by J. Rudolph
The woman beside him was a few inches shorter than him, but only a few, making her about as tall as Trent. She looked to be a few years younger than Jack, but given her similar look of spending a lot of time outside, I couldn't be sure of that. She was muscular as well, but had a definite air of femininity beneath the rugged exterior. Her blonde hair had some gray streaks in it that blended well in the lighter shades of her hair, and it was all swept into a messy twist piled on the top of her head, with strands that fell around her face in soft waves. She was wearing a casual blue dress that seemed to be too big on her, and I wondered if it was something from her own closet that she had from before the apocalypse diet plan that slimmed down our group, or if it was a discovered outfit like the scrubs that I was wearing. A faded dark canvas messenger bag hung across her chest and rested on the front of her right hip. The flap to the bag was open and unzipped. I wondered if there was a weapon in easy access in there. I didn't fault her for that if she did have a weapon, after all there were zombies around and we were complete strangers; not to mention we had our weapons too.
After I absorbed what the couple looked like, I let my eyes follow the rope that was wrapped around the woman's hand as it led down to the goat. They actually brought a goat. I didn't know much about goats, my experience around them was in a petting zoo, but this one seemed like a young one.
It occurred to me that I was just staring at the goat while Trent was saying hello to Jack, and I was probably coming off as a psychiatric patient, so I pulled my brain back into civility mode. I realized that it had been a long time since I was in a place to be making introductions and I was suddenly hit with a moment of shyness. I stammered as I put out a shaky hand.
"I'm, uh, Cali. Cali Anglin. Hi." I laughed softly at my sudden awkwardness and Jack took my hand, shaking it warmly. I smiled at him and I tried to stuff that awkward weird girl thing back down.
"Jack. And this is my wife Terri. It's nice to meet you. I've heard a lot of nice things about you. Trent says you're a nurse?" The lines around his eyes deepened with his confident smile, and the previous wondering if this was something he was used to doing was cemented as fact. I wondered for a moment what his previous life was like, but for some elusive reason, I didn't want to ask. I said hello to Terri, and I asked how they were. Terri smiled that same reassuring smile that Jack had and said hello.
"So, you're my new neighbors, huh?" Terri's voice was as kind as I imagined it would be after seeing her face and it was a comfort to see that there was a match. I definitely liked them both, and I prayed that these first impressions were real indications of who they were. "We have a welcome-to-the-neighborhood gift here." She regarded the goat at her side. "This is Jeffrey, although I expect you'll name him something different. He's nine months old, and will be full grown in a few more months, although they usually don't mate until they are around fifteen months old. I figure that if you guys are capable of getting him to that age, we might have to set you up with a female goat so you can mate them. You know, you can tell a lot about a person by how well they keep their animals."
I liked the way that she was thinking. I always thought that about people and their pets before the zombies. If they couldn't be bothered to take care of the animal they chose to bring in, then they weren't going to take care of anything else properly either. I was forgiving with the learning curve of course, but there had to be evidence of correcting the things you weren't doing right. I was a little worried that Jack and Terri wouldn't be as forgiving though.
"I don't know anything about goats. I've only ever seen them in a petting zoo, and my biggest memory of them was when I took my son in to meet the goat, it tried to eat his shirt." I laughed at myself as I was stumbling over my explanation of my understanding of animals. Terri nodded, and was smiling at my obvious city self.
"We can work together on that. I'll bet you that there is some serious overgrowth over there in Wilsall, and I bet that this goat will love you for that. Penning him will probably be a pain, goats are notorious escape artists, but that's something we can help on too."
"Wow. I can't begin to tell you how awesome this is." I reached down and touched the head of the goat to scratch it behind the ears. "How can I ever repay this?"
"Well, Cali," Jack began, "your background will probably be of more use to us than ours can be to you. I'll be honest, we have an agenda here." My eyebrows lifted as I looked up at him. "We don't have anyone medically minded in our group. We tried to figure stuff out from books we found, but all the books tell you to do is to call a doctor when the symptoms were bad. Not a lot of help, you know? We lost a couple of guys over the winter. One guy fell on his knife. Stupid accident, but it happens. The first aid things tell you to put direct pressure on the wound but it didn't seem to make that much of a difference. Every time we took our hands off of him he started gushing out again. Then he died. And another guy had a cough that turned bad. We gave him meds we could find, but we don't even know what half of the things we found are or if they could have helped. All we knew was that things ending with -cillin were antibiotics and we stuffed pain meds down his throat because it was supposed to keep the fever down. In the end, we felt stupid and heartbroken that we lost a good guy. You might be someone to make a difference in that sort of thing."
"Jack's right. We need you and you need us. Montana can be rough, but we've lived most of our whole lives here, and we know tricks to getting by. This could be a good friendship to have, for the both of us." Terri's eyes were pleading and hopeful.
I looked over to Trent. I was asking him what he thought with my eyes, and he understood it. He gave a gentle nod so I put out my hand.
"Terri? Jack? We thank you so much for the welcome and we'd love to get to know you both more as neighbors. I'd be more than happy to help you guys out, and on behalf of everyone, I know we will more than be happy to accept Jeffrey, and any advice you might have for a bunch of city folk. Just promise to not laugh too hard at us as we bumble through this, alright?"
"You've got a deal." Jack said proudly. "Now, we do have some questions for you right off the bat. Terri brought a few bottles of pills that we found in some of the houses. Will you tell us what the heck they are?"
Trent laughed and said, "Why don't we all go inside and talk. I can put on some coffee and we'll chat. No promises though on how good this coffee will be, God knows how long it's been sitting around."
"There is no such thing as bad coffee anymore, my friend." Jack replied as he clapped his hand over Trent's shoulder.
We went inside and Terri laughed at me when I brought in Jeffrey. I tied him up in the kitchen and grabbed a pot and filled it up with water, then located another pot and ran outside for an assortment of plant stuff from the yard. When I put it down in front of the goat, Jeffrey sniffed at me appreciatively. By the time I was done with the goat, I could smell the coffee as it started brewing in the camp pot in the fireplace. I riffled through the cupboards and secured four mugs, and after wiping them out to make sure there was no dust inside, I took them to the living room where everyone was setting in. Jack was in the middle of explaining to Trent that they had been going from town to town looking for supplies, but they hadn't gotten as far north as Wilsall. He hoped that there were enough supplies around, and Trent assured him that compared to previous hunts that we had been a part of, this small town felt like an absolute treasure trove.
Terri opened her bag and began to pull out various prescription bottles. There were an assortment of blood pressure medications, high cholesterol medications, and pills to control blood sugar. After looking at each bottle I put them in separate piles based on the disorders they were supposed to treat. I found it interesting that in a place known for the wide open spaces and plenty of cowboy types, there were so many bottles of pills that people in the cities took. I figured that these cowboys must have had cowboy breakfasts with tons of eggs and bacon and were steak eaters at night. I was probably being a bit stereotypical right then, and I silently cha
stised myself for it.
After all the pills were looked at, I explained the piles. The last pile I made was the smallest pile, and it was for antibiotics and pain meds. I told them that was the kind of thing they would want to keep an eye out for when they did runs, and they both were listening closely.
"So, most of what we had, they really wouldn't have helped in our situation then?" Jack asked softly.
"You mean with your sick friend?" I asked, just as softly as he did. He nodded silently. "No, not likely. Most of this stuff would only be handy if you knew someone's blood pressure was through the roof."
"How would we know that?" Terri asked.
"Well, if you can find one of those battery powered blood pressure cuffs, you could check people out with that, otherwise, later on, I could teach you how to use one of the manual cuffs. If someone comes to you with a ridiculous headache you could check them out and make sure it isn't a blood pressure headache, for instance, and treat the reason for the headache instead of just the pain."
A loud clatter came from the kitchen just as I finished my sentence, as though Jeffrey was announcing his boredom with the conversation. I jumped up from the couch to see what he was up to and found that he had knocked over the water dish and was gnawing on the pot that was once his food dish. I squeaked loudly and ran over to take away the pot. It couldn't be good for him to be eating metal. This goat was a stubborn one. He liked chewing on his pot and was not about to give it up. As I tried to wrestle it free, I heard Terri standing behind me, trying like hell to stifle some laughter. I was horrified. Here they just gave me this goat and already I was going to kill the damned thing because I fed it a pot.
When I finally wrestled it free, I tossed the pot behind me and tried to inspect the goat for damage. I was sure it had to have broken its teeth. I pulled back his gums and he belched at me. Terri lost any composure she might have had and was laughing at me, and not just laughing, but holding her sides and wiping the tears off her face laughing.
"Um. Did he just burp at me?" I asked, which made her laugh even harder.
"Goats will try to eat everything. Absolutely everything. Terri is laughing because she did the exact same thing you just did when I gave her our first goat. She was terrified that the goat was going to have some major damage to its teeth and stomach. She wouldn't speak to me for a week when I told her the goat didn't need to go to the vet, and that I wasn't going to pay $300 for a vet check. I think the only reason she got over being mad was because our goat ate her favorite flowerbed. Goats are made out of armor or something. Maybe they are related to our dead friends, nothing really kills them." Jack smiled at me then wrapped his arm around Terri, who was finally regaining her composure.
Terri looked up and glanced out the window. "Hey, babe? It's getting later than we thought. We need to get rolling." Terri looked over at me and smiled. "I was having a good time for the first time in a while," she explained. I was too.
"Yeah, our group is going to be really antsy if we don't come back soon." Trent seemed to be apologetic over the length of time we had been gone.
"It was fantastic meeting you guys. I knew there had to be more good out there, and I'm very grateful you stumbled on our neck of the woods," Jack said as he clasped Trent's hand. "I'm going to have a great time telling all of our people about you two."
"And we will be saying probably the same thing about you guys." Trent was smiling ear to ear right then.
I gave Terri a goodbye hug and shook Jack's hand. I wrapped my hand around the goat's leash and finally convinced him to go with me. We parted ways at the street, and walked home. When our wall came in sight we spotted Tyreese on the wall looking down our road with a pair of binoculars. Trent waved over to him casually. I could see him return the wave in the distance.
When we walked closer I heard him call out, "Everything okay?"
"Yeah. It's good." Trent called back. "Are the rest of the guys back yet?"
"Yeah, they got in maybe thirty minutes before you did. Uh, is that a goat?" Ty asked. Trent and I started to giggle. Ty opened the gate up and we walked through.
Jeffrey loved his new town; however, trying to convince him to leave the plants alone long enough to reach to the school was a maddening trip. When we finally came close enough, we heard the kids playing on the playground with their tricycles that we found in a shed next to the kindergarten classroom, and then, the sound of their playing suddenly stopped. A moment later, I heard the pattering of feet that grew louder as they ran up to us. Jeffrey must have been spotted. They crowded around to check out the new group member. I heard Trisha admonish them for running off and I heard the sounds of her running after them. She stopped short when she saw us, and like her father, the first thing out of her mouth was, "Is that a goat?" It was a going to be the question of the night, I thought.
"Yeah. We'll tell you all about it inside. Let's go talk!" I replied.
When I found Tanya, Matt, and Lucas, I asked how the shopping trip went. Tanya's smile was absolutely radiant.
"I am so grateful that people didn't decide to stock up on fertilizer and plant food when the end came. We made out like absolute bandits, and I got so many more seed packets! We should be able to plant stuff for the next fifty years after this haul. We got a ton of those upside down tomato planter kits so we can set those up in the eaves of the school and the houses. Tomatoes will be taking over this place!"
Lucas came over to where we were talking and gave me a hug. "Tanya here is amazing. She can spot stuff from a mile away. We have a couple solar panels for each house, a windmill well pump, all this gardening stuff, tools and gloves and all. She also found a nice little shed for us to store the farming stuff in. We are set in the growing department."
Tanya had a deep blush flash across her face. "I had fun, what can I say?"
Lucas turned to face me and asked, "So what's all this talk about goats and new neighbors I keep hearing about?"
"We have some awesome new neighbors. Trent's trying to round everyone up in the cafeteria and we'll tell you all about them. It's a good thing." I grinned at him.
We all sat down in the cafeteria and Trent stood up and gave the rundown of our events, then Tanya gave hers. We had direction, we had jobs to do; we were all wrapped in hope and warmth. We were no longer going to survive-- we were going to live.
Life and Relationships
Over the next several months, we settled into life in Montana. We took advantage of the fall weather to put together the solar panels at each occupied home. It wasn't going to be a lot of power for each house, but really all we were after was enough lighting for us to see by. Trent did build a windmill to run power at the school and another at the auto-shop, with the metal forge set up next to it. As time allowed, he would add more to power other public places. Trent and Lucas discovered where the water pumps were for individual wells on public properties like the school, and rigged those with wind powered pumps, as well as the easier house property wells, giving us running water to the buildings. It was going to be a little bit before we could do the canals for the farm. We didn't want to start that project until spring was fully here because it would be a waste of resources that we needed right now for a job that could only be half done.
The winter was a surprise, to say the least. We thought that the time we spent in Heartsvale had taught us a lot about what winter was like to our band of Californians; Heartsvale was a cold wasteland, but it was manageable. We discovered that despite the psychotic mindset that had the loyal residents in its grip, there was a great deal of work that had gone into keep the residents warm and alive. It felt like we worked every day, practically deforesting Montana ourselves, just to keep everyone barely warm and fed. Hunting became more scarce as the colder weather took hold, and we went through the stores of canned goods we had gathered up faster than we had intended. We often chose to sleep at the school after we built a fireplace with a wood burning stove set up on one side in the multipurpose room. It was easier to only have
one area for both heating and cooking, and take advantage of the body heat of so many of us in a confined area. As we sat together exhausted, we came up with solutions for the next winter that included us stockpiling fuel for the fires year round instead of doing this frozen scramble. We also plotted out how to retrofit all of the houses with wood stoves for cooking, so we wouldn't have to use our limited solar power to run electric ovens. Gas powered ovens were a relic of the past, as were hot water heaters. All of the propane tanks were empty at the café; no one had turned off the burners before the infected came in, and since the school was already out of session, the tanks must have been drained as a long-term storage safety issue.
Despite how hard that winter was, we couldn't feel anything but joy and happiness. We made it. We actually made it and found hope even in the hard times, and that was everything, not just to me, but to my immediate and extended family. When spring hinted that it was on its way with that first blade of grass, we felt like we had made it through the impossible, and indeed we had. I couldn't imagine the climbers of Mount Everest felt more triumph than we did as the snow began to turn into a muddy Slurpee. We learned so much that winter, from trapping to heating, that we felt like we were close to invincible.
It certainly didn't hurt that we traded my nursing and Kristen's herbal remedies like chamomile tea and ground eucalyptus leaves to boil in the house to treat our neighbors’ random respiratory illnesses for extra foodstuff. One of our best trades included our newest and most celebrated members of the group, Henrietta and Lucille, our egg laying hens, and their love interest, Ricky the rooster. Their coop was raided daily for our breakfasts. After a while, we decided to see if Lucille would be a good mother and let her have a nest that we didn't bother with. She had been tending it carefully, rarely leaving her guard post and duty to keep her eggs warm. It wasn't long before the grass wasn't the only thing that was proof of spring and life, as the baby chicks made their escape from their shell prisons. Drew was the one to discover that the chicks hatched when he went out to see if Henrietta had made her breakfast donations. The chicks were a huge hit, and they followed Lucille everywhere. It was funny to see them struggling to keep up with their mother, and the little peep noises they made were cute enough to put a smile on everyone's face.