Eleven

    Below the porch rail and on the other side of the grand staircase was a grandfather clock. It was by far the most distinguished piece in the room. It was made of lightly distressed Saratoga cherry wood. The polished brass finished dial featured cast corner and center ornaments and a moon arch with an astrological blue moon phase. It included a silver chapter ring with applied polish brass Arabic numerals and was complemented by polished brass finished weight shells with decorative bands and a pendulum with a cast center disk. There was beveled glass throughout, the lower front door featuring an oval patterned frame with book-matched olive ash burl overlays. Sitting on either side of the chiming grandfather clock was a Mezzo gold fabric chair with a kiln-dried hardwood frame. They were not the most comfortable chairs to curl up in, but they added a sort of regal atmosphere to the room.

It was there that I found myself spending most of my time throughout the day. I could have my space sitting hidden in the shadows, but I could still participate in conversations held both in the living room and in the dinning hall. To the immediate left was a dark wooden door. I had seen Gracie go down there on occasion. She always came back up with her arms full of food. I assumed that that led to a basement where food storage was kept. I myself had no intentions of wandering down there. This manor creeped me out enough as it is. I didn’t need my overactive imagination consumed with haunting thoughts after what haunting images I had already seen.

“How would you like to meet the man whose voice was on the radio?” a warm voice filled the darkness of where I sat.

I looked over to see Daniel standing at the foot of the staircase, his arm slung over the curled banister. He was smiling at me, his head titled and brows raised in curiosity. I grinned back, my chest swelling instantly.

“I would love to,” I answered. “But I thought that none were allowed into his room?”

“Not without permission, no,” Daniel said, taking a step forward before dropping into the chair on the other side of the clock. “But as I said before, he has taken an interest in you.”

“In me?” I muttered, my eyes drifting into the living room where James, Hector, and Edvard were having an intense conversation in hushed whispers. “I cannot imagine why.”

“You have endured a lot within the past few weeks. You’re young, and yet you have accomplished more than many of us could have hoped to achieve in a lifetime,” Daniel stated.

I let loose a light laugh. “Oh, please,” I huffed. “I did what I had to. My body was controlled by instincts, not desires.”

“You climbed up a range hood like an Olympic gymnast. That’s pretty gnarly,” Daniel grinned.

I rolled my eyes, but returned the smile nonetheless. “I see that our journey has been relayed to you through many perspectives.”

Daniel shrugged. His eyes sparked from the reflection of the chandelier off of the glass of the clock. “You have some very colorful and articulate admirers.”

“Do you have a great story?” I asked as I pulled my legs to my chest on the chair and cocked my head.

“No,” he laughed. “I did take out a zombie with a pencil like the Dark Knight, but that was in the beginning, when we all thought that this was just a game.”

“I see,” I murmured.

Our conversation ended and I went back to looking around the room. The walls were two stories high and made of protruding gray stone. The chandelier above had been dimmed. All of the windows in the room had been boarded up. Only the stained glass windows in the dinning hall had remained untouched. With the property being on a stone support, the windows along the back of the house could not be touched, while the ones in the front could be reached by stepping onto the porch. There was such a historic beauty to this house that it seemed heartbreaking to never have it appreciated in its entirety.

“So…ready to meet him now?” Daniel asked again.

I silently nodded my head and stood. Daniel did the same, rounding the corner and leading me up the staircase. We walked along the second floor hallway and as we neared the rounded stairwell in the corner, I noticed that for the first time the door to the room that held the children was cracked open. A pair of giant brown eyes were staring back at me. It was a girl. Her skin was dark and smooth and her black hair was pulled back into a loose and wiry bun. Little curls fell from the bundle atop her head. She scanned me over before quickly shutting the door.

“They still haven’t come out yet?” I asked.

“No, Miss Frizzle hasn’t brought them out yet,” Daniel said.

“And you don’t think that’s weird?” I wondered as we started up the stairs.

“I know nothing about children,” the man admitted. “I suppose in normal circumstances, it would be weird; but, I don’t know what they have gone through. I don’t know what they have already seen.”

I was fine with his answer. In a way, it made sense. I wasn’t sure how long they had been here before my group and I had arrived, but having that many children to look after in a time where their questions couldn’t been answered, I had to trust that Miss Frizzle knew what she was doing.

Daniel led me down the hallway into the darker corner of the third floor. He knocked three times on the large wooden door until there was a muffled response emitted from the other side. Daniel pushed the door open and ushered for me to go in first. I swallowed a mouthful of collected saliva before stepping in. I was completely caught off guard by the interior design of the room. It was a step further than how Kora’s had been laid out, as though this man was still living five hundred years in the past. Casted onto the stonewalls were images of ancient scholars. I caught sight of Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, and even Homer. Their painted images were so realistic. I could feel their eyes following me as I walked further into the dark room.

Laying in a four posted bed was a very brittle looking man. His eyes were an intense and glorious crystal blue. His hair was pure white, thinning in some areas, but falling to his shoulders. His cheeks were sunken in, his face and neck very hollow-like. His eyelids were purple, puffy and swollen. A light whistle accompanied his breathing. The puffy comforter on the bed rose and fell with every inhale and exhale of breath that his boney chest took.

“Come closer, child. I want to get a good look at you,” he breathed, his fragile fingers curling towards him.

Daniel nudged me forward. He stood behind me, once again like a bodyguard, as I hovered by the bed. Lord Sigmund’s thin lips turned upwards into a smile. He looked much worse than others had led him on to be. As horrid of a thought as it was, I couldn’t understand how he was still alive. He looked as frail and thin as the dead that walked outside. The only difference was the gleam of life that still seemed to shine in this man’s captivating eyes.

“Daniel has told me so much about you,” Lord Sigmund said. “But he has failed at his attempts to capture your beauty in words.”

I felt my face grow red. I looked up over my shoulder at Daniel whose cheeks mirrored the same level of embarrassment that I was feeling. Lord Sigmund’s chuckle was staggered with a cough buried deep in his chest.

“Thank you,” I settled on saying. I never found myself to be beautiful. Compliments made me uncomfortable.

“Where were you?” Lord Sigmund asked. “When you heard my radio call?

“Not far, just outside of Newburgh,” I answered.

Lord Sigmund moved his head against the pillow in an attempt at an understanding nod. “The radio I use isn’t programed to go far. I am surprised that you were able to make out my message at that distance.”

“There was a news channel working the other day. They mentioned safe camps. Have you heard anything on the radio about that?” I inquired.

“No, child,” the man said. “Not on the radio that I broadcast from. But…but that little one on the desk, that one is different.”

I twisted my neck so that I was looking in the direction that Lord Sigmund was talking about. The equipment looked old, some held up by polished wooden frames. There were wires and transceivers roped throughout the piles on the desk. Little blocks bounced up and down to show that the signal was working.

“They call it a ham radio, for amateurs. I haven’t heard much, but worldwide broadcasts can be made from it. I haven’t heard anything about safe camps, just bickering between countries,” Lord Sigmund’s voice cracked as he spoke. He sounded so frail.

“How far out has the infection spread?” I asked.

“When taking into consideration how large our planet is, the infection hasn’t spread far at all,” the man said. “It covers but a speck on a map.”

I found that hard to believe, but kept that to myself. I found my eyes drift towards the wooden night table by the large bed. It was covered with unlabeled pill bottles and a glass of water. There was a notebook with a few papers poking out from the black cover. Very thick and light cursive was written in pencil. I couldn’t make it out.

“Daniel tells me there were others with you,” Lord Sigmund brought my attention back to him. “He said you had a rough start.”

“Yes,” I murmured with a slight nod. “There are just nine of us now.”

“What rumors do you hear?” he voice went low. “Of how this infection spread?”

The corners of my eyelids narrowed a bit. My green eyes bore into the crystal blue ones of the brittle man before me. His head was propped up on a white lace pillow. When his thin lips were still, they seemed to fall into a natural frown.

“They’re assumptions, fictitious Hollywood myths, really,” I said.

“How you like to hear the truth behind it all?” Lord Sigmund asked. He struggled to turn, finally able to brace himself against his right shoulder.

He had been so serious, his eyes set in an inquisitive glare. I corrected my posture, puffing out my chest to show that I wasn’t in the mood to hear the fabrications of an ailing man. I looked towards Daniel and was somewhat shocked to see that he stood there perfectly calm, as though the Lord’s words had not placed a cornucopia of questions in his head as they had mine.

“How do you know what heo truth is?” I pressed.

“Because, my dear, it started here. In Queensbury.”

I knew why he was pausing so much. The older men that my father worked with were great at telling stories. They were so animated, their entire bodies moving as they laughed at their own recollections. But they always paused for the same reason. It was for effect, a chance for them to gauge their audience’s reactions. Every couple of sentences or so, Lord Sigmund would do the same. He would pause, briefly, and then continue. Perhaps it was because of his health. Perhaps he needed to catch his breath.

“My family moved here three decades ago from Northumberland in the North East of England. I worked in pharmaceutical exports since I was a young man. When the opportunity came for a partnership with the United States exploring new pharmaceuticals, I was one of the first to sign up for relocation to a new country. I dabbled in this partnership for a period of time, thus finally loosing interest in it about five years ago,” Lord Sigmund said, his accent very faint. “To procure an extension of my wealth, I began investing in American oil companies. Albeit risky, with America’s history of warfare with the Middle East, I have thus been blessed with an abundance of monetary income. It is from that wealth that I was able to begin the restoration of this old building and its transformation into a bed and breakfast.”

I waited a few minutes, looking from Daniel and back to Lord Sigmund. “I’m sorry,” I muttered, softly. “I don’t understand how that connects to the cause of this outbreak.”

Lord Sigmund cleared his throat and adjusted his back once more. The bed made no sound as he moved, his skeletal body weighing what looked no more than one-hundred-and thirty pounds. “The very night you and the other students where taken from the military base, Amber Alerts spread across the country at a rate much faster than this infection. Fingers were being pointed at the very countries that struck this one eighteen years ago. Because it wasn’t just children of American soldiers that were disappearing, but also the soldiers themselves,” the old man hummed.

He let loose a low cough before continuing. “Less than twenty-four hours latter, your story had been replaced by another; one with a narrative all too familiar. There had been some questionable pharmaceuticals added into the contract between England and America. Their side affects deterred many from continuing the research on what they could cure…and what they could cause.”

The old man had suddenly found some spurt of strength to push out the next few sentences with a deep and desperate voice. “Had I known the harm that their mixture of drugs would have brought to this country, I would have never left those few years ago. I would have stayed in the lab not to perfect it, but to destroy it. Do you not see it? This is my fault. The infection is all my fault.”

I could see him growing worked up, the tight leathery skin on his neck tensing as he reached out for me. I placed a hand on his wrist, hushing him. I pulled the covers back up to his chest. “There was nothing you could have done differently,” I muttered, hovering over him. “You have provided for us a haven, which I am entirely grateful for. I am so happy to have finally been able to meet the man who’s voice over the radio brought my friends and me here.”

It must not have been enough to calm his nerves, for Lord Sigmund began to drift into a restless sleep with a frown still plastered across his face. Daniel quietly led me out of the room, gently closing the door behind me. The shadows of the hallway and flicking wall light cast a dark expression over his skin.

“You look upset by that information,” Daniel noted. “I thought that you would have found some satisfaction in knowing how this happened.”

I sighed, not satisfied in the least. “It always starts with some man failing at some experiement or doing something that he knew he shouldn’t be doing,” I frowned. “I guess I just thought that this was something different.”

“Like a punishment from God?” Daniel asked with a half smile and a snarky glint in his eyes.

“No, not even that,” I found myself pouting like a child.

“How about an affliction from the Devil?” a dark voice broke out from behind us. “Or some immoral and malevolent retribution from a darker force?”

            Daniel and I turned to see the smirking face of James. His head was cocked to the left, arms folded, and black hair falling across this eyes. I felt uneasy, my eyes instantly dropping from his gaze. He didn’t make me feel uncomfortable in the way that Jorge had, but instead made me fearful of how he made me feel like he would attack me in the way that these dead creatures would, despite him still living. I could sense his desire to rip my flesh from my bones in a way all too abhorrent.

            “I don’t think that would be the story she is looking for either,” Daniel chuckled. He was used to the mannerisms of this tall and dark man before us, so while James always carried a smirk across his face, Daniel bore the smile.

            “The teacher wants to see you,” James said to Daniel. “She wants to bring the children out today, maybe have them eat dinner with everyone else.”

            “Alright, I’ll go speak with her,” Daniel said. He turned and placed a hand on my lower black. I had to bite down on my cheeks to hide the smile that was threatening to spill. “I am sure that if you had anymore questions, Lord Sigmund would permit you to see him again.”

            I nodded, and meekly whispered a, “Thank you.”

            With a crooked smile across his face, Daniel and James left me to stand alone in the dimly lit hallway on the third floor. I decided to spend the next few hours in my room, just staring out the window at the men who took turns guarding the courtyard. It was fascinating to see how they each had a different style when it came to taking out a zombie. While Hector was swift and collected, Cory was incredibly juvenile and playful. While James would taunt the creatures, Cory would play with them like they were children. Edvard would barely move. He was a combination of James’ coolness and Hector’s professionalism. Daniel’s younger brother, Aaron, reminded me of the comedian Jay Mohr. Their humor was one in the same. Aaron was nineteen-years-old, but there were times where he reminded me of my own little brother Aaron, who was only six.

            I was currently watching Cory and Aaron teaming up in the courtyard. Aaron was sitting on the stone edge of the water fountain, his left hand dipping into the water and cupping a handful of liquid against his lips. Cory was marching alongside the gravel road, spinning his rifle in his hands like a high school baton twirler. I chuckled a bit as I heard Aaron through the windowpane when he yelled at the Cadet for carelessly dropping the rifle. Cory huffed, pursing his lips together so they nearly touched the tip of his nose.

            “Audrey?”

            I froze. Goosebumps shot up my arms, carrying a shiver down my spine. It was as though everything around me blurred and all that could be seen was what was directly in front of me. The voice had been so soft, spoken so gently and in a saddened disbelief. My joints felt stiff, like I couldn’t turn fast enough to see the figure that had called my name.

            There was a boy in the doorway. His hair was blonde, straight until the ends at the nape of his neck curled. His eyes were round and big, a pair of brown irises as large as could be in the center. His skin was pale and smooth, untouched by the imperfections of growing up. He was skinny and taller than most boys his age. And when he looked at me for the first time in two weeks, I felt my heart explode and tears fall from my eyes.

            “Aaron!” I could barely breath.

            I fell to the floor, my knees pushing into the carpet. I ignored the burn that washed over my kneecaps and threw open my arms just in time for the little boy to run into them. I squeezed him, held him tight. His long arms wrapped around my neck. I could feel his warm tears fall to my neck and the globs of snot collide with my hair, but I didn’t care. All I could think about was that another member of my family had been found, that my little brother was here in my arms.

            Through glossy tear-filled eyes, I looked up at the two figures that were staring back at me through the doorway. Miss Frizzle was clutching her chest, a faint and sad smile present on her small lips. Daniel stood there, as well, but did not hold much of an expression at all. He looked more inquisitive if anything.

            “I don’t understand,” I murmured, my voice cracking. “You had my brother. Did you see the rest of my family?”

            Miss Frizzle straightened her stance. Her pale green dress with white polka dots rustled as she moved. Her white flats had darling mint green roses on the front. “I taught the third grade at the West Point Elementary School. I never had your brother in my class. I never had any of these children in my class,” spoke the woman. “I was in the caravan of vehicles that evacuated the first group from West Point. About seventy miles out, we hit a whole group of them. They flipped an entire vehicle of people. It didn’t matter how many soldiers there were to try to calm us all, chaos broke out and people began to just run. I never saw your father, or your mother, or your brother, but I did see Aaron. There were a few of us who took as many children as we could into the woods. We hid, but eventually the smell became too much and we had to get them out of there.

            “We jumped from car to car, each one failing us not long after we took off. Each time an attack would take a new man, woman or child, until it was just down to me and the eight little babies that are here now. I heard the radio call,” Miss Frizzle finished. “I’m sorry that I don’t know about your family. I don’t know about any of these children’s families. I am a teacher who can answer any English, math, or science question in the world. But I cannot answer why these children are here alone.”

            I could hear the hurt and struggle in the woman’s voice. The lines that curved around her lips were growing deeper. Her eyes became glossy with unshed tears. Her nostrils flared and her lips pursed together to keep back the tears.

            “Women like you deserve recognition not just because you help mold the minds of children, but because you continue to care for them outside of the classroom,” I muttered. “And for that, I can never be too grateful.”

            Miss Frizzle smiled. “I should get back to the other children. I should be with them when we introduce them to everyone.”

            The curly haired woman excused herself, leaving Daniel alone to stand outside of the room. A smile finally formed on his lips. “Had I known he was in there…” his voice faded.

            I shook my head. “Don’t. It’s fine,” I assured him.

            My younger brother finally pulled away. He kept his small hands on my shoulder as he stared at me. He looked like a child from one of Margaret Keane’s doe-eyed paintings. Ever since he was born, his large chocolate eyes could mesmerize even a blind man. He was smart, always silent because he was observing and containing. He was easily overlooked, but therefore one of the smartest little boys that I have ever met.

            “Lainey is alive,” I said. “Would you like to see her?”

            Aaron smiled and rapidly nodded his head. I stood, taking his hand in mine. Daniel moved aside to let us pass and walked behind us as we went down the steps and across the second story hall. From the top of the grand staircase, I could look into the living room where everyone was gathering across the furniture, eyes glued to the television where the film How To Train Your Dragon was flashing across the screen. My sister was currently squished between Toner and Brandon on the couch, which also held a very annoyed Cory. Aaron, Daniel’s brother, was leisurely lying across all four figures, watching the movie as though nothing was wrong. My sister looked like she was in Heaven amidst four guys.

            I guided my brother down the stairs. His clammy hand gripped mine tighter and tighter with each descending step. We stopped at the bottom, just before reaching the rug in the middle of the living room. I kept my eyes on my sister, boring into her and seeing how long it would take for her to notice that one of her long lost brothers was just a few yards from her. One by one, I caught the attention of the others in the room. James was sitting in his usual spot, the plush recliner on the opposite end of the glass coffee table. He looked at me first, but I kept my eyes on my sister. Cory and Aaron looked at me next. I paid them no mind. My face was beginning to scowl.

            “Hey,” Brandon eventually whispered, nudging my sister in the gut.

            She first shot him a nasty glare before looking to where he was pointing. “Oh my God!” she screamed. She jumped up, her skinny frame weaseling its way out from Aaron’s gut as she jumped up on the couch and leapt over him. She crashed to the floor as I had and wrapped her boney arms around our brother.

            Lainey had been the one sibling in the house to normally keep to herself. She never really got along with the rest of us. She held a grudge against my parents and would normally do her best to get out of spending time with the family. She looked the most like Aaron. They shared the same shade of blond hair and the large circular eyes, they were also both tall and skinny. But while Lainey had our father’s oval facial shape, Aaron had our mother’s more circular build.

            Lainey looked up at me, our brother still pressed against her chest. “How did you find him?”

            “He was one of Miss Frizzle’s kids,” I said, craning my neck to nod my head in the direction of the grand staircase.

            Daniel was still up there, but had been joined by Miss Frizzle and a brood of seven, small, terrified children. Some were tall, others short. While some looked like they hadn’t eaten in days, others looked as though that’s all that they had been doing. They were all so different and unique, but there was one thing they had in common: the same look of a dark and deep sadness.