Defiant: Quantic Dreams Book 2 by Elizabeth McLaughlin (reading list txt) 📗

had set up a hundred tents. We had three twenty man teams take up a watch in shifts of four hours each. I didn’t bother to tell the watchmen about the cat-thing. We would work on fabricating weapons in the next couple of days. For now, I would settle with instructing them to report any movement. Terrifying them wouldn’t do any good. The night passed without incident. Few, if any of the hundred slept. They were too busy going through the same revelations I had. Groups and families stood in front of their tents or lay on the grass staring at the stars. The few of us who weren’t shelter born wore contented smiles on their faces. If it all went to hell after this I could take comfort in knowing that they had seen the sun and stars again. The only real problem we experienced was two people who fell ill sometime overnight. They were taken back to their quarters for monitoring.

Day two was focused on the continued supplying of the camp. Basic medical supplies, emergency food rations, and personal items were brought up. Now that I was staying outdoors of my own accord, the entrance to the shelter looked like the opening to a dark cavern. It was almost a surprise every time we unlocked that inner door to find a functioning civilization. The most exciting thing that happened that day was the discovery of a new species of bug. Unlike the larger insects I had managed to spear with my knife for dinner, these ones were smaller and more tenacious. Apparently they had been attracted towards the shelter by the introduction of new food scraps. I can’t imagine who did that. In my defense, I was too busy trying not to die to worry about my trash.

Our new entomological friends appeared to have a taste for human flesh in addition to their attempts to infest every food container we had. We decided to leave any food, no matter how well sealed, in a steel locker kept in a communal space. There would be no food allowed in tents. This was not a difficult rule to enforce. Even the smallest crumb could bring a swarm of bugs upon a family’s dwelling. It took hours to clear them all out and kill them. The lucky folks who managed to squish or stab them inadvertently provided us with another source of food. Stuck on to the end of a sharpened stick the bugs made for tasty, crunch morsels of protein that one could eat like popcorn. I missed the creature comforts of my old life but damn, if this wasn’t a decent change of pace.

It was better than I could have ever hoped for. If there was one thing that I wanted for Fiona and her family, it was for them to be able to live out their lives in the same world I had grown up in. The world had changed, of course, but knowing that my great-grandchildren might grow up on terra firma was a dream come true.

Even more heartening was setting new faces appear everyday that included people who had been afflicted by the sickness. The medical team had come to the conclusion that anyone who had been ill was safe to return to the general population after a two-week quarantine. The recovered were instructed to monitor any symptoms and informed that they may be required to return to isolation at any time. We assigned them the lightest tasks possible and they could take a break whenever they wished. I think people were just happy to see their loved ones again. Taking on the extra responsibilities was a small price to pay.

After basic shelter and food supply was established, we used one of the storage containers that previously held replacement hibernation pods to set up a medic tent. As more and more of the shelter recovered from the sickness the pressure was relieved little by little on the medical team. Several of the volunteers who put themselves forward to assist the nurses and doctors during the crisis had taken it upon themselves to receive advanced training. Soon we would have double the medical professionals available to us. Seeing as we were about to venture out into a new and strange environment, I had a feeling that we were going to need them.

One day, Dr. Rickman came up to see the fledgling settlement. She looked a hundred times better than the last time I saw her. The bags under her eyes had nearly disappeared and it looked like she was freshly showered and dressed. I asked someone to take over setting up the new weather station we were installing and jogged over to her.

“Hey! Good to see you up and outside!”

“Hey yourself.” She caught me up in a hug. “For a guy who’s exiled from the shelter you seem to be doing okay for yourself.”

“I am becoming a proper Paul Bunyan.” Phoebe looked at me curiously. Okay, maybe that reference was a little too old school. “A real outdoorsman,” I clarified.

“That you are.” We chatted for a little while about the progress of the settlement, and Phoebe updated me on how things were coming along below. There was still some grumbling from Gabriel’s former fans but they found themselves outnumbered. Any disagreement was quickly extinguished.

I was about to return to my task for the day when Phoebe’s tablet emitted an ear-splitting alarm. We both jumped and she scooped it up. Red lights flashed across the screen. “Fuck,” she swore and ran off. I started to sprint after her but remembered my exile, skidding to a halt just in time. Several other people’s tablets blared to life. They dropped whatever they were doing and ran inside. I picked up the tablet one woman left behind and what I saw turned my veins to ice. The alarm was sounded because of a critical failure in the shelter’s systems. From what I could tell from the message scrolling past there had