Induction

We quickly fell into a routine. The soldiers would leave each morning at dawn to search for more survivors. Jake and I stayed back with Meg and the others, performing menial tasks around the store. The rotting meat section had started to reek like week-old roadkill in the dead of summer. Myself, along with Jake, Adam, and the Talbots took on the chore of emptying the molding deli section. After filling shopping carts lined with plastic shower curtains, we carted them out the back door where a second group waited to dump them in the canal. A third group wore painting masks and cleaned the shelves with bleach upon our completion.

Jake found it comforting to fall back on his military training and began taking shifts at the barricade. Meg put her psych degree to good use, providing an outlet for many of the survivors to process what horrors they had seen. We all suffered from post-traumatic stress in one way or another.

Another thing I noticed about Meg was that she spent a lot of time with one of the soldiers, a good-looking kid who was well-liked by the others. Will, she told me, was also twenty-one, and she really liked him. I don’t know where this generation got their slang for dating. I’d lived through terms like going steady, dating, boyfriend and girlfriend, but it seemed the new way to say it was talking. So Meg and Will were talking. Whatever that meant. She said she was keeping it casual, but this was no big surprise. She had always distanced herself emotionally from getting too involved with guys. Her first serious relationship began at the end of her senior year of high school and lasted through her first year of college. He wanted to get serious, and she didn’t want the hassle. Meg was gorgeous. Like all the Rossi kids, she had dark hair and big brown eyes. She was also pint-sized and had a perfect body. She invested a lot of time working out and staying in shape. I guessed she was probably the best looking girl left alive.

The center of the store became a tent city. People slept in groups for fear of being alone. Jake and I had set up our own tent on the fringe of the group. He avoided talking about his family. “I’m sorry I was such an ass about Daphne. I deserved that left hook.” He touched his jaw and pretended that it hurt. I slapped him playfully.

“At least you’re finally admitting you’re an ass,” I joked back. The realization that life as we knew it had been so severely altered, I forced my feelings of resentment to the depths of my being and made the conscious effort to forgive his cold betrayal.

His face turned serious. He gripped my face in his hand and drew me into a kiss. “I couldn’t bear losing you. You’re everything to me.”

“Me, too, baby.” I snuggled down with him. The store was dark. Lit only by an LED lantern at the center of our makeshift camp. Barely able to make out his features, I laid in his arms. Daphne snored softly beside us as we drifted off.

Nights were difficult for everyone. The sounds of people crying themselves to sleep haunted each and every one of us. Jake had taken the news of his parents hard. Instead of letting it out, though, he took out his rage on the undead that wandered too close to the barricade. He began spending more time on the wall than with me inside. I missed my easy-going, funny husband. I don’t know why I wasn’t falling apart, I just wasn’t. I put my limited nursing education to good use, caring for boo-boos the kids would get playing, and diagnosing dehydration on numerous occasions. Gabby had taken to following Adam around. His hesitation was obvious only to me, since he refused to talk about himself to the others. Our brief conversation had been the only time he had let his guard down.

Margie became the den mother of sorts. She corralled the kids and kept them out of trouble. Most of the kids were alone, families having perished in the initial outbreak. The first few search parties had rewarded us a total of twelve new survivors. Margie and the Talbots took on the role of welcoming committee, introducing the new arrivals to everyone and helping them get acclimated to the store. The survivors were zombies of another kind. Bodies emaciated from days without food. Wits frayed by all they had seen.

I spent the morning getting to know Finn and Noelle Jamison. Noelle was three weeks into the eighth month of her pregnancy. The couple got married the year before and this was to be their first child. Finn was a numbers and statistics guy. He worked for a small accounting firm in town and had the stereotypical rigidity expected from a CPA.