A pair of hands folds under her shoulders and she feels herself lifted. The bag over her head is removed and the blinding light of the day increases the pain already in her head. She is helped to her feet and she glances around as best as she can squinting from both the increase in light and the pain. She recognizes that she is at the high school and therefore knows she wasn’t out for long. Standing on her shaky legs with a man on either shoulder helping her, she is walked into what used to be the main school office. Confusion reigns as to why she was attacked and why they are keeping her. She is brought into the main secretarial office and placed in one of the brown plastic seats lining the walls.
“Don’t struggle or try to get away and it’ll go easier for you,” one of the men says.
The threat in his voice unsettles her even more. She knows she is not in a good situation. Due to the drastic change in her cicumstances, the room looks so unfamiliar from the many times she has visited the school for one reason or another. The office reminds her of her kids and a knot of worry forms in her stomach. She just wants to get out of whatever she has found herself in and go find them. Balance would be restored to a large degree if she could just find them or at least know where they are and how they are doing.
The man who talked to her leaves and enters one of the other offices only to return a short time later. “Come with me,” he says standing by her shoulder. He and another man help her to her feet once again.
She is placed in another chair and faces a man in camouflage fatigues sitting behind a desk. The rays of the sun outside filter in through open blinds behind him. Dust motes sparkle in the air where the bands of sunlight find their way in. The mostly balding, slightly overweight man stares at her for a moment with his chin resting on steepled hands. Lifting his head and sitting upright he clears his throat.
“Do you mind telling me what you were doing walking around alone?” He asks.
“I was looking for my kids,” she replies.
He shakes his head in confusion momentarily. “How is that you were able evade the ghouls for so long?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t evaded anything. I woke up this morning and my kids were gone. I set out to look for them. You wouldn’t happen to have seen them would you? Two girls and a boy, teens. My son is about six feet tall with blond hai..” she begins to say.
“That doesn’t matter now,” the man says interrupting her description. “What matters is that you follow the rules around here. You’ll be put on a work team as soon as your head heals to the point where you can work. Breakfast is just after sunrise and dinner when you return from the fields. No congregating or talking. Any attempt to escape will not be a pleasant experience for you so you can get that out of your head right away. If you have to use the bathroom, you’ll notify one of the guards and be escorted. And, there will be no slacking. Do you understand what I’ve told you?”
She nods not trusting her voice. Tears well up in her eyes thinking she might not get out of this or see her kids again. The frustration she felt at not being able to find her son and daughters when she awoke builds along with the anxiety and a feeling of complete hopelessness. She wishes she could remember anything prior to this morning. She does remember the flu and some of the past but there is a blank gap between seeing her kids to bed at night and waking this morning. It’s obvious something has happened and time has passed but she can’t remember any of it.
“Show her to the women’s quarters and put her in with the other injured,” the man behind the desk says addressing the two men standing just behind her shoulder.
The light isn’t as brilliant and blinding as she is taken outside and over to one of the classroom buildings. Her headache dissipates to a degree but the knot in her stomach, her confusion, the worry, and hopeless feeling remain.
She is guided to a classroom filled with other women and girls who are either sitting on cots or lying on them. The desks have been removed and replaced with cots covering the linoleum of the classroom floor with small lanes between each row. A guard with a gun leans back in a chair behind what once was a teacher’s desk in the far corner of the room. She is given a cot and she lies down staring at the drop-down ceiling and hanging florescent lights. Her mind is both numb and racing a hundred miles an hour. The soft breathing of the others in the room, accompanied by an occasional moan, is the only sound. Sunlight pours through the open windows and a slight breeze blows sporadically across her face.
In the late afternoon, she is gathered with the rest of the women and taken outside to the fields just south of the gym building. They are given some time to walk around. She is still numb and merely wanders from place to place staring at the chain link fence in the distance. Freedom lies just on the other side; so near and yet so far away. The guards keep a close eye on the group and they aren’t allowed to venture far into the field. Heartache fills her. She sinks to her knees, starts to cry, and feels an arm wrap around her shoulder. Through her blurred vision, she turns and sees an elderly lady.
“It’ll be okay, hon. You’ll get used to it and it won’t be so bad,” the elderly woman says quietly to her.
“But I don’t know where my kids are,” she says with the tears streaming once again down her already wet cheeks.
“There, there. You just focus on staying alive for them,” the woman says. “Keep the faith that you’ll see them again. Hold onto that.”
She hears vehicles approaching, turns, and watches a line of school buses drive along the street in front of the high school. Her eyes stay on them as they enter through a gate and park along the entrance drive. People emerge and she watches intently for any sign of her son and daughters. Many people exit but none that even slightly resemble her kids. The helpless feeling sinks even deeper.
They are rounded up and taken into the cafeteria building where they sit quietly at tables after getting their food. Several people next to her attempt to engage her in conversation but she feels too low to respond. After their meal, they are taken to the gym and allowed to shower. Fresh clothes are dumped in a pile and there is a scramble amongst those there for clothes that fit. The posted guards chuckle at the frenzy.
“I’ll never stop being amused by that,” she hears one of them say quietly to another.
She doesn’t have the energy to fight over clothes so dons her old ones. They are taken to their rooms and that’s where they remain for the night. The only difference being there are two guards during the evening sitting behind the desk. At one point, she has to go to the bathroom and asks one of the guards if she can go. He rises and escorts her across the hall to a door marked “girls.” To her horror, he enters along with her. He doesn’t enter the stall but she is mortified having to go with a man so close.
During the night, she hears faint shrieks rising in the darkness every so often and wonders what those are. She worries they are torturing people or found someone escaping. They don’t sound like shrieks of pain but she can’t figure out what else they could be. Rising in the morning, she undergoes the same routine; breakfast, shower, field, and then back to the room. Time passes slowly and depression sets in; a constant, tired feeling mixed with restlessness. She is told in the evening that she is being assigned a work team and guided to a different classroom after her shower.
The next morning, she is shaken awake early, taken to breakfast, showers, and then is guided to one of the parked yellow school buses. They are driven to an open field with partially completed structures and tilled soil. She is assigned to work in the fields preparing the ground for planting or picking from crops already sown. The guards around the perimeter are intermixed with the various groups working. It’s hard work and a long day but at least she isn’t given too much time to think; the work occupies her mind. Over time, she comes to learn what happened to the world and hearing that makes her even more anxious for her kids. The sun lowers to the west and they are herded back into the buses for the trip back to the compound. This is how her days and weeks continue.
Gonzalez awakes. The pain is immediate and unrelenting. Her head throbs with her heart beat and it feels like someone stuck a stiletto in it; starting at her forehead and driving it through her brain and down her neck. There is first the dull, throbbing pulse followed immediately by a sharp, penetrating pain through the entirety of her head.
With her eyes still closed, she raises a hand and feels a tender bump on her forehead just above her right eye. Her foggy mind recalls seeing the windshield of the Humvee closing in quickly. She opens her eyes and the bright light sends pain shooting through her head. She groans and squints through one eye. The sight confuses her for a moment. The white ceiling and part of a hanging light fixture doesn’t fit with the thought of her in the Humvee. She remembers the red truck and knows she was pulled from the wreck.
