Fortitude: Supply and Demand

another meeting to iron out the details.” He was pissed that they had not included him in their confessional last night, as she suspected he would be. But he didn’t seem angry like she had expected, or at least not as angry, about the fact that they had gone ahead and told the others without his awareness. If anything, it seemed his ego and pride were damaged atop all else, which was a fact that Anna could easily live with. Catering to William’s whims had been exhausting and she had grown tired of it, but he was not a man you wanted to piss off. While he hadn’t shown a display of his power, it boiled just under his surface. She half suspected that he could kill them all in their sleep if he so chose.

  “I was hoping you could talk to Nathan, convince him to come out of his apartment and socialize with the group again. And then we could all get together and discuss our plan of action.” By giving William a task that none of them wanted under the guise that he was the only one who could accomplish it, they catered to his ego while avoiding a conflict they didn’t want. It seemed a win-win to her, and William didn’t balk at the idea.

  “I will find you later,” he told her. “Once I’ve had a chance to discuss matters with Nathan. We’ll set a time for the meeting and you can let the others know.” She nodded, keen to let him have the final word as he always desired. No doubt he would have her running around playing secretary to coordinate the meeting, but it was a task she was fine doing. She had made it out of this discussion faring a lot better than she thought, a fact that made the smaller things seem insubstantial.

  Davidson

  The sight that awaited him on the roof surprised him. He even did a double take at first, sure his eyes were playing some kind of trick of him. But the view remained the same. Lenore stood at the edge of the building, hands gripping the ledge as she looked out over the street below. She turned to face him as he approached and though fear was clearly written on her face, she managed a smile and remained standing in her spot.

  “Good morning.” The cheery words couldn’t hide the exhaustion in her voice, but they masked it well. Her smile even seemed genuine. “What?” she asked as he continued to approach her without returning a greeting, his head tilted to the right.

  “I’m trying to figure out if this sight could be an early sign of infection,” he teased before returning her grin with one of his own. “Radical changes in attitude and behavior. Sudden fearlessness.”

  “I wish,” she replied, her gaze turning back over the ledge of the building. “I guess I just realized that I was going to have to deal with it sooner or later, so I might as well know what we are getting ourselves into.”

  He joined her at the edge, leaning his arms against the ledge, his elbow just brushing against hers. “Kind of wishing you hadn’t worked up the stones, right?”

  It took her a moment to reply. When she did, though, it was what he had expected to hear. “I just don’t see, realistically, how we think we’re going to be able to make it back.” Her words mirrored his own thoughts from the previous night, the ones he'd been having for weeks now. “Maybe a small group will be able to make it out and even into a store. If we’re lucky, and it's a big if, there will still be food on the shelves that hasn’t already been looted or broken. But even if they can get the food, there’s no way they’re going to make it through that undetected. Getting back is going to be impossible.”

  They stared down at the slow but steady stream of aimless infected below. A quick glance over at Lenore showed the goosebumps littering her arms. “It certainly won’t be easy. If it was going to be easy, we would have done it weeks ago.”

  “Are we really going to send people we know, people we sort of like, out into that? How could we ask that of anyone? It’s suicide.”

  “Maybe we won’t have to ask. Maybe a few people will volunteer.” He felt her eyes on him and tilted his head to meet her gaze. “What?”

  “Tell me you aren’t thinking about being such a person?”

  It took him a moment to find the right words for a reply. “I would. Believe me, I would. I sit up here and stare down at the streets below; I never see a single person. At least not a healthy one. I think to myself, what are we even doing here? Are we just biding our time, one hopeless day after another as we half starve ourselves to death? What we're doing now is hardly a life anymore. When I start to think like that, I want to do something productive, you know? Something that shows that we’re still fighting, that we aren’t just holding out until it takes us anyway.

  “But I don’t think it’s going to matter,” he added. “I have a certain skill set that I’m willing to guess is unique to our group, and I’m going to end up being the air cover for the group going on the run.”

  In all the time he’d known her, he still hadn’t told her what he did. Sure, he had mentioned that he was in the military and was on quick leave before his next deployment, but he hadn’t told her what his actual job was. He hadn’t told any of them, because he could guess at the reactions it would elicit. None of them would be favorable. But he doubted he would be able to keep it hidden for much longer. Luckily, she didn’t pry further. For now.

  “It’s hard to even consider,” she said, her eyes transfixed on the street below. “To be willing to put your life on the line in order to help others. I know that makes me sound unbelievably selfish. I never would have even thought of it in another life, but it’s all I can think now.

  “It’s not just risking your life, it’s risking your humanity. I know some people probably think that there’s a military group or the CDC or a group of scientists out there working away on a cure to bring the infected back to life, but realistically… they’re zombies. There’s no coming back from that. It’s a fate worse than death.”

  “It’s amazing, what you find you have the courage to do in the face of danger. You might even surprise yourself,” he told her. He fought hard to hold off the memories, to push them back down and bury them where they belonged. They didn’t have a place in this life.

  “Well, I volunteer to handle water duty today,” she told him with a sad smile. “Nothing too heroic about that, but maybe it’s a start. I’m sure you’ve got something better you could be doing today. Everyone does. Except me.”

  “Come on.” He wondered if she had always had self-esteem issues, if she had always struggled with self-doubt. He hesitantly reached over, placing his hand on hers. “You’ve already made the biggest sacrifice of us all so far. You’re going to go get us what we need to give us a shot out there on those streets. That’s the most important thing any of us can be doing right now.”

  This caused her jaw to tremble and he knew tears would be next.

  He released her hand to wrap his arm around her shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “We all have our strengths and weaknesses, but overcoming our weaknesses is what makes us strongest. Besides, water is vital to our survival. Water duty is nothing to bash.”

  Without a word, she leaned her head against his shoulder. After the briefest of moments, she pulled away, wiping at her eyes with embarrassment. “Go do something useful,” she snapped jokingly to lighten the mood.

  “Yes, ma’am. I’ll come back to check on you when I’m done. If it starts to pour, I’ll head up. We need to collect as much in reserves as we can to send some with the scavenge party. Water is still our number one priority.”

  “If I need your help, I’ll come find you,” she told him. “Scout’s honor.”

  He doubted she had ever been a scout a day in her life, but he was going to hold her to her word just the same.

  Daniel

  “So this is the joy of scavenging?” Daniel asked as Anna gestured him into the next apartment she and Sebastian had just finished clearing.

  Sebastian nodded and headed straight to the pantry. Anna followed him into the kitchen and started opening the cabinets one at a time. “Doesn’t get monotonous at all, does it?” she asked.

  “I could think of a couple other things I would rather be doing, but with our resources limitin
g our available activities…”. In reality, with the building completely swept and fortified and Lenore and Davidson handling water duty, there wasn’t much left for them to do now a days. The savages for food were done, which was apparent by the fact that he had been going from apartment to apartment for the past five hours with Anna and Sebastian, and all they had managed to find were the bedsheets they needed to make their belay. Sure, he still needed to handle laundry duty every once in a while, but with the cooler, dryer winter approaching they had recently cut back on nonessential water uses, laundry and bathing included.

  “You think we have enough sheets?” Sebastian asked as he shut the pantry door, reappearing in view empty handed.

  Daniel gave a quick shrug of his shoulders. “We have enough to fashion a harness for her and to easily lower her to the first floor, but it wouldn’t hurt to collect as many as we can carry. We might be able to fashion some sort of protective gear out of it to protect the skin of the group that goes.” It was a recent idea that he hadn’t had a chance to share with the group yet, but he might as well share it now. They were short on time, and any idea could help at this point.

  “Go grab some more,” Anna agreed as she continued to open and shut cabinets with loud bangs. “Check the