He puts down the items on one of the tables and comes to greet us with an extended hand. He shakes each of our hands, asking our names. “I’m glad to have you here.” He leans down and scratches Winston behind the ear. “Nice to have you here too, big fella.”
“You did all this?” Ian asks turning around and taking everything in.
“Well, not by my own hands. We hired contractors to get most of the work done.”
“But how did you know the aliens would come?” Wade asks. “The government didn’t even know.”
Dave shakes his head. “An alien invasion was only one of the things we were planning for. We wanted to survive against anything that came our way, invasion by aliens or world war, contaminant outbreak, Armageddon.” He shrugs. “Anything.”
“I’m glad you did,” I say. “And I’m glad you opened your doors to my mother and to us.”
“How could I turn your mother down? We had planned for everything except for medical help.” He chuckles deep. “Not as smart as we thought we were. So when we bumped into your mother, it was a no-brainer. But she did have one catch though.”
“What was that?” I ask.
He smiles warmly, as he looks down at me. “She would only help us if her daughter would be allowed to come into the community too.”
I squeeze my mother’s hand. She knew I would make it back to her. “Thank you. I hope we aren’t a burden to you.”
“No, we welcome you with open arms. This place can hold thirty-five people comfortably and right now we’re at twenty-six with you all.”
“Glad we made the cut,” Wade says.
Dave nods and then hollers out. “Jilly-bear, they’re here. Come on out.”
The woman that I assume is Jillian comes from a back room. She’s wearing an apron and her white hair is pulled into a bun. She has the same warm smile on her face as her husband. And she smells wonderful. The closer she comes, the better she smells, until finally she hugs me and I never want to let her go. I let the smell of bread and cake waft over me.
“Come, come,” she exclaims, pulling me toward the table. “Have a seat. I started cooking as soon as Rocky told me we had visitors.”
We don’t waste any time taking seats. Jason takes a seat next to me and my mother stands behind my chair and begins to put my hair in a braid. Dave puts a hand on his wife’s shoulder and says, “They aren’t visitors, they’re family.”
I look up at my mom and smile.
We’re home.
“I’m starving,” MJ says. He picks up his spoon and fork and assesses them, as if he’s never seen them before.
Jillian laughs. “I thought you would be. Rocky told me you all started off in Tallahassee, Florida. That’s a long ways away from here.” She shakes her head in disbelief. “That’s cause for a special meal, so I got permission from Papa Bear here and tonight you all get to dine on steak and potatoes, macaroni and cheese and a chocolate cake for dessert.”
I think I might die on the spot. “Oh. My. God.”
Jason leans back in his seat. “Somebody pinch me. I think this must be heaven.”
“Shut the front door!” Jasmine yells out.
Wade and MJ give each other high-fives.
Mia leans over and kisses her plate and then kisses Ian.
“That’s the reaction I was hoping for.” Jillian chuckles. “I even have something special for the pooch. Venison and a nice fat bone.”
“Thanks, he’ll love that.”
“I bet he will.” She turns and goes back through the door she came in from.
“Is this how you guys eat every day?” Jason asks Dave.
Dave takes an empty seat. “Of course not. We’d go hungry before the year is out. We only eat what we need. We’re at war. We try to stay to a fifteen-hundred calorie a day diet. If we’re going to outlast the aliens, we have to be smart about our food supply.”
“We brought some food with us,” I say. “We gave our bags to Rocky. We have some canned goods and food pellets that I got from the aliens. The pellets don’t look like much, but when you eat one and take a drink of water they expand in your stomach and make you really full.”
My mom’s fingers stop moving in my hair. “What do you mean? How did you get anything from the aliens?”
“Sinta and I were caught,” Jasmine blurts out. “That’s how we met. We had a one-way ticket to the alien mother ship.”
I glare at Jasmine, willing her to choke on her tongue.
My mother let out a painful gasp. “They…they caught you?”
I swing my legs around on the bench so that I can hold onto her. “I’m okay now. Don’t worry about something that I survived.”
“But you could have been taken away,” she says breathlessly, her body shaking.
“I know, but I wasn’t,” I say, confidently.
“How did you escape from them?” Dave asks. “I haven’t heard of anyone getting away once they’ve been caught.
I glance over at MJ. “My friends didn’t leave me behind. They hatched up a stupid plan for MJ to get caught too. But he came packing grenades. We blew them to smithereens and got away.”
My mother is shaking so bad that it feels as if she’s going to fall over. “Oh my,” she says, her voice shaking. “You were caught by aliens and you used grenades.”
I look up at her with a half-smile. “I also have guns and a samurai sword. I chopped one of them to pieces.” Might as well tell it all and get it out into the open before Jasmine does.
“Whoa!” Dave yells out, with a laugh. “I like the sound of that.”
My mother’s eyes roll back as though she might faint.
Wade jumps up to stand behind her, holding her up. “Hold steady now.”
“She’s still your baby,” Jason says. “But she just has a little more umph in her now.”
I raise a brow at him. What he calls “umph”, I call bad-ass.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The sound of someone humming a soft melody is what pulls me from my dream. As the fog lifts from my mind and I open my eyes, I find my mom sitting next to me.
She’s really here.
I’m on the cot that has been assigned to me in the room that I share with Mia and Jasmine. It isn’t spacious or furnished with anything besides three cots lined up side-by-side, with only space for one person at a time to pass between them and three lockers against a wall. I don’t mind my accommodations—my new home. When preparing for the apocalypse, all decorating extras are basically thrown out the window. Which is understandable. This cot feels better than anything else I’ve slept on in a while.
“Good morning, sweetheart,” she says, when I finally open my heavy eyes. She’s casting her gaze down on me and everything inside of me seems to relax, knowing that I don’t have to run and hide anymore. I’m safe and I’m with my mom.
“Is it time to get up yet?” I lift my arms over my head, stretching out muscles that have been overused. “I’m still sleepy.”
“You’ve been here for two days now. It’s time for you to get acclimated to how things run. Come on, up and at ’em.” Using her hand, she brushes my hair out of my face. “What are we going to do about all this? I think I’ll put a cute braid in it today.”
I roll my eyes. “Mom, I’m not ten. I don’t need you to do my hair anymore.”
She tilts her head and pouts. “I just got you back. Let me indulge in pampering you.” When I don’t immediately answer, she adds, “Please?”
“Alright, but only for a little while,” I say, giving in. If she can let me snuggle in her lap like a toddler, then I guess I can let her comb my hair for a little longer.
“Come to my room after you get dressed.”
Her room is a lot smaller than ours and has only one cot, otherwise I’m sure she would have made me bunk with her.
“Sure.”
She gets up and heads for the door. “Come on Winnie-poo,” she says, calling Winston by the nickname she had given him. He doesn’t seem to mi
nd it, because he jumps up from where he had been sleeping between me and the wall.
“Ow,” I say, as he scampers across me, digging his nails into my torso.
As he jumps from my bed onto the floor and trots over to her with his tail wagging, my mom says, “Make sure everyone else is up too. Rocky wants you all at breakfast this morning.”
As the door closes behind them, I roll to sit up, placing my feet on the cold floor. “Mia, Jasmine, time to get up.”
Mia has her body, including her face, buried beneath the blanket while Jasmine is sprawled wildly across her bed, her blanket half on her and half off. She’s snoring so loudly I don’t think she could possibly have heard me, but when she bolts straight up, she catches me off guard.
“What? What’s going on?” she asks, her eyes wide open and darting around the room, as if she’s trying to find something out of place.
Startled from her sleep, Mia sits up and looks around too. “What’s wrong?” she asks in a panicked voice.
“Nothing goofballs. It’s time for breakfast.”
“Urgh, I’ll skip. Wake me up at lunch.” Jasmine flops back down to her bed.
“No can do,” I say to her. “My mom just left. She said it’s time that we get acclimated to the way the compound operates. Plus, Rocky wants us all at breakfast.”
“Why?” Jasmine moans, pulling the blanket over her face.
“He probably wants us all to start our duties. Maybe he’s getting tired of seeing us bum around all day while everyone else works their tail off to keep this place running.”
I get up and head to my locker. Until we can go out and get new clothes I only have the three outfits that I got from the surplus store, so picking something out to wear doesn’t take long at all. I have my choice between camouflage, camouflage and camouflage.
“Hold up,” Mia says. “I’ll go with you.”
I pick out a clean outfit and wait for her. “You coming to the bathroom?” I ask Jasmine, who is still in bed.
She waves me off. “I’m coming. Go on without me. I just need five more minutes.”
Mia retrieves one of her four outfits and meets me at the door. “Don’t be late,” she says to Jasmine over her shoulder. “We have a good thing going here. I don’t want them to regret ever opening their doors to us.”
“Point taken,” Jasmine groans, as we leave the room, closing the door behind us.
The bathroom is basically the same set up as we had in camp. There’s a large common area with a couple of sinks and mirrors for washing your face, brushing your teeth and grooming. Passing through that area leads to a divide, with one side taking you to a room with ten showers sectioned off by concrete walls and curtains, and the other side the same number of toilets, sectioned off using the same design. The only difference between this place and camp?
This bathroom is unisex. So men coming in and out is a little off-putting, but something I’m sure I can get used to.
The way we get our water supply is pretty ingenuous. It’s on a filtering system that pumps water from one of the nearby lakes and our used water gets pumped through the filtration back into the lake. This works out perfectly for everyday needs, but our drinking water is boiled to remove any contaminants.
So after a shower and dressing, my mother, who was too impatient to wait for me to go to her room, is standing by the row of mirrors. She places a round, light-weight stool on the floor, which I recognize from the clinic.
“Where’s Winston?”
“Jillian lured him away with bones.”
“What? That’s all it takes for him to be lured away?” I ask playfully. Since we’ve been here, Winston has been spoiled to no end. I want to pretend that he’s mine—all mine—but everyone has taken to giving him treats and love. But sharing him with everyone isn’t so bad; I’m just happy that they love him just as much as I do.
“I guess,” she chuckles. “Now, let’s see what we can do with this lovely hair today,” she says as I sit down.
She begins combing through the tangled strands. I don’t complain as she does, but let her fuss over me. But if this scene isn’t embarrassing enough, Jason and MJ come strolling through the doors.
“Good morning, Sinta and Ms. Allen,” both MJ and Jason say. MJ seems to be holding back a laugh and Jason has a humor-filled look of pity on his face.
My mom shoos them with her hand. “Please, call me Diana.” She tsks and, with an exasperated huff, releases the lock of hair she was holding. “Sinta Marie Allen, I think your hair has developed a mind of its own. I can’t get it into a braid this morning. Maybe it wants a ponytail.”
Flames. That’s what it feels like is causing my face to burn. “Oh, God,” I whisper, hiding my face in my hands.
“What?” she asks, as if she hadn’t just embarrassed the crap out of me in front of Jason.
“Really Mom?” I whisper, when both MJ and Jason have passed through our area and have gone to one of the back rooms. “Did you have to say that? Ugh. Now he’ll really think I’m a kid.”
“Who? What are you talking about?”
“Never mind. The damage is done.”
She puts the brush down on the sink and steps in front of me. She crouches, coming to eye level with me. “Talk to me girl,” she says, as she lifts my chin up so that I’m looking at her.
A quick peek to my right lets me know that Jason and MJ are out of earshot and, since I hear the showers running, I decide to let her know exactly how much she ruined my morning.
“Jason. My hair is all crazy, I look like a geeky-nut.” My shoulders drop. Now I’ll never move out of that little girl or sister category. “He already thinks I’m a kid and I think that’s just been cemented into his mind.”
She pulls back. “Really? Is that what you think? Well let me tell you what he just saw. He just saw a mother doting on the daughter she feared was dead. So he may see a lot more of me fussing over you, because I don’t intend to stop. You don’t know the hell I went through when I thought I’d never see…or touch you again.” She cradles the side of my face in her palm and I can’t help but to lean into it, because I also missed her touch as well.
“I know. I’m sorry. I just…I just want him to see me…differently.”
“You know what I see?”
I scoff. “Mom, no offense but your opinion is biased. I’m your one and only child.”
“Oh baby, that maybe true, but I know what I’m talking about. When I see you I see someone who has the purest and most penetrating eyes. Your eyes have seen so much, they mirror a soul that’s grown and matured, also one that has held onto hope, love and determination. Those lashes of yours are so thick and plentiful that super models would be jealous of them.”
I blush with embarrassment.
But that doesn’t stop her. “You remind me of a fairy princess—so small but so fierce. Your aura is so strong and powerful it makes you seem ten-feet-tall. And this beautiful hair of yours, well, people would line up for miles to have a snippet of this for their own.”
I run a hand over my hair. “I was starting to believe you before you got to the hair. No one wants this mess.”
“You believe what you want to believe but, mark my words, one day you will learn to appreciate your hair.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say, twisting a finger in a curl. “I’m just a kid with wild hair.”
She pulls my hands from my hair to hold them. “You want to know what else I see?”
“What?”
“My little girl left for camp and came back a woman.”
I snort. “I’m not a woman. I won’t be eighteen until November.”
She places her hands on my knees. “A little kid couldn’t have done what you had to do. Age doesn’t matter, sweetie. Do you think anyone around here is referring to Masana as a little kid? No, age wise, yes, she’s still a child. But she grew up when she had to watch her classmates murdered, her companion get taken by the lizards and had to cross two states to get home—on her ow
n.”
I tilt my head, thinking about what she just said. I do see Masana differently. Not the small ninth grader I had previously known her as, but someone stronger now, after everything she endured.
“I say all this with one disclaimer though.”
“What’s that?” I ask.
“You’ve grown up, but you’ll always be my baby.” She stands, with a groan. “That will never change.”
I giggle. “I know.”
“Good.” She picks up her brush and moves behind me again. “So now that we’ve established that you’re a woman. I still think you should wait until you’re at least thirty-five to have sex.”
“Mom!”
* * * * *
“Glad you all could make it,” Rocky says with his gaze touching on everyone in the mess hall in turn, but when he gets to Mia, Jasmine and I it lingers.
The intensity of his stare makes us sink into our seats. He isn’t upset with us, that’s not what I’m feeling, but he wants us to know that he has given us time to recuperate, but the free ride is over. He was an imposing figure when we first met him and he remains so. He has that same authority vibe I got from Captain Page and Ken. When I asked my mom about him, she told me that he used to be a Navy Seal, which pretty much clarifies why he seems strict and controlled and why I feel like if I rubbed him wrong, he could snap my neck like a twig and walk over my dead body without any remorse.
He finally breaks his eye contact with us. “Everyone is expected to eat breakfast unless some unforeseen source is keeping you away. It’s not only the most important meal of the day—”
A child-like giggle erupts in the room. I straighten in my chair so I can see who’s about to get their neck broken.
“Hush now,” Jillian says to a girl no more than eight or nine, who’s sitting next to her.
“I couldn’t help it,” she says, with laughter in her voice. “I’m sorry for interrupting, Daddy.”
Rocky shakes his head playfully before he continues, a move that seems so out of character for a hardened man. “As I was saying, it’s not only the most important meal of the day, but also when we meet to discuss duties, actions needed and other community business. Everyone is expected to attend because everyone here is a member the Arrowwood community, meaning we are all family and we have one voice.” He pauses to take a look around. “Any questions so far?” No one says a word. “Good, I’ll let the meeting continue then. We eat during these meetings so try to keep the side chatter down so that we can all hear.”
Against The Darkness (Cimmerian Moon) Page 24