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Chapter 15:
Home
I jolted upright in bed. I looked around the room, disoriented. When the fog of sleep cleared, memories slammed into me. I wasn’t in the POD anymore. George and I had arrived in Area 23, Sector 2—otherwise known as the Village of Rosewood, Tennessee—three weeks ago. I felt my stomach clench and chest tighten. David was gone, and I didn’t know where he was.
The sun peeked through the slats of the window blinds, shining in my eyes. I groaned, flopping backward on the bed. I threw the quilt over my head and turned from the window.
Go away.
Sunday. I hated the weekends. I couldn’t wait until Monday when I could go to work and be around people again. At least work distracted me. I could think of something other than the man I’d left behind.
But until Monday I was on my own. David wasn’t here, and I didn’t know how to contact George. There was no village communication system in place.
The house was too quiet and left me too much time with my ache for David…and with things that reminded me of life before the POD.
Knowing I wouldn’t go back to sleep, I climbed out of bed with a sigh. I changed and pulled on my running shoes. David and I had run together on the treadmills every day in the POD. The thought pierced through my heart like a dagger—even exercising wasn’t free of memories of him. I ran hard, pushing myself harder than usual, trying to push through the memories that haunted me.
Finally, Monday morning. Rainy, it was gray and overcast and I wanted to snuggle down in my bed and wrap myself in my soft quilt. But it was a workday, and I welcomed the chance to get out of my quiet house. I showered and dressed, grabbed an apple for breakfast and walked across the street to meet Nona.
The rain was slanted, the kind that slapped us in the face and soaked our clothes and hair even though we had umbrellas.
“A white shirt wasn’t my best decision.” I looked down at my shirt already plastered to my skin. Nona laughed.
“We have time. Run and change.”
Nona was my neighbor across the street. We walked to and from work together every day. By the time she and I got to work, we were both soaked. My clothes, wet and wrinkled, stuck to my skin. My shoes made squishing noises when I walked.
Since moving to Rosewood, I’d been given a house and a job. When I’d arrived the first day, after a horrible ten-hour bus ride, I reported to intake—a converted office in the old high school. Making my way to the dust-covered counter, I waited while the person ahead of me was given his information.
“Name?” The girl behind the counter asked when it was my turn.
“Evangelina Evans.” I wrung my hands, the knuckles cracking painfully.
The girl shuffled through some pages before producing a large manila envelope with my name printed across the front. My stomach churned.
Stop being a baby, Eva. Take a big breath and pull on your big girl panties. elephant sitting in the middle of I It wasW
“You’ll find your address in the envelope. It also contains your employment information. You’ve been assigned a teaching position. Looks like English and creative writing. Your schedule and first weeks’ lesson plans are in the envelope. Go out this door,” she pointed to a small door on the left. “Your transport to your residence is waiting.”
“Thank you.” I started to walk away, clutching the envelope so tightly my fingers ached.
“Wait! You’ll need these.” She held out a key ring with two keys hanging from it. “You don’t want to be locked out.”
I smiled and took the keys, my fingers trembling. I walked slowly to the door, pushing it slightly. It glided open. A security officer waited outside. He asked my name, took my envelope, and pulled out a pink slip of paper.
“This is your address. Don’t lose this paper. It’s your proof of ownership.”
“Ownership?” I asked.
“Of your house,” he answered. “Put it somewhere safe. Give your street address to the driver.”
I own a house?
I walked across the parking lot to the waiting car. “Um, I guess I’m supposed to tell you my address. It’s 12 Maple Brook Lane,” I said, reading it off the paperwork I was given.
He opened the car door for me and smiled. “I know just where that is. We call it the teachers’ district. It’s over by the elementary school, you see. I bet that’s where you’ll be working. Your house is close enough for you to walk to work.”
He drove while he talked. By the time he’d finished telling me about the school, we’d reached my house.
My house. I own a home…they just gave it to me.
It seemed unreal. Of course, there were plenty of houses to go around, and with no banking system in place it’d be hard to keep up on mortgages. So they gave us all homes.
I was a homeowner. It was a beautiful house—yellow with white shutters and a big front porch. But it felt empty. For the last fifteen months I’d lived with nine other people. My house felt too big and too quiet without them, especially David.
Walking home after my first day at work I told Nona, “I never thought I’d be a teacher. In fact, I was sure I wouldn’t be.”
“Well, how’d the day turn out?”
“Really, really good.”
“That’s great, Eva.”
As the days passed, I found that I enjoyed my job more and more. In the evenings, I read every book I could on teaching. I looked forward to school days. I taught English to the younger residents. The raffle had chosen people beginning at age twelve, so I taught kids thirteen through sixteen proper English, writing and oral communication. I also taught a creative writing course.
The work and the kids kept me busy.
Work was my escape.
Four weeks went by without word from George. Nona told me the “M” next to George’s sector number meant that he lived in the Medical District—the “E” over my headoror want to ou next to mine meant Education District. Since I knew he had still been in school when the virus hit, I looked for him in the medical training classes, but he was never there. With no way to find his address, I’d given up. I mourned his absence like I did for everyone else from sub-POD twenty-nine.
Early on the Monday of my fifth week in the village, a short rap against my classroom’s door caused every head in the room to turn. The old wooden desk chair squeaked when I stood. Pulling open the door, I let out a squeal.
“Keep working on your papers, everyone,” I told my class before stepping into the hall and hugging George.
He hugged me tightly, lifting me off the ground. “I’ve been looking for you since the day we got here. You know they don’t have any kind of directory? It’s crazy.”
“How did you find me? I checked the medical classes for you.”
He set me down and I studied his face, now free of metal. Small marks showed where the piercings had been, and the tattoo on his neck peeked out of his shirt collar. “Yeah, I work one month at the clinic and come to school for a month. I started my first day of classes today. Your friend Nona saw my name on the roster and asked if I knew you. When I said I did, she told me where to find you.”
“Here.” I grabbed a pen out of my pocket and reached for his hand, scrawling on his palm. “This is my address. Come by when you can. I have to go back in there and make sure the students aren’t strangling each other. It’s so good to see you, George.” I kissed him quickly on the cheek before I turned to the classroom door. He grabbed my hand.
“It’s good to see you too. Eva, I need to talk to you. I’ll come by on Saturday if that’s okay. It’ll give us more time to talk.”
“Saturday is great. Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, it’s good. Don’t worry, I’ll see you Saturday.” He gave my hand a squeeze before letting go. He turned, his shoes squeaking against the floor. I watched
him walk away, wondering what bad news would meet me Saturday.
It was a long week. I busied myself with work, going to the various stores in town to stock up on supplies and studying my teaching textbooks at night.
The closer Saturday came, the more on edge I became. By Wednesday, the students were getting on my nerves and I snapped at them. Friday morning, I thought about calling in sick, but I didn’t know the rules about missing work. Besides, I didn’t want to be alone with my thoughts all day.
Saturday finally came. George hadn’t told me what time he’d be over.
Hurry up, George.
I paced the rooms waiting for him. From one room to another, the bedroom to the kitchen and back again, I’d pick up the knickknacks and trinkets and rearrange them only to put them back in their original spots the next time my pacing led me to the room.
The doorbell pealed through my small house, and I jumped. I’d been looking out the front bay window, but I hadn’t seen him walk up. Then I realized the doorbell had only chimed once. The bell for the front door chimed twice.
I peeked out the peephole to make sure he wasn’t waiting on my front porch. When I didn’t see him, I jogged to the back of the house and open over my headoror want to oued the back door.
“Hey, Eva.” He gave me a hug and quick kiss as he stepped in.
“It’s so good to see you. Do you want some lemonade?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
“So what’s up?” I demanded, handing him his drink.
“You never were one for small talk.” He smiled.
I didn’t smile back.
He grabbed a kitchen chair and swung it around, straddling it. He put his drink on the table, and I watched a bead of condensation run down the side of the glass. George’s finger played in the liquid pooling on the table before he took a drink. The ice cubes clinked against the glass and I flinched—the sound was too loud in the room. I waited. George set the glass down and looked at me.
“I saw Seth,” he said quietly.
“Really! Where?”
“He’s living here now.”
My heart sped up. It was hard to breathe and I had to strain to find enough air to ask my next question.
“Why?”
“The government had dispersed the POD residents evenly over the continental U.S. Hawaii and Alaska are too far away to repopulate.”
“Yeah, so?” I asked, slipping into a chair across from George.
“Well, the villages were too small.”
“I wondered about that. Less than fifteen hundred people makes for a really small town. It’s hard to be self-sufficient.”
“That’s why they’re combining villages. Instead of one for each state, they’re combining them and keeping the majority of them on the Eastern seaboard, where it’s easier to move goods to and from the villages.”
“Like the first colonies.”
“Yeah.”
“Seth and David were in the same camp,” I whispered, my heart speeding up. I rubbed my sweaty palms on my jeans. I started to ask a question, but my voice came out gravelly. Clearing my throat, I started again. “David’s here?”
“No.”
My heart dropped. “But you just said—”
“Seth said David left not long after they arrived at their village. He’s been gone a month, looking for you.”
It took me a few seconds to process the information. I stared at the wood grain of the table top, following the lines with my finger. My mind spun and blood pulsed behind my ears. David was gone. He was looking for me. My hands gripped the table so hard it hurt. The edge bit into my flesh, and my fingernails bent under the force. I stood up so fast my chair toppled backward, landing on the wood floor with a crack.
“You’re telling me David is wandering around God knows where looking for me. Meanwhile, the government realizes they screwed up and made the villages too small. Our villages are combined, but because David left he doesn’t know. Did I get it all?”
“Yeah.”
“Isn’t that just flippin’ ironic?” I wanted to cry. “If David had waited a few weeks, the government would have driven him right to me.”
the smile in his voice.
“Where’s Seth? I want to talk with him.”
“You can’t,” George told me. “He’s in quarantine. His entire village i"K0RUT">ȁ
Chapter 16:
Compound
The remaining week of Seth’s quarantine period crawled by.
He’d told us while we were in the POD that he excelled in math. Maybe he’ll be assigned to teach and I’ll be able to talk to him without fear of getting caught mingling with another district.
I didn’t know the letter on his badge. I asked George, but when he went to the clinic to ask Seth, he was escorted out because it wasn’t his month for clinic duty.
We sat at a cheap table that had been made to look like wood, surrounded by mismatched chairs. Our lunch—if you could call it that—congealed on our trays. We didn’t have much time to talk before we had to be back in class.
“Why are they going to so much trouble to keep people separated? Districts aren’t supposed to mingle unless it’s work-related; you can’t enter the clinic because it’s your month of classes. I don’t understand. This isn’t how a normal town would work.”
George shook his head. “We aren’t in a normal town, Eva. Nothing about this is normal.”
“And what’s with the curfew all of a sudden? We’ve lived here almost six weeks and now they institute a curfew?” I asked, too loudly. People at neighboring tables turned and looked at me.
“The nursing and med students have a theory, but it’s just a theory. We think it has something to do with the survivors. None of the villages have allowed the survivors inside. The curfew helps keep the villagers inside so the police can monitor movement for non-residents.”
“But wouldn’t they just put them in quarantine, like they did Seth?”
“No, they aren’t allowing them in because they don’t have enough quarantine equipment to deal with all of them. I don’t even think we have the proper equipment to fully protect us if one of the other villagers had the virus. I think the quarantine is just for show…to make the villagers feel safer than we actually are. If we feel like our little area is clean and virus-free, no one will want to chance contaminating it by allowing non-residents inside,” George said.
The bell rang. I eased out of my chair and picked up my lunch tray. “Back to class.”
“Yup. Lunch tomorrow?”
I smiled. “Sure thing.”
George nodded once and walked out of the cafeteria. I stood watching him leave, tapping my fingernails against the scarred tabletop. Something he’d said nagged at me. I couldn’t put the pieces together, but I was sure when I did I wasn’t going to like what I saw.
That evening Nona and I took a walk. I said we needed some fresh air after being cooped up all day at work. Truthfully, I wanted to do some exploring. We walked down the sidewalk to the main street that ran through town, and then turned left. I knew approximately where the clinic was, but wasn’t completely sure. I was on a mission to find it.
We walked by t the smile in his voice.
We came to the white church I remembered from my first day in the village. I had thought it looked so beautiful, sitting tall and proud in the middle of town. Up close, it looked a far throw from beautiful. The white paint flaked from the wooden clapboards, and the cement stairs leading to the front door were crumbled and broken. The once-beautiful stained glass windows showed several cracks. It wasn’t the majestic temple I remembered.
Nona and I chatted about work, talked about the unruly students, gossiped about the other teachers. We passed the grocery store, the teenager who ran it already closing up for the night. I yelled a greeting, and he smiled and waved. We continued walking through the town square. I admired the bright yellow and orange mums lining the walkways. The smell of fresh paint filled the air as we passed the library, the
small building getting a much-needed facelift before opening.
“It’s gonna be dark soon. We should turn back,” Nona said.
“Okay, let’s walk to the edge of the square and turn around there.”
“Wait,” she said slowly. “Are you going somewhere in particular?”
I didn’t want to lie to Nona, but I couldn’t tell her the truth either. She was a by the book person. She wouldn’t have come along if she’d known where we were going.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because you have a friend who works in section M and that just happens to be where we’re standing.”
“George. Yeah, he works in medical, but I see him every day at school. Why would I walk all this way to see someone I’d just seen this afternoon?” I said, not really lying, but definitely not telling the truth.
“Then what are we doing standing ten feet from the clinic, Eva?”
“Honestly, I didn’t know that was the clinic.” At least that was the truth. The brown building looked like it used to be an elementary school. A playground sat beside it, and there was no sign labeling it as a clinic. How were people supposed to know where to go when they were ill if the stinkin’ buildings weren’t labeled?
“Let’s check it out,” I said, pulling Nona with me toward the clinic.
“We aren’t supposed to be here,” she said, struggling to keep up with me.
“Why not? You said it was the clinic. Isn’t this where we’re supposed to go if we need a doctor?”
“I don’t…I guess so.”
“Then come on. If they ask, we’ll tell them the truth. We’re curious if this is the right place to go if we get sick.”
We’d walked up two steps when a voice called out behind us. “Ladies.” I jumped at the booming voice, sucking in a breath to keep from screaming. Nona let out a small gasp. “IDs, please.”
“Crap, Eva, I left my purse at home.”
I turned around slowly. The uniformed man had a rifle unslung and pointed in our general direction. “Um, we don’t have them with us.”
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