I’m better rested today than I was yesterday, Nonexistent Reader. The banging on the walls of the warehouse seem to have died down. I might go look outside. Whatever storm or atmospheric fluctuation has tormented me for the last few nights seems to have died.
I’m nervous to open the door, though. I haven’t left since I buried Evelyn. The storage room has plenty of canned food, the result of the expeditions our community sent out into the world when we actually were a community.
By the time we reached the Big City, we were a true mob of people. Walter Grisholm’s group numbered in the dozens when they came upon us at the gas station. When our suddenly bolstered group exited the shelter, heading toward the abundance of the City, we became like a magnet for stray humanity.
For days, people sightings had been rare. Evelyn and I had existed as a pair for days before seeing Haley and then almost immediately adding Jeremy and Fred. That pace of society building was already a little too fast for me. The sudden growth of our group caused by Walter and his orchestra of misfits glomming onto us made my skin crawl a bit.
The world had become unsettled. The world had become something different from the world as we had known it. My nervousness was justified, wasn’t it? How could I know who to trust?
Plus, Walter went from seeming like a good enough guy to being a good enough guy with a nevertheless irritating arrogance. I already said I wasn’t an Alpha man. I didn’t assume I was in charge of the five-some. But Walter made sure I knew it. He clearly was the leader of the group who joined us. They deferred to him in a way I found unsettling, even as it made me question if I had behaved similarly to Evelyn and the other “originals.”
I tried engaging him in conversation, curious about how so many people had come together, where and under what circumstances they had chosen to coalesce into a community. He was cagey. “Here and there, you know. Strength in numbers.”
His tone and demeanor were dismissive. I not an Alpha. I don’t have the capacity for heroism. But I don’t like being dismissed.
I tried talking to others in the group, as well, but they were not particularly chatty. Some of it I chalk up to exhaustion. Some of it was trauma, I’m sure. Still, their reluctance to converse felt abnormal.
There were no children for Fred to play with, either. That seemed strange. The entire group appeared middle-aged, lacking the age diversity that even our tiny original group had. Between Evelyn and Fred were a good 50-some years. The new people looked like they could have been in the same high school graduating class.
Maybe they were in the same high school graduating class. Who knows? I wonder if they were Titans or Eagles. I didn’t think to ask, but then again, they almost certainly wouldn’t have answered.