HUMAN

Chapter Eleven

A/N: Trigger Warning - Mild description of violence at the end.

Warrior (feat. LIGHTS) - Steve James, LIGHTS 

***

Two entire months had passed. They still weren't finding any significant information about what exactly was going on. Nothing about the state of the world around them had improved, besides their swanky living conditions. They focused on only collecting food that was closest to expiring first. Esther spent two hours one day organizing the giant pantry, fridge, and freezer by expiration date. She had Kevin's help. One of the neighbor's houses had a small vegetable garden. Nicole and Kevin collected its cucumbers, carrots, and asparagus together and learned how to pickle them because of a very helpful cookbook Patti LaBelle had owned. They hoped this would extend its shelf life. Everyone spent a lot of time training their fighting skills with each other. They used cardboard weapons so they wouldn't accidentally poke any eyes out. Scott and Mitch found a couple of books in a neighbor's kid's room on martial arts, which they all studied fervently. Kirstie trained with the others, but she spent the majority of every day doing yoga outside. She actually picked up her fighting skills pretty easily. She just didn't have quite as much fun doing it as the others did. When she wasn't outside, she was in bed. She had been in denial about what was going on, she had been angry at the world, she had wished she had gone home sooner, and now she was in the fourth stage of grief... depression. She was doing everything she could think of to get through it.

Today, Kevin and Esther were out collecting more food and supplies. They were in one particular house for about twenty minutes, before Kevin took a moment to appreciate its huge library.

"Wow," he proclaimed. "This is amazing. I've never seen this many books in someone's home before. They're organized alphabetically too."

"Nice," said Esther. "Any good books? Or are they all boring encyclopedias and dictionaries?"

"No, some really good books here," Kevin replied.

His eyes widened as he picked up a very old looking, bright red book with a beautiful, embossed cover. He opened it to examine it's contents very carefully, "This almost... is this... this looks like a first edition of Ti-Ping Tien-Kwoh. No way... published in 1866... beautiful illustrations and all. I'm just gonna go ahead and borrow that."

He gleefully put it in his bag.

Esther laughed, "Careful hun, your nerd is showing."

Kevin laughed too. He was way too giddy to be offended by her sly judgment. He looked around the library a little more, when something caught his eye. A Dictionary of Surnames. Interesting. His priorities casually shifted as he sat down to read through it.

Esther started to rifle through the books too. She saw some big cookbooks and grabbed them. There were some interesting books on gardening too. They really may come in handy. She almost exited the room, but Kevin grabbed her attention.

"Hey," Kevin yelled. "Did you know Grassi comes from the word grasso, which means overweight? I never knew that."

"Also, that couldn't be less Mitch," Esther chuckled. "Poor boy. Don't tell him that please."

Kevin laughed as he continued flipping through the pages, "I definitely won't....... Oh my goodness. I swear."

"What..." Esther was amused.

"Maldonado comes from a Spanish word which means an ill-favored or not very smart person," Kevin gasped. "I'm personally offended by this book for Kirstie."

Esther was laughing so hard, she nearly busted a gut.

"Again," she said, "very far from the truth."