Apokalypsis | Book 6 | Apokalypsis 6 Morris, Kate (cheapest way to read ebooks TXT) 📖

stayed home instead of joining in their dinner party. He seemed a little odd, in her opinion.

“Sorry we didn’t find as much as everyone had hoped,” Elijah apologized as soon as they were settled into the living room furniture, the dining chairs, or at the island of her former apartment. She was glad to see that Spencer and Renee were getting comfortable and thinking of the place as their own. “Someone got to that semi before we could again.”

“You guys did fine,” Tristan said as Jane’s father joined them after using the restroom. He seemed tired, and she wondered if fishing all morning and making all that food for everyone wore him out too much. “Don’t worry about it. You got a lot, actually. You did well.”

“We have a lot to go over, so let’s get started,” Spencer suggested as he leaned against the wall. Renee was seated and held a yellow legal pad and pen to take notes.

“Good idea,” Gyles agreed and sat in the chair Roman offered.

“We’ve been coming up with some contingency plans, Spencer, Gyles, and I,” Tristan told them.

“Contingency against what?” Wren asked.

“If this gets worse, if one or more of us lose our homes to vandals or those things,” Spencer explained.

Tristan added, “It seems like there’s more of them down here in this county than we anticipated. I assume most are locals who got sick and couldn’t get to medical care. The medical care that was down here was pretty limited, so their options were, too. Getting to the bigger cities like Canton, Akron, or Cleveland would’ve been almost impossible after a while.”

“I think you’re right about them being locals,” Roman said.

“Expand on that,” Tristan ordered.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Just a hunch. They were hiding today in buildings in town that were dark inside. They probably would’ve known of them ahead of time that they were darker inside and in which ones to hide. Some were in the basement, others in the dry-cleaners under the clothes racks in the production area where it was darker. It seems to me that they might go back to places they know, that they stick with what’s familiar. Same as the ones in the woods like the other night at the bunker. Those ones that came showed up pretty quick after we shot it out with that jerk. They would’ve had to have been within a mile’s walking distance to have heard that.”

“Where would they have been hiding then?” Avery asked. “A house?”

“Don’t know,” Roman admitted. “Maybe a barn or something like that.”

“Like the ones Wren and I ran into in that barn,” Elijah spoke up and then explained that situation to everyone.

“That’s crazy, man. Glad you guys were smart enough to get out of that,” Tristan stated with a shake of his head. “Look, we know they’re sensitive to the light. They aren’t going to come out into it if it hurts their eyes. We’ve seen them do it. I’m sure you all have, too, but it’s not often. What concerns Gyles and me is that some of them seem to be forming small groups. That could be speculative on our part, but they’ve attacked us more than once in multiple numbers, and we’ve seen them clustered together, too.”

“Us, too,” Elijah added. “In the city, before we left it, they did the same. Tried to get in our house in clusters and groups like they were working together. Also chased us through the streets and stuff in small packs or groups.”

His brother, Alex, added, “But we’ve also seen them turn on each other, too.”

“And we’ve seen them upset about one of their own that we’ve killed,” Roman said and got nods.

“Look, we have these walkie-talkies now,” Tristan said and held one up. “We have enough for each house to have one. These are the good ones. We’ll keep these here at the houses and the other ones you guys found for when we’re out on the road, doing a run or something. I want Spencer and Renee to have the fourth one. They’re the eyes and ears for us here as far as being the first house down the driveway, the first one to get past, and the first to see anyone coming. We tested them out this morning, and they work pretty well. I’m not going to say they’re as good as what we used in the Army, but they’ll do in a pinch. Before everyone leaves tonight, we’ll go over how to use them.”

“Sounds good to me,” Roman said.

Alex added, “Yeah, we’re also remote and have no driveway gate or fence coming in that would stop anyone. At least here you have that, and Gyles’s place is so damn remote, you’d pass the driveway ten times before you saw it.”

“Yeah, we need to do something about that at your place,” Tristan said. “With this winter being so hard, I think we’ll have to wait till spring to do much about it. Can’t dig in a post if the ground’s frozen like it is. Until then, if you have trouble, get us on one of the walkies.”

“Thanks, man,” Elijah said, although Wren was still silent on all subjects being discussed.

“Oh, hey,” Tristan added. “Make sure you keep them on the charging docks. We can’t afford for them to go dead, what with the power not being reliable. If you don’t have it on you, keep it on the charger, especially when the electric’s working.”

“As far as added security goes, even simple things like a string stretched out between trees with some cans, or anything that clanks around noisily can work as a good alert system,” Gyles suggested. “It sounds hokey, but it works. We have a good guard dog, so do you, Wren, but these folks don’t. Or, at least, we don’t know if they do yet until something comes up. You’ll see soon enough, I reckon, if those two mutts will alert y’all to danger.”

Wren’s dog was sitting at her feet where it normally rested.