Quaranteam

Chapter 37

The conversation had gone far into the evening, with members of the household coming in and out several times, joining for a while before leaving the trio to their own devices once more, mostly anyway, a couple of Andy's partners choosing to remain longer. Sarah and Aisling in particular were intent on getting as many stories about Andy's youth as they could, and he felt a little like they hoped either Xander or Fiona would tell them embarrassing tales from their college years.

While Fi had been mostly coy about the years they'd spent at university, Xander, by contrast, had been eager to tell at least a handful of hilarious and ridiculous stories about the troubles they'd found themselves in during their misspent youth.

Despite how flustered he got a couple of times, it was a wonderful night of reminiscing, and a chance for the girls to see Andy in a different light. A piece of advice Andy had never let go of was that as you got older, it was almost important to keep people around you who knew you when you were young and fearless.

At least a few times, he'd managed to deflect the conversation off himself and onto other people, a detour letting both Sarah and Emily talk about their experiences making movies, and Xander talking about the process of being relocated from Ohio out to California.

Xander's trip had been surprisingly surreal, and he told the group about it in explicit detail.

He'd been loaded into an isolation chamber on a cargo plane along with twenty other men, each in their own little plastic bubble tent, although each of the tent also had curtains that could be dropped for privacy. Xander told them he'd found that odd but understood why eventually.

The plane had been mostly full of men when it picked Xander up in Ohio. The little isolation chamber was like a emergency field hospital's clean room, with a mattress on the floor as well as a few days of rations, both food and water, and a little sealable chemical toilet. Nearly everything was ziptied to weights to keep it steady. There was also a little headset that connected to a series of voice chat channels all the men could use to talk to one another.

The main channel had been too hectic for Xander to stay in for more than a handful of minutes, but he'd eventually peeled off a couple of the men in the plane into a separate channel, and was able to both give them some information and get some on his own.

All of the men on the plane had been gathered from cities in the central and eastern United States, and were being ferried out to partners, generally military but some in other branches of the government, and they weren't being let out of their isolation chambers until they'd been paired up with at least one woman, thus, the beds and the privacy curtains.

At least a couple of the pods had not only men in them, but also a woman in the middle of the imprinting process . The government didn't want to risk the life of any man, so this was an emergency plan decided to keep as many people as they could safe.

The two men Xander spent the afternoon talking with were Klaus, a 26-year-old Master Sergeant from Georgia that Xander felt like was probably in special ops of some kind, and Bill, a 34-year-old schoolteacher from Tennessee who was being paired up with a prominent Silicon Valley businesswoman he'd dated back in high school.

Klaus clearly knew far more than he wanted to share with Xander and Bill, but he'd done his best to give the two men some information to make their journey a little less panic stricken. There were two women in the isolation chamber with Klaus, a twenty-year-old blonde named Olivia and a twenty-two-year-old Korean American named Naya, or so Klaus told them, as both women were still in the middle of the imprinting process.

The man was part of the security forces for the flying hospital that was transporting men and women around the country. He knew what he could and couldn't tell Xander and Bill, and just having a conversation with Klaus had made Xander feel more safe in their travels.

He had a calm and casual demeanor to him while discussing how everything had been carefully planned, even if it all felt pretty slapdash. He couldn't answer all of their questions, for security reasons, but he told the two men that the airplane had basically been in motion nonstop for the last three weeks, doing its best to ferry people around the nation.

Xander had asked him if it was truly necessary, only to be told how high the casualty rate was for men around the nation. Klaus had seen the stacks of bodies, and the man sounded rattled when he described the hundreds of empty apartments he'd seen in his native Queens, as the corpses had filled up dump trucks, and they'd had to conceal the bodies as they were taking them out in the dead of night.

Klaus told them he'd been in a biohazard suit for most of the last week, but now that he had two partners, he would be able to go out and provide an escort for everyone going to and from the plane, although he planned to return to his isolation room with his two partners in between each stop they made.

From Ohio they flew down to Nebraska, stopping at Offut Air Force Base, where they picked up a handful of soldiers and dropped off a handful of women. Bill had asked Klaus how long they'd been running these routes. Klaus said they'd been running for a few weeks now, and they were only one of five planes that were crisscrossing the nation. Olivia and Naya had both been brought into the inoculation center in Denver earlier and then swapped planes to meet up with him in New York, where they'd met up after he'd returned bringing in another stable of surviving men.

All privacy had basically gone out the window. Klaus told him that most of the men had the option to wait until they were in a house or an apartment or

something

, but Klaus had been told by his commanding officer that they couldn't spare him that much time, so he needed to just get on with his business on the plane so he could get back to work as soon as he was done.

By the time they'd touched down at McCarran Airport in Las Vegas, Bill had been just about ready to break out into full fledged panic, between the constant shift in air pressure, the take offs and landings done without proper seatbelts and his inability to go anywhere that wasn't his little sealed off compartment, but a quick talking to from Xander had gotten the man to cool down at least a little bit.

They were barely on the ground in Nevada an hour, taking people off and bringing new people on, as well as refueling the plan, before taking off again, landing at Oakland airport a few hours later under the cover of night.

Their cellphones had been taken from them when they'd arrived at the plane, so Xander had been forced to guess at the time, but he would've placed their arrival in Oakland at something around 2 a.m. or so, although the lock in had made it impossible to use traffic as a gauge.

In Oakland, everyone had been taken from their individual compartments and loaded onto a large troop transport truck, with no caution given to cross contamination or infection, as they were all told they would be getting paired up within a few hours, so even if they caught DuoHalo now, it wouldn't matter. Xander had been concerned by that but he had decided to go along with it, because Klaus seemed to consider the whole thing fine, and he was the one loading people onto the trucks.

The trucks had ferried them from Oakland up to a staging area next to the lab near Mount Diablo, just adjacent to New Eden, and once there, they'd been introduced to their new partners and from there, sorted into where they were going to go.

The building they were using as a staging area felt like a converted aircraft hangar, with a high curved metal ceiling and big fluorescent lights hanging high above them. Although there were some tented parts of the space, similar to what had been inside the cargo hold of the airplane that had brought him here, most of the space was open, with long painted striped lines on the ground, leading people through the processing.

Men weren't being given

any

injections, something Xander had thought was odd, until all the men were given a five-minute lecture on "Your New Reality," something that the men were told to take deadly seriously.

The lecture included basic things like how they would be receiving their vaccinations (sexually transmitted from their new partners), how their partners would need sexual satisfaction about once a week or so, how their semen would be toxic to any woman they weren't paired with, and how if they ever felt like they were coming down with the symptoms of DuoHalo they should have sex with one of their partners immediately, which would resolve them.

At the point when the men had been told that their semen would be toxic to any woman they weren't paired with, a handful of the men had quietly jeered and rolled their eyes, but the next slide in the presentation showed a wound on a woman's arm that had silenced all that nonsense quickly.

The end of the lecture included a video message from President Pelosi, urging the men to consider fatherhood like a new version of the WWII draft -- every man needed to do his service to help save the country. Extensive tax breaks and financial aid would be provided to families with multiple children, it was stressed. The country needed to be rebuilt.

As soon as the lecture was done, they'd been marched single file to a series of processing windows, over a dozen clerks taking people's names and social security numbers before assigning them a holding area to head over to, where they would meet their partners. A sticker was placed on their chest before they were sent on their way.

It had all felt very assembly line, as if there wasn't time for kindness or courtesies, and people were simply being pushed through the grinder as quickly as possible. Klaus had joked around with them on the ride over that while it might seem rough, it was being done for optimal performance in getting people in and through the system and into their new lives, wherever they may be.

Xander had heard several different locations mentioned -- the San Jose highrises, the Stanford campus, the Berkeley campus, the SF towers, the Altamont sprawl, the Tracy ghosttown -- but when it came time for him to be told where to go, he was told he wouldn't need to go far, as he was being assigned to Dos Eden, the first expansion zone to New Eden.

He'd been given four partners on site, with one more to be waiting for him at the location. They'd been waiting for him in the holding area assigned to him, each having arrived sometime over the previous day, so they'd all had a chance to get to know one another. Letting the women have some time to bond in advance of the man's arrival seemed smart to Xander, as they could size each other up without having to worry about keeping their new mate's attention.

The women had also been given their injections in the holding area, and so Xander assumed the spaces had also doubled as observation areas, making sure none of the women had suffered any adverse reactions to their injections the day before.

Captain Betsy Ross had turned out to be a complete knockout, a blonde pint-size pocket rocket dynamo who was training men nearly twice her size in hand-to-hand close quarters combat, and they had clicked immediately, almost as if they were custom made for each other. She'd kissed him hard enough to nearly knock him off his feet before he'd even been able to say hello.

The second woman had been Serena Ortiz, a Latina woman in her late twenties who was a U.S. Marshall, and had built a career out of tracking down fugitives. Tall and statuesque, she had a certain grace to how she'd moved, he'd noticed immediately. She'd spent the past few hours talking with Betsy before Xander's arrival, and the two already had a friendly relationship, having bonded over the fact that they could both kick Xander's ass if needed.

The third was a slender blonde woman in her late 30s who had looked hauntingly familiar before her introduction, but Xander had struggled to place her, even after she identified herself as Alicia Geller. When she'd told Xander that he would likely know the role she'd played in her youth, Rascal Rachel, that had made it all come together immediately. Alicia was a child actress who had been the star of a popular kids show until she'd grown out of it and the show had been canceled. Instead of continuing acting, she had retired from show business and gone into education, teaching history to high school students. She seemed a little shy, but had assured him that once they'd had time to get to know one another, she would come out of her shell.

The final one on site had been Brooke, and she'd detailed the story to him how her friend Piper was paired up with Andy, and that they had recommended Brooke pair up with Xander, so she had. She'd been wearing a Shelby GT Cobra necklace when they met, and Xander had known it was going to work out just fine.

A second sticker was placed on his chest and the girls were told to stay with him, as everyone was sorted into lines and sent towards trucks. Most of the trucks were large troop transports, but Xander had been surprised to see that the vehicle he and his partners were set to was much smaller, and they were the only group loaded up onto it. He'd felt a little bad, since really they could've just been loaded up into an Escalade, him, his four new partners and the MP driving them over to their new home.

On the way over, the MP delivered the final set of instructions to Xander, as to why his fifth partner hadn't been waiting for him at the base and was, instead, at the new home. Her name was KC Kadrey, and she was a 20-year old Vietnamese-American student over at Stanford, studying mechanical engineering. She'd needed to get her injections a couple of days prior, and there had been some concerns that she might simply just grab the first man she saw and go after him, so she'd been taken to their new home and allowed to settle in. But, the MP warned him, it meant that she might be a bit intense when they arrived. She'd also brought her golden retriever with her, and keeping the large dog at the staging area had seemed problematic.

Xander, like all the men who'd been on the airplane, had been forced to travel light, a single wheelie suitcase all he'd been allowed to bring with him. All of his things that had been picked up in Ohio would show up at some point within the next few weeks as the truck conveying them drove cross country, but until they, he would have to make due with the things he had. Xander had been forced to argue with the people picking him up that the one car he'd been restoring, a black 1970 Barracuda, would be part of the things taken to his new home, and while the discussion had gotten a little heated, eventually the people picking him up had relented and loaded it into the truck with the rest of his stuff.

Each of the women had a similar amount of things with them, and when they arrived at their new home, they all felt woefully unprepared.

Dos Eden was technically part of New Eden, but it was an expansion to the original enclave, and the dwellings there were much more of nice houses than they were the sorts of mansions and manors that made up New Eden itself. The MP driving them over had said she lived in Dos Eden, and she was incredibly thankful, as it meant having a family was a distinct possibility, while the people in many of the other locations were going to be doing lots of relocating and readjusting over the next few years. Those in the tower condo buildings were generally being given an entire floor to themselves, and as needed walls would be knocked down and units combined as families expanded. The views were nice, the MP told them, but it just didn't feel like a home.

When they pulled up to the house just around dawn, Xander was a little surprised by it. They had told him not to expect a grandiose mansion, but the home was far nicer than any place he'd ever lived in before, a two story building with five bedrooms and four bathrooms, so not enough that each person had their own bedroom, but they would make it work, all of them agreed. It was mostly glass walls, and Xander found himself thankful for the ring of trees, and the high fences, that would provide him with at least a little privacy from his neighbors, who were only a short walk away on either side. It had a three car garage, and Xander was told there were new Teslas charging inside for them. (Xander immediately planned to turn one of the three garage spaces into his own little workshop where he'd continue restoring the Barracuda.) The driveway was long enough that they would be able to comfortably fit at least four more cars out front if needed. The place had its own pool with hot tub, however, something Xander was astonished to find. He'd never lived in a place with a pool before, and now his

home

had one.

They'd barely gotten in the door before KC had rushed Xander, practically mauling him with love in the entry way to the home. She'd been coherent enough to talk with him, the two of them moving into the master bedroom before he'd had sex with her and she'd fallen into her imprinting process.

The other girls had moved into the bedroom somewhere in the middle of their tryst and Betsy had immediately insisted on going second, having stripped down while watching Xander and KC. Alicia had gone third, leaving him with only Serena and Brooke conscious.

The three of them had taken a shower together, and somewhere in the middle of the shower, Serena had decided she couldn't wait any further, and had gone through part of the process in the shower and the rest bent over the bathroom countertop.

As much as he wanted to, he told Brooke that he was going to need a while before he could imprint her, his entire body more than a little exhausted, as the chemicals from the four women had been flowing through his bloodstream, giving him immunity from DuoHalo and doing some rather significant changes to his body. Brooke had laughed and just suggested they go over to visit Andy and Piper, which brought them up to now.

"Fuckin' hell," Andy laughed. "No fucking wonder you look exhausted, Xan. How much have you

slept

in the last two days?"

"Oh, we took a nap after we settled into the house, and I slept a bit on the plane while it was hauling our asses through the skies," his best friend said with a chuckle. "So yeah not as much as I should but more than I do some days. Was your experience similar, Fi?"

Fiona's journey had been very similar, with her and Moira catching an earlier flight out of Washington a few days ago, although their plane had made only one additional stop before landing in Oakland, their plane having gone straight from Washington D.C. to Los Angeles, where many of the men in the chambers had been unloaded and several women had been loaded on board.

Because Fi and Moira had been traveling together, they'd had each other to talk with and neither had felt especially lonely during the voyage. Fi even admitted they had spent much of the time talking about Andy, speculating how much he might or might not have changed over the years.

As the hour grew late, Brooke returned to the main room with Piper, suggesting she and Xander head home, reminding the two old friends that they now lived less than fifteen minutes apart, and could see each other as often as they wanted to, but Andy and Xander still hugged for a long minute, thankful to have reconnected on the other side of the disaster, before they walked the two to the door and sent them home.

Several of the girls had peeled off and gone to bed over the course of the evening, and at the end of the night, the only people still awake were Andy, Piper and Sarah. Aisling had been the very last to go to bed before reminding Sarah not to stay up too late, otherwise she would be too tired to talk to Maya when she arrived tomorrow, but Sarah had laughed it off and dismissed it.