Grid Attack (Cyber War #2) by Emerson Hawk Page B

“Then what about Alice? We can’t just leave her.” I said. The thought of just abandoning her after her husband just died wasn’t something I could do.
     
    “We need to offer to her to come as well, I suppose.” He said. I could see he was having the same thoughts as I was. It was hard to think in terms of keeping people around just because of their usefulness. But that is what we were faced with. If someone wasn’t useful to us, it made sense to let them find their own way.
     
    What a horrible world we lived in now. But I decided I wasn’t about to leave her here, alone. No way. She was always working before and I had no doubt that she would make herself useful now.
     
    “Speaking of Alice, where is she? I haven’t seen her in a while.” I said.
     
    “Alice?” I called out quietly. I didn’t want to speak too loud, even in the house. We never knew who might be just outside.
     
    She wasn’t upstairs and I didn’t remember her being on the main floor when we were all looking over the map.
     
    I went down to the basement, and she wasn’t there either.
     
    “Tony, where the hell is she? I didn’t even hear her leave…” I felt a knot in my stomach. Where had she gone?
     
    I knew she was terribly heartbroken over the death of her husband. As much as I tried to console her, there was nothing anyone could do to speed up the emotional healing when it came to the death of a loved one.
     
    We all grabbed a couple of flashlights and went outside to look. We had to be quiet, because we didn’t want everyone to know we were still there. We kept the flashlights off for the most part allowing our eyes to adjust to the dark as we walked around looking for her, but stayed within earshot of each other.
     
    We all met up by the garage where Ernie’s body was.
     
    I whispered to Carl and Tony, “You don’t think she would be in there, do you?” I asked.
     
    Carl shrugged and Tony said he would go take a look inside.
     
    Carl and I both stood outside, waiting and watching to make sure no one would sneak up on us. Thank goodness we had installed the gate between our two houses when we put our fence up.
     
    Alice always liked sharing her food with us and we would share eggs from the chickens. So when we put up the privacy fence, we made sure to add a gate between our two back yards. It made it easier for us to pass things through and chat with each other without having to go all the way around to the front of the house.
     
    Tony appeared a few minutes later, grabbing my hand and pulling me back into our house. I could tell by his walk that he was in a hurry and he seemed upset.
     
    I felt my stomach lurch as he pulled me into his arms and hug me.
     
    “What? What is it?” I asked as I pulled away to look at his face.
     
    His eyes were filled with tears.
     
    “She…she slit her wrists. She laid on top of him and slit her wrists.” He said.
     
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 3 - Anthony
    When I got into Alice’s house, I used the flashlight to see inside, being careful not to shine it towards a window.  Since the tree was still covering most of the front of the house, it was easy to go through the back and not be seen.
    The first thing I noticed as I made my way towards the garage was the smell.  We hadn’t noticed it up until now, probably because the door was closed to the garage and the temperatures had been pretty cold, so any decomposition would have been slow.
     
    When I got to the garage door entrance from inside the house, I could see the door was ajar.  We had made sure it had been closed before, so I knew either someone had been looting or someone was in here.
     
    “Alice?”  I called out softly.  “Are you here, Alice? It’s Tony.”
     
    Making sure I identified myself was vital these days.  We didn’t want to accidentally get shot.
     
    Of course, I had no way of knowing if she was even in the garage or if someone else was in there.  I pulled my