No Journey Today

I just didn’t get it done. I’ll work twice as hard next week.

One of the problems is that I’m having a hard time focusing. I’ve got this great idea for a book kicking around in my head, and I’m also getting to the part of “Journey” that is the whole reason I wanted to write the book. The two creative worlds do regular battle for conscious processing time in my brain.

I need more time to write…

How Do You Organize?

I’m looking for a good way to organize all the fiction that I write/have written. Right now I just have a directory and everything gets stored haphazardly in subdirectories there.

I guess I could use a plain old spreadsheet, but that isn’t really as extensible as I want. I’ve got one submission tracker that I haven’t really tried yet, but again, I don’t think it tracks everything that I want.

Here’s what I want it to track.

• Story Title
• Short Description
• Location (Where I saved the little beast)
• Complete/In Progress
• Length
• Notes about story (i.e. submit it to Asimov’s & The New Yorker when finished)
• Date/place of publication (with a link if possible)
• List of places/times it’s been submitted

Any ideas?

The Journey of St. Laurent, Chapter 34

Note: Finally.

For those of you who haven’t read any of the Journey Of St. Laurent before: You are now reading an online serial pulp novel. If you didn’t start at the beginning, you may want to do so. Chapter 1:  Down By The Bay. This serial is the sequel to my first novel, Oasis.

Also, I broke my own first rule of editing here – I didn’t read it aloud to myself before posting. Let’s just hope I’ve kept the typos to a minimum.

Chapter 34 – Bumpy Ride

I really didn’t want to let on that London had saved out a vial of the virus, so I made sure to give Rhett the stink eye when I jerked open the door.

Rhett didn’t seem to notice. He just hurried us down the stairs and out the front.

A large military transport helicopter touched down in the middle of the pavement a couple of blocks down. Soldiers immediately poured out. Parked on the street were a number of other military vehicles, including a couple of bigger transport trucks, and several Humvees.

Did the president reconsider? Are they here to help out? Or are they just here for us? I shook my head. Of course they’re here for us.

Just outside the hotel was parked a blue and primer gray El Camino. Next to the car stood a young man in a black wife beater staring at the chopper. The wind from the rotors tossed around his shoulder length hair a bit, and he looked pretty uncomfortable.

Rhett opened the passenger door. “Let’s go.”

The long-haired kid started at the command, tore open the driver’s door, and flung himself inside.

Rhett held the door and motioned for London to climb in. “Come on, we’ve got to get moving.”

London hesitated then gave me a questioning look.

I shrugged and motioned to the open door as well.

She climbed in.

I hopped in the back, careful not to let my right thigh bang into anything, which was harder than you might think, because the bed was partially full of random scrap metal and logs.

I pushed some trash away so I could have a place to sit next to the cab. “Why do people even buy these instead of getting a real truck?”

Rhett jumped in on the other side. “I know, they’re ugly as sin.” He hit the top of the cab twice.

The car sputtered to life and the driver punched the gas.

My head jerked with the motion and I steadied myself on a big piece of rusty something-or-other. I hope this crap back here doesn’t shift too much.

As soon as we pulled away from the curb, one of the Humvees started up and pulled onto the road behind us.

Our driver must have seen it too, because he floored it again. The acceleration felt kind of like the stretching of a rubber band, but it was enough to slide several pieces of wood and metal toward the tailgate.

I hope his driving smooths out. I really don’t want to chance anything with the vial. I braced my arms on the sides of the bed and fought the urge to continually stare at my Velcroed pocket. Deep down, I was certain that Rhett would notice.

The Humvee stayed about thirty feet behind us, no flashing lights, no commands to stop, and no gun waving. The driver didn’t seem too concerned with catching us or stopping us. It was more like he was only shooing us out of town.

Two more giant military helicopters flew overhead.

Of course, the twerp at the wheel of the El Camino must have thought this was a life or death chase. That, or he was just a really bad driver. He took turn after turn too fast, and braked seemingly at random. Every time he did something crazy the heavy garbage shifted around.

Still, I was able to hold on for dear life and keep the pocket with the virus from any of the shifting refuse.

Untill we hit the mother pothole just out side of town.

Our driver slammed on the brakes sending a load of metal and logs my way.

I extended a foot to redirect the path of the biggest log.

The car bounced down and up what had to be a six inch deep hole in the road. My butt and legs were airborne and stuff was shifting under me.

I twisted mid-air as best I could and my left cheek came down hard on something solid.

The contact was going to bruise and it might even be bleeding. At least I knew the vial would remain intact.

Yet another victory that feels like an injury.

The Humvee cruised over the pothole without even dipping.

Rhett pounded on the hood again and shouted something about slowing down.

Our driver must have figured it out because he took the edge off the speed for the rest of the short trip.

The Humvee stopped and turned around at the last curve before the camp.

Rhett looked over at me and made an attempt to shrug.

Everywhere I looked were trees, split up by the occasional cleared field. The terrain was all gentle hills that backed up on genuine Appalachian mountains. It would have struck me a quite picturesque if I wasn’t so worried about, you know, pretty much everything.

Last night I had been suprised at the number of people that had gathered to such a remote place on such short notice. And if I had been shocked last night, I was completely blown away in the daylight.

The field was filled with row upon row of campers, tents and RVs. There had to be at least two hundred of them, with probably a hundred and fifty more non-sleeper vehicles. Whoever had organized the camp had really done a good job. Over against one side there were several guys digging pits. At the far end of the field was the hill and behind it, the mountains.

The El Camino slowed and we bounced onto the field.

To my left I noticed a man playing catch with a little boy. The boy looked happy, but the man looked like death warmed over. He was wearing faded jeans and a polo shirt. Every time he tossed the ball, he would look first over his shoulder at a gun that was sitting on a camp chair and then at the sky. His eyes were dark with puffy bags underneath. Still, he kept on his fake smile and played ball with his son.

It occured to me that he could have been anybody. He wasn’t a paramilitary nutjob of a gun worshiping lunatic. A week ago he was probably just an accountant or a real estate agent or a programmer. Now he was just a dad looking for a way to protect his kid.

The more I looked around, the more I noticed that he was the norm here. Not the camo pants and dog tag crowd. Just regular men and women joining in the fight that the government wasn’t willing to risk.

And why not? What are they afraid of?

Rhett pounded on the hood again and the car stopped next to a big canvas tent.

We jumped out of the back.

London kicked open the door before anyone else could get to it. She scrambled out of the car, and glared back. “And if you ever even talk to me again, I’ll break your smug little nose.” She slammed the door.

The long-haired kid drove off.

I pointed to the car. “What was that all about?”

London folded her arms. “Don’t want to talk about it.”

Rhett narrowed his eyes and stared at me for a second. “Before we go in, I gotta know. How dangerous is that virus, really?”

I shook my head and tried to stop wondering what the long haired kid had said. After all, I had Rhett’s full attention for a second.

Maybe if I lay it on thick, he’ll be willing to help, whether Jex likes the idea or not. “There’s no cure. It works fast. It tore apart Oasis in the matter of a few days. And the people that have been infected are, well I don’t even know how to describe them. They’re soulless, restless, and violent. They don’t seem to be able to think other than use what is already a part of their muscle memory. And they don’t feel pain. For lack of a better word they are zombies and they are fleshy virus spreading machines.”

London frowned and touched my shoulder.

Rhett raised his bulky arms and cracked his knuckles. “So why are zombies better than aliens? What if it gets out?”

I shrugged. “A zombie can’t fly a spaceship or pull a trigger. It can’t strategize or make deals with coward politicians. And yes, it would be devastating if the virus infected a large city, but I don’t know how else to even the odds.”

He clenched his jaw for a moment, then nodded to the tent. “Well, let’s see if we can’t figure out what he did with your WMD.”

I looked over at London. “You ready?”

She lifted a balled fist. “Oh, I’m ready. Are you?”

“As ready as I’m going to get.”

We followed Rhett into the tent.

---

Keep Reading! Chapter 35 is here.

Tools of the Trade: Backing up

I’m sure everybody here has lost a hard drive or two. We’ve all experienced major crashes. I have lost all manner of half finished stories over the years. The only real protection you can have against this is to back up your work regularly.

My first solution

My first backup solution was a little thing called synctoy. Synctoy is available for free from Microsoft. Synctoy was neat, and did what I wanted, but was ridiculously slow, like 30 minutes slow. I haven’t tried it for a while, so maybe they’ve sped it up by now.

My next solution

I used to use Toucan, as it’s a part of the PortableApps.com suite and it’s really easy to use. The only problem: it is slow, slow, slow. It took like 20+ plus minutes to back up my open projects directory. Granted, there’s all sorts of stuff in there, including the testing web server I use for work and many file-intensive web scripts .

Speaking of PortableApps, I use a fork of that project called geek.menu. It automatically integrates with Truecrypt, so that when I plug in my backup drive, it prompts me for a password. If I type it in right, it mounts the encrypted portion of the drive (which is where I keep all my backups) and loads up the menu in the system tray. Form that menu, I can run a portable version of OpenOffice, firefox, Toucan, all sorts of stuff. It’s totally slick, and makes me feel like a worthy nerd.

Anyway, as I said Toucan took forever to run (albeit it ran a little faster than synctoy), but I was willing to take the time, because I did not want another data calamity in my life. It also had the benefit of being portable, which for no good reason makes things attractive to me.

Enter rsync

Then I learned about rsync. It’s a super powerful (yet easy to use) backup tool. The problem is that it’s command line only. While I’m not such a graphical interface snob that I refuse to use command line tools, I do avoid it whenever possible. (I’m only a level 20 nerd I suppose…)

However, I located grsync, which is a rsync with a windows GUI frontend.

Grsync performs the exact same same operations as  synctoy and toucan, but in 1/20th the time. That’s right, it backs up my open projects directory in less than one minute.

Here’s the settings I use for grsync:

Did I mention it’s fast?

So anyway, that’s the tool I now use to backup my work. I backup onto a 128 mb Toshiba USB external hard drive. I haven’t tried to run it from the external drive yet, so I don’t know if it’s portable.

download grsync for windows

How do y’all protect your work?

StoryHacking Again.

Sorry for the long absence. I’ve dropped about four other projects and now I’m ready to focus again on this site and on fiction. The next chapter is almost done and it’ll be up on Friday. I’ve got some other ideas for the blog, too. More on that as I figure things out.

The Journey of St. Laurent, Chapter 33

Author’s note:

For those of you who haven’t read any of the Journey Of St. Laurent before: You are now reading an online serial pulp novel. If you didn’t start at the beginning, you may want to do so. Chapter 1:  Down By The Bay. This serial is the sequel to my first novel, Oasis. As it ends up, getting to see the boss is pretty easy when you’re willing to assault someone. At least, that’s how it worked out for us.

Thanks be to DarcKnyt for his edits last time, and to Maelstrom, Tyler, Chad, Major, Jordan and Mal for stopping by to say hi. If it weren’t for you folk, I probably would have stopped writing this stuff a long time ago.

Chapter 33 – The Wrong Side of the Bed

Another pounding on the door.

When you’ve had time to wake up and get your head screwed on straight you tend to make better decisions. I didn’t have the luxury of thinking the situation through. All I know is that I wasn’t thinking, I was reacting.

In fact, my whole body shook with rage. I felt the blood boils up my neck and my face tense up. Can’t believe I fell for that. I rushed to the door, tore it open and before I could even process who it was, I swung at the person behind it.

A meaty hand deflected my punch. “What the hell…”

I stumbled off balance into the hallway and growled.

The man stepped back and raised his hands. “Slow down there.” It was Rhett, the tank of a man that worked as producer on Jex’s show.

I balled both my fists and advanced swinging.

The man covered like a boxer and just let my wild blows glance off his arms and iron abs.

I lunged forward and pushed with both hands. “Where is it?”

He hopped back a few feet. “Where is what?”

Like he doesn’t know. It was clear he’d had a lot of hand-to-hand training. I was in over my head and in the back of my mind I knew it, but I was too mad to care. I sucked in a couple breaths then dove at him. “Oh, right!”

He caught me in my dive and slammed me against the wall. “I don’t know what the hell is going on, but you’ve got to settle down or you’re going to get-”

“What did you do with it?”

“Corbin!” London burst from the doorway.

Rhett turned his head to the noise.

It was all the distraction I needed. I jerked my right arm free and swung my elbow for his face.

It connected with his mouth.

His head snapped back and he let go of me.

I braced my arms on his wide chest and pushed.

Before I could move him back, he grabbed my shirt with both hands.

I twisted and tried to pull away, but the hallway was too cramped and he was too strong.

He hefted me up an inch or two then flung me in London’s direction. “Calm down! What did I do with what?”

I landed on my butt and immediately tried to get my feet back under me.

London fell to her knees and wrapped her arms around my chest. “Corbin, don’t!”

I scrambled, but couldn’t quite get to my feet.

London jerked me down. “Corbin, stop it.”

Rhett touched his mouth and looked at his hand. No blood. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

I flared my nostrils and gave him my best death stare. “Where’s the virus?”

“What virus?”

“Don’t be stupid. What virus would I have brought with me?”

London tightened her bear hug. “What?”

I pointed the accusing finger. “In the middle of the night, these lying scum opened the door, cut the chain lock and stole the cooler with the virus.”

I heard London suck in a breath through her nose. “They stole it?”

Rhett raised an eyebrow. “Cut the lock?”

“Who else would it have been?”

London held me a moment then loosened her hold. “It’s okay, we’ll get it back, we’ll figure it out. Calm down.”

I stopped pulling against her. How is she the calm one? Doesn’t she get it?

Rhett lowered his guard and scrunched up his forehead. “You mean you had the virus? The virus? As in the one that…”

“That killed Oasis?”

Rhett frowned and turned half away. “No way, I can’t believe that.”

“And you want me to believe that you didn’t know he stole it?”

“If he did, I sure as hell didn’t know about it. But he tells me everything.” Rhett strode by us and examined the cut chain.

“He was the only one who knew we were here, plus he had access to the keys.”

Rhett stared at the hanging half of a chain on the door. I could practically see the gears grinding to a halt at the sign of the break in.

“…said you might be grumpy…” He shook his head. “He just sent me to get you before…”

London let go. “Corbin, it’ll be okay. We’ll find it. Trust me.”

“Before what?”

Rhett took a couple of slow steps back in the hallway. “Alan wouldn’t do… Are you sure?”

“We pretty much went through hell to get it here, and I’m pretty sure it’s gone now.” I rolled onto my knees and faced London.

Our faces were closer than I expected. In fact, if I had turned any faster we would have had a collision kiss.

London looked me straight in the eye. “Trust me.”

My lips moved involuntarily but I couldn’t speak. Why isn’t she furious?

“Trust me.”

What am I supposed to do? I pushed up to my feet, then helped London stand.

The initial flash of rage had passed. I guess plopping to the ground on your butt helps with that. As I got my breathing under control, it occurred to me that Rhett wasn’t acting – he really didn’t know about the virus. But where did that leave me?

Rhett was staring at the hallway wall and appeared to be just as lost in thought as I was.

London grabbed my hand. “Come in the room a sec.”

Rhett snapped his head to the side. “We’ve got to get moving.”

London raised a finger. “Just hold it a minute, captain butch. We’ll be right out.”

“We don’t have much time.”

London tugged me inside the room and kicked the door shut.

Why should we go with him now, anyway? I must have looked as confused as I felt. “What was that?”

“Look, when it’s not summer and the world isn’t ending, I teach third graders.” She let go of me and walked to the other side of the bed.

“What are you talking about?”

She reached down and lifted the corner the mattress with one hand and pulled out something wrapped in a washcloth. “There’s occasionally a kid that likes his neighbor’s folder or pencil or something. He gets a certain look in his eye, and within a day or two he’ll try to steal it. Jex had the same look last night when he looked at the cooler. I figured he knew we had the cooler, but didn’t know what was in it. I had to do something.”

“You didn’t touch-”

“I was careful.” She dropped the washcloth on the bed. One of the two unbroken vials rolled out.

I stared at it. The sight of the vial was almost a relief. But there was a lot still bothering me. The fact that I still had that vial only dealt with half of the problem. If push came to shove, I could still try find a way to infect the aliens. But what about the virus juice that Jex now had? Should I go with Rhett, play nicely, then try to get it back?

One thing was certain, I’d never again be bothered with the question of whether or not to trust Alan Jex – he’d proved himself a snake. But should I still try to work with him in order to fight to good fight?

And what about Rhett? He seemed like a good enough guy, but could I trust anybody? Did Jex leave him out of the virus theft plot because he knew Rhett would object? Or was it just the less people that knew, the better?

The deafening noise of a low flying helicopter snapped me out of my daze – was London saying something?

Rhett pounded on the door. “We’ve got to go.”

Might as well go with him for now. I carefully bundled the vial back up and put it in the Velcroed packet of my cargo pants. “Thanks, London.”

She nodded for the door. “Let’s go get the rest back.”

---

Keep reading! Chapter 34 is here.

The Process of Writing

I love hearing about process of other writers. Novelr pointed me today to an article on slate about the process Agatha Christie used. It makes me feel better about the many many notebooks, text files, 3×5 cards and other stuff/mess I use.

A Little Inspiration for the Authors Out There

Rhiannon Frater just put up a great post about her journey to getting picked up by Tor.

My Journey to Tor – The Story Behind The Deal

Congratulations to Rhiannon!

Fixed chapter.

Ok, the last chapter now has the proper ending. http://www.storyhack.com/2010/04/02/the-journey-of-st-laurent-chapter-32/

The Journey of St. Laurent, Chapter 32

Author’s note:

For those of you who haven’t read any of the Journey Of St. Laurent before: You are now reading an online serial pulp novel. If you didn’t start at the beginning, you may want to do so. Chapter 1:  Down By The Bay. This serial is the sequel to my first novel, Oasis.As it ends up, getting to see the boss is pretty easy when you’re willing to assault someone. At least, that’s how it worked out for us.

Chapter 32 – The Hostile Hotel

London punched the guy right smack in the middle of the face. He staggered onto his heels and put his hands on his nose.

The other guard brought up his rifle.

I took a step back and raised my hands. “Whoa there, comrade.”

“Hold it right there.”

London threw up her arms. “You’re going to shoot me for punching him?”

“Well-”

She took a step toward the second guard. “Well, what? We both know you’re not. Just get on your radio and tell Jex he has guests.”

The guard stared at us a moment, then took a step back, lowered his gun, and got on his radio.

The punched guard was a bleeder. It took a good ten minutes before he stemmed the flow.

Sure, he’s ready for an alien invasion, but not a nosebleed.

Five minutes after that, a pickup truck pulled up to take us into town where Jex and a few of his lieutenants or commanders or whatever he was calling them were meeting.

The line of vans, campers, and pickup trucks waiting to enter the field was backing up a good quarter mile down the road.

Where are all these people coming from?

We pulled up in front of the only hotel in town. It was a sleepy little place with only a few rooms, a café with big picture windows downstairs, and a wealth of refined old school personality.

The café wasn’t open for business, but Jex and a couple others were in there sitting around a table and pouring over what looked to be maps.

A shot of anger trickled down my spine at the sight of the talk show host. Perhaps I still felt a little offended by the way he had treated me on his show.

We went in the main entrance to the hotel.

The main lobby smelled like cherry and cedar. The furniture looked like it was at least sixty years old, but still in excellent condition. The whole place was a warm step back in time.

To bad I didn’t find this place under different circumstances.

Our guard told us to stay put then threw open the glass paneled door to the café and entered.

The door slammed back shut behind him. The pane rattled like it was going to flop out and break on the floor.

Through the door we could see yelling. All of it directed at our guard. It was too muffled to hear well, but the idea was clear. The guard was a total moron to bring someone out here. Jex stood and leaned forward to get a look at us through the door. He stopped his tirade mid sentence when he recognized me and pushed back his chair.

He was wearing black fatigues with a red, white, and blue armband. He seemed somewhat taller than he had in the studio and he walked toward us with a definite swagger. Maybe he was feeling the rush of power that comes from leading an army of survivalists and lunatics. Or maybe it was just the firearm he had in a holster on his hip.

London leaned over and whispered, “Wow, from his voice on the radio I expected someone-”

I half turned to her. “Fatter?”

She smiled. “Yeah.”

Jex opened the door, shook our hands, and motioned to a sitting area in the back of the lobby. “Can we talk a minute?”

I nearly rolled my eyes. No, we drove the whole way out here just to stare at you. “That’s why we’re here.”

London and I sat on a plush velvet couch.

Jex pulled up a carved wooden chair. “I was afraid you didn’t make it. Word got around about the attack outside of Houston. To be honest, I was shocked that you called. And by the way, that was a really bad idea.”

I crossed my legs and leaned back. “I gathered as much.”

He pointed a finger at me. “Really, you should have known they’d be listening in to my calls.”

“Who, the aliens? How was I supposed-”

“No, the feds.”Jex reached into a pocket, pulled out a pen, and started twiddling with it. “They’ve been keeping the whole alien thing under wraps for years and years, and then I broke the story with just enough detail that they thought I had to have hard evidence. They had no choice but to go public. The thing is, those feds don’t really forgive easily. And of course once the president went on TV, well, why would the aliens operate in secret anymore? So that’s cat’s out of the bag, and they all see it as my fault.”

Man alive, this guy likes to hear himself talk.

London glared at him. “So what is everybody doing in Tennessee?”

“They’ve got a base here with the main entrance one hill over from the camp. As soon as I read where to go in that packet you delivered, I booked the whole hotel and made arrangements for the field we’re using as a camp.” Jex raised his eyebrows pointed to the cooler sitting by my foot. “I take it you’ve got in there what I think you’ve got in there?”

I glanced down. “Yes it is, but go back. You mean a base for the extraterrestrials? Why did we set them up with a base? And why does the government take their side in all these attacks? Why aren’t the Marines here to carry out an attack rather than a bunch of, you know, you guys?”

He stayed focused on the cooler. “You’d better leave that with me until we decide whether or not to use it.”

Unbelievable. “Wait, wait, wait. Not use it? If the aliens are so scared of it that they’ll bomb a neighborhood minutes after establishing a peace agreement, don’t you think we should make their fears-”

“To be fair, I don’t think they know exactly what it is.”

“Well, I didn’t come all this way to hand over the most dangerous biological weapon that has ever existed without knowing exactly how and when it’s going to be used.”

Jex balled up a fist and banged it on the arm rest. “And I’m not going to let someone I don’t trust completely bring something that dangerous into my camp.”

London scooted forward so fast she almost came off the couch. “And didn’t you say that we are already at war? That we needed to fight with everything-”

Jex raised his hands. “Look. I didn’t know if you’d show up. So I started evaluating other strategies. I’m not saying I won’t use it. I’m just saying I want to know where it is in case it comes to that. And we’ll know soon enough if it is going to come to that.”

My nostrils flared. “And how are you going to protect it if they hit the camp?”

“We have more than enough firepower there to take down one of the smaller UFOs.”

“How do you even know that?”

Alan Jex folded his muscular arms and gave me his best ‘I’m in charge here’ look. “It was in that packet you delivered. There was one in China brought down with small arms fire. You just can’t use steel or steel jacketed ammo very well. It gets caught up in the enemy’s magnetic shield.”

“I’m still the only one here that has a full appreciation of what this virus can do. I should be the one to handle it.”

He stood. “Why, because you’ve had tactical training?”

I jumped to my feet. “Oh, and you’ve had medical hazmat training?”

I glared at Jex.

He glared right back.

London grabbed my arm. “Let’s go Corbin. Apparently they don’t want your help.”

I crouched, grabbed the cooler, and took a backward step toward the door.

Jex clenched his jaw and popped his knuckles.

I took another step back. “I could help, you know. You don’t have to control every last thing.”

London gave me another tug and nodded at Jex. “Wish I could say it was nice to meet you.”

We turned and walked toward the door.

“Wait.”

I glanced back.

Jex grabbed the bridge of his nose and shook his head. “All right. Hold on, you two. I’m sorry, things are stressful and I’m not quite myself. You got a place to sleep tonight?”

“Not exactly.”

“Okay. If you want you can stay here in the hotel. There’s an open room upstairs. We can talk again tomorrow after-” Jex stopped himself and cocked his head to the side. “After we both get some sleep.”

I got the distinct feeling that I shouldn’t trust him blindly. However, it was late and sleeping outside on the ground didn’t really appeal to me. Neither did knocking door to door in this dinky town asking for a couch to sleep on. I nodded.

“Hold on a second.” Jex went behind the counter and produced a key. “Room four. I think it’s on the left upstairs.”

London let go of my arm to take the key. “So why isn’t the president on our side?”

“Good question.” Jex shrugged, took one more glance at the cooler, then turned. “Get some sleep.”

The upstairs fit exactly with the lobby. It was adorned with intricate crown molding and antique fixtures.

Our room was larger than I would have expected, but it still only had the one bed.

I sighed as I closed the door and locked the chain lock. “I guess I’ll take the couch. At least this one has a couch. Better than that chair in the last motel room we shared. You know, or the floor of your Dad’s RV.”

London made a point of looking around the room, then turned to me and pursed her lips. “No, we can share the bed.”

I raised an eyebrow.

London gave me a less than half-hearted slap with a very tired smile. “But don’t be getting any ideas. We’ll divide the sheets and sleep burrito style, with your opening facing one side and my opening facing the other.”

I set the cooler on the nightstand, drank as much water as I could and made up the bed according to London’s directions. “You know, this is really more of a taco than a burrito.”

“Shut up. It’s a burrito.”

I finished getting myself ready then crawled into my side. A tiny temptation in the back of my tired head told me that I should be attempting some kind of hanky panky.

London was still fussing about getting herself ready.

Maybe I’ll just close my eyes for ten minutes first, then see how it goes.

I was still in my burrito and laying on my side when I awoke.

Through the squinting I could tell the sun was already up. An extra weight pressed on my hip.

I turned my head and peeled my eyes half open.

The extra weight was London’s leg. Apparently she had abandoned her burrito, stretched out, and claimed most of the bed for herself.

I slid out from under London’s smooth leg, put my feet on the floor, and stretched.

Something wasn’t right.

I scanned around the room.

Why can’t I put my finger on it? What is wrong here?

And then I saw it. Or rather, I didn’t see it.

The cooler is gone. The virus-

An impatient knock sounded at the door.

I jerked my head around to get a look at the door.

The chain lock had been cut and now dangled in two pieces.

My stomach dropped and I started to sweat. It’s gone.

Another knock hammered on the door.

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Keep Reading! Chapter 33 is here.