She hasn't lived Boston in over three years. The place hasn't changed much (which annoys her) but she knows that that's good news for a quarantine zone. Most of the others she's been to have gone to complete shit. The further inland you go, the worse everything looks. Abandoned zones, ghost towns. Everyone always flees to the coast. Not many manage to make it. But she's seen villages, fortified compounds or small communities still holding on. Not so much thriving as surviving. She's heard of a settlement out in Wyoming that's doing well for itself. Completely self-sustained. It sounds like a good retirement option. Things like that mean a step closer to a life she's only heard stories about from the older folk. That's what they fight for anyway. Steps closer.
As she peers from behind the ragged curtain out into the streets below, a feeling of unease washes over her. She took the first mission out of this place at fifteen. She only ever came back for rendezvous and recruitment within the Rhode Island and Massachusetts zones. She'd be here for perhaps a day or two. But she's being stationed now for an entire rotation, her protests and pleas to Marlene going unheard.
"You know why I can't go back there."
"That's exactly why I'm sending you," Marlene said, and that was the end of it.
She's always willing to give anything to the cause. Anything. But maybe not this. Most people visibly blanch at the idea of having to work the Bay State. MA military is infamous for taking out any kind of resistance with extreme prejudice. Unlike other zones that try to weed out trouble from the roots, this one is entirely happy hacking off buds, almost daring them to grow back just to do it again. Perhaps this is why they've stood for as long as they have. Their vision is small, but clearly focussed.
Because of this, everyone hates Boston. But not as much as she does. Utah isn't much better for her; if the journey to get there doesn't kill a man, the boredom will. It's a lot of babysitting a bunch of academics who can't fire a gun or pummel a damned thing to death. The Utah base is simultaneously the safest and most dangerous place to be. They're away from the military – soldiers are far too busy and scared to leave their respective QZs to ever come after them. Plus, they'd never get the funding or support to travel cross-country. Not to mention that would just plain be a suicide mission. She knows a group of twenty can easily fall to a group of three. But while they have no soldiers breathing down their necks there, they're still at risk from other threats. Hunger is one of them. Nobody is supplying them with rations. And everything is far too open to the elements to grow any kind of food where they're based. They eat what's either brought in on rare shipments or whatever grows in the wild (it's trouble in itself to try to visit the remnants of farms and orchards outside the city). Other than the hunger, there's the isolation. The infected. Lonely old Utah breeds the worst of them. Bloaters are generally hardest to find by the coast since there's a lower likelihood of infected advancing to that stage. More densely populated areas do mean more infected, but it also means more people fighting back. But in the midlands, it's a different story. They're left alone to grow, to evolve within this untouched environment. It's almost poetic. Kind of like what that Darwin guy said in that one book she read. The mid-West doesn't hold a candle to the Galapagos, though.
"You wanna back the fuck away from the window before someone sees us?" Chen grunts from the sofa, cleaning his gun and shooting her a nasty look.
"You wanna calm the fuck down?" she replies, rolling her eyes. "It's going to look more suspicious when you have a registered apartment blocked up with curtains 24/7. Open 'em from time to time. Even two-bit smugglers know how to play house well enough."
Chen turns back to his gun and mutters something.
Asshole.
There's just something about Boston that brings out the worst in people. She's not even with her regular crew which is irritating enough on its own. She knows they got her back but Marlene has given instructions that she needs to work with the faction here. She's to be in charge entirely of drafting any potentials and escorting the enlisted to drop-off/pick-up areas. She'll direct any insurrectionary action and raise awareness within the zone. It's not something that the others entirely appreciate her overseeing. After all, she's young – twenty years old. She has a reputation for being unpredictable and breaking protocol. That's not exactly leadership qualities, and even she knows it. But perhaps someone more flexible and adaptable is what the Boston resistance needs. Besides, she has five years of experience. Most people don't make it twelve months.
She pulls away from the window and goes into the bedroom designated as hers. She's never had her own (unless she counts the room in the patients' ward in the hospital base as a bedroom) and it seems pointlessly luxurious. The owner of the apartment is a little old lady. She's been here since outbreak and hasn't moved. She lived here with a son and husband for decades. Infection instantly took her husband, and sometime later, soldiers took her son. The room is his, and it's been left unchanged. It's covered in faded posters of old rock bands and the shelves are lined with dusty college-level textbooks. He must have been in his twenties when it happened. The old woman is a friend to the cause. Maybe she has nothing to live for except for a promised hope.
She finds a CD player on a desk. She inspects it, pressing a button and its lid pops open revealing a disc inside. It's still intact.
"90s alt mix," she reads aloud, scanning the tiny hand-scribbled print.
Sonic Youth, Hum, Garbage, School of Fish are some of the names she sees; she wonders momentarily if these are the songs titles or bands. She turns it over and finds the battery lid missing, and of course, no batteries inside. She goes to her backpack she earlier tossed in a corner, digs in the side pocket where she keeps her spares, and pulls out a handful of them. Some are duds that rely on the strength of the few with juice, and she tries a combination of batteries until she finds some that power the device. The little LCD screen lights up and she sees three out of a possible four full bars on the battery metre. She's amazed that it even works.
"All right, tunes."
She knows better than to do this, and she knows if any of the others catch her indulging in frivolities, they'd question her and in turn question Marlene's decision. They're not in a position to lose faith, what with their numbers dwindling and them making no headway in finding a cure to the CBI. But she needs these little distractions. She's spent enough years listening to QZ warnings and drills on loop and to the crackle of intercepted walkie-talkie and radio frequencies. When she can get music she relishes in it, even if she doesn't like what it sounds like. Music keeps the noise out. And it reminds her of a green-eyed girl she once knew.