Survival Instinct: A Zombie Novel (20 page)

Alec didn’t argue with him.

Alice

Alice picked a red square out of the bucket of pattern blocks and placed it next to the yellow shape she didn’t know the name of.  The hex-a-thinger.  Then she picked out a blue rom-something and put that next to the red square.  Lastly, she put some green diamonds around the rest of the yellow thing.

“What are you making there, Alice?”  Mrs. Lou kneeled down next to her.

“I don’t know,” Alice shrugged,  “I think it’s a person.”

“It does look a little like a person.”  Mrs. Lou pointed to certain shapes.  “Here’s his head, his hair, his shoulders.”

“I think it’s a girl.”  Alice liked girls better than she liked boys.  Boys were gross
and
icky.  They were also dumb.

“Yes, it could be a girl.  We’re going to make some paintings soon.  Do you want to paint?” Mrs. Lou asked.

“Yes!”  Alice loved to paint.

She was about to get up but Mrs. Lou stopped her.  “Put away the pattern blocks first, please.”

“Okay.”  Alice started putting away the blocks while Mrs. Lou went to tell the other kids.

There weren’t very many kids in day-care today.  Izzy, Lisa, Owen, Steven, Macy, Carol, both Joes, Betty, Ming, and Oscar all weren’t here today.  They must be sick or their parents got the day off work.  That sometimes happened.  Even Alice’s Daddy sometimes got Saturdays off.  She liked those days.  She got to stay home and watch cartoons.  Sometimes they’d go to the big park or Daddy would take her to a baseball game.

There were only four other kids here today.  Judy, Frances, Lester, and Paul.  Alice didn’t like Paul.  He was mean.  Judy was nice though, and she had very pretty hair.  It was straight, red, long, and in a ponytail.  Alice’s hair was blonde and it was all curly and she didn’t like it.  Her Daddy told her that she looked like someone named Shirley Temple, but Alice didn’t know who that was.

Alice joined the other kids at the painting table with Mrs. Lou and put on her painting smock.  At five years old, she thought of herself as a big girl and could put her smock on by herself, unlike four-year-old Lester who still needed help.

Mrs. Lou handed out paintbrushes to all the kids and put out the paint pots.  Since there were so few kids today, nobody had to share paint and everybody got an easel.  Alice liked using the easels, which she called eels.  They made her feel like a grown-up painter.  Mrs. Lou attached a sheet of paper to Alice’s easel (eels) for her.

“What are we supposed to paint today, Mrs. Lou?” Frances asked.  He always asked questions, even ones he should know the answers to.

“Today you get to paint whatever you want.” Mrs. Lou told them cheerily.

All the kids lit up at this idea.  Normally they were told to paint their families,
houses, or flowers.  The prospect of painting anything filled them with glee.

Alice started painting her dog, Shoes.  She loved Shoes very much; he was her best friend, after her Daddy, of course.  But Daddy was Daddy, so Shoes was her best friend.  Daddy told her that Shoes was a Basset Hound.  Alice didn’t know what that meant, but loved the fact that he had floppy skin.  Shoes was a brown dog, but Alice didn’t have brown paint
, so she used red.  He also had white feet, which was why he was named Shoes, but the paper was already white so she used blue for them.

While they were painting, Mrs. Lou went to the far corner of the room where a telephone was attached to the wall.  It was too high up for Alice and the other kids to reach, but Mrs. Lou could reach it just fine.  She made a telephone call on it, but spoke too quietly for Alice to hear.  She looked sad though.  Something about the phone call upset Mrs. Lou and she kept looking over at the children.  She smiled at Alice briefly when she noticed she was looking, but then turned her back to her.

Paul reached over to Alice’s painting and put a big gob of purple across the side of Shoes’ head.

“Hey!”  Alice turned to Paul.  “You ruined my picture!”

“No I didn’t.  I made it better.”  Paul turned back to his own painting.

“No you didn’t, you ruined it,” Alice huffed.  “You suck at painting.”

“No, you suck,” Paul retorted.

Alice looked at Paul’s painting.  “I don’t even know what that is.”

“That’s ’cause you’re stupid.  It’s a monster truck, duh.”

“I’m not stupid.  Monster trucks are stupid.”

“Your dog is stupid.”

“No he’s not!”

“Is so.  He’s a very dumb dog.  The dumbest ’cause he’s yours.”

Alice streaked a big gob of yellow paint across Paul’s paper.

Paul scowled and splattered black all over Alice’s paper.

Both kids started to paint all over each other’s paintings, getting more and more upset and angry
at each other.  Eventually Alice shrieked.

Across the room, Mrs. Lou quickly excused herself from the phone and rushed over to the children.  It was pretty obvious what had happened.

“He ruined Shoes!” Alice sobbed.

“She ruined my monster truck!” Paul sobbed back.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Mrs. Lou tried to calm the kids.  “You can just paint another one.  We’re having extra painting time today.”

Mrs. Lou took Alice’s and Paul’s easels (eels) and put them a good distance apart.  She set up new paper for them both,
and then went back to her sad phone call.

Alice was now next to Judy, which made her happy.  The girls chattered
, giggled, and painted colourful portraits of each other.  Judy was two years older than Alice so they didn’t play together at school, or even very often at day-care, but being the only girls here today meant they had to stick together.  Girls always had to stick together against the nasty boys.

Alice noticed Mrs. Lou on the phone again.  “Mrs. Lou looks sad.”

“Maybe something bad happened.”  Judy looked over at her as well.

“I’ll go see.”  Alice put her
paintbrush down and walked over to Mrs. Lou.  “Mrs. Lou, what’s wrong?”

“Oh!  Alice dear, I didn’t see you there,” Mrs. Lou
was startled somewhat.  “Nothing’s wrong.”

“Then why do you look sad?” Alice pointed out.

“I’m not sad,” Mrs. Lou told her, “I’m concerned.”

“Concerned?”

“It’s like being worried.”

“Why are you worried?” Alice continued to prod.

“There are bad things happening around the city today.  I’m concerned about you children.  I think you should be at home with your parents.”

“But Daddy’s working,” Alice reminded her
, “he’s not at home either.  Shoes is there by himself, and he can’t answer the phone.”

“I’m trying to contact him and the other parents, hoping they’ll take the day off.”

“What’s the bad thing?”

“The what?”

“The bad thing that’s happening?  What is it?”

By now, the other children had wandered over and were all looking up at Mrs. Lou.  She hung up the telephone with a sigh.

“Let’s sit in the carpeted area.”  Mrs. Lou led them over to the one corner of the room that was covered in carpet.  Usually this area was used for story time.  It was weird to sit there in the painting smocks.

“Can you tell us about the bad thing before story time?” Alice asked.

Mrs. Lou didn’t answer her.  The children gathered around the rocking chair and sat down cross-legged.  Instead of sitting in the chair like she always did, Mrs. Lou sat down on the floor with them.  Alice frowned at this.  She didn’t know why anyone would sit on the floor when there was a chair you were allowed to sit in.  Especially a rocking chair.

“You kids understand there are bad people in the world, right?” Mrs. Lou asked.

They nodded.  Of course, Alice knew about bad people.  In stories, they wore black, were ugly, and liked to kidnap the hero’s girlfriend.  Strangers were also bad people unless Daddy said otherwise.  Alice knew never to talk to strangers.

“Well, there are bad people in the city right now, hurting people,” Mrs. Lou tried to explain delicately.

Judy put up her hand but spoke without being called upon.  “But we’re in the subbers.”

“Suburbs,” Mrs. Lou corrected her.  “And I’m including them when I refer to the city right now.  They seem to be all over the place.”

This made the children nervous and worried.  Alice’s Daddy was someplace.  What if he was someplace where there were bad people?

“I’ve managed to contact most of your parents and they’ll be coming to get you as soon as they can,” Mrs. Lou assured them.

All the kids started asking at once about their parents and when they would be there.  Mrs. Lou raised her hands, and they fell silent.

“I can’t say for sure how long it will take them, but they’ll be here.”  Mrs. Lou looked over at Alice after she said this.  Alice didn’t like that look.  It made her feel
concerned
.  “Do you guys want to keep painting?”

They all nodded, but the enthusiasm from earlier was gone.  The kids were all quiet while they painted.  Alice painted a butterfly but used a lot more blue than she normally would for the bug.  Butterflies would normally be red, yellow, and orange.  This one even had a bit of black in it.  It was a moth.

Mrs. Lou didn’t go back to the phone this time.  She walked around and complimented everyone on their paintings.  Soon though, painting time was over.

“What would everyone like to do now?” Mrs. Lou asked after everyone’s smocks had been removed, the paint put away, and the brushes cleaned.

Alice thought this an odd question.  After painting time, they always went to the little park up the street.  So she decided to voice this.  “I want to go to the park.”

“Yeah, the park!” Paul chimed in.  Soon every kid wanted to go to the park.

“I’m sorry, but we’re not going to the park today,” Mrs. Lou told them all.

“But it’s sunny!” Lester pointed out.  The only times they didn’t go to the park was when it was raining or really cold in winter.

“Yes, but remember that your parents are coming to get you,” Mrs. Lou reminded them.  “If we go to the park, they won’t be able to find you.”

The kids thought about this, weighing the love of going home with their parents against the fun times they have at the park.

“How about we have more free play instead?” Mrs. Lou suggested.

The children all agreed that this would be acceptable.  Alice went back over to the pattern blocks.  They were her favourite thing to play with.  Mrs. Lou went into the back room for several minutes.  Alice could hear the radio turned on low, but it sounded like boring old news instead of music.  Eventually the muted sound of the radio was cut off and Mrs. Lou came back into the room.  She didn’t look any better than she did before.  She looked more
concerned
.  It wasn’t long after that when Frances’s mom showed up.  She knocked politely on the door, and when Mrs. Lou opened it, she immediately asked where he was.

“Frances,” Mrs. Lou called into the room
, “your mom is here.”

Frances jumped up from where he was playing with Lester with the action figures.  He ran over to his mom and wrapped his arms around her legs.  His mom stroked his hair a few times and said something quietly to Mrs. Lou.  Frances and his mom then left without even saying
good-bye.

* * *

Sometime later, another knock came at the door.  The remaining four kids looked up expectantly, all of them hoping it was their own parents.  Mrs. Lou opened the door to reveal Lester’s dad.  Lester went to him and his dad scooped him up in his arms.  They left in a hurry.

Then came snack time.  Normally
, the snacks were made before snack time, but since there were so few of them, they got to help make them.  They decided on milkshakes.  The remaining kids walked over to the little kitchen corner and got to go behind the counter.  They had never been allowed behind the counter before, so Alice was excited.  Mrs. Lou picked each of them up and let them sit on different parts of the counter.  She then got out the blender and poured some milk into it.

“So what flavour of ice-cream should we put in our milkshake?”  Mrs. Lou opened the freezer so that the kids could see what flavours were available.

“Chocolate!” Alice immediately cried out.

“Vanilla!” Paul shouted at the same time.

“Strawberry!” Judy yelled at that instant.

Mrs. Lou laughed.  “How about we put in all of them?”

“Eww.”  Judy scrunched her nose but still smiled.

Alice liked this mixture idea.  She had never tried mixing different kinds of ice cream before.

Mrs. Lou got out the ice creams and handed a spoon to each of the kids.  “You get to put in one scoop each.”

She let the kids put in their scoops, which were as large as they could make them, and then lick the remainder off the spoons.

“What else should we put in our milkshake?” Mrs. Lou asked after she put the rest of the ice cream away.