Six

    “They weren’t zombies, Brandon. Stop being stupid,” I heard my sister scoff for the one hundredth time.

            I was still driving. Brittany was sitting quietly in the seat right behind where I sat. We were the only two who hadn’t spoke since Brandon’s great revelation. As the two oldest on the bus, we had decided to keep our opinions to ourselves and let the younger ones hash it out. I had my own assumptions of what those creatures had been, but wasn’t about to voice them unless directly asked.

            “I swear to you they were!” Brandon insisted. “I’ve seen my fair share of The Walking Dead! I know what I saw!”

            “The Walking Dead is a post-apocalyptic horror drama television series adapted from a comic book series and produced by a man who was born in a refugee camp in France. The original cause of the virus was never given, other than the fact that everyone was infected and the infection remained dormant in the brain. That is hardly real life,” muttered Harry.

            Harry had always been that overlooked sixteen-year-old in high school who was a living and breathing textbook of random knowledge. His awkwardness in most social settings had been the background to why he got picked on so much by his classmates. I had often felt sorry for him, especially after his father passed away from liver cancer a few months ago.

            Brandon scoffed before adding, “What? Would you say that they are more like the zombies from World War Z?”

            “Yet another apocalyptic action film, this one adapted from an excellent novel by Max Brooks. However, it would seem as though the creatures depicted in that format bite to infect, not bite to eat, and therefore hold a mental capacity far surprising the level that we just witnessed,” coughed Harry.

            “Dawn of the Dead, 1978 version. Go!” Brandon cried out.

            “Hmmm, hard to say,” pondered Harry. “Romero’s film illustrated the zombie plague’s apocalyptic effects on society on a larger scale. However, yet again, it was a storyline with a virus of an unknown origin that caused mass hysteria. I don’t feel confident in that diagnoses, either.”

            “Warm Bodies?”

            “Oh god, no. If that had been the case, then all Audrey would have had to do was hug one and love would have cured it.”

            I bit the insides of my cheeks as a small smile threatened to escape. I was familiar with that film, having stumbled upon it just a few months ago. It was cute, and I had enjoyed watching a story unfold in such a different perspective; but there was no way in hell or on earth that these creatures mirrored any altered version of what Hollywood had depicted in that film.

            “Okay, try this one. Doghouse,” grinned Brandon.

            “Oh, that British horror comedy and splatter film. Poppycock,” Harry mused in a coy New England accent. “First, I do believe I saw a male zombie, and second, the female one was hardly naked at all.”

            I couldn’t help it. The laugh that came from my lips sounded more like a snort as it blew threw my sucked in cheeks. I could hear Brittany chuckling in the seat behind me. Despite all that we had been through, it was nice to be able to share a laugh, and it was quite unexpected that it had been from something that Harry had caused.

            Brandon was rolling in his seat, his intensity and heated attempts at getting others to affirm his beliefs that these were in fact zombies had been long forgotten. “Dead Snow!” he screamed.

            “Nazi zombies frozen in Norway after hoarding golden treasures, yeah, that seams plausible �" ”

            “Just shut up! Shut up before I punch your face in!” Andrew suddenly yelled. He had been sitting in the seat directly behind Harry. Destiny looked up at her boyfriend with wide eyes as the young boy loomed over the more timid one. Harry had fallen back onto the seat, his head banging down on the metallic interior just below the window.

            I slammed my foot down so hard on the brakes that it caused Andrew to crash into the aisle. I was furious. I stood and twisted around the seat so that I was facing everyone. My eyes were wide, my nostrils flaring as my breaths came out in erratic puffs.

            “Sit. The f**k. Down,” I hissed, very very slowly. My normally very plump lips were pressed together in a tight line.

            I could easily see everyone shrinking back into their seats, shocked by my sudden outburst. Andrew pushed himself up from the floor. Rubbing his palms, he stepped backwards so that he was standing by his seat, but didn’t sit down in it. I stared at him, my eyelids refusing to blink.

            “I’m tired of hearing him speak,” shrieked Andrew. His voice cracked a bit. “His ideas are bullshit. Both of theirs are.”

            “It’s a game, Andrew,” I spat. “They are playfully throwing ideas back and forth like a game of catch.”

            “Yeah, well it’s annoying. I’m tired of hearing about what they think it is. I just want to get home and find out what it is,” Andrew snarled.

            “None of us have the intellectual capability to put together an accurate theory of what it was that was at that gas station. For all we know, with Halloween next month, it could have been some pathetic attempt at a hoax,” I stated. “I’m doing my best to get you home, I really am; but if you’re going to beat each other up instead then by all means, you can walk home.”

            I took a step back to put my hand on the lever that opened the bus doors. Everyone’s eyes were intently on mine. I wasn’t sure where this sudden burst of anger and authority came from but I kind of liked how it felt coursing through my veins. If they looked up to me as their leader then I was going to do my best to get them all home in one piece and not let a fight erupt in such a cramped space.

            “Yeah, let’s get home,” I heard Toner mutter. “Cause it was probably your terrorist father who knows what’s going on.”

            Andrew’s head snapped in the direction of where Toner was sitting by the emergency exit on the left side of the aisle. I saw his brown irises grow black with a sudden hatred. Andrew lunged over the seat and I bolted from the front of the bus. I barely got to the middle of the bus before Andrew was trying to take a swing at Toner. I pushed my shoulder into his gut, causing the teenager to stumble backwards and cough. He looked up at me with reddened eyes. I held one arm out in his direction and one in Toner’s in attempts to keep them apart.

            “That was uncalled for,” I said to Toner. He shrugged his shoulders and sat back down.

            Andrew stood back up and fell back into the seat where Destiny was. The petite girl put her arms around his neck as he lay down in her lap, his arms holding onto his stomach as he groaned. I waited a few minutes to see if either of them had some impudent comment to make before turning back down the aisle. I cast my eyes over the other three who had been quiet this whole time. Lainey, Hannah, and Brandon all held the same baffled expression. I had been quiet in high school, looked up to because I was smart and kind, motherly and caring. I had no enemies, but I also had no voice, so to see me verbally irate and get in between a football player and a fiery tempered young man was a completed unexpected action on my part.

            “Was that too much?” I murmured as I neared Brittany.

            She looked up at me and shook her head, then gave me a thumbs-up. “No, you did great.”

            I nodded in response and when I looked back up, there was another woman staring back at me. I froze, my eyes equally transfixed on her as hers were on me. There was a woman standing in front of the bus, less than a yard away from the front bumper. Her hair was brown, falling alongside her narrow face in straight and greasy strands. The irises of her eyes were swollen and fogged over. Her teeth were stained yellow. She was wearing a collared brown dress, the material frayed at the bottom. But what stood out the most was her nose, and how it was nothing more than two boney slits the dripped blood down her chin. Her slender fingers were flexing. Her jaw was cracking. She was snapping her jaw open and closed, like they all had done before.

            “I don’t think that’s a Halloween costume,” Brittany whispered behind me. She was peaking her head over the seat, as though hiding her body would make her less vulnerable.

            “She’s not moving,” I whispered back. For some reason, her presence made me fearful of talking too loud, as though maybe if she couldn’t hear me, she wouldn’t be able to see me either.

            “You have to go,” stated Brittany, her fingers pushing gently into my lower back.

            I locked my legs, not wanting to get closer to the woman despite the thick layer of glass and machinery between us. “I’ll hit her.”

            “You’re going to have to.”

            “But she’s not moving. What if she’s not one of them?”

            There was movement in the trees a few yards ahead. The woman’s attention was not altered, but ours was. My voice escaped me as a group of slow moving people emerged into the ditch. They were all walking slow and sluggish, their bodies decaying at a drastically accelerated rate.

            “Audrey, you have to go,” breathed Brittany. She grabbed me by the shoulders and pushed me into the driver’s seat. I gripped the wheel shakily.

            I tapped the gas peddle and the bus moved forward slightly. The woman didn’t move. I accelerated again, this time stopping just before the bumper hit the woman’s knees. To the left, the massive hoard was growing closer.

            “Audrey, go!”

            My foot slammed down. A loud thud erupted as the yellow exterior hit the woman. Her head bounced back off of the hood. She fell back, disappearing under the bus as I drove forward. The wheels ran over her, her body crumpling into a warped ball as she got tossed under the vehicle. I bounced up and down on my seat until we were driving on smooth ground once more. I didn’t dare look behind me. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to stomach what I had just done, even if she was the type of creature that Brandon had claimed her to be.

            My nails rattled against the wheel as my hands shook. I drove on in silence, narrowly missing the hoard that hadn’t made any acknowledgment to what had just happened. Brittany rubbed my shoulders before falling back into her own seat. No one said a word after that. Brandon and Harry didn’t bother with their game, and Andrew and Toner kept their quarrel to themselves. I had never been the type to easily vomit, but within the last few minutes, I had come close to twice.

            “They took back roads the whole way. They never went near the city,” Brittany randomly spoke. “If we continue the way they came, we won’t have to worry about…you know.”

            I did know. I knew exactly what she meant. West Point was less than an hour away from New York City, so if we followed signs to the city and drove north, we would get home. But after what he had spent the last several hours witnessing, trying to drive through the city in case there was an outbreak there, too, was the last thing that I wanted to do.

            “Why did they take us all the way to Ohio,” I murmured. “If they were only going to just bring us back to New York?”

            “Maybe they didn’t. Maybe this whole thing is just a game and they were driving in circles,” suggested Brittany.

            “I highly doubt that. It’s all just too much of a coincidence. The kidnapping and then these dead looking things showing up. The nine of us don’t even have anything in common to be sold on the Black Market as a group,” I said.

            “Aside from me, you all are children of American soldiers. Perhaps they took us for that reason.”

            “Then why bring up the Black Market? Why not hold us for ransom and make some deal with the government?”

            “They could have been. Or maybe there was a foreign buyer on the Black Marker who wanted the children of American soldiers as a trade for whatever this virus is,” my best friend said in a hushed tone. “And maybe Mildred was trying to weasel out a better deal which caused her own death with whatever was in that room with her last night.”

            “Maybe the Black Market only comes to town every couple of years. You know, like the Olympics. And we just had to sit tight until then,” a third voice chimed in.

            Brittany and I looked up to see Toner climbing over the bus seats. He dropped down into the one behind Brittany and hung his long arms over the top. He smiled, leisurely.

            “You know the aisle was empty, right?” I said with a cocked brow.

            “Uh huh,” Toner nodded, his idiot smile still plastered across his face.

            “Never mind,” I muttered.

            “Toner, could you please excuse us,” Brittany politely asked. “We are in the middle of a private conversation.”

            “Sure thing, mama dos.” He didn’t argue, which was somewhat surprising. He just climbed his tall body back over the seats until he had returned to the one by the emergency exit. Brittany and I exchanged amused looks via the rear view mirror before continuing on with our conversation in hushed whispers.

            “There is no way that the Black Market is like the Olympics,” she snorted. I just smiled.

            The scenery was growing more and more familiar. My ears began to pop as we started to drive up the mountain that led into Highland Falls, the town just outside of West Point. There were cars scattered along the narrow old town roads. The pavement was covered in bodily fluids, but there were no actual bodies to claim them. We continued down West Point Highway, the road that was parallel to Main Street. I looked over the trail of flowers and trees that parted the two streets.

            We drove by the Ice Cream Shop, where my family used to get frozen yoghurt after school. It was a popular first job for many students that attended my James I. O’Neill High School. Then we passed Dong Fong, the favorite Asian buffet where my father and I would spend time together. It was there that I discovered the magic of soy sauce and their mushroom soup. My grandfather would normally dump half a Kikkoman’s glass jar of the sauce into his bowl. There was a bank, florist, and market. Then The Park Restaurant and Schade’s Restaurant, two competing but amazing places to eat. And to the right, one the other side of the road and just before the Thayer Gate to West Point, there was a McDonalds. I remember how amazed I was in learning that they delivered. For the one year that my family had lived here, there were already so many unforgettable locations full of memories.

            There had been a police station in town, on Main Street, but the town had seemed so empty that we didn’t bother making a stop there when we were just a few yards shy of our home. I slowed the bus down as we approached Thayer Gate. It had always reminded me of the drawbridges just outside of castles. The gate was not much of a gate at all but more like an old stone wall on either side of the two lanes entering and exiting the base. In between the two lanes was a two-story stone portico with an eagle and crest design at the top. The once yellow reflective dividers were now knocked over, and it was clear that a barrier of sandbags had been attempted.

            There was a sudden slam against the bus that made us all jump. I jerked my foot from off the brake and the bus came to an abrupt halt. The others screamed upon seeing what had thrown itself against the bus. One of those bloody and decaying creatures was at the door. Its teeth were rattling against the glass of the doors in a poor attempt at entering. Had this bus been full, the sudden shift in weight as the kids all jumped into the left side of the seats would have probably caused the large vehicle to tip.

            The creature was then pulled back as a hand grabbed at its soldier. We all watched with big eyes as a man spun the creature around and shot him straight in the gut. As the creature crumbled to the ground, the man knocked it in the head repeatedly with the butt of his weapon until bits of bone and brain were sprinkled against his black boots. I recognized this man. He was middle aged and one of the West Point Security Guards. The black jacket that he wore had the triangular badge with a blade behind a Trojan helmet. His face was long and hollow. It was peppered with stubble, breaking the standards for appearance. Our eyes connected. I squinted a bit as his eyelids flickered. He looked sad almost, regretful like he knew who were where, what had happened to us, and what we were coming home to. I had seen him at this gates many times prior, but I didn’t even know his name. I had always just thought that he was an a*****e.

            There was a high pitched scream and a dash of darkness ran out from the trees that lined the sidewalk. A rather agile creature, still with most of its graying skin, jumped onto the back of the guard. I let out a petrified and low gasp as I watched the guard struggle. The creature locked its arms around the man’s neck and its legs swung around and knocked him in the gut. The guard spun around, pulling the creature over him by the neck. He pushed the creature back before shooting it in the head with the shotgun in his hand.

            Once more our eyes connected. He took a step forward towards the best and held out the gun. He walked until his arm was just a foot from the door. I reached down for the lever.

            “Audrey, don’t,” shrieked Brittany. “You don’t know what he wants.”

            I slowly turned to my best friend. “He’s on our side. He’s been standing at that gate protecting these military families for who knows how long. I don’t think anything is going to change that.”

            I could see the fear in my best friend’s face as I opened the door. The guard lowered the weapon. He leaned forward, his eyes still on mine. I was confused as he placed the shotgun on the steps and then backed away. It wasn’t until I saw his full appearance that I realized why he wasn’t going to join us on the bus. There was a tear along his right arm. The creature that had jumped on his back had managed to rip the man’s sleeve and puncture his almond skin so that a few tendons and scraps of skin were hanging off his muscles. He reached for the pistol in his belt.

            The guards who stood at these gates every day and every night carried two weapons: a 12 gage pump shotgun, which was now laying on the steps of the bus at my feet, and a 9mm baretta, which the man now had aimed at his temple. He had raised it slow, as if cherishing his last few moments as a sane being and motioning a slight salute. I jumped and the girls on the bus screamed as he pulled the trigger. The suns rays shown through the light spray of blood that remained in the air as the man hit the pavement.

            “Audrey, don’t you dare,” my best friend warned again. I hadn’t listened to her the first time, so I wasn’t sure why she had bothered to say it again a second time.

            I took a step down and over the shotgun. I stuck my head outside of the bus doors and looked both ways. I saw nothing. Looking ahead, I also saw no rushed movement through the trees. I wasn’t sure how smart these things were, or if any part of their brain worked at all. I had a quick flashback to the first Jurassic Park film, where the velociraptors had outwit Muldoon by hunting in a pack and attacking. But I knew that the pistol at the man’s feet would be a vital asset to our survival. I jumped onto the pavement and snatched the weapon up before charging back into the bus and slamming the doors closed. I turned to see my best friend scowling at me with folded arms. She could be so maternal at times.

            I could feel all of their stares as I drove through Thayer Gate. The door to the portico was open and I could see another guard laying on the ground, half propped up against a chair. His eyes were open, frozen in terror, and his chest looked like it had been eaten out. I quickly altered my attention to the second gate. Normally, one man would check the licenses of those driving in and then a bit down Thayer Road past Thayer Hotel on the right, there would be another man waiting in a booth to enter a code that lowered the cement barriers. I saw that the barriers were still up and knew that I wouldn’t have the time, patience, or nerve to fiddle around with discovering a code, which meant that the only way I could get the bus inside was by going the opposite way on the roundabout circling Buffalo Soldiers Field. Along this field were several parked cars outside of the long stone buildings where the West Point Post Library, West Point FMWR Bowling Center, and US Post Office buildings were.

            Making the executive decision to break standard driving etiquette, I made an abrupt left and began driving along the field. It was a large athletic field named in honor of the Black American troops of the Ninth and Tenth U.S. Calvary Regiments in the nineteenth century. However, now it was just a field with a name where less than a dozen creatures were sluggishly meandering across the lifeless grass. They didn’t seem to take any interest in the large vehicle slowly making its way along the edge of the field. They moved so irregular and leisurely that they almost seemed to pose no threat. But that didn’t seem to occur to Destiny as she suddenly sprang up from her seat. Before I had time to even consider stopping the bus, the black soles of her silver flats where tapping along the aisle as she bolted towards the front of the bus. Her hand pushed down on the lever and she jumped down all three steps where she landed roughly in the grass.

            “Destiny!” I screamed, slamming down on the brakes.

            The small fourteen-year-old troubled adolescent girl looked back at me with wide, tear stained eyes. Her pin straight brown hair blew in the slight breeze as she stood there with balled fits. It was not a defiant act, but a desperate one. It was then that the creatures meandering around seemed to care about our presence. They sluggishly began walking in her direction. The others stood on the bus, pressing their noses against the glass windows, now on the opposite site of the bus that they had all previously ran to. Andrew came to the front of the bus. I put my arm out, blocking his path as he tried to walk down the steps.

            “Audrey,” the boy said with a suddenly low and mature tone. “She is sick, suicidal at times. Has been for months now. These ones are slow. Just give her a minute to play.”

            “To what?” I hissed in disgust.

            “We have been stuck on a bus for almost a week. We want to stretch our legs. You have a weapon now. Be a mother and watch us from the steps,” Andrew said.

            I couldn’t tell if he was intentionally trying to be rude or just trying to get me to see this situation in another perspective, but all that was going through my mind at that moment was how would I be able to keep them safe if they were out there playing.

            “I want to do that, too,” my sister said.

            Her choice surprised me. I had seen her cheer many times at high school games. She was fit, her core was strong. But I doubted her ability and endurance when it came to running. I looked from her and to the others. They didn’t need to voice their opinions for me to know that they wanted to run across the field, weave through this creatures, all while having full trust in my ability to protect them. I looked down at the shotgun and the pistol that I had kicked under the driver’s seat. I had never fired one before. And although I must have looked composed to all of them, I was beyond terrified inside.

            “Audrey, please,” Brandon said. “It’s like all of the mental ones decided to congregate here today. Look how clumsy they are.”

            He was right. I hadn’t seen ones like these before. Some of them were dressed as Cadets, their uniforms now soiled and hanging from their bones. A few others looked like Civilians. I sucked in a shaky breath before moving aside so that they could walk by. Andrew, Brandon, Lainey, Toner, Harry, and Hannah all got off the bus. Brittany looked up at me from where she remained sitting on her knees in the seat behind the driver’s seat. I wordlessly picked up the shotgun. I looked it over and ran my tongue over my dry lips. I walked down until my toes were sticking over the last step and at age seventeen I played mother.

            For the first time in a week, I heard these children laugh. They were running across the field, their legs stretching as they darted past one creature after the next. The dead would swing their arms out, grunting almost in frustration as they failed to grab the living. For a moment I envied the freedom that these children felt. Their worry and fear had been briefly taken over by this instant of fun. There were times where I got nervous if one of the kids got too close to a creature. My sweaty palms would grip the shotgun and I would stop breathing for a moment.

            Brittany did her best to keep me sane, her brown eyes scanning the field just as rapidly as my green ones where. The desire to find a police station, to go back home, to see our parents, had briefly been replaced by the current longing to just feel free, to feel the cool autumn wind against their skin. And for a brief, solitary moment, there was a calmness in my heart.

            While the others ran around, I noticed Hannah’s body still as she came across a form laying in the grass. She was about a third of the field away from the bus. I narrowed my eyes to try to see what she was staring at. She had drifted from the group and was out there seemingly alone.

            “Alright, guys, just a few more minutes and then we should keep moving on,” I called out. But Hannah didn’t seem to hear. I looked towards Brittany. “I’ll be right back. Something’s not right.”

            In high school, Hannah Barns would have been that cute little freshman girl that every bad boy would want to corrupt. She was modest, holding morals and values that most girls her age would have never considered. By age eleven, she had the intellectual understanding of a person three times her age. And much to my surprise, she had a great interest in bugs and for the longest time has held the desire to be an entomologist. She had her quirks.

            As I approached her now, having darted past a few creatures whose interests had veered from the original wanderers, I could see how rigid her body had become. She was looming over a corpse of a man. It was still moving, but couldn’t seem to go anywhere as more than half of its body was missing. He was wearing an officer’s uniform. Both of his clouded eyes were still intact, seemingly the only part of his body that was.

            “Hannah…” I murmured gently as not to frighten her.

            The small girl didn’t move at all. Instead, she looked down as the figure slowly rolled its head. Her face was emotionless. Her eyes mirrored his dead ones. Little gurgles were coming from his vacant throat.

            “It’s my father,” whispered Hannah.

            My stomach churned. “Oh, Hannah…”

            My paused condolences were silenced by the unexpected attack of hysteria that befell the young girl. She dropped to her knees, tears falling from her eyes as she began to choke on her own screams. Her hands hovered over her father’s shredded body. Her fists shook and I could tell that she was struggling with holding back touching him. She was reaching out to her father in such desolation while he reached back in hunger. Her reaction to that shattering divide of need was beyond devastating.

            And then it made me wonder which one would I be? Would I cry and scream and need someone strong to pull me away? Or would I just walk off with silent tears falling down my cheeks. Who would I see that would tell me which one I am? For Hannah, it had been her father. She was the catastrophic one and it was then that I dropped the shotgun, realizing that I would need to be the strong one to try to pull the girl away.

            “No, no, no!” she was crying.

            “Help me!” I called over my shoulder to no one in particular.

            Toner and Harry were quickly at my side. They each took a hold of the ecstatic girl as I picked back up the shotgun. We turned to face the creatures that had once scattered about. They had now all come together in one group with one target.

            “Go to the bus!” I called out, waving to the others. Lainey, Brandon, Destiny, and Andrew all raced across the field to where Brittany was waiting for them on the bus steps.

             Hannah was fighting hard. Toner and Harry were struggling to keep a hold of her squirming body. Sweat was beginning to drip between my fingers across the barrel of the shotgun. My heartbeat was pumping so fast that I wondered if that was what had drawn the group of creatures in our direction. We were moving slow, Hannah’s fit causing us to slow down.

            “Shoot them, Audrey!” roared Toner. Hannah almost punched him in the eye and he adjusted his hold on her arms.

            I looked down at the shotgun, fearful. All I knew was to pull the trigger. I didn’t know what the terminology was, how to aim, or even how to reload. I held the shotgun by my waist and pulled the trigger. A round flew out so fast that it took off one of the creature’s legs right at the knee. He fell, but continued to pull himself along the ground. The pressure from the recoil made me loose my breath as the butt sprang back into my stomach.

            “Audrey!” Toner cried again.

            I tried correcting my posture but was in so much pain. I aimed the shotgun up, this time making sure that the back end wasn’t close to my body. I shot at the next creature, this time sending a round right through its jaw and out the top of its head. She crashed to the floor, dead for sure. The shotgun flew from my hand with such force that it felt like my hand went with it. I grabbed it’s shoulder strap and awkwardly ran alongside the boys with Hannah. We made it to the bus before the other creatures could get to us.

            Brittany pulled the bus doors shut and I threw the gun to the ground before falling into a seat. I was clutching my stomach, it hurt so bad. I was still struggling to catch back my breath. Brittany looked back at me through the rear view mirror with fearful eyes as she began driving.

            “What’s wrong?” she said. “Did they get you?”

            “No,” I rasped, my head hitting the window as she went over a speed bump. “Damn recoil.”

            Hannah’s screams had dulled to sniffles. I could hear my sister hushing her, cooing in her ear as she ran her skeletal fingers through the girl’s hair. They were born only a few months apart, not friends at all, never once having spoken to each other.

            “I don’t know where I’m going,” Brittany said.

            “Head up Mills Road,” I croaked. “Some of us live past Stoney Lonesome and the other half past Merrit.”

            I had never been good with road names, my aids for traveling being landmarks such as McDonalds or a broken fence. I had always wondered what I would remember in a traumatic event and to suddenly be able to recollect road names was somewhat a minor accomplishment in my mind.

            “Take a right,” I said as we passed Michie Stadium where I used to ogle at all of the Cadets in their spandex football uniforms. “Andrew lives on Schofield Place.”

            I’m not sure what procedures the authorities of West Point take during traumatic events, but the roads of the base where surprisingly clear. It made me wonder whether all occupants had been evacuated early on or the virus had spread so rapidly that there was no time for people to be scared. Either way, there were only a few inconsequential roadblocks down each road.

            Brittany pulled up alongside a brick house. Many of the residential buildings in West Point where old, large structures made of brick or stone. They held so much character and makeup. As I looked over the teenager’s house, Andrew walked down the aisle. He looked down at me crumpled in the seat and held out his hand. I looked up at him, questioningly.

            “I need the pistol,” he clarified.

            “What for?” I asked.

            The boy huffed. “I’m not walking out there unarmed. Anything could be in my house.”

            “I’m not giving you that, Andrew. You have five minutes to pack a bag. If you see anything just drop it and run,” I responded.

            Andrew scowled at me. “Whatever,” he said before going down the steps. “Stupid b***h.”

            Brittany opened the doors and immediately shut them after the boy walked out. She then turned in her seat to look down at me to make sure that his snide remark hadn’t affected me at all. It hadn’t. It just made me respect parents more for having to deal with teenagers. If adults could handle attitudes like that for a decade or so, then I could handle it for a few days.

            His concerns must have been for naught, as he came barreling back out of the house four minutes later with a lumpy military green knapsack. He glared at me as he got back on the bus. He stormed to the very back and took a seat. He then pulled an iPod from the knapsack and put blue Beats ear buds into his ears. I could hear the angry music all the way at the front of the bus. It made me wonder where his priorities had been as had he packed. And then I thought to myself, had I just experienced my first teenage tantrum?