Life After the Undead (Completed)

PART 11: Hibernation .2

Connor's P.O.V.

I had been trying very hard to fit in with this new group of people but it was hard... you know?

Melissa was antsy and unsocial. She was only happy when Evelyn was home.

Rebecca, my red-headed goddess, loved attention and loved getting it from me, but when Will came back from wherever he went with Evelyn she stopped caring about me.

Keith was more social and would talk to me when I was all he had. But he didn't give a damn about me either, and once Will came home I was shunted to the side for him.

In fact Keith and Rebecca seemed to spend a lot of time arguing over who got Will's attention. Evelyn would have to mediate sometimes, but that was just her screaming: "Oh My God! I Don't Care! Who had him last?" and then whoever had him last didn't get him at that point. If Will could, though, I noticed that he picked Keith over Rebecca 7 times out of 10.

Will was basically the same as Keith, actually. He was social, he would talk to me, but if anyone else was around, he'd choose them over me too.

No one in their group was overtly mean to me, but I could tell that they were a solid group and I was the outsider.

Evelyn didn't like any of us, and she was very vocal about it. But she liked Melissa best. She just did her best not to show it.

From the stories, Brendan's theories were confirmed. Steve preferred Evelyn, and no one else. But he was getting ready to hibernate, just like Evelyn was. So I hadn't met him yet. The only one who had met him was Melissa and she refused to talk about him. Just as she never wanted to talk about Ottawa.

Evelyn said it was because he was busy, but he never came over prior to getting ready to hibernate either. None of them had ever seen her with anyone, which just made me more curious. But Evelyn never answered questions about him.

I learned the gist of the Ottawa trip. That Evelyn had gotten the call to go get me and my brother-in-law. That Rebecca and the gang had convinced Melissa to betray Evelyn, to kill her and take control of her house and her business. Both were very highly coveted apparently. But somehow the tables were turned on Melissa, somehow she broke her leg, somehow she met Steve and then I stole their car, Steve had to get them back to Toronto. On the way back they had somehow informed the Drifters of her missing car, which was how they knew to look for me, and now here we are.

That was where the theories came in. Rebecca reckoned that Steve interrupted Melissa as she was about to kill Evelyn. Steve being the brute that he was had obviously overpowered Melissa and broken her leg in the process. Will assumed that Evelyn had overpowered Melissa from the get-go. Evelyn was wily and more than her fair share of scrappy in a fight, and that when Steve found out what Melissa had tried to do he snapped her leg out of spite. And considering what I knew Evelyn was like I was inclined to believe that theory.

But neither woman would talk about that trip. Would never go into detail. So it was all a big mystery too.

Seriously, why did Evelyn like mystery so much?

When Evelyn and Will come back from their latest trip outside, even despite the cast I was up and walking towards her.

"Hey, hey, Evelyn..."

I tried to talk to her but she ignored me in favour for whatever it was the two of them had brought back today, which looked like big bags filled with spoiled and apparently boxes of books, DVDs and video games. She was in the process of getting everything into the kitchen, where we would get to pick apart the stuff she had gotten for us, and then we'd help her put away the things that were just generally for the house. At that moment, she was more interested in unloading and unpacking than she was in speaking, but I knew if I waited she'd eventually acknowledge me.