“Then I guess you’ll have to live with that decision.” With her last words spoken, Rion turned to leave. Her bravery surprised even her. As brave as her words were, inside she still felt broken. She made it halfway down the hallway before a tear began to slide down her cheek. Her hand went to her stomach as she walked. There was no bump yet, no physical sign of the baby growing inside her, but Rion knew the tiny being was there.
“It’s just you and me now baby, but that will be enough.”
CHAPTER TWO
Six Months Before the Outbreak
The last place Nolan wanted to be was the one place he found himself at least once a week. The bell above the glass door chimed when he walked into the small town police station. For no fault of his own, Nolan was very familiar every face of the Dyersville police department. When your dad is one of the notorious town drunks, you become pretty friendly with the cops who picked him up from time to time.
“So gentlemen, what’s he in for this time?” Nolan rested his elbows on the front counter. He tried to stifle a chuckle. Picking his old man up from jail wasn’t a laughing matter, but it happened so often that Nolan often found it amusing. Even though he preferred not to be there, it didn’t mean he couldn’t have a little fun with it. The two officers behind the counter grinned at him in the same friendly manner they did every time he came in to get his old man.
“Wanna play a round of guess why Frank’s locked up?” Officer Ryan joked with a smile and pulled up Frank’s most recent case. It was a little game they sometimes played. It could be fun to play the guessing game, but Frank was usually always locked up for the same three or four reasons. Every once in awhile there would be a new charge, like the time they found him wandering around in nothing but a shirt. That had been a fun day to play the game.
“Wish I could man, but Sada’s waiting for me. I just need to know what bail is set at so we can get him out.”
“Alright, let me go talk to Tripp.” Officer Ryan went off to find his fellow officer, shaking his head. He didn’t know why Nolan bothered to bail his dad out time and time again. It had to be costing them quite a bit of money, money he wasn’t sure Nolan could spare. But it never failed, whenever they picked up Frank, Nolan would be there within an hour or so to bail him out.
Nolan pulled out his phone to send Sada a text. He didn’t want her to worry when he was late to pick her up. She was that kind of girl and he liked that about her. No one in Nolan’s life worried about him except for Sada. With Frank always half in the bag and his mom gone, there wasn’t anyone around to look out for him. After his mom had passed, they lost contact with her side of the family. Frank’s side of the family had never been able to put up with him for very long.
Frank is in jail again. I’ll be a little late, just getting him out now.
Nolan hit send and then put his phone back in his pocket. His fingers drummed against the counter as he waited. It usually didn’t take very long to get Frank out of jail. They processed the paperwork, gave him back his things, and sent him on his way with a court date to attend later. Unsurprisingly, his phone sounded from inside his pocket. Sada was pretty much glued to her phone at all times. He slid it out of his pocket to read her text.
Don’t be too long. Can’t wait to see you :)
Officer Ryan came back around the corner with a reserved look on his face. Nolan sighed, knowing what that look meant. Frank didn’t have bail this time. It happened from time to time, when the offense was serious enough that he was forced to see a judge before he could be released. It didn’t happen often, but when it did, Frank always left jail angry. Nolan hated picking him up on those days.
“What did he do?”
“Looks like ol’ Frankie boy missed not one but two court dates. Meaning you forfeit bail for those offenses and he has to sit in jail until he sees a judge. On top of that, he got picked up for beating up Marsha’s husband at the bar and he pulled a knife.”
Nolan rubbed his forehead and let out another sigh. That didn’t seem like Frank at all. He never had a weapon on him. Nolan didn’t even know where he would have gotten a knife. Frank never had enough money to even go to a pawn shop and buy one, or if he did have enough money he wasn’t going to spend it on anything but booze. His old man wasn’t usually violent, but with the right combination of desperation and Jim Beam, he could turn as mean as a bear.
“Is he looking at serious time?”
“Probably three months here, the prison is over crowded. If he gets the max on this he could do a year in prison.”
Max, or maximum time, was the worst case scenario. It didn’t just mean prison time for Frank. It meant that Nolan could end up in a foster home. That was the only reason he put up with Frank and tried to keep him out of trouble. There was no way he wanted to spend his last two years living with a bunch of strangers who were only foster parents for the extra money from the state. Or worse, a house full of uptight religious nuts who constantly tried to save his soul from eternal damnation.
“When does he see the judge?”
“Not for two weeks.”
“Do I have to worry about someone trying to come pick me up?”
“Nah.” Officer Ryan knew that no one would bother to call the department of child services on him. Nolan was a good kid and he could take care of himself. There was no need to get the state involved when they all knew Frank would be back at home soon enough.
“Alright, thanks Ryan.”
Nolan climbed in his truck and drove over to pick up Sada. He had a special night planned for her and he was already late. The old truck he drove puttered through the street and came to a stop at the curb in front of Sada’s house. Nolan honked the horn and waited for her to come out. He didn’t like to go up to her house. It wasn’t that her parents didn’t like him, it was that they liked him a little too much. Sada’s mom was always really nice. She constantly made him food and invited him to dinner. Sada’s dad was just as nice to Nolan too. It made him miss his mom and made him wish Frank was a better dad when Sada’s parents went out of their way to be kind to him. It made him ache for something that he knew he couldn’t have so instead he just chose to stay away from the situation. Sada didn’t understand and sometimes she resented how distant he was from her family. It wasn’t something they just didn’t talk about anymore.
Sada climbed into the truck and brushed her long brown hair out of her eyes. She scooted over to sit in the center closer to Nolan. His arm wrapped around her shoulders and he pulled her in for a kiss.
“So where are we going?”
“I told you,” he said, snuggling his lips against her cheek while keeping an eye on the road, “it’s a surprise.”
“I hate surprises.” Sada’s voice turned little whinny and she scrunched up her nose to make a face at him.
“No, that’s what you say when you want to know what a surprise is and I won’t tell you.”
Sada laughed and the sound of her laugh made Nolan smile wide. That sound was the closest he’d ever been to heaven. It was his favorite and almost sounded musical.
Nolan listened to her talk about how her last days of school were and how she had cheer camp next week. Though he wasn’t particularly interested in the schedule of cheer camp or the routines they had to learn, he loved listening to her talk. He would willingly listen to her read the phonebook for hours on end as long as he got to do it while cuddled up next to her. As his girlfriend continued to talk, Nolan pulled into a field outside of town.
“We’re here.”
“There isn’t anything here but an empty pasture.”
“Maybe.” Nolan got out of the truck and pulled some things out of the backseat. Sada hadn’t noticed what was back there. She slide down from the passenger seat and watched Nolan. He laid down a few blankets and then piled pillows all around the bed of his truck. From the backseat he pulled out a laptop and then climbed in the back.
“Are you coming?” His hand reached out for Sada’s and she took it. They laid i
n the back of Nolan’s beat up old truck.
“We can watch The Notebook or The Force Awakens. You’re pick.”
“You’re really going to watch The Notebook with me?” She sounded as if she didn’t believe him.
“The Notebook it is.” He kissed her cheek and then started the movie on his laptop.
Sada smiled, snuggling in against Nolan’s shoulder. His arm went around her and pulled her in a little more. She couldn’t get over how sweet it was, how sweet he was. They watched the movie in silence, under a sky full of stars.
CHAPTER THREE
Five Months Before the Outbreak
Like most evenings, Drew was dreading going home. Usually she avoided going home just because things had been difficult between her and her dad. But after today, things between them were just going to get worse.
After running errands that weren’t important, stopping by a friend’s house, and then aimlessly driving around, she had no choice but to go home and face the wrath of her father. He would know by now that she had been suspended from the softball team. Kicked off was more like it. They only had five games left in the season and she was suspended for eight weeks. This affectively benched her for the rest of the season. The coach would have called her father by now, she was certain of it. When you lived in a small town like Dyersville news traveled fast. Even if the coach hadn’t called him, someone would have seen him at the gas station or the grocery store and they would have told him.
The engine to the old Tahoe she bought last summer shut off as she turned the key. For a moment, Drew sat in silence, trying to come up with an explanation. The truth was, she didn’t have one. It had all happened so fast, the fight with her teammate Alyssa over a stupid call in practice. Within seconds the pair were yelling at each other, throwing their gloves down in the dirt. Alyssa ran over and pushed Drew’s shoulders with both hands. Their screaming could be heard all the way across the field and Coach Jackson came running toward them. He was yelling their names, telling them to stop but in that moment Drew couldn’t hear anything but her own rage boiling up inside her. Alyssa reached out again, pushing Drew hard, and that was the breaking point. Her fingers balled up into a fist and she swung.
Striking the side of her teammate’s face sent a jolt of pain through Drew’s hand. The pain surged up her arm but at the time, she felt nothing. She pulled back again, steading herself for another blow, when her hand was caught by Coach Jackson. He was cursing at her, but it didn’t register as she tried to get at Alyssa one more time.
Ten minutes later, both girls were sitting in the dugout. Neither spoke as they were questioned about the fight. They wouldn’t talk about why it started, frustrating their coach even more. After what seemed like a long time, Alyssa spoke up. Drew always knew she was a snitch, but she didn’t think Alyssa would give it all up so easily. She blamed the entire thing on Drew, saying that she hadn’t done anything wrong. Leaning over, Drew spat on the ground.
“Do you have anything to say for yourself, Drew?” Coach Jackson asked, more annoyed now than angry.
“Yeah,” she said, looking over at Alyssa, “I should have hit you hard enough to knock some sense into you.”
“That’s it!” Coach Jackson yelled before he informed Drew of her suspension. Alyssa was only suspended for one game. It was bullshit as far as she was concerned. If she had spoken up and told Coach Jackson what had happened, she probably would have gotten the same punishment, but Drew hated that she had to explain herself.
The other members of the softball team cleaned up the dugout but Drew didn’t move. She was rooted to the spot, her thoughts going to her dad and how mad and disappointed he would be in her. Coach Jackson sat beside her as the other girls filed out of the dugout to head home.
“Why’d you do it Drew? I’ve never known you to hit someone for any reason at all.”
She just shook her head, her eyes looking at the ground. Alyssa had said that she was a disappointment to her dead mom. That was exactly how she said it. Alyssa knew how to play dirty and she knew that would get a rise out of Drew.
“It doesn’t matter. At least now she won’t ever say it again.”
Coach Jackson put a hand on her shoulder trying to comfort her, but it just felt awkward. He followed the rest of the team, leaving Drew to her thoughts in the dugout. The dugout floor was littered with gum wrappers and sunflower seeds. Drew had stuck around in the dugout for a while, throwing a softball up against the chainlink fence. She was mad about the fight but in a way she was even more mad at the fact that she couldn’t bring the herself to talk to Coach Jackson about what happened. It didn’t matter who she was talking to, she didn’t want to talk about her mom. It had only been a year since she had passed and since then Drew could count the number of people she had talked to about her mom on one hand. Kimber was one of them, pretty much the only person she let her guard down with.
Her dad was one person who actually wasn’t on that list. They had never sat down and talked about what happened to her mom, or what her death meant. Her father was practically invisible since it happened. The future was a vast unknown and without having someone to guide her, Drew felt lost. She was wandering around aimlessly, trying to feel better, but not finding any way to just be happy.
After all of her errands and avoiding, she sat in front of her house, afraid to go in, afraid to disappoint her father. These days all she did was let him down. The biggest disappointment for her dad was when Drew told him she was gay and that Kimber was her girlfriend. When her grades started slipping and she started getting in trouble, the General blamed Kimber. She was the first thing he grounded Drew from and this would be no different.
Drew gathered up her things and braced herself to go inside the house. At the kitchen island, the General stood waiting. In front of him was a mess of things. A pack of cigarettes, some beer, a bottle of vodka, and all of her electronics.
He knew. Not only did he know about her suspension, but he had gone through her entire room and found all the things she was hiding. Drew’s heart dropped into her stomach. With all her loot spread out before her father, Drew knew that she wasn’t going to see Kimber anytime soon.
“You went through my room?” She said calmly, surprising herself.
“I did. After a long talk with Coach Jackson about how you hit a girl on your team, I decided that it was time we did this. I have been avoiding coming down on you for a long time.”
Drew snorted, “That’s a fucking laugh. You come down on me every chance you get. Out of all the kids in my school, I have the strictest parent by a long shot.”
“I’m hard on you because you need to learn. You have to know the rules of life so you can have a great future.”
“Are you even listening to yourself? I’m sixteen and you sound like you’re preparing me for my thirtieth birthday. I’m a kid, Dad.”
The General shook his head, looking down at all the things he found in his only child’s room. “You got this stuff from her, didn’t you?”
Drew laughed again.
“No, I didn’t get these things from her and her name is Kimber. She is my girlfriend, Dad, and she doesn’t smoke or drink. In fact when you line us up together, I’m the bad kid in that scenario. You would know that if you bothered to get to know the girl that I love.”
“I’m not going to acknowledge this phase you’re going through.”
“Being gay is not a phase! You can’t change me or pray it away. I was born like this.” Her tone was seething. They had had this fight so many times and each time their words became harsher than before. “If you tried to get to know me, to understand me, instead of just trying to change me, you would know all of this. But you never do. You just want to fix me.” Drew looked her dad in the eye, “But I’m not broken.” The words left her mouth, but she wasn’t sure that she believed it. It was as if she were a puzzle and when her mom died a piece went missing. Maybe she was broken now.
With a quick movement, Drew grabbed her phone charg
er from the counter. She ran through the living room and back out the front door, the screen door slamming behind her. Never before had she so blatantly disobeyed her father, but she couldn’t imagine staying inside their house together with him for one more second. Drew fired up the Tahoe and headed to Kimber’s, the only place she felt safe after a fight with the General.
CHAPTER FOUR
Four Months Before the Outbreak
The minutes always seemed to tick by slower when there was nothing left for Eli to do and his shift was almost over. Lucky’s Gas and Grub was one of only two convenient stores in Dyersville. It was locally owned and kind of a run down place. It didn’t have the best selection or the best prices, but people in town seemed to prefer it since they knew who ran the place. The farmers were there every morning, drinking their coffee black like the soil they harvested their crops from.
The nightly to do list his boss left for him was done, leaving Eli to thumb through the book he had with him, A Tale of Two Cities. It was required reading for his AP list class. The book had been something he had wanted to read, but Eli lost interest when it had been assigned to the entire class. Eli wanted to go pick out a book at the library and read it cover to cover not because he had to, but because he wanted to. Nevertheless with nothing left to do, he flicked through the pages, skimming them as he went.
A noise traveled from the front of the station, the ding of a familiar bell. The sound of the glass door opening drew the lowly gas station attendant’s attention away from his book. Jasper walked through the door in the same breezy manner he had with everything he did.
Jasper and Eli had been friends since the freshman year of high school. Moving to a small rural town in Iowa from Mexico, Eli struggled to fit in with the other students. Almost all of the students in Eli’s class were white. It took sometime for the other kids to warm up to him. But not Jasper. On the first day they met, Jasper walked over to Eli and loudly proclaimed that he was allergic to peanuts.
Alive Page 13