Life After Death

Chapter 15

Vivian's Point of View

It had been nearly 3 days since we had resided in our latest sanctuary. We had kept ourselves occupied, every morning one of us would go and scour out each floor just to double check that all the Lurkers were safely locked away still, just to put our mind at ease more than anything else. We had gathered together as many remaining pamphlets in the unoccupied rooms to put together a map of the wider vicinity, and had pinned it onto a wall in Jade and Jace's shared rooms. Over the course of the few days, we tried to pinpoint any familiar locations we had already been too, based on the road signs any one of us remembered passing on our journeys.

The rain outside went through stages of complete and utter downpour, back to sunshine, so using buckets we already had with us, we had situated some outside on the ground floor to collect as much as possible. This place of course didn't have running water, and so this was the most hygienic and easy way of being able to wash our clothes.

"Nathaniel, I swear to fuck, if I wake up with your pillow on my side of the bed again, I'm going to keep it for myself," I moan, pulling the sheets up.

I thought we may as well look somewhat presentable. Tries to keep the humanity and normality around the place.

For the past two nights, me and Nathaniel had made a pillow wall, forcing Jade and Jace to give up one of theirs since they put us here. Yet, each morning when we woke up, it was destroyed. He seemed to have flung them over to my side in order to obtain more room, any day now and I'll be suffocated in my sleep.

Jace had taken it upon himself to try and teach Brooke some self-defence - well more how to be safe with weapons at the moment. But it was all a work in progress.

"Okay, so, if you're ever holding a knife, never point the sharp end at yourself, okay?" He said, her responding with a simple nod, "You should always hold it like this," He gave the knife to her, to demonstrate to him what she should do.

After a while of this, he moved onto guns. Not giving her any more than a pistol to look at, he showed her where to point.

"Where should you never point?"

"At a human."

"And where is it okay to point?"

"A Lurker."

"Good job," he said, giving her a high-five.

Proceeding to teach her about the safety, and how to make sure it was always off unless she needed it to be. For someone who seemed to act like he wanted anything but this child around, he was sure warming up to her.

Agreeing that it wouldn't be particularly morally correct to give a six or seven year old a gun to carry around with her, we decided to only give her one if and when the situation seemed dire enough that she may have to help us in protecting herself.

The next hour was spent with me painting Brooke's nails with some old stuff we found at one of the abandoned drugstores. It was no Dior nail polish, but the pink sparkles were more than enough to keep her satisfied and content with her nails.

Protecting this girl from the world would mean babying her. Not protecting this girl from the world would mean exposing her to death, violence and gore. I figured we should aim for somewhere in the middle. Teaching her not to be oblivious would be our task, but trying to keep her out of danger would be another.

"I have a confession," Nathaniel blurted out.

"Enlighten us," Jade said, washing her hair as best she could with the water collected from yesterday.

"I'm bored."

"Is that a bad thing?" I laughed.

"I haven't been bored in, like, two years. I forgot how boring it was."