Chapter 48

They planned to bury her in the graveyard, but Grace pleaded to pick the spot. Fulton carried her body through the woods, leading a small procession that included Grace, Amelia, and Abby, as well as Michelle and Olivia. Endora Lynn Hardin was laid to rest beneath the shade of a dense grove of beech trees, near the grassy bank of a shallow brook lined with tiny pebbles. Amid a bed of golden leaves, Grace kneeled and shook with grief as she laid a small bundle of flowers upon her lover’s grave.

Fall blooms, tied with a simple piece of twine.

For several days after, Grace refused to leave her bunk, despite how cold and empty it felt without Endora there to warm it up. Everywhere she looked, she saw reminders of her. Her toothbrush in the sink, her clothes in the closet, the view of Leavitt Hall from their bunk room window. She wanted to remove it all so that the pain would go away, but she couldn’t bear to part with even a single article that Endora may have touched. The grief she felt for the loss of her first true love was nearly unbearable.

Abby and Amelia did their best to console her and offer comfort, but it only caused Grace to withdraw even further. With the emancipation movement now behind them, the two girls began wearing clothes again, but not all the time. In the privacy of the bunk room, they preferred to wear very little, or nothing at all. Something they did to honor Endora.

Then, one day, while Grace sulked and wept in bed, there came a knock at her door.

“Sorry if I’m intruding.”

It was Olivia Redding. Grace rolled out of bed and stood. She’d received no visitors since Endora’s death, and didn’t want any, but she knew how close Endora had been with the girls on the fourth floor.

“No. Please, come in.”

Olivia surveyed the bunkroom as she entered. “Wow, you guys have a lot of room in here,” she said. “It’s pretty tight upstairs without bunkbeds.” Then she acknowledged Grace’s red, puffy eyes and wet cheeks. “How are you doing?”

The question nearly made her burst into tears, but she managed to hold it in, though her voice wavered when she responded. “The best I can.”

Olivia lowered her head and nodded. “Yeah. She was something else, wasn’t she?”

Then Grace did cry. A heart wrenching sob into her hand, but she managed to nod her agreement. “She was...”

Tears formed in Olivia’s eyes, and she wiped them with her fingers. Then she took a deep breath and crossed her arms.

“Look, I don’t like to beat around the bush, so I’m just going to ask what I came here to ask. Endora told me this was a place for ... special girls. Girls like you and her.” She paused and rolled her eyes. “Girls like us. She said there’d always be a place for me here, and I was just wondering if that was still true?”

Grace wiped her face and nodded, managing a weak smile for the first time in days. “Of course, Olivia. We’d love to have you here.”

As Kali made her way from the Copper Cove Clinic nurse’s office to the new ICU, with her nurse-trainee, Mia Clark, following close behind with a tray of bandages and antiseptic, she glanced at the patient chart in her hand. This wasn’t going to be easy, but it needed to be done.

The six patients from the terminal ward, and two from the ICU who succumbed to infection, now rested in peace beside their fellow classmates in the school’s ever-growing graveyard. A total of twenty-nine plots now filled the small clearing in the woods. Twenty-five deceased students and four fallen soldiers. Kali and Renata assisted the six terminal patients in their transition the day after Linda was killed. The two from the ICU followed them naturally a few days later.

Three other bodies were buried on the campus. Endora in the woods at the corner of the cove, and Linda and Kristin, side by side, in the garden behind what used to be her home.

Of the original thirty-nine patients, only eight remained in the ICU, now located in the second-floor bunk room previously occupied by the national guardsmen. Only half of those were expected to survive, and Kali was preparing to separate two of them into the new general ward they planned to create in Marcus’s bunk room, just as soon as they figured out where to move him.

Renata was given sole possession of the dormitory supervisor’s bedroom after Kali and Mike permanently moved into Charmagne’s house behind the campus. The large, king bed felt so empty without her, and they both missed her terribly.

Which is why they were excited that she would be coming home tomorrow, to complete her recovery in her own bed.

Although she’d assisted on a few gunshot wound surgeries before, during her deployment to Afghanistan, Kali had never wielded the knife herself. With Eric’s assistance, they carried Charmagne into the kitchen to prep her for surgery. Kali administered a broad-spectrum antibiotic and an IV, then began sterilizing her tools, none of which were entirely appropriate for the task. Meanwhile, Eric referred to a blood-type chart Kali and Renata had put together shorty after Kali’s arrival. He fireman-carried the unconscious students whose type matched Charmagne’s into the kitchen to begin drawing blood.

Charmagne was already sedated, which was fortunate. After debriding the wound, Kali followed the tract with her gloved finger until she located the bullet, then used a pair of sterilized needle nose pliers to carefully extract it. Charmagne bled profusely, and getting clamps on the damaged blood vessels and suturing them proved far more difficult than she ever imagined. Everything was slippery with blood, and she had no means of suction. Only Eric to squeeze sterilized water from a sports bottle into the wound.

Although she ultimately saved Charmagne’s life, Kali butchered her insides as she cut deeper and deeper to reach all the damaged areas, causing nearly as much damage as the bullet itself. This is what Kali needed to discuss with her, and why she’d been putting it off for a week.

“How’s our patient?” Kali asked with a smile, leaning over to give her a kiss. Charmagne’s hand went to her breast, but Kali gently pulled it away. “None of that. You’re resting.”

“Well, I’m fucking horny,” Charmagne said with a wicked little smile of her own. The pain medication made her voice sound thick and syrupy. “Can’t even get myself off.”

“You need to keep your hands away from that area, Charmagne. I’m not kidding. You could open something up or give yourself an infection.”

“It’d be worth it.”

Kali talked an embarrassed Mia through the process of checking and cleaning the wound site, and making sure the drainage tube they’d inserted was doing its job properly. When they finished rebandaging her, Kali asked for some privacy, and Mia disappeared back into the nurse’s office. Kali took Charmagne’s hand.

“I need to talk to you about something,” she said, and the seriousness of her expression and tone wiped the smile off Charmagne’s face.

“What’s the matter?”

“I’m not a surgeon. I didn’t even know what I was doing. Christ...”

She shook her head. This was so much harder than she thought it would be. Charmagne put her hand on Kali’s face.

“You saved my life. It don’t matter how you got it done. All that matters is that you did it.”

Kali put her hand over hers and turned her head to kiss her palm. Then she steeled herself and said it.

“I did so much damage, Charmagne. In the part of your body that holds your reproductive system. I saw organs down there I’d never seen before. I don’t have the training or the equipment to ever know the extent of the damage I caused you, but it’s possible I ruined any chance for you to ever have children.”

Charmagne’s face went slack and she moved her eyes away. Kali kissed her hand again, and rubbed her cheek against it.

“I’m so sorry.”

Charmagne looked at her. “You ain’t got a damned thing to be sorry for. You did everything you could. If I woulda died, I wouldn’t be having no babies anyhow. If that’s the price for living, then so be it.” She forced a smile. “Guess I’ll just have to be aunt Charmagne to your little ones.”

Kali laughed to hold back the cry that threatened. “Yeah, right. Don’t hold your breath.”

Chow time at the Camp Fitzhugh mess hall, otherwise known as Linda’s old dining room, was usually one of the best times of the day for the soldiers that lived in the house. It’s when the girlfriends and boyfriends came by to visit and spend a little time with their loved ones.

The soldiers requisitioned the four-bedroom house for use as an HHQ and a bunk house. Its proximity to the school’s entrance made it the ideal location for a second machine gun nest to supplement the one in the roost, which they installed in the attic, providing a clear line of sight to engage any vehicles travelling down Morgan Creek Road.

In fact, they put all four M240s into service, installing two other such nests in other areas of the campus. One on the fourth floor of Overton House, and another on the rooftop of the old fort. Between the four machine guns, they could deliver a withering amount of firepower to any portion of the cove, with overlapping fields of fire.

That evening at supper, the dining table was full. With Sayavong and Draper manning the lookout, Mike had come to visit with Alexis. Izzy and Ibarra came downstairs from the room they shared, as did PFC Skansi. Also at the table that evening were the three new recruits to Pollard’s Army. Privates Sophia Bryce, Zoe Peterson, and Ashley Henderson.

“Staff Sergeant told me she wants to start constructing a second observation post on the southern rim,” Fulton reported between bites. He’d become a bit of an aide-de-camp to her while she convalesced at home.

“The Defender should make that operation a whole lot easier,” Mike noted, pausing with his fork halfway into his open mouth when Alexis’s hand slipped underneath the table. His eyes shifted to look at her, then down into his lap.

Fulton, Ibarra, and Draper had gone with Mike on an expedition to secure better transportation for the Camp. The golf cart was great for tooling around the cove floor, but lacked the traction and power to make it up the steep mountainside. To solve this problem, they paid a visit to Carolina Power Sport, an ATV dealership just outside of Candler, where they liberated a pair of Can-Am Outlander quad bikes and a Defender side-by-side.

An absolute beast, the Defender was capable of hauling three-quarters of a ton, and had been Mike’s first priority to get running, with the quad bikes next up on his agenda. It had been a showroom model, modified for hunting, with black and camo body panels, a large roof rack, a gun rack, and a quick connect high seat in the bed. They mounted one of the M249s to the roof, turning it into a formidable killing machine.

The addition of the offroad vehicles meant they now needed gasoline as well as diesel, but they already had an ample supply. The eight cars and trucks parked on the campus held just over seventy gallons of gas combined, which would last them several months.

“We still need to figure out our costumes, mi amor,” Izzy said to Ibarra, referring to the Halloween costume party scheduled for the following Tuesday evening.

“I was thinking we should go as Han and Leia,” he said, and her eyes lit up.

“Oh my god, yes! I can go as Slave Leia!”

Ibarra tried to keep his grin under control. “Yeah, that would be cool.”

“What about you, Mike?” Alexis asked, her arm moving under the table. “What are you going as?”

Mike seemed a bit distracted and took a while to answer. “It’s a surprise,” he said at last. “You’ll just have to wait to find out.” He blew out a long breath and muttered, “Dear god.”

“Amelia said she’s planning to go as a school girl,” Izzy said, smirking at Fulton.

“Oh?” He kept his eyes down and shoveled food into his mouth. “Good for her.”

“Yeah. She asked me to tell you that she’d love it if you dressed up as a school teacher. She said something about needing a good, hard spanking.”

Ibarra nearly choked on his casserole, and everyone exchanged knowing looks and a few chuckles that quickly grew into loud, table-slapping laughter. Fulton glared at them with a mouthful of food and pointed his fork.

“Fuck each and every one of you.”

All Hallow’s Eve at Scirewood Academy and Camp Fitzhugh fell on an appropriately hazy night, with a mostly-full waning moon hanging in the sky above the eerie, shimmering aurora. A perfectly spooky atmosphere for what was gearing up to be a very sexy Halloween costume party.

The sexy part was insisted upon by Alexis as a way to celebrate the students’ new adult status when Theresa first suggested the party. Everyone was encouraged to wear something risqué, and nothing would be deemed too inappropriate. For example, the skimpy school girl outfits Grace and Amelia wore were some of the milder offerings on display. When Mike learned that those slutty outfits had been designed and constructed by Endora, he wasn’t surprised in the least.

The party was hosted at Overton House. With no palliative care unit, and the ICU now relocated to the second floor, the common areas were finally available for their intended purpose for the first time in weeks. The bed sheets used as cordons were removed, and the space cleaned up and sanitized, then decorated by the residents.

Libations were provided by Fulton and Adrián, from their seemingly endless supply of cheap beer. Exactly how many cases did those guys haul back that day? Mike wondered. They made five trips, and he estimated they could have squeezed eighteen cases into the Beast each time. Ninety cases? That would be well over two-thousand cans of delicious, shitty beer.

With Kali pulling sentry duty with Eric, and Charmagne still on the mend, Mike arrive at the dormitory stag, leaving the golf cart behind in case Charmagne needed to go somewhere. Two weeks post-surgery, she could move around the house fairly well on her own now, but she was in no shape to attend a party. Besides, she said, how do you turn a bad attitude into a costume?

He made quite an entrance stepping through the front entryway of Overton House. He’d gone old school. Shirtless with camouflage pants he borrowed from Eric, a red headband, one of the M249s with an ammo belt draped over his forearm, and his natural Italian heritage, he made for a convincing Rambo.

Dozens of girls catcalled and growled at him, though he doubted many of them understood the reference. Theresa, Rachel, and Marcus, who stood together in a small group talking, turned and screamed with laughter when they saw him.

“That’s amazing!” Theresa yelled, rushing over to give him a hug, and then a kiss that heated up quickly when her hands felt up his bare chest and abdomen. She was dressed as a farmer’s daughter, he guessed. Painted on freckles and overall shorts, with nothing on underneath.

Feeling far more confident these days, Marcus had on a black suit with the sleeves ripped off and a black tie, but no button down shirt underneath, showing off curly chest hair. Over the past two weeks, he’d intensified his exercise regimen, which now included bodyweight exercises, and continued to eat right, and it was paying dividends. He now weighed around two twenty-five.

He’d recently begun to shave his head bald as well, and the new look suited him. His costume had two other unusual pieces. Over his nose, he wore an odd prosthetic tied with a string around his head. Similar to a cat nose a girl might wear, which Mike saw plenty of around the room attached to sexy little kitties, but this one was different. It pressed his nose flat, and there were two thin slits drawn on it. In his hand, he held a small stick.

“Who are you supposed to be?” Mike asked, slipping his hand inside Theresa’s overalls to encircle her bare waist and pull her to his side. He braced the machine gun against his hip and held it upright, in what he thought was the manliest pose imaginable. The thing weighed a ton, though, and he’d have to set it down soon.

“A bad ass motherfucker you don’t want to mess with,” Marcus said with an evil chuckle.