Chapter Three
As they finished the induction tour and Sam suggested that they head back to the mess for some more tea ("The one that doesn't smell like ass", he assured Kenny with that dimpled smile), the group of kids (the words 'horde' and 'swarm' popped readily to mind, as it seemed to have accreted new members) went past, absorbed in some game. Todd gave her a huge grin and a wave as they passed.
As the group of youngsters went by, a man emerged from the building that had been identified as the mechanics and electrics workshop and yelled, waving his arms. Two of the youngsters broke off, and went running to him, then he led them inside.
"We've got a sort of, uh, apprenticeship scheme, I guess you could call it," Sam offered by way of explanation. "We let the kids have a try at everything – if any of 'em show an interest in something, we pair 'em up with someone, and see if they have any aptitude for it. It's a way of giving 'em something to do, and a lot of 'em aren't too happy about sitting still for too long in the school room." He turned to Kerryn. "Once he's settled in a bit, we'll get your boy, Todd, wasn't it, to see if there's anything he'd like to try…"
"He's only nine," Kerryn's momma-bear streak kicked in, "And he's… he doesn't talk, since… since his father." She paused. "Except RJ. He talked to RJ. Which surprised the hell out of me."
"Doesn't surprise me," grinned Sam, "RJ's a personable guy. Gets it from his dad. But you'd be surprised at how good kids can get at something – we got an eleven-year-old who makes ammo nearly as good as Sabine, and that's saying something. On that subject, we'll want to get you all to the range tomorrow and do an assessment, find out where you're at."
"The range?" echoed Vera.
"Uh-huh," Sam nodded, "Everybody here learns to shoot, and if they know how, they practise. No exceptions, so long as you're able-bodied, and if you're not, the workshop will work something out for you."
Kerryn pulled a face. "I hate guns," she said, "The one I've got bit me."
"The slide, probably," Sam mused, "Self-taught?" She nodded. "Yeah, we get a lot of that, too, which is why you'll need some lessons on how to shoot right, and maintain your weapon."
"I don't have one," Mandy, Kenny's younger sister, said timidly, "And I don't really want one."
Sam shrugged. "Everybody learns," he said, in a calm voice that made it clear that no hall passes would be issued. "Then we'll find you one."
Dale wasn't happy. "My wife is eighty years old," he growled.
"Croats don't care how old somebody is," Sam shot back immediately, "They'll tear you apart and eat you regardless."
Dale was over eighty, but made of stern stuff. "I will not have my wife endanger herself," he insisted.
"Dale…" Vera interrupted.
"No, Vera, I'll have my say," Dale returned Sam's stare, "It's not reasonable to expect h-OOF!"
Vera whacked him in the arm. "Oh, put a sock in it," she snapped crossly, "I might be fifty years out of practice, but I was a better shot than you! Do I have to remind you about our honeymoon?" She looked around defiantly. "I brought down an 18-pointer on our second day, and you were almost molested by a juvenile with his first set of antlers after you got careless with the lady deer pee." She drew herself to her full height – all of about five three – and glared up at Sam. "You just find me something without too much kick, young man," she instructed, "And I'll remind this old goat how it's done."
"Yes ma'am," grinned Sam, turning to Kerryn. "Todd will learn with the other kids," he went on, "Dean instructs them, and…"
"He's nine years old!" Kerryn protested. "He's frightened of guns!"
"Like I said, Croats don't care," Sam brushed off her concern, "And he'll learn not to be frightened. That's one of the things that this place is about, getting people not to be frightened. Or at least, not frightened to the point where they can't act."
"You are not putting a gun in my son's hands!" Kerryn yelped.
"No, I won't," Sam replied reasonably, "Dean or Bobby takes the kids. And we'll probably start him off with a small rifle, so he can get confidence at a distance."
She opened her mouth to protest again, but then he gave her a look.
It was not an angry look, or a belligerent look. It was a calm, confident expression suggesting that he had just made a statement, and naturally things would occur as he said. She subsided, still somewhat unhappy, but consoling herself that if these people were as meticulous about guns as they seemed to be about everything else, Todd would be safe. Especially if Dean was doing the instructing – there was something about the guy that suggested that he was protective of the kids, and wouldn't let them come to harm.
Disarmingly, he showed his dimpled smile again. "You'll soon find that neither Dean nor Bobby will tolerate any horseplay on the range," Sam assured her, "He'll have the best teachers you could hope for." He looked up at the sky, and at the position of the sun. "Come on, let's go have that tea break. Just be careful if Becky's been tryin' to make cupcakes again – we don't have a dentist here."
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After dinner and the clean-up, in which Todd happily joined in the procession of kids whose job it seemed to be to clear all the tables, things seemed to be winding down for the day. "Our electricity isn't completely reliable yet, and we don't want to waste batteries if we don't have to, so we kind of mostly work by the sunlight," Chuck explained when she spotted him and asked him about it. "People tend to go inside, once the sun goes down," After dark, our patrols start, so make sure you stay inside until you get the hang of how it works – you don't want to be mistaken for a Croat, or… anything."
"Anything?" Kerryn snorted, "What sort of anything could be worse than a Croatoan zombie getting in?"
Chuck looked momentarily like a deer in the headlights, then stuttered, "Uh, well, we did have this, uh, skunk or something get under a cabin once, and that caused a certain amount of, uh, excitement, gotta go!" Clutching his ever-present clipboard, he did what she could only describe to herself as 'fled'.
"Hey, Kerryn!" She turned to see the teenager Sabine again, and Lottie whuffed a greeting and wagged her tail. "There you are! So, ready to settle in?"
"I guess," she shrugged, "Sleeping in an actual bed is going to be a weird experience after so long. Although an actual shower? That was bliss. I can now die happy."
"Hopefully not just yet." Sabine reached down to pat Lottie, who lapped it up shamelessly. "I wanted to ask you about Todd."
"What about him?" Kerryn's eyes darted immediately towards her son, who was carefully stacking bowls at one of the tables.
"Hey, nothing's wrong!" Sabine laughed. "I wanted to ask you if it would be okay for him to come to the metalwork shop, once he's settled in a bit. I showed it to him, while I was kid-herding, and he seemed keen to come and see what we do there."
She blinked at the teen. "He… how could you tell?"
Sabine looked non-plussed. "He told me," she said, "He doesn't say a lot, does he? But he said his father let him watch while he soldered."
The sudden grief caught Kerryn off-guard, the way it often did. "His dad made models," she explained, "Little tin and copper pieces, chess sets, toys, cartoon characters. The detail was unbelievable. Todd sometimes sat on his lap, watching, and he…" her breath caught, and she stopped.
Sabine smiled. "My Mom started teaching me when I was younger than Todd is now," she offered, "Real iron-fist-in-iron-glove teaching style – I can promise you, he won't be allowed to do anything without supervision. He may not even be interested. But if he is, and he wants to learn, well, we need people who can make things."
Kerryn took a deep breath. "Okay," she said, finally, "That'd be good for him to do that. If he wants to. When he's not doing school. Oh, God, I've been so worried about that, he hasn't been to school for, it's more than a year now."
"It's the routine," Sabine nodded, "Fic – our doctor – says that a routine of normal activities is important for kids. Well, it's important for everybody, I guess, but especially the kids."
"Yeah," Kerryn found a smile from somewhere. "There is something to be said for knowing what's coming next." The light outside was just about gone. "We should probably get to our beds," she decided, "It's been a long and kind of eventful day."
"Goodnight, then," Sabine said, "Remember, don't wander around in the dark for a few days." With a last smile to Lottie, she left.
Collecting Todd and heading for the small cabin they'd been given, Kerryn mused over the day's events. Her mind was full of half-formed questions; the emphasis on not wandering after dark, for example, although the reasons given made perfect sense, and it wasn't a permanent injunction. Nonetheless, it made her wonder. It was an unfortunate consequence of having trained in science, which pre-disposed a brain to try to pull together little bits of information into a working model, and of the last eighteen months, in which becoming suspicious of absolutely everything and everybody was a vital survival trait.
She looked around. The cabin was basic, but comfortable, and so much more than what they'd had for a long time. Lottie made herself at home on a blanket on the floor, and with a large humphing sigh, went to sleep. That had to be a good sign, Kerryn decided – the dog was, if anything, more hypervigilant than she was, so if Lottie was prepared to go to sleep, the place was safe.
"Okay, then," she oversaw Todd changing into his sleep sweats, and tucked him into bed, "I'd say lights out, but, well," she glanced at the small candle lantern she'd been given, "I guess I'll say, candle out. Good night. Sweetheart."
As she leaned down to kiss him, he smiled, and for the first time in more months than she could remember, whispered, "Good night, Mom."
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It was a proper bed, just like he'd had back home, before the strange sickness came and made people zombies and made everything break down, which to a nine-year-old seemed like a lifetime ago. It had been a busy day for Todd, finding somewhere to stop – it looked like they would stay here – and meeting so many new people.
He decided that he liked the other kids he'd met, and the adults too – they weren't interested in trying to 'understand' or 'help' him. They just… were, and they were happy to let him just be, too, and they didn't do that horrible thing of being sorry for him until he wanted to squirm. That's why he talked to Lottie sometimes, but not anybody else – she listened, but she didn't cry at him, or over him, or for him, she just listened, and was there. He liked RJ, whom he'd decided was really cool, and he liked Dean, because… well, he couldn't say exactly why, but there was something about the man that made him feel safe. And he liked Sabine, because she'd showed him the metal shop, and hadn't said things like 'don't touch that' and 'you're too young'. She said if he wanted to, he could come and look around in the metal shop, and maybe have a try at some stuff, she could teach him if he wanted to learn, and the idea of being safe enough for long enough to stay somewhere and learn something was, somehow, balm to his soul.
There was a lot of sadness and loss here – but people didn't dwell on it. The adults didn't whisper to each other, or assume that because he was a kid and he didn't talk he was somehow deaf or stupid or both. And there were dogs, too. That was good, because one of the things he'd dreaded was that, one day, somebody would take Lottie away, but they went everywhere with the people, here. Sabine had explained that, for some things, dogs were smarter than humans, like picking up on threats, or finding stuff, or finding people, so they were part of the big family, too. He went to sleep easily that night.
It was the middle of the night when he woke up, not sure why – it hadn't been a nightmare, and it wasn't his Mom shaking him awake and whispering frantically, and there wasn't any screaming. Glancing at his mother, who was still asleep, he sat up, and looked down at Lottie. She was awake too, but sitting on her blanket, relaxed but alert.
"Did you hear something?" he whispered to her. She cocked her head, listening. And then, he heard it again.
It sounded like a muffled howl, from a wounded animal, but it was a sound so full of sadness, loss and despair that he could practically feel the heartbreak behind it.
His breath caught. Whoever was making that sound was really, really upset. Inconsolable. He knew how that felt. Silently, he slid out of bed, and sat on the floor with Lottie. She looked up at him, but stayed silent.
The awful keening sounded again, redolent of grief so desperate and deep that it shouldn't be possible to be so sad, so desolate, and still be alive.
"Why doesn't somebody go?" Todd asked Lottie. She humphed, and thumped her tail a couple of times. The sound was quite muffled; maybe somebody was trying to keep quiet, and failing?
Everybody here had been so nice, Todd thought, so… comfortable. It wasn't right that somebody should be so sad, and maybe all alone.
"Somebody should go," he told Lottie. He'd been told not to go out in the dark, for a few days, because there were security patrols, and he didn't want to get mistaken for a zombie, but if that was the case, why wasn't somebody going to see what was wrong?
After he heard the heart-rending cry again, he made a decision.
Pulling on his shoes and tugging his sweater over his head, he carefully let himself out of the cabin, with Lottie at his side.
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The darkness outside wasn't complete; the half moon provided some light as it popped in and out from behind the scudding clouds. Todd stood, uncertainly, listening for the noise. When it came again, he turned, and followed it.
His path took him across the enclosed compound, towards the small isolated hut.
He paused; he'd been told he should stay away from it, because the guy who lived there was really sad and liked to be alone and didn't come out. That would get pretty boring after a while, he decided, no matter how sad you were. While he was musing on that, the muffled sound came to him again.
Todd glanced at Lottie. She whined a little, but didn't do the snarling thing that she always did when something dangerous was around. Taking his cue from that he approached the small structure.
The walls were rough wood on the outside, like most of the other buildings, and he felt the grain of hastily finished timber as he put his hands to the wall. "Hello?" he whispered. "Hello?"
From the other side of the wall came a strange rumphing noise. It took him a moment to recognise it: it sounded just like Lottie sniffing at something interesting.
Todd didn't ask 'Are you okay?', because clearly whoever was making that noise wasn't. "I can tell you're sad," he whispered, putting his ear to the wall. "I get really sad too." He paused. "If you don't want to talk, that's okay, though." There was whimpering from the other side of the wall. "Just so you know, it's okay to be sad," he added. "You can't help it, it just happens, so it's not your fault. I really miss Dad. I guess you miss somebody, too."
The sound from the other side of the wall was like a defeated moan.
"I better get back," Todd said, "My Mom will get mad if she finds I'm gone, but I just came out to see if you…" he ran out of words. "I'm sorry you're so sad," he finished. "Goodnight. I hope maybe you feel better tomorrow."
He stepped back from the wall, and looked around, shivering. It was cold. He would be glad to get back into his proper bed.
Todd had just turned and taken a few steps back the way he'd come when suddenly Lottie froze beside him. "Lottie?" he asked uncertainly, "Lottie? What's wrong? What…"
The dog's face drew into a snarl, and, hackles bristling, she let out a low, threatening growl.
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It must've been the sense of security about the place, Kerryn thought later, that's what had put a dampener on her Mom-radar. However, when she woke up and saw that her son was gone, his bed was still warm, so she squelched the panic, and reasoned that he couldn't have gone far. Pulling on her boots, she headed out to look for him.
His shoes had left an intermittent trail on the dewed ground, so she followed it as quickly as she could. With a growing sense of dismay she realised that he'd been heading in the direction of the hermit's hut…
Kerryn let out a little yelp of relief when she spotted him, standing a few yards from the off-limits hut, studying something in the darkness, and broke into a run.
"Todd!" she called to him, "Todd, what are you doing? What are you doing out of…"
That was when she realised that Lottie was bristling and growling. And then she saw why.
Out of the shadows stalked the unmistakably unkempt shape of a Croatoan zombie.
For the record, I'm disappointed that Norway didn't poll better in Eurovision. I have nothing against bearded women, but I'm a bit disappointed that a man performing as a woman with a beard had to use cosmetic enhancement rather than growing his own facial fuzz. I'm the kiss of death; if you ever end up entering Eurovision, I'll make sure not to cheer for you, because you'll end up all Father Ted 'Song For Ireland'...