Quaranteam - North West Ch. 09

"She graduated from a University dance program?" Erica raised an eyebrow. "And was doing CIA spy shit to steal from professors? You realize she's probably going to be ridiculously hot, right?"

"I don't think that matters," I chuckled. "Though Greerson did mention I'd be thanking him."

"Pervy old man," Erica smirked. "Think she's bi?"

"Oh, so now you want to sleep with the potentially dangerous, sexy spy lady?"

Erica scoffed. "Of course I do."

I kissed her again, and soon she was stepping off the ATV. We fucked standing, with her back to a tree, and she had me finish inside of her. The first one of the day with Erica always went there, then it was any guess where she'd ask for the next one to go.

"So we just be a little careful," Erica said as she pulled up her panties.

"Hmm?" I asked, buckling my belt.

"With the spy," she clarified. "We treat her like we would anyone else. Like we did Ivy. We sit her down and talk to her to make sure she knows what the vaccine is all about, and what she should expect and what she likes. She's not some political prisoner or something, right? So she's choosing this to some degree just like anyone else."

"Anyone but Vanessa," I sighed.

Erica came over to rub my back. "Did you two get to talk, or did you just fuck?"

"Talk," I said, then smirked. "After fucking. She's fine with everything. Happy about it, kind of. She just doesn't want to consider us in a 'relationship' or anything. More like a fuck buddy roommate."

Erica snorted softly. "Yeah, OK. Whatever label she wants to put on it. She'll still be sleeping in our bed."

We finished the tour and returned to the compound. Vanessa was up and around, and as we all ate lunch together we came up with a plan for the afternoon. She needed to head to the motel to get her things, as well as check in with her father to let him know she could start work again tomorrow. We were also running low on food, especially with three more mouths to feed and another scheduled to arrive (though technically, I pointed out, we'd been feeding Vanessa half her meals anyways between breakfasts and some lunches so it was more like three and a half more mouths). I shot a text over to Mrs Branston that we'd be coming by for our egg pickup, then down to Mason Fuller who ran the local butcher shop to ask what he had in stock. He'd set up a system that he'd text us what he had available and as long as we gave him twenty minutes he could have our order wrapped in paper and ready to set outside on a picnic table when we pulled up, and we'd Venmo him our payment.

Fruits and veggies and other staples were harder to manage. There weren't any bakeries in the area, at least not that I'd ever made a relationship with, and I didn't know any actual farmers. That meant we'd be doing the Bundle Up routine to brave the supermarket.

After lunch we went about getting ourselves ready. We were going to take my truck so that we could haul Vanessa's luggage and the meat and groceries in the bed. Dani decided she wanted to get off the property as she hadn't had the chance to since arriving, so Erica gave up her usual spot, which meant Vanessa was going to be riding bitch in the small back seat of my truck cab since she was shorter than the Australian.

We bundled up. I was back in a thick hooded sweater with work gloves and snow goggles. I used the medical mask that the Air Force guys had given me and put a bandana over it for good measure. Dani and Vanessa had to borrow from Erica since neither of them had much to work with - Vanessa since we were going to get her stuff, and Dani because she had one piece of luggage worth of belongings since she'd been planning to just travel down the west coast stripping before the pandemic. She still had a condo full of her belongings back home, but there was no way of knowing when she could ever get access to it. Or go back, if she even wanted to.

So Erica's heavy winter clothing got divided between Dani and Vanessa, and we loaded into my truck. First stop, the motel.

Vanessa gave me directions based solely on her memory of the daily drive. The place was about thirty minutes down the highway, and as we pulled in we were waved down by a couple of soldiers in national guard uniforms. They were masked, and they stood about six feet back from the truck as I lowered the window.

"This location is restricted access," one shouted. "You need to go somewhere else."

"We're here to see Brent Peters," I said, muffled by my own mask.

"We don't have anyone on the schedule," the guardsman said. "You'll need to make an appointment."

"Can you get him on that radio?" Vanessa asked, leaning over from the back seat to look out the window and pointing at a two-way on the guard's belt. "Just tell him his daughter is here."

The two guards glanced at each other, and then one visibly sighed and walked a few steps away to use the radio. He very quickly turned back and waved us into the parking lot. Vanessa directed us to park near the front end - she had a room on the second floor directly above the one being used by her father as an office. The door to that one burst open as I put the truck in park, and the big form of Brent Peters loomed in the doorway.

"You should probably wait here and let me talk to him again," Vanessa said.

I sighed. "Alright. I do need to talk to him eventually though."

"Sure," Vanessa said as Dani slipped out of the truck and moved her seat to let Vanessa out. "I'm sure he'll calm down sometime in the next decade."

I watched Vanessa approach her father, and I guessed she explained she hadn't been anywhere other than the site yet so she wasn't compromised because Brent pulled her into a hug and then ushered her inside his office.

Dani climbed back into the truck and shut the door, leaning back on it as she lowered the gaiter she was using as a mask and looked at me. "So, " she said. "You've had a long couple days. How are you doing, Harri?"

"Honestly?" I asked her rhetorically. "I'm feeling stretched a little thin."

"I can't blame you," Dani said. "I mean, Erica is a rock and Ivy is more concerned with your cock than anything else at the moment, but two girlfriends are still a lot to worry about. Now you're adding Vanessa, plus this new girl? You need to start guarding your heart a bit, big fella. I don't want to see you burning out."

"Heh, maybe," I sighed. "What about you, though? You had Leo all to yourself, now there are two more women in his bed."

"A couple," Dani pointed out. "They'll be with each other more than him. And Leo is my guy, obviously. And I know he's good for me. He's just not my usual type. I love him to death but I don't know if I'min love with him yet, or if I ever will be."

I blinked in surprise. "That's kind of close to something Vanessa said to me," I admitted. "Not the type thing, but about love."

"Really?" Dani asked. "Well, I guess you two were more friendly than flirty before now, so that kind of makes sense."

"I can live with friends," I said.

"With benefits," Dani smirked.

"That too," I laughed.

Vanessa spent about fifteen minutes in the room, and Dani and I swapped to listening to the radio and talking about music as we waited. At one point there was some shouting from the motel room, and I had my seatbelt off and was half out the door before Dani caught my arm and reminded me Brent was her father, not just her boss.

When Vanessa eventually emerged, she waved us to follow her as she moved towards the stairs. We followed her up to the second story and she was a fast whirlwind of stuffing her things into her bags. Soon I was carrying her two big pieces of luggage with all her clothes and toiletries, while Dani was carrying her backpack with electronics and a dog-eared copy of the Fellowship of the Ring that I had noticed on the bedside table. Vanessa handled her big toolbox, which rattled as she deftly hauled it down the stairs and into the back of my truck. I slammed the gate of the truck closed, hopped into the cab with them, and we were out of there less than twenty minutes after we'd arrived at the motel.

"How'd the talk go?" I asked as I pulled back out onto the highway, giving the guards a nod on our way by.

"He thought for sure I would still be living at the motel," Vanessa said. "He's also pissed because I reminded him I'll be living with you for the foreseeable future, which means if he fucks with your house he's fucking me over as much as you. He got himself worked up again in the middle of talking about work, and I had to remind him that I'd gone to you for sex, not the other way around. That shut him up."

"Hmmm hmm," Dani hummed her laugh. "Pops doesn't like thinking of his little girl as a sexual being."

"Something like that," Vanessa said, and I could hear the eye roll in her tone of voice.

Based on the direction we were coming from, it was going to be easiest for us to stop at Fuller's for our meat order, then the grocery store, and we'd end our little tour of the area by visiting Mrs Branston for our egg hook up. I passed my phone back to Vanessa, unlocking it with my thumb. "Tell me what Mason Fuller sent me," I said.

"You're trusting me with your phone?" Vanessa asked.

"Why wouldn't I?"

"I don't know. Usually guys are protective of this kind of stuff," Vanessa said.

"You're forgetting that Harri is Harri," Dani said.

"Oh," Vanessa said. "Right."

I waited for one of them to explain, but apparently they both knew what that meant. "Someone want to clarify that for me?" I asked.

"I just mean that you're you," Dani said. "You're... well, you're not straight-laced, but you might as well be. Most guys would be worried about someone he was with seeing his dating apps or private messages. Leo doesn't like me using his phone because he's embarrassed by the porn he follows on his Reddit account. But you don't exactly strike me as a porn kind of guy, or a dating app or Instagram guy."

"And even if you were, you'd probably be smart enough to delete your history," Vanessa filled in. "And you would have deleted all your apps when you finally hooked up with Erica anyways. Fuller says he's got his usual pork offerings, as much ground beef as we want, a half dozen full chickens, and a handful of something he's calling a London Broil."

"Text him back that we'll take four pounds of the ground beef - actually, make it five. Four of the chickens and all the London broils, plus two dozen sausages, ten pork chops and a couple of big tenderloins." I decided to ignore all the talk about why my phone was accessible. Especially the part about Leo's interests hidden on his own phone.

"Jesus," Vanessa muttered. "That's going to be a big grocery bill."

"Well, if the new girl shows up tomorrow there's going to be nine of us to feed," I said. "It's a good fuckin' thing my bank account sprouted a few extra zeros on the end recently or else you'd all be eating me out of house and home."

Mason Fuller had the order ready when we pulled up and he stood in the door to his little shop as I hopped out of the truck and went to gather the two big paper bags that held the paper-wrapped meat. "Don't tell me you're hosting a cookout in times like these, Harri," he called to me.

"Nope," I said. "Honestly, you wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Try me," he said.

I thumbed back towards the truck. "I'm picking up strays."

Mason chuckled when he saw Dani and Vanessa waving from inside my truck. "Where'd you find them?"

"Would you believe the government sent me them?" I asked.

"You're right, I don't believe you," Mason said. "Wanna try again?"

I shrugged. "Maybe next week, buddy. Let me know if you get anything interesting in. I've got mouths to feed and variety is the spice of life."

Mason waved me off, and when I got back in the truck I Venmo'd him the hefty price on the receipt he'd stapled to one bag. I don't think I'd ever paid that much on a grocery bill in my life, and that was just the meat for the next week.

We hit the grocery store next, which ended up only allowing two people inside in a party at once. Dani wanted to look for some specific stuff, and Vanessa hadn't had her own kitchen to cook in for almost two years since she'd been eating cafeteria food on industrial construction sites, so I decided to hang out in the truck while they went in. I sent them with my credit card and reminded them of the staples we needed.

They got in line outside the store, and I decided to enjoy the warmth of the afternoon and open the gate of my truck so I could sit outside. I watched Dani and Vanessa from across the parking lot, keeping one eye on them while I could. I could tell they were talking from the small hand motions. Neither of them talked with their hands like Erica or Leo did, but everything seemed friendly between them.

"Excuse me?"

I turned and realized I'd tunnel-visioned and completely lost track of my surroundings because a woman was standing about ten paces away from me. That wasn't like me at all. She was nervous, wringing her wrists as she stood awkwardly. She was a little scrawny, her clothes hanging off of her, and the eyes above her rough-looking mask were... not sunken, but sort of sad. "I'm sorry to bother you, Harri," she said. "I was just wondering if maybe you could spare a couple bucks? Things aren't really going well right now, and I've got my kids..."

Living in Portland, I'd seen my fair share of homeless folks and beggars. Some of them were pushy and agitated, and others entirely shut down from their addictions. This woman didn't look homeless, but she definitely looked down on her luck. And down for enough time that it showed. She wasn't wearing even basic earrings but had the holes in her ears. There was a slightly less tan ring on her finger where I assumed a wedding band used to sit, but it was fading.

Every major city in the United States had a homeless population. Some were worse than others, I knew that. The further south along the coast, the warmer it got, and the bigger the population. But out here in the sticks? In Jewell?

Sure, we had the occasional drifter moving through. I'd never seen someonebegging before.

Things were really getting bad.

"Uh, yeah, I can," I said, reaching for my wallet in my pocket. "I'm sorry, you know me but I'm not immediately recognizing you. Maybe it's the mask."

She took a couple steps forward as I said I could spare her some cash, but looked away as I asked who she was. I kicked myself, realizing that her situation was embarrassing enough as it was. "Maybe you don't remember me," the woman said. "I was a year ahead of you in high school. Mary Duncan?"

"Of course I remember you, Mary," I said. "It's just been a long time. You were a cheerleader I think, right? You did all the flips. You were really graceful."

"Thanks," she said, and I could tell she was blushing behind her mask.

I didn't have too much cash on me compared to what I used to carry for emergencies. I used to be a cash-only guy, at least around town. Knowing what my bank account looked like, I just pulled what I had and slipped down from the gate of my truck and set the bills on it, stepping back. "No offence, I don't think you stink or anything," I tried to joke.

Mary's eyes went wide when she saw the bills, and she mumbled something as she stepped forward and I backed off a bit more so she could take them. It was maybe seventy dollars, but as she quickly looked through the bills I saw her get teary, and then she clutched the cash to her chest and collapsed to her knees, crying.

I wanted to go and comfort her. Give her a hug. She was clearly overwhelmed and in a bad way, and back when we were in school she'd always been a cute, button-nosed girl with a soft smile and a big laugh.

But I couldn't go to her. I couldn't rub her back or pat her shoulder or give her a hug. The best I could do was squat down from several feet away to get closer to her level.

"Mary?" I asked.

She sniffed hard and rubbed at her eyes. "Oh my God, I'm so embarrassed," she said.

"You don't need to be," I said. "You said you have kids, right? How many?"

"Two," she said. "Thomas is six now, and looks like his dad. My little girl Charlie is four. She wanted to go to school like her big brother this fall but..."

But the schools were closed, and who knew how long they would be closed for?

"And their Dad?" I asked.

She sniffed hard again. "He went up to Portland to look for work after we both got laid off at the start of quarantine," she said. "I haven't heard from him since."

"Fuck," I breathed out, hopefully not loud enough for her to hear. The guy could have abandoned his family like a shit, or just been overwhelmed and trying to find a way to make it right. Or he could be dead. "Mary, I'm sorry you're going through this. And I'm sorry if this touches another sore spot, but is your phone still active?"

She nodded, touching the ragged little purse. I asked her to take it out and I immediately recognized that she'd probably downgraded her phone at a pawn shop, it was a beat-up old model barely above a flip phone. I gave her my number. "Call me the next time you need groceries, OK?" I said. "Or if there's an emergency. Seriously, Mary."

"I applied for food stamps, and welfare, but I haven't heard anything back," she said pitifully, like she was trying to explain her shitty situation. There wasn't any explaining.

"The system is probably overloaded," I said softly. "Mary. I'm not pulling your leg. Go get groceries for you and your kids. I'll figure something out for you for next week, OK?"

"Harri, I can't just- I don't want to-"

It was fucking stupid, but this woman who I remembered as that sweet girl was broken. I stood up and went to her, and pulled her to her feet and hugged her. She was tiny, and bony, in my arms. She'd probably been feeding her kids everything she could and taking the bare minimum for herself.

"Stop," I said quietly as I held her, and she cried a little again. "You're doing what you can in a terrible situation, Mary. I'm doing OK. Let me help."

"Thank you," she whispered into my shirt, then sniffed behind her mask again and stepped away. 'Thank you, Harri."

"Text me," I reminded her. "So that I have your number."

"I will," she nodded. "I will."

She left, headed towards the line outside the store, and I watched her go. Hopefully I wasn't going to pay for that moment of kindness with my life. But what was the point of being vaccinated and wealthy if I couldn't help a hurting woman?

I sat back on the gate of my truck and saw the two big paper bags holding the meat I'd just bought. Hundreds of dollars worth. I could have given her some, along with the cash. One of the chickens and some of the sausages. Kids liked sausage, right?

Then I could practically hear my Mom's voice in the back of my mind. She'd been the giver in the family before she died. The volunteer. And she'd always said that you couldn't do your best for others without taking care of your family first.

Seventy dollars would carry Mary and her kids for a few days at least. I could set up an account with Mason, connect her with Mrs Branston for eggs, and cover her bill. I doubted I could do the same at the grocery store, but meat was always the most expensive part of meals anyways. I could drop a couple hundred bucks with her to help cover her other staples every few weeks.

I looked down at my sweater, hoping again that I wasn't going to pay for this with sickness and death.

What did those docs say? Eighty per cent effective, with more for each partner? I had three partners now, so I had to be like ninety per cent covered, right?

The rest of my wait in the parking lot, unfortunately, wasn't peaceful. A guy with some parking lot road rage pounded on his horn at a woman who was loading her car. A half dozen teens skated through on skateboards, whooping and hollering and skirting by too close to people. None of them were wearing masks, and I saw a few of them spitting near people or fake coughing just to get a reaction out of them.