Life After Z

Chapter 29 - Lucas

"Put him on the gurney," Ivy directed while she walked over to the sink and started scrubbing her hands. Rio stayed glued to her legs, and I could see that he was afraid of us due to the slight shaking of his body. Milo still stood guard but seemed to calm down some when we didn't attack his owner. "Then you can leave. This room isn't big enough for all of us and I would prefer if you didn't hover while I finish closing up his wound. Plus, the more people in here the greater risk for infection. If you turn on any lights, don't open the curtains. They are all blackout curtains and keep anyone from seeing that I am here."

I shared a look with Everett and could tell that he wanted to push the issue. The cold, upset tone of her voice would bother him more than me but right now wasn't the time. We could explain the entire situation and apologize to Ivy once Coop was all patched up and we all had a chance to sleep. Bringing up any sort of discussion now would just make things worse.

I shook my head at Everett and had to literally pull him out of the room after we got Cooper situated on the gurney. I was just turning back to close the door when Ivy called out my name in a low voice. God, my name had never sounded so good.

"Yes?" I asked, turning to see her putting on gloves from a sealed package.

"If you stay on this floor and go through the library, you will reach the greenhouse. Walk through the gardens. There is an observatory at the far end. That is where I have set up my bed. It is the only real bed here. Sebbie can use it until we figure out something else. There is a box of snacks by my bed and he is welcome to anything there. I will show you how to get to the kitchen in the morning. You can stay with Sebbie but everyone else will have to make do with the couches or bean bags in the library."

All of this and my son is still at the forefront of her thoughts. Could she be any more perfect?

"Thank you, but we don't need to take your bed. Sebbie will be just fine on a couch," I replied, needing her to know that we wouldn't be taking advantage of her kindness. Well beyond insisting that she bring us here and patch up Coop's bullet wound.

"I highly doubt I will be getting any sleep tonight," she replied in a sardonic voice. "You also need to move the vehicles. Put them somewhere hidden. The last thing we need is those men to see your truck on the way out of town and know where we are hiding."

After that she focused on Cooper, carefully removing the gauze she had packed his wound with earlier and I knew that she had dismissed me in her own way. I took one last lingering look at her face and then closed the door with both dogs still inside. I found Sebbie holding Everett's hand and Jen looking around with her arms wound tight around her middle. It took us several moments to do anything besides stand by the door, none of us knowing what exactly to do next. Finally, Everett broke the tense indecision and pulled Sebbie through the double doors at the end of the hall so that we could explore the rest of Ivy's safe place.

I had been expecting more gym stuff on the other side of the doors, but I guess I should have known better. Ivy had told me to walk through the library to get to her room. Even with her explanation, I was surprised to see rows and rows of books in a large open space. Just like in any library in any town that I had been in, the books were sorted into sections including fiction, non-fiction, audio, and reference. It wasn't a small collection either. Much bigger than what I would have expected for a town this size.

As a group, we ventured into the treasure trove of books and I noticed that everything was clean. Almost every place we went these days had a layer of dust. It was something that I barely even noticed anymore, but in its absence, I felt this weird sense of normalcy. Right now in this room, I didn't feel like a survivor of the zombie apocalypse. Instead, I felt a long-lost thrill of anticipation as I thought about all of the stories and knowledge that surrounded us. Libraries always were a place of potential for me. All you had to do to access it was open up a book and dive into its depths.

"Fucking of course our little spitfire lives in a library. Like some sort of Disney princess," Everett grumbled and I walked over to pick Sebbie up. My little guy was exhausted. Right now wasn't the time to explore. I needed to put him to bed because the stress of the night had wiped him out. I walked to the other end of the library and found another set of double doors. This time I wasn't as surprised when we walked into a huge greenhouse. Ivy had said that I would need to walk through the gardens. Even if I wasn't surprised about the greenhouse, the contents within the room took my breath away. It was most definitely the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

Easily as spacious as the library, maybe even bigger, the entire greenhouse was flourishing with different plants. There were rows of vegetables, bushes of blueberries, swollen pumpkins, trees dotted with lemons, oranges, and apples, and vines of tomatoes and cucumbers. The more I looked the more I saw. I was completely dumbstruck. This was the best garden I had ever witnessed even before the world ended. Now it was more of a miracle than anything I had seen in a really long time.

"Wow," Sebbie whispered into my ear reverently, and I knew that he was feeling the same sense of awe that I was. This was why Ivy had chosen this place. This is what was going to make this place work as a long-term solution. We could stop going out on runs. Stop risking our lives for a few long expired cans of food that would be gone before we had a chance to recover from retrieving them.

This garden was our future. Sebbie's future.

Everett walked over to the fruit tree section and plucked a yellow and red swirled apple off of a branch before bringing it up to his nose. The smile that broke over his face was more than I had ever seen on the man. Even Jen looked too shocked by the bounty of this room to be anything but happy. I put Sebbie down and he walked over to a tomato vine and ate a cherry tomato. His eyes lit up with wonder and he quickly shoved three more into his mouth.

The fact that his eyes could look like that after the night we had was... everything.

We explored for a while longer, none of us having any qualms about eating our fill of the fresh amazingness. Eventually, we wandered to the far side of the greenhouse where there was a single door instead of the double doors that we entered through. I pushed through the door, remembering that Ivy had mentioned her room was past the greenhouses, and was yet again flabbergasted by what I saw.

The door led to a dome of glass. Very little was inside the room. A twin mattress that rested on the ground, a pile of books, a lamp, a case of water, a chest, and a wooden crate filled with snacks. The wonder of the room had its full effect when I reached back into the greenhouse and switched off the lights. After we were plunged into darkness the glass dome drew your eye. Or rather the unobstructed view of the heavens did. The night sky was dotted with brilliant stars and even the twinkle of the milky way lay above us.

Ivy slept every night under the stars.