“No way,” Lilly said, shaking her head.
“Sandy thinks so,” Katie said. “That does explain why I'm bigger than Aim and we both conceived about the same time.”
“Do you wish you knew what they were... The sex,” Amy asked.
“Sort of, but in another way no. I like surprises. I hope Conner does,” Katie said.
“You could have Martians and Conner wouldn't mind at all. He's nuts about you,” Lilly said.
“And then some,” Amy agreed.
“I think we're all lucky,” Lilly said. “Or really blessed.”
Amy nodded.
“So, I'm banished. Three months of sorting potatoes, shelling peas, and your man is going to teach me how to tan hides,” Katie said.
“Yep... Well, join the club,” Lilly said. “But I'm looking forward to learning how to tan hides. We can make some baby stuff as we learn.”
“Well I'm not grounded yet,” Amy said. “I'm jealous.” She pointed her nose in the air.
They were deep within the caves working in one of the storage rooms. The air was cold. Not cold enough to freeze, but still very cold. It was also dry air and it seemed to suck the moisture from their hands as they worked.
One of the things that Janna had asked for was heavy plastic storage bins, or aluminum or even stainless steel. But she would prefer the plastic bins that would stack one on top of the others. They would work perfectly well for what she wanted to use them for in the storage areas, she had said. Katie had agreed.
They all wore heavy coats, but even with the heavy coats the cold worked its way into them, and after a few hours of sorting and storing potatoes they all walked back out the long passage and into the main cave area.
They met James and Jake coming in as they came into the main meeting area. The smell of cooking food hit them and made them realize how hungry they were.
Lately they had taken to having most meals together. That way every one would be able to catch up with each other through the week. The evening meal bought everyone together and it would probably continue to be a community meal until everyone came back.
It also allowed everyone to work straight through the days without having to worry about stopping to prepare a meal. More work got done. One of the jobs that would now fall to Katie and Lilly was cooking that meal. It usually fell to volunteers anyway. This would just be a slightly longer period of volunteering, and it was not hard physical work, but low physical impact, which was all that Sandy would allow them to do.
Today they were having trout cooked in fresh hay. And a salad with lettuce, radish, cucumber and carrots from the gardens.
“Fish,” James said and rubbed his hands together. “There's something to be said for it.”
“Um,” Sandy agreed.
“You know,” Cindy said, “I've been reading about fish, how to preserve it... smoked, salted, we don't have a lot of salt, but we do have the smoke house. Janna has promised to teach me how to smoke meat... And we have all of that storage space too.”
“But there are just so many fish in that stream,” Sharon said. “Right?”
“True, but there are a lot of deeper pools, and,” She grinned. “I know where they came from. They come from upstream. From the lake. From up top you can see the lake... Maybe three, four miles from us... West.”
Jake was smiling. “I think I know a young woman who wants to go fishing on a large scale,” he said. “Got room for another?”
“Hey!” James said. “Me too... Fishing?” He shook his head. “Gotta go.”
“I'll go,” Sharon said.
Arlene looked at David. “Me too,” she said.
“And me,” David added.
Cindy laughed. “I didn't think anyone would want to go and there are six of us... We could go later in the week,” she suggested.
“Jake and I have a project we're working on,” James said. He looked at Jake. “Day after tomorrow,” he asked.
Jake nodded.
Everyone else nodded too.
“We can take the wagon, a good team, we'll have to take some netting... The hand nets and poles, and...” He looked up sheepishly. “I guess I'm trying to plan your fishing trip,” James told Cindy with a smile.
“That's good,” she laughed. “I only want to do it... I don't know how to do it.”
“Ah... Okay, my Dear, leave it to me. Day after tomorrow bright and early,” James pronounced.
The meal continued and the conversations went back and forth.
“I have some news,” Katie said. She looked at Sandy. “I was going to wait until Conner came back, but, well, its good news.... Big news, so I'll share it.” She took a deep breath. “I'm going to have twins,” she said with a huge smile.
“Now that's doing it right,” Arlene said. “Bravo, Katie, Bravo!”
“Wow. Conner's going to be thrilled.” Cindy added.
“He's going to be a good father too. He will be ecstatic,” Janna predicted. “That's a ready made family.”
“My dog had six puppies once,” Janelle said.
“How do them babies get in there anyways,” Rain asked.
“Uh, we'll be learning about that in school soon,” Lilly said, trying hard not to laugh.
Everyone stifled their laughs.
“I think the baby fairy does it,” Janelle told Rain. They both nodded seriously as the adult conversations picked back up around them.
“It really is good news, Katie,” David told her. “Congratulations.”
“Yes, Dear. I truly am happy for you,” Janna said.
“Well,” Amy said. She looked over at Janelle. “It's not six, but it will do.” She giggled. Janelle and Rain both joined in with her.
Katie giggled too.
“Six is a lot,” Janelle said. “This many.” She held up six fingers.
“Exactly right,” Arlene said. “Exactly right.”
“She's really smart,” Mark said.
Everyone laughed then a few moments later the conversation moved on. The fishing trip in two days. The corn when they got back from that. Then next week, the second crop of Rye and Wheat which would come down to be dried on the stalk for feed for the horses and cows. Some corn would go to the same purpose.
Janna passed around a plate of cheese. There were three distinct types.
Two were made from cow milk and the last from the deer that James had been working with. Everyone liked it and complimented James on the effort.
The meal finished up and they all drifted off to their evening jobs. Katie and Lilly began to clean up, joking back and forth as they did.
Conner
On The Road
When they arrived back at the field, Nellie, Chloe and Molly were playing a game of hide and go seek with the children, using the tent, the van and a few surrounding trees. They all seemed in good spirits. Laughing and winded. Molly's face sobered when her eyes fell on Conner's hand. He shook his head to let her know that he didn't want to discuss it with the children there. Nellie and Chloe watched the exchange and sobered as well.
Conner laughed, and it seemed to lift the veil that had fallen. The three women and the two children oohed and ahhed over the trucks and the trees. Molly looked over Conner's hand.
“Drop a tree on it,” She asked.
“A little more complicated than that... I'll tell you later,” he said. She nodded, but her eyes were serious and promised to hold him to his word. She wandered over, slipped one arm around Nellie, and began to look over the trucks.
The grain harvester was appreciated by Nellie and Molly both. They had both spent the better part of two weeks out in the fields stripping out grain by hand with nearly everyone else.
Chloe came over to Conner and hugged him. “Thank you,” she told him. She hugged Dustin and Aaron as well. “I want to go back. It will be nice to have a home and people who care... Thank you.” She walked away, and sat down with Richard and Alicia. Alicia crawled up in her lap.
“Are you still sad,” Alicia a
sked her?
“No, Baby. I'm not,” Chloe told her. She kissed her on the nose.
Alicia smiled and kissed her back. She laid her head against Chloe's chest and almost instantly fell asleep. Chloe held her and rocked her slightly. A smile on her face.
“Well,” Conner said. “I saw a herd of goats down the road on the way back. It's not exactly a calf, but we could kill the fatted goat in celebration.”
“Hey now,” Josh said. “Goat's not bad at all.”
“There's a garden we've been going to. Someone had planted it beforehand or something, I think. Potatoes, peppers, some melons might still be good,” Richard said.
“Well, I'll go get one of those goats with Aaron,” he looked down at his hand. “I guess Aaron will get the goat, I'll go with him. Give us about an hour and we should have a goat for you. You guys get the other stuff and we'll have us a nice dinner, because tomorrow we're pulling out. We have a lot to pick up and then home before too much time gets away from us.”
Dustin and Rich went with Molly to the garden that was just across the road. Conner and Aaron climbed into one of the Jeeps and headed back down the road.
~
They quartered the small goat and spitted it. The potatoes baked whole on the coals as the goat cooked. A small salad and melon slices made a good meal.
“You got other kids in the woods like me,” Alicia asked Aaron who she sat next to.
“Lots of them,” Aaron assured her.
“Do you think they would want to play with me? Because, sometimes my brother don't wanna,” she said.
Aaron nodded. “Sure they will. They're your age. And you'll get to play with them every day.”
“Good,” She took a bite of her meat and began to chew.
“Are there other boys to play with too,” Richard asked.
“Absolutely. There are a couple of boys close to your age too. They go to school. Sometimes they go fishing, or swimming or you can slide down the stream into the pool at the bottom. They play with the frogs at the streams sometimes.... Brush the horses... You'll like it,” Aaron told him.
His grin was nearly splitting his face.
Conner looked around at the others. He met Adam's eyes and then Josh's too. “So I guess that makes us a team now,” he said.
“I guess we are,” Josh agreed.
Adam nodded. “We are,” he added. “We are.”
~
A hundred miles to the north Zac Taybro sat on his Harley in the middle of the cracked and wrecked highway.
“All this empty and I can't even ride my Harley,” he complained.
Amanda looked up from the relative shade of the open rear door of the SUV, where she sat cross legged on the rear seat, smoking the biggest joint she had been able to roll. “You want some of this, Baby,” she called.
“I wanna ride my fuckin' bike, is what I want,” Zac told her.
They were parked in the middle of the highway. There were three dead zombies lying scattered on the highway. They had been living in the SUV when Zac and Amanda had happened along.
The SUV had run out of gas just under an overpass. The overpass led into a small town nearby. The Zombies had stayed in the SUV and raided the town nightly. It had probably seemed like a pretty good system to them. Their mistake had been deciding to stay put when they heard the bike. They had gassed up the SUV, deciding to leave, and then they had delayed their leaving, caught up in smoking the large stash of pot they had found in it. On top of that the whole back area had been loaded down with booze.
“I don't know how you can sit in that goddamned truck with that smell,” he told her now.
Amanda took a deep pull from the joint and then sniffed at the air. “She shrugged. “Doesn't bother me,” she said. “I don't get why it bothers you.” she looked over at the dead where they lay on the blacktop. The two of them had dragged them over onto the road.
Two of them had scrambled into the back of the SUV trying to scratch their way out. Zac had shot them both. That would have left a mess had they been alive, but the dead ones didn't really seem to leave much of a mess.
The third one had leapt out when she had thrown open the door and nearly gotten her. That had been bad. Having one so close. But she had run the long knife she carried right through its head. That had left a mess, but outside rather than inside.
The car had smelled pretty bad for a little while, but once she got the windows down and aired it out it wasn't so bad. Her eyelids flickered. She took another deep pull.
Zac Taybro was easily three hundred pounds if he was ten. His long greasy black hair stuck to his sweaty cheeks as he sat on the bike drinking whiskey straight from the bottle.
Give him another hour, Amanda thought from the open door of the SUV, and he'd pass out like he had the night before. He did the same thing every time. A two or three day drunk, then sober for a week or two. Constantly bitching about what used to be. And the way he dealt with the zombies? It was just a mater of time before one got him. They were bound to. Would have already, if not for her. How many times had he sat down next to his bike and just drank himself into a stupor. Too many times. And at least five of those times the dead had come for him and would have had him if she had not been there to kill them first. Maybe she was getting as sick of him as he was of her.
Amanda knew she was not the most attractive woman in the world. It was a rough world and age was catching up to her. She was forty five after all. She laughed and took another deep hit off the joint. Okay, she admitted to herself, forty-eight. And it was a rough forty-eight too. For most of her life she had been a beach baby and the sun had played hell with her face and skin. Her skin was brown and tough. Her bleached out hair dry and wispy from too much sun and salt water. The first time Zac had seen her naked he had laughed at how white she was where her clothes covered and what a contrast it was.
Amanda didn't mind though. At least he didn't beat her like Freddy had. He was just a harmless teddy bear... A big harmless teddy bear, she amended.
She took one more hit. The joint was down to nothing. She pinched it between her fingers and then flipped it back into her mouth and began to chew what was left. She laughed once more. A low chuckle to herself as she listened to Zac continue to complain about the world and the way it was. A big bitchy teddy bear, she amended once more.
Of course he was different when he was sober. And he didn't like other people coming around. When he was sober he was a bigger pain in the ass, she thought. But still, he wasn't mean to her, just others he ran across, and if she was honest she had to admit that she was not terribly fond of other people either. Zac was fine, but other than Zac she could not think of a single person in her life that had treated her with any kind of real respect at all. None. So why should she care about people now?
And the few times that someone had happened along and Zac wanted to make something about it, it really hadn't bothered her, she reminded herself as the secondary buzz from chewing the weed and resin in the end of the joint began to hit her, it was the best part of the high, she thought.
She lost her train of thought for a second, then remembered she had been thinking about Zac and how he could be to outsiders sometimes. She concentrated for a second, trying to get her mind back on track... Oh... Right, she recalled. The one time when the old dude had happened along with his old lady. He had done something that had pissed off Zac, she had no idea what, but before she had even realized Zac was that angry he had shot the old dude in the face. The old dude's wife had made such a big deal over that, that he had shot her in the face too. But, she told herself now, he had been forced to do it. The old man had pissed him off. Mess with the bull you get the horns. And the old lady hadn't shut up when he told her to. He had told her to, but she didn't. She had forced his hand, that was all.
She pulled out another huge joint she had rolled and lit it up. “Come on, Baby... Come get some before it's all gone,” she told him.
FIVE
Mike and Candace
Pennsylvania: I 81
September 18th
The sign read, Tremont 3, Pottersville 15.
“Hard to tell which way it used to point, Candace said.
They had found the sign protruding from the vegetation at the side of the road. The metal rails that once held it had been snapped off, pulled apart, the sign was twisted, the lettering barely legible.
“I think we can take for granted we are near those places though,” Ronnie said. He glanced at Alice who was bent over the hood of their truck examining a map of Pennsylvania. She raised her head and looked around.
“That overpass up there is route 209... Goes into Tremont, Pottersville further on. Small places. Guys, we've been following route 81 for miles now. We don't have to find it we're on it.”
They had been looking for route 81 to follow it across Pennsylvania, through Washington and then into Virginia. From there they intended to pick up whatever routes they could find that would take them toward the coast. They had been following I 81 for the last several hours without knowing it was I 81. There were no signs. The traffic was bumper to bumper in places, non existent in others. Most of the congestion was around the interchanges, and they had only come onto I 81 from an interchange. They had found no more since then until they had come up on this one.
“A compass that was worth a damn would be nice,” Ronnie said. He shoved the small compass he held back into his pocket.
Mike nodded. “Sun rises in the south west: If we keep that in sight that should keep us generally on the right track.”
Candace nodded this time. “So, stay on it?”
“I think so,” Mike agreed. “But maybe a quick look around... Stock up, wouldn't hurt us before we start really laying down the miles.”
“Go up to 209,” Alice said, motioning up at the overpass, and go left... That will take us to Tremont... Small town or city, I can't tell, it looks small.”
“Left, that would be,” Ronnie pulled the compass from his pocket once more and watched the dial dip and quiver. He sighed and then threw the small compass up into the sun. “Should have done that long ago,” He said. “East, I guess. That would be east. What used to be east.”
Earth's Survivors: box set Page 86