Chapter Twelve

"Wow," Claire gasped, walking into the room, ignoring the pitifully crying siblings on the floor, "Grandma Jean has outdone herself."

Claire often joined the siblings over the holidays. Since she had none herself, and her parents were always busy, she had essentially become an adopted kid of the family.

"We still didn't get the fish though, Gramps said the water had to cycle or something, so they'd take you on your birthday, but the electricity is all gone..." Teddy began to ramble, looking at the tank built into the wall between the bedroom and ensuite.

"Oh, oh," he jumped up and held a small round plastic thing shaped a bit like a whale, "it's battery-powered, so it'll work," he closed the curtains and turned it on. Lights shined up on the blue ceiling, rippling like the northern lights on the ocean.

"It also plays ocean sounds and whale songs, I picked it," Teddy boasted placing it down, but after strict lecturing of being quiet, he didn't turn on the music.

"I love it, thank you," Faye wiped her eyes with her sleeve and pulled Teddy into an awkward side embrace, forcing him to hunch a little to accommodate her short five foot five inches of height compared to his five feet ten.

Claire sat on the inflatable, water chair -Jean had gone a tad bit overboard on the water theme- and put her feet up like she was at home, "I'm envious of Yichen, I wanna bunk with you now..."

"Yichen?" Teddy picked up on Claire's words and remembered the man who had been holding his sister's hand on the street.

"Oh, he's your new brother-in-law," Claire chuckled, dodging the shark teddy thrown at her head.

"You got married? What the fuck?" Teddy bristled like a cat at the news.

"We're dating, just dating. He's Uncle Wu's son, Teddy, you probably won't remember him you were so little that summer holidays he stayed here," Faye sighed, remembering the cold, hostile youth.

Lixin had been a ray of sunshine in comparison, taking the kids to play whilst Yichen spent most of his time out of the house doing God knows what.

Teddy's hazel eyes narrowed towards the door, he could hear footsteps coming close, "the guards gave me a gun, if he hurts you, tell your little bro and I'll shoot him in the dick alright?"

Yichen, who was approaching the door, felt his little Yichen ache at his new little ancestor's words.

"Theodore Fraizer, is that how your grandpa taught you, eh?" Yichen folded his arms and leaned against the door. "If I hurt your sister I'll shoot myself, no need to dirty your little, white hands."

He sounded sincere, but Leo had promised something similar and he still ended up having to give that bastard a black eye on his sister's behalf last month.

"Speaking of people needing to be shot," Teddy ignored Yichen and turned to Claire for gossip, "did Leo survive?"

"Unfortunately," Claire got up and grabbed Teddy by the arm, dragging him out of the room whilst Yichen gave her a wink and closed the door behind them.

"Is there something wrong?" Faye asked, noticing the tension on his face.

"I have to go back to the city," he confessed immediately.

"For the staff's family?" She remembered that this had been his original plan, put the survivors somewhere safe, then go out to collect others plus supplies.

"Yes, the mobile networks are finally down, so we have to go quickly before their locations are compromised and we cannot find them," he explained, hesitating a few inches from her on whether to hold her or not.

"I understand, I'll help those here clear out the villas and wait for you," she nodded, taking a small step forward, "will the radios work over the distance?"

Yichen let out a sigh of relief and pulled her into his chest, "We'll be going by boat again, so we can use their radios to communicate, but we can only radio back to the boat when we enter the city."

Faye's fingers clutched into the soft cotton of his t-shirt, "do you have to go right now?"

"Sorry," Yichen rested his chin on her hair, "I'll be a few days at most, I promise."

"If you're not back in a week, I'll marry Claire instead," Faye playfully threatened, not knowing Yichen already knew Claire was straighter than he was.

"Sure, sure, you have my blessing," he kissed her forehead, then reluctantly left her in the room to head back to the yacht pier.

"Where did he go?" Claire asked as Faye sunk on the sofa beside her, Poppy, David, and the four teenagers were kneeling around a board game on the coffee table starting a new game.

"He's got to go get some other survivors, he'll be back," Faye mumbled the last three words, mainly trying to reassure herself. There was this uncanny sensation of home whenever he held her, that over these brief few days grew increasingly addictive.

***

On a smaller, two-story yacht, which was being 'borrowed' from the Fraizers, Yichen was letting Miles give him and a guard called Lingyun another run-through of the workings of the boat.

Bai Cheng was nervously pacing the floor behind him, "are you sure we should go now, not tomorrow?"

Yichen only cast him an impatient glare, then turned back to paying attention to MIles' instructions.

An hour later the yacht set off with only himself, Bai Cheng, and those who wanted to seek their loved ones. Three guards: Jack, Sean, and Lingyun. Then nine staff members. All fourteen of them had a Glock, some ammunition, and a machete. They'd dressed in trainers and sportswear, with large backpacks to fill with supplies.

Unlike the small river north of the city, that separated the city from the suburbs, the river running through the city center was wide and often had large cargo ships traveling to and fro.

Australia was the leading country in agriculture, this city exported a lot of food, mostly organic fruit, and vegetables. All of which were now rotting away in warehouses they passed.

Casting the anchor, they remained a small distance from the pier in the center of the river and went over the city map on the small table.

"We can try the aftershave trick again, but it might not be effective for every zombie and as we saw at the resort, other humans might be the biggest danger."

After going over the route three times, they finally got into the smaller boat and used oars to silently reach the pier. They left Lingyun behind to man the radio and keep an eye on their escape route.

In total, they had sixteen houses to go to, and over thirty survivors to bring back to the small yacht. All of these survivors had been fine on the phone with their loved ones last night, but a lot could change in twelve hours.

A few zombies got close, making the nine staff members, who were seeing them for the first time since the night hell broke loose, stiffen with nerves, the hands holding their machetes itching to swing to protect themselves.

Yichen slowly shook his head, walking at a leisurely, slow pace. They had at least another week or two before the zombies began to mutate.

Still, there was always the exception to the rule, so he had them remain close together avoiding the main roads and taking shortcuts through alleyways.

The first location was a riverside apartment block, where two of the guard's families were living in.

Bai Cheng both paid and treated his men well, from health benefits to crisis loans. Most of them were army veterans who had nowhere to go once discharged for one reason or another. Others were from gangs who wanted to turn their life around as Yichen's father had over thirty years ago.

His father and Uncle Bai sponsored a charity that helped get kids out of the 'gang life', these were capable men who they'd convinced along the way and all had a close bond with Yichen's family.

The result was no different than a gang in Yichen's mind, at least they were legal, mostly...

These two families were ex-army wives and their children. Both of them had a gun at home and were sensible, having lived in barracks before. Unfortunately, the youngest child belonging to Sean was barely a few months old and ill with a fever.

They used their keys to get in through the main entrance and Sean not caring, began to run up the stairs, Jack quickly following him. His wife and son were also hiding in Sean's apartment.

The apartment was close to the river, looking out a hallway window Yichen could see a fire exit that led to the fenced edge where only a narrow footpath separated the building from the river's edge.

When they came here in the dream, he had been traveling by car to and from the resort. Thus they wasted a lot of ammo and lost a few people.

Yichen knew it was impossible to save everyone, but he had the blessing of the dream teaching him what NOT to do. Making a decision, he instructed the others to go floor by floor killing any zombies in the hallways.

As they wandered the hallways they heard the thump, thump, thump of bodies trying to walk through doors to reach the noise.

Yichen began using his abilities to unlock doors and deal with the dead apartment to apartment.

By the time the apartment block of over fifty apartments was cleared, Yichen was drenched in sweat despite the cold air.

"Is your kid alright?" Yichen asked, collapsing onto Sean's sofa.

"Yeah, she woke up from the fever overnight," Sean held the small infant, reluctant to let go of her.

"Good, she'll be like her Uncle Wu then, immune," Just like her daddy in his dream who survived a bite. Genetics played a part in a person's ability to fight the virus, that and whether a person had the original virus' antibodies.

A year later, the military in the East will start developing a vaccine that increases a person's ability to survive a bite/infection drastically; unfortunately, it still was not a cure. Not even a decade later was there a cure and almost everybody was dead.

"Really?"

Yichen nodded, both pleased and jealous of the excited father's face. His men's willingness to take his words like God's Gospel since he claimed his knowledge came from his father and the Fraizers, only inflated his ego.

"The supplies are being stacked in the empty apartment a floor below," Bai Cheng walked in, interrupting the gloating father. "Let me have a look," he curiously peeked over at the first baby he had seen in what felt like too long. Jack's son was three, the same age as the youngest child they'd rescued from the resort.

"Thank God, she looks like her mother," Bai Cheng teased, giving a nod to a blushing Jessica, and walked over to the window. They were on the seventh floor, in one of the more moderately sized three-bed apartments.

It was the kind of apartment block where they had commercial shops on the ground floor, small cheaper apartments at the bottom, then the higher up you went, the larger and more expensive the apartments got. All of those facing the river had a balcony. Sean's faced the city so it was easy to check the number of dead wandering outside.

"Sean and Jack can stay here with their wives and begin packing supplies ready to go onto the boat. We'll bring the survivors here, then load them onto the boat from the riverside fire exit."

Bai Cheng nodded in agreement, he had been reluctant to come here first due to the little kids being a dead weight, but now Yichen had formed a new plan it seemed the most sensible thing to do.

"Will we still be looping around the southern city, or going for a back-and-forth method?"

Yichen was looking at the map app on his phone, then at the printed map on the coffee table with locations marked.

"We'll be looping around, there's only one kid this side of the city and he's old enough to keep quiet and if we come back and forth we might attract too many of the dead outside and block ourselves in."

Most of this part of the city was now owned by the dead. Most of the living had fled in their cars, leaving only the weak, scared, or those with young, remaining locked in their homes, waiting for the military to swoop in and save them.

Only the chain of command was broken, and the West was abandoned by the Military over in the East.

Life here would quite quickly turn as lawless as the old wild west in the cowboy movies Yichen watched with his father as a kid.

There were only three locations they needed to access in the south of the city, which was filled with mainly upscale housing, government buildings, the hospital, the university, and so on.

There were only five people they needed to collect, but who knew if they had others around them that would follow? Those were the unpredictable factors that frustrated Yichen.

Wanting to keep their numbers small, Yichen and Bai Cheng only took the three staff members whose loved ones they were going to get. The rest were instructed to simply pack up and keep the survivors in the apartment quiet.

The Chef's son was the nearest, in an apartment block three streets away. The five men walked slowly amongst the dead, who parted like the sea from their 'offensive' smell.

He was waiting at the fire exit, with a friend and a fire ax and was swiftly sprayed with aftershave before they moved onto the receptionist's apartment in a poorer district.

Again it was a simple case of checking them over, spraying them with aftershave, and moving on.

Next, they reached the Doctor's parents' townhouse, where his brother and elderly mother were. His father had turned, but the brother and mother were still fine when he spoke to them yesterday.

Unfortunately, when they reached the house, the grandmother turned and killed her son in his sleep.

Yichen was forced to step forward and end the pair with his machete. The group rested for a while inside the townhouse, giving the doctor time to grieve.

Just as they began making their way back to the riverside apartments, it began to rain. Rain was a rare event on the dry West Coast. They could only think of themselves as unlucky.