Author's note: Thank you very much for reading :)
I want to apologize once again for taking a long time to update, I haven't managed to get "unstuck" yet. Thank you for bearing with me!
Michonne's and Daryl's jaws dropped when they walked through the door behind the dining table and found a large space containing rows of floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with non-perishable food and all kinds of other supplies, from toiletries to car batteries, as well as a number of chest freezers. It was almost like a mini Walmart, minus the produce section. Which, as it happens, they had just visited.
The last room they were shown was the smallest of the three and housed two very long bathtubs filled with bubbling water and little fish, as well as three tall round plastic containers, a few 50gal bins and another worktable. There was a lot in the space that was identical to the first one they'd visited: tubes and pipes going in and out of everything, a bunch of bottles, buckets with smelly water, different looking light bulbs and the constant low buzzing sound.
Back in the living room Daryl and Michonne took the 2-seater as Jonathan and Marissa settled on the larger couch.
"Can I interest anyone in a drink? We have wine, scotch and, for some reason, blue curaçao. There's also water and lemonade" Lucas offered.
"Scotch" said Jonathan.
"Win…" Marissa started before Lucas cut her short saying "you're getting lemonade", followed by Jonathan's "no complaining." She pouted.
"Water" Daryl answered. These people had so far been fine but getting drunk was not the best of ideas. Michonne, thinking along the same lines, chose lemonade.
Once everyone had glasses in hand and the coffee table had bottles of all available liquids for refills, Lucas took a seat next to Marissa and motioned for her to start.
"So, like Jonathan said, we got incredibly lucky. The short version is we had ideal shelter, information, and the resources to act on it." Marissa said.
"I'd call it fate if I believed in the idea" Lucas added.
"No such thing as fate" Jonathan said matter-of-factly.
"We know dear" Marissa again. "Anyways, the fact is that everything converged to give us the best chance of survival. A positive perfect storm, if you will. Jonathan and I like to experiment with calculating the probability of it all having happened simultaneously and the results are always quite interesting."
"Interesting might not be my word of choice" Lucas said ironically. Marissa gave his arm a mock slap, which earned her a grin.
"Back to what I was saying, the ideal shelter is obviously this house, for which we have my stepfather, my mother and the laborers who actually built it to thank." Marissa said. "Stepdad chose early retirement in this out of the way spot, which means almost no people around, living or otherwise. You're the first ones to come into the house as far as we know. Also, like I mentioned upstairs, he decided his life's mission was to turn the place into a self-sustaining property. Throughout the years he put in two wells, battery banks, a hydroponic garden, a miniature fish farm, a worm hotel, some other types of composting piles and a bunch of systems: solar panels, wind energy, rainwater collection, grey water recycling and geothermal energy. There was always so much going on I'm sure I forgot a few things. I used to joke that he'd really gone off the deep end, so I had to eat my words when most of it became essential. All of it would have been useful, of course, but some we couldn't keep going from down here."
After refilling her glass, she continued "my mother, on her side, is responsible for our comfortable living quarters, as she's the one who insisted on having the basement finished. Mom also argued that, if she was moving away from civilization, the house had to be well secured, so we have bullet resistant glass, sensors, safes, a panic room and a security camera system. This last feature has come in handy, especially after Jonathan tinkered with it and somehow threw baby monitors into the mix."
"Which goes to show that all the technology in the world is of absolutely no use if two idiots forget to lock the door while the third idiot decides to take a lone, leisurely trip upstairs" Lucas said.
"Speak for yourself, I spotted them in the monitors. Spotted the two of you coming back as well" Marissa countered.
"And you didn't hide?" Jonathan scolded her, Lucas throwing him a warning look.
"We've been through this, I wasn't going anywhere without Elie" she said petting the little dog on her lap.
"Right" Lucas said cutting the others short. "And we just happened to be here, it wasn't Marissa's usual time to visit her family."
"I thought this was her house and you two was the ones visitin'" Daryl said.
"Did she say that?" Lucas asked giving Marissa a reproving look. "She likes to maintain this was her home, but it was actually up north, with the two of us." The woman drew breath to start speaking but he put his hand up signaling her to stop and began ticking off on his fingers "one: if your name has been on the lease for over five years it's no longer temporary housing, doesn't matter if you're not working to pay the rent; two: it's not like you were sitting around doing nothing, you were busy with your dissertation; three: your mother wasn't sending her own money, it was yours. Any other arguments for me to refute?"
"Just because I inherited it doesn't mean it's mine"
"Actually, that's exactly what it means. You have got to stop feeling guilty about being born into a wealthy family, we've talked about this."
"Fine" she said. After a little while she got a sad look in her eyes and went on "what's more, not only were we here, but everyone else wasn't, so less mouths to feed. My mother, stepfather and the Johnsons next door decided to take the collective five kids to Namibia for spring break. It turned out to be the worst possible part of the world to be in at the time, as we later discovered, and I was the one who encouraged them to go, I fell in love with the place when I visited. They were off in a safari when we found out what was going on, so by the time we managed to get through to them they could no longer fly out. We rented an entire lodge and told them to get there with as much supplies as they could and be ready to go back to the days of hunting and gathering." She stopped for a few seconds before adding quietly "I hope they're still there." Lucas put his arm around her shoulder and Jonathan held her hand as silent tears rolled down her face.
"Jonathan and I both have deceased parents and no siblings, so that just left the three of us" Lucas completed her train of thought. "As for the information we had, I was collaborating with two colleagues on a study about mental health problems associated with the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, which meant research and interviews at different CDC locations. I was always the one that went to Atlanta when needed and I actually had a meeting two days after we got down here, but I arrived there to find it had been cancelled due to a scheduling conflict. It was clear that this was a rushed excuse and something very serious was happening, so I tracked down a researcher that had been our contact there to see what I could find out, I thought maybe H1N1 had mutated and was starting to spread again. At first she looked like she was going to brush me off but then she seemed to change her mind, sat down and told me what was really happening: a new virus had been identified in Malawi and they'd been tracking it for two weeks as it made its way through Africa. She said at the rate it was going it would likely be less than 10 days before it got to us. When she started talking about flesh-eating reanimated bodies I almost got up and walked away, but she assured me it was true and even showed me a video on her cellphone. It was grotesque."
"You know she only spilled the beans because she wanted to sleep with you, right? We were basically saved by the contents of your pants" Marissa said teasingly, seeming to have recovered from her moment of sadness. She turned back to Daryl and Michonne to continue "Lucas, instead of obliging the poor woman, rushed back here to talk things over with Jonathan and me, but we were just going over the obvious. A virus with a death rate of 100% and individuals who remain contagious forever and who actively seek out healthy people to infect? This was our meteor. And even if it wasn't, none of us wanted to take part in building a brave new world, so we decided on just making sure we bought as much time as possible to live here by ourselves. We spent the night mapping out our plans and by the time the virus got here, which was 8 days later, we were as ready as we were going to get. And this is where the last part comes in, our resources. You want to take this one Jonathan?"
He looked at her like this was the last thing he wanted to do, but turned to Michonne and Daryl and said "we had a lot of money."
"Informative as always" Marissa said. "We moved as many of my stepfather's projects as we could down here, had a few necessary modifications made to the house and filled it with everything and anything we thought we could possibly need or even want; we had stuff all over the place when we first started, still have some of it spread around the house. I believe the first time we set foot outside was around the six-month mark."
"So, you just stay down here?" Daryl asked incredulously.
"We go upstairs every so often to make sure everything looks alright, and we had to start branching out a bit after a while, but yeah, we mostly stay in here" Lucas answered.
"Doin' what?" Daryl again.
Marissa answered this time "the same as every human has always done and will always do: turn time into food, which we eat so we have the strength to turn more time into more food, which we eat, and so forth and so on, until we eventually die, some choosing to leave offspring behind to carry on the senseless cycle. The difference from before is that we cut out the step where we used to turn our time into money which we then used to buy the food."
"Come now, Marissa, you make it sound like you don't enjoy any part of what's happening between being born and dying."
"I can assure you I enjoy myself as much as I can possibly want, Jonathan and Lucas make sure of it" she said to Michonne and Daryl. "There, happy?" she asked Lucas.
"Not exactly what I meant, but good to know."
"OK then. What about you two? You mentioned you had a group?" Marissa asked.
"Yeah, we was livin' nearby but got separated so now we have to go lookin' for the others." Daryl answered, rivaling Jonathan's conciseness.
"I see. And where's your rendezvous point?" Marissa asked.
"Huh?" Daryl.
"The place where you arranged to meet in case you lost each other." Marissa clarified.
"We don't have one" Michonne said thinking of how stupid it was that they hadn't set one up.
"Hmm… what do you think dear, want to take a stab at it? If we had enough information, it might actually be a little more than just guesswork." Marissa said to an uncertain looking Jonathan. "You know you'll enjoy it, and I want to see that big brain of yours at work." This she said in a very suggestive voice closer to his ear, but not low enough to spare the others.
Jonathan turned bright red, mumbled what sounded like "OK" and quickly made for the desks in the corner of the room, Marissa going after him.
'Those two need to get a room, pronto' Michonne thought.
Daryl turned to Lucas with a puzzled expression and he said "don't look at me, this is their thing. I'm going to take it as my cue to go to bed. Good night."
Michonne said "good night" back and Daryl grunted.
He met Marissa on her way back to the sofa and said "have fun, but please don't stay up all night, you know you need to sleep. And eat something in a couple of hours. Something healthy." He then kissed her cheek, said good night to Jonathan and walked toward the bedrooms.
Marissa put a legal pad and some pens on the coffee table and said "here, if you want to write down some information, we can play around with calculating the odds for each direction in which your friends might have gone." She lowered her voice and continued "mind you, regardless of what I said to him, it will just be a lot of guesswork, but you don't seem to have a lot to go on, so…"
Michonne and Daryl looked at each other for a while and ended up shrugging at the same time, so they went with it.
"What do you need?" Michonne asked.
"First, list everyone and then put everything you know about them: age, body type, personality traits, any injuries, how battle ready they are, weapon of choice, left or right-handed, any skills they may have even if it seems irrelevant, who is related to who, and how. Anything you can think of, really, the more details the better. Next, list the places where you've been, in chronological order, and put what happened at each one. We'll take it from there and let you know if we need anything else."
Daryl looked at Michonne trying to figure out where to start and she had to admit she was somewhat overwhelmed herself.
Marissa picked up on it and said "or you can come with us and we'll just ask questions and take notes. It might actually be a good idea to interview you separately, so we can get your points of view without each other's influence, and then we can all talk together. Plus, this way you can take turns sleeping. Who wants to go first?"
"I'll do it, just give me a couple of minutes and I'll be right back" Michonne said before going off with Daryl to their bedroom.
When they got there, she closed the door and asked him "are you OK with this?"
"I dunno, my head hurts. How can they speak so much? And she talks so fast."
"I know, I'm a little dizzy myself. But I'm still not getting 'danger' from them. Weird as hell for sure, I don't even want to think about what goes on in that bedroom. But I'm not feeling threatened. Do you suppose we have anything to lose by just telling them all we can?"
"Don't sound like it. But if I'm bein' honest, I ain't sure I understood what it is they want to do. It definitely seemed like they should be doin' it in private, though." Daryl's face turned slightly red and he avoided Michonne's eyes. As with a few times before, she felt somehow drawn by his awkwardness and was surprised to realize she thought it endearing.
"Alright then, I'll tell them everything I can think of and hope for the best. Go to sleep, I'll come get you later."
She found herself wanting to follow Lucas' example, so she gave him a kiss on the cheek before walking away.
He stood there staring after her, turning redder and redder by the second.
Author's note: I hope you enjoyed :) Please let me know what you think, your input is very much appreciated!
