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considered what I’d just said. Seriously, she had to consider it?
    “I’m not doing laundry, or dishes,” she said as she stood up.
    “Then tell me, Bonnie, what are you going to do?”
    “No clue, but I refuse to do either of those chores.”
    “Maggie!” I shouted and waited for the fortyish woman to pop her head in.
    “Yes, Emma?” Maggie asked as her green eyes glowed with happiness; it told me she’d been playing with the children again.
    “Bonnie’s clothes are not to be washed. If she wants them washed, she is to do them herself. Also, she’s volunteered to help you in the kitchen tonight, and would love to help you do the dishes. If she protests, she’s to be given more chores.”
    Bonnie puffed out a groan but I ignored it and turned my attention to the group who was leaving the shelter with me. “Okay ladies, reminder time! Once we go through those doors there is to be no vocal cord usage. We use the hand signals for communications. We stick together unless I signal otherwise, and if you need a moment, you signal us and we will wait for you. Any request on the logs?” I asked Addy who was in charge of taking requests from those who couldn’t go outside of the shelter.
    “Cathleen asked for a pregnancy test. Brent asked for more wires, and black tape. The duct tape is low, and Nana asked for more ointment for her rash.”
    “Crap, that sounds like a hospital trip,” I said and scrunched up my nose. I hated going to the hospital. It had yet to be cleared out of the corpses, and was a cesspool of disease. I could find all those items there, and we had antibiotics on the ever growing backlist. Why? Because I’d put off going there in hopes of clearing it. I’d also have to go in alone. There really wasn’t any reason to take a group deep into it and I knew the layout like the back on my hand since I’d done my clinical there.
    “I will do the hospital, and you guys can start the burnings,” I said as I watched them all gear up to match my outfit.  I slipped on my Kevlar vest, gloves, and then the lighter hoodie I’d grabbed when I was in Spokane last. It made it easier for me to haul tail through tainted areas. I grabbed my pack and emptied it of my last haul, which wasn’t much. I checked to make sure the quiver was full and that the crossbow was clean and working, as well as adding a handgun and a few knives to the holsters I’d created just for them.
    By the time we were done, we looked like group of punk kids who had a serious Goth fetish. Each girl used the coroner’s cream, and no one complained about what they would be doing. It was life now, and if we didn’t clean the houses out, we would all eventually end up sick. We couldn’t bury them, because we couldn’t embalm them to prevent the disease from contaminating the ground.
    I pressed the code into the buttons of the panel and opened up the doors, and waited until everyone had passed through before I turned to Addy. I gave her the sign for I love you, and blinked three times.
    “Love you too, mute; in fact, I really like you mute!” she smiled as I raised my gloved middle finger.
    Outside, Greta had the camouflaged tarp off of the Humvee, and was folding it up already. When we went out in large groups, we normally used the Humvees we’d stolen after the military had left Newport. No reason to leave them there for someone else to steal. I waited until they were loaded up, and climbed on my bike. I gave them the hand signal for them to move out, and followed behind them.
    I waited until we hit the edge of town before moving in front of them and signaling which side of town they should hit first. It only made sense to clear the dead out of one side and work our way across it.
    I sat with my feet on the pavement as I watched them head in the opposite direction of the way I needed to go. I did a scan of the surrounding area and looked for a place to hide my bike. I would walk most of the way to the hospital, since I couldn’t