A small circle of children gathered in the center of a shabby room. The last of the evening light suffused through the 'windows.' The soft shadows cast by the beds cast most of the group into darkness. Jeffery was sitting on top of his bunk looking down at all the other gathered kids. They were talking about mundane things. Their lives, their dreams and their families were all included in the discussion.
Jeffery absentmindedly listened in, trying to ignore his hunger. Keith had fallen just before lunch, and now it was well past dinner. His stomach ached with emptiness. He had only eaten some fruit and bread in the mourning. He refused to take the eggs they supplemented the bread with; he had lived on a diet consisting solely of eggs for far to long. He focused on the conversations to try to take his focus away from his stomach.
"Rob, how many men did your father command?" Samantha and Ralph were currently conversing underneath him.
"He was in charge of a 25-man squad. He's been retired for over twelve years now." Rob was beaming. He was quite proud of his father's achievement.
"What about your mother?" Rob's smile instantly fell. He looked at the ground next to the bedpost, staring at a lonely spider patrolling the floor. Samantha guessed what happened and looked horrified. "Oh... sorry I didn't realize..." Ralph's mom had died a few months before Jeffery had met him. She had caught an unknown disease that killed five people in their town.
Ralph forcibly smiled after rubbing his face a little. "It's fine, you couldn't have known. How's your family?" Samantha was still looking ashamed. She awkwardly looked up again.
"Oh, my dad's a farmer, he's raised cows all his life. My mom also worked in the military. Before she met my dad, she was in charge of managing one of the supply chains."
"How did they meet?"
The awkwardness slowly left Samantha's face as she talked. "My father supplies the army with milk, cheese and beef. When he gave them an invoice, she was the one to receive it and boom, love at first sight." By now Samantha's talking had distracted her from her faux pas and Rob was once again smiling genuinely.
Jeffery's stomach audibly growled. The guards had been standing outside their 'home' all this while, preventing them from getting out. Jeffery fantasized about sneaking past them to grab a meal. He jumped down from the top bunk and sat next to Ralph.
"When do you think they'll let us out? We've been stuck in here for hours." At that moment, frenzied whispers outside preceded the door being opened. The room was examined by a large soldier with a grizzled beard. "Speak of the devil and he doth appear" muttered Jeffery. The soldier glanced over at him, only then did Jeffery notice that his face was slightly pale. The soldier turned around.
"They're all fine," he reported to another standing outside.
"What's going on?" Brian was the first to question the soldier. Many other expectant children stared at the man making him unconsciously raise his posture by a few centimeters.
"A plague. It's what Keith had. Now, more than a third the camp has fallen. The general said to check on you to make sure none of you had it." The children looked across at each other with widening eyes. Jeffery was thinking that this was typical behavior from the General. Only after tens were on the verge of death would he remember that he had sealed away nearly twenty children. The man continued speaking. "I'll bring you dinner. Stay in here, anyone could be infected."
The man left, and the children discussed the army's makeshift quarantine. Jeffery started a whispered conversation with Rob. "I hope the plague can't be spread by air. If it can, it would blow right in through the walls." He heard no reply from Rob. He turned to face him. He was gazing at the wall in a daze. "What's wrong?" he asked, "Oh wait, I'm sorry for asking this, is this... about your mom? Were her symptoms like this?"
"Yeah." He answered without turning his head. "It wasn't as bad as it was with Keith, but she collapsed one day. Then, she... she coughed up blood until..." Rob's eyes had a few tears in them from his reminiscence. Jeffery regretted asking Rob anything. The few kids close enough to hear them had enough tact to stay silent. "I'm gonna try to sleep now." Rob trudged off towards his bed and collapsed with his eyes closed.
Jeffery sighed. The meals were here. He probably should have waited for dinner to end before asking Rob about anything. He'd be quite hungry when he woke up. He saved a meal to for Rob to wake up to. Perhaps eating would take Rob's mind off of his past as well as talking with Samantha did.
As the night wore on, he began to get tired. Rob still did not wake. Jeffery's eyelids felt so heavy- they started closing, his blinks taking longer and longer. A loud cough filled the room. Jeffery jolted himself awake, trying to remove every iota of lethargy in his mind. He saw Jim lying in a pool of blood. Three other children also sat up in their beds to stare at Jim.
"Oh my god... Jim is sick!" One of those who had just awoken screamed this as soon as his eyes landed on Jim's corpse-like figure. "Get help!" The sleepy figures who awoke did not fetch help. The first thing they did was move away from Jim. The person who bunked above Jim threw himself off the bunk in a panic. The jumper's subsequent fall to the floor caused enough noise to wake up almost anyone who hadn't yet. Truly a selfless man. Now, only Rob and Brain were still asleep. Rob was sleeping beneath his sheets with only a hand and head poking out while Brian was entirely covered. The sheets over their heads had dulled the cries of alarm, but Jeffery deemed them far enough from Jim to be safe.
"Is anyone going to get help for him now?"
"I'll go" Jeffery said. He walked to the door and tried to push it open. It didn't open. He pounded on the door. "Hey, anyone out there?" There was no reply from outside. They were locked in. Jeffery sighed; this sort of slacking was expected of the general. "The door is locked," he told the kids around him, "I'm going to go through my window." General mutterings of assent were heard.
He climbed back onto the top of his bed and slipped through the window. He hung from the window before dropping to the tops of the crates below. He needed to be careful not to slip in the rain. The old, rotting wood creaked under his feet, but didn't break. He slowly lowered himself to the ground while being mindful of the rusty nails that poked out of the wooden crates along the edges. A cursory glance at the training field showed it completely abandoned, even the warehouse had no guards posted. Besides the infirmary, only the General's building and their own showed any light.
He turned the corner and looked at their front door. The guards at their door were gone. A thick chain and padlock adorned the wooden door. Like most things in this place, they looked very worn. In one part, rust had eaten through more than half of the chain link's width. He ran towards the general's building. The door was open and unguarded, so he rushed in. He climbed up the stairs to the room he had seen the bright candlelight in. When he reached it, he saw the silhouette of the general in the doorway.
Winston stood before the bookshelves in his room. Of the many shelves on the bookshelf, only one was occupied with books. The one at eye-height held only a sword. The general broke his gaze away from the sword and looked at Jeffery. "What are you doing here? Why did the guards let you out?"
"Jim got the plague. Also, there weren't any guards outside."
"He caught it too? But how? Only him? Two thirds of the adults have it now. Shouldn't a similar proportion of them… or none of them have it?" Winston looked truly confused for a moment.
"What do you mean? Why don't more of us what?"
"It's confidential. Panic might spread if what I thought was spread to the rest. But if only one of you got sick, my theory sort of falls apart. Thank goodness for that, at least." The general turned to gaze out the window at the flickering lightning outside and put his hands behind his back.
"So… what are we going to do about Jim?"
"I'll get someone to lug him over to the infirmary, we still have a few that haven't collapsed yet." The general turned away from the window. Suddenly he turned back again. "Do you smell anything?"
Jeffery turned and inhaled deeply. Beyond the smell of the fireplace, there was nothing. The wind made it difficult for any unsealed rooms to retain odor. Suddenly, he realized something. He was standing in front of an opened window. There was no way for the smoke from the fireplace to get anywhere close due to the night's strong winds. The smokey smell must have been carried in from outside. He looked up at the general. "Is that… burning?"
The general rushed out. Jeffery watched from the window as he raced towards the steps leading to the walkway attached to the palisade. He looked towards his building. A small orange flicker was growing behind it. He started to turn away to run back and warn his friends, before an even brighter radiance caught his eye. Behind the warehouse, an inferno was raging. A five meter section of palisade was wreathed in fire. As he watched, it started licking at the walkway that had been previously protecting it from rain.
Jeffery watched as a guard standing atop the walkway looked downwards and spotted the flames. The guard jumped back from the fire, which was still growing. In just thirty seconds, the fire had doubled in height. Before Winston had even set foot on the staircase, shouts of alarm from those on the walkway, audible even over the lightning. The guard that Jeffery had seen panicked and tripped; he fell onto the ground and collided with the warehouse, which was still standing despite the flames on its back wall. Jeffery needed to warn his friends. The smaller fire by their residence was being ignored, overshadowed by the warehouse's fire.
He rushed back into the rain towards his hut. Jeffery stood upon the crates and jumped. He was just barely able to grab the windowsill, but couldn't pull himself up. He hissed in frustration. The wind and thunder would make any attempt to yell to them futile, especially with them sitting so far away from the window. He was stuck… He kicked the rotten wall, hoping that it would give in, but the wood that seemed so rotten and weak didn't dent at all under his abuse. He kicked again, still nothing. He alternated between hitting the door and the wall, but only got hurt toes for his troubles. He slumped onto the ground.
Suddenly, he had an epiphany. He slapped his face then raced towards the fire. He climbed in through the window next to Brian's bed while cursing himself for his earlier forgetfulness. Brian had gotten up at this point and was sitting on the bed. When he shoved himself through the window, Brian jumped. He looked at Jeffery as if he were insane. Jeffery supposed that any sane person would be startled if a person fell through their window onto them.
"What were you doing outside? Are you crazy?"
"You've seen Jim, right? I was just letting the general know."
"Oh… ok." At that moment, the door exploded inwards and spewed rotten chunks of wood onto the floor. The children turned in unison at the soldier standing there.
"The chain wouldn't come off," the soldier said in an attempt to justify his destruction of their residence.
"We're here to get Jim," said a second soldier who entered through the gaping whole in the wall. "I don't know what fool locked you in here, none of us had the key, and even if we did, that lock looked to rusted to work." One of the boys picked up the lock on the ground in front of him inquisitively. The chains holding it had broken at a rusty link. He gestured at the keyhole, upon which the glint of metal could still be seen. The soldier was too busy hauling out Jim to care. Jim had been slung over the guard's soldier. As they left the building, he turned to look at them. "Stay safe kids." When he turned back, Jim's head hit the door frame. The soldier continued out under his peer's glare.