“I didn’t say that was okay,” Nick growled at Carter. Carter clenched his jaw and ignored him, handing me the baby’s bottle and bag of snacks.
He also handed Maria the washcloth and rags that she used for diapering.
“Did you fucking hear me, man?” Nick yelled.
“I said I didn’t say it was okay to give them stuff.” Carter pushed Nick back out of his face, the muscles at his neck bulging as he held in the violence and the rage that was simmering just beneath his surface.
“I’m not going to starve a baby. Not even Warren would want that. If you’ve got a problem with it, you can tell him. Until then, I’m going to assume he wants to keep these people alive for now and that means not letting them die from dehydration and starvation.”
Nick wanted to argue, oh he wanted to do much more than argue. He smartly reigned himself in, realizing the truth in Carter’s words. How would he explain to this Warren that he let a baby go hungry on his watch, especially if Warren wasn’t the type to harm children?
Nick nodded over to one of the other kids outside in the hall.
The post-apocalyptic kiddie brigade left us a few minutes later and locked the door behind them, leaving Maria and I in the repurposed supply closet. I helped Maria unwrap Rose from her back and then slid down the wall to sit on the floor in defeat.
“Well, this was unexpected,” Maria said with a sigh after a few moments of silence.
The sarcasm dripping from her voice took me by surprise and a bark of laughter escaped before I could stop it.
“You could say that again,” I said with a huge grin.
Maria started laughing and I joined in. We both sounded a little hysterical and a lot insane, but we couldn’t stop ourselves. The whole situation was ridiculous.
Ridiculous or not, however, we were in a world of trouble.
It didn’t take long for both of us to sober up. Rose sat on the mattress playing with her stuffed elephant, oblivious to the dangers that now surrounded her. In reality, danger would always surround her in some form or another. The thought was sobering.
“What do you think this guy Warren will want with us?” Maria asked after a while.
I turned my gaze away from the baby to look at her.
“I’m not sure, but nothing good.”
“I noticed that there aren’t any adults here. Not any that I could see anyway.”
I nodded. I’d noticed that too.
“No and I bet that isn’t an accident either. Warren apparently has built himself an entire army of children.”
“Why do you think that is?” she asked.
“If I had to guess, I’d say it’s because children are not only loyal, but they are also trainable.”
Maria let her head fall back on the wall behind her.
“An army of children willing to do anything for you, to die for you, because you helped them survive when everyone else had died or abandoned them,” she murmured.
And she was exactly right.
Whoever this Warren was and whatever his motivation, he was brilliant.
And ruthless.
We had spent several hours in the tiny room when I was ready to tear my hair out in frustration. The hours passed, the room gradually got darker, and I knew we weren’t going to be going anywhere anytime soon.
Chapter Nineteen
Warren… Peace?
When I finally heard footsteps coming down the hallway toward the room we were in, I was still deciding the best course of action. If there were only one or two guards, should I try to overpower them, using the element of surprise to try and gain the upper hand? Or would that be too much of a risk with Maria and the baby in the room with me?
My mind spun and my body tensed up, ready to make a move one way or the other. When the door opened, however, I took a step back to look less threatening than I felt. There were four older kids there along with Carter, and they all had their weapons drawn.
Too much of a risk, I couldn’t take the chance that a stray bullet would hit Maria or Rose. Carter eyed me up and down before he entered the room with his buddies. I had the overwhelming feeling that he’d been ready for me to try something, that he’d actually expected it.
Smart kid.
“Warren would like you both to join him for dinner.”
I glanced over at Maria and saw the surprise I felt reflect back at me in her gaze.
What kind of game was this Warren playing at?
“And if we refuse?” I asked, crossing my feet out in front of me as I leaned back against the cement wall.
That’s me, the picture of ease.
Carter’s eyes met mine.
“You really don’t want to find out,” he said matter-of-factly. He didn’t say it with a sneer or even to sound threatening; it was a statement of fact and I took it as such.
“Okay then, let’s go have dinner with your boss.”
I placed a protective hand on Maria’s back and led her and the baby out of the room. We silently followed Carter and a second kid down the hallway with the other two child-guards following close behind us.
We were led down the same hallways we’d taken when we first got to the school, except once we passed the gymnasium, we were led down a different hallway until we reached a set of doors that led outside.
Once outside, we kept following a sidewalk that headed straight for another school building. I could hear the dead not so far away, moaning and moving about. We heard a few shots as well.
Warren had his children work around the clock to keep the dead clear of the school fences. We entered the new building and were ushered into what once was an elementary school cafeteria. I squinted against the brightness of the room, no longer used to the harshness of the UV light bulbs that hung overhead.
“Sorry about that,” a voice from further inside the room announced.
“I usually don’t use these lights except for special occasions. I thought using up a little of the gas from the generator for dinner tonight would be worth it for our guests.”
Maria and I stood in the center of the cafeteria, facing the only other person in the room. He was tall, around the same age as me, but with a gruff exterior, unshaven and a little unkempt.
The way he held himself to me he wasn’t military, just a guy with survival skills and a way of manipulating children to do his bidding.
“Warren, I reckon,” I said after a short pause.
“Indeed. And you must be Tex,” he said, then turned his gaze to Maria.
“Maria and little Rose?” he asked like he didn’t already know.
Maria nodded stiffly.
Rose was sound asleep in her mama’s arms, her little brow relaxed in a sweet sleep and her dreams still uncorrupted by the horrors of the world.
Oh how I wanted to keep them that way for her.
“Please, come and join me. I’ve had a nice little meal prepared so we can eat and chat.”
Maria looked up into my face. I had about as much of a clue as she did, and that was none at all. With no real choice to be made, we walked forward to the table that Warren stood next to and sat down once he took his seat at the head.
“Would you like someone to take the baby so you can eat?” Warren asked.
A girl came forward and put her hand on Rose.
My chair hit the floor as I surged forward. The girl, shock and anger plain on her face, had moved quickly, pulling her gun to point it right at my forehead.
“No one will be taking the baby,” I growled.
The kid’s eyes widened a bit, just enough for me to know that she was smart enough to realize I could be a real threat.
“Alright, no one will take the baby. It was just an offer so Maria could eat without having to keep the baby in her lap,” Warren suggested too reasonably.
I glanced down at Maria’s wide eyes and blinked. What was I doing? Maybe Maria would’ve liked to not have to hold Rose while she ate. I hadn’t even asked her.
“Maria?” I asked.
>
She met Warren’s gaze with a tilt of her chin.
“The baby stays with me at all times.”
“Very well then.”
Warren waved his hand and the girl standing in front of me with the barrel of her gun inches from my forehead lowered her weapon and walked over to a counter.
I righted my chair and sat back down.
A moment later a teen brought all of us a plate of food and a glass of water.
Warren lifted his fork to his mouth. Two of his teenage soldiers stood behind him, one of whom was Carter.
“Enjoy,” he said, motioning toward our plates.
Maria and I both sat there for a moment. She was probably thinking exactly what I’d been thinking. Why go to all this trouble of kidnapping us, just to feed us well?
Did that other boy, Nick, make a mistake in thinking his boss wanted the next people they stole from to be taken prisoner? I studied Warren for a moment.
No, that wasn’t it, though I wasn’t sure what exactly his game was yet. One thing I was pretty sure of was that he didn’t mean to kill us right then. He had other plans for us.
If he only wanted us dead, he’d have had his kiddie brigade shoot us in the back of the head earlier. I nodded my head at Maria and we both picked up our forks. It wasn’t anything fancy… some beans and chunks of canned chicken over a bed of rice, but it tasted good and both Maria and I needed the sustenance.
“So, why have you taken us against our will like this?” Maria asked.
Warren’s eyes met her accusing ones and he finished chewing the food he had in his mouth. He wiped his mouth on a napkin and sat back in his seat.
“We have a problem, something we’ve been trying to accomplish for a long while now, and we think you two can help us,” he said nonchalantly.
“You’re telling me you kidnapped us because you needed a little help with some kind of… of stupid project?” she asked, befuddled.
“I assure you, it’s no little or stupid project,” Warren said with a tight smile.
“Then what is it?” I asked.
Warren looked at me and smiled. He was clearly more at ease speaking to me.
It seemed Maria made him a bit nervous.
At any other time, in any other place, I may have found that a bit amusing, seeing as Maria stood only about four inches over five foot and Warren had to be nearing six feet.
As it was, I just filed the information away for later.
“We’ve been trying to raid the high school about a mile away from here, to clear out all the canned goods and supplies that have been untouched since the day the old world died, but we can’t get close enough to the fence line to get inside without losing a lot of our people or risk letting the undead inside the perimeter with us, which would make getting all the supplies back out that much more difficult.”
I sat back in my seat and listened to him while he spoke.
Behind Warren I’d noticed that Carter’s eyes had widened in surprise before he schooled his features back into passivity. Even the girl who was refilling Warren’s glass with water had paused with the water pitcher frozen over his cup. She snapped out of it as quickly as Carter had, though not before shooting an anxious glance in Carter’s direction.
“You couldn’t have just asked for our help? Instead you had to take our weapons, our supplies, and bring us here like prisoners to get us to help you with your project?” Maria shot out.
“Would you have come if I’d asked nicely?”
Marie tightened her jaw and shot daggers at the man sitting across from us. We all knew the answer to that. No way would we have gone off our course, especially not with the baby, just to help someone else and their group.
Still, there was definitely something else I was missing, something Warren wasn’t saying.
“What exactly do you expect us to be able to do if your entire crew hasn’t been able to get through the crowds of the undead to raid the high school? We’re only two people,” I said.
“Unless you are holding more people against their will that we don’t know about?” I added.
“No, you two and Rose here are the only guests we have right now,” he answered without answering the most important question.
“As to what you can do to help… I’ll share that with you a little later on. First, I wanted to show you around the school a little. Let you see what I’ve accomplished here and what plans I have in store for the children that I’ve taken in before we talk about business.” Warren smiled broadly.
Now he was pitching it as a business transaction.
Maria snorted beside me and I grinned widely, matching Warren’s air of ease and complacency.
“Sounds like a plan,” I agreed.
Chapter Twenty
Loot, Shoot, and Scoot
“These are a few of the classrooms that we’ve converted into sleeping quarters for the children,” Warren said half an hour later.
We peered inside one of the six classrooms in the short hallway.
Children were milling about, some freezing when they saw us, others ignoring us entirely. The rooms were small, but comfortable. Cots and some homemade bunk beds lined the walls. There wasn’t much left behind of what you’d expect to find in an elementary school.
No brightly colored artwork hung on the walls, no little cubbies filled with backpacks and homework, and no play centers to welcome children. Instead, basic survival gear was spotted throughout the room.
Kids sat on the floor and on their beds, cleaning guns and sharpening knives. Some kids wrote in dirty, beat up notebooks, while others hung plain, wet clothing up along a rope pulled taut across the room to dry.
The entire scene was surreal.
“Who teaches them? Who helps the younger ones do the things they can’t do for themselves?” Maria asked after a moment.
Her eyes were on a little girl no older than seven or eight who sat on the edge of her bed holding a worn copy of Goosebumps.
Warren laughed, making Maria and I both jump.
“No one has to help any of these children do anything,” he said, walking back through the classroom door.
We trailed behind him, with our ever-present armed guards following in our footsteps.
Warren showed us the few rooms that had been set aside for entertainment and fun. He said the children had fixed them up themselves, that they knew if they wanted a space to hang out or do whatever, they had to take it upon themselves to make it happen.
There were only a handful of children in those rooms though. A few were playing a board game and a couple sat in overstuffed chairs reading or sketching.
We made our way back to the gymnasium, fully aware that that was where most of the children spent their free time. We could hear yelling and cheering before we turned down the hallway that led to the entryway of the gym.
“This is the activity hub of our little camp,” Warren said proudly as we entered.
A hush fell over the room the further we went inside.
Kids stopped what they were doing and all stood… waiting.
“Everyone form a line,” Warren barked out.
Without even the slightest hesitation, a line of children formed in front of us, taking up the entire width of the gym. Everyone looked forward; no one raised their eyes to us. They moved automatically, like they’d done so many, many times before.
“Each and every one of these kids was alone when they came to join our camp,” Warren told us. “Some of them, like Nick over there, were alone for the better part of a year when we took them in.”
I glanced down to where Warren motioned and saw the dead-eyed boy who had been the leader of the group who’d snatched us up. He didn’t acknowledge Warren or us.
“Some, like Mike and Jeffrey over there, were together, but not doing so well.”
The boys he pointed to this time had to have been barely out of kindergarten. I glanced up and down the line of children. My heart ached for what they must have been through the past t
wo years.
A lot of them were so young that they shouldn’t have even had a slim chance of surviving out in the world of the undead alone, and yet, here they all were alive and thriving. Maybe Warren was right to teach them this way, to help them become tougher.
The weak got eaten by zombies.
The weak got preyed on by the strong.
The weak couldn’t survive in our new world, only the strong could. And yet, I still couldn’t bring myself to fully appreciate the army of kids standing in front of me.
Its unnaturalness didn’t sit right with me. Children should be protected, not only their lives, but also their innocence. Children no longer existed in this harsh world, only the dead, their victims, and survivors.
“None of them have any family left?” Maria asked.
Her eyes were filled with compassion as she gazed at the line of children.
“Every child here either saw their families get eaten by the undead, had to kill their own family once they turned, or worse, were abandoned by their family so they wouldn’t slow them down,” Warren said without inflection.
Maria flinched, wrapping her arms around Rose a little more snuggly.
“So, out of the kindness of your heart, you took them all in and showed them how to become survivors and became their family?” I interjected sarcastically.
Warren smiled, and it wasn’t a fake smile, it was the genuine deal.
“I tell every kid I bring in here the exact same thing,” he said. “I’m not your mommy. I’m not your big brother or your best friend. I’m a survivor, and if you want to be a survivor you have to do tough things and make tough choices, otherwise, you’re just another dead kid living on borrowed time.”
“Charming,” Maria muttered beneath her breath.
“So what exactly do you teach these kids then?” I asked.
“Besides how to kidnap,” Maria added.
“I teach them how to toughen up, how to take care of themselves, and how to survive against the odds,” he said simply.
Despite our circumstances, and even though I knew Warren couldn’t have brought us to his camp to show off his accomplishments and to “help” with his high school project, I had to admit, I wasn’t fully against what he was doing here with these children.
State of | Book 2 | State of Ruin Page 11