Evangeline, Alone. (Book 1): Evangeline, Alone

by Styles, M. A.

  “So what’d I miss here?” she said, finally looking a bit confused.

  “Elizabeth,” Nico’s mother said with a sigh and a smile. “I just gave Nico and Evie a bit of a chore to do, but I’m about to go start dinner. Would you mind going down to the cellar pantry and grabbing some potatoes, eggs, and flour? I thought we’d celebrate with Evie’s favorite. Some gnocchi, eh?” she looked at Evie, and gave her a sad smile. “Could you help me with that?”

  “Oh sure thing, Antonia!” she squealed a little, and bit her lip trying to contain herself. She turned towards a door that was under the staircase.

  “I believe we are out of butter though. Could you check if there’s any jars ready. Whip some up if it’s not?” She rose up from the chair and towards the kitchen, and started rifling around in drawers pulling out utensils and making a neat pile on the counter top.

  “You want me to churn up some butter? Right now?” The girl said a bit meeker now, her face looking a bit tense.

  The woman stopped what she was doing and looked up at her sharply. “I’m going to need butter. So if there is none, some will need to be churned,” she said very directly at Lizzy. “Is that a problem?” She was leaning forward, her arms firmly planted on the marble counter top and stared right at her.

  “Oh no, ma’am! Not at all.” She scrambled a bit trying to grab the doorknob to open the door. She swung it open, and another staircase could be seen traveling down. She set her foot on the first step then stopped, frozen in place as Antonia spoke to her again.

  “Potatoes. Flour. Eggs,” she said slowly.

  The young girl, turned to her wide eyed but still smiling, though it looked a bit forced now.

  “Got it!” Then quietly closed the door behind herself. The sound of her soft foot falls descending echoed in the complete silence of the house.

  “Mom,” Nico said, arching his eyebrow at her.

  “Nico, I need those things. She can handle it,” she said with what seemed like exasperation.

  He still continued to look at her. Evie leaned over and grabbed the map from off the table, folding it back up and cramming it into her pocket. Nico looked away at the sound of the paper crinkling, and cleared his throat again. He stood up, and gave Evie a few quick glances from the sides of his eyes.

  “Most of the farmers are out back in the workshop, but I’m sure Wyatt’s in the barn. Start with him. If he says it’s plausible and he’s willing, talk with the rest for what we can part with.”

  Evie gave her a nod and started for the side door, Nico following behind.

  “Go see Electra, please, while you’re out there. She misses you, and could use a ride,” Antonia said without looking up from the work station she was creating on the counter of the kitchen island.

  “We’ll go. Vandal could use a good run. We’ll take a perimeter scout for anything tangled up.” He nodded at his mother and opened the door, to head out, but saw Evie still standing there.

  “What about Beast?” Evie asked Antonia.

  She looked up and smiled. “Resting, but you already knew that. When you have gotten things sorted, come on back and it’ll be feeding time.”

  Evie walked out, Nico holding the door for her. They walked together side by side toward the barn.

  Charlie, Cara, and Jack still sat at the table wondering what the hell they were supposed to do. They looked to one another until finally Charlie rose up.

  “Ma’am-“

  “Sit down,” she said, cutting him off, never looking up from what she was doing.

  Charlie dropped right back down into his chair.

  She walked over to them, and took her seat back at the head of the table. She placed the stem of her wine glass between her thumb and pointer finger and began to roll it back and forth.

  “Who’s in charge? At your place?” she said, looking each in the eye one at a time.

  Cara and Jack sat with their heads slightly down. This was Charlie’s territory now, whether they liked it or not.

  “Well, ma’am-“

  “Stop calling me that. It’s Antonia or Mrs. Hansen. You may take your pick, but I fucking hate ma’am.”

  Charlie cleared his throat. “Alright, Antonia.” He paused waiting for her to say he should call her Mrs. Hansen instead, but she just stared at him. “The principal of the school, also the founder, Magda Mallone and I tend to run things together.”

  She squinted at him. “Equally?” He went to answer her, but she interrupted again, “I doubt that. I’m sure you help though, but she’s in charge. Your rules are hers, are they not? Mr…”

  “Um, Charlie, Charlie Miller ma-.” his eyes went wide as he quickly corrected himself, “Charlie. It is her place, so I suppose you could say that.”

  She took a slow sip of wine, and set her glass back down without a sound. “Tell me, Charlie. Why should me and my people, help you and yours?”

  Jack sat up straighter and Cara’s gaze went right to Charlie. At first it looked like he was thinking, but then as the moments passed it became clear that he didn’t have an answer. Antonia straightened up in her chair, placing her hands on the table to push herself up.

  “I don’t know,” Jack said suddenly. The older woman stood at the head of the table looking to him. “I don’t know why you should help us. You don’t know us. You don’t owe us anything. Honestly, all I can say is that we need it. We need your help. We have to try everything. I could go back out there if I needed to, but-“ he stopped and licked his lips nervously, “The kids couldn’t do it, and I couldn’t leave the kids. I don’t think any of us could. And the Block is safe. It’s safe, and I know we could make it work.”

  “The children,” Antonia said looking at them. “Are any of them yours?”

  “Yes,” Charlie said looking with pleading eyes. “Harrison. He’s my son. He’s twelve.”

  Her head rose just a bit as she took that in. “How many others?”

  “Six,” Jack answered. “From ages nine to seventeen.”

  She looked from each solemn, nervous face to the next. “So, we shall say for the children then.” She nodded at them and took her seat again. “Now explain how Evie is in this?”

  Charlie tensed a little. “Well, she helped us. Saved us. Then we helped her.”

  “How did you help her?”

  “She was hurt, from saving us, and our nurse checked her out. We let her stay with us until she was well again. Now that I think about it, it doesn’t seem like she owes us anything either. We just let her stay, gave her an empty room, some food.”

  “That’s more than most, Mr. Miller. I’m sure she could tell you that. She tends to favor simple things like that. And now you ask her to negotiate for you? Even after she saved you.”

  “She saved me too,” Jack said. “And three others, his son and girlfriend included.” Charlie shot him a look. “They were going to kill us, but she came and-“

  “That part I don’t need to hear,” Antonia said, putting her hand up to stop him. “We don’t ask what she does out there, but by the state of her when she comes back to us, we can figure it out. We don’t dig too deep there. Her business is hers, and we know her well enough to know she’s doing what needs to be done, and she never brings it back to our door. Until now,” she corrected herself, taking a sip of her wine.

  “So what did she do for you then?” Cara asked, curiously with a bit of attitude in her question.

  Antonia looked at her for a moment. She smacked her gums together and answered. “Evie hasn’t done anything for us besides her part when she’s here. Which is what we ask of everyone who stays here.”

  “Then how did you meet her?” Jack asked, trying to take some of the tension off of Cara.

  Antonia looked at him for a moment, seeming to weigh her response. She pointed her glass at him, the crimson liquid slushing up just under the lip without spilling. “I will tell you because it’s our story here, too. Not just hers.” She looked up at the three of them and began.

  “
When this all started, we only knew enough to close our gate and try to keep ourselves safe. The boys and I, Rae, Brooks. We began to wonder about the other farmers near us. Our neighbors. I sent Nico and Wyatt out to check on the VanderWal’s to the west of us about a few days into this. The day our power went out. When they were out on their horses going through the woods over to their property, they found her. She was stumbling around. Blood splatter on her face, some matted onto the back of her head. Her pack was on her back, and she was just wobbling, walking off to the side. The boys had seen and heard enough about the people effected, and what should be done to them. So Nico got off Brutus and slowly walked over, ready to do what needed to be done. But Evie, as soon as he was a few steps away, like lightning,” she said, loudly clapping her hands together making them all jump. “She had a gun to his head. She was panicked, confused, looking at him with wild eyes. Wyatt started yelling at her, begging for her not to do it. I don’t know why she didn’t, beside the fact that Evie always seems to know about people, but she put the gun down to her side, and just turned and walked away.

  “Nico had frozen there, not from fear. They saw it in each other’s eyes. The connection. I don’t know what it is, but it’s there. He couldn’t let her go. Wyatt got down from his horse, and tried to pull him back. Wake him up. Instead he took another step to her. Then another. He called to her. She tried to pick up her pace away from them, but she was not well. She staggered; fell to her knees, then laid out still in the leaves. Wyatt said Nico just ran to her. Checked her pulse and looked for bites. Then he just scooped her up and asked him to help get her on his horse. They rode back here, her laying on his chest at the front of the horse. I didn’t know what to make of it, but Rae and I cleaned her up. Got some water into her. Nico cleaned out and stitched up the back of her head. She had the remnants of a concussion from a blow, wherever it had come from. When she came back fully, she was quiet for three days. And we respected that. We didn’t ask her a thing. Just told her who we were and how we run our home. She told us her name about a week later.” She inhaled deeply, rubbing her thumb across her chin a few times, her eyes dark and distant with the recollection.

  “She was sad. So sad. You could see it in her face, the sorrow. The world was burning, but her world seemed already gone. Her eyes were just lifeless. Little by little though, I saw some color return to her face. We insisted she eat every meal with us. Then we started putting her to work. First in the stables, cleaning and feeding. Then we sent her to ride the perimeters with Wyatt or Nico or Rae, checking for the tangled ones that started to come more and more. My boys told me how she never hesitated. She’d dismount, walk straight for them in the barbed wire. Shove her knife right into their heads, then on to the next. But she never turned on one of us again. Never even looked wrong at Nico. Eventually, the four of them became inseparable. Rae, Wyatt, Nico, and her. Even Brooks took to her, letting her ride his Electra. When it had been two weeks since the power went out and Evie arrived, I decided we needed to try and check on our neighbors again. Evie was the first to volunteer. Then Nico of course.” A small smile crossed her sad face at the memory.

  “In another week we had saved all that could be saved. Brought them back here if they wanted it. It was her idea that we pool our resources: crops, livestock, fencing, anything, and just make a fortified zone. She showed us how we should dig out the watcher’s dens in the sides of the hills, then cover them with chickenwire she had woven with dried weeds and grass she gathered from the fields. Perfect guard stations to keep in eye on our borders.

  “As our community grew, and we all became family, something began to change in her. A twitch. Whenever she was with us she grew…” She searched for the word, “Fidgety. On edge. The more we came together, the more she pulled away. We didn’t understand. But a bit over a month later, she came to me. Told me she was going. Looking for more people to help. More things to help us. She promised she would be back. I believed her, but I was worried. It was growing cold. The next day, she was gone.”

  Charlie shook his head confused. “Where did she go?”

  Antonia shrugged her shoulders, “Anywhere. Nowhere. I don’t know. Nico tried to go out looking for her, but Wyatt finally talked him out of it. And Rae. She told him what he already knew: she needed to go, and she would be back when she was ready.” Antonia poured a few more splashes of wine into her glass, then held it out to them. “I’m sorry, would you like some. We have plenty. It’s my own. I make it here,” she smiled proudly.

  She didn’t wait for them to answer. She got up and reached into the cabinet again, pulling out three more glasses, and grabbed another bottle from a fully stocked wine rack built into the kitchen. Back at the table she poured them each a tall helping from the new bottle, then emptied what was left into her glass from the old one. She took a deep gulp. The rest of them sipped politely. Then a bit more eagerly when they tasted how good it was.

  “One month went by,” she continued, putting the glass down. “Then two. We had just started to stop waiting for her, but we never forgot about her. Especially when the hard frost came, then the snow. It was New Year’s Eve, I remember because we were celebrating. Silly I know, now that I look back. But we had a calendar that we still do check, to help crop planning. There was a blizzard outside. It was night, a few hours short of midnight, when the front door opened slowly. The wind rushed in. We all felt it and turned. Snow was gliding in along the floor, and there she stood. In the door way. Bundled with the oddest things. I remember thinking: What the hell had she been up to? She had a hooded, zip-up sweatshirt under a large men’s puffy winter jacket. A bright green knit hat pulled down over her ears, and then this blanket. A bright pink thing covered in deep purple flowers. Little dark yellow butterflies all over it. Wrapped around her neck and face so only her eyes showed.” Antonia did a little circle around her head with her hand. “She had on these huge workman’s gloves too. Of course her pack on her back, but it was full, almost bursting with things.

  “I remember Nico jumping up from his seat, and again they just stared at each other. Then she unwound the blanket from her face and neck. Pulled it down, and held it in one hand. Her face. Her eyes. A tear just fell, and rolled down her cheek. That’s when we all stood up. Even after the way we found her, and her silence in the beginning, she never once cried, not a single tear.” She suddenly brought the glass to her mouth for a quick sip of wine. “And that’s when we saw it. Under that giant coat, out of the top of her sweatshirt where the zipper led… a tiny hand creeped out and stretched its little fingers. Then we heard its sweet little cry.”

  “A baby?” Jack asked a tightness growing in his chest.

  She smiled. “Yes. A very new baby. Not yet a month old.”

  The three of them looked at her unable to speak or move. The fear of what came next was grasping them in the throat, and they just sat waiting for her to continue.

  “She had been traveling. All around searching for whatever she looks for out there, when she heard a scream coming from a little house right by the woods she was in. She moved in closer. Heard it again, and saw the garage door was raised up. The door inside leading into the house was wide open. There were a few drops of blood leading in. When she entered she heard more panicked groans and cries from down a hall. The first door she passed had a bloody hand print on it. She was going to move on further down the hall, but she heard a few knocks. When she opened it, one of them was there right at the door. It grabbed her; it had been a big man. She was caught off guard, and had dropped her gun. The turning was fresh, so he was still quite powerful. They wrestled until she finally got her knife into him. She told me how she had to check herself for bites over and over again, because she was so surprised by it. He didn’t get her, but when she looked around the room, it was horrific. Blood all over the bed, there was a bloody towel dropped on the floor. Blood swiped all over the wall and door from it trying to get out.”

  Cara’s eyes went wide, and she squeezed her glass at t
he memory of the scene she walked in on the day before.

  “When she gathered herself, and got off the floor away from the body, she realized it was silent. She couldn’t hear the screams anymore. Quietly, she went to the end of the hall, and slowly opened the door. What she saw I know she will never forget. A woman sat, legs splayed out on the floor, a screw driver in her hand pointed at Evie. She was chomping down on a cloth of some sort, and panting. Sweat dripping down her face. Evie thought she had been bitten by the man, and was turning, until she saw her belly. She looked around and realized it was a baby nursery. The woman then let out a mournful groan, and Evie realized she was in labor. She helped deliver the baby right there on the floor.”

  Jack didn’t realize until Antonia had paused to take another drink that he was breathing fast. The pictures of the nursery flashing before his eyes in quick frames. The blood on the floor. The unfinished crib. All of the little pastel gift bags piled in the corner. He turned slightly to Cara. She was already looking at him, thinking the same thing.

  “Something wasn’t right though. With the woman. Whether it was postpartum, depression from the state of things, even from before, or just the trauma of what had happened to her husband, the mother never took to the baby.

  “They were trying to put the crib together when the father stepped out to get a different tool, and some fresh air. He should’ve known better. It had been two months all ready, but still, there was a passing one who just happened to be at the house, and was brought over by the noise of the rising door. He was bit in the neck while his hands were still pushing the door up. He had taken care of it, crushed its head with his boot when he knocked it to the ground, but it was too late. When he went back in to his wife, she went into labor at the shock of it all. He panicked and closed himself into their bedroom. A few hours later, Evie arrived.

  “The baby was born a few weeks early. It was due on Christmas Eve, but healthy nonetheless. Evie was able to get the mother to nurse, to try and give the baby a fighting chance, but it was clear after the first week the mother had checked out. Evie had to take care of two people now. Keep one going so that the other one could live. She had found her once, Evie told me. The mother, with a knife to her wrist. She hid all the sharp things and medicines. Anything she could use, but she knew it wouldn’t be much longer. One night Evie’s body had just had too much from caring for these two people, and she fell asleep, deeply, holding the baby. When she woke the mother was gone. The back door was closed, but unlocked. She had just walked off into the woods, in winter, nothing more than a long nightgown on,” Antonia emptied the dregs from her glass.