One of them was Lindy Smith. “What happened?” she asked in a piping voice, her green eyes wide.
“Tussled with a zombie,” Jenn said, easing down next to the fire and poking it back to life. “Actually it was five zombies.” She picked up the biggest log she could handle and laid it among the glowing embers. A little kindling was added next and soon the log was blazing.
“Five zombies?” Lindy asked, shaking her head in disbelief. “No way. Not even Stu can take on five zombies.”
Jenn shrugged and then winced as pain flared in her shoulder. “You’re probably right. Thanks for the water. If you guys could bring up some more I’d appreciate it.” Although they left, chuckling over nearly being “joshed” as Lindy put it, they spent the next ten minutes running water as Jenn heated clean river stones which she set into the slowly filling tub.
It wasn’t long before she was relaxing and growing sleepy as the afternoon light faded. A knock on her front door jolted her awake. “Hello, Jenn?” It was Mike Gunter. Before she could answer, he let himself in. “Are you okay? Colleen told me that you had a fall?”
That was about a thousand times more believable than the truth, and it was a quicker explanation. “Yes, but I’m okay,” she yelled, “just a little beat up. What happened to the traders?”
“There was a horde; a big one. One Shot says he’s never seen one so big.” His voice grew louder as he came right up to the bathroom door. For a panicked moment Jenn thought he was going to walk right in. She covered her breasts with her bruised arms, but he didn’t enter. “We got as far as that Sears Outlet store. When we went up on the roof…” He broke off, swallowing loudly enough that she could hear it through the door.
“They were everywhere. There had to be a million of them. No one could have lived through that many.”
There was a soft tap on her door and she could imagine his forehead touching the panel. “Maybe some of them hid,” she said. With the amount of gunfire, they had heard it was wishful thinking. When he didn’t answer, she asked, “So what are we going to do?”
“When the horde disperses, we’ll split whatever we can salvage.” He took a long breath held it, held it, held it, and then let it out without adding anything more. She knew he wanted to say more just like she knew she would have to drag it out of him.
“When do you think that will be?”
He cleared his throat. “A few days, maybe a week.”
“So, what are you still doing here?”
“I-I live here now.”
She sat up in the bath so quickly water splashed onto the floor. “What? Where?”
“Here…with you. We’re supposed to get married.”
Chapter 13
Mike Gunter
Their dinner together was so quiet he was afraid to chew. They ate rabbit which was over-cooked and potatoes which were hard and undercooked. Neither complained, because that would have meant talking and one word might have led to another, which might have led to a conversation. And there was no way they could have a conversation at the same time avoiding the sixty-ton blue whale in the room.
“We’re supposed to get married,” he had said, his ears burning a ripe, cherry red.
“Married?” was her stunned reply.
He had mumbled, “I think so,” as if there was some ambiguity. That had been the extent of their conversation, since talking to her through the bathroom door, though at one point he had pointed in the direction of her elbow at the salt and she had said, “The salt?”
That was it. Mike even prolonged his meal, nibbling on the potatoes that tasted like wallpaper glue. As much as he disliked the silence during the meal he knew it would be nothing compared to the silence that would follow it. And he was right. Jenn went at the dishes with a will while he found himself looking for something to do.
He checked his M4 and his crossbow, cleaning both though they didn’t really need it and finishing just as Jenn put the last dish up to dry. Jenn looked suddenly nervous, said, “I’m tired. I-I should get to bed,” and fled to her room without looking back.
The next morning was much of the same and they both made excuses to leave the apartment. She spent the morning checking the snares, while he spent it dodging questions. With extramarital affairs and sleeping around curtailed, normal gossip on the hilltop was exceedingly dull, but that morning there were steady, unrelenting whispers and not so secretive glances everywhere Mike went.
There were three main topics: Mike and Jenn’s upcoming marriage, Jenn’s stunning vision, and the horde attacking the traders. In people’s mind the three were linked together in some mystical fashion that made for titillating speculation and conversation.
Wishing to avoid all of this, Mike sought out one of his own, Jeff Battaglia who was staying with Stu for the next few days as he convalesced. It was Mike’s hope that Stu would be gone, out doing chores or hunting or something so Mike wouldn’t have to endure his flinty gaze.
Stu answered the door, and Mike had to work to hide his disappointment. “What did she say?” Stu asked right off the bat.
“Nothing,” Mike admitted, unable to look Stu in the face. “She just sort of got quiet.”
“Nothing? Really? What the hell, Mike? Did you ask her wrong?”
The moments before and after he had brought up marriage had the hazy feel of a distant memory, but he was pretty sure he hadn’t asked her at all. He had blurted out something along the lines of We’re supposed to get married and her reaction had been so disheartening that it had thrown him for a loop.
“I-I, look it’ll be fine,” Mike replied. “She didn’t say no and that’s something, right?”
Jeff, lying on the couch in a sheen of sweat, chuckled without putting too much effort into it. “It’s something, alright. It means your marriage is in trouble before you even got to score. Don’t you know anything about women?”
Mike didn’t. They could be the most confounding of God’s creatures. One moment happy as a clam, the next spitting nails. He had seen it before, but he had never expected to see it from Jenn Lockhart. “I know enough,” he lied. Wanting to change the subject, he asked Jeff, “What’s up with you? Don’t get mad, but you look even worse than you did yesterday. I thought the Coven was supposed to fix you right up. You got the pills, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, and they gave me that concoction of theirs. Remember when Billie Lang got sick last year? He told me it was like he was drinking something that came straight from a zeke’s butthole. He wasn’t wrong.”
Stu murmured, “It’s got to be that way. The pills aren’t working like they used to. They have to supplement them with their, you know, their craft.” He made a slightly disgusted face when he said this. “You should be fine.”
“Yeah, you’ll be fine,” Mike agreed, even though there was a whiff of desperation and decay about Jeff. Stu must have thought the same thing because he asked Mike to come with him back across the bay to check on the horde even though they both knew there was no way it had moved on yet.
The two took M4s and crossbows. Stu also had his climber’s axe while Mike had a hunting knife.
The day was grey and threatened either snow or rain. “What do you think?” Stu asked just after they left the front gate. “The weather gonna hold off for us?”
Mike looked up at the clouds before teetering his hand back and forth. “Maybe to probably not. I’m not the best at reading the signs.”
“Signs? I was just looking for a weather report. If I want signs, I’d ask your wife.” Mike felt his ears burn once more. His glare had Stu holding up his hands in mock surrender. “I was just kidding. Sheesh.”
The need for silence as they made their way down to the harbor was a blessing for Mike. They dodged several zombies and made it almost to the harbor without saying a word, but both muttered in amazement as they came up to the partially frozen corpses of four zombies and the destroyed hedge.
“What the hell happened here?” Stu whispered.
“Looks li
ke someone took a baseball bat to these guys. Hey, these must have been part of the group that almost got our guys yesterday. They said some guy distracted four of them. I guess he killed them, too. I wonder who it was. Do you think Orlando could have done this? He’s pretty big.”
Stu only rumbled in his throat as he surveyed the ground. He went in a wide circle around the hedge before he returned to Mike, his head wagging in apparent disbelief. Mike expected an explanation, however Stu was as quiet as always and only muttered, “Let’s go.”
Side by side, the two walked down to the harbor to where the Puffer had been dry-docked a few days before. Compared to the sturdy Calypso, the Puffer felt like it belonged in someone’s bathtub. It bobbed like a cork in the choppy water and kept trying to slip away from Stu as he climbed on board.
Mike had no problem stepping down from the dock. He gave the Puffer a slow spinning shove and before the boat had turned a hundred and eighty degrees, he had the sail up and the rudder over. Just as the day before, the wind was with them on the way there, but would be in their faces on the way back.
“I guess Gerry had the same idea,” Stu said, thirty minutes into the trip. A mile back the Calypso had her wings furled and was practically skating across the water. The bigger boat ate up the distance in minutes. As it drew close the six man crew let the main sag, checking its speed until it was a few feet from the Puffer.
“Going in early to snag some swag isn’t very neighborly,” Gerry yelled over the wind. Stu’s eyes flashed at the accusation and Mike was sure if they had been on dry land, Stu would have broken Gerry’s face. “I’m kidding,” Gerry laughed and then took a sip from his thermos. His cheeks were already ruddier than the cold warranted.
Stu’s anger slowly boiled away and eventually he forced the ghost of a grin across his features. “I have your man with me. It’s not like I was trying to be sneaky.”
Gerry laughed. “What do you mean my man? Don’t tell me he hasn’t popped the question. Mike, tell me you’ve popped the question.”
“I did,” Mike answered, feigning indignation. “She just hasn’t answered yet. She…” He broke off as the six Islanders broke into gales of laughter. “It’s not that funny. And really, I don’t blame her. You guys sprung this on…”
“We don’t blame her either,” one of the men cried, bringing on more laughter from the boat.
Mike decided he’d said all he was going to say and calmly waited for the laughter to stop. Stu didn’t have the patience. “Alright that’s enough. Mike’s going to get the yes, we all know it. In the meantime, I’m going to go check out the horde.”
A nod in his direction was all Mike needed. He hauled up the mainsheet and in seconds, the Puffer was scooting ahead of the Calypso. Gerry was in the middle of taking a sip from his thermos and was slow to give the order to run up the main. In that time Mike opened a forty-yard lead that he knew wouldn’t last unless…
“You might want to hold on,” he said to Stu, who had already opened his mouth to object. “I’ll be careful—more or less.”
“This is an unnecessary risk,” Stu growled, hunkering down lower and gripping the sides of the boat. “Didn’t you just lose two men not that long ago, doing exactly this?”
Before answering, Mike glanced back to see Gerry bearing up on their starboard side. “It’s the same risk every time we step on board. Think about our trip yesterday. I ran her flat out and you didn’t say anything. The only difference is now there’s competition. My dad used to say that testing ourselves is how we get better.”
“I guess,” Stu said, the tan stricken from his face as they started hitting chop. Mike had swung out to his right to cut Gerry off, causing Gerry to move even further off the wind. Mike knew he wouldn’t put up with it much longer. Gerry would turn sharply and run with the wind under full sails. The Calypso’s speed would be unbeatable.
Where the Puffer lacked speed, she was easier to handle and quicker to turn. Mike waited until he saw Gerry haul the boom around before he made his own turn, cutting right across the Calypso’s bow. All six men in the Calypso bellowed curses as the two boats looked to be on a collision course.
“Mike, what are you doing?” Stu’s voice was a frightened whisper.
He was playing chicken with a much larger boat. Fearlessly he held course, knowing that Gerry cared for the Calypso more than anything in the world. Sure enough, with a scream of rage, Gerry turned sharply, killing his momentum and going dead in the water.
“You can keep that son of a bitch, Stu!” Gerry raged. “I don’t care what that little witch says, you can keep him!” His last words barely reached them. The Puffer was going her fastest.
“Was it worth it?” Stu asked.
Mike nodded. “Yeah. You can only bust my balls so much. My dad used to say that, too. He also said: ‘If you mess with the bull ya get the horns.’ Remember that one?”
Stu laughed easily and said that he did. The two had dreamy “remembering” looks on their faces. Stu’s look changed first. It was common knowledge that he had the eyes of an eagle. He pointed at the shore and it was another few seconds before Mike saw the dead crowding the shore and the docks and the hills that swept down from the bay.
They covered the earth like locusts and like locusts they ate everything that was remotely edible.
Quickly, Mike turned away from the shore and began the laborious process of beating into the wind. The Calypso passed them on the port side, two hundred yards away. Stu waved them over, only Gerry kept on course as Mike knew he would. He wanted to see the situation himself. Soon he turned back and quickly caught up to the Puffer.
Gerry began yelling from fifty yards away and Stu yelled right back, “Shut up, Gerry! No one said you had to race. And what’s the old saying? Ya mess with the bull ya get the horns.”
“What do you know about anything?” Gerry snapped.
“I know that we’re still on the same side. Should we meet back here at nine tomorrow morning?” Gerry agreed, without looking Mike’s way. They were about to part ways when Stu added, “Your man Jeff isn’t improving, by the way. He looks worse today.”
This put Gerry in an even worse mood. For a few minutes Mike was glad he wasn’t on the Calypso, then he remembered what he was going “home” to.
Three hours later he ran into Jenn as she was coming down the stairs from her apartment. She had a pot in her hands. “Soup for the sick,” she said. “Oh, I have guard duty tonight, so I’ll be home late. Don’t wait up.” It was more of a command than a friendly suggestion. She gave him a quick, uncertain smile as if she didn’t know whether a smile was the right facial expression for the moment. His smile was broader, though no less forced.
The empty apartment didn’t feel like home to him. The cold plate of venison she had left for him, although certainly tastier than the rabbit they had eaten the night before, could not have been more of a sign that Jenn thought he had overstayed his welcome. It sat all by itself at a table that could fit eight such plates. It looked lonely, and worse, it made him feel lonely as he sat in front of it.
With a few hours to kill before nightfall, he sat on the porch as wind swept across the hill, making a tattletale sound as it whipped through the spear forest. His view from the porch was that of the wall and forest. There weren’t even zombies to keep him company. Before he was really tired, he went to bed. He slept uneasily that night and woke with a sense of doom hanging over his head. This was the third day since he had asked Jenn to marry him and he really didn’t know what he would do if he didn’t get an answer.
He certainly couldn’t keep living in her apartment, but to scamper back to the island with his tail between his legs would be an embarrassment he didn’t think he could bear. Afraid to get up and face Jenn, he lingered in his room until she left, then, like a scared child he poked his head out from his bedroom, just in case she had only faked leaving.
“This is ridiculous,” he muttered at the sight of the empty apartment. Cleaning himself up, he t
ramped through the cold to Stu’s place, thinking that he would check on Jeff. He wasn’t the only one with that idea. Stu’s apartment was crowded with people: the full Coven was there as were Gerry Xydis and two other Islanders.
Jenn stood in the back near the door. When she saw Mike, she sucked in a long breath. It just kept going in and in. He was beginning to wonder if she would ever release it when he heard his name called.
“Hmm, yes?” he asked, turning away from her.
It was Gerry speaking. “Mike, I’m glad you’re here. I want you to represent the Islanders on the trip.”
Mike’s head was beginning to spin. “Trip?”
Gerry pointed toward Jeff Battaglia who sat on Stu’s couch, looking as though he were fading into his sweat-stained sheets. The man seemed to be somewhere between sick and dying. “If he’s not better by tomorrow we’re sending a team to Sacramento for new medicine. The old stuff isn’t working.”
“The old stuff isn’t working, yet,” Donna Polston added.
“And when do you interfere with the decisions of the Hill People?” Lois demanded. “Mike is one of us now and not under your authority any long…” Gerry was shaking his head, a wicked smile on his face. The entire Coven turned and looked back and forth from Jenn to Mike in astonishment.
“You aren’t engaged yet?” Donna demanded. “What’s wrong with you, Mister Gunter?”
Gerry laughed. “There’s nothing wrong with my guy. It’s the little witch. She can’t make up her mind.” Jenn opened her mouth to say something but Gerry spoke right over her. “So, it’s settled. I’ll be sending Mike and William Trafny, and you’re sending Stu and who else? One Shot?”
Stu shook his head. “No, he turned us down. I talked to him and his crew this morning and they weren’t, let’s just say, they weren’t receptive.”
He had slipped a quick look at the Coven as he said this. Donna caught it and asked, “And what’s that supposed to mean? I know for a fact that Aaron is well liked by One Shot.”
Generation Z [Book ] Page 11