Post by Admin on Mar 9, 2015 22:28:56 GMT
Here's 6 or 7 pages more. Woo. Hoo. Process of trusting, communicating, and adjusting to the new girl.
I returned back to the room with the scrabble board. Leon and the mute were sitting on the floor, eyeing the other wearily - they had not had the best impressions of each other so far. A minute ago, Leon had suggested we use a scrabble board for her to communicate, and I had gotten it from the other bedroom’s closet. Yeah, scrabble still exists.
I quickly sat back down beside the two of them and unpacked the game board and letters, spreading them around the bed room floor. Now she could ‘talk.’ Nice thinking Leon.
“No more paper or writing utensils, so I guess now you can start by spelling your name with this,” Leon said, calmly gesturing to the board. I saw his gun holstered, but close to his left hand. Was he really so convinced she would try to kill us or something?
The mute girl looked at him and at me, then leaned over to search the field of letter tiles. I flipped up any face down tiles if that could help her find letters faster.
Sliding the letters into line, one after another, she spelled out… M… (A few more seconds of searching before finding a y)…Y… R…A
MYRA. She sat back, looking at us again.
“Myra? That’s your name?” I asked.
Her slightly more relaxed eyes fell back to me. She nodded after a second. Myra. Strange name.
“Okay… this is going to be slow going. But tell us why you were there at the supermarket. Or where you’re from so we can help you get home, Myra,” Leon said.
I think another look of suspicion came over her. She didn’t want to take chances with these strangers. Trust was going to be hardest trick to get the hang of now.
“Look, I think before we get too… confidential with each other, it’s only right that we somehow trust each other more,” I followed up on Leon’s commands.
“How do you propose we do that? We can’t exactly play a round of icebreakers effectively,” Leon said, probably mirroring Myra’s own thoughts.
“Umm… well,” I began very strongly. “Myra, how could we prove to you that we’re not… bad people.”
She took a few seconds before she reached for more letters on the scrabble board. After another minute, there was: SHOW ME THIS HOUSE FROM TOP TO BOTTO.
She took another moment of looking for the last M she needed to complete the phrase, but couldn’t. Apparently scrabble only came with 2 M’s.
“You want a tour of the house? …To prove that we don’t have anyone else around or don’t cook people?” I clarified. Cooking people had become a normal term a while ago.
Myra nodded.
Leon had to interject his undeniable reason again, “You know, if we really wanted you dead or kept you hostage for some reason or were with a militia or cooked people, we would have already taken care of you long before now. There would be no reason to keep you alive this long if our intent was to gut y-“
“Which it isn’t our intent. You’ll see,” I interrupted to stop anymore unpleasant words. “So, are you up to moving around again?”
She gave one more nod and began to stand up. We did as well, and we all emptied into the hall.
What ensued was a pretty clunky tour of the home. Showed her briefly the two bedrooms – Leon and mine along with Jay’s old room (not the same room that he died in). A quick, strange pang of something like sadness hit and passed. Was this really what morning someone felt like?
We tried to move along moderately quickly, but for some reason it seemed like Myra was made of molasses, wanting to investigate and inspect every corner and closet as if she would find a corpse or drugs or something. Can’t be too cautious in strangers’ houses these days.
For a second in Leon’s closet, she saw the rifle and her eyes widened at the sight of the familiar black design (The very rifle that caused her silence). Then Leon stepped over quickly and snatched it up as if she was about to take it and shoot us.
“We can move on,” Leon offered rather sternly. We exited the room and Leon put the gun back in the room and shut the door tight.
We trooped back down the stairs, and into the mostly empty foyer and the dining room. She examined the single mirror hanging on the dining room wall that was layered in a fair film of dust. We moved into the kitchen and across the tiles where a robber had laid on, dead, about 24 hours ago. Now only the faint stench of hastily mopped up blood remained. I could see her nose wrinkle up a little in response to the barely traceable scent, but she didn’t look back at either of us and continued through the room.
Quick look into the small room that Jay had dwelled in over the last few days of his life. He wanted to be closer to the kitchen and wouldn’t have to go up a flight of stairs every day or take up a lot of room. We closed the door behind us.
Mainly, we didn’t say anything; she led most of the way. We didn’t bother tour guiding since this was a house. A house with part of the roof coming down, but still a normal house. The rooms were in need of a cleaning for quite some time. A pile of collected trash, plaster, and a small puddle of rainwater in a corner of the living room. Morning light streamed through a good sized roof crack that was steadily growing itself toward the wall – no fixing that without a ladder. Some furniture. But not much else.
Finally, having completed the somewhat extensive tour, we came to a stop in the ground floor bedroom with a bare bed. As a side note, there was three bedrooms total in this house, and the room I slept in was converted from a storage room during the war. No one had slept in Jay's bedroom since he had gotten sick. I piped up, “So what do you think? Are we murderers or are we what we told you we were?”
She didn’t say a word to us. Instead, she turned and pointed to the two of us questioningly and then swept her hands in a wide gesture, possibly referring to the house.
“What are you asking?” Leon inquired wearily. “Do we live here? Yes, we already said that.”
“Yes, we really are alone,” I said, trying to understand her wordless question a different way. “This was our uncle’s house. Now it’s ours. Just ours.”
After I said that, I could feel Leon daring me to further bring up Jay. As soon as I mentioned the uncle part, we were waiting for one of us to explain that Jay had been with us until the supermarket night. Which was still very fresh in our minds.
Neither of us wanted to explain anymore for some reason. Myra didn’t even know the previous owner’s name.
His name is Uncle Jay and he’s dead now so he doesn’t matter anymore. I told myself.
We stood like that for the longest time. What was with everyone? Our little trio was so prone to these silences, I could’ve fooled myself into thinking that Leon and I were mute too.
Myra was assessing us, and we to her. We had not done anything bad to her besides point a gun. We were alone and clearly not a malicious gang or a militia or a faction of any kind. I was honest to her. And to us, she seemed innocent enough. Her mute condition was not fake – or at least I thought so. The only thing was, we didn’t know anything about her besides her name. The same vise versa.
Then the assessments and thoughts stopped. Myra gestured to the upstairs, and it was time to return to the scrabble game to do more ‘talking’.
That meant she ‘trusted’ us. We ‘trusted’ her. Finally getting somewhere.
Once in the room with the scrabble board again, we were able to have a more fluent conversation. If you could call one person talking and one spelling out something with a scrabble board fluent.
“So Myra, do you have a home? Where did you come from before the supermarket?” I began as we sat back down.
Her face, which was previously neutral, fell and she began to spell out the next part of the complicated answer. Half a minute passed before this appeared: I DONT HAVE A HOME ANYMORE.
She cleared this away, but did not stop spelling. The new words PARENTS GOT PLAGUE. THEY LEFT ME ALONE SO I WOULDNT GET IT.
Clear. Next part. THEY VANISHED WHILE I SLEPT AND LEFT NOTE. A WEEK LATER I HAD TO FIND FOOD AT WALMART.
Then, with a slow hand, Myra reached into her dirty jean’s pocket and pulled out a piece of notebook paper. Neither Leon nor I had thought it was important to check her pockets I guess. We didn’t deem it necessary to frisk down an unconscious, innocent girl. Anyway, she unfolded it and looked at the paper for a second before looking at me and shakily holding it out to me.
This was her parents’ note written when they left her. I couldn’t believe she was just giving this to me to read. I took the wrinkled up parchment, and Leon came over beside me to look on. It was written in tiny, scribbled hand writing (they probably had to fit a lot onto one piece of paper). I read it with a gradually heavier and heavier heart:
Dear Myra, honey we’ll always love you. You know we both have the sickness and won’t get better. We can’t stay here and get you sick too. Baby girl, we have no choice. We had to leave while you slept or else we couldn’t do it. Don’t try to follow us, we’ll be gone before you wake up. We’re sorry. Please, try to live. The food and things are still where you know they are. Stay warm. Stay home and do what we told you to do before. Don’t go outside unless absolutely necessary, and don’t trust strangers. Please be angry with us if you have to, because we can’t do anything for you from now on out. But stay strong. We’ll see you again when your time comes. We love you, Myra. Love, Mom and Dad.
When Leon and I looked up, we realized she had been assembling more words together on the scrabble board. NEVER SAID BYE. NEARLY KILLED MYSELF. THEN THOUGHT I WOULD DIE AT WALMART.
Leon surprised me by being the first to speak, “We’re all in the same boat then. We all haven’t said goodbye to our parents.”
We were in the same boat. From then on out, the conversation turned away from death. It continued with us asking a question, then her finding the appropriate letters to answer it. Then she would ask a question slowly and we would answer. It was… a strange feeling, as if we were talking too fast.
“Do you have any supplies left at your home?”
NOT REALLY. DO YOU?
“A little, but we had to get out of the supermarket with you before more soldiers came, so we couldn’t get any more food. And we were raided before we returned home. But we’re still good for another week or more.”
THANK YOU FOR SAVING ME.
The plain words seemed almost foreign. Hadn’t seen or heard them in a while. “Um, you’re welcome. What are your plans now?”
DONT HAVE ANY. I DO NOT WANT TO GO BACK. BLACK BANNER WAS SWEEPING THROUGH MY NEIGHBORHOOD
Clear. Next part. …AS I LEFT FOR WALMART. DIDNT KNOW WHAT TO DO. THOUGHT I WAS READY TO DIE.
“Well, you’re not dead yet. And Black Banner? Damn, your neighborhood is probably trashed by now… sorry.”
DO YOU KNOW ANY PLACE I CAN GO TO NOW? She seemed pretty sad saying it.
That was definitely the big question. To me, it was a simple answer.
I turned to Leon, he being the unofficial leader. His face had an expression of mixed thought and concern. He was thinking about it – I could tell – but the idea of having another whole person to take care of…
“We barely know you. But seeing as you have no place to go from here, and we might need an extra hand… you could stay with us for at least another few days,” Leon confirmed my thoughts.
I thought I saw the trace of a smile on her face at that. Considering a gun had been involved earlier, this had gone smoothly. I don’t think any of us could really believe this. We acquaintances were now deciding to live under the same roof. And now two had just gone back to three, at least for a while now.
Suddenly, she leaned toward me and stuck out her hand. I took a second before I realized her simple gesture, and I shook her hand. She then held out her hand to Leon, who after a split second shook it too.
Immediately after the deal was made, Leon made her swear that she would help us out and do what he said as long as she was sleeping on our mattresses and eating our food. She agreed and we all agreed that this was the best for all of us. To me, it looked like we were temporary roommates, and everything was going to be okay again. Nobody was dying. Nobody was being kicked to the curb. We’d find more food somehow.
Later, we settled where she would sleep (the place she had been sleeping before) and what weapon she could have. Which was none. Same as me. Both the rifle and glock pistol were in Leon’s care. She would be given the rules and way of how things were run (mainly do the chores, eat the two meals given, and don’t go outside).
After a breakfast and afternoon of getting used to a new girl, renailing the boards she had torn down, and fixing the back door which had been broken from the raid night, there was the dinnerish, meager meal of the day. The two cans Leon brought downstairs to the dinner table were split three ways, just like how it was with Uncle Jay around, and we all ate them without any hesitation.
It felt like I was getting hungrier every day. I could tell Myra hadn’t eaten anything (except breakfast) in two days, the way she could barely keep the food off her T-shirt, wolfing it down so fast. She was finished before either of us, and she sat back in the wooden chair after the last bite and breathed slowly. She was definitely still hungry after the long sleep, but she was clearly glad to have a meal with other friendly people.
I didn’t leave any of my portion left. I felt bad for not sharing any, but I knew it was unusual to feel that way. Like saving a stranger. It wasn’t normal to have such compassion. The only feeling you needed was for your own wellbeing – this was the rule of the country - and I had ignored that ‘rule’ in Walmart. If I had not ignored it, then there would not be a mute girl sitting in the chair next to me and eating our rations.
“Well, it’s getting later than I thought it would be,” Leon announced, sitting back in his creaky chair. “The sun will be fully set in another half hour and we’ll have to start a watch. I’ll start, like last night, then Ryker, you can take the mid shift, and if you’re up to it, Myra, you can take the shift till sunrise.”
Myra nodded dutifully. She knew about the shifts already.
“Good. Ryker will wake you up at 4 am, so be well rested beforehand. Just remember to keep an eye to the windows, and if you hear any suspicious noise downstairs or nearby, don’t hesitate to wake either of us up. Got it?” Leon briefed. And she nodded again. “Okay, if you wanted to, you can turn in early tonight so you can get more adjusted to your sleeping schedule. If you fall asleep by 8, you’ll get about 8 hours of sleep. Ryker will be up there shortly too.”
Myra gave another answering nod and moved to get out of her chair to head upstairs obediently. As she was leaving the room and going up the stairs, Leon turned his head back to me. It was in that moment that I realized just how old he seemed. He wasn’t a young man anymore; he had grown several years over the span of several months. His untamed hair and unshaven face added to the effect.
“Ryker, we need to talk about our new, awake guest and about the future of our little shindig,” he said, tone not angry, but not happy either.
“Okay, what about her? Do you still think she should be dead in the beach towel aisle? Or worse?”
“Ryker,” his voice rose slightly higher than he had intended, so he brought it back down. “Look, it wasn’t your place to decide that. And it certainly wasn’t your place to charge an armed soldier head on, but that’s not what I wanted to discuss with you.”
“Okay, what? And why do you have to have such a fatherly tone whenever you talk to me?” Cutting straight to it.
“Because I’m the only person you have left to keep you in check.”
“Keep me in check? I’m fricking 18,” I retorted. “I don’t get why you have to look down at me just because you’re a few years older than me.”
“Let’s just cut the chase. This isn’t going to go well, you know. Myra’s a liability now that we have her. She’s parentless, basically homeless, and very vulnerable and young. I can see how this will go, and it means she’s going to be a long term thing, which might not be good. And that means two of you I have to watch,” Leon said.
“Again with the protective attitude. You don’t have to be like that. I can shoot a gun as well as you and handle my own pretty well. Now that we have a rifle, that means two of us can be armed,” I suggested.
Leon took only a second before he answered, “I don’t think so. You cannot shoot as well as me. Just because you’ve visited an indoor shooting range once doesn’t make you as good as me, let alone be able to shoot people.”
“Yeah, then teach me,” I pushed. “Teach me to be more useful.”
“Maybe, Ryker, but listen to me now,” he said, this time taking a more desperate tone, determined to get his points across. “I want you to know that I might not be around while you’re around. What I’m trying to tell you is that, what with Jay’s quick passing, anything can happen. You need to know that with this strange new girl here and remaining rations decreasing faster than before, that there may be a time when you have to decide for yourself what to do.”
“Which is what I did.”
“I said, when I’m not around,” Leon reminded me. “I want you to be able to make not dumb decisions and to know when to pull your punches and when to help someone. And always to put you and your family, whoever that might be, first. But mainly yourself, because when we’re in danger you don’t have to worry about me.”
“And I am a burden to you, I know,” I replied. “Just promise me that you’ll officially teach me how to shoot like you one day – sooner rather than later.”
Leon looked at me with something different in his eyes. “I will. And that time will be sooner rather than later, I’m sure.”
“Okay,” I exhaled, sensing this to be the best time to exit – he was done talking and I was done talking. I got up to go upstairs.
“And Ryker.”
“Yes?”
“You’ve changed. You aren’t as much of a burden as you think you are anymore. Just keep alive a bit longer with me, and you’ll be ready to take on a militia.” Attempt at humor.
“Gee, thanks.” My attempt at thanks as I left Leon sitting at the table and headed to the stairs. “Goodnight.”
“I’ll get you up at around 12:30 since the shifts are split three ways tonight. Good night.”
I returned back to the room with the scrabble board. Leon and the mute were sitting on the floor, eyeing the other wearily - they had not had the best impressions of each other so far. A minute ago, Leon had suggested we use a scrabble board for her to communicate, and I had gotten it from the other bedroom’s closet. Yeah, scrabble still exists.
I quickly sat back down beside the two of them and unpacked the game board and letters, spreading them around the bed room floor. Now she could ‘talk.’ Nice thinking Leon.
“No more paper or writing utensils, so I guess now you can start by spelling your name with this,” Leon said, calmly gesturing to the board. I saw his gun holstered, but close to his left hand. Was he really so convinced she would try to kill us or something?
The mute girl looked at him and at me, then leaned over to search the field of letter tiles. I flipped up any face down tiles if that could help her find letters faster.
Sliding the letters into line, one after another, she spelled out… M… (A few more seconds of searching before finding a y)…Y… R…A
MYRA. She sat back, looking at us again.
“Myra? That’s your name?” I asked.
Her slightly more relaxed eyes fell back to me. She nodded after a second. Myra. Strange name.
“Okay… this is going to be slow going. But tell us why you were there at the supermarket. Or where you’re from so we can help you get home, Myra,” Leon said.
I think another look of suspicion came over her. She didn’t want to take chances with these strangers. Trust was going to be hardest trick to get the hang of now.
“Look, I think before we get too… confidential with each other, it’s only right that we somehow trust each other more,” I followed up on Leon’s commands.
“How do you propose we do that? We can’t exactly play a round of icebreakers effectively,” Leon said, probably mirroring Myra’s own thoughts.
“Umm… well,” I began very strongly. “Myra, how could we prove to you that we’re not… bad people.”
She took a few seconds before she reached for more letters on the scrabble board. After another minute, there was: SHOW ME THIS HOUSE FROM TOP TO BOTTO.
She took another moment of looking for the last M she needed to complete the phrase, but couldn’t. Apparently scrabble only came with 2 M’s.
“You want a tour of the house? …To prove that we don’t have anyone else around or don’t cook people?” I clarified. Cooking people had become a normal term a while ago.
Myra nodded.
Leon had to interject his undeniable reason again, “You know, if we really wanted you dead or kept you hostage for some reason or were with a militia or cooked people, we would have already taken care of you long before now. There would be no reason to keep you alive this long if our intent was to gut y-“
“Which it isn’t our intent. You’ll see,” I interrupted to stop anymore unpleasant words. “So, are you up to moving around again?”
She gave one more nod and began to stand up. We did as well, and we all emptied into the hall.
What ensued was a pretty clunky tour of the home. Showed her briefly the two bedrooms – Leon and mine along with Jay’s old room (not the same room that he died in). A quick, strange pang of something like sadness hit and passed. Was this really what morning someone felt like?
We tried to move along moderately quickly, but for some reason it seemed like Myra was made of molasses, wanting to investigate and inspect every corner and closet as if she would find a corpse or drugs or something. Can’t be too cautious in strangers’ houses these days.
For a second in Leon’s closet, she saw the rifle and her eyes widened at the sight of the familiar black design (The very rifle that caused her silence). Then Leon stepped over quickly and snatched it up as if she was about to take it and shoot us.
“We can move on,” Leon offered rather sternly. We exited the room and Leon put the gun back in the room and shut the door tight.
We trooped back down the stairs, and into the mostly empty foyer and the dining room. She examined the single mirror hanging on the dining room wall that was layered in a fair film of dust. We moved into the kitchen and across the tiles where a robber had laid on, dead, about 24 hours ago. Now only the faint stench of hastily mopped up blood remained. I could see her nose wrinkle up a little in response to the barely traceable scent, but she didn’t look back at either of us and continued through the room.
Quick look into the small room that Jay had dwelled in over the last few days of his life. He wanted to be closer to the kitchen and wouldn’t have to go up a flight of stairs every day or take up a lot of room. We closed the door behind us.
Mainly, we didn’t say anything; she led most of the way. We didn’t bother tour guiding since this was a house. A house with part of the roof coming down, but still a normal house. The rooms were in need of a cleaning for quite some time. A pile of collected trash, plaster, and a small puddle of rainwater in a corner of the living room. Morning light streamed through a good sized roof crack that was steadily growing itself toward the wall – no fixing that without a ladder. Some furniture. But not much else.
Finally, having completed the somewhat extensive tour, we came to a stop in the ground floor bedroom with a bare bed. As a side note, there was three bedrooms total in this house, and the room I slept in was converted from a storage room during the war. No one had slept in Jay's bedroom since he had gotten sick. I piped up, “So what do you think? Are we murderers or are we what we told you we were?”
She didn’t say a word to us. Instead, she turned and pointed to the two of us questioningly and then swept her hands in a wide gesture, possibly referring to the house.
“What are you asking?” Leon inquired wearily. “Do we live here? Yes, we already said that.”
“Yes, we really are alone,” I said, trying to understand her wordless question a different way. “This was our uncle’s house. Now it’s ours. Just ours.”
After I said that, I could feel Leon daring me to further bring up Jay. As soon as I mentioned the uncle part, we were waiting for one of us to explain that Jay had been with us until the supermarket night. Which was still very fresh in our minds.
Neither of us wanted to explain anymore for some reason. Myra didn’t even know the previous owner’s name.
His name is Uncle Jay and he’s dead now so he doesn’t matter anymore. I told myself.
We stood like that for the longest time. What was with everyone? Our little trio was so prone to these silences, I could’ve fooled myself into thinking that Leon and I were mute too.
Myra was assessing us, and we to her. We had not done anything bad to her besides point a gun. We were alone and clearly not a malicious gang or a militia or a faction of any kind. I was honest to her. And to us, she seemed innocent enough. Her mute condition was not fake – or at least I thought so. The only thing was, we didn’t know anything about her besides her name. The same vise versa.
Then the assessments and thoughts stopped. Myra gestured to the upstairs, and it was time to return to the scrabble game to do more ‘talking’.
That meant she ‘trusted’ us. We ‘trusted’ her. Finally getting somewhere.
Once in the room with the scrabble board again, we were able to have a more fluent conversation. If you could call one person talking and one spelling out something with a scrabble board fluent.
“So Myra, do you have a home? Where did you come from before the supermarket?” I began as we sat back down.
Her face, which was previously neutral, fell and she began to spell out the next part of the complicated answer. Half a minute passed before this appeared: I DONT HAVE A HOME ANYMORE.
She cleared this away, but did not stop spelling. The new words PARENTS GOT PLAGUE. THEY LEFT ME ALONE SO I WOULDNT GET IT.
Clear. Next part. THEY VANISHED WHILE I SLEPT AND LEFT NOTE. A WEEK LATER I HAD TO FIND FOOD AT WALMART.
Then, with a slow hand, Myra reached into her dirty jean’s pocket and pulled out a piece of notebook paper. Neither Leon nor I had thought it was important to check her pockets I guess. We didn’t deem it necessary to frisk down an unconscious, innocent girl. Anyway, she unfolded it and looked at the paper for a second before looking at me and shakily holding it out to me.
This was her parents’ note written when they left her. I couldn’t believe she was just giving this to me to read. I took the wrinkled up parchment, and Leon came over beside me to look on. It was written in tiny, scribbled hand writing (they probably had to fit a lot onto one piece of paper). I read it with a gradually heavier and heavier heart:
Dear Myra, honey we’ll always love you. You know we both have the sickness and won’t get better. We can’t stay here and get you sick too. Baby girl, we have no choice. We had to leave while you slept or else we couldn’t do it. Don’t try to follow us, we’ll be gone before you wake up. We’re sorry. Please, try to live. The food and things are still where you know they are. Stay warm. Stay home and do what we told you to do before. Don’t go outside unless absolutely necessary, and don’t trust strangers. Please be angry with us if you have to, because we can’t do anything for you from now on out. But stay strong. We’ll see you again when your time comes. We love you, Myra. Love, Mom and Dad.
When Leon and I looked up, we realized she had been assembling more words together on the scrabble board. NEVER SAID BYE. NEARLY KILLED MYSELF. THEN THOUGHT I WOULD DIE AT WALMART.
Leon surprised me by being the first to speak, “We’re all in the same boat then. We all haven’t said goodbye to our parents.”
We were in the same boat. From then on out, the conversation turned away from death. It continued with us asking a question, then her finding the appropriate letters to answer it. Then she would ask a question slowly and we would answer. It was… a strange feeling, as if we were talking too fast.
“Do you have any supplies left at your home?”
NOT REALLY. DO YOU?
“A little, but we had to get out of the supermarket with you before more soldiers came, so we couldn’t get any more food. And we were raided before we returned home. But we’re still good for another week or more.”
THANK YOU FOR SAVING ME.
The plain words seemed almost foreign. Hadn’t seen or heard them in a while. “Um, you’re welcome. What are your plans now?”
DONT HAVE ANY. I DO NOT WANT TO GO BACK. BLACK BANNER WAS SWEEPING THROUGH MY NEIGHBORHOOD
Clear. Next part. …AS I LEFT FOR WALMART. DIDNT KNOW WHAT TO DO. THOUGHT I WAS READY TO DIE.
“Well, you’re not dead yet. And Black Banner? Damn, your neighborhood is probably trashed by now… sorry.”
DO YOU KNOW ANY PLACE I CAN GO TO NOW? She seemed pretty sad saying it.
That was definitely the big question. To me, it was a simple answer.
I turned to Leon, he being the unofficial leader. His face had an expression of mixed thought and concern. He was thinking about it – I could tell – but the idea of having another whole person to take care of…
“We barely know you. But seeing as you have no place to go from here, and we might need an extra hand… you could stay with us for at least another few days,” Leon confirmed my thoughts.
I thought I saw the trace of a smile on her face at that. Considering a gun had been involved earlier, this had gone smoothly. I don’t think any of us could really believe this. We acquaintances were now deciding to live under the same roof. And now two had just gone back to three, at least for a while now.
Suddenly, she leaned toward me and stuck out her hand. I took a second before I realized her simple gesture, and I shook her hand. She then held out her hand to Leon, who after a split second shook it too.
Immediately after the deal was made, Leon made her swear that she would help us out and do what he said as long as she was sleeping on our mattresses and eating our food. She agreed and we all agreed that this was the best for all of us. To me, it looked like we were temporary roommates, and everything was going to be okay again. Nobody was dying. Nobody was being kicked to the curb. We’d find more food somehow.
Later, we settled where she would sleep (the place she had been sleeping before) and what weapon she could have. Which was none. Same as me. Both the rifle and glock pistol were in Leon’s care. She would be given the rules and way of how things were run (mainly do the chores, eat the two meals given, and don’t go outside).
After a breakfast and afternoon of getting used to a new girl, renailing the boards she had torn down, and fixing the back door which had been broken from the raid night, there was the dinnerish, meager meal of the day. The two cans Leon brought downstairs to the dinner table were split three ways, just like how it was with Uncle Jay around, and we all ate them without any hesitation.
It felt like I was getting hungrier every day. I could tell Myra hadn’t eaten anything (except breakfast) in two days, the way she could barely keep the food off her T-shirt, wolfing it down so fast. She was finished before either of us, and she sat back in the wooden chair after the last bite and breathed slowly. She was definitely still hungry after the long sleep, but she was clearly glad to have a meal with other friendly people.
I didn’t leave any of my portion left. I felt bad for not sharing any, but I knew it was unusual to feel that way. Like saving a stranger. It wasn’t normal to have such compassion. The only feeling you needed was for your own wellbeing – this was the rule of the country - and I had ignored that ‘rule’ in Walmart. If I had not ignored it, then there would not be a mute girl sitting in the chair next to me and eating our rations.
“Well, it’s getting later than I thought it would be,” Leon announced, sitting back in his creaky chair. “The sun will be fully set in another half hour and we’ll have to start a watch. I’ll start, like last night, then Ryker, you can take the mid shift, and if you’re up to it, Myra, you can take the shift till sunrise.”
Myra nodded dutifully. She knew about the shifts already.
“Good. Ryker will wake you up at 4 am, so be well rested beforehand. Just remember to keep an eye to the windows, and if you hear any suspicious noise downstairs or nearby, don’t hesitate to wake either of us up. Got it?” Leon briefed. And she nodded again. “Okay, if you wanted to, you can turn in early tonight so you can get more adjusted to your sleeping schedule. If you fall asleep by 8, you’ll get about 8 hours of sleep. Ryker will be up there shortly too.”
Myra gave another answering nod and moved to get out of her chair to head upstairs obediently. As she was leaving the room and going up the stairs, Leon turned his head back to me. It was in that moment that I realized just how old he seemed. He wasn’t a young man anymore; he had grown several years over the span of several months. His untamed hair and unshaven face added to the effect.
“Ryker, we need to talk about our new, awake guest and about the future of our little shindig,” he said, tone not angry, but not happy either.
“Okay, what about her? Do you still think she should be dead in the beach towel aisle? Or worse?”
“Ryker,” his voice rose slightly higher than he had intended, so he brought it back down. “Look, it wasn’t your place to decide that. And it certainly wasn’t your place to charge an armed soldier head on, but that’s not what I wanted to discuss with you.”
“Okay, what? And why do you have to have such a fatherly tone whenever you talk to me?” Cutting straight to it.
“Because I’m the only person you have left to keep you in check.”
“Keep me in check? I’m fricking 18,” I retorted. “I don’t get why you have to look down at me just because you’re a few years older than me.”
“Let’s just cut the chase. This isn’t going to go well, you know. Myra’s a liability now that we have her. She’s parentless, basically homeless, and very vulnerable and young. I can see how this will go, and it means she’s going to be a long term thing, which might not be good. And that means two of you I have to watch,” Leon said.
“Again with the protective attitude. You don’t have to be like that. I can shoot a gun as well as you and handle my own pretty well. Now that we have a rifle, that means two of us can be armed,” I suggested.
Leon took only a second before he answered, “I don’t think so. You cannot shoot as well as me. Just because you’ve visited an indoor shooting range once doesn’t make you as good as me, let alone be able to shoot people.”
“Yeah, then teach me,” I pushed. “Teach me to be more useful.”
“Maybe, Ryker, but listen to me now,” he said, this time taking a more desperate tone, determined to get his points across. “I want you to know that I might not be around while you’re around. What I’m trying to tell you is that, what with Jay’s quick passing, anything can happen. You need to know that with this strange new girl here and remaining rations decreasing faster than before, that there may be a time when you have to decide for yourself what to do.”
“Which is what I did.”
“I said, when I’m not around,” Leon reminded me. “I want you to be able to make not dumb decisions and to know when to pull your punches and when to help someone. And always to put you and your family, whoever that might be, first. But mainly yourself, because when we’re in danger you don’t have to worry about me.”
“And I am a burden to you, I know,” I replied. “Just promise me that you’ll officially teach me how to shoot like you one day – sooner rather than later.”
Leon looked at me with something different in his eyes. “I will. And that time will be sooner rather than later, I’m sure.”
“Okay,” I exhaled, sensing this to be the best time to exit – he was done talking and I was done talking. I got up to go upstairs.
“And Ryker.”
“Yes?”
“You’ve changed. You aren’t as much of a burden as you think you are anymore. Just keep alive a bit longer with me, and you’ll be ready to take on a militia.” Attempt at humor.
“Gee, thanks.” My attempt at thanks as I left Leon sitting at the table and headed to the stairs. “Goodnight.”
“I’ll get you up at around 12:30 since the shifts are split three ways tonight. Good night.”