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Saff exhaled, watching the people in the garden at the house beside them. “It’s concerning.”
Maddie adjusted her hand on her arm. “But there’s nothing else you can do? No more medication or anything?”
Saff shook her head. “Not with what they have here. She really should be induced at this point, but I can’t do that here.”
Maddie frowned, her hand tightening slightly. “I hope it all goes okay when she finally does go into labor.”
“Yeah,” Saff breathed. “Me too.”
***
“I told you, Marcus didn’t think it was anything,” Josh gritted, his voice rising in frustration.
Saff’s eyes bounced between him and James as she took a bite of the food on her plate. They’d been arguing the entire lunch about what they’d seen on the other side of the wall that morning.
It wasn’t that James didn’t believe him, but his approach was much more measured than the one Josh wanted to take.
And knowing what she did, she was on Josh’s side.
James sighed. “Well, there’s not much more we can do, then.”
Josh scoffed, folding his arms tightly over his chest. “So what, we just wait for raiders to come and start killing?”
Saff stiffened, her hand tightening around the fork.
During their raids, she’d never killed someone who hadn’t come at her first. And to her knowledge, her father and the rest of them hadn’t either. Or at least, she’d never seen them do it.But as the weeks turned into months, she’d seen a change in them.
They’d slowly become more comfortable with the idea.
And in their run-ins with other raiding parties, she come across many others who had been very comfortable with killing right from the start.
The look on Erin’s face darkened as she set her fork down on the plate in front of her.
James threw her a sympathetic glance, then looked back at Josh. “What do you suggest we do? Leave here and have no protection at all? You want your sister to go back out there when we just barely managed to get her back?”
Maddie sighed, leaning her head against the back of her chair with an exasperated look. “Don’t bring me into this.”
Josh glared at him. “You said you got through on the radio and talked to the guys at the other safe zone.” His eyes flicked around the dining hall, then his voice lowered slightly. “That safe zone is on an island. That’d be much safer than here.”
Saff stopped eating, her eyes shooting up at him in surprise.
She’d come across a few of the military run safe zones since the outbreak, but all of them had broken down eventually, either from raiders, zombies, or just dissent among their citizens. Or some combination of the three. But she’d never heard of one that was separated from the mainland. Which was surprising, since her father and his friends had contacts in most of them. They usually knew which ones were being maintained and which had been abandoned or overrun.
Usually there weren’t any that lasted more than a couple of months.
“Yes,” James hissed, “but that’s a far way to travel. Just trying to get there would be an enormous risk.”
Josh ran a rough hand through his short brown hair. “Staying here is also a risk.”
***
Saff opened the door to the house and stepped over the threshold, waiting for Maddie to follow. A wide yawn escaped her mouth as they walked into the living room and dropped down onto the couch.
The day had left her utterly exhausted, but not in a bad way. Not in the way that zombies and fighting for her life made her exhausted. Instead, it was reminiscent of the exhaustion she used to feel after a long and exciting day at the hospital. When she had more work and patients than any normal person could possibly handle, yet she somehow found a way.
She shut her eyes, leaning her head back against the cushions.
The feeling of a good day.