Chapter 8
The second Inchy was able to run in a moderately straight line, the girls let him run on his own power to save them time. By a miracle of miracles, they made it to the back door with no opposition. The sunlight was ludicrously harsh as they burst out into the summer heat and made a beeline for the truck where Percy had heard them coming and was immediately getting ready with the rifle. It was unnecessary. Ana bundled Inchy into the truck as Chloe hopped in the driver's seat. As soon as everyone was accounted for, they took off.
Chloe wheeled out of the parking lot and headed the long way around the main body of the hospital onto the main road. From there, she'd have the clearest shot back to The Hive. As they neared the front of the hospital, they saw several cars pulling in. Each of them was sleek, well polished and clearly belonged to someone with money. Even with Inchy between them, Chloe felt Ana completely tense up.
"Your family?" she asked. Ana only nodded in response, letting out a shaky breath and leaning out the window to turn to Percy.
"Hold fire and stow the rifle. We'll sneak past them easier if we don't have that shit on show." Percy nodded and sat back in the cargo bed again, sliding the rifle under the tarp. Her hands sweating, Chloe pulled the truck forward as she watched several groups of people jump from the cars and walk inside. They seemed to be walking normally enough, but Chloe knew they were making an effort not to actively run. She kept her speed reasonable as she navigated past the entryway, not daring to even breathe until they were a fair distance away. As soon as they were, it wasn't just her letting out a sigh of relief.
"God damn..." Chloe muttered. "Are all your family out to get you, then? That looked like most of them!"
"Not all of them." Ana replied. "But yes, most of them. The only two that aren't are my little cousins. For them, it's like they're cut off from everyone else in a little bubble of their own. Even if they were old enough to understand why the rest of the family hates me, I don't think they would care. Oh, and what you saw there wasn't even close to half. The rest are overseas."
"Oh... My..." Chloe couldn't even find the words. "So these little cousins- are they overseas too, or are they here in the US?"
"Oh, they're here in Seattle." Ana told her. "I've driven past the house many times wishing I could talk to them. But I doubt we'll see them today. Even my family wouldn't take them out to see me made an example of."
By this point, Chloe was nearing The Hive. Percy was getting ready to disembark and take Inchy with him. But Chloe's mind was working. There had to be a way to allow Ana to see her cousins. There just had to. But how could she get someone who was so hated past such a large group of people? It seemed largely impossible. But what if the group's own size and devotion could be its biggest weakness? By the time she pulled in, she had the start of an idea in her head. As she and Ana climbed from the truck, she turned to the older girl and fished the phone she'd grabbed from her pocket, holding it out.
"Hey, I grabbed this at the hospital. It might have something on it we can use. Who's the best with tech?"
"Percy?" Ana called out. Percy looked up from where he was supporting the semi-conscious Inchy as Melody ran over, having seen what was happening. "Get this secured, make sure it can't be tracked and pull any thing useful." Percy nodded and offloaded Inchy into Melody's care, running over to grab it.
"Cool." Chloe nodded as he hurried off with the phone. "In the meantime, I have an idea. Can you come and find me later, once you've gotten the inevitable twenty questions from everyone out of the way? I have some brainstorming to do."
"Sure." Ana nodded. "I'll see you back in the room." Chloe returned her nod and headed off towards the room. As she walked, she heard Melody asking a barrage of questions and guessed House would want to make his way over. They'd throw her one hell of a welcome. Chloe was content to leave her to it. She'd already had more than enough excitement for one day. And yet for some reason, she was about to go looking for more.
She walked into the room and grabbed her phone charger from her bag, noting that she was down to the low thirties, and plugged it in. Her phone now charging nicely, she sat on the floor, went onto social media and started scanning. The bed was Ana's and she was back now. And she'd probably be exhausted. Chloe wanted to leave it free for her.
Updating her location, she started looking through the recent alerts. It didn't take her long to find the one she wanted. Ana's family had posted up a missing person alert for her, apparently hoping that someone would deliver her for them. Chloe knew she wouldn't be able to hide her name on social media, but she also didn't need to. They would have no way to know her definitive location for themselves. For that reason, she knew she was somewhat safe. With that in mind, she typed a reply.
'Hey there,
This is Chloe Price. I just saw your alert. Your daughter is in the hospital here in Tacoma City. She was transferred in just last night. She's in the bed next to mine. Good thing you posted. She was fretting about how she'd get home. She doesn't know I'm sending this, but I think she'd be real grateful if you came to pick her up. She's getting discharged in a couple of hours.'
The whole time, Chloe had been struggling to stifle a laugh. She didn't know if Ana would go for her idea, but even if she didn't, she would probably get a laugh out of the knowledge that Chloe had just sent her family on a wild goose chase to the next city over. Right on cue, her phone pinged with a reply.
'We will leave immediately.' Chloe couldn't help grinning from ear to ear. The boy who'd messaged her, apparently named Iidazan, hadn't thought to ask which hospital. She didn't know how many there were exactly but a quick Google showed that there were more than twenty individual medical centres of all kinds all over the city. Of them, more than ten were full hospitals with at least eight more being more minor clinics that could still provide overnight care for patients. Yeah, this was going to keep them busy. He also hadn't thanked her. Why would he? As far as he knew, she'd just given them the information they needed. And unbeknownst to them, she knew they weren't looking to retrieve Ana.
At that moment, Ana herself entered the room. She pretty much looked ready to go over on the spot. Chloe could see the fatigue and stress weighing on her as she trudged in and flopped forwards, landing face-first on the bed. Chloe felt for her. It hadn't been the easiest couple of days all round. But she hoped what she had to share would make it that little bit easier.
"What are you smirking at?" Ana demanded, her voice understandable, but still muffled by the bed sheets. Chloe felt her grin instantly widen, getting up off the floor and coming to kneel by the bed.
"How would you like to see those cousins you were talking about?" Ana rolled over and stared at Chloe, an annoyed expression on her exhausted face.
"Didn't you listen to a word I said? I'll get beaten to death before I get within a mile of the place. Especially since I've essentially committed insurance fraud against them now."
"Not anymore." Chloe said as she tossed the phone onto the bed next to Ana. It landed mere inches from her face and Chloe silently congratulated herself for the perfect throw. "I hear Tacoma City can be nice this time of year." Ana reached out, picking up the phone with her usable hand and looked at it, staring disbelievingly at the screen. "I've been thinking about what you said." Chloe explained. "It's my reckoning that if anyone's with those kids right now, it's a skeleton crew. Tacoma is a big place so they'll need the numbers. If you want to talk to them or even slip them a letter with the best chance of it getting to them, now would be the time." Ana kept staring at the screen disbelievingly. Chloe could see the thoughts racing through her head and bet it wasn't doing much for her exhaustion.
"You did this? You got most of my family to head out for Tacoma?"
"Yep." Chloe nodded.
"I fucking love you." Ana sighed breathlessly. "Okay, let me get some rest and then we'll go. Wake me in about an hour and a half. That should give them time to get well away."
"Sure thing." Chloe nodded. "Let my put my phone on silent while it's charging and I'll get out of your hair." As soon as she'd done that, she got up and made her way to the door. A final glance back showed that Ana was already asleep. Silently, she slipped from the room. Stepping out into the fresh air of The Hive felt weirdly rejuvenating. Everyone had gone back to work with what appeared to be a renewed vigour, with the exception of Inchy who was still in the medical tent. It was a place Chloe hadn't been yet and she decided now was as good a time as any to go check it out.
The gravel crunching under her feet, she made her way over. Inchy had taken a pretty hard hit to the head in that hospital. If it weren't for their situation, she would probably have thought it more intelligent to leave him there. But thanks to the fact that they'd just had someone shooting at them inside the building, that was definitely off the table. With that thought, she pulled back the flap of what had once been the trampoline house. Inside, she had to marvel once again at the intelligence and imagination shown. The trampolines were still in place and had been converted into bedding areas. The platform they stood on was lined with cabinets and chests that were full of bedding rolls and medical supplies. And of all the trampoline beds, only one of them had an occupant. Melody looked over to see Chloe in the doorway and came to meet her as she headed inside.
"How's it going, Chloe?" she asked as she came over.
"Doing good." Chloe shrugged as she walked in. "I came to check on Inchy. He got hit pretty hard at the hospital."
"Mild concussion." Melody replied simply. "I can't go into details, obviously. But some rest will do him good. How's Ana?"
"Exhausted." Chloe said, flicking the blue bang of hair out of her eye. "She needs rest. She asked me to get her up in about an hour and a half. In the meantime, Ana mentioned about getting me some bedding when I got here. I've had an extended use of her bed since she's been gone, but she's back now. So where do I get some bedding from?"
"Here." Melody told her, moving to the chest off to the side and pulling out a bedding roll. She tossed it under-arm to Chloe with a strength that belied her scrawny frame and Chloe herself had a hard time catching it. "For anyone using non-permanent bedding, bring it back at the end of each week and it gets washed here. If you do end up joining us permanently, you'll get your own bedding and it will be your responsibility. That said, I don't think you'll have too many problems. You've already done so much for us here..."
"I owed you guys big time." Chloe sighed. "I'd had a sleepless night, a high-stress day and come home to a home situation that resulted in me and my mom's boyfriend literally trying to kill each other. I drove off, headed here and hadn't slept in nearly two days. I knew I should have pulled over and taken a nap. But after meeting you guys, I'm pretty fucking glad I didn't."
"You fell on your feet." Melody reasoned. In that moment, she did something Chloe didn't expect- she closed the gap between them quickly and threw her arms around her. "For what it's worth, I'm glad you're here too. We needed more girls around here besides me and Ana." Chloe didn't know if Melody knew about Ana. Since she was essentially the group medic, she suspected she did. That sort of thing was hard to hide in a medical capacity. But that wasn't a chance she wanted to take. She wasn't about to out someone. Instead, she slung the bed roll onto her shoulder and wrapped her other arm around the younger girl.
"I don't know what my future holds." Chloe confessed truthfully. "But after meeting you guys, this is the first time I'm somewhat hopeful for it. And it would be so awesome if you guys were in it. I still need to work it out. Mom thinks I'm heading home and you guys are showing increasing support for me staying. Either way, someone's getting disappointed."
"Then there's only one thing to do, isn't there?" Melody said, looking up to meet Chloe's eyes. "Do what's right for you. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what you choose. What matters is that you aren't the one left disappointed by it." It made sense. It made a lot of sense. Chloe loved Joyce and she would never even try to state otherwise. And if someone else tried, she'd put them right. But she couldn't deny that life at the place she used to call 'home' just wasn't worth living. Not with David around. Had she been selfish when she fled to Seattle? There was no doubt of that. But someone had needed to do something to break the stalemate. Would it be selfish to tell Joyce she wanted to stay here? Yes. But maybe she needed to be.
Something needed to happen. Chloe made no illusion of it. And it was definitely going to hurt one or both of them. Why not make this her stopping point? Get it out of the way. It was certainly food for thought and something Chloe definitely would be mulling over for the next few hours. With that, she released Melody and stepped back, hoisting the rolled up bedding back onto her shoulders where it was about to slip off.
"Thanks. That actually helped." She meant it too. And she couldn't remember the last time she'd said that to someone and meant it. "I need to get back to Ana now. I gotta get this set up and get ready to head out."
"Out?" Melody asked curiously as Chloe turned to leave. "Doing anything good?" Chloe wanted to answer, but since this was about Ana she didn't dare give any details away. Especially since Melody was the medic. She might take issue with Ana leaving The Hive so soon after getting out of the hospital. Especially after the circumstances in which they left.
"I can't say." With that, she slipped from the tent and started walking back towards the room that she and Ana shared, her mind was so focused on how to tell Joyce she wanted to stay that she was snapped harshly back to reality as she crashed into someone else. She hit the gravel hard, the breath knocked out of her. But as she looked up, the person she'd walked into seemed barely affected. Doing a double-take, Chloe realised it was the same girl from before. The one with the brown hair and the JANE Doe t-shirt who'd shouted out to warn her before. She didn't say much, but chose to hold something out as Chloe picked herself up.
"Take one." Chloe accepted the paper from her. It was a flyer for a charity concert by a new fledgeling band called The High Seas. It promised a fun, family friendly atmosphere for all ages. And it was tonight. Perfect! Now she had something she could do with Ana and her cousins if they were able to meet up with them. But that thought was quickly shoved to the back of her mind by more important concerns. Who the hell was this girl? How the hell had she managed to find The Hive? Not to mention get in without anyone noticing. And more importantly, Why was she here now? Something told Chloe it wasn't just to give her a flyer.
"Who are you?" she asked. But the moment Chloe looked up from the flyer, the girl was gone. More to the point, there was no indication that she'd ever been there. She'd just come and gone, vanishing into the ether like Batman. In spite of herself, Chloe couldn't help but burst into almost hysterical laughter. "What the fuck is going on?"