by Lauren Beltz
impatiently. They had had the same exact conversation the night before. Or, at least, Sebastian had tried to. About half way through she had feigned exhaustion and excused herself to bed, where she had inevitably laid awake staring at the ceiling until the sun came up and she heard noises in the kitchen. Figuring she might have dozed off once or twice, she reckoned the most amount of sleep she had gotten was an hour. Two hours, tops, but she didn’t think so.
In truth, she was terrified about the task that lied ahead, especially since it seemed like it would come sooner rather than later. On one hand that was a good thing, as it wouldn’t afford her time to chicken out and change her mind. But the sheer amount of fear and dread she felt was eating her alive. She knew she had at least fallen asleep long enough to dream, because it was coming back to her now. She remembered seeing Hayley at the top of the pile, head miraculously reattached and body reanimated, though not completely. She had begged Lenore for help as the pile of bodies around her sucked her in, until she couldn’t be seen and her screams were muffled.
When Lenore refocused on Sebastian, he was looking at her as if awaiting a response.
“I’m sorry, what?” she asked, completely oblivious to any question he might have asked.
“Did you sleep at all last night?” he asked. She had a feeling that was not the original question he had posed.
“Of course,” she answered defensively as she stifled another yawn.
“You don’t look so good,” he commented.
She scoffed, “Well thanks for the vote of confidence. I’m sorry that at the end of the world I’m not keeping up my appearance as well as I ought to.”
He gave her a look as he replied, “You know what I mean.”
“I’m tired,” she admitted as a sort of apology. “I think I spent most of the night tossing and turning and didn’t get much sleep.” A truth within a lie, but it would have to do.
She hesitantly reached for the sleeve of crackers. He eagerly pushed them towards her. Guilt washed over her that her younger brother felt the need to worry about her. She should have been the one concerned about him all the time, not the other way around.
A memory flooded her, one she hadn’t thought of in a long time. Sebastian had been about five, which meant she had been eight. He had been up all night crying and screaming and had had a fever of 102. Her parents had argued on and off all night about taking him to the emergency room, afraid of waiting to take him to the doctor in the morning. Her father had argued that the emergency room would cost a fortune and would hardly be able to do more for him than they could since it was only a fever. Her mother had argued that they couldn’t afford to risk it, that their son’s life was worth the cost of a hospital visit.
Lenore had stood at the top of the stairs, her hands on the railing, her face pressed up against two rails, looking down and seeing the shadows of her parents standing in the hallway bickering. His crying had woken her up, and she was heading to her parents’ room to complain about her selfish brother who wouldn’t be quiet. The concern in her mother’s voice scared her, so much so that she sneaked into her brother’s room, crawled onto his bed, and put her hand on his forehead to check his temperature, just as her mother did to her when she was feeling sick.
His forehead had been damp with sweat, his cheeks wet with tears. “Stop whipping the blanket,” he cried as he pulled his head away from her hand.
“No one’s touching the blanket,” she told him.
“Mommy and Daddy keep grabbing the blankie and whipping it at me,” he cried again.
“You have a fever. You’re probably imagining it.”
“Make them stop.”
“Ok,” she told him. She had been tired, but if she didn’t help him he would have been up all night and that would keep her up. She pulled his blanket and sheet from the bed, pushing it over the foot of the bed onto the floor.
“Better?” she asked. “The blanket’s gone now. They can’t whip it at you.”
It seemed to confuse him. He had watched her remove the blanket, but he could still see the imaginary version of things in his head.
“I’ll go get you some water,” she told him, thinking that a glass of ice cold water might help bring his fever down.
She had spent half an hour with him until their parents came back to check on him and found her lying in bed with him. Worried he might be contagious, they had ushered her off to her own room, but not before her father had kissed her on the forehead and thanked her for being a good sister for keeping an eye on her brother.
Lenore wondered what their parents would say now. She was trying to look out for him; she knew she had let him down when she had left home, even though they hadn’t been on the best of terms. Two teenagers vying for the same resources had gotten competitive, especially after her decision to drop out of med school and her parents’ constant disapproval afterward.
“Do you think Mom and Dad are still out there somewhere?” she asked. She wasn’t sure where the question came from, but the memory of when they were younger had her thinking about their parents. She was ashamed she didn’t think of them more often.
“Who can tell?” Sebastian answered, being practical with a shrug of his shoulders. “We don’t know how widespread the infection is, and we don’t know how many other non-infected are still out there. But Mom and Dad are smart, so I’d like to think they’re still okay. Or at least surviving like us.”
Was that what their life had come to? No longer okay, no longer living, but just surviving? It was hard to argue against it, but it made her feel horrible inside.
“Do you think we’re going to make it?” The thought had been on her mind, but Sebastian voiced it first. Hesitantly, she reached across and rested her hand on his. They had never had the type of sibling relationship that had foundations in hugging or goofy yet affectionate nicknames; the gesture felt abnormal to her.
“I think we can. If we stick together and stay tough. It sure as hell won’t be easy, but I think we’ve got a chance, yeah. We have no idea what it’s going to be like outside this building, but we’ve been fortunate enough to have it up until now. Once we get some food and supplies to bring back, we’ll be lucky to have it again.”
Uncertainty clouded them from every direction, but she knew they had to keep moving forward and that they had to stick together. She was going to do her best to protect her brother and herself, no matter what it took. She had cut ties with her family once, but her visit to New York had been her chance to reconcile with her brother for his eighteenth birthday. Stuck in the building with him, she couldn’t help but think it had happened at this particular time for a reason. She hadn’t seen her brother in three years. Now she had all the time in the world to make up for her estrangement.
“We’re a team.” The sentiment was cheesy, but it felt like the right thing to say. They would stick together, and they would get through this, somehow. They just had to stay strong and keep hope.
Anna
“You did what?” His anger was palpable, but she wouldn’t back down. They had made their decision, she and Sebastian, and she stood by it. Keeping secrets would only tear the group apart, and they were going to need everyone’s help and involvement if they were going to find a way to survive. They had already lost Hayley, and effectively lost Nathan. With a group as small as theirs, the loss of even just two members made an impact.
“We had a meeting last night with the others to assess the situation.”
“Without my approval.”
Anna swallowed her distaste at the word ‘approval’. While William was effectively the leader of the group, it was hardly a dictatorship. And lately, Anna had noticed, he seemed to be contributing less and less and becoming a bit of a recluse himself. Off the top of her head, she couldn’t think of a single task he had lent a hand on in the past week. “We decided the issue couldn’t be put off any longer as we still had not found any additional supplies on our secondary salvage of the lower floors. We had an impromptu get toget
her, and we’ve already gotten a few ideas that Davidson and Daniel are helping on. By the end of the week, we should have a complete plan put together, ready to execute. If not before then.”
“And what of Nathan? He is still a bit of a wild card to contend with.”
Nathan had not made an appearance during their meeting the previous night, though she would have wagered he had been able to hear. She was partially just thankful he hadn’t fired a round through the door at the sound of her voice. “Perhaps you could speak with him. Let him know that if he would like to stay a member of our community, we expect him to still contribute to the efforts of keeping it running. We’ve got the tasks handled for now, but when we send the party out to collect supplies, we are going to need all hands on deck to make sure they are kept safe and that we keep control of the building. The last thing we need it for this place to get overrun with infected.”
“I’ll talk to him,” William replied. “And you say you have a plan in place?”
“We have a plan in progress,” she corrected. “There are still quite a few details to work out, and we greatly value your input, but at least the wheels are in motion now. If they all have things to keep them busy, then it will help keep our minds off the fact that we are all tired and starving.”
William nodded. “We will, of course, need to have