Chapter 46: Chapter 46 – Heart Community
"Push it just a knuckle deep," Mary said. "Any more and it will drown when we water."
Snow tapped the greenhouse glass. Warm earth breathed around them, thick and damp, a reminder that life could still be coaxed from soil even while the world froze white outside. Iyisha eased a seed into the dark soil and felt the grit catch under her nail.
"You will get the hang of it in one row," Ester said. "By the second you will be faster than me."
Iyisha glanced up. The panes above were freckled white, the flakes smearing to clear as they melted. She followed one bead of water as it crawled down the glass. The sound of dripping joined the scratch of their fingers pushing seeds under.
They had apparently stumbled into what the locals called the Heart Community.
It is a government funded and protected settlement established to train medics.
Most of the people here were Filipinos who before the apocalypse had worked in healthcare.
It made sense, Iyisha thought, because the Philippines had long sent nurses and caregivers abroad.
Those skills were already rooted in them, and now the authorities considered that knowledge too valuable to lose.
The place was heavily guarded, with watchtowers and patrols at every corner.
The guards were armed to the bone, rifles slung and sidearms visible, because this was the kind of community others would want to take over.
Medicines, supplies, and trained medics made it too rich a prize to be left unprotected.
She looked at Ester busily filling the water can. Both she and Mary had been too kind to her, making her comfortable in ways she had not expected to find here.
Ester glanced at her, setting the water can down. "When are you planning to leave?" she asked.
Iyisha looked at the snow falling again through the glass. The flakes blurred together, endless, and her chest tightened. She thought they needed to leave as soon as they could, before the roads closed and the cold trapped them here.
"Tomorrow," she said at last, her voice uncertain, the word carrying less confidence than she wanted.
"It will be a hard winter," Mary said. "Wandering outside is suicide."
The line of planters ran like a brown river between their knees. Iyisha pressed another seed in and brushed soil over it with the side of her hand.
The cracks along her palms stung when damp soil found them. She welcomed the sting. It was proof she could still use her hands, still make something grow.
Ester shook her head, voice flat. "You know no one survives a winter outside. The snow itself will finish what hunger starts. Even strong men don’t last long out there."
Iyisha muttered, "We have no choice."
"You can stay," Ester said firmly, making Iyisha pause.
Iyisha lowered her eyes. "I... can’t speak for both of us."
"Think about it," Ester told her. "Think hard. You know how it is for wanderers who are not ready out there. The cold eats them first, their fingers stiff, their lips blue, hypothermia claiming them before hunger does. And even if they last the night, food runs thin and water freezes. It is not just the snow you fight, it is the long days of nothing to eat and nowhere to warm your bones."
Mary sat down heavily on a chair, wrapping her hands around a steaming mug.
She sipped the bitter coffee.
"I went out with the men last winter," Mary said quietly. "We found frozen bodies scattered in the snow, their faces blue and stiff. I have never gone out since then."
Ester mumbled, barely loud enough for them to hear, "Mary is more afraid of humans dying in the cold than of zombies."
Mary straightened, her tone clipped. "Excuse me. I am just worried about the population number of Americans. Every death counts now."
Iyisha smiled.
"You were a doctor, right? You still are, I suppose," Mary said in a cheerful tone despite the weariness in her eyes.
"Yes," Iyisha said.
Mary’s smile wrinkled the corners of her eyes. "You kno you can stay and teach. If you will share what you know, you will earn your keep here."
Iyisha thought it was a good offer.
The winter would be too harsh for them to keep on travelling. Still, her thoughts pricked sharp.
Maybe she had pushed Malcolm too far that time. Her cheeks warmed at the memory of him pulling away, of the empty chair that had stayed empty two mornings in a row.
"Malcolm joined the guards," she said at last. "Two days ago."
"He joined the hunt the second day and dropped a deer clean with one shot," Ester said. "He is a good shot. The men like that."
Iyisha smoothed soil over another seed. The motion steadied her, though inside she was anything but steady.
"Tell me what you can teach," Mary said. "We will make a list and I will put it on the board."
"I was studying as a pediatrician," Iyisha said, her voice steady, "but I also worked in first aid at Redridge, and then rotated through the STD department."
Mary laughed lightly. "Oh, I heard STD was rampant in Redridge."
"People there didn’t have much to do, especially in a safe zone. They were having sex like rabbits and not careful enough with condoms." Ester cut in with a smirk.
"You didn’t have that problem here?" Iyisha asked.
"This is a smaller safe zone and the government makes sure we get everything we need." Ester smirked wider.
Iyisha nodded slowly, thinking rather than speaking. This place was very well maintained. Water, electricity, even the supplies. All far better than Redridge. Almost too good. Almost like it could lull her into forgetting the world outside.
Mary tilted her cup, the steam curling up like smoke. "What will you do when the roads close, if you are set on leaving?"
Iyisha kept her voice calm. "I don’t know, but I need to find my sister."
Ester’s brow creased. "Where?"
"East," Iyisha said. "She headed for Michigan before the lines went dead." The lie slid easily off her tongue.
"If you go east," Mary said, lowering her voice as if sharing gossip, "you will have to pass Clinton."
"Clinton is not for beginners." Ester set the watering can down with a hard clink. "That place is a redzone."
Iyisha knew well what that meant.
Everyone knew what that meant. The government used that word to mark whether a place was overrun by the undead or whether it was unsafe.
"What is in Clinton?"
"They call it a mutant. I do not like the word, but I have no better one."
Iyisha repeated the word in her head.
Mutant?
"A twitcher?" Iyisha asked, her voice cautious. She wondered if it was only another name for the same terror, the way safe zones twisted words until old horrors sounded new.
Mary shook her head slowly, her eyes narrowing as though the memory itself unsettled her.
"Faster," Mary whispered, her voice trembling as though even repeating the tale might draw it closer.
She clutched her mug tighter, knuckles whitening, and her eyes darted toward the greenhouse door..
"They say it is silent. It does not bite. It shreds. It waits above you until you forget to look up, and then you are already gone."
She felt the cold more clearly now, even in the damp heat of the greenhouse. "How many have seen it?"
"Enough to make the men stop cutting through the town," Mary said. "They circle wide even when daylight is short."
"What does it look like?" Iyisha asked.
"No one will stand still long enough to describe it," Ester said. "One man said it crawls like a lizard when it wants to disappear and runs like a cat when it wants to kill."
"I will keep it in mind," Iyisha said softly, her eyes on the soil. "But I do not think we will ever pass there."
Ester leaned closer, her voice rough. "Make sure you do not. Because if you do... ugh,I do not want even think about it."
The talk drifted to other things as their hands kept moving, planting seed after seed, the rhythm steadying their nerves.
The scrape of soil against their hands was the only sound besides the soft hiss of falling snow outside.
When the trays were filled and the watering can emptied, Iyisha excused herself and walked back through the corridors of the settlement. As she walked, she wondered where Malcolm was, the thought gnawing at her.
She caught the scent of her own skin, stale from soil and sweat, and self‑consciousness made her shift her shoulders as she passed through the friendly smiles of other people in the corridor.
She needed a warm bath.
She pushed open the door to the room they had been given. The air inside was cool and still. Malcolm was there, standing in the center of the room, as if he had been waiting for her.
