Survivors of PEACE by T. A. Hernandez

Author:T. A. Hernandez [Hernandez, T. A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sanita Street Publishing
Published: 2018-11-26T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

It took another hour for hospital staff to discharge all of them, and an additional twenty minutes for them to drive to Alma’s house. By that time, exhaustion was beginning to creep into Zira’s body, but with the morning sun rising, her mind didn’t seem to want to shut off yet. She kept running through everything Tripp had said, trying to figure out some way to make him feel safe. She and Alma had tried to talk to him when he’d returned to their room at the hospital, but neither of them had managed to get much out of him. As soon as they’d gotten into the car, he’d fallen asleep, or pretended to.

When they arrived at the house, Alma unlocked her front door and ushered them all inside. “I put clean sheets on all the beds before I left,” she said. “Tripp and Jared, you can have Javier’s old room straight down the hall. Zira and Nova, you can take mine.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Nova said quickly.

“I sleep on the couch most nights anyway. Please, take it.”

“Okay. Um…thanks.”

Alma clapped her hands together. “I’m starving. Does anyone else want breakfast?”

“I’ll take some,” Zira replied.

Tripp shook his head. “I think I’ll just go to bed.”

“Me too,” said Nova.

Alma looked at Jared. “Breakfast?”

“Sure.”

Nova and Tripp headed to their rooms while Zira and Jared followed Alma into the kitchen. She opened cupboards and drawers and pulled out pans, utensils, and ingredients, then set to work on the meal with practiced speed and efficiency. Jared offered to help at one point, but Alma just waved him back to sit in the living room with Zira and kept working. She didn’t have a dining room table, and judging by the empty plates and cups stacked on the small coffee table in front of the couch, she ate most of her meals there.

A few minutes later, she brought each of them a plate of steaming scrambled eggs mixed with peppers, tomatoes, onions, and some kind of red-tinted sausage. She sat down on the other end of the couch and doused her own eggs with red sauce from a glass bottle, then passed it to Jared.

Zira passed on the hot sauce, but nodded her appreciation to Alma as she tasted the eggs. They were delicious. “Thank you for this.”

“Thanks,” Jared echoed.

“De nada. It’s nice to cook for someone besides myself once in a while.” She switched on the hologram projector on the wall. “We should see if your fire made the news.”

“I hope not,” Zira said. “I’ve had about enough of seeing my face on the news.”

She was relieved when she turned her eyes to the morning’s story and saw no sign of fire or the burned remains of their house, but relief became dismay when she read the text overlaying the bottom portion of the footage. Angela Yang admits responsibility for missing weapons believed to be in PRM possession.

When discussing the issue with Alma, Yang had suggested that informing the public about

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.