Free Murphy's Law (Roads Less Traveled Book 2) by C. Dulaney Page A

focus on.”
    He led us to a table by the window, greeting people as they left for whatever duties they’d been assigned for the day. Everyone seemed to like him, and he them. Maybe he’d been the mayor, once upon a time. Nah, everybody hates a politician.
    “What about supplies? Food, water, fuel…where do you get them?” Mia asked.
    “Sit,” I quietly ordered Gus, snapping my fingers and pointing at my feet. The old boy obeyed and lay down, resting his chin on the toe of my boot.
    Michael was nibbling at a piece of toast. I assumed he’d been up for a while, monitoring and supervising things around the joint, and had probably already eaten breakfast.
    “We’ve got six months’ worth of supplies already put back in another part of the complex. The fields behind here are already planted in potatoes and other early vegetables. We’ll get the later stuff out next month. What we can’t grow…well we just head out and salvage from nearby towns. We keep animals here, chickens, pigs, a few cows. This place sits on about a hundred or so acres, most of it open fields. All fenced in, by the way. Makes it pretty nice for gardening and pasturing.”
    He’d already explained to us the night before how they were still able to have running water and electricity. Water from a large lake high on the mountain above was gravity fed to the prison, and the generators powered the pumps, purification units, and kept the lights on. They still rationed; to conserve fuel, the water and power was shut down between noon and four in the afternoon, and then again between nine at night to six the next morning.
    We ate quietly for the next several minutes, all of us mulling over questions in our minds, but hesitant to voice them. Even Michael looked like he had a million questions for us, but wasn’t sure whether to ask. These days, what survivors there were tended to keep to themselves, overwhelmed with the simple task of staying alive, let alone getting mixed up in another survivor’s business. After swallowing the last of my French toast, I decided to take the bull by the horns.
    “Well, you’re probably wondering what we were doing out there, where we’re headed, that kind of thing. It’s a long story, but I can give you the Cliff Notes version if you want. You might even be able to help,” I said, then immediately added when I saw the look on his face, “No, no, not that kind of help. We don’t need any of your supplies. We’re set as it is. I mean information.”
    This seemed to ease his mind a bit. He visibly relaxed and continued to nibble at his toast.
    “It’s none of my business what your reasons are for roaming around. We get passersby here all the time. They stay a bit, week or so, then move on. We offer what we can to them, at the very least we give them a safe place to rest and recuperate for a while. So no, I don’t need to know your business, ma’am. But I’ll help out, tell you what I can.”
    He studied each of us, his eyes lingering on ours long enough for me to know this was a solid guy, and not one I’d want to be on the bad side of. I took a deep breath and told him our story, then filled him in on the details of our so-called mission. He was disturbingly quiet after I finished talking, the look on his face changing from shock to anger in a matter of minutes, though I have to give him credit—he did a good job covering it up. Well, attempting to cover it up. Points for trying, I guess.
    Just as he opened his mouth to say something, the radio on his hip crackled to life.
    “Hey, Mike, we got runners on the south side. Thirty and closing,” a calm, male voice said. Michael held up one hand in apology, mumbled an “Excuse me,” then stood and took the radio from his belt.
    “Who’s on it?” he asked.
    “Cal and Olly.”
    “I’m on my way.” Michael turned to leave, stopped, glanced at us, and tipped his head towards the door. “Want to come along?”
    “Well hell yeah we wanna come,” Jake