“Shut up.” Nora snapped.
Jason stood. “Nora, come on. He was making a joke. Lightening things up. You of all people should understand that.”
“Don’t.” She spun to him.
“Don’t what? Don’t tell you to calm down. You haven’t been yourself since Blake told you Rick was alive. You knew that. Why the change?”
“Because when I knew this before, we had a plan. Now we don’t have a plan. There’s no end game. What’s our end game here, people?” she tossed up her hands. “I don’t know it and it is driving me nuts.”
John shook his head. “We don’t need an end game. Not every situation has an end game.”
“No, you’re wrong,” Nora argued. “Even before all this. Each day we woke up we had an end game. We get up, go to work, and have our day, with the end game being our nightly routine. No matter who you are. Your day, week, had an end game.”
Meredith spoke up. “I think what she’s saying makes sense. We’re spending our days going place to place. Our plan was to find our families. We found out about our families. Then the plan was to find this Salvation. But now that’s not an option. We are strangers in this world. This is not our world anymore. So we can’t even plan on what’s next.”
“Thank you,” Nora said. “I have to know what is next. I have to have a goal. I want to go to Salvation but I don’t even know why that’s not an option now, except for the words of a stranger.” She looked at Blake. “No offense.”
“None taken,” Blake said, still sitting by the fire in his own world.
“We’ll know soon enough,” Jason said. “When Malcolm gets here. Until then, I don’t see why we can’t come up with a game plan.”
“I’ve been saying the same thing,” John added. “Come up with a long term plan. This is not worthy of freaking out about Nora. Really.”
“Really? Then tell me where?” Nora asked. “Where do we go? What is an option? Do you know? I don’t, we don’t know anything. Apparently Salvation raids towns. Towns have to hide. Out east things are so bad you can die. Is this world even survivable for us? I mean really, what kind of world is this now?”
His strong voice answered as Hunter stepped to the circle. “Yours. Still your world. Just different. Make it work. Worry about today. Tomorrow is tomorrow. Worry then. Goal today… live, eat…” he handed her an apple. “And no hatabitigan.” He shook his head and walked off.
Everyone was silent.
Meredith exhaled. “In so many words, the age old saying was just repeated by a new age man. Don’t worry about tomorrow, live for today.”
Nora stared at the apple in her hand. “Hatabitgan? Was I the only one who heard that word?”
“Yeah,” Jason said. “What the hell is hatabitigan?”
“I think,” John said. “Hatabitigan is our new friend’s language for… no bitching. Just a guess.”
Nora groaned. “You’re probably right.” She glanced at Hunter who had returned to doing his thing. Just like hatabitigan was his way to say no complaining, Nora was also pretty sure, handing her the apple to consume was his symbolic way kind of making her eat crow.
Maggie knew Malcolm wasn’t happy with her, the entire camp was quiet, even Clark with all his historical arrogance said very little. It was unspoken, that the termination of the life pods was wrong. At least it seemed that way to Malcolm. Everyone was not ‘okay’ with it. Except Maggie and Trey.
How could Trey, his son, find the logic in the killing of a hundred innocent and unaware people?
The same son who lied about Malcolm’s identity was suddenly fearful of being a rebel? Trey’s argument wasn’t so much for the people of Salvation, but rather those who still lived outside the walls. The farmers, the soldiers, and the scattered communities. Did they deserve to face the reemergence of a virus that was believed eradicated?
Malcolm was fine with Maggie knowing his dismay. It gave him an excuse to go to the warehouse where they kept the solar carts. Thinking Malcolm was just staying busy to occupy his mind, Maggie let him go.
Malcolm didn’t just tinker with the carts, he prepared them for travel. But not for him.
He knew exactly what he had to do and laid out his plan.
By midnight everyone was asleep in their portable tents. Colonel Norris took watch at midnight and walked a perimeter counter clockwise fifty yards south.
Malcolm unloaded supplies from the van every time Norris walked out of sight. He didn’t remove them all, because he himself needed supplies. Malcolm could take a buggy, but the truth was he had a nine hundred mile hike to Illinois. The terrain would be overgrown and rough, and he needed to go without stopping. Something the van could do. Solar energy during the day, corn fuel at night. The fact that he was leaving the solar buggies would afford Malcolm a chance to stop closer to Illinois.
By two am, Malcolm had removed all that he was going to and left a note in the warehouse on the specifications of the buggies. They wouldn’t work for several hours. All he needed to do was get in that van and go. Norris wouldn’t shoot at the van.
It was time.
After leaving another note for Trey, Malcolm waited until he didn’t see Norris and with his bag in hand he darted around to the driver’s door of the van.
Norris stood there.
Shit, Malcolm thought.
“You know,” Norris said. “For the last two hours I watched you take stuff from the van. Good to know you aren’t leaving us high and dry.”
“I’m not a prisoner here.”
“No, but right now, you’re a thief.”
“I’m sorry. I’m just panicking. I told her where I was meeting the others. I put them in danger,” Malcolm said.
“So you need to cut them off. Warn them.”
“Yeah, because I honestly think they’re in trouble if they’re found.”
“Orders are to arrest them so they can be tried, but…” Norris lowered his voice. “I can’t say that other orders won’t come in to just eliminate them. They are a threat.”
“We don’t know that.”
“Can we take a chance? What you need to do is take them and disappear. It will take twenty-four hours to get a rescue crew here to haul us out. After that, they’ll come for you.”
Malcolm shook his head. “I’m confused. Why are you telling me this?”
Norris sidestepped allowing Malcolm access to the driver’s door. “You stole the van. I’ll take heat for that. After that I’m gonna have to follow orders. Understand?”
Malcolm nodded.
“You’ll lose your son over this.”
“My son hasn’t had me in thirty years. I righted the wrong between us. I’m good and hopeful that one day those in Salvation will give up the walls.”
“Not while you and the others are out there. Now go.”
Malcolm shook his hand and thanked him, and without hesitation, got in the van and left. He didn’t understand why Norris would help him, but Malcolm wasn’t going to question him any further.
While everyone slept the big man of few words held post. Nora wondered if he understood what was going on, but didn’t convey it as much. Hunter watched and didn’t miss a beat from what Nora gathered. They were having their first night, of which she believed would be many in the fort. It had old world charm and clearly was set up for when the trade groups came in.
John explained that to Hunter, who responded to John he knew who was bad.
But Nora felt bad for her outburst over dinner. It wasn’t like her. She typically dealt with things. It weighed so heavily on her mind that she couldn’t sleep, not even after two solid drinks of moonshine.
She wanted to speak to Hunter, get to know him, and she hadn’t had the chance to have much one on one communication with him other than being told she would break, or that she was bitching.