Chapter 16.
Vacancy.
Michonne.
She could forget who she was for now.
Michonne woke up with a very small foot lodged in her cheek. She groaned, grabbed the tiny leg it was attached to, and pulled it to her, drawing a giggle from a precious little boy.
"If I get one more foot in my face, I'll lose it," she said, rolling on top of Andre and kissing his forehead, and then tickling him. He squealed, struggling to get out of the cage of her arms. "You hear me, Peanut? Just one more foot."
"Why you gotta do my boy like that?" Mike sat up nearby, groggy, and crawled over their mountain of blankets to pretend to pull her off their son, "I got you, Itty Bit. You tell mommy she better back off before I unleash my full power."
Andre rolled over beneath her and squealed, "Back off!"
Michonne gasped, "Or what?"
"Daddy!" Andre responded, batting his legs against her stomach.
Mike grabbed Michonne and pulled her to the side, holding her down, "Now! Get her!"
It was a beautiful morning, with beautiful people. Michonne could have stayed there all day. But tummies were rumbling, and the sun was rising. She cut their play session short and kissed them both, and then left the tent. Terry peeked out of his tent, tried to crawl out, got caught on the lip again, and rolled into the middle of the classroom.
"Where's my kiss?" he asked sleepily.
Michonne brandished her blade – a sparkling katana she had looted from a museum – and pointed it at him, "Right here, Terry."
"Your mommy is mean," Terry said to Andre, who had just crawled through the tent door to join Michonne. She tucked her blade away and picked him up.
Andre shook his head fiercely at Terry, giving him a mean look.
"I think you know the baby's decision," Michonne said gravely. She held her thumb up, and then dramatically tilted it down. Andre tried to mimic her. "Good boy. You tell that lazy Terry who the boss is? Who is it? Is it mommy? Yes, it is."
"Can I vote?" Mike crawled out, staggering to his feet and stretching so all six-foot-four of him towered over her. "I vote mommy."
Andre looked expectantly at Michonne, who gave Mike a thumbs up.
"I have to go out," she said, passing the baby to his father. "Do we need anything apart from the obvious?"
"Weed," Terry said immediately.
"Your suggestion has been noted and rejected, thanks for playing."
Mike drew her in for a kiss, smiling against her lips, "I thought it was my turn."
"I want to. I'm good at it." Michonne returned his kiss enthusiastically, wishing she could stay. He pretended to object, but she took over his scavenging runs often. She liked being outside, not shut away in this school. "Just like you're good at keeping Peanut."
"I am boss at that," he admitted, lifting the toddler into the air and spinning him around, making him laugh.
"Okay. No smoking while I'm gone. Please fold the blankets before Andre tracks dirt all over everything. Please, don't let him eat any more chalk."
She left the classroom and took a left in the hallway, down the kindergarten block of the school. She had to unchain the doors to get out. Mike would chain them back once she was gone.
It was quiet outside. Michonne squinted as she pushed her way out of one of the side doors. What had once been a bustling safe haven was now mostly empty and nearly silent. No one was still living outside. Every tent had been squashed by the weather, or by the dead. Walkers roamed through the open fences, and back out again, attracted to nothing but the wind blowing.
Half of the survivors that had been here had left after a couple of weeks, and those who remained faced food shortages. When three weeks rolled around, the food was gone, and the military split up and disappeared. A herd pushed down the southern gates and took a large group while they slept – and they wandered away together while Michonne watched from the roof. She, Mike, Terry, and Andre were living inside the school with a few other groups, but it was nothing compared to the people who used to live here.
It had been twenty days since it started.
Michonne moved silently across the parking lot, ducking behind cars, her blade in her hand. She had proven quite good with it – though it took little effort to slice something up with such a sharp weapon. She brought it every time she went out, preferring it over the gun Mike had found.
It was a good day to forage. It was a little foggy because of the changing overnight temperatures, giving her better cover as she crossed the street and headed into town.
Michonne wandered the city for hours, mapping her route in her mind, careful not to trap herself. She kept a keen eye and a keen ear out for danger, but it was quiet today. Sometimes the dead seemed to be sleeping, just standing around in small groups and waiting for something to happen. Some of them just lay there in a deathly sleep until Michonne crossed their path.
She gathered a few cans of food that had been forgotten beneath a convenient store aisle, and then looted a house and took the undesirables some other group had left behind. She actually liked water chestnuts. She tied an extra blanket to her backpack and – regretfully – walked past the front doors to the art museum again. One day, when her family was not hungry and the walkers were safely away, she would take what she wanted from that place. She could see it now, paintings all over the classroom walls, priceless artifacts decorating the colorful, ABC-themed shelves.
Michonne giggled to herself at the thought of it – how ludicrous it would have seemed only three weeks ago. Now everything seemed to be fitting together into a new kind of world, a world that she fit into very well.
She was afraid, of course. But she wielded a power now that she had never felt before. It was freeing, after living a restrained life. Her parents wanted her to go to college, so she went. Her parents wanted her to live in a nice neighborhood, so she did. Her biggest rebellion to date was hooking up with Mike, and he was nearly at their standard for men anyway. Out here, everything was open and new and empty, no expectations and no standards.
Except sometimes she remembered that her parents were probably dead.
Michonne returned a little sullen. She went back by the art museum and saw a walker wandering around, and some of the artwork strewn across the floor and bloodstained. She vowed that it would be her next stop. If no one else was going to preserve it, she was.
It was quiet, like before.
Michonne ducked through the fences and crept along a brick building, slipping into a side door. She strode down the hall, bringing her pack around to her front so she could have a snack in hand for the little gremlin that was sure to charge her the moment she stepped inside.
She knocked on the hall door four times, in a coded rhythm.
Her fist hit it on the last note and the door wiggled.
Michonne frowned, pushing it forward with her fingertips. It was supposed to be locked. She groaned. Mike had forgotten to come behind her.
She pressed on into the kindergarten hall, turning a right and stopping on her heel.
A blood streak led into their classroom.
Her heart started thumping nervously. Michonne walked forward on numb legs, a sound like a stadium of screaming filling her ears.
She found what she thought she would find.
Familiar faces, now with empty eyes and overfull bellies.
Blankets wet and red.
Her world suddenly caving in on itself.