I can only help but laugh now about what happened today. It was just last week that I was at home with Mouse and the guy I had just started seeing…an officer in the Navy. We spent New Years together drinking and eating too much and watching the first two seasons of The Walking Dead. We made fun of it. We mocked how stupid they all could be, especially Rick – chasing after that little girl for so long, holding onto hope that she was out there somewhere in need of his help. How could he not realize that the group was more important and that she had probably been bitten shortly after she got separated.
We laughed even more as we watched the ball drop in Times Square, legitimately toasting to the end of the world and how we needed to make 2012 count because it would be our last year alive. We joked about getting married so neither one of us would die single and after my third glass of Taittinger, I told him that I would marry him and that since I was accepting him, he would have to dance with me to the only song an officer could dance to. He laughed, wholeheartedly knowing exactly what was coming and when Up Where We Belong came blaring through my iphone, he swept me up and we danced as serious as we could before we fell on the floor laughing.
What a couple of assholes is all I can say about that night.
I wonder where John is now and if he is okay. I saw him a the day before this shit storm came spiraling through town, but he was never much of a texter. I wonder if Mouse is okay, if her auto-feeder has enough food in it to get her through until either I can get there or my mom does. My mom is just down the street from my house. and my brother is in Pennsylvania. I keep hoping that he wasn’t hit as bad as we were, but who knows at this point.
The reality is quickly sinking in. I’m sitting here in the dark. Havier is on watch. All of the kids are passed out. Shelby was the last one to finally drift off, only after I rocked her. I don’t know how she is going to survive this without her mom, it’s crazy the amount of care I’ve had to give her to keep her calm and functioning. Matilda is snoring off in the corner, seemingly unbothered by everything because really it’s not like she does much, she just keeps the kids from killing one another while Havier and I hash out our next move and you know, deal with undead administrators.
We decided that in the morning, we’re going to have to give the kids a real explanation of what’s been going on. Vincent has been rather quiet and off to himself since the incident with Zom-Gatsby, but I know it will be a matter of time before he starts talking about it, before he needs to talk about it. For now, we’re going to have to make Alcott Elementary our home. We need to stick it out as long as possible to give parents enough time to find their kids if they’re moving this way. To give us enough time to adjust to this new world too.
Our big project tomorrow is going to be fortifying the building. Earlier, I asked Havier just what that meant. He explained that we need to board up the places that are completely open to the outside and to the hordes. We also need to make a stronger barricade maybe with the cars left in the teacher’s parking lot. I asked him what we were going to do about the bodies that have been left behind.
“Bury them,” he said matter-of-factly. “I’m not saying to have the kids do it, but they’re going to have to help with digging a big enough hole. We’ll have to move them. You and I.”
I stared at him blankly. I wasn’t sure about how I felt letting my kids dig a mass grave, but I was even more unsure about how I felt having to lug however many bodies were left through the school, outside and into a hole knowing full-well that I knew everyone of them that we’d be moving. As if Havier read my thoughts, he said, “Don’t worry. That part will be easy to forget.”
From the filing cabinet, he withdrew a brown bag and clunked it down on the table. “We will forgot all of our problems as we do this.” He ripped off the bag.
Hooch.
Thank you Mrs. Swan for being the not so secret alcoholic that you were.
Miss Burton's Class 