SurvivorZ: Grave Harbor

10

MITCHELL

Mitch decorated the bushes with his dinner, took one look at the mess he made, and brought up the rest of his nearly empty stomach. After he finished dry heaving, he rolled over onto his back and stared up at the darkening sky.

Patty appeared above him, holding out a bottle of water. "You okay?"

He sat up and rinsed the sour aftertaste from his mouth. The flavor of the water wasn't much better. He hated drinking from plastic bottles; precisely why he was in such a sorry state. With a world full of empty homes to pick from, it was just his luck to end up in the one with something funky in the water pipes.

"Tasted better going down," he murmured.

Patricia sat down next to him. She wrapped her arms around her knees and stared at him with a face too worn for her pretty features.

He smiled half-heartedly and nudged her shoulder with his. "Stop worrying. I'll survive."

"You better. You die and leave me with these asshole friends of yours and I'll never forgive you."

He chuckled softly. "They're not so bad. You and Stan seem to be getting along."

"Yeah, Stan's okay. The rest of them, though..." She snorted. "Where'd you find these guys? The 1980's?"

"At least you found yourself a playmate." He nodded at Paige. The girl stood on the shore, staring through the reinforced fence at the docked boats bobbing in the Charles River.

"Paige is cool. I like her," Patty admitted. "It takes guts for a kid her age to survive out here on her own."

"She wasn't just surviving. If you hadn't stopped her, she might've made off with some of our stuff. That's pretty ballsy."

"I know, right?"

A clangor of metal came from their left. "Fuckstick!" Sam bellowed, holding onto his stinging hand from his failed attempt to pry open the durable locked gate to the East Newton Yacht Club. In spite, he stomped on his ineffectual crowbar. "Motherfuck!"

Patty sighed. "I bring the cool kid to the party. You bring the monkeys."

Mitch smirked and scratched his armpit. "Ook, ook."

Stan, Sam, Dozer, Rick, and the twins gathered around the undamaged gate in the middle of a tall metal fence bordering the property's shoreline. In low voices, they bandied about ideas while inspecting the obstruction keeping them from their floating prize. Dozer rattled the bars. They were more likely to dislocate a shoulder than successfully wrench it off its hinges that way. Nothing short of a welding torch from Stan's garage or a swim in freezing cold waters was going to help them reach the marina on the other side.

"All those years behind bars, you'd think one of them would've learned how to pick a lock," Patty muttered.

"I don't see you stepping up," Mitch teased.

"I'm fifteen," she cried. "Seriously, do I need to do everything?"

Stan marched past them, muttering obscenities under his breath. He gave the pair a sideways glance on his way back to his parked car. "You guys better stand back. We're opening this bitch the hard way," he grumbled.

Since he didn't specify how far to remove themselves, Mitch and Patty joined Paige by the river bank. The girl regarded their company with mild suspicion.

"Hey, Paige," Patty greeted her. "How are you enjoying the circus clowns so far?"

"It's getting late," she replied. "If they can't break in and steal a boat soon, we should find a safe place for the night. We don't want to be out here after dark."