He walked fine and said his legs didn’t bother him. However he stressed how he really wanted to get clean.
Problem was he didn’t have any clothes.
Gil wasn’t a small man. He was a little bigger than Duke. Since Duke was the man in charge of storage, he found Gil some clothes. They were like a lot of the other storage clothing items. Cargo style pants and tee shirts.
Fearful that he wasn’t healed, I stayed outside the shower door until he finished and then I convinced him to come with me to the lower level of Hive Two. There we could sit in front of the fire. Wood rations be damned, it was what he needed. It was what I needed. It was good to have my friend back.
During our walk back to the Hive, Gil met nearly everyone. Even the children, which seemed to delight him.
Joie was a little bashful with him. Not saying much, I took that as her way of being protective of her father.
Tony was the one person Gil didn’t run into. I was glad because I wasn’t sure how Gil would handle Tony, especially after he found out Tony and I were a couple.
I cared and loved for Gil and I just wanted to be considerate of his feelings.
On the way to Hive Two, we stopped at the Switch room.
Gil asked Tom, “Could you contact Damnation Alley 113 and tell them that Senator Jenner arrived at your station?”
“Yes, sir, right away, sir.” Tom replied in an official way that I never heard him use.
“That is what I need to ask you about,” I said.
“We’ll talk. I’m sure you have questions.” Gil said. “I do too. I also want to talk about Tony.”
Peter’s ‘Uh oh’, cause me to snap a glare his way.
“Uh, oh, I mean…” Peter covered. “I forgot it was my turn to feed the chickens.”
“Then go feed them,” I said.
“In a minute. Maybe I’ll hang out with you two. This could be interesting.”
“Maybe not.” I pushed into his chair, swirling him to face the computer.
“It’s nice,” Gil stated. “To see how well you all get along. Being so close.”
Tom cleared his throat and Peter chuckled.
I thought, ‘Assholes’, then took hold of Gil’s arm. “Gil, I have so many questions and I know everyone is curious. So since they are, let’s you and I go talk.”
We walked to the Hive and I told him how the walking and stairs would become common place. We stopped by the kitchen, I fixed us a warm drink and then we went below to talk.
“When they told me you never arrived at the shelter,” I said. “I feared the worst. I hoped for the best, but feared the worst.”
We sat on the sofa, a cushion apart yet facing each other.
“I wanted to call you but all our phones were seized during the holding process. We didn’t know where the main bunker was. All I knew was it was in Texas. I knew after the dust settled and the sun returned, they wanted to be able to start a society near the Gulf.”
“The weather would be warmer there. Peter told me that.”
“It was planned for a long time, Anna. So it was laid out.” Gil told me. “They moved us right after I talked to you last. They took the phone, like I said, and I was worried that you weren’t making it. You know with the van and all. And I’m sitting there you know, and I’m thinking. What am I doing? The world is getting smacked upside the head with a giant rock, things will never be the same and I am gonna be sitting with the first branch of the Government while you and Jackson were here. Did I want to be part of the rebuilding process and chance never seeing you again? Or did I just want to go with what I had already built, and be with you guys?”
“So you came here. But what took so long?”
“Okay, first…” Gil held up his hand. “I was in a holding center. I had my bag ready. We were in Phoenix. The news hadn’t broken yet. They had taken us to the airport and I bailed. I didn’t have my cell phone and since you change your cell number more than a drug dealer…” He paused and smiled. “I didn’t know which one to call, so I called the house. When there was no answer, I called the police and they sent a car over. An hour later, I had reserved a car in Charlotte, because that was the first flight east I could get. I thought I had it timed. Then the news broke mid flight and a lot of flights were grounded. Mine included.”
“Where did you end up?”
“Atlanta. Now, try being in Atlanta in the middle of that crisis. At that point it didn’t matter who I was. Getting eight hundred miles north might as well have been ten thousand without transportation.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
I made a sign and kept hitching rides. But then, you know, roadblocks, curfews, I was counting the hours to impact and only made it to West Virginia.”
“I know that feeling.”
“Yeah, the best laid plans of mice and men, huh?”
“Where were you when it hit?”
“Luckily, I caught a ride with a fellow named George who was trying to get to New York. We had made it deep to a good spot when the car died. We were about twenty miles from Greenbrier Mountain resort.”
“Oh, Gil, that was smart thinking.” I said. “Really.”
“Yeah, by the time we made it. The fire bombs were sailing from the sky. Trees were going up left and right. It got hot and George suffered some really bad burns. But we made it. They let us in and we waited out the heat there. Once the heat starting cooling and the fires dying, we knew we had a couple days and that was it. It got too dark.”
“You left the safety of Greenbrier?”
“Yes, but that didn’t last too long. I have been fortunate. People rise to the occasion. A family in West Virginia took us in under the condition that we helped chop as much wood as humanly possible up until the cold came. Chopping wood in the dark is not easy, but we did it. That was where I was up until a few days ago.”
“What happened to George?”
Gil lowered his head. “He died. He caught pneumonia, we figured from all the smoke and his burns got infected. We tried to help him. Hell, Anna, the father of that family had it together. Plus he had worked for a processed food company and was well stocked. He let me borrow his old pickup and that got me right outside of Pittsburgh. I walked the last twenty or so miles. Took two days.”
I laid my hand over his, sipped my beverage then stood up. “This place, Gil. I don’t know what the other places are like, but this one is a life saver. The work you did, I can’t thank you enough. The little special touches. The pictures. Everything. You had it planned, like you always did.”
“Except to lose my son.”
Instinctively my head dropped.
“We’ll get through this Anna.”
“I know.”
“And to pass the time, there are a bunch of Easter eggs planted here. By that, I don’t mean real eggs.”
I took a moment and after composing myself again, I looked at Gil. “You deserve to be there. This is your place. It works well. We’re really clicking here and rolling. We are getting things ready for the long term.”
“I see that.” Gil stood. “I just…” he chuckled. “I’m trying to figure out how all these people ended up here. Not that there are a ton, but more than I thought there would be. And none of them look any the worse for wear, so that tells me they’ve been here since the onset.”
“Well, you know me.”
“Never can say no?” Gil asked.
“Yep. Some had a person they couldn’t leave behind. And well, it was a good thing we had this many people. When it got hot and the fire fell from the sky, people came here. I let them in. Against what a lot of the others wanted, I let them in.”
Gil stepped to me. “You make it sound like it backfired on you.”
“It did. And again, against what I was told, I trusted these people and they turned on us. We fought them.”