Project Airborne

by Johnson, Cassandra

  “Wait, do you think that we could find medicine for me?” Tom looked up suddenly.

  “Of course, I mean, if I can find prednisone, I’m sure they have medications for ADHD and if they don’t at the Walgreens I went to, we can check other pharmacies.” Kaige replied, getting up and taking their bowls, using the water that was left in the kettle to wash them up quickly. She could already sense a new morning routine in the making.

  “We should make a list of all the things we want to find today when we go out,” Kaige nodded up and down quickly as she dried off the bowls and put them in a neat stack to the side of the fireplace.

  “If we can go out today.” Logan said, pointing at the boarded-up window, he’d been awake for a long time and had already been checking out what it looked like outside.

  Kaige’s feelings immediately darkened as she got up and looked through the cracks in the boards. The brightness from the sun glinting off the ice and snow hurt her eyes, making them water as she tried to see the full extent of what the storm from yesterday had brought to them.

  “Crap.” Kaige said under her breath, she couldn’t see well, but what she did see didn’t brighten her spirits. Tucking her robe around her body she left the apartment and carefully climbed down the stairs and opened the exterior door. The sidewalk was completely covered in a thick sheet of ice, there were long icicles hanging off the trees and powerlines.

  “Damn it, damn it, damn it.” Kaige growled, looking out the door, her lips screwing up in disgust at the weather. “Well, at least we have enough food and firewood to get us through the next couple of days.” She sighed.

  Logan was waiting for her at the top of the stairs in his jacket.

  “Hey, we’re here and alive. We’ll be able to go out scouting soon. It’s not an immediate emergency and it already feels a bit warmer than yesterday.” Logan told her. “By tomorrow I bet most of the ice will be melted enough for us to go out.”

  Climbing back up the stairs Kaige knew that Logan was right. She just felt panic. Now that there was five of them, including herself, she was worried that they were going to be going through their supplies a lot faster and there was no time to lose when she thought about their ever-dwindling stock.

  “Come on,” Logan said as Kaige reached the top of the stairs, hanging his arm around her shoulders. “There is plenty that needs to be done here today while we wait for the ice to melt.” Rubbing her arm gently as the stepped back inside of the apartment where the warmth of the fire felt so much better than the damp cold of the stair well.

  “Like what?” Kaige asked, searching for her cigarettes.

  Megan and Tom were watching Tobey playing with the stuffed rabbit and the Monopoly pieces for entertainment.

  “Cleaning, I’m sure all of the units could use a good scrubbing, we need to get ourselves set up in our new homes. Have you ever thought of taking some of the boards off the windows to let in some sunlight? I noticed when we came yesterday that all the windows were above our heads. I don’t think very many zombies are going to be able to jump and climb through the windows.” Logan explained, his mind busily putting together a list of projects for them to do while they waited for the ice to melt outside.

  “I guess you’re right. Me and my landlord put them up together from some of the old boards and plywood he had down in the basement. We were hyper vigilant and there were walking corpses everywhere at the time.” Kaige felt a little hesitant, but she also saw where Logan was coming from. They wouldn’t need to use their flashlights as much if they had natural light coming in from the windows and she’d never seen zombies attack any of the houses here even in the days after the great rising. They were slow and dumb, in groups they were dangerous, but they’d never figured out how to get up to the windows.

  “If it makes you feel better, we can just take the top boards off, that way the bottoms are still in place.” Logan suggested.

  “That does sound better. I’ve never seen a zombie climb a ladder through a window, but before this zombie’s only existed in science fiction.” Kaige said with a quirk of her brows.

  “Alright then, looks like the first order of business is taking down the top boards on the windows.” Logan clapped his hands together.

  Tom rose from his seat, finally glad to have something more to do than to sit and wait to be killed or starve to death.

  “While you guys are doing that, Megan and I can start dusting furniture, sweeping, mopping.” Kaige suggested.

  “I’m down for that.” Megan smiled.

  “What can I do?” Tobey asked, hopping up from the floor, not wanting to be left out, it was sad that the little boy saw this as something fun to do.

  “You can be in charge of sweeping the dust out from under the beds and when you finish that, we’ll find something else.” Megan nodded up and down, rustling his brown hair.

  Splitting up they got to work, starting in Kaige’s apartment. Tom and Logan got all the boards down and she was ashamed of the amount of dust she was now able to see, but Tobey took care of that, running around the apartment with a feather duster in his hand knocking all the surface dust away. As soon as the boards were down, Tom and Logan went into the next apartment while Megan and Kaige were spraying furniture polish, Windex and sweeping.

  Firewood was brought up to the second floor and the guys started pitching in with the dusting. With the combined fires burning in three apartments it was beginning to warm the whole house until they all needed a break as the sun was dropping in the late afternoon sky.

  Logan was right about the ice melting, she could hear it dripping in a small waterfall that cascaded off the roof.

  “I really wish we had some electricity because we could go to town with a vacuum.” Kaige said as they all relaxed on the couch, drinking bottled water, she wasn’t sure why she never got anything else to drink besides water. She could make tea, she never thought about grabbing juices or bottles of Powerade whenever she saw them in the store. Surely that stuff didn’t have an expiration date, but for now, water would do, and it felt good to be tired from cleaning and not fear.

  “I know.” Megan agreed, sitting up to light a cigarette, even poor little Tobey had a dirt dust smudge across his nose. They were all going to need a good shower soon.

  “Sprinkle some of that good smelling carpet, fresh stuff in the bedrooms and living room, let it sit a minute and then suck it all up into the vacuum.” Kaige smiled and laughed a little bit remembering what it felt like to look around her apartment after she went on a major cleaning binge and decided to go from room to room cleaning everything.

  “Just not the Hawaiian one.” Tom spoke up with a chuckle.

  “Hah, yeah. It gives Tom a migraine.” Megan snorted playfully hitting Tom’s knee.

  “It’s too strong.” Tom grumbled.

  “This feels nice.” Logan said firing up a cigarette and looking at the rays of orange sunshine running along the carpet.

  “It does, more like a home.” Megan suggested to which they all began to nod. It did feel like a home. More home than they had felt in months since the dead woke up and took over the world that once belonged to them. It almost felt like they were taking it back. It might have just been one apartment building, but it was something to hold onto that gave them hope.

  10.

  It was six-thirty in the morning when Kaige turned over beneath her blankets and saw the purple light of dawn trying to creep up in the sky. Logan had taken the unit above hers, but she couldn’t hear any movement yet, or he was just a very soft walker which had never been the case with the previous tenants. Clinging her to her blankets it was cold in her room, so she knew that the fire had gone out. Kaige almost had to remind herself that finding people was real. She hadn’t dreamed it all in her loneliness. It would take some time to get used to that.

  Going through her usual morning routine, Kaige found a pen and an old note pad and began to make a list.

  Water

  Coffee + Hot Chocolate


  Canned goods

  Powder Milk

  Box spaghetti + Mac and cheese

  Powerade

  Blankets

  Kaige allowed her mind to wander as she tried to figure out how they would get everything back to the apartment without the use of a car. There was only so much they could carry on their backs with the duffle bags and backpacks. The more thought she put into it, the more she found that they needed.

  Extra lanterns

  Batteries

  Solar lamps?

  Those were a thing, right? Kaige felt sure that she’d heard of people using solar lamps when they went camping. If they had some of those, they could just stick them out in the sun during the day to power up and they wouldn’t need to use batteries as often. Kaige wasn’t certain where people got them, she’d never gone camping before, nor had she ever had a deep desire to go camping. Kaige liked nature, but not sleeping on the ground and peeing behind a tree, nature. Ironic, since every day of her life was one long camping experience what with cooking her food on an open fire and peeing into coffee cans.

  Kaige was also adding things to the list that she had never thought of before because apparently adults didn’t like spaghetti or macaroni and cheese. These were all things that were popping into her head with Tobey in mind. Why had she been cheating herself for months? Powder milk? Kaige could have cereal. Which reminded her of cereal, and she wrote it down on the list along with oatmeal and cream of wheat. That would be a nice option for in the mornings, maybe they couldn’t have eggs and bacon, but they could damn sure have some oatmeal or cream of wheat sometimes. Kaige realized that she had been completely passing over an entire isle of food options that would work in their current living situation. Why hadn’t she thought of any of this before?

  After an hour she began to hear people moving around in the apartment across the hall. Feet running, then the door to her apartment opened and Tobey ran inside, he was extra excited this morning for some reason and for an instant she thought that he was hurt, but instead he ran towards her, bowling her over onto her back hugging her so hard that it hurt a little bit.

  “Good morning Kaige, the ice is melted!” Tobey was so excited, almost as excited as she was because she wanted to get out of the house, she wanted to go get supplies. Kaige was seeing a whole new world opening up that she hadn’t even imagined before.

  Laughing, she slowly sat up and Tobey fell back on his bottom in front of the fire, smiling with his bed head.

  “Yes, it has. Are your parents up yet?” She asked.

  “Nope, they’re still sleeping. I heard dad snoring a little while ago and I got up to pee and I looked outside the window and there’s no more ice on the sidewalk outside and I came to see if you were awake yet. Did you take your medicine?” Tobey paused for a second to catch his breath, they really needed to get the kiddo off the coffee as soon as possible.

  “I did take my medicine, yes. Are you hungry? You want some breakfast?” Climbing to her feet quickly headed into the kitchen to pick out another can of soup for Tobey. Soon he would have different food options.

  “Yes, please.” Tobey was dancing on his bottom singing a little song to himself while Kaige pried the can open and dropped it into the boiler to heat up.

  “Did you sleep okay last night?” Stirring the contents of the boiler. Kaige really didn’t want to give Tobey any more coffee, she’d heard bad things about it when she was younger that if could stunt your growth, she’d been drinking coffee since she was fourteen and she was only five foot two, Kaige thought this was a prime example. Plus, it couldn’t have been good for Tobey to be getting that much caffeine. It didn’t have any effect on the adults that she saw, but Tobey was a little boy. Pursing her lips slowly she was thinking back to the summer when she would buy those bottles of flavoring and squeeze them into her water. Did she have any of those left?

  “I slept.” Tobey replied, which made Kaige think he was telling a lie, but she wasn’t going to call him on it. If he couldn’t sleep, he couldn’t sleep, it wasn’t his fault.

  “Don’t touch the boiler, okay? I’m just going to look for something in the kitchen really quick.” Kaige told him, getting up and going to the cupboard where she kept all of her coffee at one time and began to look around. Moving filters around, she found a box of peppermint tea and the water flavor. It was sweet tea, so Tobey had two options to drink.

  “Morning.” A deep, raspy voice spoke from the doorway, Logan’s hair was in desperate need of a trim while he stood there in his jacket, blinking hard to push the sleep from his eyes unsuccessfully.

  “Good morning, you’re just in time for breakfast. Kaige smiled, grabbing the box of tea and the bottle of water flavoring and went back into the living room. Tobey was still patiently sitting where she’d left him, watching the soup in the boiler began to bubble just a little bit.

  “I’ll just have some coffee.” Logan said following her and falling into a seat on the couch, a yawn escaping him as he sniffed, trying to place a cigarette in his lips he had to stop and yawn again. “I forgot how much better I slept when I was in a bed.” He joked mildly while Kaige was holding up the two drink choices for Tobey. The little boy looked at them both, before he pointed at the box of tea. Kaige figured it was probably because there was a peppermint candy on the front of the box.

  “I’m sure after laying on a floor you didn’t get a very restful sleep.” Kaige commented, putting the tea bag and a coffee bag into two mugs. It felt good to be taking care of someone other than herself.

  After breakfast was over, Kaige and Logan agreed that they were going to go on a test outing. They would gather some small necessities, but until they saw how safe it was, they wouldn’t travel too far from home.

  MEGAN LOOKED NERVOUS as Kaige and Logan put their backpacks on and took a duffle bag each. She was sure that the ice hadn’t melted enough and that one or both were going to fall and break a bone and there were no hospitals that they could be taken to, they’d die of exposure. Yes, Megan literally said those words to them.

  “We will be fine, Meg.” Logan assured her, the crowbar he found in the basement, hung over his arm.

  “Don’t worry, we will be back before sundown.” Kaige promised as she put the keys to the house in her pocket.

  “It’s too bad that you can’t go in a car.” Megan lamented, walking them down to the exterior door while Tom was helping Tobey take a shower with what was left of the hot water from the coffee they made.

  “Tell me about it.” Logan laughed. This wouldn’t be nearly as daunting a task if they were driving from one place to another and loading everything into the trunk or the back seat and just bringing it back. Kaige couldn’t believe the way she used to whine about having to carry all the groceries into the house from the car. What a spoiled fool she had been.

  Megan’s fears were unjustified as they stepped out onto the wet sidewalk. Logan was right, the temperature had gone up into the sixties, according to the thermometer on the side of the house. Walking up to the gate Logan looked both ways before lifting the latch and stepping out of the gate, Kaige followed behind him closing the latch back down. She could hear Tobey laughing from the back bedroom at the front of the house, he must have really enjoyed his shower. Whoever said silence was golden had obviously never considered what it would be like when the world went completely quiet.

  “Which way?” Logan looked at Kaige, his eyes drifting towards the way they came just the day before and then down towards the very bottom of the hill. Kaige had already raided all of the stores in that direction but she was too afraid to go any further.

  “Let’s try this way,” She motioned towards Stateline Road where the Murphy’s gas station and Papi’s stood. “There is a Dollar General further up the road, plus a Kroger, Walmart and a Lowe’s. Kaige wasn’t sure they needed anything at this precise moment from Lowe’s, but she wasn’t willing to discount it in the future.

  “Ok.” Logan nodded, gripping the straps of his backpa
ck as they turned and began to walk in that direction, Kaige’s baseball bat in her grip for extra protection.

  “So, what happened to you after all this happened?” Logan asked, tipping his head towards her for a moment. To him, she looked the same as the last time he’d seen her. Still quiet and sweet, maybe more so now. Watching her with Tobey was like seeing a completely different side of her. Logan always knew that Kaige was a nice girl, but he never imagined that she could take on the role of a mother so fast. She really treated Tobey like he was her own, even before she knew that they were living in the old office building she thought she saw a child there and came in to help him, not knowing what she might walk into. Kaige really was incredible, he only wished he’d told her that a few years sooner.

  “It’s really not that interesting, my experience has probably been tame compared to yours or Tom and Megan? God, Tobey alone and he’s just a little boy.” Kaige’s face fell into a mask of sympathy that this was the world he was growing up in. No child should have to withstand this, people always said the world was in terrible shape, but when Kaige looked back on it, she would still choose that life over this one any day.

  “I don’t think that’s true. You said your landlords were here before. What happened to them?” Logan asked, bending down and picking up a long stick, it was thick, probably a limb that had fallen from a tree a long time ago or just a day or so ago giving up under the weight of the ice hanging from it. He began to use it as a walking stick.

  “They were, the other tenants went out and it’s a story very much the same with Mike and Jeremy. One day they went out to try to bring back food for us and they never came back.” Kaige frowned slowly thinking of the last time she’d seen Roberto and Manny. They were a gay couple and she was pretty sure that they changed her landlords’ minds about ‘the gays’ as they had formerly referred to them as. “Robby and Manny went first, they helped me, and Walter put the boards up on the windows. Manny fixed my car for me probably ten times and Roberto always helped Walter repaint the other unit every time someone moved out. They lived in the apartment above me, the one you have now. It was hard when they didn’t come back. Todd lived in the other unit. Eunice was sick, and Walter was having a hard time taking care of her on his own, so I stayed behind to help, and Todd went out alone, I never should have let him go out by himself.” Kaige sniffed shaking her head quickly. “Maybe if I was with him, then maybe he would have come home. After that Walter was determined that no one left the apartment alone, but Eunice couldn’t be left alone, she had a terrible cold and on top of that she had heart problems, both of them did and the cigarettes didn’t help I’m sure, but what else did we have?” Kaige asked as they came to the bottom of the hill and turned left on the corner, walking past the bus stop. “Eunice passed away first, it had to be pneumonia, she had the worst cough and none of the medicine that I found seemed to help, she would make these terrible gasping noises trying to catch her breath, she would wet herself she coughed so hard, like you could see it shake her entire body. I know that she would have passed away at some point, she was in her eighties, but to pass away the way that she did, suffering with nothing to help? That’s the worst thing that I can imagine. She had a coughing fit so bad one day that she started to cough up blood and I guess her heart just couldn’t take it anymore. Walter locked me out of the apartment for two days when she passed away. He knew we had to bury her. We couldn’t just leave her in the apartment, granted this was during the summer and the higher the temperature rose outside the worse it smelled. After I threatened to break one of the windows, he finally let me in. He hadn’t shaved, eaten or bathed, he just sat on the floor with Eunice the whole time. He was lost without her, forgot things, wandered around the house aimlessly so I started staying with him at night because I was afraid he might wander out of the house in the middle of the night. It was about two weeks after Eunice that he went to be with her. I got up that morning, made the coffee and went to his bedroom to check on him. At least he passed in his sleep, nothing violent.”