I got such awesome feedback for this in my Alphabet Challenge, and have been watching Survivors on the BBC recently, so decided to give this extension a go. Let me know what you think. The first chapter is the original, everything after that is extension.


Q, is for Quarantine


Chapter One

Max blinked as the sunlight assaulted her eyes. She pushed the heavy steel shutter all the way back against the wall, and looked out of the third floor window. The grounds of the old, eighteenth-century manor were undisturbed, the countryside around them quiet. The heavy chains and padlocks were still in place on the imposing, wrought iron gate, set in twenty foot, red-brick walls. She scanned the gardens beneath her, searching for the slightest movement, the faintest trace that anyone had made it over the walls in the night. She saw nothing.

She left her bedroom and crossed the hall into the large bathroom. She lifted the steel cross-bar from the shutters and pulled them open. Sunlight streamed into the room and she repeated her scans of the gardens. Seeing nothing amiss she left the bathroom and continued throughout the house, purposefully missing out the bedroom at the end of the hall. In each room she repeated the same process. She opened the shutters, scanned the grounds and listened for any noises from the gardens. At the front door she grabbed the shotgun hanging off the hat-stand and slung it over her shoulder.

She opened the door carefully and listened again. Hearing nothing but the occasional bird's tweet, she strode down the gravel drive to the gate and checked the padlocks were still secure. Finally satisfied everything was safe, she headed back into the house. She entered the kitchen and laid the shotgun on the counter. She looked down on it sadly. It was Mole's gun. A parting gift from the transhuman when he had realised what was happening. What he was about to turn into. Max's abhorrence of guns had lasted less than a week. After that, she had learned what a necessary evil they could be. If Mole were around he'd be proud of her trigger finger. That is, if Mole was even alive. It had been ten years since she'd left Seattle.

She hadn't seen another living soul, other than the one slumbering upstairs and the livestock in the manor grounds, since she had barricaded them in over six years ago. Self-imposed quarantine, isolation, whatever. She could cope with the loneliness as long as they were safe.

She scrapped together a breakfast of scrambled eggs and dished it out onto two plates. She put them on a tray with two glasses of milk and some cutlery, then carried the lot up the stairs. She paused at the closed bedroom door to balance the tray on her hip as she knocked. She pushed it open without waiting for a response and headed toward the bed in the darkened room.

"Alec? You hungry?" a tousled blonde head peered from under the covers.

"Eggs?" he asked, voice husky with sleep. Max nodded and he sat up. "I can be hungry for eggs."

"I figured," she smiled and placed the tray on his legs. She crossed to the vacant side of the bed and hopped up beside him, grabbing her own plate and cutlery. He started to demolish his eggs.

"I'm thinking of doing a supply run in the next couple of days," Max began, "I think there's an old factory about a five hour drive from here that used to make solar panels. It would make things a heck of a lot easier for us. Cut down on searches for generator fuel for a start." She glanced at his already empty plate and stifled a laugh. "You think you'll be alright by yourself for a day?"

"I'm always alright," she started at the phrase. Looking down on him, at that oh-so-familiar way he scratched the back of his neck, before stretching out his arms and yawning, Max felt her eyes fill with tears. He looked over at her and his expressive brown eyes lit up with concern.

"Mom? Are you okay?"

For an instant, Max felt suddenly and overwhelmingly lonely. Lonely and nostalgic. She missed her old life, her friends. She missed Alec, the other Alec that the nine year old beside her was named for, so much that it ached. For the, perhaps millionth time, she listed expletives in her head at the familiars for doing this to her. For doing it to everyone. For unleashing the damn pathogen that had turned everyone into mindless, psychopathic monsters.

The last news bulletin she had caught before fleeing Seattle, had said that the pathogen mutated DNA. Specifically, it targeted junk DNA. In mutating the junk DNA, it mutated the person into something else. Something horrible, and something vicious. She had seen her friends transformed to monsters before her very eyes. Watched as Mole shot a snarling Dalton, just after Dalton had ripped out Sketchy's throat with his teeth. Her best guess was that she was immune, only because she had no junk DNA. She had no idea if she had passed that particular genetic quirk onto her son, but she had no urges to find out. There was no way in hell she was going to risk finding out if her son was immune or not, because there was no way she would ever expose him to any of the infected possibly lurking outside the manor's gates.

When she thought about those last days in Seattle, about Alec's terrified goodbye and his fierce kiss before he threw her in the back of Josh's van. When she thought about it all, she realised that Alec probably sensed she was pregnant before she did. He had been different with her since they slept together. At the time she thought he was just being weird, but now… he'd been so damn gentle with her. Had been acting so tenderly toward her those couple of weeks. He'd always been so keen to take on any and all of her duties. Not to mention that he was so fiercely protective of her that he had literally dragged her, kicking and screaming, out of T.C. and into the waiting van. Thinking about him always filled Max with shame and terror. Shame that she had ever allowed herself to leave without him, terror over what might have happened to him.

So she tried not to think about it. The only positive she could discern from the entire damned situation, was that at least the familiars had destroyed themselves as well. So much for their years of selective breeding, or the snake venom acting as a vaccine.

She blinked, trying to clear the tears and fog of emotion, which had descended so suddenly.

"I'm fine kiddo."

She knew that he was out there somewhere, whether he was dead, alive, mutated like the others or immune like her and his son. She knew Alec was out there. And she would find him. Eventually she would find him, and be able to tell her son what had happened to his father.