Year One (Chronicles of The One #1)(85)

From that facility, they’d gathered medical supplies, some equipment, and a truck.

They’d detoured twice, avoiding the sound of gunfire, found others hiking, driving, sheltering. Not all joined them, but most did.

Their group—seventy-eight people—entered the town of Besterville, Virginia, population eight hundred and thirty-two according to the sign (on which someone had rechristened the town as Worsterville with spray paint) on the Ides of March. They found a ghost town, one where it seemed the majority of the people had simply vanished. While the doors had been locked, and the handful of shops and businesses along the main street had been shuttered, they found no signs of vandalism or looting.

And there they stopped. Even after seven weeks, Arlys wasn’t sure why it had been this place at that time. They’d passed through other towns and housing developments, rural areas and urban sprawls.

But they’d stopped, and now numbered at two hundred and six. The number changed week to week, sometimes day to day, as others came in, as some moved on.

They’d renamed the town and replaced the signs at the town borders. And New Hope became home.

Though there were days she woke physically aching for the life she’d known, she remembered the fear, the horror of the tunnel, the bitter cold. And the bodies found along the way, the bodies found in houses in the place they’d claimed as theirs.

So she wrote her bulletins on the old Underwood on an antique desk with the photo of her with her family at Christmas framed and facing her.

In today’s news she’d announce that Drake Manning, electrician, and Wanda Swartz, engineer, continued their work to provide electric power for the community. As her own reporter, editor-in-chief, and publisher, she debated whether or not to include the statements from their newest community members that Washington, D.C., was essentially a war zone between military authority, organized Raiders, and factions of the Uncanny.

She weighed the public’s (such as it was) right to know against human panic. Then added reality. Gossip spread like butter over hot toast through the community. Better to write up the statements.

She added some local color: mentioned the progress on the community garden—Fred’s baby—in the town’s pretty, sprawling park; announced Story Time for kids of all ages; reminded readers to bring found books that they didn’t want to the town library (formerly First Virginia Bank).

She posted announcements for volunteer sign-up lists—gardening, the food bank, the supply center, the clothing exchange, sentry duty, supply runs, animal husbandry.

Taking her two-page bulletin, Arlys walked out into the living room. While the furnishings struck her—and likely always would—as Early American Tedium, all that faded with Fred’s touch.

A half dozen little vases held spring flowers, stones rubbed smooth by the nearby creek filled shallow bowls, bits of colorful fabric, ribbons, buttons arranged in a frame created fanciful art. In the scrubbed-out hearth, an arrangement of candles added a welcoming touch, and light in the dark.

Gone were the ugly old drapes from the two front windows. In their place, Fred hung strings of colorful beads that caught the sunlight in rainbows.

She sought to inform, Arlys thought, Fred instinctively brightened. She wondered which one of them truly provided the best service.

She stepped onto the porch. Fred had pressured her into helping paint two old metal chairs a sweet and silly pink. On the table between them sat a white pot holding a single white geranium.

Around the doorframe Fred had painted her magick symbols.

A pair of pink flamingos guarded one side of the porch steps, a family of garden gnomes the other. Wind chimes tinkled in the spring breeze.

Arlys thought of it as Fred’s Faerie House, and found herself surprisingly content there.

People walked along the street or rode bikes. She knew the faces, most of the names, could point out their community skills or flaws. She spotted Bill Anderson up and across the street, washing the display window of Bygones. He’d taken over the shop, organized it. People took what they needed, and most bartered their time, their skills in exchange.

There would come a time—she and what she thought of as the core group had talked about it often—when they would need a more defined structure, rules, even laws—and laws meant punishments.

Some would have to be in charge—and there were one or two already pushing to take control.

She walked across the street to the single-story schoolhouse. Katie sat at a table out front nursing one of the babies while another slept in a PortaBed, and the third cooed in a baby swing.

What Arlys knew about babies, she’d learned almost entirely in the previous weeks, but she knew when she looked at a trio of happy, healthy, and seriously pretty ones.

“I swear they’re bigger every time I see them.”

“Good appetites, all three of them.” Katie lifted her face to the sky. “It’s too pretty a day to be inside, so I set up out here.” She adjusted a paperweight on one of her sign-up sheets as the breeze fluttered. “The fresh air’s good for all of us. I just saw Fred.”

It was a pretty day, Arlys thought, and took advantage of it by sitting down next to Katie. “I thought she was down at the gardens.”

“She came by for her baby fix. New Bulletin?”

“Yeah, hot off the idiot typewriter. If Chuck ever performs his IT miracle I’ll kiss him on the mouth. Hell, I’ll offer the sexual favor of his choice.”