Daimones - Book 1 of the Daimones Trilogy. Booktrope Publishing Edition

Adapt

Broken Hearts

The sun shone bright the next day. Summer had definitely arrived, even if it was only late May. In the distance, the Alps were perfectly visible, the air crystal clear. Even the weather seemed to be following a different pattern than the usual one.

That morning, I had a bit of trouble looking Laura in the eye. Instead, she gazed at me quite thoroughly, and intensely. Annah was happy; summer and school holidays would soon come. She complained Mom made her study even more than when she was at school for real.

Mary was cheerful because her yearly spring allergy problems were abating. "Annah, get ready for our lessons. I'll join you upstairs in a second." She turned toward Laura and me, "and you two, leave us alone. Go for your patrolling and we'll see you at lunch. If you have no preferences, I'm planning to have lasagna today."

"Wonderful." I couldn't contain myself. Mary had always been great in the kitchen.

"You sure you don't want any help with that?" added Laura.

"I'm sure," I heard Mary reply. I was about to get Taxi ready but then she said, "No, Dan. Please leave Taxi home. Yesterday, Tarantula was very nervous and today we have a lot of new stuff to study. It's difficult for Annah to pay attention with all that whining. Maybe Tarantula will behave better if Taxi is home with her."

I turned to look at Mary with a quizzical expression stamped on my face. Was about to reply when Laura grabbed my hand and pulled me. "C'mon, big boy. Don't delay the school schedule." A mischievous smile rose to her lips. "Don't worry, I'll be there to protect you."

She exchanged a mocking glance with Mary who gestured me to hurry up and gave me a long kiss. Her eyes beaming into mine, glued, as if she were seeing me for the last time.

***

We had three rally points in Geneva, in addition to nearby villages. Laura always hoped that, with time, others would come across her messages. She regularly increased the radius we covered, arguing that the only reason we did not find other people yet was because I had limited myself to just a few miles away from home: "Imagine if everyone were doing as you did," she once said laughing. "No one would ever know of the existence of others."

She probably had a point. I had no intention to discourage her, or be accused of negative thinking and defeatism by bringing forward the theory of discrete uniform distributions. We were not a known, finite number of equally spaced survivors likely to have been spared.

I had little hope of finding anyone nearby, especially after such a long time. Anyway, it was hard to visit all rally points in a same week. Hope is what keeps you going, even when all the odds are against you. Besides, I liked the passion Laura put into everything she did, and I also enjoyed her presence around me.

"Let's go to Geneva first," she said once in the car. Radiant and gleaming, eager to leave, as if we were about to go to a party.

I was amused and bemused, and her enthusiasm was contagious. I smiled.

She was alarmingly beautiful that morning, especially after the evening before the images of which still teased me. She had on tight, low-waisted workout pants, and a T-shirt, both extremely revealing. Between her legs, she kept the bag she used to carry the leaflets she edited for the "people out there" along with the heavy duty staple gun. That thing was able to shoot a big staple into anything. We crossed the border quickly and reached Meyrin.

"Did you ever drive a Ferrari, Dan?"

"Huh?" Where did that come from? "A Ferrari? Nope. Never had the chance. Why?"