The Human Spring

by Hollingsworth, David

  Before Ehsan and Fatima could exchange glances, they heard a noise behind them. Ehsan turned around to see six of the zombies they had left behind on the previous street turn the corner.

  “What do you think?” Ehsan asked his sister.

  Fatima held out her knife. “We can take those zombies. There are only six.”

  “You don’t think we should give it a chance?”

  “Sorry, but I am in no rush to be called muzzie again. Besides, what if they plan to trick us?” She looked over to the two marines. “No offense, you two. But we do not really know you.”

  Josue opened his mouth to say something, but Ryan spoke first. “Nah, yer right to be careful. We’ll take these zombies out while y’all decide.”

  Josue and Ryan jogged back to get their weapons, then ran over to the approaching zombies. As they fought, Ehsan and Fatima spoke.

  “I don’t think they wanna hurt us,” Ehsan declared. “If they did, they could’ve attacked us outright. We’re decent at taking care of ourselves, but did you see how they fought those zombies? They’re good.”

  “That’s true,” Fatima acknowledged. She crossed her arms and rubbed her chin. “But what if they want to trick us into something? Forced labor or something, where they would want to avoid hurting us.”

  “It’s possible,” Ehsan admitted with a shrug. “But I dunno. I don’t think that Josue guy would be so rude if he were trying to lure people into something.”

  “It could be a mind game or something,” Fatima suggested. “To make us think that they do not care if we stay or go.”

  Ehsan hesitated. “I doubt it, but it’s possible. I guess it might be safer to-”

  Before Ehsan could finish, the sound of something heavy falling came from the barricaded wall of the elementary school. Ehsan and Fatima looked over. Behind the stacks of school furniture Ehsan could make out a small figure darting away from sight.

  “Hey!” Josue exclaimed at the small figure. He walked back toward the school while Ryan covered him. “That you, Andrew? You know you should be doing your reading with Miss Julie right now!”

  “I heard the noise and wanted to see!” a child’s voice replied.

  “Yeah? Well I wanna be drinking beer and playing Xbox, but I’m here on lookout duty. We gotta be responsible, Andrew.”

  “Fine. I’ll go back to reading after I meet the new people!” A small face emerged in one of the gaps in the barricade, barely visible between the bars of the school’s metal gate. “Hi, I’m Andrew!”

  “Hey Andrew,” Ehsan replied with a wave. “I’m Ehsan.”

  “And my name is Fatima,” his sister added with a smile. “How old are you, Andrew?”

  “Seven! I’ll be eight in May.”

  “Very cool,” Ehsan replied, wondering for a brief moment if anyone on earth still kept track of the date. He turned to his sister to see what she thought. She nodded reluctantly. Seeing a kid was a welcome sight. An immense wave of relief swept over Ehsan, though he knew he still had to keep his guard up.

  “Alright Andrew, go back to reading,” Josue commanded.

  Andrew’s posture drooped as if he’d been asked to run a marathon. “Fiiiiine.”

  Seconds later, after finishing off the last zombie, Ryan walked up to Ehsan and Fatima. “So, y’all think you wanna see the school?”

  “Yes,” Fatima answered as if in a job interview. “We can give it a look, I suppose.”

  “I dunno,” Ehsan joked. “That Andrew guy looks like he can cause some real damage.”

  Josue laughed. “You caught us. He’s actually our top zombie killer.” He walked up to the gate and opened the door. Behind it was only a table, which Josue slid over.

  “You keep the gate unlocked?” Fatima asked Ryan, avoiding Josue.

  “Yeah,” Ryan replied. “The zombies can’t turn the handle. And if someone tries to break into the school, a locked gate just means they’d try to get in somewhere else. Besides, we always got someone on watch.”

  “That makes sense,” Fatima replied with a satisfied nod. Ryan slid over the table and motioned for Ehsan and Fatima to do the same.

  “Well, with that out of the way, welcome to Linda Vista Elementary,” Josue declared, spreading his arms in a grandiose welcoming gesture, seemingly ignorant of Fatima’s cold shoulder toward him.

  “Excellent,” Ehsan replied as he hopped over the table. He didn’t like talking to Josue after what he’d said, but hoped joking with him would prevent any more conflict. “I expect five star level accommodations.”

  “Well, you won’t be disappointed,” Josue replied. “If you don’t mind the lack of showers, or plumbing, or really anything that makes a place five stars.”

  “Oh no,” Ryan responded with a reluctant smile and shake of his head after making it inside. “Don’t get him started with his terrible jokes, Ehsan. You’ll never hear the end of ‘em.”

  “I never thought I would meet someone with worse jokes than Ehsan,” Fatima joked with some edge in her voice as she moved over the table. Ryan and Ehsan grinned, while Josue pretended to sulk. All four of them now stood inside the school.

  The school’s walls were made of white stucco and dark blue tiles. Most of the support beams, benches, and other such metal or hard plastic parts of the school were painted powder blue or teal. The layout was very open. Immediately in front of the group was a large field. Presumably a grass field before, it was now covered in bushes and small trees bearing fruit. Beyond that field was a blacktop with handball walls and basketball hoops. Beyond the blacktop, at the back of the school, was another field, this one covered only in dead grass. To its left stood a playground and swings.

  To both the left and the right of the fields and blacktop were the classrooms; if viewed from above, the school buildings would look almost like a crescent moon, except there were much more classrooms to the left of where Ehsan and Fatima stood than to the right. There were also lunch tables to their immediate left, protected by a roof of solar panels.

  A door near the lunch tables opened and out stepped three people: a man with brown skin and expressive eyes who looked to be of the same age range and sturdy build as the marines, wearing dark wash jeans and a navy blue shirt; a middle aged man with brown, sun-worn skin, a wide smile, and crow’s feet, wearing faded jeans and an old plaid shirt; and a black man in his mid-to-late twenties with dreadlocks and a stoic face who looked like a fitness instructor, wearing black jogging pants and a white tank top.

  “Hey there!” the man with the marine-like build said with a wave. “I’m Mateo. I’m guessing Ryan and Mateo brought you in to show you around?”

  “You guessed correctly,” Fatima confirmed. She smiled. “My name is Fatima.”

  “Ehsan.” He returned a wave to Mateo.

  “Nice to meet you two,” Mateo responded with a good-natured grin. “It’s nice to see more new people.”

  “There are others?” Fatima asked.

  “Yeah,” the black man who looked like a fitness instructor responded. “Me and my cousin. We only been here a couple weeks.”

  “Cool,” Ehsan replied. “So what do you think about the service here? Do they give complimentary chocolates after every meal?”

  Fatima nudged Ehsan, but Mateo and Josue chuckled. Ehsan already liked this place, even if he still had mixed feelings about Josue.

  “So what are your names?” Fatima asked the other two men.

  “Deon,” the man who looked like a fitness instructor replied. There was an air of unease that came over Deon as he introduced himself. Ehsan noticed it didn’t come when he looked at him or Fatima, however, but rather when he looked at Josue.

  “Manuel,” the older man added with a heavy accent, who up until that point had only smiled nervously. Ehsan recognized that uneasy smile. It was the smile of someone who spoke very little English. A smile that acted as a shield, the same smile his parents and aunts and uncles used to employ whenever they spoke to people who couldn’t speak Farsi.

/>   “Well it’s nice to meet you guys,” Ehsan said.

  “Right back atcha,” Mateo responded cheerfully. “Josue wasn’t being a dick, was he?”

  “Hey, not my fault people are such pussies,” Josue countered with a snicker. He looked directly at Deon, who looked like he wanted to say something back. Fatima’s eyes narrowed in response to Josue’s words while Mateo grimaced.

  Before Deon or Fatima could say anything, however, Ryan suggested he and Josue return to the roof and get back to watch duty. “Mateo can show ‘em around,” Ryan suggested.

  “Fine,” Josue replied. “It’s more fun out there, anyway.” The two of them walked back to the barricaded gate of the school, where the furniture against the wall of the building was arranged in such a way to make it easy to climb to the roof.

  “You two must be tired,” Mateo guessed. “But how about we show you around? If you like what you see, we can give you a place to stay and rest. We have plenty of space with all the classrooms around here.”

  “That sounds nice,” Fatima replied. Ehsan nodded in agreement.

  “Cool,” Mateo responded with a smile. He gestured toward the field immediately in front of them. “Well, this is the field where we grow about two-thirds of our fruit. It used to just be grass, but we changed it ourselves.” He pointed to the classrooms to the right of where they stood. “This school had an actual garden, too, behind those classrooms. We also use it for growing food, though there’s a bunch of flowers and stuff, too. Manuel, Deon, and I take care of the gardening.”

  “Impressive,” Fatima remarked. “Did the three of you learn to garden after everything happened?”

  “Actually, we all knew how before everything happened,” Mateo replied. “I learned from my dad. He used to work in the fields when I was a kid. He’d leave at six in the morning and come back at six at night, sometimes even later. During summers he’d take me to the fields once a week to work all day with him.” He chuckled. “Back then it was just a lesson in responsibility, but now it’s really come in handy.”

  “Wow,” Ehsan remarked. He looked over to Deon. “How about you?”

  “I used to run a community garden back in Oakland,” Deon answered. “Me and some other people who’d been locked up started one for the group we organized. We protested against the prison system, but we also grew food to give to people. Living in a food desert like West Oakland ain’t easy.”

  “That sounds like a great group,” Fatima commented. Ehsan didn’t say anything. He’d always done his best to avoid politics.

  “Thanks,” Deon replied to Fatima with a curt nod.

  Ehsan and Fatima looked over to Manuel, who at this point had resumed working. He gestured toward the fruits around him with that same uneasy smile. “I, ehh, work the fields.”

  “He’s also the best grower here, by far,” Mateo commented. He looked over to Manuel. “Usted es el mejor trabajador, verdad?”

  Manuel grinned and nodded. “Pues, si! Pero eres un buen trabajador también.” He paused. “Mas o menos,” he added with a wave of his hand and a chuckle. Mateo laughed.

  “So how many more people do you have here?” Fatima asked, unsure of what Mateo and Manuel had just said.

  “Let’s see,” Mateo said, scrunching his face in concentration. “We have a total of…”

  “Fifteen,” Deon stated. “Including the kids and us two.”

  “That’s a good size. As long as they’re not all kids,” Ehsan joked. “Unless they’re elite zombie killers or something.”

  “Sorry, none of ‘em are good zombie killers,” Mateo replied. He shook his head with feigned disappointment. “They’re all just normal kids who are nothing more than really skilled neurosurgeons.”

  “Well, that’s too bad,” Ehsan replied, reciprocating the feigned disappointment. “But I guess we’ll check it out anyway. Where’s everyone else?”

  “They’re in different places around here, depending on their jobs,” Deon answered.

  Mateo nodded. “What Deon said. Everyone has their own jobs. We all have at least one, but a lot of us have more. Like I said a moment ago, the three of us are gardeners. I also serve as a lookout, and Deon goes on scouting missions.”

  “So are you also a marine, then?” Fatima asked.

  Mateo shook his head. “I was a firefighter, actually. I also trained MMA, even had a few amateur fights under my belt.”

  “Good to know.” Fatima paused as she considered her words carefully. “So, what is the deal with that Josue guy? The first thing we got from him was a racist joke.”

  “The deal with him is that he’s an asshole,” Deon answered without hesitation.

  “Yeah…” Mateo agreed hesitantly, looking uncomfortable for the first time in the conversation. “I mean, he’s been through a lot, so we try to give him a break. But he’s hard to handle sometimes.”

  Deon looked like he wanted to say more, but he simply nodded.

  “Well, I’m sure everyone else is nice,” Ehsan offered reassuringly.

  Mateo smiled. “Yep, most of the people here are great. I’ll show you two over to the classrooms we use in a moment. Right now our younger students are reading in the library, and our older students are in class.”

  “Okay, well I’ll let you handle the tour,” Deon told Mateo as he picked up a small shovel. “I’ll get back to the crops with Manuel.”

  “It was nice meeting you,” Ehsan said with a wave.

  Deon looked back at Ehsan. “Likewise. And you too, Fatima,” he added with a reserved but friendly nod.

  Mateo guided Ehsan and Fatima toward the school’s lunch tables, which were to the left of the school’s entrance. “The classes we use to teach the kids are on this side of the school. Our rooms are also in this direction, further toward the back. They’re classrooms we’ve taken most of the desks from and filled with couches, blankets, pillows, things like that.”

  “This place is quite clean,” Fatima observed as they walked to the tables. Ehsan hadn’t noticed, but she was right. The ground and walls were entirely free of debris and decay.

  “Thanks. We all take turns cleaning everything.”

  “No wonder. This doesn’t look like a place that’s fallen into ruin at all.”

  “I sure hope not.” Mateo rubbed the back of his head. “I mean, it’s the end of society as we knew it. I don’t need to say how tough it’s been. But we try to treat it like it isn’t that way, y’know? Especially around the kids. Besides, it’s not like we can’t rebuild. Hell, we’ve already started our own little society around here.”

  “Your own society?” Fatima asked. She’d been taking in all the scenery, her attention caught between studying the environment and listening to Mateo, but his last sentence caught her full attention.

  Mateo stopped, and Ehsan and Fatima stopped, too. “Yep. Now that I think about it, I should probably explain that to you before anything else, actually.” He motioned toward the field. “As you already saw, we grow fruit here. Not a lot, but a decent amount. We also have a chicken coop. We only had a few chickens at first, from a program for the kids before society fell. Now we have a couple dozen thanks to the kids. We trade some of the eggs and fruit with a couple groups nearby. There’s fisherman at the pier, a group of people holed up at a nearby community clinic, and field workers who work some of the fields near the freeway. Basically, we trade some of our stuff for fish, medicine, vegetables, whatever we need.”

  “Wow,” Ehsan commented.

  “Incredible,” Fatima added in her usual arms crossed, hand on chin thinking pose. “Though, pardon my bluntness, why do they trade with you? I mean, I imagine the fisherman and field workers produce a lot more food than you do, by a fairly sizable amount. The clinic has medicine, which is just as important. What do they gain from this deal?”

  Mateo smiled and nodded. “You’re a sharp one. Yep, you’re absolutely right. They trade with us ‘cause of the other stuff we do, like teaching the kids from the clinic every Tuesday,
Thursday, and Saturday. We even bring ‘em here ourselves, no effort needed from the clinic.”

  “So you educate the clinic’s kids, they give you more in trade than you would normally get,” Fatima reiterated.

  “That’s right. We also form a sort of link between the clinic and fishermen, since we’re right in between. If we had to abandon this place, it’d be a lot harder to keep the trade network going.”

  “I’m impressed,” Fatima commented with a nod of approval.

  Mateo’s smile widened. “Thanks. I’m pretty proud of what we’ve been able to do here.” He beckoned toward the part of the school with a raised roof and a sign that read LIBRARY. “Anyway, now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s go introduce you to the kids.”

  Ehsan heard a young woman’s voice as Mateo opened the library door. Aside from the lack of electric lights inside, the organized bookshelves and clean floor made it look as if there hadn’t been any outbreak at all. Ehsan saw three children and a small white woman who looked to be in her early twenties sitting toward the back of the library. The woman had long reddish-brown hair and wore black jeans and a white blouse. She held a copy of The Very Hungry Caterpillar in her hands near two windows with open blinds that, along with the library’s skylights, gave her more than enough light to read. Ehsan looked to the children. One of the students was Andrew, the kid they’d seen at the gate. The other two were girls who looked to be Andrew’s age. Everyone inside looked up as Ehsan, Fatima, and Mateo entered.

  “Mister Mateo!” one of the girls exclaimed. The three students ran to greet them while the woman remained seated with a shy, quiet smile.

  “Have you girls been good to Miss Julie?” Mateo asked as the girls came up to hug him.

  The taller of the two girls nodded, while the other replied with “yes!”

  “Who are they?” the taller student asked, pointing to Ehsan and Fatima. She looked concerned, while the other girl looked like she didn’t know whether to be worried or excited.