Haven (14 page)

“A Swiss Army pocket knife, two Leathermans, and a few pairs of scissors.”

Harrison could hear the disappointment in my tone and mentioned, “There are two thousand lockers to go, Kennedy.”

“Right…right…,” I said trying to convince myself it was worth it to hope for more. Either way, I appreciated Harrison’s effort to boast my hope.

The food pile consisted mostly of junk food: Cheetos, Oreos, Twinkies, a few bags of M&Ms, a couple cans of soda. There was also a half-eaten sandwich wrapped in a wad of plastic cellophane, which would find its way into the garbage shortly.

The games were limited to a traveling magnetic chess set and several decks of cards, which were prohibited on school grounds to prevent gambling. Since there were over twenty sets, it seemed that this wasn’t widely known or the owners simply hadn’t cared.

The clothing pile was mostly hoodies, hats, and gym clothes that hadn’t made it home and into the washing machine. But there was a black leather jacket that might come in handy against the Infecteds’ teeth, if we should ever get close enough to them again to allow them the opportunity.

Both prescription and over-the-counter drugs had been found so far. Most of these were aspirin, birth control pills, Claritin. There were a few highly suspect orange bottles with their white pharmacy labels torn off, which would also be tossed out.

The electronics pile was humbling. I didn’t own anything other than an outdated iPhone, which I had lost sometime over the last two days, while others in the student body had the most recent tablets, cell phones, and handheld game consoles. Of course, they weren’t much help without their chargers, of which there were none. If anyone wanted to use them, they’d need to do it quickly before their juice ran out. There was one little treasure that might be of value though. It was a small, portable AM/FM radio, the kind you’d buy at a drugstore and stow in your boat for fishing. I picked it up, turned it on, and scrolled the dial along the band, but all it picked up was static. Turning it off, I put it back on the ground thinking it would be a good idea to cruise the channels every once in a while…just in case.

A small pile of makeup had been assembled off to the side just below Beverly’s assigned locker. Apparently, Beverly had laid claim to them already. This was fine. I wouldn’t be complaining about it, and I doubted Mei would either. Looking good for the end of the world was far more important to Beverly than either of us.

As Beverly huffed under her breath, it caught our attention and we found her standing at an open locker two sections down. She turned to us, shook a piece of paper at us, and announced irritably, “These were the answers to the test I took last week. He had them and didn’t even share them with me…” She huffed again, uttered a curse word, and scowled at “his” locker before snatching a bag of pork rinds from inside it and returning to drop it in the food pile.

None of us knew exactly how to respond, so no one did.

“We need to hang signs,” Harrison stated. “I was thinking the art rooms might have something we can use.”

Doc’s head shot up. “I can help with that.”

“Me too,” Mei offered.

Doc smiled, almost shyly, and said, “Thanks, that-that would be great.”

Harrison’s eyebrows dipped at Doc’s response and I figured he’d picked up on something between Doc and Mei, but I didn’t bother to ask. A far more important mission needed to be addressed, so I headed for the next opened, un-pillaged locker and began searching for anything that might be of value. Harrison came up beside me, I noticed, and started on another locker, and I recognized that even his presence next to me was a nice distraction from encountering filthy books and moldy food. Over for the next few hours, as Beverly opened the lockers and Harrison and I looted them, I felt rather than saw Harrison’s attention on me. As we passed each other, carrying objects to their respective piles, our eyes met. When a locker door became jammed on me, he was instantly by my side to heave it open for me. Beverly didn’t acknowledge us and only stopped once every hour to send a text. Her cell phone battery would be dead soon, which was a strong motivator for her to open the rest of the lockers. Because I’d spent so much time with her before my dad passed, I knew exactly what she was thinking…
Without a recharger she couldn’t reach her dad and if she couldn’t do that she was as good as dead, stuck here with G.I. Jane, the Lone Ranger, The Hulk, and the Whiz Kid.
I’d never seen her work ethic so strong. And I’d never felt more guilty in my life.

Doc and Mei showed up around late afternoon, hauling several signs, which looked sturdy and visible from a good distance.

“We found some tarps with grommets,” Doc said dropping the large plastic rolls at our feet and snapping one end so that they unrolled down the hallway. “And we found rope in a custodian’s closet.”

As we stood over the signs, inspecting them, Mei mentioned awkwardly, “Doc did the painting.”

Insisting on giving her credit, he shook his head. “Not all of it.”

“You did most of it,” she admitted. “You have a good hand for it.”

His head jerked back at the compliment, but a content grin slipped across his face as he re-rolled the tarps.

“They all have the same message…SOS,” Mei explained. “And the paint is dried, so we’re ready to hang them.”

“Good,” Beverly muttered from down the hallway with her head ducked into a Vogue magazine she’d taken from one of the lockers. As if it wasn’t already evident, she added, “I could use a break.”

“Well, you’re needed, unless you want to give up the keys,” Harrison said.

She made a disgusted noise, set down the magazine, and gave no sign that the keys would be handed over. “Which way to the roof?”

Harrison, who evidently had already been up there on his nightly rounds, led the way. Doc carried the tarps and Mei brought the rope. It required climbing a ladder from the maintenance room, which didn’t leave Beverly enthusiastic about agreeing to come. She baulked about it and the scuffing of her good heels until Harrison suggested she give him the keys so that she could head back to the hallway, alone. She shut up after that.

With our school being two stories it didn’t tower over the tall buildings across the skyline of downtown Chicago, but it gave us enough elevation over the houses and retail businesses that immediately surrounded us that we could see a good distance. We collected at the edge of the roof, lining up to look out over the city. If it weren’t for the smoke plumes curling up between the trees and rooftops from unattended fires, it would have looked serene and untainted, even idyllic.

“The trees cover a lot,” Doc reflected in a mumble, referring to what we couldn’t see but knew was happening on the ground.

Almost in unison, our heads lowered and we looked out across one of the school’s parking lots below us where bodies were still strewn across the pavement and cars were left abandoned, and those who had done this to them were weaving mindlessly, carefree between them.

“Let’s get these signs hung,” Harrison suggested, shifting our focus to something positive.

The rest of us nodded in agreement and for the next couple of hours we draped them over the edges of the roof and down the sides of the buildings from several different spots. Since our school’s footprint wasn’t a perfect square, we used more than one sign on each side of the property. And because our school’s design had an opened quad area in the center, we had to walk around the roofs of the connecting buildings to reach the opposite sides. By the time we were done it was dusk and we were exhausted.

The storm that had stirred the draft that had carried the aroma of Beverly’s dad to Harrison’s nose, finally arrived, just as we finished scraping SOS into the gravel on the school’s roof. It was the end of summer and the storm seemed to be making up for time lost, rolling in with fury. After the sun went down, the clouds hovered on the horizon, coloring the sky with bolts of lightning every few seconds. Claps of thunder sounded in the midst of them, forceful enough to rattle the metal exhaust vents around us. Since it didn’t carry in any rain and the humid heat of the day lingered with it, the five of us stood there on the roof, watching.

Gradually, the street lights began blinking on one-by-one. This was likely caused by an automatic, remote-controlled timer as they registered dusk approaching. They seemed like a quiet reference to how much our lives had been pre-planned, made to be simple, in control. It was a surreal façade to the world we knew. There were no sirens, no wails or screams, no people running for their lives. It wasn’t hard to imagine that it was just another day and that some of these houses might have a dad, just home from work, turning on the BBQ for a late summer dinner in the backyard.

“It’s almost peaceful,” Mei whispered.

A few of us nodded in agreement. Of course, Beverly couldn’t allow the moment to pass without disrupting it.

“Yeah, sure is…until you look down.”

We did, and in the flashes of lightning that lit up the sky, we saw what kept us locked inside our school, what had kept those dads from coming home to turn on that BBQ. Just as before, the Infected wandered around in no particular order and with no obvious direction in mind, their bodies bent to the side or tilted forward, their heads down in search of food.

“You know what, Beverly?” Doc blurted. “You can shut the hell up.”

“Excuse me?” she said, turning to glare at him.

“You’re so damn negative. If you were on the team you’d have been shoved in the shower and shaved down by now.”

“
Excuse me
?” she repeated, her offensiveness growing.

“By team,” I interjected, “he means the football team.”

“I know!” she spat.

By this point, Harrison and Mei were watching tensely to see where it might go, and Doc showed that he wasn’t finished. “I’m tired of your comments and your stupid sense of self-worth. You’re not as important as you think you are, Beverly.” Her jaw dropped farther, impossibly farther. “In fact…” He licked his lips in anticipation. “You’re not important at all anymore. The world isn’t about if your name’s on the ballot for prom queen or what color lipstick you just bought from Target.” I had to stop myself from laughing, knowing she’d never set foot in Target, and Doc went on to prove this point. “No one cares what clothes you wear anymore. No one cares who you’re dating anymore. No one cares! So when we’re standing up here and appreciating what we see –
for the first time since the world has gone to hell
– you can…
JUST
…
SHUT
…
UP
!”

Beverly, who had never been put in her place before, snapped her mouth shut, just as Doc had demanded. The rest of us stood in awkward silence, our heads now dipped toward the Infected below, avoiding the dissension between the two of them. No one came to Beverly’s defense, and the reason for it was clear. We were tired of her attitude and Doc, who was known for correcting others’ attitudes, stepped up to do it.

Wondering about Harrison’s reaction to what had just happened, I glanced to my side to find he was actually studying me. When my eyes landed on him, his striking features drew tight and his breath seemed to become trapped in his throat. I’d caught him, once again, taking me in, as I had done so many times over the last year. But this time was different. There was no thrill over the possibility he’d cross the room and start a conversation. I didn’t hope to be asked out. As Doc had pointed out, neither of those approaches would work now, not in this uncertain world. This time was different because we knew each other now, we’d spoken, told each other about our families, seen each other act under extreme circumstances, and despite all of that, there was still electricity between us. That sizzle made me want to lean toward him, to reach out and touch him, to feel his skin make contact with mine. And it was more than comfort or security that drew me to him. Those were superficial wishes and I didn’t need either one of those to survive. No, the attraction I felt for Harrison ran much deeper. The intensity of his stare and the swell of emotions coursing through me made my shoulders grow rigid and my breathing cease. And I seemed to provoke the same reaction from him. Our concentration hung there, testing us, seeing if we had the resilience to keep the distance preserved between us, and it was only cut off by Beverly’s gasp and Mei’s simultaneous utterance.

“No…,” she breathed, the word carrying with it a powerful note of fear.

My eyes darted to each of them and then back to the city, in the direction of their gaze. The street lights blanketed before us began blinking off, one by one, in large square blocks. They did this silently without fizzle, without a bang. They simply went out, leaving us standing in the inky blackness broken only by the intermittent flashes of lightning in the distance. It was as if the city was saying to us, “Good night, Survivors. In case you didn’t know it yet, this is your warning sign. You’re on your own now.”

In the dark, Doc drew in a slow, deep breath and exhaled shakily. “Okay….”

Beverly’s response was a little more dramatic. “What the fu-”

Mei nervously interrupted, asking no one in particular, “Do you think the water and gas will go out too?”

After an apprehensive pause, Harrison was the only one to reply. “Utilities need to be maintained.” He didn’t need to add for our benefit that there probably wasn’t anyone left to do it.