Sorrow's Gift

Chapter Nine: Parrish

"Any luck finding my sister?"

Parrish finally had a quiet minute to talk to Crash, and she was dying to know if he'd made any progress getting in touch with Zoe. Earlier when she'd mentioned New York to him, he'd refused to show her any videos of the area. He didn't want to upset her, but had promised he would look for a way to connect with Zoe's cell phone if he could.

They'd only been at Crash's for a few hours, so she didn't want to bug him, but she had to know if her sister was still alive.

"I was able to locate a signal from her phone, but when I tried to ring through, nothing happened," he said. "I think it's just too far away. I can't seem to connect to it. But from GPS, it looks like her phone is still at the Four Seasons, though, just like you said."

Parrish let out a sigh of relief. That meant Zoe had listened to her and barricaded herself inside her room instead of trying to make it to a so-called safe zone. According to Crash, none of the safe-zones he'd researched had survived. Too many people pushing to get in and not enough security measures in place to tell if someone was infected or not. Especially since symptoms of the virus didn't always show up right away. All it took was one infected person to make it inside a safe-zone and the entire population was knocked out.

But if Zoe was still in her suite at the hotel, there was still a chance she was alive.

"What about calling her room? I can't remember the room number, but if you could get through, maybe someone would answer at the front desk," Parrish said, crossing the room to stand behind Crash. There was so much information up on his giant computer screens, she couldn't even make sense of it all.

Crash gave her a sad half-smile before turning back to his monitors. "Give me the information. I'll try everything I can."

Parrish bit her lower lip. She hated to think of her sister surrounded by zombies in a hotel in New York City. If their dad was already sick when she'd last talked to Zoe, Parrish knew it was foolish to hope he'd gotten better. She didn't want to think about that. She just wanted to believe her sister was still okay.

She needed to believe it.

"Keep trying, please," she told him. "Whatever it takes."

Crash nodded, but she could tell from the way he looked at her that he didn't hold out much hope of survival. "Not wasting power might be a good place to start," he said, shooting a look at Karmen who was just coming out of the bathroom after drying her hair.

Parrish wanted to strangle her. Who brought a hair dryer with them in their backpack during the zombie apocalypse?

"Did you honestly think it was necessary to blow dry your hair?" Crash asked, an amused look on his face.

"Yes," Karmen said, brushing imaginary dirt off the couch before sitting down. "So?"

"So, you do realize that we're running off some kind of mystical power source that seems to be connected to my mind, right? I have no idea how long I'll be able to keep this up, and honestly, since we've been running the lights and stuff nonstop, I'm starting to get a headache. We have to try to conserve power. A hair dryer is one of the worst things you could use."

"Okay, mister I've-got-a-thousand-computers-running," Karmen shot back.

"These computers are our only link to the outside world," Crash said, his voice louder and much less amused. "Hardly as important as making sure your hair looks good for all the boys you're going to meet, I know, but if you could please restrain yourself, I'd appreciate it."

"Fine," Karmen said.

"Fine."

Parrish kept her mouth shut. She didn't want to get in the middle of their argument. Besides, she couldn't stop thinking about her sister. She had to find a way to get to her, but New York might as well have been on the other side of the world. They had barely survived the trip to Crash's house, and he only lived twenty miles away. Dark hopelessness washed over her.