Part 6 - May 20 Pine Ridge Hunter Gatherers

Sam tried to smile at the children. In a voice she hoped sounded positive, she said, “Well, I guess we should have some introductions.”

The children looked at her expectantly. She hesitated and wished she could run away. She had never learned to be comfortable with kids. She looked around. “Uh, you.” She looked straight at the boy Nancy had called AJ. “Mrs. Jackson called you AJ?”

AJ nodded. “Yeah, and this is Mike.” He tilted his head toward the boy beside him.

Sam nodded. “Oookaaay.” She let the two-letter affirmative trail on for about half a breath. She had no idea what to do with these kids.

A girl to her right raised her hand as if they were in a classroom and asked, “What’s your name?”

Sam looked up and thought, Uh, duh, yeah lady, what’s your name? She did her best to give the children a genuine smile and said, “Well, my name is Sam—Samantha Jorgensen. What’s yours?”

Then, by ones and twos, names flew at her as she scanned the faces of the children. Sam just kept listening, nodding, and making polite short answers, and noticed that this wasn’t going too badly. Sam didn’t particularly dislike kids; it was just that young humans were so alien to her. Give me my farm or wood babies; I can handle those.

A little red-haired girl spoke up. “Miss Sam, do you think there are more babies in those houses?” The girl pointed toward the small neighborhood.

Sam looked at the girl and then toward the houses and frowned. “What do you mean, more babies?” she asked.

The child explained how Mrs. Jackson had gone to look for help and found the baby, Mia, in one of the houses. Sam looked out across the silent neighborhood; a slight breeze was the only thing breaking the silence of the small town as the children looked up at her expectantly, waiting for her to make some decision. What had Nancy said? Just talk to them like you would talk to anyone else.

“Well, okay, let’s see what you think,” Sam said, looking around at the children. “If I was alone, I would go up and down the streets and listen—but if a baby was asleep, then I could miss it. So, what do you think? I can’t leave you here alone.”

The boy Mike spoke up. “We could go around like we were trick-or-treating and knock on doors.”

AJ added, “We could take turns going into each house and looking.”

Sam thought about Odell, Stuart, and Ted. “Listen, kids—uh, how much do you know about what is going on?” she asked. Shit, what a stupid question. These aren’t adults, Sam.

AJ spoke up. “Miss Sam, we know that people are frozen like vegetables for some reason. That’s why we’re all here.”

Sam smiled—from the mouth of babes—then said, “Look, kids, if you haven’t noticed, I’m not very good at this teacher stuff, and my name is just Sam.” She looked around, and the children smiled back.

One boy toward the back was grinning with the most blatantly wicked look of mischief on his face. “Don’t worry, Miss Sam, we’ll show you how it’s done. We know all the ins and outs. Rule one: you look the other way, and we just don’t get caught.” His two friends chuckled and looked at each other conspiratorially.

Sam raised her eyebrows. Thanks, Nancy. So, you left the most helpful for me? She locked eyes with the boys, crossed her arms in front of her chest, and gave them the same look she’d give a man at a bar to signal him to back off. “So what do you suggest we do?” she asked.

The boys, cowed by Sam’s expression, looked down and shrugged. Then the first boy said, “Mike’s idea sounds okay.”

Sam gave the boys a one-sided smirk and looked around. Some of the girls didn’t look as if they liked this idea, and one girl asked, “What if the bus comes back and we’re not here?”

“The neighborhood doesn’t look all that big,” Sam answered. “I think if we organize our search, we’ll be back in plenty of time. Plus, I think we’ll hear that old bus coming when my friend Carl gets back.” She looked across the road toward the neighborhood. “Does anyone know how many houses are in that neighborhood?”

“I can tell you how many streets,” AJ interjected. “They’ve only finished the first three streets. The contractor just started to build the next street for more houses this year.”

Sam nodded to herself. “Do you know how many houses are on each street?” she asked the boy.

“I do,” one of the boys in the group that had told her earlier to just look the other way offered. “There’s about eight houses on each street. I counted last Halloween when I was deciding where to trick-or-treat.”

Sam laughed. “Good reconnaissance. What’s your name?”

“I’m Jayden, and this is Ryan, and he’s Randy.” He pointed his thumb at his two friends.

The little kid seemed friendly enough.

Sam looked at the cluster of girls who were worried about missing the bus. “Here’s my thought: we start at the last street and work our way back this way. That way, if my friend Carl makes it back sooner, we’ll have worked our way back and be close enough to hear the bus when he returns.”

She waited for any objections. When there were none, she glanced at the girls, and they appeared less unhappy. “So this will give us something to do while we wait here. But what I’m still worried about is what you might see in some of the houses.”

The children were quiet.

“What—or how much—have you seen so far?” Sam asked.

A little blond girl said, “I saw my teacher Mrs. Hanson just stop and fall over on the floor.”

Sam looked at the other children. “You were all in school when this happened?” Most of the children nodded silently, while a few looked down at their feet and would not meet her eyes. “So all of you saw what this did to your teachers in class?”

Again, the children solemnly nodded, some mumbling replies.

A girl in her early teens spoke up. “Most of the kids in my class all froze. It was really creepy. I thought it was some stupid joke, but they wouldn’t stop it. I tried to wake Mrs. Jenkins up, but she just stared straight ahead like a zombie.”

Everyone was silent as Sam looked around at the faces. The shadows of their individual thoughts—fear and sadness—were reflected on their little faces. These kids had just witnessed a total upheaval of their world. They might not fully comprehend it yet, but the fact that something catastrophic had happened was now permanently stamped into their young minds, and they would have to deal with it. For now, they were dealing with the circumstances forced upon them.

Sam was amazed at how well these kids were responding to this traumatic situation and was starting to form a new opinion of “kids.” Nancy was right—just talk to them as if they were people.

“Okay, first, I’ll feel much better if we all go together—I don’t think Mrs. Jackson would be happy if I left anyone alone. Second, let’s set up a plan for how we’ll go up and down the streets and check as many houses as possible, then get back here in time. My friend Carl said it would take about a half hour to get to the campus, and he might be able to drive faster coming back. So, let’s say one hour for his best time.”

A second boy from the mischievous team of three, suddenly serious now, suggested, “We could check for food and blankets while we look for babies.”

His friend looked at him in confusion. “Blankets?” he barked with a laugh.

“Yeah, it’ll get cold later. I ain’t gonna cuddle with you.” The other boys laughed and pushed each other playfully.

Sam smiled. “Okay, I think some blankets might come in handy—and food. But let’s think: we need to be systematic about this. If you enter a house, where will you find blankets?”

“Bedrooms,” several children called out.

“And food?” Sam said. “We can’t take anything from the refrigerators. What kind of food could we take?”

Hands went up and suggestions started coming from every angle. The barrage of noise was overwhelming. “Cereal, canned soup, potato chips, bread,” and on and on.

Sam raised both her hands to fend off the noise and was surprised when the children responded quickly to the signal for quiet. She took a moment to think in that short quiet space. “Let’s try this: as we go down the streets, we will go to each house, and I’ll check the door first. If no one answers, then I’ll go in and make sure it’s safe for a team to enter. Each team will—” Sam paused and held a finger up for each step of the procedure. “Check for young children, get blankets, get healthy food that won’t go bad.”

The word healthy drew a group groan of protest.

“And then out of that house and onto the next,” she finished.

Sam looked at her wrist chronometer. “I have 2:20 right now. We have until at least 3:20 to go through those homes and collect what we can. BUT!” Sam raised her voice. “We can’t take any more than each one of us can carry. We all have to fit on the bus when Carl comes back.”

She looked around at the children’s faces. They looked up at her with determination.

The group followed Sam down the main street and onto the third side street. She looked down each street, and as Jayden had reported, there were about eight homes on each street.

Sam, with her search party fanned out behind her, walked up to the front door of the first house and knocked, then hesitantly opened the door. When there was no answer to her call, she stepped in and looked around, then came back out and pointed to the first four children at the front of the group.

“You two check the kitchen, you two check the bedrooms. If there is no one there, I want to hear you yell ‘all clear.’ Understand? Until I hear the all clear, we don’t move to the next house.”

The children went to the assigned areas, and Sam heard the all-clear signal from both sets. “I want you to come to me when you are done and not go on to another house until you check in with me, understood?”

They all responded that they did, and Sam turned to the group waiting at the front door. She made a shooing motion with her hands as she waded through the group and moved on to the next house.

One of the boys ran back out to yell at Sam. “Hey, Miss Sam, what should we put the food in? There’re no grocery bags.”

Sam frowned. “Use a pillowcase from a bed,” she shouted back.

She repeated the same systematic directions with the next group, heard their all clears, and set off for the third house. In this house, the children from the bedroom called that someone was in the house.

Sam went directly to the bedroom, where the children stood staring at a man sprawled out on his bed. He had apparently been getting ready for work when the event happened, and he had managed to get his pants on when he froze in the process of closing his zipper and fell back on the bed.

Sam gently herded the shaken children out the front door and told them, “You don’t need to do any more—go out and stay with the rest of the children.”

The children from the kitchen came out with grocery bags of food, and they all left to go to the next house.

The group of hunter-gatherers became more efficient with each house, finishing quicker each time. More people were found at home, frozen instantly in a single moment of performing their daily tasks. But most gratifying to the whole group was that they found two small children who would have been left behind if the others hadn’t voiced their concern to search the neighborhood.

One child—a toddler crying for her mother on the living room floor—had a small bump on her head. Sam concluded she must have been in her mother’s arms when the woman fell. The other child—a little boy under two years old—was in his playpen, playing with his toys as if nothing had happened. He started to fuss when Sam picked him up, so a bottle was located, and he quieted as he eagerly sucked on the nipple.

As they finished the last house on their planned search, Sam checked her wrist chronometer and told the children, “We made it just in time to go back to the fire station.”

The caravan of scavengers, loaded with their collections of loot, filed down the streets and back to wait for the bus.