A.N.: Hi everyone, so I was reminded of this fic yesterday, and it struck me that these kids are very much in the same situation we all are - in quarantine, with people being assholes about available resources etc. and no idea when things will get better. I figured in April 2020 the season two premiere should be soon…right?

Also Outer Banks may be my next fanfiction.

A Shadow on the Wall

02

The trees were still there next morning.

They checked, first thing. They didn't have breakfast: Kendall had no appetite, and Grizz was slightly hungover - the only time he was ever crabby. Crabby, and cuddlier than usual: She woke up tangled up with him, and if she could have chosen, she would have stayed there forever.

She couldn't say why, but after a restless night, her dreams full of eerie Snow White trees and Walking Dead walkers, it was with a profound sense of relief that she found the chickens scratching away, clucking and cooing, ready to be let out to tidy the yard, where the hives were set up, Grandma's flowers already humming happily with bees.

Eggs and honey. She didn't know why she relaxed when she found the girls teetering out of the coop, fresh eggs laid - but Grandma was a firm believer in the power of nature, and Kendall was always happiest out in the garden. Maybe because she had so many wonderful memories of being out in the garden - either with her grandparents, with Maisie, or with Grizz. She felt calm among the flowers and crops, amongst her chickens and the pleasant hum of the honeybees.

The sun had risen; the world continued to spin on its axis.

But the trees remained.

And in spite of that, in spite of the fact everyone but the 224 kids on the buses had disappeared, Kendall still had her morning chores. And it was as comforting as the girls' clucking and the hum of the honeybees was, going through her morning routine; it went a long way toward settling her anxiety. The illusion of normalcy. She at least appeared to be holding it together.

They cycled past the railway, and, having knocked on Caius' door early, he rode over to the police-station with her, Santiago and Grizz, to ask his dad what the hell was going on. They were early enough, they'd catch him as his shift ended.

But the station was dead. Not just empty, but dead.

Thankfully, she had never had occasion to visit Caius' dad while he was on shift, had never been inside the police-station before - she'd stayed home whenever her grandparents got a call about Courtney, too young to bail her out: But she had seen enough cop shows - Grandma loved the pretty-eyed detective on Chicago P.D. enough to tolerate the lead actor's grating voice - to know that there should at least have been a skeleton staff to keep the office operating…right?

"Shouldn't there be someone on despatch?" Grizz asked Caius. Tall and handsome, skin like dark-chocolate velvet, with shoulders built to wreck doorframes, Caius' lips had parted when they found the place deserted. Kendall was too used to seeing an easy-going smile - or a frustrated frown as he completed his homework: She had never seen him shocked. It was a sucker-punch to the gut, and there was no disguising that.

"There should be," Caius murmured.

"Unless they were evacuated," Santiago said quietly, gazing uneasily around the station. It didn't explain the trees, but it explained the dead-zone West Ham now seemed to be.

If there were no police…

"Guys…what about the hospital?" she asked, her mind whirring: Five minutes later, they were pedalling over to the hospital. Because if there were no police… There were no emergency-services. They were alone, cut off.

The hospital was eerie - it always was; even when Maisie was born, the atmosphere at the hospital had made her shudder, and they had been there for a good thing. But the E.R. was empty; no-one sat behind the Admissions desk. There were no phone-calls coming through, no calls over the intercom. Not a single person waiting to be tended to, no-one but them heading to the doors that parted automatically.

If she found a set of chained doors with Don't Dead Open Inside spray-painted on, that was it.

She'd be searching out Daryl Dixon and sticking to him like epoxy.

Second-best after Norman Reedus was Grizz, her real-life sweet superhero with survivalist know-how - if no hunting experience, and far superior personal hygiene.

She turned to Grizz, eyes wide, her stomach doing something weird…evaporating… She could suddenly feel every cell in her body, supercharged with panic. Maisie…

"Okay…now we really do need to tell someone," Grizz sighed, staring around the empty E.R. "I'm gonna call some of the guys. Hey, can you call Cassandra?"

"I don't have Cassandra's number!" Kendall scoffed, shaking her head. Cassandra Pressman was part of that topmost echelon of the West Ham High social hierarchy that looked down their noses at Kendall and her friends - Kallista had nicknamed them the Snob Mob, and the name said it all. Kendall, Cherry, Kallista, Brittany - together, they were hyper-creative, intelligent, funny, charming kids with their priorities straight - they had their fun, but not at the expense of others. Cassandra, they respected; she earned everything, and she was a leader. She intimidated the kids who ran the school, and because of that, she had become one of them, leading them. But did Kendall want to spend her precious free-time with Cassandra Pressman?

Kendall spent enough time being a high-functioning Type A: When she wanted to hang out with her friends, she wanted to relax. To enjoy her projects, to laugh until her stomach ached and she was in danger of peeing her panties, to goof off and get stoned on rare occasions, but to have fun. Cassandra Pressman did not strike her as a girl who knew how to relax; and Kendall struggled to at the best of times. She needed to not be in her head so much, worrying about everything. The girls helped; Grizz was even better. But, no: she did not have Cassandra's number saved on her phone.

"Right," Grizz muttered, pulling out his phone; he dialled, and the call connected. "Hey…we need to talk. Where are you? The bridge… We'll be right there."

"They're at the bridge?"

"Guess we won't need to tell anyone after all," Grizz said grimly, and they climbed on their bikes.

They arrived at the bridge overlooking the railway - Luke, the Fighting Centurions' star quarterback, perched on the hood of Harry's mother's Mercedes convertible with Helena. Clark was frowning at the encroaching treeline, and slumped on the sidewalk were Allie, her friend Will with whom Kendall had P.E., Campbell, Sam, Becca and Kelly Aldrich. Gordie from her AP English class sat beside pretty Bean with her neat headscarf, worrying her lip. It was an odd grouping, made odder by their appearance: Caius, star shooting-guard, tall as an oak, Santiago, unassuming, gruff but polite, Grizz with his ponytail, and her.

Cassandra, all-around overachiever, stood perched on the railings, clinging to one of the painted steel supports, her face expressive as she gazed out over the woods. Trying to figure out what the hell was going on, with absolutely nothing to go on.

Kendall had been thinking on the ride over: Perhaps it wasn't so much about where they were, or why…

Grizz frowned at the sleek convertible, abandoned in the middle of the street. "You guys heading out to get help?"

"Trying to," Luke said quietly.

"Every road blocked off like this?" Caius asked.

"Every road out of town; we checked," Luke nodded. He glanced at Grizz. "Where've you been?"

"Over at the police-station and the E.R.," Grizz muttered, and Cassandra glanced around, eyes widening with interest.

"Did you find anyone?"

"It's a fucking ghost-town," Grizz answered, shrugging. He eyed the treeline, and Kendall followed his gaze; the trees were dense, established. Eerie. As if Maleficent had raised her staff last night and raised a forest to trap them - or protect them?

Were they trapped here, or was everyone else prevented from getting at them?

Was it dangerous to stay in town, or…had the danger passed, and they were all that survived?

"How did the buses get through?" Kendall asked, frowning at the woods that had dug up the road out of town.

"Huh?" Harry asked. He flicked his dark eyes over her, perhaps he might recognise her from the halls, or one of the few parties Grizz had dragged her to, but she doubted it. His gaze dipped briefly to her breasts, then at Kelly, hoping she hadn't noticed him checking her out; but pretty Kelly had her face hidden in the cuffs of her hoodie, and Kendall was the furthest thing from interested in Harry Bingham.

"The buses. Five buses, five drivers; they stopped outside the gazebo, let us out and then drove off," Kendall said. She had been thinking about it since she woke up.

Between getting on the bus yesterday morning, and being dropped off again in the same exact place, by the gazebo downtown, their families had disappeared and the woods had grown, as if they had been established for decades. The woods cut off the main roads, the railway - every thoroughfare into West Ham.

So where were the buses? And the people driving them.

"Who were the bus-drivers?" Kendall asked, glancing at the others, at Cassandra, who stared at her, at Grizz, who frowned at the road, biting his lip, at the others - it seemed like they hadn't even thought about it until she just mentioned it.

"I've got a better question for you," said Campbell, who made her skin crawl and always had. "Where the fuck did they bring us?"

"As a rule, the more bizarre a thing seems, the less mysterious it is; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle," Grizz frowned.

"You know this shit?" Clark said, glancing at Luke, first, who shook his head, before he glanced at Kendall, who nodded: She read. "I don't know this shit."

"Sherlock Holmes," Kendall said. In an undertone, she added to Grizz, "You willingly spend time with these idiots?"

"The point is, there's an explanation for everything," Grizz said, nudging her with his elbow. She supposed Clark and Jason and Luke had been good friends to Grizz, after all - friends he hid the truth from, but then, hadn't he lied to her, too?

"What does that have to do with that Arthur Boyle dude?" Clark asked.

"It's Doyle, and you're hopeless," Grizz sighed.

"There's only so many options," Gordie spoke up, frowning.

"Maybe we're dreaming?" Allie suggested, fiddling with her gold star necklace. "It's the best option."

"Maybe this is just some elaborate fucking game," Harry said, frowning at the road.

"Nobody in New Ham has a sense of humour," said Will.

"This isn't funny," Kelly spoke up, her blue eyes on Will, looking slightly bloodshot. From the state of most of them, Kendall imagined they had all let off a little steam last night.

"Someone thinks it is," Campbell smirked.

"Someone built an exact replica of our town and just put it in the middle of nowhere and if we just…walk - like this way, or that way…eventually, we'll get back to…you know, the real world," Harry said, gesturing around them vaguely. "I'm not saying it makes any sense."

"There was a smell; and then it went away," Cassandra said, her voice clear over the ticking of the insects and birds chirping in the new woods. "Then it came back, and the buses came for us."

"You're just gonna work this out, Cassandra, like some logic problem?" Harry sneered. "I mean 'not a flicker of a doubt'?"

"The world doesn't just turn upside down without a reason," Cassandra replied heatedly. "We're not in some play within a play, okay. Clever is not the same thing as true, there is a point to everything, there are answers."

Kendall frowned, gazing at the woods, and, blinking, startled and surprised by the thought that trickled through her head, muttered, "Croatoan."

"Huh?" Harry glanced at her again, eyes dipping. She wished she'd worn a jacket over her short overalls - it was too hot and muggy; she already wanted to go home and change into something loose and airy, and it was barely nine a.m.

"From Supernatural?" scoffed Allie. "We're all infected with some demonic virus?"

"History, Allie. Sir Walter Raleigh, the founding colonies," Kendall said. She was a year ahead of Allie Pressman but everyone knew Cassandra's shadow; she had a reputation for being blunt and bitterly jealous of her older, higher-achieving sister. "Everyone vanished; except for a word carved into a tree - Croatoan. What happened to the colonists has been a mystery for centuries but in all likelihood, the people were enslaved or absorbed into local Native tribes. People don't just disappear…"

"Maybe it's Biblical," Helena suggested, and Kendall exchanged the most fleeting of glances with Grizz. She attended church every Sunday for the social aspect, rather than the scripture: She was agnostic at best, but respected other people's choice to believe. There was nothing wrong with a little faith.

"If it starts raining frogs, I'm out," warned Allie. A few people smiled half-heartedly.

"God doesn't just play games with people for fun," Helena exclaimed.

"Which version of the Bible have you been reading?" Santiago scoffed, the tiny gold cross he always wore glinting against his dark t-shirt. He frowned at Grizz. "You said - that graffiti - mene, mene, tekel, upharsin? You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. Maybe that's the point; divine punishment."

"Where did you see the writing on the wall?" Helena asked, her voice full of scepticism.

Grizz frowned at Santiago, and only Kendall knew Grizz well enough to see he hid his annoyance that Santiago had brought up the writing on the wall. "On the church wall. It was cleaned up when we got home."

"We saw it yesterday, before we climbed on the bus," said Clark.

"Hey, don't worry about it - Book of Daniel's known to be historical fiction, it's riddled with inaccuracies," said Grizz, seeing the troubled look on Helena's face.

Kendall frowned, thinking. "In Oedipus Rex - remember, we read it last semester? - toxic fumes lingered over Thebes in punishment because Oedipus had inadvertently murdered his father and married his mother. Divine punishment from the gods - because he went against Nature's laws, even inadvertently."

"Dude, definitely wasn't me," Clark said, throwing up his hands defensively.

"Well, no shit," Grizz said, deadpan.

"My point is - maybe the writing on the wall was just someone messing with us, playing on the smell," Kendall said. "Maybe they're a very well-read asshole who doesn't realise most of us aren't cultured at all."

Luke, Clark, Harry and Caius all turned to Grizz with expectant looks on their faces, as if waiting for his confession. His lips parted, indignant. "Don't look at me!"

"More likely, the smell was like a hallucinogenic," Kendall proposed.

"Like a biochemical weapon?" Bean spoke up.

"Like it's affected our heads, or something…" Santiago muttered, nodding at Kendall, obviously thinking things through. "You know, we're still home, we just don't think we are."

"Collective hallucinations?" Helena scoffed.

"Hey, don't scoff; the mind's a weird and unknowable thing," Gordie remarked, eyeing Santiago and Kendall thoughtfully.

"Alright, look, Grizz and I will put a group together, and we'll go hike out of here through the woods, okay?" Luke suggested. "Like a search-party."

"I think that's a good idea," Helena said, always supportive of her boyfriend.

"Do you think it's safe?" Cassandra asked dubiously.

"Yeah, sure." Grizz; always self-assured and relaxed. Be prepared. The Scouts' motto; also words of wisdom from Scar. Lion King remained his favourite Disney movie, though Scar tied first-place for favourite villain with Hades.

"Yeah, Grizz knows what he's doing, and if there's people out there, we've gotta find them, right?" Luke said. "We've gotta get help."

Kendall frowned at him. She knew her upbringing wasn't similar to most people's, especially not in this group - but she didn't need saving. She was the one who raised her niece, took on the heavy stuff when her grandpa had been deteriorating, carried the burden for her grandma because it wasn't fair to make her shoulder the responsibility…

"I'm leaving," Harry declared. "I'm hungry."

"You're leaving?" Allie blurted in disbelief.

"Yeah, I've got a house, with a refrigerator with food inside of it, and I'm gonna go eat it. Luke -"

"You can't just leave," Cassandra exclaimed, cutting him off.

"What are we supposed to do instead?" Harry asked.

"We have to figure out what is happening to us!"

"You're not Student Council President anymore, Cassandra," Harry said snidely.

"God, you really, really need to get over that!"

"You comin' with, Kel?" Harry asked, glancing at his girlfriend. She didn't unfold from the sidewalk, didn't look Harry in the eye.

"No." It was said gently, but with a stubborn bite. Harry looked taken-aback: Kendall saw a stubborn look set Kelly's pretty features. Once upon a time, they had been friends: Then Courtney vanished one day, leaving Maisie behind, and Kendall's priorities shifted overnight. That was too much responsibility, far too real for the girls she had thought were her friends; looking back, she knew they hadn't been ready to believe that some people's lives weren't as simple and safe as their own. She had chosen to put Maisie first: And her so-called friends had punished her for it. Children were vicious, especially fourteen-year-old girls.

She didn't know Kelly well - not anymore, not since early in their Freshman year: But they had known each other since kindergarten. She politely looked through Kendall in the halls, smiling blandly and looking mildly uncomfortable when Jessica, Steph, Georgia and Lexie did their very worst to try and bring Kendall down - as if their opinions mattered to her, when she could see them for what they were. Still…Kelly stood by and never said anything, when the girls were truly heinous… Grizz wasn't the only one counting down the days until graduation; Kendall was just waiting for the relief that came with the knowledge half the girls she had grown up with and endured the last four years would be leaving, taking their nastiness elsewhere.

Kendall just didn't think Kelly had much of a backbone: She had never once told her friends to leave Kendall alone, though she could see the effect their bullying had on her, and was ashamed of her friends' behaviour.

"Jesus Chris, just get in the car," Harry said.

"She said no." Kendall frowned at him: He blinked at her, surprised.

"Fine, who gives a shit?" Harry scoffed. "You all can walk home for all I care." Harry flung himself into the driver's seat of the sleek convertible, tyres squealing as he reversed haphazardly, jerked the car in a U-turn and screeched off toward downtown.

"He was my ride," Clark muttered despondently.

"When the going gets tough, Harry heads for the hills," Grizz sighed, shaking his head.

"You see, that attitude right there, that is why he didn't get my vote," Kendall said, and Santiago smirked subtly beside her: Harry was a well-known elitist snob, disliked by the majority - though he considered himself to be the height of cool, the envy of everyone at school. She glanced at Grizz. "You sure about hiking out?"

She could think of a few things his time would be better spent doing, but she wasn't going to tell him that. She wasn't a leader. She wasn't Cassandra. Glancing over, she saw Cassandra watching Campbell closely.

"Hey, what are you doing?"

"Um, I'm just gonna send a text, let everyone know how fucked we are," Campbell said irreverently, snapping a pic on his phone.

"Campbell! Don't! Come on, let's think about this!" Ever the voice of reason: Campbell smirked, and they heard his phone swoosh as his text-messages disappeared into the ether. "Fuck!"

"You know the real question isn't where we are, or how we got here, or even if we can get home," Kendall spoke up, as everyone groaned and muttered obscenities at Campbell. She held Cassandra's eye, glancing around. Kendall, for one, had watched far too much Walking Dead not to think of how she'd handle the apocalypse. Short of finding Daryl Dixon, well… All those hypothetical conversations she'd had with Grizz about what they'd do…suddenly, not so hypothetical. It's how do we survive here?"

A.N.: The next few chapters will speed up/change focus from what we've seen on the show, establishing Kendall's role within the core group.