Read Online The Last Tribe by Brad Manuel - Free Book Online Page A

I’m sorry I’m
talking so much.”
    Greg warmed his hands, letting heat
flow through his freezing body.  He sat down and took off his coat and boots. 
Rebecca continued with questions.  She rambled about herself.  She even started
crying at one point.  Greg waited for the soup and listened.  He gave yes or no
responses when prompted.  He knew the girl wanted to talk to someone more than
she cared about his answers. 
    Greg was almost in shock.  He was
hungry, dehydrated, and exhausted.  He was not capable of giving more than the
one word responses he offered. 
    When the soup was hot, Rebecca used
an oven mitt to grab the pot handle and pour it into a paper bowl.  She gave
Greg a plastic spoon, and sat quietly, waiting for Greg to eat, and more
importantly, to answer her questions.
    “I walked from Boston, well Hightower.” 
He began.  “I’m headed further north to Hanover.  My family is meeting me
there, probably not until the spring, but maybe this fall.  I don’t know which,
but I know I have to get up there.”  Greg explained as his warm, full belly
brought energy back into his body.
    “You walked here from Boston?  Wow,
that’s pretty far.    Even if we had a car it would take you over an hour to
get to Hanover, and you want to walk?  I went to volleyball camp in Hanover
last summer.”  Rebecca stopped talking.   “Wait, you think your family is up
there?  Your family is alive?”
    Greg nodded.  He explained the
phone call with his father.  He told her that his father, brothers, uncles, and
cousins were not getting sick, and they decided to meet in Hanover.  He told
her one of his uncles was in Raleigh when everything began, and was still alive
after a few months.
    “My parents died about two months
ago, just like everyone else in town.  Concord and Manchester died early for
New England.  My parents said it was because half the town worked at the
airport and caught it early, but I don’t know.  I think the whole country died
at about the same time.”  Rebecca was not as frenetic in her conversation.  She
was serious and sad when she spoke of her parents.
    “How did you end up here?  How did
you survive on your own for so long?”  Greg was curious because Rebecca was
young.
    “I’m 13 years old.  I’m not a
baby.  Once I realized I was going to survive, I made some rules, made some
decisions, stuck to a plan my parents wrote for me.  You know, most of the kids
died first, I think because we’re younger and still growing, or because we’re
smaller, but whatever.  It was weird that I didn’t get sick like everyone else
at my school.  My parents kept me home, told people I was sick, and held back
canned food for me.  Right at the beginning, when Raleigh happened, they
started hoarding the food, mostly for the town and survivors, and then
specifically for me.  You know, people could tell they were sick.  They weren’t
hungry, had to force themselves to eat.  They just got wiped out.  My parents
knew, probably a week before they caught fevers.”  She paused, wiping away a
tear.  “It feels good to talk about it, you know, to talk to someone.”
    Greg nodded.  He knew they would
have a lot of time to talk about what he had seen.  He wanted to ask more
questions about the rapture.  He was locked in his dorm when the sick were
moved to the infirmary.  He did not know much about the disease.  Greg knew his
mother was dead, and wanted to know how she died.  How she was at the end.
    “Anyway, I wasn’t sick, and my parents
kept all this food, and we wrote down some rules: Don’t trust the military or
the government.  Don’t trust adults.  Don’t go outside or be seen or have fires
until you know everyone is dead.  Don’t share your food.  I stuck to those
until about four weeks ago.  I haven’t seen or heard anything for weeks.  At
first the airport was crazy busy, and I could see military planes and big jets
coming and going all the time.