Dawnland (Book 1): Pockets of the Dead Read online

  “Can we start tomorrow Sir, I mean Professor?” I asked. “I am really going to need you tomorrow.” I looked at Huck, he held my gaze, but Leyton didn’t answer.

  “Come on, man,” Huck said, peering into the Professor’s calendar. “You have nothing else on your schedule.”

  “I do, too,” the Professor said, snapping his day planner shut. “And don’t call me man either. I am not a dude or a man. I was planning on reorganizing my bookshelf tomorrow.” He turned toward me. “But, for you, I will make an exception. I can see that spending time with this boar might cause you some grief.”

  “He’s not a boar, and he’s leaving,” I said. “He’s going to be gone and I have no one else. “With Huck leaving, it’s me and you, Professor.” I pointed to both of us, back and forth a few times so he would get the idea. “You might like being cooped up in this dark room all by yourself, but I need someone to talk to and the only other someone I know is leaving. You can’t just stay in here knowing it is safe outside, knowing I am wandering around all by myself waiting for him,” I pointed at Huck with a vengeance, “to come back.”

  “We’ll talk about it tomorrow at 10:30, I’m looking forward to helping you. You surely need it.” The Professor dusted his hands off like he had a huge task in front of him. I hoped it wasn’t insurmountable. I hoped he could actually help me. “Now, can I finish my breakfast? You really must go.”

  Huck and I had no choice but to leave the Professor to his breakfast, which turned out to be a packaged meal from the military. Huck told me when we were outside. He also pointed out several more webcams looking down upon the green. The guy had the place well under surveillance.

  “That guy has got it down,” Huck said. “If you are ever in trouble, if any strangers come into this village, go directly to his apartment. He knows how to stay hidden and he will protect you.”

  “How do you know? He might not let me back in.” I frowned. Huck tucked me under his arm and guided me across the green toward his motorcycle.

  “If he doesn’t, I’ll kill him,” Huck said. He was serious, which disturbed me. He looked out over the green to a dark cloud coming in from the east. “I’m going to have to go before that gets here.”

  My world froze. The birds stopped chirping, the wind stopped blowing, and the sun stopped shining. “No, you can’t. You said you would stay the whole day. You have people. I don’t have anyone.”

  “You have the Professor now. He’ll be there for you. You guys had a real good rapport; I saw it in his eyes. You really opened up to him. He loved it.”

  “He did, didn’t he?” The Professor seemed to glow the more I talked to him. I looked up to the Professor’s window and was sure he had a camera trained on us at the moment. “Can we say goodbye away from the cameras?” I asked.

  Huck pulled me onto the stone stage. Instead of kissing me, which I expected him to do, he just gave me a big-giant hug.

  “Don’t you want to kiss me goodbye?” I asked.

  “No, I can’t. It’s too hard that way. I’ll never want to leave.” He kept hugging me.

  I felt my eyes burning again. “What if something happens to you?”

  “It won’t. I’m like the Professor there. I will never get caught. I made it here, didn’t I?”

  I buried my head in Huck’s neck and he kissed me on my ear. “Two weeks, three tops,” he whispered.

  We walked slowly back to Huck’s motorcycle and I helped him pack up all the supplies he could carry on the back of his bike. After we were done, he looked at me one last time and started his engine. He drove once around Oval Park Place and then left the village, turning right onto the main street. I walked back to my apartment and piled in my bed, where I spent the whole day.

  Chapter 9: Psychoanalyzed

  November 21st, 10:30

  215 Oval Park Place

  Haverlyn Village

  I woke up early in the morning eager to have my meeting with the Professor. I had only spent a couple of days with Huck, but when he left it was like I had lost a lifetime with him. I felt the loss of the hundreds of people around me, like their skin was being ripped from my skin, and it made me want to run, to try and find Huck. I had made such a stupid mistake letting him go, but at least I had the Professor. He was not a substitute for Huck, but he was male and would do if I needed a donor.

  To make Huck’s return more real, I made a flip calendar with the next twenty-one days marked in black marker. By the end of the calendar, Huck had promised to return. Then, I made blueberry muffins for the Professor from pancake mix and a can of blueberries. They turned out pretty good and made the place smell of home.

  Thoughts of having my own cow and chickens crossed my mind as I packed up our snack. There had to be farm animals wandering around somewhere and my task was to eventually find them.

  Crossing the green, with Huck still fresh in my mind, was easier than I expected. It was like he was still with me, next to me as I walked up the steps to the Professor’s apartment. The Professor greeted me more politely this time and was grateful to have the muffins. He said that even before the apocalypse, he frequently stayed home for weeks at a time—it was just his way. His way saved his life.

  He offered me a chair and lifted a notebook and pencil from the coffee table between us. He told me about the process, how he would ask questions and wait for me to answer, just like I was a new patient of his. His tone was soft, droll and very relaxing. Since he wasn’t looking at me, I observed the exposed beam and the duct work ran across the ceiling.

  He made me start with some background, two parents who loved each other, lived in Chicago, a twenty four year old brother who had been hiking in Colorado and an eleven year old sister who was still at home.

  “What do you think of your family?” He asked.

  “I’d like to know if they are alive,” I said. They are most likely dead, especially my parents and sister. I saw what the zeroes did to the small community of Haverlyn Village. A bigger city, with so many people living in it, wouldn’t have a chance—even if my killer-virus was hereditary. My brother, on the other hand, might actually be alive.

  “What do you want to do about that?” he asked. The soft light and the red curtains made his brown skin crimson.

  “I want to go home,” I said. “I want to hug my mom one more time. I want to tell my sister that I love her. I want to tell my dad…” Thinking of my dad made my breath catch in my throat. I was his favorite and he was mine, mostly because we shared the really annoying habit of overanalyzing things. We could talk for hours about the best way to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, whether it was best to put the peanut butter on one side or on both so that the jelly was in the middle.

  “Would you feel more content knowing?” the Professor asked.

  “Knowing they were dead?” I sat up. “How on earth would they have survived? Even if this crazy thing was isolated to the middle of North Carolina, it spreads fast, like a wild fire—impossible to put out.”

  The Professor scribbled in his notepad. “How would you describe your mood?” he asked when he was done.

  “Frustrated,” I said. I was tired of answering questions and getting nothing in return. “I want to talk about Huck. He left, remember?”

  “Not yet. We’ll get to him later. Try this: finish this sentence for me. It really upsets me when…”

  “It really upsets me when I can’t talk about what I want to talk about,” I said.

  “You have never been analyzed, have you? Go ahead, then.” Leyton put down his notepad and looked in my direction. I noticed a slight and very fast tremor in his head, which went away when he put his hands behind his neck.

  “Did you teach at the University?” I asked.

  “I have my own practice, here. I don’t like going too far.”

  “Agoraphobic?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said, shifting his feet back and forth. He picked up his pad again. “But that’s my phobia. Why don’t you tell me about yours?�
� He just couldn’t do it—he couldn’t have a normal conversation.

  “My phobias?” I asked.

  “Yes, what are you afraid of?” Leyton asked.

  “Being left alone,” I said.

  “That’s tough,” Leyton said.

  “Yea, no kidding,” I agreed. “Especially now.”

  “What makes the problem better?” Leyton asked. “What makes the loneliness go away?”

  “I’m not lonely,” I said. He looked at my chin with a puzzled expression, so I continued. “It’s not so much being alone, as being left alone. I like being on my own. I like doing things for myself, but I don’t want to be the only one out there. I want to feel that there is some hope for the human race, you know? Before all this crap, I felt the same way. I’m a social science major, population studies, you know. I had lots of friends at school.”

  Friends like Stan and Mi-Yung and Saudah. Stan and Saudah had contacted me, left me chats, and said they were going north. I had the power to travel now without getting hurt. I could find them, if they were still alive, and bring them back to the village. Suddenly I felt overwhelmed with guilt for not rescuing them before this, and thinking only of Huck. Where were my morals and responsibility and how did I let my hormones take over?

  “What makes you feel threatened?” Leyton asked, continuing on his psychotherapy train.

  “Being trapped,” I said. I didn’t know how to start looking for them. What if Huck came back and I wasn’t here? I had to stay, at least for three more weeks, until Huck came back with his friends. My obligation was to him for the time being. I didn’t know where to look. I could only travel by bicycle. I couldn’t go that fast or my aura wouldn’t work and I’d risk getting mauled. Up north could mean so many different directions and distances. Heck, they could be trying to make it to Canada for all I knew.

  “What is your goal for the future?” Leyton asked like he was going down a standard list of questions.

  “To survive and procreate,” I said in something of a Freudian slip because I was again thinking about Huck. Leyton’s face turned a bright crimson with the last word. If it is true that the meek shall inherit the earth, and if Huck didn’t return, and if I couldn’t find Stan, then the Professor would make my last possible partner. “I’d like to talk about my future, your future, the future of all humanity.”

  “Let’s start with your future and we’ll get to mine later. Tell me about your plans.” The Professor raised his pencil like he was preparing to joust me.

  I proceeded to tell the Professor every detail about Huck and what he had told me. I included the fact that he was bringing a few people back with him. I told him about how when I was a child, I would sneak out late at night, lie on my back in the grass, and look at the stars thinking about life on other planets. I was sure life existed out there; we just couldn’t reach it. I felt the same way now.

  In the beginning I felt there must be others out there—others like me. During the last few weeks, I had changed that position into believing that humans were almost extinct, much like the dinosaurs—until Huck appeared. And now that I remembered that Stan and Saudah might still be out there—alive—now my world felt bigger than ever and I was ready to reconquer it.

  “You’re planning too much,” Leyton said, even though I hadn’t answered his question yet. “You have too many ideas. I can see them spinning around in your head. Let’s start slow, with just one. Let’s start with your feelings of anxiety. What makes you most afraid today?”

  “Death,” I said. “And betrayal.”

  “Choose one,” the Professor said.

  “Death,” I said.

  “That’s interesting. Whose death? Yours?”

  “Huck’s,” I said without hesitation and so fast that it startled me.

  “How would Huck’s death make you feel?”

  “It would really suck if Huck died for any reason.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if Huck dies then I’ll feel like I’ve lost my only known-to-be-living friend.”

  The Professor looked up, but not at me. I realized I could’ve hurt his feelings.

  “It’s more than that. I mean, you are my friend. But, it’s more. It would make me feel sad, lost, and hopeless, like there’s no chance for humanity. Without Huck, without the others, then it’s just us again. And I mean no offense, Professor, but Huck is my hope for salvation, he’s the light in the darkness. He’s proof. There are children out there. A young boy and a girl. We can go on—all of us together.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic and don’t worry about humanity, worry about yourself today. Worry about Hella. What will Hella do without Huck?” The Professor’s voice was still calm and so contrary to the man who was hiding behind the door when we found him, the man that was annoyed. I liked calm Professor much better.

  “Mope,” I said. I couldn’t think of a better response. I must’ve been channeling my inner child. “If Huck doesn’t come back, I’ll cry.”

  “What makes this problem better?” The Professor asked.

  “This problem will get better when Huck returns in one piece.”

  “Let’s say he doesn’t,” Leyton said. “He doesn’t come back, and neither do his friends. What makes the problem better now?”

  He was pushing me toward thinking of an alternative plan and reminding me of my father. My father would have wanted me to have a Plan B. The thing was, for me, there was no after-Huck. But there had to be. There was an after-Stan and an after-Ara. I owed it to Ara to come up with another plan, and to Mi-Yung. The Professor stared at my chin.

  “I’d go on,” I said. I kicked my legs up over the arm of the chair and rested my back on the other arm, so that I was looking up at the ceiling.

  “I guess it means there is hope,” I finally continued. “Huck could die. But there would still be hope that there are others like him out there. I’d be able to continue my plan before I had my Huck-plan. I’d be able to finish fixing this place up. I’d be able to go to the ocean, to see what it’s like out there, to bring more people back here.”

  “Is that it?” The Professor asked.

  “I wouldn’t go to the stupid ocean. I’d go after him. I’d have to find him, right? I’d have to see if his friends survived. I’d have to make sure the kids were gone. What if they were alive? What if I could save them and bring them here? I should’ve gone with them.”

  “Relax, Hella,” the Professor said. “You’re overanalyzing.”

  He was right. I was never good at getting my brain to stop thinking and with all this time alone, and now with the Professor, it was going into overdrive. There were too many thoughts sloshing around in my head, so I decided to cut the session short. I was so excited to have Huck, and now the Professor in my life, but I also was so used to being alone that I started to feel frayed at the edges in the Professor’s company. The Professor looked surprised and hurt, but I promised to stay the whole session next time.

  November 21st

  450 Oval Park Place

  Haverlyn Village

  After I finished up my session with the Professor, it left me feeling vulnerable and depressed, so I decided to go to Huck’s apartment to clean it up. Even though he wasn’t in it for very long, only a few hours, I felt it would make me feel closer to him. I had wanted him to keep the keys as a symbol of his return, but he had given them back to me before he left. It was clear that he wasn’t sure if he would make it back.

  The lights in the apartment were off, but sunlight was streaming in the windows so I didn’t bother turning them on. I didn’t notice anything different from my last visit, when I discovered the apartment. The furniture was used and eclectic, worn out couch, dining table with three mismatched chairs, Chinet dishes, and a big wooden desk in the corner of the living room.

  I had been over to that desk when I first came in the apartment. The previous owner, Jim Douglas, had been a student. It was a mess, pillars of books, crumbled up paper, pencils and candy wrappers everywher
e. I took pictures of it all before cleaning it up, stacking the books on the bookshelf, smoothing out the crumpled paper and putting it in his desk drawer. He was either a political science or history major from what I could tell of his writing.

  There wasn’t any sign of Huck’s presence in the living room, so I went in the bedroom. Huck hadn’t taken the covers from the bed, but I could tell he sat on it by the imprint he left. I sat in the same spot and regarded the view. Huck had been here not long ago. I sat there for a few minutes with my eyes closed, smelling his musty odor which was still heavy in the air. The tick of a clock made me open my eyes. It was a small dial clock sitting on the nightstand.

  In front of the clock were a couple of objects that must have come from Huck’s pocket along with a folded up piece of paper. I picked up the paper and saw it was resting on a picture. The picture was of a woman on a motorcycle, about my age, wearing extremely short shorts and a revealing tank top. The motorcycle was Huck’s; I recognized the baby blue color and the flying tiger. I turned the picture over and read the note written on the back.

  Dearest Huck, it said, I never want to live without you.

  The picture fell from my hand and I stared at it on the floor. Huck had a girlfriend and he was going to bring her back here. He was going to risk his life to save hers. No wonder he was so anxious to leave, but it was stupid of him to forget the photo. I kicked it under the night stand so I wouldn’t have to look at it anymore.

  If that woman was his type, he’d have no interest in me and I should have no interest in him. He was playing me for a place to live. Sure, I could dress like in short shorts and be hotter than her. My chest was bigger, my waist was smaller. I could straddle a bike and pose like a whore, but that wasn’t me. Wait until he came back, I would give him a piece of my mind for using me like that.