There's little playground out back of the hotel where most of the colony's residents live. It's not much of a playground – just a slide, a few swings, and a see-saw – but it's enough for the colony's lone child. At least for now. Maybe they'll add to it, as the Aquene Generation grows. (They're on track for three births that year.)
It's around that small playground that most of the colony has gathered to celebrate Jenna's birthday.
Jenna, of course, being one, couldn't care less that people were gathered on her behalf. She was too busy gumming strawberries and toddling across the lawn (an overachiever, she was walking before she was eleven months old); her favourite game was to be chased, all the while squealing with glee.
"It's a nice feeling, isn't it?" Jack said, settling beside Henry on one of the tree stumps around the fire pit and passing him a chipped mug full of mead.
"Hmm?" Henry hummed a note of question in reply as he accepted the mug and took a swig from it.
Jack nodded in the direction of the playground where Emily was pushing Jenna on one of the swings, both of them smiling with a brilliance that almost almost made one forget that their world was but a shadow of what it had been only scant decades ago... "This," he added, "Our children will get to play outside. They'll skin their knees on the sidewalk, playing tag, instead of running for their lives. They'll get to be kids..." He didn't add, 'the way we didn't'...he didn't have to, as they were both thinking it.
The thing about growing up in the midst of the zombie apocalypse was that memories of your formative years were inevitably full of terror and uncertainty. They'd been lucky, of course, that the people in their lives were perhaps better equipped to endure such an apocalypse than most. That didn't mean there was any less fear, though...
"When is Lily due?" Henry asked, changing the subject. He glanced towards where Lily and her twin sister, Chloe, were helping Garcia prepare lunch.
"Six weeks," Jack said, following his glance with a soft smile. Quickly, his expression flickered over to anxiety.
Henry nodded sagely. "Scared?" he asked, as if he'd missed the flash of fear on his face.
"Shitless," he replied with a dry little laugh.
Henry nodded again – he remembered all too well that feeling of being so wildly unprepared for whatever came next, in completely uncharted waters as he became a father in the midst of a zombie apocalypse without either of his parents to guide him.
"Well?" Jack prompted, gently elbowing him in the ribs. "Got any wisdom for me?"
He barked out a laugh, not because anything was particularly funny but because the situation itself was decidedly not funny... "It really does take a village," he said after a moment of thought. "Now moreso."
Henry, probably better than anyone in the colony, knew just how important it was to have the support of others to survive. One after another, the important people in his life had passed away – as was wont to happen in a zombie apocalypse – so his whole life had been reliant on the kindness of others.
"I don't think I could have gotten this far if it weren't for Emily and Alex," he added. Tessa, Jenna's mother, had passed away in childbirth and since then, Henry had relied heavily on Emily and Alex to help care for the baby.
"Say, where is Alex?" Jack asked, apparently only just noticing that she hadn't joined the festivities.
Then, as if right on cue, Alex came stomping into the midst of the party, growling, "Emily Elizabeth Prentiss! How could you not tell me!?" Everything about her posture made it clear that she was furious; she wasn't normally one to be incandescent with rage, but something had clearly changed that...
Bringing the swing to a stop, but keeping Jenna between them like a human shield, Emily asked, "Could you be more specific?" She didn't make it a habit, per se, to keep secrets from Alex, so she had a feeling she knew what had her so riled up, but she wasn't going to come right out and say it on the off chance she was wrong.
"Is Derek right? Are you planning to go on some wild goose chase hunt for the so-called 'Murphy'!?"
Emily's expression turned to a glower and she glanced about in search of Derek, but he was nowhere to be found. Turning back to Alex, she held her hands up in supplication and began apologizing, "I can explain..."
"Are you going after The Murphy?" she demanded a second time.
"Maybe..." she admitted in a mumble, shrugging her shoulders up near her ears sheepishly. "But I can explain," she insisted once again.
Raising a brow, Alex dared, "Go ahead, convince me."
Emily glanced about, feeling everyone's eyes on them – partly because they were, in fact, making a scene, but partly because every Alpha in attendance could no doubt smell that Alex was in heat. "Can we talk about this in private?" she urged.
"What's The Murphy?" Henry asked, interrupting the silently murderous glares Alex was directing at Emily and the silently apologetic glances she was returning.
For some time now, there had been rumours of The Murphy on the ham radio transmissions they were receiving. According to the stories, The Murphy was immune to zombism...which, if it were true, would make him the key to finding a cure and ending this nightmarish existence.
Emily explained that to Henry, following which, his eyes lit up. "You're going to find him? Can I come?"
"Henry!" Alex scolded, "You have a child! You cannot risk making her an orphan by going on this snipe hunt!"
"Sorry," he said, shrinking in on himself. She was right, of course. He'd just gotten caught up in the excitement that came with the idea of returning to some kind of normalcy...
Turning to Emily, Alex continued, "No one should be going. It's just an urban legend. There's no such thing as The Murphy."