Our love grew exponentially as we got older. It became a deep, abiding love. I could never explain it to anyone, let alone myself. Part of it was just the many things we’d gone through with each other and part of it was just the fact that she was an amazing, awesome woman and she accepted me completely.
The two year age difference between us made it a little weird for a year or so, until she reached 16. Some of the teachers tried to keep us apart, but our foster parents never tried. They could see how we felt for each other and could tell that it wasn’t a childish love. They never knew the things we’d gone through or the horrors we’d seen, but they could tell that something drew us together. And knew even better that nothing could tear us apart.
I graduated high school with honors. The government fixed my transcripts so that my first couple years of high school didn’t matter anymore, but I managed to do the last couple all on my own. It’s amazing how much it helps to have a nice, stabilized environment at home with supporting parents. I got accepted to a bunch of really nice schools but they were all too far away and I couldn’t leave Fannie Mae. She told me not to worry about her, but I just couldn’t leave her like that. So I went to DU – University of Denver – and eventually graduated with a degree in IT.
Fannie Mae blossomed well under the attention of her foster parents. They bought her nice clothes and pampered her and treated her like the little girl they’d never had. She ate it up but never got spoiled and never took them for granted. She flourished and did even better than me in school. She went to DU, too, and graduated with a degree in social work. All she wanted to do was help people so she got a job helping developmentally disabled people. I was so proud of her.
We got married when I was 25 and she was 23. Everyone wanted us to wait until we both graduated, so we did. We got married less than a week after she got her degree. It was a huge wedding, with all of our foster families and the many friends we’d made over the years. There were over 300 people at the wedding. We burned a candle at the ceremony for all of our friends who’d gone before us. I knew that no one there knew what we were talking about, but we said our little piece and a prayer for the fallen and both had tears streaming down our cheeks when we did it.
I think our foster parents were the only ones who’d had an inkling of the truth. They knew that the government was the ones who’d dropped us on their doorsteps. They’d never asked us for details, but they’d all heard the screams and the moans of our night terrors. I think I’d had nightmares for the first year or so that I lived with them. It haunted me more than Fannie Mae. Barrett weighed heavily on my mind. He was always there for me and there were times I could swear I could see him out of the corner of my eye.
Fannie Mae’s foster mom died when I was 30 and she was 28. It was shortly after the birth of our first child, Barry. She’d held out for as long as she could. She had stomach cancer and it was particularly vicious. The doctors gave her only a few months to live right when Fannie Mae announced her pregnancy. She vowed to see her first grandchild and she did, dying the day after Barry was born. Fannie Mae took it hard. The birth had been long and painful and she was still recuperating in the hospital when her mom died. She turned to me with tears in her eyes and whispered that she wished her mom could come back. I shook my head vehemently at her and told her to never wish for something like that. We’d both seen what happened when people came back.
Barry was five when his little sister was born. She was the spitting image of her mother. In other words, she was the most beautiful thing you’d ever seen. We named her Tammy. Our little soldiers reminded us daily of those who’d fallen but since we found we could never forget we thought it was best. They weren’t just reminders; they were tributes to our friends.
If we’d have had a third we were going to name him Duke, but Fannie Mae had complications from the birth of our Tammy and the doctor said we shouldn’t have anymore. He thought that she couldn’t survive another pregnancy. It was an easy decision for me to go get a vasectomy. A quick snip and a tug and 20 minutes later I was driven home, nursing my balls. Fannie Mae took care of me like I was a king for the next few days. It was amazing and just made me realize all over again how much I loved her.
Hell, I woke up every day and fell in love with her all over again. She was always that 14 year old girl with the braids to me. My little Fannie Mae.
Barry had his first kid when he was 25. He had fallen in love with his high school sweetheart, too, and I could see that theirs was a deep, abiding love was as well. He named his boy after me – after my new government name – but the boy quickly earned the nickname Duke from me and his grandmother. She called him Dukey. Barry had no idea where the nickname had come from and Fannie Mae and I could only give him our quick, secret smile.
We never told the kids about Litchville, Kentucky, and the horrors that had happened there.
All in all we had six grandkids. When I was old and gray it was the best thing in the world to have them all climbing all over me and screaming for grandpa to read them a story or play games with them. I was their favorite and we all knew it. Grandma didn’t mind. She knew how much the little ones meant to me. They were my whole world.
After her, of course.
I was 96 and on my deathbed. Not really dying of anything specific. Just old age. My Fannie Mae lay on the bed next to me, holding my head and stroking my hair. She whispered words in my ear that half the time I didn’t understand. I’d look up at her and smile my goofy grin at her, thinking about the 80 or so years that we’d spent together. The events of that weekend and my 16 birthday blurred together and finally some of those memories were allowed to rest.
My grandchildren and great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren stood around us, arrayed silently as I lay dying on the bed. Fannie Mae swore that she’d follow me within hours but I told her not to be silly. She still had at least 14 good years left in her. I know I murmured some of our secrets in front of the little ones but they didn’t understand, didn’t know what we were talking about. We’d kept the secret all those many, many years.
As I lay there dying I thought about Barrett and Tamara and Mason Smith. And Washington, who’d gone so wrong there at the end. He’d… he’d…
No. None of that had ever happened. We’d been saved and rescued and Fannie Mae and I had had our lives together forever and ever. Forever, dammit.
If only.
21.
Washington pointed his gun at Fannie Mae as the zombies closed in around us. His eyes were dark with his insanity. There was nothing of the man left. I glanced at Kevin where he held the barrel of my shotgun. He looked like a rabid dog: spit sliding out of his mouth and dripping on the ground. Shaggy was over there looking like he wanted to tell us all to go to hell and run off on his own. I didn’t blame him, that’s what I wanted to do, too.
I did the only thing I could think of; I pulled the trigger of the shotgun where it was pointed at the sky. The roar and flash of light it made as it fired filled the night sky. Kevin jumped back from the noise and heat and brought his hands to his ears. I swung the shotgun up and hit him on the head with the stock of the gun, breaking his fingers. He dropped like a sack of potatoes, moaning and holding his head. Everything moved in slow motion as I swung the shotgun back in Wash’s direction. I pumped the shotgun, ejecting the empty shell and following the arc of it with my eye.