“It’s amazing. It’s like something out of a wonderland tale. It’s what school should be.”
Max and Patrick had moved around them when they’d walked into the large open room. They stood talking to Clay and the woman in the raincoat. Max caught Shelby’s attention and motioned with his head, so she and Bianca hurried to catch up.
A large wall was positioned in the middle of the room, a kind of divider. It didn’t reach to the ceiling, not even close. But it did separate one half from the other. Maybe they projected movies on it, or it might have been designed that way to cut down on noise. A couple hundred kids could get pretty loud.
When they walked around the wall, Shelby stopped in her tracks. This half of the room was filled with children, all ages and colors and shapes and sizes. They were all lying down, as if they’d been told it was nap time, and maybe they had. Some of the older ones were reading to the younger ones in soft voices. Some of the younger ones were curled up with a light blanket, thumbs in their mouth, gentle snores proving they were asleep.
Shelby scanned the room left to right, and then worked her way back left again. “Looks like groups of ten with an adult in each group.”
The woman in the raincoat had come back to where they were standing. “Exactly. We have an adult with every pod at all times.”
“Pod?”
“That’s what we call the groups.”
“Pods.”
“By the way, I’m Maria.”
“My name is Shelby, and this is—”
“Bianca Lopez.” Bianca shook Maria’s hand, and Shelby did the same.
“Where did they all come from? What are they doing here? What’s your plan to reunite them with their families? And how much food do you have?”
Maria grinned, removed her ball cap, and combed her wet hair out of her eyes. “Let’s go see Donna. She can answer your questions better than I can.”
Donna was a smallish woman, probably five foot four, with short, spiky brown hair and a serious expression. She glanced up and saw them and held up a finger for them to wait. When she squatted down to talk to a small boy, her scowl brightened into a smile. Her voice was soft. Her eyes filled with compassion.
She handed the little boy off to Maria. “If you could help Justin find his mat…”
“Of course.”
Justin’s face was wet from crying, and his shoulders shuddered when he pulled in a deep breath, but he put his hand in Maria’s and allowed himself to be led away.
“Clay. Good to see you. Why don’t we go into my office?”
Her office was a kindergarten classroom off the large open area. No one had bothered to take the artwork off the bulletin boards, but the desks had been pushed back against the walls, and chairs for adults had been brought in and set in a semicircular fashion.
“Have a seat.” She sat behind her desk. “We hold our meetings here, which is the reason for so many chairs. Would you like to take a few minutes to dry yourselves off?”
“Actually, we’re in a bit of a hurry.” Shelby stepped forward. “My name is Shelby Sparks. We’re from a small town to the northwest of here—Abney. I’m here for medical supplies. I’m looking for insulin for my son.”
Donna was already shaking her head, but Shelby pushed on. “We have things to trade—food, other medicine, a few items of jewelry that are gold, even some fuel. We’ll give you whatever we have, whatever you need, but I have to find some insulin.”
Donna exchanged a quick look with Clay, a look that confirmed Shelby’s fears even before she spoke. “We have very little medicine here and no insulin.”
“Then this was a pointless side trip for us. I’m sorry we’ve wasted your time.”
“I didn’t say your trip was pointless. I don’t have what you need, but one of our crew—Bill—he can find just about anything. Which doesn’t mean he can get it for you, but he can probably tell you where to look.”
“Can we talk to him?” Max asked.
“Sure you can. He’s out on a supply run, but I expect him back soon.”
Shelby felt her frustration rising to the point it might boil over. How many detours would they take? She’d known that it wouldn’t be easy to find what Carter needed, but she felt blind, as if she were fumbling around, following sounds that might lead to the one thing that could save her.
Bianca was the first to step forward and reason with her. “If this guy knows, it’s a lot better than us driving around aimlessly.”
“She’s right,” Patrick said. “Given what we’ve just driven through, I’d rather have a clear destination in mind.”
Max nodded in agreement. Bhatti stared up at the skylight, as if his fate weren’t tied to theirs.
So it was decided. Shelby knew waiting was the right thing to do, but that didn’t mean she had to like it.
Donna stood, effectively dismissing them. “Excellent. Any friend of Clay’s is a friend of ours. Have a look around. I’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have when we meet later. In the meantime, Maria will be happy to take you where you can hang up your wet things. We also have hot tea or coffee.”
“Coffee?” Shelby almost laughed and wondered if her desperation was causing her to hear things.
Maria had appeared at the classroom door.
“If Bill still isn’t back once you’ve cleaned up, you’re welcome to take a tour of our facility.”
They walked back out into the main room, and Maria closed Donna’s door behind them.
“A tour of their facility?” Patrick asked. “Is she for real?”
“Oh, she’s for real,” Maria said, smiling to show she wasn’t offended by their skepticism. “She’s proud of what we’ve done here. Follow me and you’ll see why.”
TWENTY-TWO
Shelby wanted the coffee. She did not want to dry her clothes, tour the facility, or wait for Bill.
Unfortunately, the group vote went against her.
“When did this become a democracy?” she grumbled.
“Stop complaining. You need coffee, something to eat, and to get out of those wet clothes.” Max held both hands up when she gave him a pointed, don’t-mess-with-me look. “Just saying.”
In some way, the teasing helped to ease the knot in her stomach. What they’d driven through was more devastating than anything she’d seen, anything she’d imagined, and exponentially worse than what they’d experienced in Abney.
They walked down a hall that bordered the large room with sleeping children. At the end of the room was a kitchen. The aroma of coffee drifted toward them, and she felt her pace quicken. Ten minutes later they were sitting around a table, clutching mugs of coffee and eating bowls of oatmeal flavored with raisins and nuts.
“This place. It’s like something out of the past.” Shelby cleaned her bowl and then walked toward the sink.
“We’ll do that,” Maria said. “Donna has set certain protocols in place to maximize our water usage.”
“Including how you wash a bowl?”
“Including everything. She’s a take-charge kind of person.”
“That’s an understatement.” Clay walked into the room, poured himself a cup of coffee, and sank into a chair at the table.
“Where are Jamie and Kenny?” Max asked. “I imagine they could use a cup of this coffee.”
“They’re taking care of a shipment.”
“Shipment?”
Clay waved away his question and changed the subject.
“You all look good in the new clothes.”
Shelby stared down at her scrubs—scrubs! Where had they come from?
“Our clothes are drying in the laundry room,” Max explained. Then he leaned forward, his gaze split between Clay and Maria. “Where did these scrubs come from? Why does a school have a laundry room? How do your lights and fans work if there’s no electricity? I certainly don’t hear a generator.”
He jerked a thumb back toward the main room. “And whose kids are those?”
Maria glanced
at Clay and shrugged. “She said to give them a tour. I suppose that means explaining what we’re doing here.”
Shelby noticed that everyone in their group leaned forward a little—interested to hear this story. Everyone except Dr. Bhatti. He seemed lost in another world as he stared at the opposite wall.
Shelby still hadn’t figured the man out, and she still didn’t trust him. That thought was interrupted by Patrick.
“Donna is part of the Remnant.” When everyone turned to stare at him, he chuckled. “Not that hard to figure out. Your code words? When we first drove up to the school? ‘Micah. Five. Remnant. Clear.’ ”
“Yeah, she is. But her passion has always been children—before the flare and after.” Clay sat back, his hands cradling a mug of coffee, and he and Maria told the story of the school, the story of Donna and the children.
Bianca leaned toward Shelby and whispered, “Better write this down.”
“Donna worked here as a language arts coordinator for the school. Some of the adults you’ll see were employed here as well. I was a first grade teacher.” Maria shrugged. “I was living in an apartment on the east side. Rode my bike to school every day. It was the healthy, urban renewal thing to do. The city had even put in bicycle lanes to encourage people to ride more, drive less. The Saturday after the flare, I thought I would come over to check on my classroom. There’s plenty of lighting with the skylights, so I figured I could change my bulletin boards, maybe grade a few papers.”
“You have papers to grade? In first grade?”
Maria smiled, as if she’d heard that question before. “It was a good thing I decided to come when I did. I don’t think I’d have made it through the mobs on my side of town if I’d waited until Monday.”
Clay nodded in agreement. “Donna had planned to come in on Saturday to catch up on some paperwork.”
“Something she did far too often.”
“She drives an old Subaru—no electronics on it to speak of. When she realized the extent of the outage, she decided to stay here.”
“This school was built as a living lesson in sustainability.” Maria’s entire countenance changed as she warmed to her subject. “As you can tell from the neighborhood, our students—our families—were upper class. They could afford the very best, and that’s what the school board built. GT Elementary was designed to run on solar and wind energy. We have a greenhouse and animals. We have the latest in sustainable technology.”
“An oxymoron if there ever was one,” Shelby said.
“True. But Donna understood that this would be a perfect place to use as a retreat until the madness out there calmed down. When we first came, that first weekend, we thought it might be for a week or so. Now we know how wrong we were.”
“So you plan to stay here? Indefinitely?”
“No. That won’t be possible. Those people you drove through? They’ll find their way here eventually. At that point we need to be gone. All of these children, they need to be gone.”
“Where can they go?” Max asked. “And whose kids are they? Because the people who live in the mansions we drove through…I imagine their kids are home and bedded down in a safe room.”
“Donna and I showed up on Saturday. By Monday, we had twenty-four adults. Some were workers here, some were maids and caretakers for the houses in the area. They all found themselves locked out of their place of employment. That was our first crew of workers—maids, gardeners, janitors, teachers, a security guard…”
“Bill set up the perimeter blockade and found weapons to distribute.” Clay let his gaze drift toward the other room, where the children were. “Without him—they wouldn’t have made it past the first week.”
“A few of the homeowners tried to continue as normal. They answered the doorbell when it rang, went out in the neighborhood, attempted to find additional supplies at the local stores.” Maria stared at her coffee, and when she glanced up, her eyes had taken on a pained expression, as if even the memory of those first days had the ability to hurt her. “They were killed. We began to do neighborhood sweeps—always in groups of three, always armed, and we were very careful to not lead anyone back to the school.”
“You found the children.” Shelby leaned forward, completely enthralled by the story.
“Many of them were in the neighboring homes, though the parents were dead or missing. We brought them back here. Some were children of the employees who had shown up the first few days. The others…” Maria glanced at Clay.
“We were bringing a family into town. They were looking for their daughter at the university. We guided them as far as this neighborhood. Never did hear if they got the girl out. But that trip was the first time we stopped in the apartment areas and rescued a group of children. They were hungry, scared, and filthy. We were headed back to our base when we came across Maria and two of her friends.”
No one spoke for a moment, digesting all that had transpired over the past few weeks. Finally Bianca asked, “How did you know their parents weren’t coming back for them?”
“In most cases, their parents were dead—right there beside them.” Maria pulled in a deep breath. “Someone had robbed them, shot them, left them. The kids they didn’t bother with.”
“But Kenny said the children we saw were decoys,” Shelby said.
Clay nodded. “More so now than then. And even those children—even the decoys—need to be saved. We just haven’t figured out how yet.”
“Sounds dangerous.” Patrick crossed his arms on the table and leaned forward.
“It is. We move slowly. We’re careful, but it’s something we’re committed to doing. Every life is precious. Right? Every soul is loved by God.”
“But you can’t save them all,” Max said.
“No, and as Maria said, we soon realized that while this seems to be an ideal place, it will eventually be overrun.”
“You take the children back out.” Patrick’s tone was definitive. It wasn’t a question.
“We do.”
“Where do you take them?” Shelby asked.
“The modern world may have ended, but there are still good people out there. People who are willing to love and care for a child.”
“Host families?”
“You could call them that, though each family realizes that the situation is probably permanent.”
“So you bring in supplies and take back children.”
“Or sometimes we bring in people—like you all—and take back children.”
“What kind of supplies?” Max asked.
“Whatever we can find. It’s true they have fresh vegetables and a sustainable facility.” Clay put a heavy emphasis on the last two words. “There are some things they don’t have, some things they’re beginning to run low on. And when we find children who are truly abandoned, we bring them here until they are ready to travel.”
“How can you tell if they’re truly abandoned?” Bhatti asked.
He’d been typically silent during the conversation. Shelby was learning that the doctor didn’t speak much, didn’t interject his opinion, but he took in everything. He was like a biological recording device. He could probably spit the entire conversation back out at them.
“I don’t know how to explain it. Experience, I guess. Not saying we always get it right. We’re more careful now than we were at the beginning.”
“Some of the children got sick,” Maria said. “We’ve quarantined them in a separate area. The school was well stocked with ibuprofen, that sort of thing, but no antibiotics. Clay brought us some, and Bill managed to find what Clay didn’t.”
“How are they doing?” Bhatti asked. “Are they still sick?”
“Some are.” It was the first look of uncertainty Shelby had seen pass across Maria’s features.
Bhatti stood and glanced at Patrick, who said, “I’ll fetch your medical bag.”
“Medical bag?” Maria stood too.
“I’m a doctor,” Bhatti said. “Take me to the children.”
“I’ll help,” Bianca said.
Which left Clay and Max and Shelby staring at one another.
“Looks like I’m in charge of the tour,” Clay said. “Unless you want to attempt to catch some winks.”
Shelby shook her head, trying to ignore Max’s knowing smile. “Show us the school.”
Clay slapped the table. “All right. Hold on to your scrubs. This place is going to knock your socks off.”
TWENTY-THREE
Clay wasn’t exaggerating. As they walked from the greenhouse to the chicken coop, he filled them in on the “green school” concept.
“Their goal was to integrate sustainability principles throughout all aspects of the school.”
The cloudy skies had lingered, but the rain had stopped completely. The concrete was wet, the air muggy, and the temperature rising as they approached an animal pen.
“Goats?” Shelby sounded as surprised as Max felt. Her pen hovered over her notebook, temporarily unsure how to spell goats. She was more tired than she thought.
“Tennessee fainting goats.”
“A Texas goat isn’t good enough?” Max laughed, but he peered closer into the fenced area.
“I hear you. These are a multipurpose breed, known for being good pets in some cases. Other folks raise them to provide meat, milk, and fiber. The school used the milk to make cheese.”
“But not now,” Shelby said.
“No. Now every drop of milk is going to the children.”
They visited the chicken coop, which was large, elaborate, and filled with a good number of chickens pecking at the ground. Next they stopped by a composting pile, walked around a recycling center, and stopped at the water-harvesting facility.
“Could you sketch this for me, Max? It might be something we could re-create back at High Fields.”
So they waited while Max drew the water tanks, the pipes fitted to them, and the unique design of the rain gutters attached to the adjacent barn.
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