We're Still Alive(Book1)BEING REWRITTEN

Thirty-Nine

Ohio

   Cora tried to calm herself down and tell Jack to stop, but she only burst into tears again.
   "What the hell is wrong with you? Are you blind? Or deaf? Or did you just let it in?" He was facing Ella and Miles.
   Miles didn't say anything, and Ella answered with a hint of guilt in her voice. "I don't know how it got in. I really don't. Someone would have heard a window break if it broke in, and that door up there never opened for anyone but us."
   "What, then? Did it slip through one of the back doors? Pick the locks of the doors and sneak around the barricades? Someone let it in!"
   "Stop!" Cora screamed, letting out another wave of tears. "Just stop. Can we not fight right here, right now?" Everyone stopped talking, except for Mica, who was still talking to Cassidy, telling her that she would be okay. "We need to bury her." She looked up at the group of people gathered around her. "She didn't get bit, so she won't come back."
   "There's a big stretch of grass out back." Louis's voice cut in.
   "Yeah." Cora replied, trying to calm her breathing while everyone was focused on her. "That'll be great, thanks."

   They had people set up on the roof of the building to watch while Cassidy was buried. After filling the grave and sharing words and a long moment of silence, they went back into the mall. Cora was ushering Mica along. He wouldn't move on his own and stared off into the distance. He hadn't tried to hide his tears like he had for other things, like most guys do. Cora knew how much he loved Cassidy, who'd also been her best friend. As the two girls of the group, they communicated easily and had fun shutting the boys out of their conversations.
   The guards were going back to their positions at the doors and on the roof while the rest of them gathered back in the dining hall, which had become like their meeting place. There was six of them that
weren't on watch. Tom, Casey, Jared, Cora, Mica, and Lynn. There was a long moment of silence that felt like hours. The more time passed, the more frustrated it made Cora.
   "What happened then?" She asked, looking around at them. "Jay said they didn't see it on the roof or coming towards the building, and no one saw it at the doors. How did it sneak in?" No one said anything at first. They were all wondering the same thing and trying to come up with an answer.
   "What if it didn't?" Jared answered quietly. Cora have him a weird look.
   "What do you mean? How else would it get in?"
   "What if it was already here? I know we checked the place, but it might've found a spot to hole up in that it thought we wouldn't notice."
   "So it was here the whole time..." Cora concluded. Of course, it made sense. More than the other theories, at least.
   "It couldn't have been, though." Casey said suddenly. "They're not that smart. Jared, you remember that one we hit, after we lost the van? It ran right out in front of us, practically jumped in front of the jeep. Do you really think they're smart enough to hide like that?"
   "I think it's possible." Lynn said, exchanging a glance with Tom.
   "We don't know a lot about these things. We're learning to survive around them, so maybe they're doing the same with us." He agreed. Cora looked at Mica for his opinion, but he was staring at the floor. She
wondered if he'd even heard anything they'd been saying.
   "So what do we do about it?" She asked.
   "Check all or the rooms again. Look everywhere, make sure there isn't any others. After that, there's not much else we can do." No one objected with Lynn. Instead they split up and started searching again.