The Shelter

Part 3 - The Dead

xx-xx

"What happened to her?"

Oberon had called a meeting after the earlier fiasco. The medic woman was here, along with the scout team who had gone with Jeanine, and Karma apparently. Oberon had asked her to be there. Why? She couldn't answer that herself, but she was glad she was being kept in the loop.

"We got to the Ghost town with no complications," Spencer started, looking troubled. "And we raided a few supermarkets. Most of them had already been looted, but we brought back enough for a week. I think there are more supermarkets on the other side of town, so this could actually work. We were about to head back to the shelter when Jeanine started whimpering and shaking. She was talking about getting a wavelength through her System that was making it malfunction. The rest of us had our Systems on sleep mode to conserve battery for months, so we managed to pull her back into the supermarket in time before an X came around the corner.

"Jeanine was still making noise, so we told her to put her System on sleep. She wouldn't, or maybe she didn't hear us, but a few minutes later, she stopped clutching her head and stood up. At first, she was silent, I think she was in shock, so we managed to evacuate the Ghost town and go into the forest, and that's when she went hysterical. She was screaming a bunch of things like how it was all useless, that we would never survive, and that we should all kill ourselves whilst we had the chance."

Spencer stopped talking, swallowing loudly. Carrie slung her arm around him and picked the story back up.

"We left one of the bags of food in the forest because we needed multiple people to bring her back. The rest you know. We managed to knock her out for a while, but she woke up when we were almost here."

Oberon looked concerned, his eyebrows furrowed, picking his nails. For the first time, Karma realised he wasn't that old. Maybe in his early thirties. He wasn't ready to be a leader, to be in charge of all these people, all these deaths. And Karma felt incredibly bad for shouting at him. He was just trying his best. They were all trying to keep on fighting, keep on hoping.

"Thank you," Oberon spoke up. "We need to make sure everyone here turns off their System and only open it back up from time to time. We've been using Helmets these last few months which explains why we haven't had this case yet as they probably can't pick up the squealing from the X's. It also explains why the population count when down so fast. With the X's killing, and some people suffering from their Systems the way Thalia," The suicide girl, Karma filled in for herself. "And Jeanine did, it could lead to more suicides. Luckily, most of us disabled out Systems in the beginning at the first sign of danger. We need to stay alert and see if we can help Jeanine. She always needs to be watched over, and Martha," Oberon turned to the medic in the room, "have you ever done any psychological work?"

"I studied it in high school, and for my medical degree, I needed to learn how to ease information out from patients without triggering them," Martha stated. "I should be able to ask her what she saw or experienced from the squeal, what the X's want."

Oberon nodded and dismissed them. They were all more than ready to fall asleep.

That night, they pushed all the beds together in the middle of the room, curling around each other. Karma explained the eggshell situation to Pandora, leaving the gory details out, and they stayed in the dark, talking to each other about trivial things.

And Karma realised that she was beginning to survive more and more. She was starting to care for this fake family she'd constructed in this Shelter.

She wondered how hard her heart would break when they eventually died, and if theirs would break too when she stopped breathing. She hoped they'd remember her as the girl who loved gold, used to knit like a grandma, and who thought her parents were superheroes when she was small.