Chapter 25

The most immediate issue that Bryan needed to address was the extra people. There was Sean and Annie Callahan and their three daughters, Josephine, Olivia, and Ashley.

In addition there was Brenda, Annie's sister, and her husband Jeff. They had no children of their own but she was reportedly expecting, though there was supposedly seven months to go.

Derek of course would need special care and space for a while if he managed to pull through. His girlfriend Cassie was by all accounts nine months pregnant and ready to pop at practically any moment. She also had her fifteen year old brother Billy with her, who was trying hard to keep his big sister from completely falling apart.

Introductions were fleeting and hurried, as Bryan worked to take stock of what he was dealing with. His mental calculations in hand he ended up with a figure that made him grimace a bit. He now had an additional six adults, one teenager, and three children under the age of ten. The fourteen acre farm was getting awfully crowded and would not be able to sustain them all through the winter.

As it was there were now thirteen adults, five teenagers, and eight children ages ten or under. Twenty-six people. Twenty-six mouths to feed. Twenty-six beds. Twenty-six personalities to get tied up and tangled up and fight over inconsequential things. Twenty six people to keep alive. Twenty-six people's fates hanging in Bryan's incapable hands.

Bryan suddenly had a pain. It felt like a large rock had suddenly been dumped into the pit of his stomach. He excused himself and vomited behind the shed, nerves and pressure finally getting the best of him.

There was so much to do, so many things to find out. Just making a list of them all seemed a daunting task. The worst bit seemed that no matter how he sliced it they had no way of keeping the group together and fed with the growing capacity of the farm. It all seemed pointless. There were too many mouths to feed. They were all going to starve if the coming winter proved to be a bad one. If they didn't starve, then they would have to kick some people out into the cold ... He rubbed his forehead in anguish.

First there was the obvious issue with what had happened to Derek. No one as of yet had said much on the subject. Then there was the ultimate issue at hand as to what had happened to Sean and Derek's mother and their family farm. Clearly something had happened to her and there was the question of whether she was alive or not. Clearly someone had broken into and ransacked the house; but who? Were they still in the area? Where they a threat?

What was going on in the world out there? How were home invasions getting overlooked? How had any of it escaped the news? How safe were things outside the gate?

He suddenly felt very caged, very trapped, yet secure in his own property. "Agoraphobia," his mind spit out automatically. "The fear of leaving a safe place."

The need to know the answers without the willpower to find them was disconcerting him. He felt powerless, unable to focus or concentrate. His mind wandered to all sorts of worst case scenarios for himself, for the farm, for his family, for the people he had vowed to save and protect ... They came at him rapid fire as a sort of high speed nightmare-scape. He felt a weight of pressure upon his chest and shoulders, as if another person were sitting on his shoulders, or twenty-five people to be exact. His heart and lungs seemed to burn as the panic and anxiety drove his vital signs toward oblivion. It was the body's own suicide routine, designed to kill itself if the mind simply could not handle the outcome of its conditions and these conditions were quickly becoming unbearable.

The questions piled deeper and deeper, building up a mountain of anxiety. Sometime around three o'clock the effects simply overwhelmed him and he went to the house, feeling light headed and disoriented.

Silver was putting together the ingredients for the meal that night and with the additional people, had been forced to recalculate. She watched as Bryan came in and wordlessly walked through the house; a strange enough action of its own regard. It did happen however, when he was preoccupied so she waited. When he did not return after a few minutes, she began to wonder about him.

Maggie had been helping her prepare the evening meal and knew the routine mostly by heart as well, so Silver left her to get started while she checked on Bryan. Something was clearly wrong because he didn't typically walk through the house when she was home without stopping caress her cheek, kiss her, embrace her, or at least slap her butt on the way by. He had, however, walked through as if she had not even been there, his face quite troubled.

Silver found him in his normal spot. He had gotten undressed and had crawled into bed. Hidden from view by the blankets he had curled into the fetal position and was shivering as if he were freezing cold.

Silver had not seen him act in such a manner since they had first been married, when he had been known to have violent flashbacks of his previous life involving his ex-wife. She got undressed and slid under the covers with him, spooning his shivering form and wrapping him tightly in her arms.

After a time he succumbed to the skin contact and the body pressure and his breathing slowed somewhat. Silver rocked back and forth, using the rhythm and her slower breathing to get him to match her breathing and relax. A short time later he stopped shivering and relaxed from the fetal position, letting his legs stretch out. Silver rubbed her fingers through his hair and scratched at his scalp with her nails for a while, an action that she knew was sedative to him and would help bring him around after a bit.

Finally, after nearly an hour of relaxation and breathing therapy, he spoke.

"We have too many people here," he said simply. Silver did not change her expression, choosing to remain passive instead.

"We have no place for an additional ten people and two more on the way," he groaned. "IF Derek makes it through the night..." Silver nodded solemnly.

"We need to investigate the goings on outside the wall, both with the Callahan family farm, and further abroad. Nobody's been to town in almost a week. I should check to see if everything is running business as usual ... or not." Neither of them cared to think what "or not" meant.

For another twenty minutes they simply laid there, enjoying the quiet of the moment and their shared warmth. On a normal day Bryan would have simply stayed in bed and likely Silver would have too. He had an oppressive headache and likely would for a few more hours, a result of the excessive blood pressure from the panic attack. However, there was no rest to be had for the weary.

"I'm sorry I melted down on you," he said. She smiled as she rubbed his scalp a bit more and kissed him on the cheek.

"It's what we do," she said. "You were strong when I needed you to be. I was strong when you needed me to be. That's just the way we are." He found himself unable to argue with her logic so smiled and said nothing.

Slowly, grudgingly, they climbed from beneath the blankets and put their clothes back on. They shared a brief embrace, but knew that it had to be brief before the work they were supposed to be doing piled up.

"Meet you back here sometime after dark?" Bryan asked quietly, almost pleadingly.

She smiled. "I wouldn't go anywhere else," she replied. He nodded. "As it is now, I've got to go cook for an army and Maggie can't handle that all by herself."