“You all need to build my trust, too,” I said.
He stepped around me to the rail and looked over the horizon.
“Kady is downstairs on the couch, sleeping. She needs to start helping,” he said.
“You’re going to suggest that she get the water instead of Skinny?”
Oliver’s shoulders tensed and I knew I’d spoken with just enough disdain to piss him off.
“The two of them alone in the woods wouldn’t last a mile. We need to consider our strengths.” Oliver was right. It had never occurred to me that someone other than me would be putting consideration into how best to run our colony. For a second, I missed his hand on my shoulder. Only for a second.
“Big Guy—”
“Tom.”
“. . . is our only fighter. Kady and Skinny—”
“Blake. Do you really not know their names, or are you just being an ass?”
“. . . could be taught to shoot. But if it came down to it, could they kill a person and not just a creature?”
“Could you?” Oliver’s voice betrayed fear, and I wondered if he feared me or what this world might be making us into.
“Dammit!” Big Guy shouted from the middle of the yard, the sticks he was carrying dropping to the ground with a clatter. “I stepped in dog shit! Just because the world has come to an end doesn’t mean you stop picking up after your dog!”
“He isn’t wrong,” Oliver said.
“He is. The world hasn’t come to an end. We have.”
Just as Oliver facepalmed, Kady screamed from downstairs. Her voice was muffled, as if she were speaking underwater. I started to suspect why she was about to be executed when I’d found her. There was a moment of silence, and then Kady’s voice sounded again—but it was cut short by Skinny yelling back at her.
“You could have warned us about her before saving us from the rooftop,” Oliver said with a smirk.
“She wasn’t like that where she was living. She just needs to adjust.” I didn’t face him. Instead, I watched the field around the house, in particular, the roadway into the clearing.
“I’ll take over for you on watch. Why don’t you go downstairs and see if you can calm Kady down. Blake and Tom can take the night watches. Can we trust Kady to pay attention up here?”
Biting my lower lip, I placed a foot on the ladder. “I don’t know.”
I didn’t trust any of them to pay attention in the roost, but I wouldn’t last without sleep. None of them knew how to plant or harvest a garden, or hunt and trap food, or to defend themselves in a real fight. We needed to take time to train—before we ran out of packaged food or someone attacked us.
As I climbed down the ladder, the arguing got louder. The trouble with this strife was that it took our focus from survival. I had to send a message to everyone that I was serious about being leader, and that they had to listen to me. Confrontation is a cancer, and cancer must be cut out severely, I could almost hear my stepfather tell me.
Kady was on the couch, her arms crossed. Her face was tight in a pout. She reminded me of my sister whenever she’d want to play outside or get a new toy. Skinny was in the adjoining breakfast nook, and Big Guy was sorting through the stuff we had in the kitchen. The two guys were telling her she could be helping. Kady was yelling that she wanted to just go back home.
I walked directly to her, and she looked up at me through teary brown eyes. She opened her mouth to speak. I lifted her from the couch by the arm. She yelped and fought against me. I was stronger, and I forced her to the door and threw her outside. Big Guy and Skinny ran up behind me.
“This is how things are going to be from now on,” I said, staring directly at Kady. “We are a team, one unit. Anyone who doesn’t like it is free to go.”
I brought her into the field, where I could see Oliver watching me from above. Connor was staying between me and the house, glaring at the other boys. He was definitely my dog. A part of me was mad at Oliver for not paying more attention to his surroundings, but he’d needed to hear that, too.
I faced Kady. “You want to go back to your hatch? You go right ahead.”
I started back to the house, leaving her shivering outside. Connor followed me. Skinny and Big Guy were wide eyed and staring at each other. I glared at them, and then I spoke again to Kady. “When you’re ready to join us, you’re always welcome.”
Even before I was able to take another step, Kady scrambled past me and into the house. When I was close to the guys, I said, “I’m going to cut wood for the fire. If you have any more trouble with her, remind her that staying here is a choice.”
I turned and headed toward our woodpile to chop more wood. Safe. Alone.
Except that I wasn’t alone. Connor was by my side, standing guard as I took a log from the pile and grabbed the ax that rested against the shed. I didn’t need to see Connor’s ears perk to know we’d been followed.
I took my log and walked to the chopping block. Oliver was now watching me.
“That was a real jerk move,” he said in a dark, gravelly voice.
Kady appeared on the roof, watching us. She opened her hand and waved at me. I had no idea why, but I waved back if only so she’d stop.
“What you said to her was mean, even if it was needed. She won’t carry the gun up there, but she offered to take her turn.”
“Kindness is our enemy.” I repeated my stepfather’s words so easily I got chills. “We need to make her stronger.”
Oliver sighed loudly. I ignored him and raised the ax. I brought it down hard on the log. The wood split in two. “Who’s next on watch?” I asked as I reached for another log.
Oliver sighed, and I noticed his face soften. “Is that all that matters to you? Watch for invaders, make a fence, scavenge food and water?”
I split the next log and another after that before answering. “Of course not.”
“Thank god!” Oliver laughed and grabbed a log to sit on.
“We have to grow our own food. Learn how to make things again. Figure out a way to stay healthy. Sooner or later we’re going to run out of things to scavenge.”
“Didn’t you have any hobbies before everyone got sick?”
“I collected Batman comics. I had nearly every one, including a rare Detective comic number twenty-seven.”
Oliver nodded and watched me split logs. That he sat made me wonder if my show with Kady had any impact at all.
“Well, don’t you still like to read those comics?”
“I only have thirty-seven comics left. The rest were destroyed.” I realized by his long sigh that that wasn’t what he had meant. “But yes, I would if I had more.”
“And we need to still do our hobbies. Even if they are not important to you, our hobbies will keep us sane. They make life worth living.”
“Oh.” I stopped chopping wood and let that sink in before continuing. If it meant they’d work harder, then maybe letting them rest wasn’t such a bad idea. He was right. I did enjoy reading comics, and I would like to count which ones I had left. Maybe I could scavenge the rest.
“What if we worked that into our routine, so there was always someone on watch while everyone else did their hobby?”
Oliver smiled. “I knew you weren’t a Borg. I think we can agree to that.”
I ignored his Borg comment, mostly because I had no idea what that was. The scent of cooked oats wafting from the house distracted me, and I realized it must have been past noon. I stood beneath the rising sun, my arms suddenly sore and my mind on fire from all that had just happened. My fingers were starting to shake, and I slammed the ax down into the chopping block.
Oliver had already walked away from me and was circling the shed. I heard him fiddle with the heavy iron lock.
“Can we talk about what’s in here?”
Images of what had just happened with Kady, the glares from Big Guy and Skinny Guy, and Oliver’s soft, nearly condescending voice filled my mind until I felt as if I were going to burst. Then the jingle of th
e iron lock pierced my ears, like the sound of a hot knife cutting into my brain. I ran to Oliver, grabbed his shoulders and slammed him against the wall.
“I said never go in there!” I growled at him, slamming my first against the wood by his head. “Never! Never!”
“Whoa! Dude!” He pushed me off him but kept his hands up, showing me his palms in surrender. I fell to the grass, my own palms covering my ears so that the pressure in my head wouldn’t split my brain in two.
Connor wandered over to me, slowly, sniffing the air as he walked. He pushed his forehead into mine and the pressure in my brain eased. He sat with me, his head pressed on mine. I glanced up. Oliver was watching, his eyes wide, his lips curled back.
“I hope to god you are not our only hope,” Oliver muttered as he returned to the house. “Hope. To. God.”
OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS, Oliver took watch whenever Big Guy and Skinny Guy tossed the football back and forth. When Big Guy or Skinny was on watch, Oliver and Kady plucked blackberries from the vines near the house. Tom and Kady often went on walks. Eventually, our field was filled with echoes of laughter. A part of me wanted silence, to hide and to never be found, but wherever my stepfather was, he knew full well where we were. The laughter, if he heard it, would be daggers of victory proving he had failed to beat me. That he had not broken me.
We still hadn’t scavenged, but I followed Oliver’s advice and allowed my colony to get into a routine of work and hobbies. I found it hard to do, but something about Oliver made me want to ignore my stepfather’s training. I practiced my Escrima with two bamboo sticks and taught Connor commands such as “stay,” “come,” and “hide.”
He enjoyed too much of the chase game that Oliver sometimes played with him. I wondered if he would ever wind up in a situation where his instinct to fight was overcome by his desire to play. But on those occasions when a deader stumbled upon us, Connor froze with fear in a fit of snarls and growls that sounded like yelps. He smelled them long before they were a danger.
Today, Oliver was up on the roost, while Big and Skinny tossed a football back and forth. Kady was playing with Connor, running as he leaped at her feet. We each had one hour of fun—our “break time”—before we got back to work on important things. I was sitting in the grass, lost in my comics, until Oliver sat beside me. I looked up at the roost and saw Kady had taken over.
“What are you reading?” Oliver said to me.
I shrugged as an answer. Lately, reading my comics just made me remember all the ones I had lost. Hardly a hobby when it did nothing to relax me.
“You know what I miss?” Oliver asked as Connor ran to our side.
Oliver threw a stick, but before the dog chased after it he looked at me. I chose not to answer Oliver’s question. I nodded at the stick so Connor would tear after it.
“Swimming. I miss being able to just go to our pool in the back and dive into the cool water.”
Connor brought the stick back and dropped it at my feet. I didn’t miss a lot of things about the old world—my stepfather, Kyle, and Zeke. And the hunts.
But I missed my mom. I missed my sister. I longed for the nights when my mom would come to my room when I felt as though my emotions were drowning me. She’d wrap me in a blanket so tight it would hold in everything that seemed to be spilling out of me. Those were things I missed. The creak of the swing as my sister wiled away her days imagining she could fly. So stupid it seemed then—but now I missed it.
“You gonna throw the stick? Connor looks like he might burst,” Oliver exclaimed.
I threw the stick. Oliver watched me watching Connor. After a while I said, “I can help you swim.” He sort of smiled at me, but with a weird, crooked-eyebrows-raised look that I didn’t quite get.
“Forget it,” I said.
“I want to swim! Where?”
I considered everything first. Kady was up in the roost, without a rifle, but at least she was keeping watch. Big and Skinny were playing football, but they’d run to help Kady if a deader wandered onto the field.
I nodded at Oliver and headed toward the back of the house past the shed. He followed, as Connor closed on my heels. I took him to a spot in the back of the property that was a little overgrown with shrubs. Once we pushed past, we came to a path. Connor took point, sniffing that the way was safe. We walked until we emerged into a sandy clearing, at the side of the lake downstream from where we got our water. The water wasn’t fast moving, and where we were, it was shallow and good for swimming.
To the right of us was a decrepit dock with a rowboat tied to it. It floated but had been there since before my stepfather bought the place. Who knew how safe it was.
Oliver rushed past me and jumped in the water. He didn’t even take off his clothes. As I watched, his laughter reminded me of those rare times my sister laughed as I pushed her on her swing. I might not have ever taught her to fly, but this was pretty close for Oliver.
Days like this day would become our routine. Even when our supplies got dangerously low, and even long after we could no longer put off those things we had to do. But listening to Oliver’s laughter, I knew he was right. Without these moments, what was the point of survival?
Chapter Ten
Because I had no natural light in my shelter, I had to check the clock for the time. Six in the morning, the twilight hours. I strapped on my machetes, and when I opened the door Connor walked to the top of the stairs, sniffed, and then tore outside. I followed him out into the field, stretching my back and staring into the rising sunlight. Steam rose from the dewy grass, and I knew it was probably going to be another hot day. I wondered what would happen to us when winter arrived. Would we be ready?
I lunged forward, stretching my hamstrings. My legs were sore, and I felt grungy. Oliver wandered outside with a steamy hot cup of something.
“Do you want a cup of hot water? We’re out of tea,” he said when he saw me staring at his cup. “We’re low on water again, but we’re always low on water.”
“The built-in filtration system was dependent on our electrical systems running,” I said, as I remembered the generator at Kady’s. How could we bring it here? We’d need a truck. “Get everyone on the roof so we can have a meeting,” I told Oliver. I glanced back at him, and he nodded.
Oliver went inside before me, and I remembered how my stepfather ran meetings. He had always told me, You don’t need to respect me. You need to fear me. Fearing me will keep you alive.
That had turned out to be a lie. I remembered reading Lord of the Rings, and what ultimately made everyone loyal to Aragon. He acted like their servant before he became their king. I just had to figure out how to do that. Not that I wanted to be their king.
Once everyone was up on the roof, I joined them. “We need to figure out a way to pump water to the house. It’s time to scavenge.”
Skinny Guy started fidgeting. I remembered my stepfather yelling at me for doing that, telling me people only did that when they were nervous or afraid. “Oliver and I are going scavenging,” I said.
They all nodded, perhaps because they knew the chances of us coming back were slim. Skinny stopped fidgeting. No one wanted our job. Oliver said nothing, and I wondered if that thought was on his mind, too.
“How will we know if you two get killed?” Kady asked, her voice trembling.
“You’ll know because we won’t come back.” Oliver said this quickly, and I remembered his shock when I had said something similar to him only a couple months before.
“Should we give a time limit before coming to look for you?” Big Guy’s voice trailed off in the end, making me believe he didn’t want to come after us.
“Carry on as if we’re not coming back.” Oliver said, his words echoing what I knew was true.
“Shut up!” Tom said.
“What’s the problem, Tom?” Oliver spoke before I could tell Tom to get bent.
“No, I mean be quiet. There’s a girl crying.”
We all listened. Sure enough, beneath
the whistle of the wind was the soft sobbing from a small child. I couldn’t help but remember the soft voice of my sister, especially on those nights when my stepfather tucked her in. A stab of anger and regret pushed that memory from completely surfacing.
I peeked over the rail and saw a little girl swaying back and forth on the rusty swing set. She was clinging to the chains, and her head was down so that her long, unkempt black hair covered her face and chest. The tips of her toes barely touched the ground. She kept herself swinging by gently kicking the ground once in a while.
“Where the hell did she come from?” Tom asked.
A smile flashed on my lips, and my eyes swelled when I recognized her. My little sister!
I wanted to run to her.
“I have to go to her,” I said, against my better judgment. All that mattered to me was that she was my sister, and she was alive.
“We’ll all go,” Oliver said.
“No. Watch the roost. Someone must have brought her here. Watch Connor.”
I started down the steps but couldn’t help feeling like a little boy being led to something that I should be able to see. Every step was heavy as I approached the front door as if I were being transported back to before all this had happened.
When we were little, my sister would spend hours on the swing set. She loved it so much. And sometimes when my stepfather was out training Kyle and Zeke, I’d push her as if launching her all the way to the moon. It was the only time I ever heard her laugh.
Remembering her laughter made hearing her weeping seem weird. I took a step forward out the front door. When I was on the stoop, I stopped. Something was wrong. When I was a few yards from her, she turned and looked so fast I stumbled in shock. I fell backward. I tried to get my wind as I slammed back against the ground.
Her face. Patches of black skin. Bloody eyes. I scrambled to get up. She started running to me. Not a full-fledged run, but a half gallop—almost a skip. Her leg was broken. Her fingernails were muddy. Her clothes were soiled.
Panic hit me. She was getting closer.
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