’t generating much food, certainly not enough to feed all these mouths,” he muttered.

“They shouldn’t be here,” Linda countered sparing a disparaging look at the small family.  “You shouldn’t be giving them our food.”

“Uncleans are people too even if they are not lackeys for the Authorities,” Justin shot back.  Linda blushed but she didn’t respond.  There was a time when Justin did not feel that way about the Authorities, there was a time when he was as devoted to their cause as Linda and Kent but something had happened.  Ridec struggled to dig deeper into the man’s mind to figure out what had gone wrong but there was nothing; just anger.