by N. C. Reed
And it felt good, too.
She got the third bedroom. That room actually had a bunk bed in it, a full size bed on the bottom with a twin on top. Comes in handy when my friends and I would watch a game and drink a bit too much. The room wasn't quite as large as Connie's, but it was still pretty large, considering. It also didn't have it's own bath, but the hall bath was next door so it wasn't that much of an imposition. My own room had a large bath, complete with a sauna tub, separate shower, and separate toilet. What? I like my comfort. That's all.
Technically I had one more bedroom, but I used it as more of a large closet. Shelves along all the walls, tubs of gear stored along the bottom, that kind of stuff. My library was in there too. I had a fold up bed standing in one corner, but. . .it really wasn't up for occupancy except in an emergency.
I had put a lot of work into this place over the years I'd owned it. I'd gotten lucky with the house and I've never pretended otherwise. It was originally part of a small farm with right at two hundred acres. When I bought the place, I'd turned right around and sold the farm land apart from the two acres I'd kept for myself and used that to pay off the loan against the place. I didn't have money left over or anything but I was thrilled to have my place at what was essentially no charge. What would have gone toward paying for the mortgage was instead put into the house and property.
Anyway, Not So Bubbly Red Rita went into that third room. She was obviously not impressed with the accommodations, but. . .tough. She'd used all my patience already with her whiny ass attitude so I wasn't really feeling sympathetic. I was already planning to use her as bait the first time the zombies had us backed into a corner.
I know, I know. I'm going to hell for that one. Still, if it was choose between her and the doc, well. . .I'd shoot myself if I thought I had to spend the rest of my life with just Rita for company. Seriously, it was that bad.
I hoped that she might be one of those who would steady up if the shit hit the fan but there was no way to know until and unless the fan was actually hit. Until it did, I'd have to hope for the best and be prepared for the worst. Hence the plan in place to use her as zombie bait.
Stop judging me! You haven't had to sit in the same room with her while she lamented her damn dishes and wash stand and dolls and, and, and! I'm telling you, if you had to endure it, you'd have the same attitude I had. You cannot imagine. . . .
All right, enough about that. If you don't have the point by now, then I'm wasting my time. Moving on.
Anyway, that night Connie and I went over our loosely made plans checking our work, then checking behind each other. As far as we could tell we were okay, at least for now. I planned to clean and paint the cistern the next day and get it filled by the day after that. We'd have some water, if and when the utilities failed. Once I was finished, all I would have to do was check the gutter system to make sure we could switch it over once the water stopped.
I had plenty of filters for my filtration unit and the solar pump was in good shape. I didn't have a spare, but I did have enough PV equipment to replace it if I had to. Best I could do on short notice. I really wished we had a well, but two attempts to find water on the place had failed. I'm sure the farmer had suffered more than once for a lack of a well, but you can't put a well where there's no ground water.
If all else failed there was a creek behind my house right at the edge of my property. It usually had water. We could make the trek there to get water and then boil it to make it safe for drinking. Not the best option considering what we were preparing for, but like I said, last resort.
Otherwise we seemed to be on top of things. Connie had ordered some drugs she thought she'd need and had taken two suitcases full of bandages, supplies and equipment out of her office that afternoon. She'd do the same thing again that next day. She was trying to think ahead to what ever she might need and have that ready. Like I said, she was just as smart as she was good looking. And she was very good looking.
While we did this Rita was constantly droning in the background, whining about her room, her abandoned possessions, the necessity of being hunkered down in this 'miserable old farmhouse' and on and on and friggin' on. Once when I was probably about to explode, Connie reached under the table and squeezed my hand gently, and I relaxed. I looked at her, surprised, but she never looked up, just smiled slightly when she noticed me looking from the corner of her eye.
Busted again. Not that I cared. I couldn't be the only man who'd ever taken any possible opportunity to stare at her, know what I'm saying? The pressure of her knee against mine wasn't at all unpleasant, either.
I'll never know what made me think of gardening right then. Never will. There are a few ideas in my mind, but I'm not going to share them since they'll make me seem like all I had on my mind was Connie and. . .well, you think about it. It'll come to you.
Regardless, I suddenly realized that I hadn't picked up the least bit of seed, fertilizer, nothing. Be damn hard to plant a garden without them. I also realized I needed some heirloom seeds. I'd never bothered with them before because I really didn't have the extra time to set the seed aside and ready it for the next year's planting. That would have to change if this happened the way we were afraid it would.
Connie and I made a list of the seeds we'd most like to have, and I resolved to head into town again come morning and pick up all of them I could find, along with fertilizer. Realizing we had overlooked something so important made us start over on the lists, looking harder this time. We spent another hour trying to visualize anything that we might need, might have to make or repair, anything that could go wrong. We hadn't missed much, but what we had missed would matter.
Finally we were convinced we'd covered everything. I knew we hadn't and she probably did too, but there comes a point when you have to just stop for a while. It had been a long day already and we'd spent hours working over our plans. With red eyes we decided to stop for the night. Everyone was hungry, and Rita had been complaining about that for nearly an hour. Why she didn't just fix something I don't know. She was supposed to be a good cook.
I put on some beans and mixed up a pan of cornbread. Connie put some bacon on the griddle and then watched over the bread and beans while I started frying some diced potatoes. Simple food, but very good and filling. Surprisingly, I heard not one word of admonishment from the medical professional about healthy eating. Either she was hungry or she liked southern cooking as much as I did.
Rita looked askance at the meal when it was on the table. I'd made some tea, and when she found out I used saccharin to sweeten it she refused to drink it. 'Okay by me', I'd assured her. More for me.
She didn't like the water, it tasted funny. That wasn't possible I told her, since all my drinking water was run through a filter. One of the best available in fact. I used it to cook with, too. What tasted funny was that she was used to drinking treated water that still tasted like chemicals. I explained all that, and of course that just made her more angry still. Finally I just ignored her and ate.
Dreaming all the while about how nice it would be to shoot her in the head. I wasn't going to of course, but I really, really wanted to. Connie knew it, I guess, since she kept rubbing her knee against mine under the table. That was distracting me.
It also made me wonder if that's all she wanted to do, or if maybe, just maybe, she liked me back a little. I mean, you know, as more than just a friend or fellow survivor. Oh, how I wanted to believe that.
When we'd finished eating Connie smiled sweetly and asked if I minded doing the dishes. I told her I didn't, I was used to doing them anyway. She nodded and rose, asking Rita to come with her. The two went outside while I worked to clear my kitchen.
I suppose it's an oxymoron for most women, but despite the fact that I'm a man I kept a clean house. And my kitchen was kept even cleaner. I had a thing about germs, and keeping a clean house, especially the kitchen and bathrooms, was the best way I'd found to make sure that I didn't pick up anything that I couldn't wash off with
Dial.
As I washed I was sure I heard raised female voices once or twice, but I chose to ignore it. Whatever was going on was between them was their business. Once I was finished I headed to the small fourth bedroom and put away the new re-loading supplies I'd gotten. I kept an old stand-up refrigerator for that, using air-dry to keep the moisture out. Pretty good powder safe if you can find one with a lock on it. I stored all the components in there then locked it back. Next I unpacked the new ammunition I'd bought, storing it in the small closet which I'd converted to what was essentially a walk-in gun safe and ammo storage area.
I was actually pretty happy with that, just to brag a little. The wooden door was still there, but it was only a cover. Inside the door was quarter-inch steel plate hung on very sturdy hinges. Three locks secured that steel door, which opened out rather than in. It had taken some tricky work to recess that door so that the wooden door could stay as camouflage.
Inside the closet, the same quarter-inch plate lined the walls, ceiling, and floor, welded together and then braced in the corners. A hand made gun rack dominated the long wall, with solid shelves over that to hold accessories and equipment. Oxygen absorbing elements were all over, keeping the closet moisture free as well.
It wasn't as fancy as some but it worked. It was secure, controlled, and perfect for me. Once I'd finished putting the ammo away, I checked the magazines I kept loaded. The dates were still okay (you don't leave a magazine loaded forever since it will weaken the spring. I dated mags when I loaded them with one of those small price stickers. After six weeks, I emptied them and loaded others) so I left them alone except for three, which I took to go with a Ruger Mini-14 I took from the rack. I picked up a bag for the rifle as well and then shut the door, locking it once more.
Now, I know what you're thinking. Why a Mini-14? Why not an AR platform. Well, there are a few reasons, actually, but the main one was simple. While a Mini-14 might not be quite as accurate as an AR, or as sexy, it would shoot any ammo that you could get into it, whereas an AR is balky about what ammo it would feed. I don't like balky. I like dependable. And my Ruger, or Rugers since there's more than one, were dependable.
Anyway, I figured it couldn't hurt to start putting a rifle in the vehicle when I was going into town. Hopefully if something happened here it was still a good ways off, but I didn't know that. Better to have and not need, right? I stored the bag with the rifle and mags in the hall closet, available for me to grab on my way out.
As I closed the door Connie and Rita came walking back in. Rita had been crying it looked like and I was almost sure that one side of her face was redder than the other. She mumbled something that might have been 'excuse me' as she moved past, heading straight to the room she was using and closing the door. I looked at Connie, who was smiling. It was a little cold I thought, that smile.
“I think Rita will be fine in the morning,” she said very business like. Like a doctor who had treated a patient. “She's not coping as well as I'd thought, apparently. She's seeing now that this isn't some kind of game. She needs a night to sleep on it, that's all.” With that Connie went to her own room, likewise closing the door behind her.
How 'bout that, huh? No good night. No 'thanks for supper, Drake'. No nothing.
Women, man. Almost as hard to figure as zombies sometimes.
CHAPTER FIVE
I was up the next morning by four-thirty. I'm usually an early riser, and once I'm awake that's it. I'm awake and I won't be able to go back to sleep. I envy those who can, since I almost always want to and I just can't.
Up, through the shower and with coffee perking, I fired up my computer and started surfing for news. While the story still hadn't broken containment, I had been right about the number of villages that were 'temporarily' cut off in Europe. People were starting to demand answers that the EU and it's member governments didn't want to give. Questions like why the roads were still blocked when in some cases the rock slide had happened over a week prior. Like why are the communications still down? In the modern era of digital communications there was no real reason, technically anyway, why the communication issues hadn't been cleared up. These were just the most pressing of the two questions now being asked not only by the people but the press as well.
Government officials were stammering and stuttering but not really answering the questions. That would work only so long before people started asking in a more determined way. Already three people had been 'detained' for trying to hike into one isolated town to check on family members. Like as not they would have disappeared but for the fact that one of them had the presence of mind to record the conversation live while uploading it to a cloud server. It was still streaming over YouTube and several other channels when the plug had been pulled. The damage was done, however, and the three had been taken into custody and detained in a very high profile way. If something happened to the two women and one man, questions would be asked. Lawyers were already working to have them released, and experts were saying there was no way to hold them much longer without creating a crisis.
Not my problem I admitted, but it did mean that control was slipping away from the authorities. I wished I could be listening in on conversations inside my own government, just to know what was being said and decided. I didn't figure they had any real answers either but knowing what they planned to do might have made it easier on me.
Other than the three detainees and some sporadic protests over the situation in general there were no new videos out of Europe. On the one hand I wanted to see more of what was happening but on the other hand the first video had been scary enough. I couldn't decide if the absence of more was a blessing or a curse.
On a whim I decided to check the message boards that I frequented on occasion. Much as I had expected, talk and rumor were rampant among the world's dedicated survival community. There were slips of news reports, most of which I'd already seen, along with a few eyewitness accounts and 'friend of a friend' type warnings and alerts, but no hard evidence. No one who had a copy of the Spain video was willing to put it up on the web for fear it would lead to a 'scrubbing' such as the one in Europe. Couldn't blame 'em for that. Most were willing to e-mail people they knew a copy so it was still getting around, just not in the open.
There were constant topics of advice. What to stock, what to buy now, what to try and scavenge later, the kind of people you wanted to surround yourself with. Most of it was sound advice. The ones that made me laugh though were the threads on 'how to combat the undead menace' or 'dealing with zombies in a SHTF scenario' and a dozen more just like them.
Seriously? Who's a friggin' expert on zombie combat? No one, that's who. What a load of horse shit! 'When approaching someone you know who may be infected, call them by name to see if they respond'. Really? Hell, I was gonna do that anyway. 'If attacked, remember that the zombie can only be killed by a massive head wound that will render the re-animated brain activity to non-responsive'. Who the hell talks like that? And where did they get that little gem of knowledge?
From movies, that's where. They took the shit from a movie and then dressed it up with some four dollar words, cleaned up the sentence structure, then threw it on the 'net. Here we were, possibly facing the Zombie Apocalypse End-of-the-world as we know it, and we're getting advice from George Romero fans? Shaking my head in sadness I left the forums behind, moving on to US news that might hint that the infections had spread to us.
After forty-five minutes of surfing I was pretty certain that nothing in the morning headlines indicated that the sickness had reached our shores yet. Of course that could change five minutes after I logged off, but I couldn't just sit here and monitor the web. I had work to do and errands to run, like it or not. I turned the computer off and got up. So many idiots and so few subjects for them to discuss this morning.
I spent the next half-hour making breakfast of pancakes, scrambled eggs, and sausage. As I cooked the eggs I realized that chickens should be on that list. Which meant I had to build a h
en house, and lay in a supply of feed. And corn to stretch the feed.
It never ends, I thought to myself as I scratched a note on the bottom of the new list Connie and I had agreed on last night. I needed to get this done today if at all possible. I wondered how much help Bubbly Red Rita would be today, and decided probably not much. It also hit me that I'd have to leave her alone in my house if she didn't go anywhere and that was something I didn't want to do. I decided right there that I wasn't going to. She would have to go with me or go help Connie at the clinic. She wasn't staying here. She could always go to her own place for the day, I figured. Whatever she decided, she wasn't staying here without me around. That was just not gonna happen.
As I finished setting the table, Connie came around the corner and my breath caught for a second. Clearly she'd forgotten where she was since she was still in her sleep wear. Why was that a problem? Well, technically it wasn't. It was just that a string shoulder tank top and very brief, uh, briefs, really stood out on her. And other things stood out on her, too. I had to spin back around to the stove to keep her from seeing my reaction. She probably wouldn't have noticed since she was still half-asleep. She sat down, yawning, and looked at the table.
“Wow, Drake, you sure know how to spoil a girl,” she smiled sleepily.
“Hey, nothing too good for my favorite roomie ever,” I managed not to stutter a single time. Proud of me? Thank you.
“I'm not really a morning person, as you can probably tell,” she admitted, taking the offered cup of coffee gratefully. “Thank you.”
“You're quite welcome,” I assured her, valiantly trying not to stare at all that cleavage, along with the very thin fabric covering, almost, her erect nipples. Oh man, was it hot in that kitchen? I must have left the stove on.