ERICA
With exquisite boredom, Erica stared out the window at the trashed courtyard between Harvard's Biological Laboratories buildings. She didn't know what the quad looked like before the army set up shop here, but she was pretty sure the university landscapers didn't intend for it to resemble a dusty parking lot dotted with sandbags, barbed wire, trenches, and machine gun emplacements. The lack of greenery almost made her homesick for their bulldozed front lawn.
At least it was an improvement over the same four walls occupying her every waking moment for the past couple of days. Marginally.
Since springing them from jail, the army had set her and Eve up with their own room in Divinity Hall, next door to the one shared by Graves and her idiot brother. Apparently, the brass was under the misconception that locking them in a broom closet together for days on end would somehow compel the four of them to become civil to one another. She always knew "military intelligence" was oxymoronic. If Officer Mike hadn't bailed them out of there a day early, their jailors would probably be mopping up blood off the walls by now.
She was glad for the opportunity to stretch her legs and leave the others behind. With Graves drafted for some kind of top-secret military mission and Tommy and Eve off doing God-knows what, she had fallen back into her familiar habit of being invisible to everyone around her. She haunted the halls of their new home, silently observing everything and filing any useful rumors and information away for future reference.
To be fair, there was plenty of both going around. The army's gossip mill was running on overdrive today. In the space of a single morning, she had gleaned information about an upcoming mission to meet with another group, heard the strangest rumors of monsters being kept in a cage on the top floor, and learned that the brass were worried about a sudden drop in communication with the refugee camp at Hanscom Air Force Base.
All that and it wasn't even lunchtime yet.
Something different caught Erica's eye. It was such a fascinating change of pace from the uniformity of camouflage everywhere she looked that she immediately perked up and took notice.
An elfin figure sporting a backpack – clearly not military – moved through the heavy shadows at the eastern edge of the quad. She snuck across the grounds like a ninja, keeping an eye out for sentries. Several armed soldiers marched by in a procession. She ducked behind a parked Humvee and waited for them to pass before darting into a side passage. The closest soldiers were too preoccupied with polishing their big gun to notice her.
Erica snickered, her curiosity sufficiently piqued. She trotted down the hall after the stealthy girl, eager to learn the rest of her story.
She caught up to her on the ground floor of the south building, outside a lab that the army had converted into a makeshift kitchen. Her target checked that the coast was clear before heading inside. Erica stayed hidden and waited for her to make her move before following.
She didn't know what the girl's plan was, but she was certainly enjoying their game. She hadn't had this much fun since the last time she nearly got caught spying on her father's business dealings.
After checking that the corridor was empty, she tiptoed up to the kitchen door and peeked inside. She spotted her quarry in a matter of seconds.
The dark-haired teen, who looked to be a year or two younger than herself, crept from cupboard to cupboard, filling her pack with canned food. Regularly, she'd check over her shoulder, sneaking glimpses of the cooks preparing the lunchtime meals on camping stoves at the other end of the room. Nobody else seemed to notice her presence. Erica stifled a giggle and enjoyed watching the tiny thief rob them blind.
Boots echoed down the hallway, getting louder. Erica held her breath and checked on the progress of the food bandit. She had moved on to the stacks of bottled water piled up in the corner of the room. She had no inkling of the threat heading her way.
"Damn," Erica whispered. It was up to her to do something, or they'd catch the poor girl for sure.
After unfastening the top button of her shirt, she pulled it loose from her pants and tied it below her breasts, revealing her toned midriff. She stirred her hair up with her fingers and started breathing heavily and jogging in place to get her heart rate up.
The sounds of her footfalls caught the attention of her young accomplice. The girl froze with a bottle of water in her hand and a panicked look on her face. Erica winked at her and raised a shushing finger to her lips.
Then she was off, jogging down the corridor towards the approaching soldiers as if out for a morning run. As expected, the uniformed horn dogs stopped in their tracks to ogle her as they crossed paths at the intersection.
"Hey, sweetheart," one of the privates called out as she jogged past them. "You must be new around here, aren't you? I'm sure I would've remembered someone as fine as you."
Erica turned to face them, running in place. She could barely keep from laughing at the flushed faces of the wide-eyed young grunts gawking at her assets jiggling in the loose folds of her shirt.
"I just arrived a couple of days ago," she replied. "I'm Erica."
"Private Chaz Spillane," he said with a broad grin. "Friends just call me Champ."
The other soldiers snickered at this. "Dude, no one calls you that," one of his friends muttered. He earned an elbow in the ribs from Chaz for his unsolicited feedback.
"You like to have fun?" another of the soldiers asked. "We traded a few favors with some of the guys in the motor pool and scored a bottle of primo scotch. How about you meet up with us this evening? Say, around nineteen-hundred? We could crack it open and make it a proper welcoming party."
Erica stared past them. Her co-conspirator stole across the hallway with her loaded pack on her back. The girl gave her a grateful nod before disappearing out of sight.
Time to wrap this up, Erica thought.
"I'll think about it," she answered with a measured smile. "I should get back to my run now. Maybe I'll see you around... Champ."
She turned and jogged off, leaving the soldiers to whoop and catcall as they patted Chaz on the back. Erica smirked. Manipulating them had been so easy that she almost felt guilty about standing them up.
Sorry boys, no drunken playdates for you.
Once she was out of sight, she fixed her clothing and cut across a side passage, heading in the direction from which the thief had originally appeared. She ventured down the hallway of the northernmost building, peeking through every opened door, until a familiar figure stepped out in front of her.
The teen stood in her path with her thumbs forked in the straps of her backpack. She eyed Erica cautiously.
"Thanks for that," she said.
Erica smiled. "Don't mention it. I'm Erica."
"Paige."
"Did you manage to get everything you wanted?" she asked.
Paige jiggled the laden pack on her back. Canned food scraped together inside it.
"You must really be hungry," Erica snickered.
"I'm stocking up to leave," Paige said. "It's not safe here."
"You do know they have tanks outside, right? And guns? And Humvees? About the only place safer than this is a deserted island in the middle of nowhere."
Paige shook her head. "That's not all they have. Have you been upstairs to the labs yet?"
"I thought that area was off limits."
"It is." Paige admitted. "Doctor Mueller got approval to bring me on as her assistant. I start tomorrow."
Erica hiked a surprised brow. "Sounds exciting. Is it true what I heard? That they're working on a cure up there?"
"They're working on all kinds of things," Paige said. She glanced over her shoulder, confirming that nobody else was listening in. "They're doing experiments on these... creatures in a cage. Giant spiders or something. They give me the creeps just looking at them. Mueller says they're the key to stopping the zombies, but I don't know. All I know is, I don't want to be around them. I'd sooner take my chances with the dead."
Erica nodded, putting a mental checkmark next to the rumors she heard earlier about the army conducting tests on monsters. Her smile widened. She couldn't help but be fascinated by her young companion. The girl had managed to trick her way into the army's confidence and uncover the truth of their activities here for herself. That was a feat worthy of her respect.
"I like you, Paige. You're pretty cool. We make a good team."
A glimmer of a smile crossed Paige's face, gone as quickly as it appeared. "Thanks. Same here. But you don't want to be around me. Everyone who gets close to me ends up dead."
Erica shrugged, unperturbed. "That's not an issue for me. My family's with the mob, so Death practically had a seat at our breakfast table. Trust me, whatever you've been through, I've seen and done far worse."
"I doubt that."
Erica turned away, but not before flashing the girl a final, contented grin. "Do me a favor? Don't go running off without saying goodbye first? I don't often meet people who impress me as much as you do. I think I'd like to get to know you better."
Paige nodded. "Okay."
"See you around, Paige."
Leaving the girl to stare at her departing backside, Erica sauntered off, immensely satisfied by this unexpected turn of events. In the space of a few hours, she furthered her knowledge of the military's operations and established a relationship with what passed for Harvard's criminal element. She had to hand it to herself. Overall, it wasn't a bad day's work.
Dad would be proud of her.