Grieving process

Wednesday 12: 14 AM

The thudding of feet pounding pavement breaks up the moaning backdrop of the night. Giving up on the safe house completely, the four were racing through the streets in search of shelter. A stitch was beginning to tear of Ryan's side when Linc s voice cut through him.

"Down there- see it?"

"What?"

Linc led at a jog in the direction that he had pointed at. As they got closer, a vine- covered retaining wall was visible. Explaining about solid craftsmanship, the man vaulted over the wall and out of sight. Quickly following suit, the group realized that they were in an untouched paradise. The well manicured lawn that they had fallen into suggested regular maintenance, as did the old money smell of the house itself.

"This neighborhood is older." Linc was explaining. "Nothing slapped together for young couples starting out. The house has stood the test of time."

"So we're betting it can withstand zombies?"

"Wonder why they haven't hit here already?"

Linc was staring upwards. After a moment, the others fell silent and did the same- and nearly cried out in alarm. A dark figure was draped over the balcony, staring down at them. It was almost mistaken for a zombie until the wracked sobs registered.

Linc carried a mug of tea into the bedroom although Ryan couldn't see how it would be expected to help. The woman was crying and ranting in strings of Spanish that no one understood. That she'd let them in was a mark in the direction that she wasn't in her right mind. The woman accepted the mug complacently; the liquid held between her trembling hands maintained a tremulous grasp of the interior of the mug. Her tear stained face was oval and light skinned. Listless swaths of dark hair framed her face untidily; suggesting that she was so in shock personal grooming had fallen by the wayside. One couldn't help but noticed the exceptional quality of the furniture, likely worth several hundred dollars apiece. Spanish was softly spoken, although she could be prompted to reply in snatches of English that suggested she was fluent in both languages.

Leaving Linc to it, Ryan checked on Burke and Kinsey's progress. The beautiful sliding glass doors onto the balcony were in the process of being boarded up. The downstairs of the house had already been seen to by someone else. The woman? Another family member? Assuming that the woman wouldn't throw them out, the trio began to explore the house. It was a beautiful house, an antique style that Ryan couldn't recall. There were four bedrooms on the third floor. Two had the homey sense of being lived in- one was covered in rock posters. The state of the art computer on the desk was dusty.

The next room was covered in soccer posters and memorabilia- although hair products and jewelry boxes suggested that the soccer enthusiast was a teenage girl. Kinsey voiced concern over the children's whereabouts that no one had the heart to guess after. There were two bedrooms prepared as guest rooms that they dropped their gear in- all four dingy backpacks that were their sole possessions.

Prompted by guilt to check on their hostess, they found her responding to Linc's patient presence. Linc had scrapped together enough to learn that her name was Carmen Doroteo, this was her home and that her husband had died earlier that morning. That she'd seen him shambling around the corner market had caused all of the emotional angst.

"I want my Miguel to have peace." Carmen gasped, pressing a proffered Kleenex to her wet face.

Kinsey hesitantly mentioned the revivification process that Carmen seized with maniac glee.

"My Miguel can live again? You are sure?"

"I can't do it." Kinsey had to be honest. "But friends of ours are going out to revive this afternoon- we'll be sure to look for him."

Carmen collapsed in tears of relief. After awhile of comforting, Carmen composed herself to tell them to make themselves at home and apologized that she couldn't serve them anything as she hadn't made dinner for herself.

Waving off her efforts to serve them, Linc encouraged her to rest as Burke went downstairs to scrounge up dinner.

An hour later, every window had been barricaded, the travelers had showered, eaten the delicious tamales that Burke had cooked and most were bedding down for the night. Deciding to stay up and keep watch, Ryan moved restlessly through out the house. He'd adopted a patrol of peering out of the peephole they'd left in the balcony on the second floor and another peephole out of the third floor. The house was quiet, something that was jarring after becoming accustomed to the groans and resulting panic of breaches. The night went on with Ryan as their edgy night watchman.

Wednesday 12:16 PM

"Ryan! Carmen!"

Jolting upright, Ryan discovered himself lying atop of a bed in the guest room. His shoes had been taken off, but he couldn't remember doing that or going to bed. Stumbling out into the main hall, he narrowly avoided bumping into Burke.

"Hey, you sleepy bastard." Burke greeted with a light swipe at Ryan's shoulder. "You don't look any better than this morning."

"This morning?"

"We put you to bed at like, 6 AM. What, you don't remember?"

Ryan was piecing together a reply from his sleep muddled brain when a small form darted between him and Burke and kept on charging down the hall with child- like dexterity.

"She has kids?"

"Hell no, these are the Valencia lot."

"What?"

Before Burke could answer an older child- about thirteen for her height- huffed into view. "Did he come by here?" The question was directed to Burke.

"Yeah, think he's in the head." Burke indicated the closed door down the hall.

"Oh." She looked to Ryan, her eyes taking in his disheveled appearance. "Hi."

"Hi." Ryan replied back, his voice mired in confusion.

"Cristina Valencia." Burke began introductions. "Oldest of the Valencia family, you're what, thirteen?"

"Yeah."

"Ryan Milstone, resident insomniac and cade watcher extraordinaire. " Burke finished with a grin. "We went out for supplies and found her family under siege from a small horde. We killed 'em and brought the kids home."

"You're parents are here too?"

"No." A bit of a waver came into the voice. Having had enough time to map it out, a clear Spanish accent could be detected in her voice although she spoke English perfectly. Realizing he'd been insensitive, Ryan quickly backtracked and apologized. They trumped downstairs where the crew was situating two more children and a teenage boy with a meal. From the way they were wolfing down the pancakes, it was guessed they'd been living lean. Introductions were made, revealing the kids to all are related. Cristina and her boyfriend Anton were the oldest at 13 and 14. Cristina's brother Chavo was 11 and her cousins Maria and Saniah were 8 and 6, respectively.

"How long were you in the trailer by yourself?" Kinsey was asking the group gently, filling Saniah's glass with more orange juice.

"Since Monday." Cristina replied, joining the brunch. "After school gets out, I watch everyone till 7 o' clock when my- when Stacey gets home. "

"Whose Stacey?"

"She never came home." Emotion lined Cristina's voice as she speared a piece of pancake, savagely ending its maple laced bliss. "Two days and she never came home. I don't know where our mom is, she's supposed to get home at nine." After a moment she adds. "She works two jobs. Stacey was supposed to be helping out and she never bothered to come home. Real nice, huh?"

"Lot of responsibility, taking care of everyone so long." Burke mentioned, moping up a spillover from Saniah's plate. "You did real well, Cristina."

"I tried." Some of the anger faded from Cristina as she looked between everyone, indecisive.

"We'll find your parents and Stacey. You guys finish up; we'll be over here…"

"They'll stay with us, right?" Burke started off when they'd adjourned in the living room for privacy. "Ain't right, those kids living alone like that for so long.'

"You think they're parents would have- hopefully they're alright…"

"They stay with us." Ryan agreed. "We'll talk to Carmen and her husband afterwards, see if they mind us crashing here,"

"Oh, Miguel!" Kinsey started. "I have to go meet Rex at the mall to track her husband down. Is Carmen up, yet?"

"I didn't even know she was here." Ryan admitted sheepishly.

"You two were still up when we all woke up, so we decided you needed a rest." Linc explained kindly. "She'll want to join us in finding her husband; I'll go tell her we're ready to leave."

"Some of us should stay home with the kids, watch the cades."

"I'll stay with you." Burke agreed quickly. After a few minutes of discussion, it was agreed that Linc, Kinsey and Carmen would go to meet Rex at the Mall to revive Carmen's husband while Burke and Ryan stayed at the Doroteo estate with the kids.

Best laid plans…

Wednesday 1:36 PM

"You're sure you're alright?" Kinsey asked for the twelfth time, marveling at Miguel's recovery. Saving Miguel from another affirmation, Rex cut in.

"You handled yourself well back there, kid. Most times, people freak at their first revive point."

Recalling her initial visceral reaction within her gut at seeing the small horde of zombies milling mindlessly about the corner market, Kinsey could see why.

"How is it that they know about the revive point?"

"The zeds?" Rex clarified. "Dunno for sure- but we think some people don't have it in them to be the undead. They gather together away from folk and just cease to be. Not men, not zeds- they're just waiting to be found- and stuck with a needle."

"It was a most disturbing feeling." Miguel broke away from his quite murmuring with his wife to add.

"It's… terrible, truly terrible." The harrowed look in his eyes drove the point home, just as the bone deep dread in his heavily accented speech. "I never want to feel that way again."

"Where to?" Linc asked, gently breaking the tension.

"I need to get back to the Mall." Rex informed. "That's where I keep my cache of supplies and I promised to go out with the defenders tomorrow to Richmond Hills."

He continued to explain there was a RP that needed help in the neighboring town while Kinsey listened with rapt attention, having found a macrebe fascination with reviving. "Actually, I was thinking we should stop by the mall." Linc said to Kinsey. "The kids we picked up look a bit ragged and we picked up supplies for four people yesterday, not eleven."

In quick agreement, the group accompanied Rex back to Ackland Mall, where they spent the better part of an hour restocking. Taking a quick lunch in the food court before heading home, a gun- toting young man approached where the four were eating.

"Is it true?" He asked without preamble.

Forcing down the last swallow of her Kung Pao chicken, Kinsey managed. "Is what true?"

"That you all have kids." He looked between the four even as they sat back and exchanged silent looks with one another, deciding. That alone was confirmation for the questioner, who waved over to a neighboring table. Half a dozen men clambered over, looking much less grim than Kinsey thought they had looked moments before.

"Rex told us." The stranger replied to the unasked question. "We've known Rex for a bit, he's helped us out of a rough patch. Got Gambe here back on his feet from lying on his damned back."

He thumped the nearest sheet of muscle who guffawed appreciatively.

"We all have a bit of a thing with kids getting eaten. It isn't right and if they're parents can't look out for them, it's damned right of you to step up."

"Ah… thanks." Kinsey replied, surprised by the feeling behind the surprisingly articulate speech.

"So what are you proposing?" Linc asked, wisely offering the chair beside him to the speaker. Lowering her fork, Kinsey looked the men over. The one who had approached first easily topped six feet, with ash blond hair cropped close to his head. Black seemed to be the theme of clothing with them- each wore black T Shirts and Dickies. As they moved, she noticed they set gear by their feet that included Kevlar vests.

"We'd like to join up with you- we're thinking we'd come in handy, right you assholes?" The men at his back laughed loudly. One leaned in towards Kinsey and confided that they were all from the same prescient- police prescient. This smoothed things out considerably as the group shared a bit of a relieved laugh. Kinsey reflected that it was sad that people they met were met with suspicion these days- but there were killings going on that weren't all being done at the hands of zeds. Who better to help out than Malton's finest?

"Gambe here-"

The wiry olive- skinned man named Argolan indicated the younger man setting out a platter of egg rolls on the table. "He's the rookie. Been in all of a year- two hours into this hell, he bit the big one!"

Gambe took the teasing well, mentioning that Argolan had been so level headed- he'd put two bullets in Gambe's Kevlar – after he'd Turned.

The group laughed at Argolan's expression that summed up the hilarious story pretty well. "What about you?" Kinsey asked the ash blond 'leader', who so far remained nameless.

"Stephan Tietz. Homicide detective,"

There was some private joke the by the amused expressions of the other police officers. "That mothball there is my partner, Ray Cross."

After a joke about Cross' jacket of insubordination files, the group finished introductions and tucked into lunch- they seemed eager to check out the set up at the Doroteo estate.

The officers helped pack up some of the fresh produce being stored in China Chicken's refrigerators and they got on their way to the Doroteo estate with sixteen more helpful hands than they'd started off with. The ambitious doctor had pressed a small medical bag in Kinsey's hand before they departed- and she was surprised to see precious revivification syringes lined up neatly within. He sent her off with a knowing look, plunging back into his work.

Shouldering thier packs, the group stepped into the decimated streets to start the long trek back to the relatively untouched region of Shore Hills.