Drake shakes his head at his father as he walks in behind him with a stack of three more of those industrial-size toilet paper packages.
“And that’s why you’re the weakest link in this house, Pops.” Drake chuckles. “If you get the Kingdom Virus, we’re going to have to lock you up in the basement.”
“Ha!” Tad balks. “We don’t have a basement.”
“Start digging!” Ethan shouts as he comes in with about four more packages of toilet paper, and I can hardly see the top of his head.
Logan and I exchange a quick look as he stands to his feet.
“What’s up with all the toilet paper?” Logan takes Jaxson from me. I have a feeling his paternal instincts to protect his young are kicking in.
Nathan and Barron run over and thrust themselves at the packages as Drake and Ethan set them down in the family room.
“We gone”—Nathan starts before taking a breath—“we gone build afort!”
Drake gently pushes the boys away with his foot. “You kids steer clear. This here is the new currency. We’ve got sixteen more of these babies in the back of my truck. Come on, Ethan, we’ve got a lot of unloading to do.”
“Sixteen?” I struggle to rise to my feet. Not because my stomach has grown all that much, but because the couch has lost all of its support from Drake and Ethan lounging on it, day in and day out. “Mom? Em?” I call out, examining them as they haul in enough industrial sized packages of TP to build the boys a mansion. “What’s going on?”
Em tosses her package to the floor. “We’ve got to be prepared. Now that the apocalypse has hit, we need to ensure each bottom in this house has more than enough to wipe with for the next seven years. If we don’t, this place is going to stink so bad it’s going to blow the roof off.”
“This place does stink.” I shrug over to my mother. “What about food?”
Mom shudders. “Oh, Skyla. All of the canned goods are just about wiped out.”
Tad comes through again, this time with another stack of canned goods. “Yup. And we did the wiping!”
“Mom, there are other people on Paragon.”
She shakes her head my way. “You don’t know what we just went through. There was a three-hour line to get into that place and a four-hour check out. We grabbed everything we could. Thank God we each had two carts. But the store was flat out of flour and yeast. I don’t know how we’ll bake our bread.”
“We don’t bake bread,” I say.
Logan nods to the television, and sure enough, there’s a shot of empty grocery shelves, people lined up for miles trying to get inside despite the foul weather, and talks of shortages from toilet paper to bread.
“Oh my God,” I whisper.
Logan steps in close. “If the death toll keeps climbing, there won’t be a need for toilet paper or bread.”
Mia gets up from the floor and lets out a growl of frustration.
“It’s as if the whole world hates my wedding,” she snips. “Mom, you’d better head back to Cost Club and pick up all the food we’ll need for my reception. The bakery called and canceled my cake. They said the head baker has the virus and she’ll be too dead to bake anything for me. Can you believe this? I finally get the man of my dreams to propose, and the entire world decides it’s a good time to get the flu.”
Logan frowns. “This is no flu. And it’s ten times as contagious. Schools, churches, they’re all shut down with the exception of any essential businesses.”
Mia groans hard. “Please tell me the flower shop taking care of my bouquet is an essential business.”
Logan and I wince as we slowly shake our heads.
Mia lets out the cry of the injured and even Jaxson lifts a feathery blonde brow her way.
“Oh, just kill me, why don’t you,” she shrieks. “How did my life evolve into one big nightmare?”
Melissa spikes to her feet. “Would you shut up already? It’s not all about you, Mia. Real people are dying. And believe me, they’d much rather that a spoiled brat’s wedding go off without a hitch than finding themselves at the receiving end of the Reaper’s sickle.”
Mia sucks in a quick breath. “Oh please. If this were your big day with Gabe, it would be you running around slaughtering people. This makes no sense. How is this happening now with my wedding just weeks away?”
Melissa rolls her eyes. “You picked Valentine’s Day as your wedding day. It’s right in the middle of flu season. Something was bound to go wrong. So don’t go pointing fingers as if the world conspired to have a pandemic just to annoy some ditzy bride on Paragon.”
