Lockey vs. the Apocalypse by Meadows, Carl (7 ebook reader TXT) 📗

only trained shooter at the school as Sarah was new to it, and he wasn’t going to abandon them and move here. It didn’t make sense to move them all out of there and cram them into our smaller space.

We glossed over that decision for now and to her credit, despite their reunion, Maria said she wasn’t going to just move to the school today. She still had responsibilities and we could all talk about the future in the days to come.

After they hung out with us for a couple of hours, we gave them some food and medical supplies, gave them a vehicle to get them home – the black Astra we took from Shooty McFuckface at the court building - and they went back to Crenshaw before their people started panicking about their absence.

Tomorrow, we’re all going to Crenshaw. All of us. There are eight here, so we’re going in a convoy of three. Nate will drive the Humvee, taking Isaac, Mark, and Charlie. Alicia will drive the van loaded up with some more supplies we’re going to take them, with Norah as her passenger. I’ll be driving our trusty pickup, with Maria and Particles riding shotgun.

It should be an interesting day, I think. And likely quite awkward when the moving question comes up again.

I’m happy as a pig in shit right now, because everyone I consider as family are alive and well. That’s just bloody awesome.

However, I do think this is going to change the dynamic of the lodge completely. I’m certain it’s a given that Isaac will move to the school, and honestly, I’m okay with that. The two of us having distance will do everyone a power of good.

I can’t see how Maria wouldn’t move in the next few days either. She’s got her husband back, and her goddaughter. She’s been around since Sarah was born. They’ve known her way longer than me.

That’s going to be two definite moving out of the lodge, which actually saddens me. This is my home now, the first place I’ve really felt was home. It was great having my own flat for four months, but home is really where the people most important to you are. Home isn’t really a place, it’s people, I guess.

But this lodge has so much significance for me that moving out just doesn’t feel right for the moment. For one thing, Freya, this is where you’re buried. Moving away would feel like an abandonment of your memory somehow. Shrug.

Mark’s skills might be of more use over there, and where Mark goes, so does Charlie. Personally, I think Alicia will be wherever Nate is. She wants to be a warrior, and there’s no better teacher than our resident one-man army.

There’s a very real possibility that our lodge might reduce to just me, Nate, Alicia, Norah, and of course Particles.

So today has been somewhat bittersweet, I think. It’s amazing, and I wouldn’t change it at all, Freya.

But I also think it signals the beginning of a new phase for us. And an end.

Anyway, there’s no point in dwelling now. It’s been a tiring day emotionally, and we’ve got some further discussions to have with Dean about those people. From the brief garble he did about them, they sound like a cult of nutters, but suggested there were hundreds of them. And they talked about their leader commanding the dead, which is all kinds of weird.

Either way, we’re going to the school tomorrow for a tour, to meet our new allies, and to have further discussions about these heavily armed lunatics calling themselves the Children of the Resurrection.

Well, that’s not a creepy name at all, is it?

Night night, Freya. Wish you were here.

PART 3

DREAMS OF LIGHT AND DARK

NOVEMBER 5th, 2010

CHANGES

Remember, remember, the fifth of November. It should be Bonfire Night, or to give it the correct title, Guy Fawkes Night, where we staunch, stiff-upper lipped Brits celebrate the failure of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament during its state opening. We give pennies to our children who have constructed effigies of the conspirator for whom the day is named, which we later cheer and toss on a huge fire so we can watch them burn.

I mean, how fucked up is that when you consider it? Yay, our children are burning effigies of a national traitor from four centuries ago! Go us!

Parliament declared a national holiday, first celebrated a year later, to mark foiling a plot to kill the king and parliament as a reprisal for oppression of Roman Catholics in England. Hearts and minds of a peace-loving God, eh?

“We don’t like how your religion is oppressing our religion, so we’re going to blow you the fuck up!”

“Oh yeah! Well fuck you, we caught you out, so we’re going to burn your ass, then make all our children celebrate it for the rest of time! Sucks to be you, Guy!”

Not much changed for the next four centuries. Religion has a lot to answer for.

Actually, not fair. Dean is religious, and he doesn’t want to start wars on Muslims, or Sikhs, or Buddhists, or other denominations of the Christian faith. That’s the kind of religion I’m okay with. You do you, but don’t tell everyone else to follow the teachings of something that gets all the credit when something goes right, and when something goes wrong, it’s all just part of a plan. I’m not sure I can get behind a plan as to why somebody’s four-year old just died of leukemia, or there are diseases ripping entire third world countries apart along with famine and drought. Assholes live to their nineties, when good people are struck down before their time by cancer, or heart failure, or something else from the litany of things that can stop our clocks.

Okay, Lockey, time to get off the soapbox. That was meant to be a jovial opening to my entry, and instead I went off at an oblique tangent. Long story short, I have