Isolation | Book 4 | Holding On Jones, Nathan (best smutty novels txt) 📖

down . . . we might be getting to the tail end of this outbreak.”

“Fingers crossed,” her counterpart in the camp said, then signed off to get back to work.

She set down the radio and leaned back over her figures, doing some quick math. As of this morning, the fourth since the outbreak began, there were 571 Zolos cases. There had only been 93 new ones in the last 24 hours, and in the last 12 only 31.

Fingers crossed, that meant their containment efforts had been completely effective, and within the next few hours the new cases would peter out to none.

Moving into Stanberry would be less stressful without having to worry about that. Although Ellie still needed to plan the shift rotations for the day, which was getting harder since a lot of volunteers were dropping out; she wasn't sure if that was from exhaustion or because the crisis had been going on for days now, but she was having to do a lot more wheedling to find enough people to get things done.

First things first, though, she figured it was late enough in the morning where she could contact Darby and he'd be awake and moving on with his day.

Feeling a bit nervous, Ellie picked up her radio again and caught Hal's eye, motioning him over. He patted Todd on the back and stood from the fire, making his way over. “I still have my doubts they'll agree to this,” he told her.

She had her own doubts, but she tried to sound confident even so. “They promised when we got here that when we went through our 21 days we could enter town.”

“Yeah.” He wrapped an arm around her and pressed the side of his head against hers. “Fingers crossed.”

Ellie nodded and raised the radio. “Feldman to Mayor Darby.”

He had to agree to let them in. He had to. She couldn't keep sitting out here with her son, outside either of the places offering protection from Jay and his marauding band.

There was a crackle. “Darby here. What can I do for you, Ms. Feldman?”

Hal squeezed her shoulder encouragingly and she took a breath. “I'm calling to let you know my group has gone through our 21 days of isolation. We'd like to enter the safety of town.”

There was a long silence. “You must realize that's impossible,” the Mayor finally said.

She felt her face flush. “Could I ask why?”

“Well, obviously the danger of you bringing Zolos inside the barricades is too great to risk.”

Hal swore quietly, and across the camp Cara snorted almost triumphantly, even though she'd been complaining about their vulnerable position ever since they moved camps. But that was pretty much par for the course for her.

Ellie grit her teeth. “We've very carefully maintained isolation, just like you asked for. And you agreed that at the end of isolation people in the camp or surrounding areas could enter Stanberry.”

“Yes, that's true,” Darby said slowly. “But you've also changed locations twice since then. You're also sitting a stone's throw from a major Zolos outbreak. I'm afraid it's just too risky.”

“We can't stay here!” she snapped, hoping she wasn't giving away too much to Jay over the radio with vague terms. “We have young children with us.”

The Mayor sounded weary. “I'm sorry, Ellie. You know how much we want to help you, but we just can't take that risk. Maybe once the outbreak has died down and this situation with Jay is resolved.”

By then that bald maniac might have shot up this camp! She'd suspected that with how ridiculously overcautious everyone in Stanberry was, there was a chance they'd refuse even after her group had finished their 21 days.

But suspecting and seeing her fears confirmed were two very different things.

Which begged another important question. “What about the people in the camp who've done their 21 days? They haven't changed locations, and we've been very careful about maintaining isolation.”

“Your outbreak that's hit almost six hundred people and claimed over four hundred lives so far would suggest otherwise,” Darby replied patiently.

“That's not an answer,” Ellie did her best not to shout. “What about them?”

“For the time being, no one will be entering Stanberry. Again, I'm sorry.”

“You can take your apologies and sh-” she started, then snapped her mouth shut. She was so furious that she simply flicked to the camp's frequency without saying anything more.

“The longer we stay, the more Stanberry draws a clear line between them and everyone outside,” Cara said. “We should just cut ties with the town completely and move the camp. Let them deal with Jay on their own. They're not giving us anything, so it wouldn't affect us one way or another.”

For once Ellie had a hard time disagreeing with Hal's mom. Although there was no way they could move the camp in the middle of an outbreak, even if everyone who had friends and family inside Stanberry would agree to such a drastic measure.

Hal hugged her a bit closer. “I'll dig the berms around our camp a bit higher, and dig another latrine,” he said quietly. “We'll be fine here.”

“I guess we'll have to be,” she replied. With a sigh, she squeezed his arm, then reluctantly straightened. “I need to plan these shift schedules.”

✽✽✽

Nick lowered his binoculars, nodding to Chet. “That definitely seems like it could be their camp,” he whispered.

They were five or so miles northwest of Stanberry, at the top of a tall hill overlooking a large pond surrounded on three sides by thickets of scraggly undergrowth. Through that undergrowth they could just make out a road leading to the open field on the western side of the pond, where they caught hints of parked vehicles and flashes of colored cloth.

Unless some group of refugees had set up there, an unusually large one considering everyone's leeriness about grouping up due to fears of Zolos, that was almost definitely the Wensbrook survivors.

Chet slapped Nick's arm in confirmation, and together they wriggled back down the far side of the hill and crept from cover