CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“Saying goodbye is hard. It’s not what any of us wanted, but here we are. The zombies are almost gone. People still get sick, but we’re prepared now. We have hope . . . but the cost . . . my God, the cost . . . only in a future after we rebuild will we be able to look back and ask if the cost was truly worth it. If we have said future, my fellow Americans? Then yes, yes it was worth the cost.”
From: Collected Radio Transmissions of the Fall,
University of the South Press, 2053
On a freezing cold Easter morning just after sunrise, the memorial service for both Temple and Sister Ann was held at the top of the mountain. All who called St. Dominic’s home now were in attendance.
The night before, I’d sat down with the student council and Governor Lenity-Jones. Together we talked about the path forward for the school, our collective responsibilities, and the state as a whole. After one meeting with the governor I understood why Sister Ann had thought so highly of her. She was almost as good as Sister Ann motivating us.
Unsurprisingly, her long-term goal was to reestablish Richmond as the state’s capital. For now, and until the state of emergency ended, Governor Lenity-Jones decided that Covington would make a perfect temporary capital location, though the downtown city hall was still damaged from the flooding and needed repairs. Like Sister Ann, the governor wanted to begin rebuilding. The main difference was the where.
More and more updates were coming in by the shortwave. The president was officially sworn in, and the fight to reclaim Washington, D.C., from the shambler hordes there was on. Marines were slowly driving any shamblers away from the White House. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was apparently under constant watch once more, something that made Governor Lenity-Jones extremely happy.
Reclaiming the world was going to be a long, tough slog, but we were living proof that it could be done. Not only could it, but it had to. Like Sister Ann had said over and over again, survival was only half of what it meant to be a human being. The other half was why we were here on this earth in the first place: to build.
Or in our case, rebuild.
These thoughts clouded my mind as I stood near the back of the gathered crowd. It had been a half-mile hike to the peak, and while it wasn’t the highest mountain around us, it definitely had the best views. From the top one could look and see West Virginia, the Blue Ridge Mountains to the south and east, and watch the Jackson River meander toward Clifton Forge in the distance. From up here, the world was peaceful, serene. The daily struggle to survive wasn’t as big of a problem here as it was down below.
Sister Ann loved it up here.
Had loved it, rather.
I blinked at the sudden tears and listened as Governor Lenity-Jones gave them both a eulogy. While she hadn’t known Temple outside of meeting him back at Deer Creek, his granddaughters had spent a lot of time in the subsequent week since, talking about how he’d kept them alive and protected them. A few of the other locals knew him and also offered tales and anecdotes. None of the words mattered, really. Two more little girls had been left alone in this world, and no kind words would ever change that.
Stop it, I mentally chided myself.
Her story about how Sister Ann—then Gunnery Sergeant Tabitha Towers—had shown a fresh-faced second lieutenant just how things worked and turned her into a proper marine was funny, but also wrong. The gunnery sergeant had been gone long before Sister Ann died. The governor didn’t understand, not really. I don’t even know if I did for sure.
One thing I did know was that I couldn’t give a speech. Everyone was expecting me to say something in her memory, but every time I tried to think of what I was going to say, I came up blank. How does one describe the person who helped save your life without even letting on what they were doing? Is there any way to properly share the tale of the woman who selflessly gave every last ounce of her being to protecting us, keeping us safe, and giving us a reason to become more than just a group of teenagers existing in a broken, shattered world?
The sun crested the Blue Ridge Mountains to the east. Clouds, streaked across the sky as though painted by God Himself in pinks, purples, and blues, made the entire scene surreal. Birds were starting to chirp nearby. Cardinals, from the sound of it, but I couldn’t be certain.
It was a perfect sunrise for such an occasion. It was also wrong.
Sister Ann should have been here to lead the Easter service, not buried back in the cemetery on campus. There was no way I could do it. I was barely Catholic, after all. It’d been Sister Ann’s faith in God, and in us, that had kept the girls of St. Dominic’s alive. Her sheer will and determination had forced us to thrive.
The governor came to the final part of her speech. It was a nice one, heartfelt and honest. I hadn’t paid much attention since I’d already known what she was going to say. She’d practically borrowed a page out of Sister Ann’s playbook, talking about resiliency in the face of our future challenges, working together to overcome our past differences, blah blah blah. While she was a good orator, there was just something about the governor’s words that felt off to me.
Listening to her, it dawned on my why they felt wrong. They were Sister Ann’s words, but without the sincerity or conviction behind them. In the two weeks since we’d buried Sister Ann and Temple, I’d gotten to know the governor halfway well. A lot of what she said was honest, but she always kept an ear on any issues that seemed to be plaguing random people across campus. She acknowledged the fact that the student council was nominally in charge still, and didn’t create any conflict. But to me, it felt like she was always halfway campaigning and always worried about making a misstep in her words.
Sister Ann never worried about those things. She wasn’t afraid to make a mistake, or say the wrong thing. Honesty was her schtick, absolute and complete. Even if it was something we didn’t want to hear but needed to. The governor? Again, everything was heartfelt, but it also felt massaged, cautious. There was none of Sister Ann’s energy behind it. The governor treated this as a mission. Sister Ann approached everything as if it were her very life.
There was a divide here, amongst the survivors. I hadn’t spotted it at first, since I’d been busy trying to grieve for Sister Ann while keeping the girls calm and secure. The governor had a few people who had latched onto her the same way we girls had to Sister Ann following the early days of the Fall. Locals mostly, and almost all newer arrivals to the mountain. Kayla was standing near her group—well, with Sammie more accurately. But deep down I knew that if everything was on the line, Kayla would have my back.
Glancing around, I was a bit surprised to find almost every other student of St. Dominic’s clustered near me. I’d seen this before, back when Sister Ann was still alive. They needed me now, the same way we’d needed her. Only now it was Maddie, She Who Kills Shamblers, in charge of things.
Scary, that.
The twins pressed up against me, one on either side. Fiona and Finlay had been very quiet since we’d buried Sister Ann. Their Tannerite bomb had been perfectly placed, removing the obstacle blocking I-64 that King Dale had put up so we could pass through. I gave each of them a slight hug, partly to comfort them, but more to calm my own nerves. My speech was up next.
The governor’s speech ended and I clapped politely along with everyone else, some more enthusiastically than others. None of my girls were clapping very hard. Like me, they’d all been deeply affected by Sister Ann’s death. Some of the refugees who’d arrived after Temple might not have agreed one hundred percent with the way Sister Ann did things up on the mountain, but none of them would have denied her positive impact on the school, Covington, and Alleghany County as a whole.
“Maddie?” the governor asked once the applause quieted down. I swallowed and started to approach, but stopped as the lump in my throat grew. Looking around, I could see everyone staring at me expectantly. On the girls’ faces I saw hope and expectation. They’d voted for me to lead them, and Sister Ann had given them her blessing in making this happen. On some of the others’ faces I saw unease and nervousness. They didn’t know me, and now they were expected to live on campus being ordered around by an eighteen-year-old?
All this was completely fair. It also wasn’t.
The altar where Monsignor Dietrich had given the last Easter morning service—two years ago, since last year’s was cancelled on account of the zombie apocalypse—was old and worn, donated a long time ago by someone who did stonemasonry. They’d used a local rock found around campus, nelsonite, to carve the altar out of a large, singular piece. I only know this because both Sisters Ann and Margaret had explained it to us on the hike back down to campus afterward.
Stepping behind the altar, I struggled to relax. The expectant faces of everyone around, waiting for me to say something, to screw it all up, was almost too much. The survivors looked at me with eagerness, fear, suspicion, and even dislike. I knew why . . . or at least, I thought I did.
We’d run our student council without any of the refugees’ opinions. Kids, in their eyes, deciding what the school would do. Some probably harbored grudges against us for that. Sister Ann probably saw it coming, which was why she suggested setting up a commission to be run out of Covington. Get them off campus, since St. Dominic’s was never intended to be a power base for anyone.
Breathe. I could almost hear Sister Ann’s voice in my head. A surprisingly warm breeze brushed frizzy hair from my eyes, reminding me that I forgot to tie it back when I woke up this morning. Though it was a cold morning, the day promised to be warm and pleasant.
Which I didn’t want. The weather should have been miserable, cold, and rainy. It should have been exactly what I was feeling at the moment. But no, nature had other ideas.
Lucia and Emily both threw me a thumbs-up. They both thought I could do it. And if they believed, then the others definitely thought so as well. I had to do it. The girls needed me to be strong for them. Now, and in the future.
What was a simple speech compared to standing tall in front of Sister Ann and admitting I screwed up? One took guts, the other, courage. I shot Lucia and Emily a grateful smile. It was quick, but I knew they’d seen it.
“Thank you,” I said, meeting Governor Lenity-Jones’s gaze steadily. “Just a fair warning . . . I’m a terrible public speaker.” There was a small titter of laughter from the younger girls of the school. Good. I continued, “She never lost faith in you . . . or any of us. Ever.”
My heart felt like it was on fire. It was hammering against my ribs, threatening to burst through, each thud more painful than the last. I suck at giving speeches. Being in front of a group like this, talking about the one person who’d been my rock for the past year? The lone individual who kept us together, made us stronger, created a family amongst a bunch of girls who would have descended into chaos and probably died in the early days of the Fall without her?
This should have been her moment. A triumphant return to some normalcy, of her giving the Easter morning service with the usual solemness. To celebrate the resurrection, not to mourn a death. Easter was about life. Things like this is what she was put on this earth for. She shouldn’t have been lying in the cold ground while a bunch of teenage delinquents like us were still here. Setting the notes down on the stone, I let the words come directly from the heart.
“Sister Ann believed that the mission of St. Dominic’s Preparatory School for Girls was to both teach and save young girls. Later, it became a refuge for those who survived the Fall. Again, the theme was saving and teaching. She also wanted to be a beacon of hope for everyone, and that’s what we’re going to be. She believed in us, and we believed in her. And we will continue to believe in her vision, and strive toward it. That is my promise to all the girls under my care. Sister Ann showed us the way, and we will not fail her.”
There was nothing else to say. The speech had been exactly what Sister Ann would have done: short, sweet, and to the point. The governor was frowning slightly. Why, I didn’t know. Not that I cared what she thought. My mission was to protect the girls, and the school. Let her focus on the problems that came with being the governor. I had no interest in anything like that. I turned and walked away.
Nobody tried to stop me. The walk rapidly turned into a run. I couldn’t say how long I weaved my way across the mountaintop, only that it felt like forever. Pine branches whipped across my face as I fled through a particularly thick grove. Birds sang as the sky began shifting slowly from pinks and deep blues to lighter shades.
Eventually, I started figuring out where I wanted to go, to be. Though I hadn’t been this particular way before, with direction I felt a little more confident. I wasn’t worried about any shamblers here. Bears were a passing concern. The main worry for me was twisting an ankle on a hidden root or something in the darkness. Fortunately, I made it to where my subconscious wanted me to be without breaking my neck.
At the spot of our crucible, I stopped and stared. It’d been three years since I first climbed this rock. That angry little girl was gone, replaced by . . . who? I didn’t know yet, but I figured Sister Ann would be pleased with the end of my journey.
The sun had climbed over the Blue Ridge Mountains to the east. It was cold now, but it promised to be warmer later. The lookout point was the one spot on the mountain where nothing obstructed the view. This had been the spot where I promised I would give my best effort to be the person God meant for me to be. During those first two days out in the wilderness, before the world ended and everything went to crap, Sister Ann had brought me and the other three girls here to watch the sunrise. There she had told us what her expectations of us were, what St. Dominic’s was, and—most important of all—what ours should be.
I cried. It was the first time since Sister Ann had died that I allowed myself to cry. All the pain, anguish, and uncertainty that had built up since we returned from the Homestead was lanced like a poisonous boil with every sob. For the first time, I allowed myself to mourn what I’d lost. My family. My friends.
My mentor and role model.
Grieving is what we do. It’s totally okay, too. There’s nothing wrong with it. Sister Ann told me once that funerals were created to pay our final respects for the dead, but the grieving process is for our own soul, our loss. We are sad for what we lose when someone close dies. It’s part of the process, she’d said. I’d believed her but hadn’t really understood it. Not then, at least.
I finally did.
It didn’t really help, though. Not that I expected it to. Crying was a waste of energy. Uncontrollable sobbing was selfish. I was weak. There was no way I could protect the girls now, not without Sister Ann. We’d failed. I would fail. It was only a matter of time now. Someone would come in, push me out, and then—
“It’s okay,” a soft, unfamiliar voice whispered behind me. Blinking through my tears, I turned to see who had managed to follow me through the forest. It was Ulla, all by herself. Nobody else had tried to follow. My little minion had tracked me through the forest to make sure I was okay. Or maybe she thought I would leave her? She leaned in and wrapped her arms around my waist. She sniffled and squeezed as she buried her face into my ribs. Her hesitant voice was music to my ears. “It’s okay, Maddie.”
Ulla. She was speaking. In spite of all the crap we’d gone through, with everything that had gone bad during the rescue, the little girl had never given up. She’d found the strength I’d known was inside her the whole time. A wave of emotions crashed over me. I smiled. Tears ran down my face, but damn it, I wasn’t sobbing anymore. I’d saved her life. In return, she helped me find something I thought I’d lost—hope. I cried, but this time they were happy tears. Miracles do happen, every single day.
Sister Ann had been right all along. In a vast sea of darkness, a beacon of hope was what we needed to be. It was what St. Dominic’s was supposed to stand for—a light on top of a mountain, surrounded by a sea of darkness, offering a chance for those who would take the opportunity. A lighthouse in the worst of storms. Even in death Sister Ann was teaching, striving to make us better women, better human beings. She’d shown us the way. It would be up to us now.
Oh, who was I kidding? It was always up to us if we wanted to be better. Our choice. And with her as an example, we would succeed. Sister Ann never taught us to fail, only to keep striving toward a goal. If we stumble, we push on. If we get knocked down, we stand back up. When we succeed, we do it with humility.
Not if we succeeded. Never if. Sister Ann wouldn’t allow it.
I kissed the top of Ulla’s head the same way Sister Ann had done for me once, so many months before. It was comforting for me then, and I knew Ulla found it to be the same for her now. A simple act of kindness, made out of love, could change the life of a child in the blink of an eye.
Straightening my back, I turned and held her hand. It was a long walk to the altar, and an even longer one down to campus, but I had a school to lead.
“I know it’ll be okay, kiddo. We’ll be all right. All of us. I’ll protect you all. Sister Ann said we’d be okay.”
And Sister Ann was never, ever wrong.
The End