A Quick Check-Up

Later that week, a lot more of the things we had going started to come together. We were getting close to the day that it would begin snowing, thus trapping us inside. We never got another person in our ranks, but we did improve upon the relationships we already had. For example, Cody and I offered to take watch on top of the school and alert Dad, who was mainly working in the field all day, if we saw anything. Whether it be an animal, person, or whatever.

We ran out of fresh food in the refrigerator finally, but we luckily had about another year's worth of supplies in the various freezers all over the school. We had a ton of packages to keep fruit and other things we were growing alive in the fridge or the freezer, and we could eventually start to hunt for other meat to keep ourselves well-fed.

All of these plans were brought to the table by Uncle Brandon and Dad, who often hunted together. I told them I would like to one day, but they kind of shoved me off and told me I didn't need to know how to use a gun.

"What's up, guys?" Uncle Brandon asked. He climbed up the ladder quickly to the roof from the inside of the school and greeted Cody, Connie, and me, looking over the ledge with the rest of us behind the railing.

"Nothing much! Nothing to report, sir!" I playfully saluted at him, and Uncle Brandon chuckled with his hearty laugh.

"Amazing work out there soldier! There are still no zombies out there? I'm finding it hard to believe that there's been nothing... it's kind of surprising, you know?" Uncle Brandon said out loud, waiting for me to join in.

"I can definitely see that. You know, I think maybe they're all sleeping like the ones we saw before you and Mister Brian got here. What do you think of all of this, Uncle Brandon?" I asked him. I wanted to know what he honestly thought about our living situation and things in general. I liked it, but did he?

"It's nice and peaceful. I'm not working at a job I only have to support my family anymore, and I get to be here with family. Can't complain, we always have to find the positive in the negative, you know?" He told me. I nodded, noting that important lesson from him.

"What about you, soldier? Are you holding up okay? I know you were supposed to be in school again today had it just been a sickness, but it turned into much more," Uncle Brandon told me. He took a seat on one of the cushions Cody smuggled up here so we could sit down and put his feet up on a foldable table right next to the cushions.

"I think it's fun! I mean, we are at the elementary school, and I liked school. Now, I never have to leave. We have playsets, we have the greenhouse so we can help everybody else, and the fence I can watch the street from behind. I like it," I told him.

"It's nice, that I get to be here with my friends," Cody added. Connie didn't have anything to say, however, and stood silent while looking at the road.

"What do you guys think about Leon's Parents being the leaders of the whole school?" Uncle Brandon asked both Cody and Connie.

I didn't see it as a very important detail, but with all that was going on in terms of the workforce and the things that had to be done, Dad and Mom wanted to keep watch over everybody and keep a good note of everything they were doing. It was a unanimous decision, brought up by Brian while he was going on another one of his rants.

Dad and Mom were against it, as they believed in working together, but it was agreed upon that nothing would change, besides the fact that Dad and Mom would approve every idea before it launched off the ground to become official.

The rules remained the same overall, but Dad and Mom took a leadership position is all that changed.

"Good, Mister Charlie and Miss Kristin are very smart people, and I trust them," Cody replied. Connie's reply was around the same, that being because Dad and her bonded a lot over that zombie show, and how they used tips from that to acclimate themselves to our current situation. I'd say overall, we were very lucky to have everything here. Without a stable food supply, who knows how different our situation would be?

"What do you guys think about more people moving in here? Are you for it? Against it? What are the benefits do you guys think?" Uncle Brandon asked us.

Looking back on it, it was a question to determine what kind of leaders we would end up being. Whether we wanted more people, or to keep our circle small and trustworthy.

"I think it would be okay, more people end up being fewer problems, kind of like our situation right now," I told him.

"That also depends on how trustworthy the people are. What if you hire people who only ever eat all of your food and do nothing else? More people would be a lot more problems," Connie suggested.

"What about you, Mister Brandon? Do you think there are too many people right now? Or is our group small enough?" Cody asked him in return. We all had different ways of answering the question I noticed. I offered an answer, Connie refuted it with a good point, and Cody returned it to the sender. Together, the three of us made for a very good team, and I think Uncle Brandon noticed that as well.

"It always depends. We're very lucky to have known each other before because we're all people we can trust. Cody and Connie, I know you were friends with Leon beforehand so I trust you guys fully too, which makes us all one big family in my eyes. So, I think it's perfect where it is, but it could get better with more or less. It's very unpredictable to me. Okay, guys, I think I'm going to go do adult stuff with repairing and whatnot, you let us know if you see anything, okay?" Uncle Brandon asked the three of us while moving to go back down the ladder.

"Wait! I see something!" Connie whispered loudly while crouching down behind the railing. I followed right behind her, and Uncle Brandon became alert while moving closer.

"The right side, it looked like a crowd!" Connie said again. When Uncle Brandon peered over the ledge, he tightened his fist and went back to the ladder.

"Come on everybody, down, let's go!" He said. He helped Connie down first, then Cody, then me, quickly shutting the hatch above and moving into the hall.

"Charlie, we got a bunch of them outside, maybe fifteen or twenty. Do you want to let the fence get them?" Uncle Brandon asked Dad as he walked down the hall.

"In case they know how to climb, we can't have them pile up. You got your knife on you?" Dad asked. His tone sped up as he began walking toward the outside doors by the individual classrooms, pushing past the desks and whatnot to get to the fence on the outside.

"We're going to kill them? Alright, that's fine, I get you," Uncle Brandon said, unsheathing his knife. Dad turned to us and crouched down to my level again.

"Just stay in here. You can watch, but I don't want you getting close, understood?" He asked me. I nodded, and he left out of the door, running over to the fence.

I couldn't hear them at all, but it looked like Dad was pointing at Uncle Brandon to get him to move along the fence, taking a wide stance with a knife like how I imagine he would be when trying to poke at a possum to move.

They plunged the weapons into the people's skulls. I could only see them as people, even after all of this time, and after the first knife inserted itself into one, I stopped watching out of fear I would get sick.

I could only imagine what horrors awaited me if that was what my mind couldn't handle. I was still so afraid of this world... and I knew that, even in my child's mind. I knew something had to change, and as I crouched down underneath the window on the door, underneath Cody and Connie, I knew I couldn't be like this anymore.

I just wanted to open my eyes one last time...

When I did, I saw one climb over the fence, and Dad stabbed it fiercely in the side of the head. He pushed another one up against the gate, and before he hurt it, I closed my eyes again.