Fortitude: Supply and Demand

to be ok after what just transpired? He would never be ok again. “Well I am clearly not, but please don’t let that slow your departure.” He had to fight the urge to reach down and wrap his hands around her thin, frail neck. He wanted to strangle her until he saw the life pass from her eyes. But it wouldn’t change anything, and it wouldn’t bring Hayley back. So he pushed the anger and the rage welling inside him down.

  “Nathan, I am so sorry about what happened to Hayley.” Her eyes glistened as if she had the audacity to sit in their apartment and shed her unwelcome tears.

  “You don’t have the right to ask for forgiveness, not now and not ever. And I really think you should leave now, before you wear out your welcome more than you already have.”

  “Anna never should have-”

  “Anna nothing. You never should have opened your mouth. Now get out of my sight.”

  “Nathan-”

  “I said out!” he snapped, the levy breaking on his control. How dare she sit there, trying to make excuses for what she did. If she didn’t leave, he swore to himself he would greet her with the same fate that had fallen his beloved Hayley.

  Thankfully, she stood without another word. She paused only when she reached the mess in front of the closet door, a place he couldn’t bring himself to look. “Are you sure you don’t want me to send someone else?”

  “I think you all have done enough damage for one day without stirring up any more trouble.”

  Davidson

  The pebbles fell with little accuracy from the height the roof offered. With such a small mass, he guessed they reached terminal velocity before they struck the pavement below, and even the smallest hint of stale wind was enough to knock them off their trajectories. The vast majority of the miniature rocks clanged inaudibly on the ground below. The ones that did manage to make contact with their intended targets simply bounced off harmlessly. The infected did not wince or change or glance or even slow their pace from the small impact.

  He didn’t know why he bothered as he pulled another handful of pebbles from the artificial plant’s pot positioned next to him by the ledge. He wasn’t making a dent in the infection below; all he had managed to do for the past hour was scatter more debris on an already trashed sidewalk and street. The pointlessness of the task, however, didn’t stop him. In anything, it spurred him further, challenged him to make a change in at least one of the things on the ground below.

  He had left the roof door propped open, so he was not aware of the company that approached until it was at his side. It swiftly grabbed his arm and pulled him away from the ledge. His years of training kicked in, and he moved fluidly without a moment’s hesitation. His hand was around the attacker’s throat while his arm held their arm pinned against their back before he realized it was only Lenore. Lenore, who never approached that close to the edge of the building.

  “Sorry,” he apologized immediately as he released his hold on her and took a step back to let her catch her breath. Her hand went to her neck and massaged the area he had grabbed. She coughed weakly a few times. Then she burst into tears, and his comfort level plunged.

  “Lenore, I didn’t mean to hurt or scare you. You just sneaked up on me, and I reacted.” He couldn’t handle it when women cried. Tears were not something the military trained you to face, especially not when coming from the eyes of a tired and torn young woman. He didn’t know how he knew, but she would be his undoing.

  She shook her head, as if to suggest that his defensive move wasn’t the cause of her tears, but she didn’t elaborate with words. Instead, she approached him once more, her hands grabbing fistfuls of the front of his shirt as she dropped her cheek against his chest and continued to cry.

  He stood stock still, unsure of his next move. Not knowing what to do, he chose the simplest of options and did nothing at all. He simply stood there and let her cry against him.

  “… my fault,” she choked out after what felt like an hour. “… all my fault what happened.”

  Well, he wouldn’t agree but he didn’t disagree either, so once again he wasn’t sure how to proceed. They all carried the blame of Hayley’s fate to some extent and to varying degrees. Nathan never should have kept her locked away in secret. Lenore probably shouldn’t have told William and Anna until the rest of them had discussed options. Anna shouldn’t have gone to the apartment wielding a machete of all things, and William shouldn’t have sent her with one, for they all knew it was William’s call that had started it all. Daniel shouldn’t have followed Anna into the hallway; Davidson shouldn’t have let either of them go into the hallway with Nathan still in possession of the gun.

  There were several other ways it could have played out, but Davidson couldn’t help think that, all things considered, it could have been worse. A lot worse. At the end of the day, the only one hurt - at least physically, for they were all at least a little emotionally damaged by the event - was Hayley, and she really hadn’t been much of a person in the end anyway. The story could have ended with one or more of them attacked or infected, or both, but thank goodness that hadn’t been the case. They were lucky for the results at the end of the day, but the method by which they obtained those results was less than ideal by anyone’s standards.

  Perhaps his fundamental problem was that he wasn’t programmed the same way as the rest of them, or at least Lenore. He wasn’t mourning the loss of Hayley, as he didn’t see the value of life lost. By the time they got there, her soul - if such a thing even existed - had long since expired. He wasn’t upset about the removal of Hayley from the apartment, but more with how the situation managed to sneak up on him and take him by surprise. He didn’t like being surprised, and this time was no exception. He had continued to play the scene through his mind time and time again, and each time he ran through an alternative means to the end, one that wouldn’t have put them all at such risk. It was useless to play this game of what ifs, but his mind didn’t have anywhere else to wonder in such a confined world.

  Lenore, however, didn’t seem too concerned about the fact that Anna and Daniel had followed Nathan into the hallway, though she had certainly seemed concerned for Daniel when his body had projected back into the hallway after the scuffle over the gun. She was upset about Hayley’s demise and her role in it happening. He didn’t know how to comfort her with that, so he chose to keep quiet. She hardly seemed to expect him to say anything anyway. She seemed content with crying against his shirt.

  “He’ll never forgive me,” she said as the tears finally began to dry from her eyes. Unable to meet his eyes now after the display of a somewhat public breakdown, she settled with staring directly ahead at his chest.

  “He’ll never forgive any of us,” Davidson corrected her, for he knew it was the truth. It was a truth that they would likely find difficult to manage in the coming days. It wasn’t as if Nathan would be able to cut ties with the group; he still depended on them for food and water and other supplies, and William would no doubt expect him to still pull his own weight around the building, especially now that they officially had one less set of hands helping out.

  Their situation was beginning to crumble around them as the bonds in their relationships cracked and broke. Hostility was something unwelcome in confined spaces, and with the six of them stuck with each other for better or worse, Davidson knew it would be for worse. Hayley may have been a danger to them all that they had successfully avoided by one way or another, but the removal of her threat opened another, much larger flood gate. And Davidson knew they would only be able to tread water for so long before they all began to sink.

  Anna

  Her knuckle against the wooden door seemed to echo throughout the hallway. She steeled herself for the moment when the door opened, ready to face an angry William. The William that responded, however, looked almost human. He looked exhausted, for once, and not at all happy to see her standing at his doorstep. For the umpteenth time in the past three days, Anna thought about holding off telling him. But it seemed the time for delays
and distractions had come and gone. Sebastian urged her to tell William, and she knew he was right. She just didn’t want to be the bearer of bad news while they were all still recovering from the last big decision she had made.

  “We have a bit of a situation, I’m afraid,” she got straight to the point without giving any specifics.

  “Nathan’s infected now and you want to chop his head off with a machete?”

  She bit back her retort, though his words were a low blow if she had ever felt one. He was, after all, the one who had shown up at her apartment and asked such a thing of her. He was the one who had placed the machete in her hands. Was it her fault that she was the one trusted to step up and take the actions he refused to do himself? Who was he to point the finger at her?

  But she held in the bitterness. Tension was thick enough between everyone in the group as it was; no need to start tossing fuel into the fire when they were all hot enough to ignite.

  “The supplies are gone,” she stated simply as if she were merely commenting on the weather.

  “Who do you think took them?”

  It took her a moment to process his statement, and another for her to realize he had interpreted what she had said as meaning that someone had stolen the supply