When Ian arrived later Christmas day, I gave him his gift. He loved it, but he smiled abashedly, admitting he’d pretty much forgotten it was Christmas.
Later, after we’d finished eating lunch and Ian was getting ready to head back into town, I asked him to stop by and check on Jamie. “He has the flu. He was looking pretty grim yesterday.”
“You were by his place?” Ian asked. It was hard to miss the jealous tone in his voice.
I saw Frenchie’s eyebrows rise, but she said nothing and continued to clear the dishes.
I nodded and handed Ian the sweater. “Don’t forget your gift.”
With a distracted smile, he stuffed it into his bag. “I’ll be back tomorrow. We need to start planning the New Year’s Eve party,” he said. Unconsciously, he leaned in to kiss me. I turned my cheek.
Looking embarrassed, Ian gave me a light peck and then turned to leave.
“Be careful,” I called as he stepped out onto the porch. He waved, jumped onto his snowmobile, and left, closing and locking the gate behind him.
I closed the front door, sliding the bars into place.
I turned to find Frenchie looking at me. She was grinning.
“Well, spit it out,” I told her.
She shrugged. “You’re using your head,” she said with a grin and went into the kitchen.
Ian returned the next day with the news that Jamie had started feeling better. I was relieved. We then got to work planning the New Year’s Eve party. I was hyper-aware of the fact that Ian had plans, and not just for the party. I would be his friend, I would forgive him for the past, but that was all there could be between us. Ian and I had nothing in common, no connection except our shared past. When I first arrived I thought I wasn’t over him, but the more time I spent with him I realized I had buried any real feelings long ago. I did not love him anymore. It seemed that Ian, on the other hand, thought the end of days had given him the chance to live a life almost missed. His misguided hope was becoming a problem.
“Hey, I have other news for you,” Ian said.
I raised an eyebrow at him.
“Kiki and Gary finally had some luck with that radio.”
“Really?”
“They were able to pick up a signal and communicated for just a minute with someone.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I guess someone asked where we were. They were able to give our location, but they couldn’t get the signal to come back in again.”
“At least we know we aren’t the only ones still alive,” I replied. “Maybe in the spring we can consider looking for other survivors.
Ian nodded.
In that same moment I noticed how tired he looked. Ian was not well and had started to look gaunt. Though he said he was fine, it was clear that he was having pain in his stomach. His meals became smaller and less frequent. When I tried to get him to eat more, he always said “leave it for the girls.” I didn’t buy it and as every day passed, I started to worry more.
Just after Christmas, Ian and I let the others know our idea about the party. At first people seemed resistant, but after a little convincing, the idea grew on them. Frenchie, Ian, and I, and a handful of others, spent two days reorganizing and decorating the elementary school gym. While Grandma’s warning to be watchful was ever-present in my mind, the cold winter weather seemed to have ground to a stop the movement of the undead. With the exception of finding Clark in the Fletchers’ field, it had been weeks since anyone had seen anything.
On New Year’s Eve day, residents who could stand the cold weather were brought in by snowmobile or horse-drawn sled for the party. It turned out that the “decorative” Victorian era sled that had sat in the post-office lobby longer than I could remember still worked. With a little reconfiguring, Fred Johnson had gotten it running again. They’d managed to lasso in the Fletchers’ horses, and Fred had become the town taxi-driver.
“Looks beautiful,” Summer gushed when she entered the gym. We’d found supplies from a recent prom whose theme had been something celestial. The entire place was decorated with silver crepe, stars, and moons. It was not overly done, just enough to make the event feel festive. Summer looked at least twenty pounds lighter. Her mother, who had always had dark-brown hair, had gone completely gray.
“I only had one bottle of dye left,” she told me when she saw me looking at her hair. “I wanted to save it for when we are rescued,” she explained with a laugh.
Rescued by whom, I wondered.
The others slowly trickled in. By the dinner hour there were thirty five of us. Harkening back to older and happier days, we shared food, eating at a long table in the middle of the room.