“How did it go out there, bro?” Lacey asked once the kids were busy looking for treasure in the rocks (they had found a marble, thirty seven cents in loose change and a small piece of fool’s gold so far).
Carl looked shaken, as if this was the first time he had actually had time to think about everything that had happened in the four hours or so since he had left. “We got hit by raiders or something, man.” The young man sighed heavily and it looked to Lacey like he was going to puke. “I…I killed two of ‘em. Buncha freakin’ zombies.” He grinned awkwardly. “Shoulda seen me though. Truck got stuck so we decided to set the bomb up right there in the middle of town. All these zeds were around it. I jumped up on the roof of the cab, climbed a tree and made a run for it.”
“Spiderman! Spiderman! Does whatever a spider can…” Lacey sang softly. He grinned though there was no humor in the expression. His mind flashed back to that day in the country club months ago when he had killed healthy humans. “You did alright, man.” He extended his hand and was genuinely pleased when Carl shook it.
“I…I’m sorry I was so bent outta shape awhile ago.” Carl said at last. He looked up at the sky and watched a couple sparrows flit around until they landed on the roof of the airport tower. “If you want to be with my sister I guess she can do worse.”
Lacey laughed and gave the younger man a jab in the ribs with his elbow. “Thanks man.” He grinned at his children still playing in the dirt nearby. Now Paulie and Becca had apparently decided to give up on the treasure hunt and try to find dinosaur bones. “My kids appreciate it too. I know they still miss their mom but I think they love Amy more than I do.”
“She was really looking forward to being a mom…” Carl said wistfully. He could tell that there was really no reason, save maybe force of habit making her get out of bed in the morning for weeks after the miscarriage. Anything that could make his big sister smile again was worth it in his book. “Hey, I’m going to go see if Frannie can come get lunch with us. She’s still at the Med Center, right?”
“Yeah man. We’ll wait here for you to get back.” Lacey answered. The way Carl’s eyes lit up whenever he talked about Rodriguez made him think of the way he used to feel about Laura. He still missed her too but he also knew that she would want him to find someone else and be happy if not for himself then for the kids. Somehow Lacey could not help but think that Laura and Frays might have been friends if they had met under different circumstances.
He stood there reminiscing and…holy shit actually making plans in his head for some time. A hand slipping into his startled him out of his reverie. Frays grinned up at him and gave his hand a squeeze before walking past him to crouch beside the children.
Standing there watching this beautiful, brilliant talented young woman playing in the gravel with his four year old children a strange thought occurred to him. We’re gonna beat this thing. We’re gonna beat this thing.
Postscript
2 May 2021 0734 hours Sheriff Amy Lacey’s House Phoenix, Maine
A woman dressed in a threadbare light green tank top and faded Levis exited the small rectangular house and yawned mightily as she stretched the kinks out her spine. She turned her head and pulled her chin to her left shoulder, shivering at the sensation of her neck popping. Then she reached down and touched the toes of her well loved blue Converse sneakers and flicked some dirt off them while she was down there. Her trusty M9 now rested in a handmade leather holster (a gift from her brother) on her belt along with the double magazine carrier on the opposite hip.
“Morning Sheriff!” Mister Gibbs, her next door neighbor called when he came out of his own house and noticed her up and around. “Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll keep an eye on your vegetable patch for ya!” Amy waved him thanks and continued stretching.
Amy stood on the porch of the snug little house she shared with her husband and two adopted children. She was going to celebrate her twenty seventh birthday in a few weeks and sometimes she felt like the antique some people thought she was. Since the outbreak of the plague and civilization’s slow, painful rebirth life expectancies in the Eastern United States had taken a sharp downturn. Heck, just last week Doc Stark had to amputate a man’s toe because an ingrown toenail got infected.
Still, even if she did have a few smile lines and some wrinkles so what? She had two wonderful children and a man who loved her. These days that was all she really cared about. The town council paid her twenty ounces of silver and a cord of firewood so with that and Adam’s job on top they were not exactly hurting.
There were a couple old canvas duffle bags as well as a few smaller backpacks and suitcases against the wall. The provisions for the trip were kept in a separate pile: venison jerky, smoked trout, mason jars filled with preserved vegetables and fruit…Moira Johnson, the wife of one of her deputies, had even included several precious Tupperware containers of her amazing fried cakes.
A grey minivan trundled down the town’s barely paved main street from Carl’s shop a few blocks up the way. She spotted her brother’s face behind the dusty windscreen as it came up and stopped. Amy grinned at her brother as he got out. She sometimes found it hard to believe that the whiny, feckless kid she had grown up with was the same guy standing before her now. It occurred to her that Frannie really had done him a lot of good despite her initial misgivings about the two of them paring up.
The side door slid open with a whoosh and Frannie got out holding the most adorable little guy Amy had ever seen in her arms. She had given birth to a son named Michael four and a half years ago. Amy rushed forward and took her nephew from his mother’s arms. “Good morning, sweetie!” she squealed as she gently hugged the toddler and kissed his wispy black hair. “How’s my little buddy doin’?”
“Oh a little terror as usual.” Frannie muttered as she went to her husband’s side. Amy found it indescribably sweet that the two of them were always holding hands even after all this time. They had been married six years ago after Carl and the other men in the burgeoning village had built the two of them a house to live in.
After the bulk of the gas and diesel fuel had finally went belly up they had to build new homes for themselves from material scavenged from abandoned homes in the area since lots of them did not have fireplaces to keep the houses warm in the winter and could not be easily retrofitted to make up for the lack of electricity or natural gas.
The village itself had sprung up around the walls of the former Forward Operating Base Freedom like some kind of medieval township. Much like the archaic structures the now mostly abandoned FOB still contained a somewhat useable airstrip (if the pilot was feeling adventurous, desperate or suicidal) and the ever expanding communal vegetable and grain fields. Getting real fresh baked bread again…
However Carl had shown himself to be quite the entrepreneur. He had discovered a book on distillation and set up a shop that sold alcohol to run the internal combustion engines still functioning in their little burg. On top of that he had also started scavenging precious metals from abandoned cars (there were far more vehicles rusted and disabled scattered around than operational anymore) and now useless home electronics, almost singlehandedly getting Phoenix and the surrounding settlements back on the gold standard after almost fifty years. He also fixed cars and became a local hero by getting a couple tractors running for use in the fields.
Still, Carl had come to be a wealthy and important man in their little community and as such he spoiled his niece and nephew rotten. They had all the goodies they could ask for on their birthday and Christmas: for instance he had gotten both the kids Glock 19s and three boxes of 9mm ammunition for Christmas last year.
Of course it caused some tension. Amy could not begrudge her little brother wanting to do nice things for his family while Adam rankled at it. He dug wells and latrines for the village as well as the other settlements nearby and did pretty well for himself but he still could not provide such extravagances for his babies.
Paulie and Becca came out a fe
w moments after the van arrived with Adam, their father bringing up the rear. The two of them had grown gangly like their father though they still favored their mother around the eyes. They both still had the tiny gaps between their front teeth too which when on full display when the teenagers saw their cousin Michael. The little boy squirmed until Amy set him down and the little guy sprinted towards the two older kids.
“About ready to go, guys?” Carl asked at last as he looked the other adults in the eye. He smiled to try and soften it but he knew this was going to be a hard trip. After the official end to the walking plague in the United States a few years back a guy from the Department of Defense had come around looking for Amy, Adam and Frannie.
Half expecting to be brought up on charges the three of them could not have been more relieved and shocked when the man instead had them sign their discharge papers and presented them with ten thousand dollars each in cash, back pay owed to them for the last five years allowing for the newly adjusted value of the dollar. The neat thing was it said right on each bill that the paper money could be exchanged for gold. Of course none of them really had anything to spend that much money on and nobody in their area really had that much gold just sitting around. Still it was the thought that counted. Amy and Adam decided to set their money aside for the kids when they turned eighteen as a coming of age present or maybe a dowry when Becca got married in a few years. The two of them had laughed until they cried at the idea of actually being around long enough to be grandparents.
Then word came over the shortwave radio that the city of Boston was going to have a parade and a big reunion for the various National Guard and Reserve units that had fought to maintain the quarantine almost a decade ago. Going or not had been the subject of much debate amongst the four of them. Amy kept making the excuse that she couldn’t leave for two weeks to go drive down there and back. That they needed her around here.
Of course Carl had brought up the point that there were only about two hundred people in town (half of them former Marines or Sailors that had stayed around the FOB) and she had two full time and three part time deputies who could, in turn, deputize other citizens if the need arose. The place was not going to go to hell in a hand basket just because their brave and noble sheriff decided to take a couple weeks’ vacation.
Then came the arguments with Adam and the kids over nothing. Amy had trouble sleeping. Adam found that he had nightmares and sometimes Paulie and Becca would find their parents sitting on the rocking bench on the porch wrapped in a blanket. There were times when Frannie would come and stay over with her sister in law ‘just because’… Just because being that she found it too tempting to be around her husband’s ethanol. She knew that it would more than likely make her blind if she drank it but the temptation to relapse was that strong.
But in the end Carl managed to convince the three of them to pile in the van with them and take the trip south. The kids would come along too, making it kind of an extended family vacation. The more intellectual one of the kids, Paulie even got it in his head to take notes and write a book about the trip when they got back. His sister decided it needed pictures so she would do some drawings for it.
“C’mon guys. Grab your gear and pile in.” Amy said as she went to the porch and went inside the house. She flung on a light blue denim jacket over her tee shirt then filled the jacket pockets with shotgun shells from the chest of drawers inside the door then checked that the Mossberg 590A1 they kept near the umbrella stand was still loaded before slinging the weapon over her shoulder. Even if the undead threat was officially over most people still went about armed especially if they were going to go far outside town or city limits. All manner of dangerous animals both two legged and four legged roamed the empty spaces between settlements these days. After making sure the kids had their pistols and spare ammo the van puttered off down the road in search of a way south.
The road trip was filled with tense silence eased only by Mrs. Johnson’s wonderful fried cakes and a big thermos of coffee. Carl had splurged and bought a two and a half pound can of actual for really coffee just for the trip. They made pretty good time and the driving only got easier as they got farther south towards the coastline. Everywhere there were little signs of the area being reclaimed by civilization but they still had to spend the night at a rest stop a couple times. At the last one they were treated to the sight of watching Michael play with a functioning drinking fountain for the first time in his life. Of course they were all amazed by the sight of something that they would not have thought twice about a decade ago: clean, clear cold water coming out of a fountain.
On the third day of the trip Amy pointed to something rapidly growing on the horizon that sort of resembled a mountain range. “Look everybody!” she said, making everyone lean forward in their seats to see except Michael who was napping in his car seat. “It’s Boston! We’re almost there guys!”
The three of them had received room reservations at a hotel near where the dinner and reunion was going to be and the city had even set up a shuttle service so that the out of town guests would not have to add to Boston’s already bustling street traffic. The bus ride to the hotel was almost overwhelming. There was just so much noise and movement and Amy found herself floored by the sheer number of people. It seemed like there was the entire population of Phoenix just walking around on one block of sidewalk.
The city definitely had the feeling of a post war boomtown. Lacey had to wonder if this is what it felt like to be walking on a street in say Germany or France after World War Two. Everywhere there was rubble being carted off, new construction or repair work being done on structures deemed repairable. He looked at his wife out of the corner of his eye and smirked. Something about her made him think of some rustic hillbilly seeing the big city for the first time. Maybe it was the shotgun slung over her shoulder? Either way he would not mention it. She would probably slug him on the arm pretty hard.
The building the hotel was in was one awe inspiring sight after another. The smells wafting out of the dining area made Carl’s stomach very angry with him for not rushing right over and devouring the beef he smelled. However his little boy found the little fountain in the lobby far more interesting and both he and Frannie had to keep picking him up so Michael would not run over and climb in it. Amy and Adam got everybody’s room keys for them while they were occupied with the baby.
The two couples got their own rooms while Becca and Paulie also had to split one. Since they were both only fourteen they qualified as family members and got their room free from the city too. The rooms were stunning: huge beds with good firm mattresses, air conditioning and… “Holy crap, hon come look at this!” Amy muttered as she waved Adam into the bathroom. The man giggled and put an arm around his wife when he saw what had her all excited.
There was an honest to goodness shower in the tiled room along with a for really and truly toilet. The sink was glistening with perspiration from the chilled water inside the pipes in the florescent light. Adam slipped past his wife and went to the tub. It was easily big enough for the two of them. “Might have to try this out later, babe.” he said with a demure grin as he tested the hot water tap. It was scalding in a matter of moments.
Amy tapped him on the butt with the toe of her sneaker. “Maybe later. I wanna have a shower!” Adam frowned when the smaller woman playfully pushed him out of the door and shut it behind him. Once she was reasonably certain that he was not going to try to sneak back in Amy shrugged out of her jacket and pulled her tank top over her head. She leaned the shotgun against the toilet then rested her M9 on the top of the tank. Amy stepped into the shower and turned it on full blast filling the little bathroom with steam in moments.
She gasped in pleasure at the feeling of the hot water running down her face soothing all the little aches and pains of the road trip, the stiffness in her joints running down her torso and limbs and swirling down the drain. Amy groped around and found the little bottles of shampoo. She washed her hair carefully. Sh
e had cut it off short years ago and regretted it so she had let it go. Her hair now hung almost below her shoulder blades but it was pretty tangled up.
Her breath caught in her chest and a wave of dizziness made her steady herself against the wall She sat down in the shower with the hot water drumming on her head hiding her face in her hands and trying to catch her breath. She started crying softly and did not look up when the bathroom door eased open.
Adam kicked off his boots and climbed in the shower with her. “What’s wrong, baby?” he whispered as he sat down with her and held the crying naked woman to his chest. He brushed her hair away from her face and kissed her cheek. “It’s okay, sweetie. It’s alright…”
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I…I just…I dunno…I miss my mom and dad. And Sergeant Emery. And…and you know…everybody…” Amy sniffed. It strangely had not even occurred to her just how many people she had known and cared about and lost since the plague began. Adam held her tight and kissed the tip of the woman’s nose.
“I know, hon.” he whispered. “I love you.”
Amy frowned and leaned against her husband’s sodden chest. “I know.” she said at last. Now Adam frowned. They had been together all these years through thick and thin, hunger and plenty including a scare when the kids were six or seven and Becca caught the flu real bad. However Amy had never told him she loved him. He knew she did but for some reason she could never bring herself to say it.
“C’mon. Let me get out and dried off. I’ll get you some dry clothes.” Amy said at last. She turned and smooched her husband on the cheek. “It’s lunchtime.”
They spent the day before the reunion enjoying the accommodations and free food from the hotel kitchen. The pool was a definite plus for the kids too. They found a small store not far from the hotel and went shopping for swimsuits. Frannie and Carl stood off to one side of the store while Frannie tried on different swimsuits. “I dunno, Carl…” she sighed heavily as she studied herself in the triple mirror. The old scars like hail damage on her legs, shoulder and arm showed plainly along with the massive furrow across her left thigh thanks to the one piece. Bikinis were right out because the scars like worm paths from the burns showed on her back.
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