Two Alive, стр. 19
“This is all fucked up.” Anderson shook his head, lowering his gun.
“And while we’re in here trying to talk about all this shit, their people are probably surrounding the building.” Carver spat on the floor.
“We don’t have people.” Miles looked around at everyone. “We don’t… we don’t have a group. Or people. We… we’re by ourselves. We were just looking for food. We thought we’d find food here. We were just looking for food.”
“And you thought to come here?” Carver asked, his eyes regarding the boy.
“Who wouldn’t try goin’ to a Costco for food?” Antonio replied from the floor.
Carver eyed Antonio, “It’s not like you could just walk down the street to find this place. We haven’t seen survivors in a while. Where were you coming from?”
“We just been on the road.” Miles spoke louder. “We came from Oakland. We were in Oakland. We tried to go to San Francisco. But the cities all fell apart. We had to run. We had to move on. We’ve just been moving ever since. We’ve been on the road ever since.”
Carver looked at the boy and blinked slowly. “No one else? Just you two? Just you two kids on the road by yourself?”
“Naw, we had a whole circus wit us. We went around doin’ circus acts and jumpin’ on trampolines and shit,” Antonio said through clenched teeth.
Nadine chuckled at the comment but quickly wiped the smile off her face when the major gave her an icy glare.
Carver turned back to the boy. “Look, I don’t care if you traveled with the three little pigs or the seven dwarves. Do you have anyone else out there either waiting on you or looking to try and get in here?”
“Noooo!” Miles moaned. “It’s just us. We travel alone.”
Carver stroked his beard, letting the silence fill the room and settle. After a sigh he started, “I don’t feel comfortable sending them back out there. They could tell their group where we are.”
Antonio was allowed to get to his feet. “We don’t got no group!” he shouted at the major.
“Bullshit. No way two punk kids just travel the road out there and make it this far. You’ve got a hideout, people waiting or whatever the fuck out there. And I’m not going to let you get reinforcements to come back and kill us.”
“Then just give us some food and we’ll leave with no problem.” Miles chimed in, “We’ll just leave. We’ll just leave.”
“We don’t have food to just give to strangers,” Carver muttered.
Julia looked at Miles and then at Antonio. She sighed and wiped her face with her hand. “Dios mio. Baker, check them again for any weapons and put them back in the closet.”
Miles and Antonio both were visibly displeased by this decision but didn’t put up a fight when Captain Baker went to pat them down and Anderson helped.
“Could this evening get any crazier?” Julia looked back at Nadine and the monitors in front of her.
Alana looked at Julia and her father, “Everyone in the store can hear the banging from outside. Is it the infected?”
Ben remembered the screens on the table and stepped between Alana and her view of the display. “Don’t worry about it Alana. Just go back and tell everyone it’s being taken care of.”
“No!” Miles held his hand over his pocket when the soldier searching him tried to take out his phone.
“Just hand it over kid.” Baker snatched the cell phone and pulled it free from the boy’s earphone cord.
“Give him back his phone!” Antonio shouted.
“Does that thing even still work?” Anderson asked. In his distraction, Antonio tried rushing past him at Baker.
But before the young man could get to the soldier, Carver stepped in and grabbed Antonio by the collar, throwing him into the closet. “I swear, the next fuck up and I’ll toss you outside with the freaks!” Carver’s icy glare fell on Anderson who just tried his best to avoid eye contact.
Baker shoved the pleading Miles inside the closet with Antonio and closed the door on their crying and cursing and threats to get out.
The major turned and started towards the inner store. “Nadine, watch the cameras and come get me if anything changes. Right now, we have to go calm down our people.”
***
The interior of the Costco store was aisles and aisles of shelves with oversized tubs of kitty litter and dry dog food, as well as hundred packs of toilet paper and five-liter jugs of detergent. There were pallets of canned foods, multiple family packs of kilo sized peanut butter and acres of boxed granola bars. The small community of forty survivors had gone through their full rations of perishable goods, but beyond that they still had enough food to last them for the foreseeable future. It was the combined efforts of Major Eric Carver’s military training, Dr. Manson’s calculations, and Dr. Martyn’s knowledge of the health index, that not only kept everyone fed but kept them from consuming their provisions too quickly.
It was Carver who worked with Lesly, the superstore’s former general manager, to get the generators running and maintaining refrigeration and electricity for the compound; during regulated hours throughout the day and night. Carver wasn’t the leader of the military crew that was positioned to keep this facility safe, but the soldiers respected the old army major and Captain Baker appreciated his help in issuing orders to protect the store and the survivors. Carver even worked with Julia, a trained psychologist, to keep up the overall morale of the store. Carver had a pivotal hand in