Free Shudder (Stitch Trilogy, Book 2) by Samantha Durante Page A

fingers
supportively as Isaac wiped his eyes with the back of his
hand.
    “ We did everything we
could, but the virus just took him.” His voice cracked. “It was
only a matter of hours before my mom came down with a fever.” He
closed his eyes and dropped his head against the wall, pushing the
image of his dying mother from his mind. “And then she was gone,
and it was just Joe and me. I don’t even know how we managed not to
get sick. Lucky, I guess. If you can call any of this lucky.” He
looked at Alessa with a shrug.
    She wrapped her other hand around his
now too, cradling it in between both of hers. “How did you guys do
it? You and Joe, on your own?”
    Isaac shrugged again. “By that point
they’d been talking about the quarantine zone on the radio for a
few weeks. We still had internet access, so Joe went to some local
forums looking for other survivors who planned to make the trip. He
found a group, packed up our stuff, and we went – there was nothing
left for us at home.”
    “ I can’t imagine doing
that by yourselves. It must have been so hard for you
guys.”
    “ I was –” Isaac shook his
head. “I was just grief-stricken. I couldn’t function. Our parents
were dead, our lives were over, I just couldn’t deal with it. But
Joe sucked it up and made sure we would be okay, like he always
did.”
    Alessa turned away slightly, but Isaac
could still see the tears dripping down her cheeks. He knew Joe had
been Alessa’s rock as well – they’d both needed him.
    “ So we just piled on a bus
with this group of strangers and somehow we made it there. A few
people fell sick along the way, and we had a couple close calls
with thugs and that sort of thing, but eventually it all worked out
and we pulled up to the gates.”
    Isaac fell silent for a moment,
remembering his first days at the compound, and Alessa shared her
own experience.
    “ I think I’ve told you
that my family all left together for Paragon, or what would become
Paragon anyway,” she said. “But somewhere along the way my brother
caught the virus, and then my parents, too. They’d just started showing
symptoms maybe a day or two before we reached the gates. Our car
even broke down about 10 miles outside the compound, and they found
the strength to walk all that way. We really thought they would
pull through, that if we could just make
it to the compound, that they would have a
secret cure or something that they’d been saving, just for those of
us who were strong enough to get there.”
    Alessa choked back a sob and took a
deep breath. “But they didn’t – they didn’t have anything. And then
after we’d come all that way, they wouldn’t even let them in.”
Alessa buried her face in her hands for a moment,
sniffling.
    “ My mom insisted that
Janie and I go on, since we hadn’t tested positive for the disease.
She still seemed to think there was a chance they’d somehow,
miraculously, make it. Or maybe that’s just what she told us, to
make sure we went on without them.” Alessa shook her head. “Either
way, we never saw any of them again.”
    “ When did you first meet
Joe?” Isaac asked.
    “ When they assigned us an
efficiency unit. The first few days, we were in this refugee
building, basically a sorting center where they were cataloguing
everyone who’d come in and finding a place for them to
live.”
    Isaac remembered – long rows of cots
in a big open room, sounds of muffled crying from every other bed
once the lights went out at night. It hadn’t been an easy
adjustment for anyone.
    “ We finally got our
assignment and went off to find our building, and that same night I
met Joe while wandering the halls looking for a less-crowded
bathroom.”
    Isaac laughed. “Ah, yes. Joe had spent
our first few weeks there scoping out the best spots in the
building. There wasn’t much else to do at first.”
    “ No, not until they
started giving out the work assignments a couple weeks later. Then
all of a sudden