Cora (Love in the Apocalypse #2)

12. Derrick

Chapter twelve

Derrick

I looked at the place in the wall where the woman disappeared excitedly as I cupped my aching balls in my hands. My excitement over being proven right far overshadowed the pain from her kick. I looked at a dumbfounded Trent. “You saw that, right?!”

He nodded. “Yeah, I saw it,” he replied, monotone.

I decided to give him a few more seconds for it to sink in as I walked over and inspected the wall. There had to be a switch or something to open it. Do other rooms also have secret doors? And where do they go?

“Holy fuck! There’s a girl living in our fucking walls!” Trent suddenly yelled.

“There it is,” I chuckled. “Welcome to the neighborhood. You wanna go get your brother and your lover?”

Trent ran outside, and I heard him hollering for Isaac and Remi to get their asses inside.

I put my ear against the wall to see if I could hear anything. I thought perhaps I heard ragged breathing, but I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just my imagination. Squatting down, I pressed my ear to the wall again, and the sound was louder. She was sitting on the other side!

“Hey, Ghost Girl,” I said softly. “I know you’re in there. You can come back out; I promise we won’t hurt you.” The breathing stopped as I assumed the woman held her breath. I pushed on, hoping to convince her to come back out. “I know you’ve been helping us. We appreciate it.”

“What’s going on?” Isaac said as Trent practically pushed him and Remi through the front door. I stood and grinned at them.

“What happened to your face?” Remi asked me.

My face? I looked at my reflection in the small mirror attached to the living room wall. My nose was bleeding and swollen, and bruises were already beginning to form around my eyes.

I started laughing. “You know, I think she might have broken my nose.”

“Who?” Isaac asked.

“Ghost Girl,” Trent and I answered together.

“Let me see,” Isaac said, stepping in front of me and eyeing my face critically. He gently poked at my nose, making me wince. “Not a break,” he assured me. “Damn close, though. That might hurt a bit, and you’ll be sporting the raccoon look for a while. Now, be serious. What the hell did you smack your face on?”

“The back of Ghost Girl’s head,” I replied.

“I said be serious,” Isaac sighed wearily. “I don’t have time for your delusions or games today.”

For weeks now, I’ve dealt with Isaac’s barely-contained exasperation about Ghost Girl’s existence, and now, I will finally be vindicated. “I am being serious. After the trapping book showed up, I had a feeling that she might return if we were all gone. So I hid in the closet and waited. It didn’t take long to hear pots and pans rattling in the kitchen. When I went in, I saw her putting a giant pot in the bottom cabinet.”

I went to the cabinet and pulled out the pot she had placed there. Inside, she had put extra food. I put the pot on the table for them to see.

“I grabbed her from behind, and she fought me before disappearing behind that wall. It’s a secret door, but I can’t figure out how it opens.” Isaac and Remi still looked like they didn’t quite believe me, so I pointed to Trent. “Ask him! He came inside in the middle of our scuffle and saw the whole thing.”

“He’s telling the truth,” Trent confirmed. “I came in to find out what was taking him so long and found him wrestling the blond girl from the picture to the ground. She ended up getting away from him and went through that wall. She’s not a ghost; she’s very much a living, breathing human being.”

My expression was unapologetically smug. I had been right this entire time, and it felt good.

Isaac took the items out of the pot, inspecting each one. His face lit up as he had an epiphany. “She heard us talking about rabbit stew and brought us the ingredients needed to make it.”

“You know what that means, right?” I asked.

“What?”

“That means you need to get your fucking ass out there and trap us a rabbit or two,” I replied.

“He’s right,” Remi said, chuckling. “Our ghosty hosty wants rabbit stew. We’d better make sure we get some.”

“I think I’m going to hang back and see if I can make contact with her again,” I announced as they started moving toward the door.

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” Trent replied. “We should give her some space. That was a pretty intense first interaction.”

I didn’t like the idea of leaving her all alone without any protection. What if someone showed up while we were gone? What if something happened?

“She’s been surviving all of this time on her own, D,” Remi said softly, reading my mind. “She doesn’t need us, but we have needed her. Give her some space, and hopefully, we can coax her out tonight with some stew.”

Begrudgingly, I agreed and followed them out. We spent the rest of the day in the woods, laying down traps according to Isaac’s book and hoping for the best. When we finished that task, we went to the start of our lines and checked them. After about ten traps, we found our first rabbit. Isaac handed the carcass to me, and I stuffed it into my bag. He cleaned up the trap and reset it.

We ended up finding about five rabbits, which Isaac took to the slaughter shed to dress while the rest of us went back inside. We stepped into the house slowly, hoping to avoid spooking Ghost Girl if she was out and about. Unfortunately, I didn’t see her anywhere.

I went straight to the kitchen and started tapping on the wall, looking for the door switch. I knew there had to be a way to open it from this side, and I was dying to find out what was back there.

“Hey, D?” Trent said behind me.

“Yeah?” I asked.

“You have a message.”

“Oh, yeah?” I asked, only half listening to him as I continued my inspection of the wall. “Who’s it from?”

“I’m going to go ahead and say, Cora,” Remi replied.

“Who the fuck is Cora?” I asked, finally stopping to face them.

Trent held up a sheet of paper with one sentence written.

My name is Cora.

I snatched the paper from his hand and read the flowy words a few times. Cora. I liked that name.

“Nice to meet you, Cora,” I said more to myself than anyone else.

Isaac came in with the rabbit, and we all pitched in to make the stew and mashed potatoes. When dinner was done, we served up five dishes and then sat at the table, looking at the wall.

“Cora?” I asked, “Would you like to join us for dinner?”

We held our breath as we waited for a response. Maybe she wasn’t even on the other side of the wall watching us. After nearly a minute, Isaac cleared his throat to repeat my request when I heard a click, and the panel in the wall swung open.

Cora emerged from the wall slowly, her bright blue eyes darting around, not settling on any of us for more than a few seconds as she searched for any danger. Her blonde hair was neatly brushed into a ponytail, and she was wearing different clothes than she had been wearing earlier. I hadn’t realized how small Cora was during our initial meeting. Her clothes hung on her body, proof of the weight she’d lost since the apocalypse started. Cora was pale, frail, and still one of the prettiest things I’ve seen in a long time. In her hands, she carried what looked like… an iPad?

“We won’t hurt you, Cora,” Trent assured her, patting the empty seat between us.

Her eyes darted around nervously again before locking with mine. A pretty pink blush spread across her cheeks, and I smirked in response. Making a girl blush with eye contact was always a good sign.

Cora took another step forward. I admired her bravery and was humbled by her trust in us. We outnumbered and overpowered her. It would take little effort for us to confine her, go through that wall, and take what we wanted. A foreboding chill spread across my skin—what would have happened to her if we hadn’t been the ones to find this place?