by Selena Kitt
The first time she’d seen another person again—before Caleb—she’d been strangely elated. The man had stumbled into her garden—the one she’d buried him in—but that feeling of excitement at seeing another human being had vanished almost instantly. Just watching him, she knew that there was something wrong. He’d been chasing a rabbit, which was a crazy endeavor for any human. Rabbits were nearly impossible to catch with your bare hands.
But this man had managed it. Ivy watched him put on a burst of super-human speed. She’d never heard a rabbit scream before, but that’s exactly what it sounded like. She’d also never seen a human being tear into living flesh before, but she supposed there was a first time for everything.
Then the man had seen her. He had an unnatural light in his eyes. His mouth was full of the rabbit’s blood. It ran down his chin and stained a shirt that had once been a white button-down but was now rusty with dried blood. The rabbit was still twitching in his hands, but the minute he saw her, he tossed the animal aside and started running in her direction.
He didn’t walk. He didn’t say anything. He just ran toward her, that light in his eyes growing stranger with every step. The scariest thing was, it wasn’t madness. There was still a sentient human being in there. He wasn’t sick, not exactly. He was just… hungry. And Ivy, like the rabbit, was simply prey.
She’d run into the house and locked the door.
Wishing he’d go away hadn’t been very effective.
He sat in the yard for a half an hour, eating the rest of his rabbit, staring at the house. Ivy watched him, peeking out the back door window, trying to decide what to do.
Then he approached the house. He knocked politely on the door. He called out to her.
“Hello? I know you’re in there. Hello?”
Ivy flattened herself against the wall, her father’s rifle in her hands, trembling as she saw him looking in the back door window, shading his eyes and straining to see into the shadows.
That’s when she heard Nikon bark.
The dog had free reign. He wandered off, but he always came back.
Now he was back and had found an intruder in his territory.
“Well, hello there, doggie,” she heard the man say.
No!
She had seen what he did to the rabbit. If she let him, he’d do that to Nikon. Or to her.
She knew what she had to do, as much as she didn’t want to.
Ivy yanked the door open. She saw the light in the man’s eyes as he turned toward her on the porch, distracted from the barking dog—Nikon was running, full-steam ahead, through the garden rows of raised beds—by the temptation of the woman now standing in the doorway.
His gaze flickered to her rifle—he recognized the danger—but it only registered for a moment. She’d never seen a look like that on another human being’s face before. It was pure lust. She didn’t know if he wanted to fuck her or devour her, or both, but whatever he was craving, she seemed to embody it all.
She shot him square in the chest. It hadn’t been a difficult shot to make, although it was a horrible one to take, in spite of her certainty that he meant her great harm. She’d seen enough of it on the news, before the television went dark. She’d just never experienced it first-hand before, and she never wanted to again.
After that day, Ivy would never go anywhere without her rifle.
She told herself she was better off alone—and believed it, until Caleb had come along. Of course, she’d expected him to be like the first man. Hungry. Like Caleb said the others were, the ones who had taken Nikon, who had invaded her farm and driven the two of them underground. But he wasn’t. He wasn’t like that at all.
Not everyone was, he’d told her. He didn’t know how many had “turned cannibal.” That’s what the news had called it. Turning cannibal. No one knew how many had been affected. Not anymore. Too many to count, Caleb said. So many that those who hadn’t been affected had become walking Happy Meals, in hiding from the rest.
Ivy hated this, hiding in the bunker. No sunlight, no grass, no wind on her face. She missed her little house. She missed her garden. And she didn’t want to think about Blitzen the cow, and all of her chickens and rabbits—every one of them had a name. Every time she mentioned them starving to death, Caleb just looked at her. So denial wasn’t just a river in Egypt. It happened to run right through her hopeful little square of the world.
I want to go home.
She said this every day to Caleb, who nodded sympathetically, but he kept saying it wasn’t safe. Well, when would it be safe? When could she go home? He didn’t have answers to those questions. It was maddening.
And her dream wasn’t helping.
Three days in a row, she’d woken up from the dream. It wasn’t always the same, but similar. The first night she’d had it, Nikon had been trapped in the house, barking and barking, but Ivy couldn’t find the door to let him out. She’d run around and around, panicked, searching where she knew the doors should be, but they weren’t there.
Then she’d smelled the smoke. The house was on fire. Nikon was howling. Ivy couldn’t get in to save him. She tried to break the windows with the butt of her rifle, but the house was impenetrable. Finally, she collapsed, sobbing, on the lawn, watching the house ablaze in the night, feeling the heat blistering her face.
Caleb had woken her from that one. She’d been calling out in her sleep, he said. Calling for Nikon. She sobbed while he held her against his chest, murmuring comfort. When she told him about her dream, he said it was because it was too warm in the bunker. He was still getting the hang of the masonry heater, he said. He’d put too much wood in or something. Wasn’t she warm, too?
And yes, she’d been sweating. Hot. Her t-shirt was sticking to her, and her cheek was flushed against his bare chest.
But then she’d had the dream again the second night. This time she had woken herself up with a start. This time, she’d been in the woods in the middle of the night, trying to find her way home. Then she saw a faint orange glow. The closer she got to it, the more certain she was—the house was burning down. But it was like a mirage—she walked and walked, but could never get to the clearing, could never get back home.
Tonight she’d been inside the house. Woke up and smelled smoke, felt the heat of the fire. In her dream, she’d gotten out of her bed, Nikon whining and scratching at her bedroom door to be let out. It was nice to see him again, even if it wasn’t real. She’d opened the door to see the whole cabin ablaze. Her father’s photographs were burning in their frames, the pictures turning black at the edges.
She was horrified to see his most prized photo—the bear with the blue eyes—like charcoal in its frame. Even as she watched, it fell to the floor and shattered.
Ivy rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands, trying to erase the image from her mind.
Just a dream. It’s just a stupid dream.
She heard the soft sound of snoring and knew it was Caleb, sleeping in the bunk across the way, and smiled. Part of her wanted to go to him, tell him about her dream. Strange, how much safer she felt now, knowing he was nearby. How fast things changed in a week’s time. She’d been terrified of this man seven days ago, and even when she was satisfied that he wasn’t like the others, she’d remained wary around him.
But he’d taken such care with her ankle, icing and wrapping it every few hours, and doing things she had a hard time managing with her limited mobility—like cooking their food and putting wood in the masonry heater—that she’d started really relaxing around him. Relying on him. Even trusting him.
It was the first time she’d had her dream, two nights ago now, that she’d felt an undeniable heat rising up between them that had nothing to do with the temperature in the bunker. She didn’t know if he felt it, too, but she suspected he did. Sometimes she caught him looking at her in a way that made her breath catch. He made her aware of herself in a way she hadn’t been in a very long time.
Ivy sat up in her bunk. Her head just cleared
the one above it, but Caleb’s didn’t—he’d bumped his head more than once until he’d gotten used to it. The first time it had happened, Ivy had been getting up too, and she’d leaned over and kissed the top of his head without thinking. It was something her father had always done whenever she injured herself, and it just seemed natural to “kiss it and make it better.”
Caleb had looked up at her, surprised, and Ivy had flushed all the way to her toes as she’d stammered an explanation. He had just given her a strange, crooked smile, shaking his head as she hurried off to the bathroom.
Ivy reached under her mattress, finding the small pen light she kept there for night time trips to the toilet. The bunker was impossibly dark at night and feeling your way through the living and kitchen area to get to the bathroom felt like a very long trip. They both kept a small flashlight under their mattress now, after Ivy had nearly sprained her other ankle hobbling to the bathroom on their first night.
“Ivy?” Caleb stirred when she turned on the little flashlight.
“Just going to take a shower,” she half-whispered, as if there was anyone else there to awaken. “Go back to sleep.”
“Time’s it?” he murmured.
“Six-thirty,” she informed him, shining the light through the living area and squinting at the analog clock hanging on the kitchen wall.
He snorted and rolled over toward the wall onto his side and was still again. Ivy looked at the broad expanse of his back, feeling something taking flight in her belly. It was like butterflies—something fluttering and full of excitement. She told herself it was just the remnants of her dream, and she just needed a shower to wash away the residue.
Chapter 8—Ivy
Her father really had spared no expense when it came to making the house and even his bug-out bunker completely efficient. The masonry heater—which used surprisingly little wood—created enough heat to warm the water in the on-demand heater that ran to the shower. It was the same technology he’d employed in their log cabin home, and it was very effective.
Ivy stood under the hot water for a long time trying to wash away her dream.
But it wasn’t the image of the house on fire, or her father’s photos burning, that stayed with her. It was the sight of Caleb’s broad, strong back, the sheet tangled around his waist, riding down the edge of his hip, that wouldn’t go away.
Strange, because Caleb had been a perfect gentleman. He turned away when she got in and out of bed—she’d started wearing just a t-shirt, to save on laundry. Even when her ankle had been worse and he had to help her to the bathroom, he’d been careful to give her as much privacy as possible.
Standing on it now, her ankle still hurt, but it was nothing like it had been. It looked more like a sunrise now—fading orange and yellow—than a pink and purple sunset. She was taking Tylenol instead of Vicodin, which had just made her sleepy and out of it. She could walk on it, with just a little limp. In another week, she’d probably be walking without any pain at all.
I can walk home.
She desperately wanted to. But she knew Caleb was right about the men who had found her property—if they were like the man who had chased the rabbit through her yard, they were dangerous. Caution made sense—but she didn’t want to be stuck down here forever. She wanted her house back, her life back.
Such as it was.
Funny, she’d been perfectly happy with Nikon and her garden and her books and her routine existence away from everything. But Nikon was gone, now. And she knew her other animals probably were, too, thanks to the intruders. But it wasn’t just mourning that loss that was getting to her.
For some reason, the thought of going back to her life before wasn’t as appealing as it had been at first. She missed home—she missed the outside—but the more time she spent in the bunker with Caleb, the less she wanted to return to a solitary existence. She hadn’t realized just how much she missed having someone to talk to.
And they’d talked a lot—there wasn’t much else to do down here, after all. Her father had the forethought to bring down several decks of cards, some board games, a chess set—which made her smile, because she’d never learned, even though he’d always promised to teach her—and a dozen paperbacks or so. But all of those quickly lost their luster.
Besides, talking to Caleb was fascinating. Or, more to the point, getting him to talk. He wasn’t the most forthcoming conversationalist, that was for sure. But she’d gotten him to open up a little bit. In the past week, she’d told him about her time homeschooling with her father on the homestead through eighth grade—and then going to a private girls’ boarding school for high school. That was hard at first—being separated from her father—but she’d made friends and it had been an eye-opening experience, being out in the “real” world after the isolation of home.
Her grades were good—she was actually far ahead of most of her classmates, academically—and she’d applied and been accepted to the University of Michigan. It meant more time away from home, but her father encouraged her desire to be a journalist, even in an era when any sort of real “news” was declining. It had been a fast four years, getting her degree.
And getting her job at the New York Times—“job” was more like “internship” but her father agreed to pay for her apartment and give her a monthly stipend until she could get something that actually paid her money—had been quite an accomplishment right out of school. Her father had been incredibly proud of her, and she’d been lucky to have a parent who had invested wisely and well, who had the money to send her to the best schools and give her such amazing opportunities.
Ivy loved New York, she loved her job. She never in a million years saw herself living back home, taking care of her ill father while the rest of the world fell apart. He’d been so sure something was going to happen. He talked about all the ways the world could end—an economic collapse, a giant earthquake, floods, the demise of the honeybees, an electromagnetic pulse that would take down the grid, a nuclear disaster… the list seemed endless.
When she was a kid, everything he’d done, from the garden to having solar panels and the masonry heater installed to get off the grid, just seemed normal to her. But the more time she spent out in the world, the stranger his behavior appeared. She still loved him dearly—but she began to worry about his preoccupation with preparing for inevitable disaster. And when his headaches started, and he had refused to go to a doctor, she’d finally stepped in and forced his hand.
Turned out it was all too late—the brain tumor had already spread to his liver, his lungs, his pancreas. They offered him a myriad of options, none of which he was willing to do.
Funny, in spite of his paranoia and the brain tumor that had clearly been effecting his thought process—he’d turned out to be right. The world had ended, just as he’d predicted. Well, not exactly in any of the ways he’d predicted. She used to joke with him about the pending “zombie apocalypse,” and his preparation plans for it. That was their pat phrase that encompassed all of those possible real-life scenarios that might change the world forever.
In the end, it had been closer to a real zombie apocalypse than anyone ever would have thought. And her father hadn’t even lived to see it.
“Ivy?” A knock on the door startled her and she turned off the water.
“Sorry!” She grabbed her towel off the rack as she pushed the shower curtain aside, wrapping it around herself. “Coming!”
She opened the door, steam rising around her, to see Caleb standing there in his boxers.
“Gotta pee.” He gave a rueful shrug, stepping aside so she could walk by him.
“I’ll make breakfast,” she offered, shivering a little as the cool air hit her wet skin. “What do you want?”
“Eggs, bacon, a big, juicy steak…” His gaze swept over her as he talked. The towel wasn’t very big—it barely closed. Her father had thought of everything. There were even toothbrushes and toothpaste. Couldn’t neglect your oral hygiene during the apocalypse, right? Would
n’t want to end up like Tom Hanks in Castaway, doing your own tooth extraction with an ice skate blade.
“Ha.” She gave him a little smile as she slipped by him. That was one thing about the bunker—it wasn’t big on protein, unless it came in the form of dried beans and powdered milk. “Oatmeal it is.”
“I’ll just take a shower while you… uh… get dressed,” he called after her. “Maybe we can look for some bigger towels?”
“I couldn’t find any.” She glanced over her shoulder at him and shrugged. It was true, though—the towel hardly covered her, and it covered even less on him. “But I’ll look again in the back closet.”