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Chapter 68


When my dad died, I thought I’d never be able to laugh or even smile ever again. The first time I did, it felt fake. Okay, it probably was fake. The first time I did for real, it felt wrong. I felt guilty, like I shouldn’t be having fun when my dad wasn’t around to enjoy things anymore. I knew he was probably having fun up in Heaven, or at least I hoped he was, but that didn’t stop me from feeling bad about it.

After enough people told me it was okay to laugh, that my dad was watching over me and would want me to go on with my life and be happy, I started to believe it, and I learned how to smile for real without it hurting. But I was never as happy as I used to be.

I guess it’s the same now, for all of us. We feel like we shouldn’t let loose and have fun when the world around us is dead, but sometimes we do anyway. I think we’d go crazy if we didn’t. It’s better now than it was when we were all living in the chapel. We even have video games now! Makayla would like that. I don’t think we’d play as much Resident Evil, though. We’re living Resident Evil now.

Kevin always reminds us that we can never let our guard down completely, and he’s right. ‘Cause even when it seems like things are getting better, something bad always happens…

Daddy, if you are watching over us, we need you now!



Friday, August 3, 2012
Week Fifteen

After her father’s death, the public library had become something of a sanctuary for Gabby. On hot summer days, she liked to escape the bright sun and retreat into the cool, dark corners of the library, curl up in a chair, and lose herself in a story. She liked the silence and solitude of the library, the musty smell of the books which made her forget who she was and let her pretend to be someone else. She preferred fantasy tales to the scary stories and sappy tearjerkers her friends liked to read. The real world was scary and sad enough; when Gabby read a book, she wanted to visit another world and stay as long as she could.

As much as Kayleigh annoyed her, she owed her for being the one to finally convince the others to check out the base library. For as little else as they had in common, the two girls apparently shared a love of books. That surprised Gabby; she’d always thought of sorority girls as dumb bimbos who only went to college to drink and party. But Kayleigh actually knew a lot.

Still, Gabby had been grateful to get away from her and the others once they were safely inside the library. She roamed the shelves, looking for a book her English teacher had recommended to her before the Osiris Virus was unleashed. “It’s called ‘Redwall,’ and it’s by Brian Jacques. If you like the Harry Potter and Percy Jackson books, I’m sure you’ll like this one. And if you do, there are plenty more in the same series.” Gabby had always been skeptical of people telling her what she would and wouldn’t like, but since Mrs. Tremain was probably now either dead or a zombie, she felt she owed it to her to give the recommendation a try.

She found the book, a nice, thick hardback, and settled down in a patch of sunlight on the carpet to read. She was quickly charmed by the idyllic, flowery descriptions of Mossflower country, where Matthias the mouse was helping with the preparations for a big feast at Redwall Abbey, while Cluny the rat and his army grew closer, intent on invading and pillaging the abbey. The suspense of the impending attack kept her turning the pages, her eyes skipping over lines of heavy dialect in her hurry to read on, and she nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard Riley shout, “OH MY GOD, you guys, you have GOT to see this!”

Gabby lowered her book for just a few seconds, listening to the distant replies from her mother and Gretchen. Then she determinedly went on reading.

“GABBY!” Riley called. “C’MERE! You’ll love this!”

Gabby rolled her eyes, but she knew her mom would start freaking out if she didn’t answer, thinking she’d been attacked, so she grudgingly set her book facedown to mark her place, picked herself up from the floor, and followed the sound of Riley’s voice. “COMING!” she hollered back in annoyance.

She found Riley standing in front of a big old TV on a cart, the kind of TVs they wheeled in to show movies on at school. This one was so ancient, it was hooked to a VCR, instead of a DVD player. Riley was holding the remote and laughing hysterically, while a grainy picture flickered on the TV screen. Gretchen, Kayleigh, and Jo were gathered around her, looking bemused. “I was poking around in their media archives,” Riley gasped, breathless from laughter, “and I found this!” She handed Gabby the box to a VHS tape. It was titled Reach for a Book! and the cover featured a woman with a cheesy smile and a bob haircut, surrounded by a group of equally cheesy-looking kids in tacky, eighties-style clothes.

Gabby snorted. “Looks like the kind of videos my guidance counselor makes us watch at school.” Made, she corrected herself inwardly, the sarcastic smile slipping from her face. Everything about her old life had to be referred to in the past tense now. Everyone she’d known, with the sole exception of her mother, was dead or a zombie.

“Oh yeah, it’s hokey alright,” said Riley, “but it gets better. Look closely at the kids. Recognize anyone?”

Glad for the distraction, Gabby squinted at the goofy, grinning faces of each of the children. The widest, toothiest smile belonged to a blonde boy in a red and white sweatshirt. There was something oddly familiar about him, and she looked at him for several seconds before her jaw dropped. “OH MY GOD!” she mimicked Riley. “Is that-??”

“Nick?!” gasped Kayleigh, snatching the box from over her shoulder. She brought it right up to her nose, studying the cover for a second, before she burst out laughing. Gretchen and Jo swooped in from the sides to get a look at it, too. Soon, they were all cracking up.

“Okay, okay, watch!” wheezed Riley, aiming the remote at the VCR to un-pause the video. Gabby came closer, smirking as she recognized a young Nick among a group of kids sitting around a library table.

“So, how about it? Are we gonna have the party or not?” asked the Nick onscreen. He looked close to her age, but his voice hadn’t started to change yet; it was oddly high-pitched. He said his lines the same way kids at her school sounded in their school plays, and even though he was pretty hot, she could suddenly understand why he hadn’t had much success as an actor in L.A.

“Wait till we show him this,” she giggled, while the cheesy kids talked about planning a surprise birthday party for their cheesy friend with the cheesy librarian. She must have been laughing through the transition, or maybe there wasn’t one, because all of a sudden, out of nowhere, the cheesy librarian burst into a cheesy song.

“It’s a musical?!” shrieked Gretchen, laughing so hard that tears started to stream out of the corners of her eyes.

“It’s your L-I-B-R-A-R-Y… It’s the place to be!” sang the cheesy librarian, over the chorus of their uproarious laughter. “It’s your L-I-B-R-A-R-Y… It’s your library!”

“C’mon, Gretchen, you don’t randomly break out in song in your classroom?” Riley asked sarcastically.

Didn’t, thought Gabby automatically, feeling another pang of sadness.

“Oh, sure, all the time,” giggled Gretchen, playing along. “My students sing along and rock out just like those kids, too.”

Sang, Gabby corrected. Rocked. She couldn’t keep herself from thinking it. All of Gretchen’s students, kids younger than her, were probably dead or zombies, too.

“Nick’s really into it,” Kayleigh snickered, as cheesy Nick swayed back and forth to the beat of the song.

“At least he’ll never forget how to spell ‘library’,” joked Jo, as the word was spelled out yet again in the song.

“Let’s reach – up – high!” chanted the cheesy librarian, and the five of them nearly collapsed in fits of giggles as they mocked the hand motions that goofy little Nick and the other cheesy children onscreen were doing. “Sing L-I-B-R-A-R-Y…”

Watching the older women, including her mother, be silly and dance around in front of the TV made Gabby smile. It reminded her of the kind of thing she and Makayla would do – and had done, many a time, during viewings of High School Musical. That was back before Gabby stopped caring and started pretending to care, before her father’s murder and long before Infernal Friday.

Her world had been one of innocent fun then, but now she saw that they could still have fun in a world that was changed, a world that was not so innocent, a world that had fallen apart. There were still bits and pieces of their old lives that they could get back, moments just like this – goofing off, laughing with friends, making fun of a cheesy old video. The undead world was a scary place, but they didn’t have to be scared all the time. They didn’t have to be sad all the time, either. They could still smile and laugh and have fun. She could do all of those things.

Grinning, Gabby mocked the dancing along with the rest of the girls, and they were all still laughing hysterically when AJ came running into the library.

“AJ! Watch this! Oh my god, you have to see this!” crowed Kayleigh, bouncing up and down as she pointed at the TV.

But Gabby took one look at AJ’s ashen face and knew the fun was over. Something was very wrong.

“What happened?” she asked in a whisper. Behind her, Riley paused the video, and the library fell deathly silent.

“We got attacked-” AJ panted, out of breath from running, “-in the bowling alley. Howie’s hurt. We need you, Jo. It’s… it’s bad.”

That was all he said, but it was enough. Gabby watched her mother take off jogging for the front door, and she and the others quickly followed.

“Where is he?” Jo demanded, as she climbed behind the wheel of the Hummer. AJ ran around to the passenger side and jumped in beside her.

“They put him in the truck and took him to the medical center,” said AJ. “There was... a lot of blood…”

Jo nodded, cranking the ignition. “Everyone buckled?” she asked, glancing into her rearview mirror. Gabby, Kayleigh, Riley, and Gretchen had squeezed themselves into the back seat. Gabby was sitting on Kayleigh’s lap in the center seat. She grabbed the seatbelt, extended it to its full length, and clipped it around them.

“Now we are. Drive, Mom!”

Without a second’s pause, Jo slammed her foot to the pedal and peeled out of the library’s parking lot. The Hummer veered through the base’s winding roads, making it to the medical complex in record time. Even Gabby was impressed with her mother’s driving. They pulled up to the front doors, and Jo threw the car into park, as they all scrambled out.

“Watch out for the undead,” she warned Gabby warily, as they hurried through the doors.

“It should be okay now,” said AJ. “We cleared this place out.”

“Didn’t you think that about the bowling alley, too?”

“Point taken. Hey, GUYS, we’re here!” he bellowed.

“In here!” The answering call came from one of the rooms on the right side of the hall. AJ and Jo took off running again, and without thinking, Gabby followed.

She was unprepared for what she saw when she skidded through the door.

Nick, Brian, and Kevin were standing around Howie, who lay facedown on a table, his shirt ripped open, his back dotted with gauze pads. Gabby knew that the pads were supposed to be white, but these were bright red, soaked with blood. There was more blood on the floor under the table, puddles of it, then smaller drips that made a trail all the way to the door, from when they had carried him in. Gabby looked down in shock and saw that she was standing in a smear of blood; the floor was slippery with it.

“Can you do something?” she heard Kevin ask, his voice unusually grave, even for him. She glanced up and saw the way he was looking at her mother. His face was as white as AJ’s. “He’s bleeding out.”

Gabby followed his eyes to her mother, who actually looked pale herself. But of course her mom could do something; she was a nurse! She took care of people who were hurt worse than Howie all the time.

But then, Howie was a hemophiliac. Gabby had read about hemophilia in her science book at school; she knew it was a genetic disorder and that it messed with the blood’s ability to clot. Even if his cuts weren’t deep, Howie would keep bleeding and bleeding, until there was no blood left.

Tears stung her eyes, as she watched her mother put her hand over her mouth and start to shake her head.

***
Chapter End Notes:
*Sings* It's the L-I-B-R-A-R-Y! It's the place to be... yeah! It's the L-I-B-R-A-R-Y! It's your libraaaaary!