Wings

Chapter 7: The Weaponry

Us three girls walked up the stairs, heading to the room on the second floor. Perrie and Nessa mindlessly chitchatted about some sewing they had done yesterday, repairing the sparring mat in the weaponry, as we walked. When we reached the door, Nessa just turned the knob and walked in. I glanced at the old peeling room number as I stepped in behind her: 205.

“You guys don’t lock it?” I questioned.

"There’s no keys,” Perrie explained. “Only about half the rooms have the keys that go with them so all of the locks were removed so no one could lock themselves in or out. Apparently Simon had a hell of a time trying to get into a lot of the rooms at first and broke down a few doors.”

I laughed a little, not able to imagine the very professional Simon breaking down doors.

But now we were all in the room and I began taking in my surroundings. There were two double beds, mismatching handmade quilts on each. There was a window at the end, only one curtain on the right side, the left one I assumed lost or torn at some point. A slightly musty armchair was in the corner, a deep red with nailhead trim. The dresser on the wall across from the beds looked like it was about to collapse and seemed to be missing a few handles.

"We cleared out a drawer for you to use,” Perrie told me, pulling out the middle drawer of the three long ones stacked in the dresser.

“Thank you,” I said, realizing as I answered that I had literally nothing to put in it. The boys had brought my leather bag with me but there had been just a few of my things in there. The rest of my possessions (what little there were) still remained at my whole in the wall. After this many days however, I doubted someone hadn’t picked through my stuff and any of it was left.

We went through a short tour of the rest of the room. It wasn’t much but the tip about not leaning to your left in the chair was handy, otherwise the whole thing tips (it has missing a leg) and you fall into the window sill. Perrie showed me a large purple bruise on her forearm from doing just that, laughing at her own clumsiness as she did.

Soon however, we had to go. “Perrie and I are on the lunch shift,” Nessa told me as we all moved towards the door. “Dinner too so we will be in the kitchens the rest of the day.”

“Of course you can come too and cook but you don’t have to,” Perrie added. “I don’t know how Simon will want you to be helping once you get into the swing of things.”

That was something I had learned in the past days; everyone at The Recovery did their fair share. Everyone either cooked, cleaned, repaired, built, or scavenged to help, bringing in supplies and making them usable for the inhabitants. It was a small community within a broken one, a community flourishing and blooming while hidden beneath the horrors of London’s, trampled and demolished by Strazier.

It had been ages since I had cooked properly on a real stove or anything but I still figured I could be of some help n the kitchen so I went with them. I didn’t know what I would do otherwise so it seemed like a good plan.

We headed for the stairs, passing a few open doors and hearing voices within. Three doors down from our room, I definitely heard a familiar laugh; I remembered it because it had been the first laugh I had heard in six years. Some of the boys must be in that room. We continued walking and I silently took note of their room number, 202. I didn’t know why I felt the need to.

An hour had passed and I had found that I wasn’t much help in the kitchens. The nine women (that included Perrie and Nessa) hurried around, having a set pattern and practice at cooking a meal this large. I floundered in the corner, trying to figure out how I could be of help with little success. The most I did was help lift a bag of flour onto the counter and covered the task of mixing the soup while one of the more motherly women working there went to help Nessa stoke the wood burning stove.