“You don’t think you’ll hurt it more?”
“No, I don’t think that. I think I’ll be fine.” I stood up and immediately leaned on him for support. “You have to help me get there.”
“What are you going to do when I leave?” His arm wrapped around my waist, and he pulled me against his body.
“Find other boys to carry me around.”
“Should I be jealous?” Hendrix asked with a smile in his voice as we moved back into the building.
“Yes,” I said. “Obviously.”
He grinned down at me, and we made our way to the community room where Haley and I held school most of the time. Depending on the weather or Zombie activity, sometimes Vaughan needed the big space for his training, but usually they practiced out front. If they needed the room, we would find a small storage bay to have a class in, but whenever the students were forced to sit too close together, we noticed there was a significant increase in behavioral problems.
And yes, I did realize how ridiculously responsible I sounded by saying that.
Reagan Willow, twenty going on seventy-five with a nice tenure under my belt.
Once we reached the community room; Hendrix gave me a quick but sensual kiss and told me to behave myself. He disappeared down the darkened hallway to join his other brothers outside, and I took a deep breath before facing my “job.”
Haley looked up when I hobbled in and raised her eyebrows at another torn-to-shreds shirt and the ace bandage that wrapped around my entire shoulder and bicep.
“What the hell happened to you?” she demanded.
“Cuss jar!” King and Harrison shouted out at the same time. I leveled Harrison with a nasty glare, and he ducked his head immediately and went back to writing.
“I had an accident.” I proved this by limping to the teacher’s desk.
“Obviously,” Haley intoned dryly. “You alright, Reags?”
“Still alive, Babe.”
“That’s all I can ask for.” She smiled at me finally, and I was forgiven for leaving her high and dry with the savages.
The Savages. That was our name for the kids in our classroom. We were effectively raising children apart from civilization or polite society and so we decided that they were nothing but barbaric, primal beasts.
We hoped to change some of that.
But honestly, what kid- before the Zombie Revolution, and lucky enough to grow up with TV and Disney- didn’t imagine themselves as Mowgli at least once? The whole raised-by-wolves thing was very appealing to children. It was less appealing to adults, more specifically me.
The kids were cool savages, but savages none the less.
“Want me to take it from here?” I asked Haley. She nodded enthusiastically.
“We were just discussing the importance of fiction even in a world that has little time for leisure.” Haley and I had prepared this lecture a week ago, so I knew where it was headed. “I’ll take the younger ones and work on some reading.”
She gathered Page and the five other students who were younger than “high school” age, and they went off to a lantern-lit corner. I stayed with the older kids and dove into my discussion.
Harrison, King, two sisters named Whitney and Alexa and another boy named Jeremy gathered folding chairs in a circle. I limped to my seat in the midst of them and began the interesting discussion of whether fiction was still important in the world we lived in.
The girls immediately agreed that it was while the boys played devil’s advocate. I suspected not one of them had opinions one way or the other, but enjoyed the heated disagreement.
I carefully steered the discussion in a way that would get me to my point.
I couldn’t have commanded an entire classroom with my little experience, but these kids were easy.
We talked about fiction in the Middle Ages, during a period not so different from our lives today- with the major exception of killer Zombies. We talked about Greek mythology and the talent of story-telling. We discussed how even early cave drawings could depict fiction.
The education Haley and I provided for these kids wasn’t going to earn them early entrance into an Ivy League- not that that was even a possibility anymore. But they also weren’t going to become the uneducated barbarians we teased them about being.
We knew that even in the compound, they didn’t sit around idly, letting their brains rot. It took work to survive, even in a settlement. They had to think about everything. They had to use common sense for everything.
But those brain-exercises did not equate to an education.
So we pushed one on them. The parents had all been in favor this and helped Haley and I develop a curriculum of sorts. We worked through what math we could remember, but it wasn’t much more than long division and some complicated algebra. Although, Haley was sifting through the stores of books in search of some math text book. We found a few scientific manuals of sorts that we used to guide us through a biology, anatomy and earth science class medley. One storage bay had been almost filled with books when Gage took over, and that’s where we found the majority of our history texts, biographies, autobiographies, and literature material. We also had a class on minor first aid and survival skills that could save their lives if they were ever stranded. Vaughan and Hendrix had a specialized weapons class for each group of kids, the younger ones and the older ones. And to round everything out, once a week we had an apocalyptic cooking class.
It didn’t seem like a lot, but it was more than nothing. And it was kind of fun!
I enjoyed using my brain cerebrally as well as in panic mode. It was one thing to think fast in order to get out of a difficult situation, but it was another thing entirely to have an intellectual discussion and force myself to reason through an argument.
The kids were great and seemed to enjoy something different in their otherwise monotonous routine life. And they liked to argue as much as I did.
Fighting had become a building block of any community these days, but fending off Zombies and running for your life didn’t make anyone feel like a winner. Arguing your point in class, in a safe environment where nobody was threatening to eat you, actually felt like success. And these kids needed victory in their lives.
Desperately.
We all did.
We talked for forty-five minutes on the merits of fiction, pretending and stretching imaginations into something greater than ourselves and our present circumstances. The kids seemed to love this. And I was amazed at the capacity for imagination they had.
Personally, I felt like everything fanciful and fiction that I’d once thought about had been sucked into a vacuum of oblivion; right along with technology, government and toilet paper production. But these kids, despite the fear and uncertainty they lived with daily, had never given up daydreaming or believing they could be something greater than their present circumstances. They still dreamed. They still believed in magic and different worlds and hope.
And they were so inspiring; I wanted to bottle them all up and carry them with me everywhere.
My hope was born from desperation. I had faith in a better future, because if there wasn’t one I would die of misery. My inspiration came from the deep, marrow-sucking will to live, not because I wanted to accomplish anything else.
When I looked at these teenagers who could still see the world through rose-colored glasses, even if that world was filled with Feeders and terrible men, they convicted me. When had I become nothing more than a cynical, depressing old hag?
I wrapped up our discussion and handed each of them a classical novel we’d rescued from storage. There weren’t any multiple copies of anything yet, so we couldn’t discuss one book at a time. Haley and I had decided to give them each a different book and make them do a presentation on it in front of the class.
Very “teacher” of us.
I hadn’t even read half the books they would be talking about, but at least Haley had. She was such a little genius. She made our job as teachers almost easy. And
it was good for her, too. She had this issue with not using her brain. She would get restless and come down with these terrible headaches. Teaching school forced her to think and plan. I knew she appreciated this as much as I did and as much as the kids would one day.
Obviously, that day wasn’t today. They all whined and complained as I gave them their books. King threatened to quit, and Harrison tried flirting with Alexa to see if she would read the book for him. Jeremy was a super shy kid, but even he grumbled about homework.
I ignored them all and sent them away with a smile on my face. That had to be the best part of this gig- the utter sense of fulfillment and happiness I got from torturing teenagers.
Ah.
Haley finished up with the younger ones and brought them over to me. They weren’t allowed to walk the hallways alone, so their parents or guardians dropped them off in the morning, and we walked them back to their “apartments” after class.
“How about you take Page to lunch, and I’ll handle the rest of these goons,” Haley suggested while ruffling the hair of one energetic ten year old named Carson.
“Sounds great.” I smiled down at Page, who was frowning at my bandaged shoulder. “I’m starving.”
“I’ll meet you there in a few minutes,” Haley called over her shoulder. “Save me something good!”
Page giggled. “If there is something good.”
I appreciated her cavalier attitude, but she was right. Gage hadn’t wanted to risk another supply run, for good reason, so the kitchen crew was forced to ration as much as possible. This meant we were subjected to small portions and no extras.
It wasn’t like there was ever a feast to enjoy before, but sometimes we’d pick up something different on a run. Like Little Debbies.
Oh man, I loved Little Debbies.
And once we found this abandoned semi from the Frito Lay Company with about six hundred small bags of chips. They were the variety kind, and we had treated each meal like it was Christmas.
They didn’t last long. But everybody got three different bags of chips.
It was really special.
Page grabbed my good hand, and we walked through the quiet, dark hallway back to the warehouse. Before we came to the compound, most of the meals were served in the community room. But Gage’s numbers had grown and so he moved meals to the warehouse. He had also built a kind of kitchen down there. There was a place for a fire and a pantry- in the opposite corner of the fire.
“Reagan, what happened to your arm?” Page asked sweetly.
“A ladder fell on me.” I crinkled my nose at her.
“Does it hurt?” Her eyebrows dipped, and I could see her concern turn to fear. She was a little replica of her older brothers, she was adorable.
“It’s not so bad now,” I lied. “Tyler wrapped it up nice and tight. I should be fine in a bit.” Another lie, but this one was more for myself than for her.
“You’re not going to go outside until it gets better, are you?” She looked up at me with those big blue eyes, and I knew I was in so much trouble with this little girl.
But still, that was a big promise to make. “I’m going to try not to.” Her pleading expression turned to a glare. “I won’t go outside until I know it won’t bleed anymore.” She seemed barely appeased by that. So I changed the subject, “Are you hungry?”
“Yes,” she relaxed. “I’m starving.”
“Me too.”
We pushed into the warehouse, but it was still early, so the room was quiet. Only the kitchen staff was here, setting up for the mass of people that would be bombarding them soon.
Harrison had picked up the ladder and put the table back in its place. Or someone had because the extension ladder was leaning against a far wall, and the table sat in a neat row along with three others like it.
Page and I walked over to our usual table and sat down to wait for the mealtime. There wasn’t exactly assigned seating down here, but something like the effect with church pews had happened. Families stuck to tables they knew and people that were already familiar. We were no different, preferring our meals to be family-only.
I made Page pull out a piece of paper, and a pencil from her school bag, and we played tic-tac-toe for a while to pass the time. We were giggling and being silly when she stopped suddenly, all laughter dying immediately from her pretty lips. Her big eyes found a target behind my back and her body went utterly still.
In a soft whisper, she asked, “Reagan, do you know that man over there?”
Chills, cold and fast, snaked down my spine, and I pulled from my deep stores of courage before I could turn around. I didn’t know what made me so hyperaware at her simple words, but some sharp instinct told me to be careful.
“What man?” I asked before even swiveling my body.
“He’s standing by the back door,” she continued to whisper.
I slowly turned, not wanting to spook anyone. Sure enough, there was a man across the room, leaning against the back wall. This room was like every other room in the facility, and it was way too dark to make out anyone’s face or features from this distance. Candles ran along the outer walls, but only his legs were illuminated and all they revealed were a worn pair of jeans. I could tell that his stance was casual and that his arms were crossed against his chest. But that was it. His face remained completely obscure in the darkness, and there was nothing distinguishable about his features that I could make out.
“I don’t know him,” I told Page, hoping to relieve some of her fears. She didn’t relax, and I glanced back to find her still watching him. “Do you know him?” A thousand different fears beat against my chest and if Page knew him in any possible way, I would pull out my handgun right now and shoot him first and ask questions second.
But she shook her head no, and I about fell off my chair with relief. “But sometimes I see him outside our room. Sometimes I see him watching our curtain.”
Icy fear sliced through my body so strongly that my eyes watered from it. I turned back to the man to find him still standing there. Now that Page had said that, it did seem as though he was watching us now. I couldn’t see his eyes but his body angled in our general direction, and his head could easily be facing us.
“Page, when has there been a man outside our room?” I demanded in a gasping whisper.
“Since we moved,” she said evenly. “He never asks to come in or anything. He just stands there.”
“And you’re sure it’s the same person?” My voice trembled as badly as my hands shook.
“Yes,” she confirmed.
“How can you tell? It’s so dark.”
“I just can,” she said. And I believed her.
The man moved at that same moment. He turned and pushed through the back door that led out to the courtyard. Fear warred with morbid curiosity and that same instinct to survive. I stood up and almost ran after him until I remembered Page.
No way would I leave her at this table alone; not when strange men were watching us and not when I didn’t trust anybody on this planet outside of the Parkers and Haley.
Sometimes Tyler.
I fidgeted with my injured leg bent on a chair. My entire body was tensed and ready for a fight, but not being able to chase after this mystery man was going to drive me insane.
A few minutes later, Haley walked into the warehouse flanked by King and Harrison. “Watch Page for a minute!” I called over my shoulder as I hobbled as quickly as I could to the back wall.
I pushed through the heavy door, noticing that the lock was missing. We had been outside once today, and I was positive that Gage unlocked the door for us. Now the door wasn’t just open, the lock was missing.
Out in the courtyard, I glanced around frantically for the very generically-shaped man. When he opened the door before, I had tried to take in as many of his attributes as I could, but there wasn’t anything distinguishable about him in those thirty seconds that hinted at someone I would know or recognize. He had a stocking hat completely covering his
hair; he was wearing a black jacket with the collar up so I couldn’t see his neck, and he was wearing jeans.
He was undoubtedly a man by his tall, muscular frame, but that was the only factual deduction I could make. Other than that, he was just… common.
I couldn’t make any kinds of conclusions about him or what Page had said.
Except that I did.
Fear, panic and pure, blaring forewarning ripped through my blood, and I breathed out one word into the still, cool afternoon.
“Kane.”
I shivered at the word spoken aloud and slipped back inside to the protection of the warehouse and the Parkers. Vaughan and Hendrix were sitting down, and Nelson was scooping Haley up into an embarrassingly enthusiastic kiss. Page was the only one paying attention to me, and she sat at rigid attention with her small back straight and her tiny hands clenched in front of her.
I hopped back to the table, sat down heavily and shared a meaningful look with an eight year old.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Reagan,” Vaughan commented from across the table.
“Is that what he is? Is he a ghost?” Page’s eyes grew impossibly big, and I couldn’t stop a small smile at her childish innocence.
Tyler squeezed in next to her, catching the very last part of Page’s question.
“Is who a ghost?” Tyler asked.
“The man that watches us,” Page told her.
All eyes at the table swiveled to me, demanding answers. I gulped and gave them a sheepish smile. It was time to come clean.
To Tyler I said, “I’m going scouting with you.” She didn’t even question me; she just nodded. I could feel Hendrix vibrating with questions and restrained demands next to me. I didn’t want to talk about this, and I didn’t want to say these words audibly… but I didn’t have a choice anymore. The logical part of my brain told me I was making the right decision, but the terrified part, the piece of me cowering in fear and hiding in the deepest places of my soul, whispered that this secret belonged with only me. This secret, if shared, would reach beyond me and my safety and into the Parker family. This secret would snake and slither into every section of my life it could get its greedy hands on.