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Chapter 113


I don’t care what everyone else thinks – I can’t wait to go back to England!

I get why some people don’t want to. Gretchen and Brian, Nick and Riley, and even AJ and Selena all have little kids now, and they don’t want to take them away from a place they know is safe. Plus, it’s the only home their kids have ever known.

Florida’s my home too, and it’s not like I want to leave it forever, but lately I’ve been feeling like there’s no future for me here. I’m not a kid anymore, but I’m also nowhere close to where the other adults are in life. They’re all in their thirties and forties, while I’m about to turn twenty-three. There’s literally no one my age left on this side of the ocean. I’ll admit it: I’m lonely. I just can’t help but think that if I never go back, I’ll never have what Gretchen and Riley and Selena all have: a family. I know we’re all like one big happy family here on the base, blah blah blah, but I want a real family of my own someday. A husband. Children. I want to know what it’s like to be someone’s wife, someone’s mother. I think my mom would want that for me, too. But I’ll never have that here. There’s no one left for me. Nick and AJ and Brian are already taken – not that I would be interested anyway. They’re more like my big brothers than anything else. Then there’s Howie, who’s like an uncle to me – that would be way too weird. And Kevin’s like my second dad, so not even going there!

But that’s why I have to get out of here and go somewhere else. Callum could still be there, but even if he’s not, there has to be someone out there for me. I just have to find him.



Wednesday, April 13, 2022
Ten years after Infernal Friday

The day was already getting warm when Gabby walked down to the aircraft hangars. Behind them, she could see Brian puttering around in the field he had so meticulously planted. Otherwise, the base was quiet. The kids were still in school, she assumed, and Nick was probably out on his boat, where he spent most nice days like this one. He claimed to be fishing, but Gabby knew he just liked to spend time on the water. She didn’t blame him. Sometimes – more often these days, it seemed – she needed to get away, too.

It was probably still cold in England, but spring would be coming soon. She imagined spring and summer in England would be lovely, without the undead stinking up the place. She wondered if their old friends were still living in the castle, or if they’d spread out to the cottages in the nearby village. That was if they were still even living in England – or living at all. She knew it was possible – likely, even – that they weren’t. But she also knew she would never stop wondering until she went and found out for herself.

That was where Kevin came in.

“Morning, Gabs!” he called, waving to her as she walked into Hanger 5. He was standing on a stepstool near the wing of one of the smaller planes, wiping down its exterior with a cloth.

“Good morning.” She gestured to the plane. “Is that the one we’re taking up today?”

“Yup. Now that you’ve got the basics down, I figured it’d be good for you to get some experience with different aircrafts, just in case you can’t fly out in the same plane you flew in on. If you remember, when Nick and Riley and I went on our little expedition to California back in the day, our plane exploded shortly after we’d landed. If we’d had to rely on another plane to get us home, it would have helped to know how to fly it.”

Gabby nodded, trying to seem self-assured, even though her stomach was twisting in knots of nervousness. Sometimes she wondered if she was a fool for wanting to fly into the great unknown. She had it good here, relatively speaking. The base was safe and had enough resources for them to be self-sufficient. The same could not be said of the rest of the world. What was she getting herself into?

But like any twenty-two-year-old – twenty-three tomorrow, thought Gabby with a little thrill – she was itching to go out into the world, finally ready to fly the coop, figuratively and literally.

She had come to Kevin with her proposition shortly after the new year, when the future was on everyone’s mind. “I want you to teach me how to fly,” she’d told him. “I know it sounds crazy, but I’d like to go back to England someday – by myself, if no one else is on board – and I don’t know if Nick’s boat is big enough to get me there.”

“Don’t let Nick hear you say that. No man wants to be told his gear isn’t big enough, if you get my drift,” Kevin had joked, winking at her. Gabby wrinkled her nose, but she had laughed along with him. It was nice to finally be at an age where he felt comfortable talking to her that way, like another adult, an equal. For too long, she had been treated like a child, even though, in her own mind, she had grown up the year the dead rose. Sometimes, she was sure Kevin still saw her as the little girl she had been when she’d first come to the base with her mother, but slowly, he’d begun to accept that she was an adult now.

Even so, Gabby could tell he wasn’t comfortable with the idea of her flying overseas on her own. He was still like a father to her and considered her to be sort of his surrogate daughter. Naturally, he was worried that if something went wrong, he would never see her again. “Which is exactly why I want you to teach me, so I’ll know what to do if something happens,” Gabby had said, when he’d expressed these fears. It had taken some time and energy, but eventually, her persistence had paid off. Gabby’s powers of persuasion proved stronger than Kevin’s reservations, and she’d convinced him to give her flying lessons.

They’d been at it since February, and after two months, Gabby was getting to be a pretty good pilot. She hadn’t yet been up in a plane by herself, but although Kevin still went along for the ride, Gabby did most of the flying these days.

“You ready, kiddo?” said Kevin, swatting her playfully with his rag.

She realized she had been spacing out and smiled sheepishly. “Yep. Let’s go.”

They climbed into the cockpit, Gabby sliding behind the controls while Kevin settled into the co-pilot’s seat. She started the engine, as he had shown her many times before in other aircrafts, and felt the vibration under her feet as it roared to life. Slowly, she guided the small plane out of the hangar and onto the runway, centering it over the faded line that still ran down the middle. The takeoff was always her favorite part of a flight. She made sure the wing flaps were up, then shifted the throttle to full power. As she released the brake, the plane began to roll down the runway, bouncing on its wheels as it picked up speed.

“Get ready to pull up,” Kevin warned in a low voice, almost under his breath.

“I know.” Gritting her teeth in determination, Gabby pulled the control column toward her, easing the nose of the plane upward. She let out the breath she’d been holding as she felt the plane lift off the ground, the runway disappearing underneath it. There was always that moment of uncertainty, when she worried she wasn’t going to get off the ground in time. Once she was safely in the air, she could breathe more easily.

“Let’s fly west today, over the water, eh?” suggested Kevin, pointing to the right out his window.

“Okay,” agreed Gabby, her heart accelerating with anticipation. She hadn’t flown over water before, other than Tampa Bay. Usually they headed eastward, staying over land in case they needed to make an emergency landing. But, of course, she would need to feel comfortable flying over water to make it across the Atlantic Ocean. The Gulf of Mexico would work for now. She took it as a sign of Kevin’s trust in her that he had been the first one to suggest it.

Following his directions, she turned westward and flew the plane over the peninsula on which the former cities of St. Petersburg and Clearwater lay in ruins. It made for an eerie sight, looking down on the neatly laid out streets, still lined with cars, but none moving. Not a sign of life anywhere. Not for ten years now.

Soon, the land was behind them, and nothing but water lay ahead. It was a little bit scary, not being able to see where she was going, with no frame of reference on the ground below, but at the same time, it was exhilarating. “How long does it take to cross the Gulf?” she asked Kevin.

“A couple of hours. Maybe we’ll fly all the way across to Texas sometime so you can experience a longer flight over water, but for today we’ll turn back soon so we don’t waste fuel.”

Gabby nodded. For now, she was fine with doing whatever Kevin told her to do; after all, he was the expert, and she was still learning. But she knew there would come a day when she would have to make all the decisions on her own. “When do you think I’ll be ready to go over the Atlantic?” she wondered aloud.

“Don’t you mean ‘we’?”

She looked over at him in surprise. The sight of his raised eyebrows made her heart lift, too. “Really? You would go with me?”

“Well, sure, Gabby. If you’ll have me, I mean. I can’t tell you what to do anymore – not that I ever could.” He gave her a sidelong look, and she grinned. “But you’re an adult now, and if you’ve got your heart set on going, I can’t keep you here. All I can do is offer to go along and give you as much help as I can.”

“Yeah… yeah, that’d be great!” she enthused, her fears fading away. With Kevin sitting by her side, the thought of leaving didn’t seem quite so scary.

He grinned back at her. “And here I thought you’d never ask.”

Shaking her head, she shrugged and said, “I just didn’t think you’d wanna go. The base was like your home even before the rest of us were here. And your family’s here – Brian, I mean…”

“You’re my family, Gabby.” He reached out and patted her knee. “Brian’s got a family of his own, and if anything happened to me, I know he’d be okay. Same with Nick and AJ and the girls. But if something were to happen to you…” He paused and shook his head, temporarily speechless. If she had looked at him then, she would have seen the tears sparkling in his eyes. “…I would never forgive myself.”

Gabby was not one to get emotional. Not anymore. She thought that all the trauma she’d experienced as a child had numbed her to such feelings. But, hearing the emotion in Kevin’s voice as he said the same sort of thing her own father and mother would tell her when they were still alive, she felt a lump rise in her throat.

“I appreciate you looking out for me all these years, Kev, but you don’t need to worry about me anymore. We’ve made it this far, haven’t we? We’re gonna be just fine.”

She looked out the window, where the sun shone directly in front of her like a beacon of hope. It would serve as her frame of reference when she was ready to leave Europe again. All she would need to do was follow the sun, as it beckoned her back home.