Missy

“Put the doll away hun.”

“But Missy was lonely,” Alice told her mother.  

“You can play with her later. We’re falling a little behind,” Alice’s father piped in.

“Ok,” she said as she put the doll into her jacket packet. “Safe and sound.”

As they continued walking on the road, they approached a group of abandoned cars. Several people checked the cars for supplies and finding very little. Just as they were finishing with the cars, the groups scout, Rudy came running up.

“What’s up Rudy?” David, the group leader asked.

“We got trouble. A mob is just around the bend ahead,” he paused for a moment to catch his breath, “On the plus side, we might have a place for a night or more.”

“How many in a mob?” Alice asked her mom.

“More than twenty,” Lucy replied as she scanned the road ahead. It took only a few moments until the first of the dead started to come around the bend. They had about 10 minutes.

Alice had started to count all the people around her. She came up with sixteen. Alice pondered for a moment before saying “That’s more than us.”

“Yes, it is. That’s why we do what?”

“Avoid or hide.”

“So, what are we going to do?” a man named Paul asked.

David pondered the situation for a few moments while looking around. There were trees on each side of the road but the dead might be lurking in there as well. “We hide. Everyone stash your packs under the cars, we’ll hide in them until they pass. Remember, we have to keep still and quiet,” he said to the group.

Alice, her mother and a woman named Molly got into the backseat while her dad and a man named Rob got into the front of a blue car.

They silently waited as the mob approached. For Alice, it seemed to take forever before the all clear was given and they could get out of the cars. When Alice slid out of the back seat, she was unaware that Missy had fallen out of her pocket and onto the floor of the car.

“Hey, it’s snowing!” Alice said as she looked around.

The group had gathered their packs and continued on their way. It took them almost two hours to get to the house that Rudy had mentioned. It was a two-story building with a large porch overlooking the large yard.

“Looks good so far, let’s check it out” David said.  

It didn’t take to long for them to clear out the house to make sure it was safe.   That’s when things got busy. Everyone was given a task to do from cleaning rooms to sleep in, securing windows on the ground floor with whatever was handy like doors and getting dinner ready. Alice and the four other children were given the family room to clean. This kept them all together in case they had to get out quickly.

Just as Alice was going to start cleaning, she reached into her pocket to check on Missy and panicked when her hand didn’t touch anything. She started to look around the room and began to retrace her steps in her mind. “Oh no,” she muttered when it dawned on here where Missy could be. She ran to find her mom and dad.

She found her mom upstairs. “Mom! Missy is gone!”

Lucy spun around to face her daughter. “What? Do you know when you lost her?” Missy was the plastic doll her brother gave to her last Christmas. He had found it still in the box in a toy store. He died just three months later and it was the only thing Alice had to remember him with.

“She must have fallen out while in that car,” Alice confidently said.

“It’s getting to late to go and find it now, we can go in the morning hun,” Lucy said while hugging Alice.

“But,” Alice started.

“In the morning. No go back downstairs,” Lucy sternly said as she sent Alice back downstairs.

Alice wasn’t having it as she went downstairs. She had to get Missy and now not in the morning. When she got downstairs, she looked around and snuck out the door.   

The sun was just setting when Alice got to the cars. It had taken two hours to get there and she had been as careful as she was taught to be. She quickly found the blue car and opened the back door. Alice looked around before getting in the car. It didn’t take her long to find Missy. “There you are,” she said as she picked the doll up.

 Alice slid out of the car and looked around before heading back. She was able to walk in her footsteps that she left in the snow. She kept looking around her for any sins of trouble. When she got to the bend, she saw two figures in the darkness approaching fast. Alice quickly ducked off the road and hid behind a tree. She waited and watched. The two figures stopped just at the point where she went off the road and turned towards her. Suddenly two beams of light lit up the trees around her until they landed on her.

“Alice!” Lucy yelled.

Alice ran up to her mother and saw her father was next to her. “I’m sorry but I had to get her,” she told them.

“We know. let’s get back to the house,” John said as hugged her.     

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