Posts Tagged ‘kids’

Hope and Loss

Posted: February 12, 2012 in Home Sweet Home
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I am thankful that we had gotten here when we did. Winter has finally found us and I am glad that my fireplace is workable. We’re warm, fed and have books to read and games to play. As strange as this world has become, at least here, we have some sort of semblance of normalcy. I just want to hold onto this little piece of my old life for as long as I can. I know life here is fleeting just like everything else, but I still can’t help but hope, just like my mom hopes that Ryan will come to us.  In the meantime, she has taken Armand and has found happiness in having someone to take care of.

I’ve transitioned nicely into the more maternal role that I have to be now. It was something I hadn’t envisioned for myself for several more years, but need outweighed the plan.

During the day Shelby and Vincent go off with the other kids. There’s talk of starting a school for them. I’m having trouble wrapping my head around that. Sadly, they all have the amount of education that they would need in a world they this – they can read and write. My mom is quick to remind me, “what about when this is over,” she asks consistently.

And that’s where I get stuck. My mom holds onto such copius amounts of hope including the idea that things are not as bad out there. But I have to disagree.

The military bombed an entire development and a school to try and control the hordes and that was just some small suburb in New Jersey, I can only imagine what the cities are like. I wish I had my mother’s optimism, but I just don’t see how its possible that life will be restored anytime soon. At least, not life the way that we knew it.

I don’t argue with her though. I know her hope is one of the things that keeps her going. I don’t want to take that away from her as infuriating as I find it most days.

It’s Javier’s birthday tomorrow. I don’t think he realizes that I know. Bonnie and the kids have been working on a tool belt for him. I’ve been trying to get the ingredients together for some sort of microwaved cake. Javier is softening to life here, softening to me and to the kids. It’s amazing to see.

The New (Old) Digs

Posted: February 11, 2012 in Home Sweet Home
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Like a Dream

Posted: February 9, 2012 in Home Sweet Home
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My mom was waiting for me on her front porch. Her face light up when she saw me. We hugged for what seemed like hours. She ran her hand over my G.I. Jane look and laughed.

“Is Ryan with you,” I ask.

She shakes her head. “I hold out hope,” is all that she says.

We go inside where I get my first shower in a month. There is even hot water. My mom makes me lunch and it is warm and good.

“How do you have all of this?” I don’t even look up from my food.

“We always knew Mr. McGrady was a nut. He’s been prepared for this for years. Once the hordes hit, he wiped them out. We spent the next several days burning the bodies in the field and barricading ourselves in. Then he set us up with generators and running water. The food has come from his stockpile and from the people who have found us and chose to stay.”

I’m nodding as I eat. I can’t believe McGrady was able to do everything the military failed at doing. Thank God for bat-shit neighbors is all I can think.

I spend the rest of the day with my mom. Eventually I venture outside. Several of the kids have found their parents here, however Vincent and Shelby stay with me. Bonnie and Javier join us too. We go to my house where Mouse greets me happily at the door. I sweep him up into my arms and nuzzle my face into his soft tangerine fur.

Bonnie and Shelby claim the guest room. Javier and Vincent take the office while Mouse and I take my bedroom. We get to lay in my bed for the first time in weeks and feel normal if only for a little bit. Javier comes in sometime later. We sit in my bed and talk about life and how much everything has changed. We agree that for now this is where we are going to stay and that if we were to leave Bonnie, Vincent, Shelby, Armand and my mom were all to come with us. Mouse too if we could feed him.

In the morning my mom comes over with our box of rations for the week. All of us bask in the heaven that is powdered eggs after having lived on school preserves for a month.

We begin our life here as some sort of patchwork family.

Outta Town

Posted: February 7, 2012 in Home Sweet Home, On the Road Again
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Javier kept driving. We only stopped when we saw cars that hadn’t been in the epicenter of the bombing. Most of them have already been picked clean. We look for one that hasn’t had its gasoline siphoned out. Our bus runs on diesel and we know that we can only sustain it for so long. Most of them are a no-go, but we eventually find a van that was a little bit off the street. It has half a tank of gas when we turn it on. I breathe a sigh of relief.

Bonnie and I lead the way out of the neighborhood with the van. I’m excited to be going home to see if my mom is there. If Ryan is there…I’m also scared that they both will be there, maimed or worse yet…Undead. We fall quiet. She’s anxious too. She walked most of the way that we’re driving to get to Alcott Elementary from her school. I can tell from her withdrawn demeanor that her adventure to us must have been just as horrifying as our time at Alcott was, burying students and cleaning up left over zombie-goo.

Once we’re out of town I think we all begin to calm down a little bit. There were fewer people out here so hopefully that means fewer zombies and no mega-hordes.I’m expecting my street to be dead. I’m expecting some damage and carnage, but what I am not expecting is a complete barricade at the beginning of my street.

I stop. Javier stops. We all get out except for the kids. Mr. McGrady, my seventy-something year old neighbor greeted us, brandishing an assault rifle.

“HAVE ANY OF YOU BEEN BIT,” he bellows. I can see his five grandsons pop up on the other side of the barricade complete with matching assault rifles.

We all instinctively put our hands up and stand still. “None of us have been bitten, Mr. McGrady.” I never could bring myself to call him by his first name.

“Who’s with you,” he barks.

“Two coworkers and the kids I  have left from my class.”

He nods and begins to walk over to us. He looks over each of us before he boards the bus. He takes stock of each kid and our supplies. After about fifteen minutes, he gets off the bus and comes to me.

“I believe you. We’ll let you in, but it will cost you the supplies.”

Javier and I look at each other and then back at McGrady.

“We’ve fortified the perimeter. We’ve made this work. We have food and running water. Your mom is here,” he adds.

At the mention of running water, Javier was ready to even throw in the bus as payment for our admission and I was already walking in once I heard that my mom was waiting for me.

It’s a New Dawn

Posted: January 29, 2012 in Alcott School, On the Road Again
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I slept in my classroom for the past couple of days. I just wanted to be alone. This all is just crushing and everything that happens just makes me think it can’t get worse, but it does.

It is oddly warm now for this time of year. The snow is gone and everything is just wet and muddy. We have a lot of water now so we all got to have our first real bath in weeks. We also did haircuts. It took me four years to grow out my hair from that bob that never looks right on me and it took twenty minutes to cut it all off. I look like Demi Moore in G.I. Jane. I feel better though. I was even able to find new clothes and wash out my underwear. That’s all I’ve wanted to do was have clean underwear. You never know what you’ll miss until it’s gone and clean underwear was definitely one of those things.

We’re organizing the supplies that we do have and getting ready to load up the bus. Havier and I decided that we’re going to make a move to my house. We’re going to check and see if my mom is still there or if something happened to her. I told him about John’s farm and we agreed that that is probably the best place to be. It’s 30 minutes outside of the city so if we needed supplies we could always make a trip and since it is so isolated the chances of hordes are slimmer.

We’re setting out the first thing tomorrow morning. I have mixed feelings.

Enter the Ice Age

Posted: January 21, 2012 in Uncategorized
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Havier has been allowing us to use the back-up generators sparingly. It’s absolutely freezing. We’ve all been wearing our coats, gloves, hats – whatever we had or found all day. You can smell the snow in the air, that’s how much the temperature has dropped. I’ve moved back to my spot in the corner. It’s warmer if we’re all together and as Havier tells me, life has to gone despite the mistakes that we make.

And he’s right. I made a half-joke about making a fire in the courtyard, but Havier was quick to remind me how fast that would attract the Undead back to us. What I wouldn’t give for a little warmth. Havier and I have been taking turns on the roof. We watch and listen for the hordes, for John, for Havier’s sister, for my mom, for the kids’ moms and dads. So far no one has found us, but I still have hope that soon somebody will.

We emptied out crates and buckets and put them up there. We’re hoping to collect as much water as we can. We’d all like to bath and manually flush the toilets, it’s getting super gross again. As I sit up on the roof, looking for my friends and family, I can see my hands and how they are no longer pale and milky, but gritty and grimy and somewhere between a gray and brown color. I have dried blood from my students and from cleaning, wedged beneath my nails. I once had a manicure, but that was a lifetime ago now.

My hair is so matted from everything that tomorrow I’ve decided it’s time to cut it off completely. It’ll take some adjusting, but it’s more feasible than trying to hold onto an old life.

We’ve also begun thinking about an escape plan. Alcott School can not be the place that we stay forever. Too much has happened here and with the way the hordes have been moving, we’d always be a prime stop for them. We’re going to have to take what we can and prepare for the day that we will inevitably have to leave here. Havier says that the little kindergarten bus in the back is small enough to maneuver and big enough to hold all of us and supplies. It’s just figuring out where to go that’s stopping us. That and the fact that I know if we just wait it out for a few more days that John will be here and maybe some parents too.

I’m trying to hope as best I can and not freeze to death all at the same time.

Death Toll

Posted: January 17, 2012 in Alcott School
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It’s been a few days. It’s been a few hellish days wherein I just felt like the worst possible person on the planet. How could I have been so stupid? How could I have let myself get drunk when that much danger was around my kids? How…

Much of what happened, Havier later had to explain to me. We lost four kids in the attack. Gabe was among them. Vincent hasn’t said much to anyone, especially to me ever since. Once the hordes had moved past again and the halls became quiet, we were able to get out of the media center. It took two days. Shelby became eerily calm after everything that occurred and has glued herself to Vincent. I hear them whispering to each other at night, making plans of some sort.

I try not to worry about this now, but I can see this becoming a problem eventually.

I feel so at fault for everything that happened that I take it upon myself to go to my classroom and find the zippered storage bags that I used to keep pillows and things in. I come back with four. One for each of my students that I totally allowed to be killed because of my inability to handle this sort of life.

For the most part they are all torn to pieces. Gabe is the only one with half a face left. Havier took a pick to each of their skulls just in case. I thought that there had been too much of them eaten to allow for any kind of reanimation, but Havier is convinced that we need to be more careful.

Together, we bring each bag outside. We let the children come with us if they want to. I’ve agree with Havier that it’s time I stop shielding them and he’s agreed it’s time he stops babying me and mocking me for my suburban upbringing. We’re at a crossroads him and I.

Carefully, on the other side of the kickball field, we dig a hole for each. I’m hysterical as I help Havier lower each one into their own grave. We mark each with a piece of wood, adding their name on it with a black permanent marker. We say a few things about each student. I tell each of them what made them special and how I was sorry that they wouldn’t have a chance to be everything that they could have been.

The rest of the day is quite solemn. We take the kids back inside and clean up the mess from the last attack. We board up the rest of the school. Havier thinks we need to set up a post on the roof so that we can see when the hordes of Undead are coming or when those that are looking for us are on the horizon.

If the teachers and John aren’t here by tomorrow, I will be beside myself. There is only so much loss someone can take in such a short span of time. I’m surprised with how resilient the kids are being over all of this.

Tonight, I’m moving to my classroom. I need a night to myself and with the way I feel right now, I feel like I am more a danger to my kids than a help. Havier agrees. He stays in the media center with Matilda and the kids. He gives me the pistol and sleep overtakes me quicker than I’d like to admit.

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