“What do you think happened to my mother?” Dawn asked from the darkness where she laid on her little mattress by the cubbyhole. Mr. Jay was over at their small table. He used a wooden packing crate as a chair. After returning to their hideout, they had eaten dinner and shared a little chat about the day. Mr. Jay did not tell her anything about what happened at Carmen’s apartment except to say she had pictures of cats. Dawn didn’t think that was any biggy. Since the animals went crazy after the Change, pet lovers had to make do with pictures and stuffed animals.
She asked him about the men who chased them. And he finally explained that he’d been around a long time, and it could have had something to do with old debts. Though he promised her that he had done nothing wrong or illegal.
“I was just avoiding trouble, Dawn,” he said. “Sometimes that’s the best you can do.”
While that explanation didn’t reassure her much, she was still upset about the situation with Carmen, so she let it stand. Before her curiosity got the best of them, Mr. Jay sidestepped more questions by telling her he wanted to make an early start the next day. She should get to bed early and he’d go too after he’d given a couple of his books a quick glance.
Dawn dozed off but woke back up to find her friend still reading in dim candlelight.
“Go to sleep.” Mr. Jay turned his green eyes to her. From their faraway look, Dawn could tell that he had been deep in thought.
“What do you think happened to her?” She pushed herself up on one little elbow. Her nose still twitched at the chemical they had used to remove her beard.
Mr. Jay sighed, turned all the way around on his makeshift chair. He set his hands on his knees and leaned forward. “Well, I don’t know,” he said. “We’ve talked about that before.”
Dawn nodded. “But I was just thinking about it.”
“Well, you’ll have a lot of nights like that.” He smiled warmly. “At least until you know more or get used to not knowing.”
“You think that will happen, Mr. Jay?” she asked.
He chuckled, “I doubt it.”
“And you don’t know…” She struggled with conflicting urges. Dawn had moments of obsession on the topic but she was sure that Mr. Jay was tired of it. Momentarily, she pondered returning to sleep.
“No I don’t.” Mr. Jay leaned back with one elbow on his table. “But I remember the stories about the riot. It was a bad one by all accounts.” His head drooped forward; his brown beard dusted his chest. “What I heard was that there was a big group of living people in a town called Severance. Now that’s a long way north and west of here as you know, and when I heard the story I happened to be traveling north of it.
“But I heard a group of living people were trying to get rid of all the dead people in the town. They asked them nicely at first, but the dead people had no place to go, and they had a right to stay in Severance, since most had lived there when they were alive. But the story goes that the living people believed the walking dead caused Change. That really wasn’t fair since they rose after it. It was just a matter of time before something bad happened.”
Dawn’s mother had brought her to Severance. The town was just a main street that you could see to both ends of with no buildings taller than three stories. It used to be a bigger place her mother said, but pointed to burned ruins as the cause of its shrinking. The forever child could still feel the thrill as her mother led her by the hand over the street’s cracked asphalt. It was so different from Nurserywood-she corrected herself-it wasn’t called Nurserywood in those days. People were just starting to come there to hide and had built a little village around old campgrounds. And they didn’t even have a giant yet.
She had heard about towns and cities in stories, but seeing one and hearing about them were two different things. She couldn’t remember anything before Nurserywood. Her mom told her sometimes the first years of a child’s life were like that. Nurserywood was like Severance since it had people and buildings-though in the forest, there were old cabins and rough shelters of woven branches, cloth and plastic. And there were no paved roads only paths. So her first sight of the town was surprising. In those early days, forever children were still numerous enough that they were still accepted as children. They hadn’t started to really scare anyone at that point and everyone was more worried about the dead.
Dawn saw her first walking dead man in Severance. It terrified her-and her mother too. Part of the reason they had traveled to Nurserywood was to stay clear of the Change and the dangers it brought. They weren’t in Severance five minutes before a dead man stepped right out of the rain.
They were taking shelter from a downpour by the eaves of an old building. People still got out of the rain back then, because they thought it might stop. But the building had boards where its windows should be. Her mother said that was not the way things were when she had visited a year before on a trading mission. They were snuggling under her mother’s long woolen cloak when the dead man appeared.
He hurried in with his collar pulled around his ears. One of his eyes was missing-just a hole of twisted flesh instead, and there was a great piece of skin hanging down from one cheek that exposed the teeth on that side. His clothes were like rags. He stood there looking terrible and awkward before staggering into the rain again and he was gone.
“So,” Mr. Jay continued, “the living people decided one day to chase the dead people away. And they did. They formed a big group, with the sheriff and the police helping, and they ordered every dead person out of town. The dead people didn’t know what to think; they were surprised by the action. Never imagined their neighbors could do this. So they left, and the living people celebrated.” Her friend chuckled sadly. “But that was a mistake. The dead people went harmlessly enough. It all looked fine and the people of Severance tried to return to their lives like nothing had happened. But the dead gathered just outside of town. They were angry-outraged being thrown out of their homes. And they decided to fight for what was theirs.” He rubbed his knees. “You see the living made a mistake. It turned out that they had the most to lose in a fight.”
Dawn’s mother managed to get a job cooking for a restaurant on the main street-she had coaxed the owner with the spices and recipes she brought from the fields near Nurserywood. For about two weeks Dawn helped at the restaurant. She could not remember the name of the place but remembered the owner was a black man who smoked too much. Dawn was happy at that time, if she did feel a little exposed and over-pinched. All the women in Severance loved her dark curls and her big brown eyes. They squeezed and pinched her every day.
But she could remember the man who owned the restaurant chasing dead people away, even if they just wanted a glass of water, and he pushed them from the sidewalk out front. She remembered him taking a big gun and going with the others to send the dead people away.
“One night, the dead decided that the time had come,” Mr. Jay said in hushed tones. “They had lived their lives in Severance, and they were not about to lose it in death.” The magician’s features flickered in the eerie candlelight. “So they marched into town. The living suspected such a thing might happen, and had kept a watch. So the dead people met a blockade of living people at the edge of town.” Genuine sadness softened his features.
“One story said a living man threw the first punch, and the other said the dead started it. But it didn’t matter it was going to happen anyway.” Mr. Jay pulled at his beard. “You’ve got to remember, this was fifteen years after the Change and these people were terrified-all of them. And things just exploded!”
Dawn could remember the night. She was napping in the little room the restaurant owner had lent them-her mother was still finishing up the last of the dishes. But Dawn came out of a dream into a nightmare. There were explosions and screams-the light that usually burned yellow outside their little room was gone. In its place was a blue-white flickering-like broken wires or lightning. More screaming followed, and the loud bang, bang, bang of guns. Then her mother screamed. Dawn ran out of the little room and into the strange blue-white light, her eyes blurry with sleep. She ran along the hallway that led to the kitchen. There was another scream and then a big crash of glass.
She hurried into the dining area and dove for cover behind the counter. There was a great dark group of people filling up the whole building. The air was musty and smelled of smoke. She didn’t recognize the people. Dawn remembered most that they were monsters in the eerie light-faces white and round-eyed and their hands were more like claws than fingers. There were loud sounds: snapping and cracking, struggling grunting, glass breaking and crunching under foot, and screaming and screaming.
When she finally gathered her courage to look up again-the restaurant was empty. Both of the big windows were broken; chairs were thrown around and tables upset. She had a stark memory of a man’s leg lying under a table looking strange, it sock and shoe twitching. There was nothing else. “Mommy?” was all she could say.
“And so the story goes that the whole town burned that night.” Mr. Jay grew more somber with the telling. His eyes were sad. “And when authorities finally got there to help, there was no one left. There were a few dead people limping and crawling, too badly damaged to go wherever the others went or tell what happened-but I never heard more than what I’ve told you. No one else was ever found.”
“But, so.” Dawn’s eyes felt heavy with the memory. “What do you think happened?”
“Nobody knows, Dawn.” Mr. Jay moved over, knelt beside her and rested a hand on her forehead. “Nothing good.”
The forever girl couldn’t remember much more. She could remember a terrible feeling, little more and she could conjure up images of blood and destruction-and loneliness for days and days. And she remembered trying to find Nurserywood and hiding and eating garbage and sneaking into old buildings to get cans of food. She didn’t know how long she wandered. But wherever her spirit had gone for that time, she remembered it first coming back when she heard Mr. Jay singing by a campfire.