A/N: 7 weeks in (2 weeks after the last chapter)

The Journalist

Chapter Eleven

Take What You Need

Two flashes of light drew her attention. Each different and indicative of separate, forboding events. The first, lightning. Small strikes, far and away from the motel but bright enough to enlighten the night sky for the briefest of moments. Few as the strikes were, she counted the seconds after each one. One-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, three-Mississippi, and on until she reached fifteen. Thunder never followed those strikes, yet her body keenly anticipated them. Her shoulders, arms, even her neck and legs hunched inward, muscles tensed. She was glad thunder never came.

The second flashes of light were manmade. Motel doors opened and motel doors closed as someone held a flashlight and braved the late night hour for a trip to the latrine. When a fourth person crossed the lot only an hour into her shift, Carley scaled down the RV and keyed herself into the supply room, grabbing a couple bottles of water. She would log she took them later, otherwise Lilly would lose her shit.

Not literally, Carley childishly thought. There was enough of that happening anyways.

She approached the figure, flashlight in one hand and water bottles in the other, only to find he failed to make it to the latrine. He hunched over a patch of unhewn landscaping on the side of the hotel, down on all fours as he gagged twice before finally wretching.

Carley swallowed, her stomach twisting into uneasy knots.

"You all right?" she finally asked, stooping down next to Kenny, offering him a rag to wipe his face and a water bottle.

"Fucking peachy," he croaked. He turned over and leaned back against the curb, his legs spread out under him, breathing heavily.

"Drink," Carley said, pushing the bottled water closer to him.

"I can't."

"You'll dehydrate."

"I can't." He stared up at her, his brow determined and a heavy scowl on his face. She could barely seen him, but her flashlight's beam, aimed at the wall, encased him in just enough light to highlight the gaunt in his cheekbones and the sheen on his skin.

Carley bit the inside of her lip. "Katjaa and Duck?"

"Same thing. Fevers too, probably. Sleeping. Fuck-" Kenny turned on all fours, heaving again. Carley looked away.

"I'll sit with you."

"No."

"No?"

"I'm fine here,," he said forcefully. "By myself."Impatience rattled through his throat with the same force as the next round of dry heaves.

"Not in your condition," Carley argued.

"Unless you've got some magic cure to food poisoning, you can't do anything," he rasped. "Just go back... on watch." He swallowed and clutched his stomach, his eyes closing in brief reprieve, his breaths heaving his shoulders and his stomach up and down. "Jesus," he whispered, more to himself and probably in some desperate prayer.

By dawn, more than half the group—the half that made the egregious decision to eat seafood from a nearby river—suffered the debilitating traumas of food poisoning. While Kenny swore his catches were fine and cooked to appropriate temperatures, there stood unexplained reasons for why over half the group purged waste from one or both ends of their bodies. Some, namely Clementine, Duck, and Kenny, were so badly affected, their entire bodies were giving up on them.

"It hurts, Lee," Carley overhead Clementine say that morning through the thin walls of their adjoining bedrooms.

"I know, sweet pea. I know," Lee would say back.

Carley swallowed. Her mouth was parched and as sick as everyone was getting, dehydration—and by extension water supply—would no doubt play a critical issue in the survivability of their group. She held two water bottles in her hand, one leftover from last night's watch, and this morning for today's run. She would sacrifice both as she knocked on the door entering Lee's room.

"Hey," she said.

Lee attempted to sit up from where he rested on the couch, but Carley quickly raised a hand in protest. "No," she said, tight-lipped. "Down."

Lee, an unnatural and peculiar shade of green, grimaced as he slowly sunk back down.

Carley looked to Clementine. She could barely see the girl, white bed sheets swallowing her in the queen-sized bed. She was surrounded by flattened white pillows and wrapped in an equally white, albeit tangled, sheet. She had presumably kicked the comforter to the far end of the bed. A light layer of sweat coated her skin and a slight pink flushed at her cheeks. Wound loosely in her sheet, Carley could see Clementine huddled in a fetal position, her knees hugged to her chest.

"How it's going, kiddo?" Carley asked.

Clementine's response was timid. "Bad."

Carley could barely hear her.

"She's afraid to talk," Lee said. He gestured at the trashcan next to the lone bed. The bin stood not on the floor, but on the nightstand for a quick reach should either Clementine or Lee need it.

"Could you... do me a favor?" Lee asked. "Can you check her temperature? I'd do it but I'm pretty warm myself."

Clementine shook her head. "No," she said, looking at Carley. "You'll get sick."

"Don't worry about me," Carley said softly. "It's not contagious. Here."

Carley chewed on the inside of her bottom lip as she stooped down next to Clementine. Taking a deep breath and briefly closing her eyes as she reached out, she pressed the back of her hand against Clementine's forehead, the girl squeezing her eyes shut.

Carley sighed and retracted her hand. "You're warm, kiddo."

"Fever?"

"Mmhm."

"Oh..."

Carley reached over and tucked a water bottle in Clementine's hands and then handed the next one to Lee.

"How bad?" Lee asked, gesturing at Clementine with a tilt of his chin.

"Not too bad," Carley said. "Maybe a 101, but nothing higher, I don't think."

"That's... good." Lee closed his eyes as his head leaned back on the armrest of the couch. Though neither of them ever brought it up, Carley knew Lee used the light blue couch as a bed, preferring Clementine to use the lone mattress in the room. If she were to sit on the couch Carley was sure the cushions would sink beneath her.

"Drink fluids if you think you can handle it," she advised him.

Lee nodded, his eyes still closed. "We will."

"I'll tell Larry not to be optimistic about you or Mark switching out for watch. You guys need your rest."

"Okay," Lee muttered.

"All right. I'll be back soon."

"Carley?"

"Hm?"

"Thank you."

Three of them chose not to eat the catch. Carley, Lilly and Larry. Three , the miracle number: enough for two to head out for a run and one to stay behind for watch.

"Look, I'm not eating that. I don't care about your Fisherman of the Month award from two years ago. I'm not eating fish," Lilly adamantly said the day before when Kenny brought in the haul of fish and half a dozen frogs.

Kenny's rationalization for hiking out to the nearby Ocmulgee River was that the group would soon run out of protein. The trip spurred out of, first, an untruth stating they would go into town for food, and second, because Lilly rambled about their dwindling stock of canned meats. Despite the men's efforts, Lilly remained steadfast, cautious about eating their catches.

Carley declined eating for similar reasons, albeit less hostile ones. Tired as she was of salt-and-pepper powdered mashed potatoes and canned chocolate pudding, she didn't trust freshly caught seafood. She never did. She much preferred leftover spaghetti Tuesdays on Wednesdays than have any variation and preparation of amphibian or fish—not that she was picky being on the cusp of stomach had shrunk so much in the past week, she was sometimes more than happy to trade her white bread for anyone's wheat, usually Katjaa's or Clementine's and sometimes Duck's. They needed the calories. She was fine.

She placed her crowbar down beside her and unshouldered her backpack. In one swift motion, she swept the remaining three bottles of Pedialyte from the shelf.

"Shit," Carley heard Lilly mutter from the other end of the convenience store.

"What?" Carley stood up and called over the few, long aisles that separated them, moving quickly toward the beverage aisle. They chose to forego Lee's parents' drugstore, knowing the store had well been gleaned of electrolyte solutions. Instead, they chose a larger corner convenience store, mere blocks from their original holdout.

"I lost the slip Katjaa gave me."

"The one with the drugs?"

"Yeah," Lilly said. "I know the brand name meds but there aren't any here. Generics, drug names—you know anything about that?"

"Uhh," Carley swiped some bottles of lemon-lime sports drinks and some powdered mixes into her bag. "Loperamide!"

"Glimepiride?!"

"Loperamide! It's what's in Imodium!" Carley yelled as she walked further away from the pharmacy section of the store. "With an 'L!'"

"Loperamide! Got it!"

"You might wanna take the Glimepiride anyways."

"Why?"

"It's blood pressure medication," Carley called out. "For your dad."

"Oh. Thanks," Lilly said, her voice much softer. "It's not just loperamide. Her list was longer," she called back.

"I don't know what they are." Carley moved quickly up and down the aisles, looking for small soft drinks to tuck into her backpack. Along with the two cans of ginger ale she found tucked behind some store-brand Coca-Cola, walking through the foreign foods aisle, she found a jar of powdered ginger. "Uhh, maybe some kind of 'cillin?'"

"Amoxicillin?"

"No, but grab that anyways. We need more of that."

"Ampicillin?!"

"Ampicillin? Uh..." Carley racked her brain for the long list of meds Katjaa recited. Ampicillin, ampicillin, had she mentioned ampicillin? She couldn't recall. Katjaa's weak voice spoke in mutterings as she scribbled on the notepad earlier that morning, and for Carley, drugs all sounded the same to her. Christ, why did they all have to sound so scientific?

"Sure?" Carley called out.

"You're not helping here," Lilly seethed.

"I'm not the one who lost the list!" Carley yelled back while sprinting down another aisle. Sugar, salt, sugar, salt—where were they? She moved quickly up one aisle and down, her pack strapped tight to her back bounced up and down with each stride, the contents slamming into her back in mild discomfort. She felt the few fluids she grabbed swishing in the pack. She kicked at a tin pack of sardines on the floor and stopped her sprint to scoop it up.

"Carley!" Lilly called from the other end of the store.

"What?"

"What am I getting?"

"Fuck, I don't know! Grab anything that sounds familiar to you!"

Carley rolled her eyes, finally setting her pack down after finding the sugar and salt. She unzipped her backpack and tossed in a large package of sugar and a container table salt, which should be more than enough to replenish lost electrolytes, according to Katjaa.

Carley quickly ran back to Lilly's location and hopped over the pharmacy counter, where she briefly noticed a binder split open on the counter. The words 'SURVIVOR GUESTBOOK' headed the top of the page in blue pen. Beneath the words lay a scribbling of names, well over a dozen of them. A few had strikethroughs, as if to indicate grim demises, while other names were flanked by tallies, a sign this convenience store saw frequent visits from regulars—a sign that these other people lived. They survived, too.

Carley joined Lilly among the nearly identical white shelves holding nearly identical white bottles of pills. Lilly moved quickly from each shelf, one hand holding her duffel bag, the other sweeping across the shelves, dumping the meds into her bag.

"What are you doing?" Carley called out.

"We'll just take everything!" Lilly replied, still swiping at each of the shelves. "Katjaa can sort it out herself and we'll need this stuff sooner or later."

"Shouldn't we leave some of this?" Carley turned toward a sign on the counter, one undoubtedly hastily scribbled by a former pharm tech, the words 'TAKE WHAT YOU NEED' abreast the guestbook binder. Underneath, hastily written in different handwriting read, 'LEAVE WHAT YOU DON'T.'

"Oh, yeah, because a sign is going to police me."

"Other survivors come here."

"We need this!" Lilly replied. "Our people are sick!"

"Look, I'm not here for stealing meds!" Carley returned. "We take everything and we could be killing other survivors who need it!"

"Why does that matter to you?! They're strangers!"

"Because we're not fighting this alone! There are other groups out there who come into here for meds, too-"

"It doesn't matter! We're not responsible for those people!"

"They're fighting the same fight we are!"

"We won't be fighting any fight if we're all dead!"

"Huh," Carley suppressed a grin. "And look whose point you just proved."

"Get off your fucking high horse," Lilly said. "We grab these meds and our people live."

"You keep saying 'we' like you care about other people."

"I care about our group! Our group surviving. Why don't you?!"

A door slammed shut, followed by several voices and footsteps echoing in the backroom adjacent to the pharmacy. Lilly and Carley's argument ended in abrupt silence, both of them crouching down behind an island counter, out of sight as they saw shadows enter the convenience store.