Chapter 9
Qwould be lying to say he wasn’t nervous about how the women would react to Flora.
She wasn’t dumb or slow, but she had no clue about anything in the real world.
The world she’d grown up in was incredibly different from this.
He hoped she wouldn’t be too afraid or shocked by the women and what they told her.
First to arrive was Ellis and Trip. Q could tell Flora felt very nervous around Trip. He wondered if having the men here would be a problem for her. When Rider showed up with Andie, he knew he’d made a mistake having the men come in, too.
He moved to the door and opened it, hoping the guys wouldn’t have any problems staying outside for a while. “Rider and Trip, would you step out here with me?”
“Sure,” Rider said and followed him out along with Trip.
Zip was coming up the sidewalk with Talia and paused beside them. “Hey.”
“So Flora is overwhelmed having the guys inside. I’m sorry, I didn’t think it through.”
“We can hang out in the backyard,” Trip suggested.
“Yeah, I have some beer in the cooler, and we can chill,” Rider said.
“Are you sure that’s okay?” Q asked.
They all nodded before heading around to the back of his place. He went through the house and unlocked the gate. Flora looked nervous when he stepped in. Ellis and Andie had brought in food and were putting it together in his kitchen. Talia headed over to Flora to introduce herself.
Flora felt this was a huge mistake. These women didn’t know her, and she felt like she might just break into pieces having to deal with them.
She could see the men outside, and she longed to have Q beside her. Fear clawed its way up her throat, threatening to take over. Two more women came inside and gave the other women hugs.
“Okay, so Flora, I know I already introduced myself, but I’m sure meeting this many new people is chaotic. I’m Ellis, and this is Vera.” Ellis introduced each woman, and Flora tried to remember their names.
She wasn’t sure what to say or what they should talk about. Maybe she should have prepared food. Would they think she was rude because she hadn’t made anything for them?
“So Q said you needed some help.”
She licked her lips, worry filling her. “I know nothing.”
Talia’s eyebrows rose. “Nothing?”
She shrugged. “You’re all going to think I’m stupid. I mean, my mom taught me how to read and write, and I’m good with numbers, but I don’t know anything. The community was different.”
“How?” Talia asked.
“Well, the way I found Q was I’d been buried in the purification field before my marriage, and I couldn’t do it.
The man my father picked was old. I couldn’t marry him and spend my life with him.
I crawled my way out of the dirt and ran.
I had no plans, but I had to get away. Do you think that makes me bad? ”
All the women shook their heads, but it was Clove who spoke. “Buried, as in covered you with dirt?”
She nodded. “It’s the purification ritual. They bury you in mud.”
“How would you breathe?”
“They gave me a tube. I’ve been buried over night before when I was punished for being bad, but three days is a long time. I knew I could get away so I dug my way out and ran. That’s how I found Q.”
Ellis reached out and squeezed her hand. “I don’t know how you were raised, but being buried for three days is wrong. I guess the only good thing about it was it gave you time to escape.”
She shook her head as emotions rose. “But everything is different, and I don’t know how to deal with it.”
“What is different?” Vera asked.
“Well, first off, they told us most of the Earth’s population died, and there were only five million people left on Earth.”
Talia shook her head. “Oh no. You were in a cult. That’s wrong. So wrong. I’m sorry I’m going off, I just hate that kind of manipulation.”
“What is a cult?” Flora asked.
Vera shook her head. “It’s when a group like your community uses manipulation to keep you under their thumb.”
“Yes, that’s what it felt like. I was always under their thumb. I had to follow the rules at all times. We were told to accept their word as law.”
Ellis reached over and squeezed her shoulder. “We’re here for you now. We’ll make sure you know how to call us on the phone.”
She gasped. “I couldn’t use a phone.”
Ellis smiled. “Sure you can. It’s not that hard.”
Clove chuckled. “You’ve probably never seen a computer, either.”
Flora shook her head. “What is that?”
Vera hugged her. “We’re here to help you.”
Flora was amazed these women wanted to help her.
They all hugged her then pulled her into the kitchen and they began eating and talking about everything.
She was overwhelmed by the amount of information they gave in less than an hour.
They set up a schedule to come over during the week while Q was at work and make sure she had what she needed.
Before they headed out, she hugged them all again, thanking them for everything. The guys came in and said goodbye to her before they took off. After talking to the women for almost an hour, it wasn’t so weird meeting Q’s friends.
She watched the last of them leave out the front, then turned to Q. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I hope it helped to have them over.”
“It did. They’re stopping by during the week. Ellis is getting me a phone, and she’ll teach me how to contact them.”
“Oh, I should have done that.”
“No, you’ve done enough. You saved me out there. I know I would have died if I had stayed out there alone.”
He shook his head, marveling at her resilience. “Based on some of the things you’ve said, I’m sure you’ve never watched TV.”
Her eyebrows shot up as confusion filled her face. “TV? What is that?”
“Television. It’s a way of seeing moving pictures. Television shows are filmed in another location, and you can watch them in your home instead of going to a movie theater. I’m guessing you’ve never been to a movie theater, either?”
She shook her head. “I missed out by growing up in a cult.”
“Cult, hmmm. Did they teach you that word?”
She nodded. “Yes, they did.”
He led her over to the couch and picked up the remote control. “I don’t want you to stumble upon something on the TV and not know what to do. You turn it on by pressing this button.”
She jumped when the TV came on, lighting up the room and filling it with sound. Q lowered the volume to reduce the sound, but still it was odd having the sound of someone speaking coming from a box.
“Right now, the football game is on. But tomorrow, it might be something different. You change the channels by pressing the up or down buttons on the remote.” He pressed the button, and it changed to another football game.
“Wait, is this one different from the other one?”
“Yes. It’s a different team.” The camera panned over the crowd, showing people in coats cheering and waving.
“How many people are there?”
“That stadium holds about seventy or eighty thousand people.”
She shook her head as she stared at the screen. “I can’t imagine.”
“I know this is a lot. To turn off the TV, press this button. I won’t get into streaming services that I have. If you’re not used to it, it can be overwhelming.”
“I don’t think I’d want to watch football.”
He chuckled. “I can see that. But there are other shows, like dramas. And some scary shows, too. It would probably be best not to turn it on.”
She nodded. “I don’t even know why I would.”
“I just don’t want you to not know how to turn it off. Sometimes, there are shows that are intense. They show situations that can be scary and weird. I don’t want you to be afraid when I’m not here.”
Worry crept in. “I’m used to cleaning and preparing meals all day, but there isn’t much to do. Your house is clean, and I looked in your cold box and pantry, and there isn’t much I’ll be able to do tomorrow.”
“You can read, right?”
She nodded. “Yes, I know how to read.”
“I have a history book you could read. It talks about what happened in the twentieth century in our country.”
She wasn’t sure what he meant but smiled. “Sure.”
“Also, I have a few books about gardening and some about the Navy.” He stood and moved to a shelf. “There are also some fiction books, but you may not want to read them. I like to read horror, and those books can be shocking if you’re not used to it.”
“Oh, shocking how?”
“They have a lot of gory stuff in them. It’s not something you should read if you haven’t read scary books as a child.”
She bit her lower lip, thinking of the stories they told her as a child. “I grew up hearing stories about how the rest of humanity was eaten by zombies and how we would be too if we left the community.”
He took her hand and squeezed. “You are so brave, leaving like you did.”
She shrugged. “I was more afraid of what Jebediah would do to me. Many of the women have bruises all the time. I knew he would be violent at first. Most newly married women have their legs beaten so badly they can’t walk for the first month.”
His eyes narrowed and he shook his head. “What?”
“It keeps them dependent on their husband. It’s a way of teaching women to never leave.”
“Fuck. That is disgusting. I’m sorry you had to live through that. I wish we knew exactly where they were so we could send the police.”
“I don’t know that they could do anything.
It’s not like the women would say anything bad about the elders or their husbands.
I was always the odd one, the one who didn’t conform like the other women.
I wasn’t awful on the outside, but I was always thinking of being somewhere else, and then I learned about the beatings and other things the elders did to women. ”
“I’m so sorry you had to live through that.”
Q pulled her into a hug, and she rested her head on his shoulder. She breathed in, realizing that she was breathing in his scent. He smelled clean but had a bit of outdoor smell on him. There was something else, too, something warm that brought a tickle to the back of her throat.
Warmth spread through her, and an odd feeling worked through her. What was going on? Since leaving the community and finding Q, everything inside had been shaken. She didn’t know how she was supposed to feel about Q. Was it wrong to want something from him?
She leaned back and met his gaze. Maybe that was the wrong thing to do because now the feelings inside were growing.
She wanted to press her body closer to his.
The swirl inside her mind had her feeling things she’d never experienced before.
She wanted to find out what would happen next, but Q stepped back and wiped his hand over his face.
“Okay, so I think we should talk about how to wash clothes. Let me show you the washer.”
The let-down feeling almost overwhelmed her, but she tried for a smile as she followed him through the kitchen. She’d been washing clothes since she was a child and knew how to do it, but the contraption he showed her was something she’d never seen before.
“Wait, I don’t have to scrub the clothes first?”
He shook his head. “No, this does all the scrubbing.”
“How?”
“The soap helps, but the washer also turns with water inside, and it gets the clothes clean.”
She shook her head. “So what does that machine next to it do?”
“It’s the dryer. You put the clothes in and pick a setting. I do almost everything on normal with medium heat and it dries the clothes.”
“Is that why you don’t have a clothesline?”
He chuckled. “Yes. I don’t need one. Also, I don’t have time for one.”
“What am I going to do all day if I’m not cooking or cleaning?”
He shrugged. “You’re going to read and learn some information about the world you didn’t know existed.”
She shook her head, trying not to lean into the overwhelm threatening her. She could do this because Q thought she could. “It’s all so weird.”
“I’m sure it feels like you’re on another planet.”
Shock filled her. “Wait, are there other planets?”
He smiled and nodded. “But none with humans living on them. At least nothing close by. If there is another solar system with humanoid-type people living there, we don’t know about them.”
She shook her head. “I have no idea about anything.” She wondered how she would work through everything. When she’d run she’d known it would be difficult, but this was much more complicated than she’d expected.
A bell rang, and she jumped. Q put his hand on her arm and warmth spread. She needed to watch her reaction to him. It wouldn’t do her any good getting her hopes up about this man. He was being nice right now, but there was no future for them.