by M. D. Massey
Tucker took the fish into the kitchen, pouring them out into the big basin sink to gut. The little girl watched curiously as he sliced into their bellies and pulled out all the guts.
"My grandpa taught me how to do that," she informed him.
"Is that right?" he said, dropping the gutted fish onto a plate. He grabbed the next fish and smacked its head on the counter to kill it. Niah winced.
"Me and mom come up here every summer," she informed him, swaying back and forth on the balls of her feet.
Tucker didn't usually like kids, but this one was kind of adorable with her pigtail braids and her sunny blue eyes. She looked a lot like her mom, but had a friendlier disposition. The woman walked into the kitchen and stood staring at him with her arms crossed as she watched him with her daughter.
"What are you doing in Reno?" she asked.
He didn't exactly know what to say. Being an unemployed military veteran who spent most of his days drinking and philandering probably wouldn’t impress a woman driving a brand-new Jeep. Although, maybe she’d stolen it, he had no idea. Still, she had that look about her like she did things like go to the gym and shop at Whole Foods.
"I'm a military veteran," he said puffing out his chest.
"Oh, I see. Those skills could come in handy in an apocalypse," she observed.
"That's right, I'm good at other things besides catching and gutting fish."
"Good to know," she muttered, examining his face.
He hoped she didn’t notice his nose was red from the booze and his body was emaciated, down twenty pounds from when he'd served. Or that he’d gone fairly soft around the belly.
"What did you do?" he said, feeling she owed him that much.
"I'm a freelance coder from Silicon Valley."
"Like computer programming? Don’t think that line of work’s going to come in handy much anymore, now that the grids down," he chuckled.
"I'm an engineer. My skill set doesn't end at computer programming.”
So, this sassy black woman was smart and gorgeous. Not bad at all. His day had just gone from good to better, and he couldn't believe his luck. He tried not to lick his lips and stare at her breasts while he cut the heads off the fish and turned the gas stove on to start frying them.
"It's lucky. This place has a gas burning stove," he said. “Otherwise I’d have to start a fire to cook anything. And who knows if those zombies can smell or not."
"It's a good question.”
"You got any theories on how this started. Secret military conspiracies? Foreign governments? Aliens? An ancient disease pulled up from underground in Siberia?"
"I guess those are all as plausible as anything else," she said, her tone annoyed. "Niah come with me, we’re going to get the bedrooms ready. I think we both need a nap. We've been driving since yesterday morning, and I haven't stopped."
"You drove all night?" he asked.
"I stopped for about five hours on the side of the road once it got dark. When I started driving again about an hour ago. I didn't know what I was going to find when I got here, and I'm glad that I waited until morning to arrive."
"Why? Because of me?" he asked.
"Maybe," she said, putting her arm around her daughter and walking out of the kitchen.
"Fish’ll be done in ten minutes," he said.
He frowned and went back to his cooking. He didn't think he was getting off on the right foot with this Jada Sinclair person. She had an amazing ass, but she also had an amazingly bad attitude. He usually didn’t go for women like that, but the apocalypse did something to a guy. Still, she was smart, and her daughter was cute. He could put up with having them around. He lit another cigarette while he finished frying up the fish. Jada came into the room and glared at him.
"Are you gonna really smoke inside?" she asked him.
"Look, doll, most of the world is dead. I think a little secondhand smoke isn’t going to hurt anyone."
"Take your smoking outside if you want to stay in my parents’ cabin," she snapped.
"Geez, fine," he said, taking the fish off the flame and walking out the back door of the cabin.
He couldn't believe that he just let her talk to him like that. So bossy. Still, she was a mom, and he could appreciate her wanting to protect her daughter from zombies and secondhand smoke. He might as well try to get along with them. Her skills might come in handy. You never knew when you might need a website developed, or something. He smiled.
"We’re going to eat this now," she said, peering out the back door.
"I'll be in in a minute," he said.
"I have a few cans of vegetables we can eat with the fish.”
"Sounds good," he said.
She stepped back into the kitchen, giving him a look like she thought he was an idiot or serial killer or both. He threw a cigarette butt on the porch and stomped out the flame, walking through the door into the kitchen. He found Jada and Niah sitting at the table with their food on tidy little plates. He was just going to eat the fish out of the pan, but plates were good too.
He sat down and found his helping already dished up with a fork and napkin placed beside it. How civilized. He took a bite.
"This is good," Jada said.
She smiled at him, and it lit up the whole room. The look in her eyes did something to him that he didn't want to admit was happening. Jesus, did he like this woman? How was that even possible? He couldn’t remember the last time he’d liked a woman. Attracted maybe. But liked? No.
Still, he glanced at her breasts and they did look awfully good in that shapely bra she was wearing under her black tank top. He could get used to that for sure. They finished their meal and she cleaned up as her daughter went to the bedroom she’d chosen for the two of them. He had his things in the other room across the hall. Now it was like they were all living together. One big happy family.
22
Jada cleared the dishes from the kitchen table and put them in the sink that was still streaked with blood. Tucker had cleared the guts out, but hadn't rinsed the basin. She turned on the faucet, thankful the water was still running from the well. After washing the sink, she washed the dishes in the cold water and put them in the drainer beside the sink. Niah left their bedroom and followed Tucker outside.
Jada could see them standing at the end of the dock as he instructed her how to bait a hook. Niah had been fishing since she was a little kid and knew how to do it herself. Jada just shook her head, wondering how she'd managed to run into the worst possible person in the middle of an apocalypse.
She had seen the empty bottles of whiskey littered across the cabin. It didn't take a math genius to put two and two together. Tucker was an alcoholic, and he was driving a stolen vehicle. It had California plates, and he’d said he was from Reno.
She couldn't blame him for stealing a car. What did it really matter anymore? He had been right about that. Still, she didn't trust him. He said he was a military veteran, which she was willing to believe — his natty old duffle bag did say ‘Marines’ on it, but he could've picked that up from a thrift store. He did have weapons and that was more than she could say for herself. As untrustworthy as he seemed, it was better to have someone else around to help her protect Niah.
She watched him hand the fishing pole to Niah, and Niah cast it out into the water. She smiled up at Tucker who'd said something to her. Jada could read his lips: Good job. Niah began to reel in the line, the happiest Jada had seen her since they’d left San Jose. The poor kid was obviously going to be scarred for life. But what could Jada do about that? At least they’d survived.
By some stroke of luck, she and Niah hadn't caught the infection. Some gene in their DNA made them immune, she supposed. That was her running theory. It was impossible to say how the virus spread. On the road from San Jose, she’d seen the zombies overtake the living and bite them, only for the living to rise again, several moments later in the same undead state. So, she was able to deduce that the virus was spread through bites. But that
wasn't how it had swept across the country and the world so quickly. Some other carrier had to be to blame. She squeezed her eyes shut as she put the last dish in the drain. She didn't want to think about the origin right now. It hurt too much to think about all that death. Tucker's explanations were all farfetched and ridiculous. Each one more insane than the last.
She walked out the back door and down the dock just in time to see Niah pull a small trout out of the lake. She squealed with glee as Tucker tried to catch it with the net. He swept the net up under the little fish as Niah waved the pole around wildly. They were both laughing hysterically, and the sound lifted Jada’s spirits more than she would have expected. Tucker fell to his knees and pulled the hook out of the fish's mouth, throwing it into the bucket of water at the end of the dock. He looked up at Jada and smiled, light sparking in his eyes.
“We’re catching some lunch," he said.
"We'll need it."
"The fish are an unlimited supply, but we’ll have to go scouting for everything else in the next day or two," he said seriously.
"I agree.”
"Have you ever shot a gun before?" he asked her.
She pursed her lips and shook her head no. She was physically oriented and enjoyed the outdoors, but she'd never held a gun in her life. She’d lived in the Bay Area since childhood, and her trips to Tahoe were more about sitting around the campfire roasting marshmallows than hunting deer.
"I can show you how. If you want," he said with a shrug.
She saw his eyes sparkle with hope and something else she couldn't place. It made her uncomfortable.
"If we shoot any bullets we’re sure to draw the zombies right to us.”
"You got a point there," he said. "Maybe you'd be better off with a crossbow. I could pick you up one at the hunting supply store when I go into town for food."
"Hmm, okay," she said.
"You won't be as fast as with the rifle, but you can retrieve your arrows.”
"You think the crossbow could take out a zombie?" she asked.
"Definitely. How many zombies have you killed with that machete?" He pointed to the weapon at her waist.
"With the machete or altogether?" she asked.
"Both," he said with a chuckle.
"Altogether, I've killed three, but only one with the machete.”
"We’re almost tied," he said, standing.
"Yeah, but I did it while protecting an eight-year-old," Jada said, feeling competitive.
He burst out laughing and snorted, holding his waist. "You're alright, Jada," he said shaking his head.
"Yeah," she said. "So are you."
She left Tucker and Niah on the dock fishing, thinking they couldn't get in too much trouble while she was in the cabin. She wanted to take stock of the supplies they had and search the rest of the cabin for anything else useful. In the kitchen, she stocked the food she'd taken from her ex’s apartment along with the food from the cabin. They had ten cans of food. Four cans of beans, one cans of chili, two cans of tuna and three cans of corn. There was a packet of beef jerky. Powdered milk. Coffee. And salt and pepper and a bottle of canola oil. She shook her head at the slim pickings and continued searching through the drawers and cabinets. She came up with a couple of boxes of dried soup. In the utensil drawer, she found a sharp cutting knife that was dull with age and slightly rusted.
After she searched the kitchen, she went about searching the living room. There was a good hatchet by the fireplace, and the wrought iron fireplace equipment. The long fire poker could be used as a weapon in a pinch. She then went to the bedrooms and searched them for supplies. There was an old pack of DD batteries in the nightstand by the queen-size bed she and Niah would share. Along with a flashlight. There was also two kerosene lamps and gallon can of kerosene.
Jada went outside and checked the propane tank. The meter said it was half full. Satisfied with her inventory. She went back to the dock and checked on Niah and Tucker, who were now sitting in lawn chairs. Both held fishing poles. The bucket held six trout and the two of them seemed like they'd made friends. Tucker was smoking a cigarette right next to Niah, and she had to resist the impulse to snatch it out of his hand and throw it in the lake.
"Could you not smoke next to my daughter?" she asked from behind. He looked up at her and squinted in the sun.
"We’re outside," he said.
"Secondhand smoke is secondhand smoke," she said. He pursed his lips and threw the cigarette in the water.
"You’re the boss. Mama bear," he said.
Niah giggled and Jada rolled her eyes.
"I've taken stock of what we have in the cabin.”
"Good work, chief," he said sarcastically.
“I've written down our inventory. We should plan a restocking mission soon.”
"Sounds like a plan," he said, his tone dismissive.
Jada growled and left them on the dock. She went back to the house and found an old am radio her father kept there. She sat down at the kitchen table and began turning through the channels, looking for signals. She tapped out an SOS message with each turn of the dial. All she got back was static until finally she heard the faintest impression of what she assumed must be Japanese.
A recorded message played on repeat. The sound of the voice was panicked even in the foreign language. She rubbed her face, wishing she could translate the message somehow. After several minutes of listening to the same voice on repeat and trying to communicate with the sender, she grew frustrated and turned the radio off. Sitting back in her chair, she crossed her arms over her chest and pinched the bridge of her nose, squeezing her eyes shut.
Tucker and Niah walked through the kitchen door with the bucket full of fish, smelling of the lake and the outdoors. Niah beamed happily, as if the zombie apocalypse wasn't happening all around them. It gave Jada a strong sense of relief that her protective duty wouldn't have to be on overdrive every second.
"We caught ten trout," Niah said triumphantly.
"Good job," Jada said, patting her daughter’s head.
Tucker began to butcher the fish on a wooden cutting board at the counter. The sound of crunching bones and slicing flesh filled the kitchen.
"I found a signal on one of the channels on this radio," she said.
"Really?" Tucker said, turning to her and looking her straight in the face, his expression serious for the first time since she'd met him.
"It's in Japanese. It's a recorded message on a loop. No one responds when I send my SOS.”
"Oh," he said, turning back to the fish. "I guess all you can do is keep trying.”
"You're probably right," she said. "I wish I could understand what they're saying."
"Probably something like ‘Help me, everyone's turned into a fucking zombie’," he said with a shrug.
"Don't cuss in front of my daughter," she snapped.
"Noted," he said in a sarcastic tone.
Jada let out an exasperated sigh and Niah bounced off into the living room, pulling her toys out of her backpack to play zombie apocalypse with them on the couch. Jada stared at Tucker's back, trying to read the man who'd stolen her parents’ cabin. She gritted her teeth and stood from the table, turning into the living room.
"I'll fry these up as soon as I'm done butchering them," he said.
"Great," Jada said, conceding to their unsteady alliance for the time being.
23
Cody sat in a rocking chair on the porch, drinking a cold beer from the fridge in the basement as Felix purred in his lap. He looked out at the road, across the front pasture, down the driveway, his rifle on the floor by his side. He hadn’t left the house since the last time he'd gone to town to find supplies, but with the spring season eking toward summer, he knew he was going to have to do something to ensure his long-term survival.
He'd started a plan at the back of his mind. It wasn’t clearly defined yet, but every day it grew stronger. The electric fence lines were powered by solar panels and he’d already seen they worked o
n zombie cattle. The same could be said for zombie humans, he was sure. The ground over the decaying corpses of the herd had begun to grow lush over the last several days, the rotting bodies providing an ample source of fertilizer.
If he wanted to survive in the future, he would need to grow his own resources. The family's main profit had come from the cattle, but he also had a henhouse full of chickens who had been spared the plague. He'd seen a deer jump across the road yesterday. He’d caught a glimpse of it through his binoculars, sure that it was still alive. So, there were other animals out there who had survived.
He knew he needed to go to the feed and seed store if his plan was going to work. Going into town meant being confronted by his old neighbors and friends from his life before the plague. Killing Mandy still haunted him, even though he knew she was already gone when it happened. His heart was heavy with loss and his soul ached as he patted the little black and white cat.
Felix jumped from his lap and Cody finally climbed out of the rocking chair, a bit tipsy after his bottle of beer. He grabbed the rifle and went to the truck. He still had plenty of gas to run his equipment, but he'd need to fill the propane tank to keep the freezer and the refrigerator running in the basement.
He was very careful about running anything else in the house and let himself enjoy a hot shower once a week. But the rest of the generator power was for the freezer and fridge alone. He'd been going to bed early and used his natural gas stove to cook in the morning. He tried his best to conserve all the energy he could, but he knew there was plenty of supplies in town if he just went and got them.
The propane company was twenty miles up the road. If he could hotwire one of the tankers, he'd have enough propane to last a year. He climbed into the truck, taking a few deep breaths before he turned on the vehicle and pulled out of the driveway. He rolled down the window and called back to Felix.
"You be good now, cat.”
His barn cat was a survivor, and he knew he didn't have to worry as much as he did, but having another living soul to talk to was what was saving him from madness and self-destruction. He rolled into town and found the streets lined with the dead, walking groggily, as if in slow motion. They rocked back and forth in unison, like a demented chorus line. When they noticed the sounds and the movements of the truck, they perked up and started toward him, picking up their pace with renewed energy.