Tooth and Nail (Draft In Progress - Book One)

Chapter 10 - Fresh Air

When we stepped out into the night air, everything felt alien. We felt absurd, stepping into this living time capsule. These people, all about sixty, saw the Cold War, the first computers, the first phones, and now they were seeing the apocalypse (or more like not seeing,) doing just fine in their little Vatican of survival. I followed the older ones off the bus and onto the street, cold and wet. It had rained earlier, and the asphalt was glittering under street lamps and flashlights and the barely clouded moon shone down on us foreigners in the temple of life on the side of the highway in south Texas. Immediately, we were swarmed by Grandfatherly men, each with their own gun and utility box of sorts. Were they all in construction and maintenance? I guess that's all this little town really needs - upkeep. Looking around, it would seem that the town itself was alive. For all the miles and hours we had driven, looping round and round through the grayness and silver and dull, blunt, blue and black, this town was red and orange and bright aqua and teal and yellow and pink and white. There were flowers and green grass and clean sidewalks with leafy trees that were as much part of the awake and vibrant scene as the people with outstretched arms coming to greet us and hug us and ask if we're alright. Professor Spooner was behind me, a hand on my shoulder and the other on the bus door. I could feel the tension in his grip - he was afraid. Afraid of what?

I should have asked before taking the last step out into the world completely, in the mob of grandmothers giving us shawls or jackets, as if we could be cold on a June night. The men stood behind their women, and everyone's eyes looked sad and accepting and willing and ready to help us. How war-torn could be look after nine days on a bus? Apparently pretty bad. I knew we smelled bad, but I hadn't considered us particularly ragged in way of clothing or face. In any case, we were escorted to the old Post Office, and told to pick cots. The girls stuck together, and I stayed near Jason. Our guide, a woman no younger than seventy-five told us that the bathroom was still fully functional, and we could be given showers in any house in the town. The girls almost instantaneously asked if they could go with her to shower, and they left us in the post office to settle in.

I looked around.

I saw Jason.

Erissa, Marguerite, and Candice had left with the old lady.

But where was the professor?

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Allen pressed his ear to the wall of Jezebel's room. Jezebel pressed herself against Allen's back. Tamerlyn pressed herself into the carpet, uninterested in eavesdropping with her friends. Anything worth knowing, they would tell her.

So far, the only thing intelligible that had been understood by the listeners in the next room was that Drew wanted to break up with Avery.

Not really, break-up, they hadn't been dating, but stop acting as if they were. Stop sleeping together. Stop flirting. Stop kissing each other goodnight. Stop getting dressed in the same room. The audience didn't know that any of this had been happening at all. Avery and Drew had done well concealing the exact nature of their relationship, but now they had only a wall between their personal and public business.

Avery fought him back in the best way she knew she could - seduction. Jezebel could picture her standing there, looking small compared to Drew's strength and size and height, making a face of innocence and sadness, not meeting Drew's apologetic but unwavering final glare. She would wrap her small left hand around her only slightly thicker upper right arm, and tug on her shirt, uncomfortable.

Drew would hesitate to hold her close to his chest, pulling her in by her frail shoulders. Everything about Avery was a snowflake. She was short and thin and had frail, her eyes were sharp, her hair was a curly disaster, she was fantastically asymmetrical.