Page 36 of Cora

“Do we ask?”

I contemplated it for a few seconds before shaking my head. I knew Cora didn’t have so much as a hair out of place, which meant whatever did or didn’t happen involved Remi. If he wanted us to know what happened, he’d tell us, and given how jumpy the man is, I was going to let him keep his secrets. “Nah. If it were important, they’d tell us.”

“What are we doing with these three?”

I sighed. I was not interested in digging a hole for them, and I didn’t want them found on our property in case their “Queen”came looking for them. “Know any good cliffs?” I asked, only half joking.

“We could just drop them in the zombie pile. I doubt anyone will go anywhere near it to look for them,” Derrick suggested.

The zombie pile was pretty much what it sounded like. It was a chasm where we’d been dumping the zombies we’d encountered.

“Yeah, let’s do that.” Derrick ran and grabbed the wheelbarrow we’d been using, and together, we loaded it up and wheeled the bodies out. I went through their pockets, not finding anything worth keeping, before tipping them into the chasm.

When we returned to the house, Trent, Remi, and Cora were where we had left them.

“Thank you,” Cora said when we returned.

“How come there are two iPads?” Derrick asked, picking another one up off the floor and holding it up so we could see the busted screen.

Cora and Remi exchanged a quick look before Remi spoke up. “The intruders broke it.” Cora nodded her agreement.

“I have a better question,” I said, suddenly realizing the unaddressed elephant in the room. “Princess, where did you get the gun?”

We all looked at her; she had the good sense of looking a little sheepish. With a heavy sigh, Cora hopped off the table with her iPad and gestured for us to follow her. We exchanged excited looks before scrambling over each other to follow her. As she walked through the secret door, she bent to pick something up and then led us downstairs. She tossed whatever she had picked up in a bag and typed something. “Welcome to my home.”

I looked around in awe, utterly stunned by how much space was down here. It was far larger than the house above. It was probably at least three times the size of the house above.

“This was the giant square I saw in the ground from the roof!” Trent exclaimed.

Derrick walked over to a ladder in the far corner and looked up. “And I will assume that leads to the hatch under the truck.”

Cora confirmed his suspicions with a nod.

“Holy shit,” Trent says from down the hall. We follow the sound of his voice and find him in a giant pantry with shelves full of food. No wonder she was always bringing us more; she had plenty to spare and then some.

“Cosmic Brownies!” Derrick exclaims, grabbing a box off the shelf and ripping into it.

I smacked him in the back of the head before he could open one of the brownies.

“Hey!” he protested. “What was that for?”

“This isn’t our stuff; this is Cora’s stuff. We aren’t going to help ourselves to whatever we want without permission,” I growled. Honestly, fucking manners aren’t dead just because half the planet is.

“Sorry,” Derrick says sheepishly, putting the brownies back on the shelf.

“You can have one,” Siri tells him.

He shot me a look as he grabbed the brownie and ripped it open. He took a giant bite, and there was a moment when I wasn’t sure how he felt about it. Three-plus-year-old cosmic brownies couldn’t taste that great. Cora watched him with wide eyes as he moaned around the snack. “It’s still just as fucking good as I remember!”

“Hey, Cora?” Remi calls. “Is this a greenhouse?”

We join him in the room across the hall, where a plastic curtain is tied back, and empty boxes to be garden beds sit in rows.

Cora nods and then points to a wall where jars of seeds are labeled. There were a lot of seeds.

“Why didn’t you ever plant any?” Remi asks.

Cora shrugs. “I didn’t have any use for it.”

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