SurvivorZ: Grave Harbor

52

ERICA

With exquisite boredom, Erica stared out the window at the trashed courtyard between Harvard's Biological Laboratories buildings. She didn't know what the quad looked like before the army set up shop here, but she was pretty sure the university landscapers didn't intend for it to resemble a dusty parking lot dotted with sandbags, barbed wire, trenches, and machine gun emplacements. The lack of greenery almost made her homesick for their bulldozed front lawn.

At least it was an improvement over the same four walls occupying her every waking moment for the past couple of days. Marginally.

Since springing them from jail, the army had set her and Eve up with their own room in Divinity Hall, next door to the one shared by Graves and her idiot brother. Apparently, the brass was under the misconception that locking them in a broom closet together for days on end would somehow compel the four of them to become civil to one another. She always knew "military intelligence" was oxymoronic. If Officer Mike hadn't bailed them out of there a day early, their jailors would probably be mopping up blood off the walls by now.

She was glad for the opportunity to stretch her legs and leave the others behind. With Graves drafted for some kind of top-secret military mission and Tommy and Eve off doing God-knows what, she had fallen back into her familiar habit of being invisible to everyone around her. She haunted the halls of their new home, silently observing everything and filing any useful rumors and information away for future reference.

To be fair, there was plenty of both going around. The army's gossip mill was running on overdrive today. In the space of a single morning, she had gleaned information about an upcoming mission to meet with another group, heard the strangest rumors of monsters being kept in a cage on the top floor, and learned that the brass were worried about a sudden drop in communication with the refugee camp at Hanscom Air Force Base.

All that and it wasn't even lunchtime yet.

Something different caught Erica's eye. It was such a fascinating change of pace from the uniformity of camouflage everywhere she looked that she immediately perked up and took notice.

An elfin figure sporting a backpack – clearly not military – moved through the heavy shadows at the eastern edge of the quad. She snuck across the grounds like a ninja, keeping an eye out for sentries. Several armed soldiers marched by in a procession. She ducked behind a parked Humvee and waited for them to pass before darting into a side passage. The closest soldiers were too preoccupied with polishing their big gun to notice her.

Erica snickered, her curiosity sufficiently piqued. She trotted down the hall after the stealthy girl, eager to learn the rest of her story.

She caught up to her on the ground floor of the south building, outside a lab that the army had converted into a makeshift kitchen. Her target checked that the coast was clear before heading inside. Erica stayed hidden and waited for her to make her move before following.

She didn't know what the girl's plan was, but she was certainly enjoying their game. She hadn't had this much fun since the last time she nearly got caught spying on her father's business dealings.

After checking that the corridor was empty, she tiptoed up to the kitchen door and peeked inside. She spotted her quarry in a matter of seconds.

The dark-haired teen, who looked to be a year or two younger than herself, crept from cupboard to cupboard, filling her pack with canned food. Regularly, she'd check over her shoulder, sneaking glimpses of the cooks preparing the lunchtime meals on camping stoves at the other end of the room. Nobody else seemed to notice her presence. Erica stifled a giggle and enjoyed watching the tiny thief rob them blind.