When the Dead (17 page)

“So what’s
your name?” Molly asked as she hastily undressed the tense girl. She tossed the
dirty and dripping wet clothes into the sink.

            “My
name is Hayden,” She said quietly, embarrassed to be near nude in front of a
stranger.

            “Well
Hayden, since we are alone right now, let me tell you a few things about life
here,” Molly felt compelled to influence the girl since she figured the others
would make her share her apartment again.

            “It
can’t be worse than out there,” she said.

            “True.
But still, you should know a thing or two. First, they are Nazis about the food
and it is controlled and rationed. Don’t eat more than your share. I learned
that the hard way. Second, no one is in charge but there are a couple of people
who act like they are.”

Molly picked up a bottle of shampoo and started to scrub a week’s worth
of dirt out of Hayden’s hair.

            “Who?”
Hayden asked. She wanted to suggest Tom, so she could find out more about him,
but she knew it wasn’t a good idea

            “Isobel,
the one on the megaphone, is nice enough but she kind of runs the show with
Ben, the guy who brought you in.”

            “They
seem like good people to me,” Hayden said.

            “Just
don’t be surprised if they try to tell you how to act,” Molly warned as she
finished shampooing Hayden’s hair and rinsed it with bottled water.

            “Ok,
anything else I should know?” Hayden asked as she dried her hair with a towel.

            “Use
these baby wipes and disinfectant soap to wipe off the rest of your body,”
Molly showed her what she meant. “It’s our version of a shower when we can’t
use the camp shower on the roof. We brush our teeth with bottled water.”

            “But
the water and electricity still work. Why don’t you use them?”

            “They
aren’t reliable and we could lose them at any time. Also, we aren’t quite sure
about the quality of the water. We don’t want to get sick. So, we decided to
switch to the backup system. We’d have to eventually anyway,” Molly said.

“I drink the water all the time and I’m not sick, but whatever. Anybody else
I should know about?” Hayden pushed for more information, hoping the note
writer Tom would come up in the conversation.

            “Everyone
is pretty harmless but there is a guy on the third floor that you should watch
out for. His name is Tom Vaughn, but he goes by Vaughn.”

            Hayden’s
heart beat a little bit faster at the mention of his name. She thought it
strange that he would sign the note ‘Tom’ instead of ‘Vaughn’ if what Molly
said was true. “What’s so bad about him?” Hayden asked innocently.

            “Everything,”
Molly answered. A knock came on the bathroom door. Isobel opened it and brought
in another towel for Hayden’s body as well as some clean clothes.

            “Did
you check her for injuries?” Isobel asked politely, avoiding any reference to
bite wounds.

            “I
didn’t see any. She’s clean and free of infection.”

            “And
her name is?” Isobel asked Molly.

            “My
name is Hayden,” Hayden responded, annoyed by Isobel talking as though she
wasn’t there.

            “Well,
Hayden, if you could get dressed and come meet the others I think that would be
great.”

            “Yes,
ma’am,” Hayden responded.

            Molly
could hear a hint of sarcasm in Hayden’s voice and it made her smile.

Fifteen
minutes had passed since Molly and Hayden had entered the bathroom. When they
emerged, Rob, Ben, and the other residents who had come to meet her, could not
believe what they saw. A beautiful teen, although slightly emaciated, stood
before them. All that time without a proper diet had almost killed her.

“I didn’t find any wounds. No bites, no cuts and she scrubbed her skin
with disinfectant soap. I think she is healthy,” Molly updated everyone.

“Hi,” Hayden said shyly.

All the residents started to ask her questions at the same time.

“Don’t overwhelm her,” Isobel stopped the barrage of questions. “Hayden,
how old are you and where did you come from?”

 “I’m sixteen and I lived in Maple Leaf.”

“What happened to your family?” Ben asked.

“My parents died on the second day so I’ve been alone ever since. I tried
to make it to the houses of friends and I did but most of them were dead before
I got there,” She started to cry and Molly put an arm around her. “I spent
nights in abandoned houses. I decided to try one more friend; he and his dad
were still alive but my friend got attacked and was dying. I left there two
days ago. I haven’t had much luck since then with food because the dead are everywhere.
I’ve had to keep running.”

“How did you know we were here?” Rob asked.

            Hayden
hesitated. She couldn’t tell them about waking up and smelling Tom, finding his
note. “I saw candles burning in your building last night so I knew you were
alive in here,” She gestured around the room. “It looks like you have it pretty
good.”

            “Don’t
be deceived. We’ve had our share of tragedy,” Molly said solemnly.

            “I’m
sorry,” Hayden said.

            “We
all are; and sorry for your losses as well,” Isobel said. “We’d like to invite
you to stay if it would suit you.”

            “I’d
love that. Thank you all. You saved my life.”

            “Where
will she stay?” Molly asked.

            Isobel
smiled at Molly, volunteering her recently vacated second bedroom.

            “I’ll
show you to our apartment then. Come on,” Molly said to Hayden.

Vaughn
was waiting upstairs. He had cleaned up his apartment, washed up, and had just
one beer to relax. He sat on his couch and looked at a tabloid magazine he had
picked up. The group had taken the girl in as he knew they would, now all he
had to do was give her everything she wanted so he could get the one thing he
needed.

“Play it cool,” He told himself.

Hayden
was settled in to her new place on Molly’s couch but very eager to meet Tom,
who had been kind enough to leave her peacefully sleeping and to offer her this
refuge. She couldn’t find a moment of rest from all the residents. She went
from loneliness and desperation to an overload of attention. She finally had to
ask for some time alone.

            “I
was thinking about taking a walk upstairs to check out the rationing system,” she
lied. It had now been three hours since she’d climbed the fire ladder. She was
clean, dry and well fed. It was time to meet Tom.

            “Can
I go with her dad?” Gabe asked Rob pleadingly.

            “I’d
rather go alone. I’m feeling a little overwhelmed.”

            “Are
there any boy kids out there?” Gabe asked her as she walked away from him.

            “I
didn’t see any. I’m sorry. I can play a game with you sometime if you want,” she
offered.

            “It’s
not the same,” he said unhappily.

Hayden felt nervous. Her heart was beating as she envisioned a handsome
twenty-something greeting her at his doorway. She reached the top of the
stairwell and stopped. The hallway here looked exactly the same as the one
below. Six doors to six different apartments spread at perfect interval down
the hall.

            “Which
one?” She asked herself aloud.

            “Hey,
I’m down here,” a strong voice said from the end of the hall. “You made it.”

            “Tom?”

“Yeah. But I prefer Vaughn.”

Molly
awoke to the sound of things falling off the bathroom counter. The apartment
was dark which was frightening to her but she knew it could only be one person.

            “Hayden?”
Molly asked as she pulled her blanket tightly around her and walked slowly
across her bedroom.

            “Wha?
I wasss jus brussing mah teef,” she slurred loudly and fell onto the floor of
the bathroom with a thud. Molly shone a flashlight down on the girl. Hayden had
toothpaste all over her face and she had her bra in her hand. The entire
bathroom smelled of whiskey.

            “Where
did you get alcohol?” Molly asked, sounding more motherly than she intended.
She knew there wasn’t any in her apartment.

            “T-
um . . . Vaughn. We hat a parrrrrtty an we drank and ffffucked. It wasss
niccce,” Hayden tried to stand up again but was unsuccessful.

“Oh no,” she said; the only clear words out of her mouth. She puked on
Molly’s feet and the area rug near the sink.

            “Fuck,”
Molly said as she reached in the dark for a towel. “Did you say you guys had
sex?”

            “Hmmm?”
Hayden asked before she passed out on the floor.

            Molly
had no choice but to clean the girl up. She cursed to herself the entire time
especially as she carried, half-dragged, Hayden to the bed in the second
bedroom.

Molly
woke up early and went to see Isobel before even eating. She didn’t think
Isobel would be awake yet but she planned on waking her if that was the case.
She knocked twice on the door of 205 and Ben answered, looking confused.

            “What’s
going on?” he asked as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

            “I
need to talk to Isobel about something. Let me in.” Molly pushed the door open,
walked passed a still groggy Ben, and went all the way down the apartment’s
interior hall to Isobel’s bedroom door.

            “Isobel,
wake up! We have to talk!” Molly yelled through the thin wood of the door.

            The
door opened and Isobel stood in a matching pajama and bathrobe set. She didn’t
look happy to see Molly.

            “Can
this wait until after I eat?” Isobel asked through a yawn.

            “No.
I haven’t eaten either. That girl we let in is trouble.”

            “What?
Already? You told me she was free of wounds. She seemed nice and appreciative
of our help. What could
possibly
be the problem?” Isobel looked annoyed,
like maybe she thought Molly was overreacting.

            “She
left my apartment last night at some point, I don’t know when. That doesn’t
matter. When she came back she was drunk and holding her bra. She said some
incoherent stuff about Vaughn.”

            “You
think he gave her alcohol?” Isobel took Molly more seriously the second she
heard the name Vaughn.

            “He
gave her a lot more than that. She said they had sex.”

            Isobel
was making Molly walk toward the kitchen as they talked. She dragged her
slippers along the carpet which made Molly feel that under Isobel’s leadership,
she was a lazy person.

            “She’s
a minor. That’s illegal,” Isobel said as she poured a bottle of water into a
pot to heat water for coffee.

            “That’s
my point!”

            “How
did they meet? He never comes downstairs,” Isobel wanted as much information as
she could gather.

“I’m not sure how she came to meet him.”

            “Was
she upset when she told you?”

            “Nope.
Happy as a clam. Drunk as a skunk.”

            “Is
she awake yet?” Isobel asked.

            “No,
no. I think she’ll be sleeping a bit late today. She really was a mess last
night,” Molly said, thinking back to the vomit on her feet.

            “Well,
what do you think we should do?” Isobel asked with a hint of exasperation as
though the conversation was going nowhere.

“If her parents were alive they wouldn’t allow it,” Molly said assuredly.

“But they aren’t alive and one could hardly expect a girl of her age to
listen to a group of strangers,” Isobel pointed out.

            “I’ll
talk to her myself then,” Molly huffed. She had wanted Isobel’s strong support
but she seemed uninterested in taking up the battle.

            “It’s
up to Hayden to decide how she fits in our family,” Ben said from the living
room.

            “He
could have drugged her and raped her!” Molly yelled. She was still reeling from
her encounter with Vaughn in the third floor hallway. She knew what he was
capable of. She knew the man would do whatever it took to get what he wanted.