All That I See - 02

by Shane Gregory

  Ron was shorter and wiry with dark hair and sharp features. He had a laid-back, easy-going way about him.

  “Ron and I have been friends forever,” Ben Parks said, keeping his eyes on me like he was sizing me up.

  I shook Ron’s hand and looked out at the other SUV. I could see the dark shape of a person behind the wheel and the shape of a child in the passenger seat, but because of the shadows on the windshield I couldn’t make out their features.

  “Don’t worry,” Ron said. “They’re friendly.”

  “We’ve been watching this place for a while,” Ben said. “We knew someone was living here, but we didn’t know who or how many. Then we noticed it had been abandoned about a week ago. Was it you here before?”

  “Yeah,” Sara said. “We came back a couple of days ago.”

  “We were just on our way back from a food run,” he continued, “and I noticed the new vehicles, so I had Ron pull in. If I had known it was you, Sara, I would have stopped by sooner, but…well, it’s not always the safest thing to do.”

  “How many of you?” I asked.

  “Five,” Ron said. “Molly Anderson and her little boy, Adam, are in the other truck. Mr. McAllister is back at the house; he’s an old dude and doesn’t get around too good. There were seven of us originally, but…” his voice trailed off, and he looked away.

  “I’m sorry,” Sara said.

  There was an uncomfortable silence then Sara spoke up again. “I would invite you in for something to eat, but we just finished off the last of our food. We’re going to make a food run ourselves in the morning.”

  “Oh,” Ben said, looking to Ron as if to consult him. “I think we could leave you a little something. We had some good luck today. We were able to fill both trucks from one house.”

  “Yeah,” Ron chuckled. “They must have been one of those couponers or something.” He looked at Ben and shrugged. “Sure, we can let you have some food to get you by for a day or two.”

  “I couldn’t--“ I started, but Ben stopped me.

  “Judging by that bandage on your head, you need to take it easy anyway.”

  I figured that was his roundabout way of asking what happened to me. I reached up and touched the bandage.

  “We had some trouble with looters,” I said. “They were from out-of-town.”

  Ben looked concerned then glanced over at Sara.

  Sara gave them a short version of the story.

  “Are they still around?” Ron asked.

  “Dunno,” Sara shrugged.

  Ben looked back at the other SUV then to the sky.

  “The sun is going down,” he said. “We should go before Mr. McAllister gets worried about us. Ron, let’s get them some groceries before it gets dark.”

  We followed them out to the rear of their truck and Ben opened the back hatch. It was stacked to the ceiling with food and toilet paper.

  “I don’t know how you feel about it, but you’re welcome to come in with us,” he said. “We’ve got a fairly safe place a few miles from here. We haven’t seen one of those things out that way since Thursday. We’d be glad to have you.”

  He handed Sara out a case of chicken flavored ramen soup.

  “We need to stay here,” Sara said. “Some friends were supposed to return yesterday, and they haven’t yet.”

  “Oh, so it’s not just the two of you?” Ben asked, sounding kind of relieved. He gave me a box of Corn Chex, a large can of mixed vegetables, and some packets of powdered milk.

  “It’s a long story,” I said.

  Ben looked at me, but I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

  “Well,” he said, closing the hatch, “I look forward to hearing it. We’ll probably be by to check on you in a couple of days if that’s okay.”

  “That would be great,” Sara said then she looked around at us and blushed. “Um, Mr. Parks, this is kind of embarrassing, but you wouldn’t happen to have any pads or tampons in your truck, would you? Those men stole all of our supplies.”

  Ben looked out at the other SUV, “Yeah, I think I saw Molly put some in. I suppose I should give you some toilet paper, too.”

  “Did you…start?” I asked Sara, hesitantly. Ben shot me a look, but didn’t say anything.

  “Not yet,” she said. “But I’d like to be prepared.”

  “Did you notice an increase in zombie activity when Molly was on her period?” I asked. I felt awkward saying it, but I thought it needed to be asked.

  Ron made a face then looked out at the other truck. “We don’t ask her about stuff like that.”

  “Oh,” I said. “It’s just that we thought there might be a correlation. It’s just a theory.”

  Ben stared at me expressionless then looked over at Sara.

  “If you think something like that might happen, the two of you should come with us,” he said. “Our place is more secure than this one.”

  “We really need to stay here and wait for Nicholas and Judy,” Sara said.

  Ben opened the back of the truck and dug around until he found a box of tampons. He put it and two rolls of toilet paper on top of the case of ramen noodles that Sara was holding.

  “As soon as things settle down, we’re heading west,” Ron said. “We found a boat, and we’re crossing the river. You’re welcome to come with us if you want.”

  Sara and I looked at each other but neither of us accepted the invitation. We’d already discussed whether or not we should leave the area, and we were on the same page.

  “Okay,” Ben said. “If you need anything just drive that way until you get to the stop sign. Make a right and we’re the first house on the left. It’s a green mailbox with the number seventy-one on it. Mr. McAllister came looking for us the last time and almost got himself killed, so we better get going .You two stay safe, and we’ll see you soon.”

  We waved as the two trucks backed out of the driveway. They pulled out into the road and headed east.

  We were both asleep before eight o’clock that night. Because of my recent injuries and illness, I was more tired than usual. I ended up sleeping a couple of hours past sunrise. As expected, Sara was already up when I stumbled into the kitchen. We hadn’t had any coffee since our run-in with Wheeler’s group.

  “Good morning,” she said. “Are you hungry?”

  I nodded.

  “I mixed up some of that milk for the cereal,” she said.

  I nodded again, still half asleep.

  “I started my period this morning,” she said, almost in a whisper.

  I looked up at her.

  “Do you think we should leave?” she said with a worried expression.

  I poured cereal into my bowl, “We should definitely be ready to leave.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “Better than yesterday,” I said, pouring in the milk.

  “I thought I’d go out and put out some chicken feed from the moving van,” she said. “Maybe we can get them closer so we can catch them. Maybe we can take them with us if we do have to move.”

  I nodded again, my mouth full. She picked up her rifle and went out of the room. I heard the front door open then the sound of her footsteps on the long wooden porch.

  I felt rough. The bone in my left arm still hurt, and there was a nasty bruise between my elbow and wrist. My head hurt, too, but mostly when I touched it. I did need to take it easy, but we had so much to do. I looked over to the kitchen counter where we’d put our seed flats. Five of the little seedlings had recovered overnight after getting some water. We’d need to put them in a warmer place if we wanted the other seeds to germinate. The garden would need to be planted soon, and we still didn’t have enough seeds. We needed to be out every day looking for additional seeds. It didn’t matter how I felt; these things couldn’t wait for me to get better.

  I finished up my cereal and went outside. Sara was sitting inside the back of the moving van with her legs hanging out. The AR-15 was across her lap, and she was tossing out small amounts of scratch fe
ed to the two hens.

  “Chick chick,” she said. “Here, chick chick chick.”

  I walked along the porch. The chickens saw me coming and ran a short distance away. Sara looked up at me. I sat next to her as she stuck her hand in the feed bag and pulled out another handful.

  “Here, chick chick.”

  “We really need to go out and look for seeds,” I said. “We should be ready to plant in a week or two.”

  “Do you feel up to it?” she asked, keeping her eyes on the hens. “Here chick chick.”

  “We’re out of alcohol, too.” I said. “We can leave a note for the Somervilles—tell them to stay here until we get back.”

  She quietly tossed out some more scratch, and the chickens cautiously made their way back toward us.

  Finally she said, “I don’t want to risk your safety. Maybe I should hole up somewhere until—“

  “No,” I said, putting my hand on her leg. “We’re in this together.”

  She smiled wanly, but didn’t look at me.

  “Here, chick chick.”

  I put my arm around her, and she leaned against me.

  “We should take Mr. Parks up on his offer,” she said. “It would be better if there were more of us.”

  “Are you wanting to leave with them?” I asked, concerned.

  She shook her head, “No. I don’t think so. I mean, it might be nice to see new places one day, but I don’t think we’d find things to be any different than they are here. It might be more dangerous in other places. I just thought we could stay together for a while. Maybe they could help us with some of the things we have planned before they decide to leave. Who knows, maybe they’ll decide to stay.”

  “They seemed nice,” I said. “I don’t see any harm in going in with them for a while.”

  “He was my favorite teacher. Let’s drive out there today and tell him.”

  “Okay,” I nodded and watched the chickens.

  She stuck her hand under my face. It was full of the chicken feed.

  She grinned, “These are seeds, aren’t they?”

  “Well, yeah” I said, “But the corn in there has been cracked, so—“

  “No,” she said. “I’m talking about these little round ones.”

  “I don’t know what they are or if they’re safe for humans to eat.”

  “It’s millet,” she said. “There’s an article in one of your magazines about millet. It has recipes and everything. It’s supposed to be really good for you.”

  I held out my hand and she poured the grain in.

  “I think those other ones might be wheat,” she said.

  I turned and looked into the truck. We had a lot of animal feed back there. Some of it was pellets, but a lot of it was straight grain. I thought we could eat the corn if we had to, but I hadn’t really considered using it as seed.

  “Good,” I said. “It looks like we’ll be set on grain, but we still need to find more vegetable seeds.”

  Sara hopped down off the truck, and the chickens ran away.

  “Let me find some paper to write a note for the Somervilles then we can go.”

  CHAPTER 12

  We followed Ben Parks’ directions, and drove out to the house with the green mailbox. On the way, we passed a fenced-in field. There were several cows in the distance, huddled together around a big oak tree. Nearer, was a dead cow. Five zombies were hunched over it feeding on the carcass. Sara slowed the vehicle then stopped. There were seven other partial carcasses spaced out around the pasture. One of the creatures looked up from his meal and stared at us.

  “I wish they all would die,” Sara said.

  The creature stood and looked at us more intently. I wondered how much actual thought was going on in its head.

  “We should come back later when we have more weapons and take care of those before they kill the rest of those cows,” I said.

  Sara nodded and drove on. I followed Ben Parks’ instructions: east to the stop sign, make a right, first house on the left, number seventy-one on a green mailbox. I was surprised I remembered.

  The driveway was blocked by a wrought iron gate and flanked by a stone fence about three feet high which was topped with another three or four feet of wrought iron fencing that ran across the front of the property. The sides and back of the property were enclosed in an old barbed wire fence that had an additional three feet of welded wire around the bottom. The fence was old and the strands of wire had been swallowed up in places by the twisted trunks of Bois D’Arc trees. The whole place was surrounded by pasture.

  It was a large house, more than a century old, and it was made from the same stone as the fence. The materials weren’t local. This part of Kentucky doesn’t have big stones like that, being mostly clay. Factoring in the size of the house, the age, and the fact that the stone had been imported, I could assume the original owner had been wealthy. This had probably been the central home place for a large farm. Things like that got the history buff in me intrigued, but I shouldn’t have been wasting time thinking about stuff like that.

  I got out and went up to the gate. The front door opened and Ron came out on the porch with a rifle in his hands. When he saw that it was us, he waved.

  “The gate isn’t locked,” he yelled out to us, “Just make sure you close it behind you!”

  I swung the gate open, and Sara pulled the Crown Victoria inside. After I’d shut and latched the gate, we drove up to the house.

  Ron stepped off the porch and greeted us.

  “Good morning,” he said. “Did your friends come back?”

  The front door opened, and Ben stepped out.

  “You two change your minds?” he asked.

  “Nicholas and Judy aren’t back yet, but we needed to go out for some things, and we thought we stop by.”

  “Glad you did,” Ben smiled. “Come on in and meet the rest.”

  Inside, we were introduced to Mr. McAllister, a frail man with a blanket over his legs. He nodded to us from a recliner, but didn’t speak. Molly came out of the kitchen, and little Adam hid behind her. He looked like he might have been around three.

  “He’s shy around strangers,” Molly said, smiling and shaking my hand. She was a plain, but pleasant-looking, woman in her forties. She had red hair pulled back in a ponytail.

  “Molly is making some food,” Ben said. “Are you hungry?”

  “No,” I said. “We had some of the cereal you gave us.”

  The house was old. The ceilings were high, and the rooms were small. It was in need of repair. I noticed a ladder, drop cloth, and several gallons of paint in the corner.

  “This was my great-grandfather’s place,” Ron said. “I started trying to restore it back in January, but the virus happened….” He shrugged.

  “Have you had any trouble out here?” I asked.

  “We did early on,” Ben said. “But they never managed to get into the interior of the property.”

  “Any problems with survivors?” I asked.

  “No,” Ben said. “Not here. A guy shot at us at Wal-Mart about three weeks ago, but he got away, and we never saw him again.”

  “There are some survivors a couple of roads over,” Ron said. “They haven’t been too friendly either. I guess everyone is scared, and they don’t want to take the chance. They shoot first.”

  “The reason we stopped by is we want to take you up on your offer to go in together,” Sara said.

  “Yeah,” I added, “or at least work together. We plan to get a garden started soon, and we were going out today to look for seeds.”

  “A garden?” Ben said. “What for?”

  “For food,” I said. I thought I sounded like a smartass stating what I thought was the obvious.

  “There’s food everywhere,” Ron said.

  “But what about when it runs out or goes bad?” I said.

  “It’s only a matter of time before these things die,” Ben said. “I figure they’ll resume food shipments from out west when they know it is
safe to come back in. It might not be right away, but it shouldn’t take more than a year, two at most, and really I doubt it will be more than a couple of months. We have enough canned goods around to keep us fed until then. Besides, Ron and I sent our families to Oklahoma to stay with my sister.”

  “But…” I started but didn’t know what to say.

  “Don’t’ you know?” Sara said. “The rest of the world is like Clayfield. It’s all infected.”

  Ron and Ben gave each other concerned looks.

  “You must be mistaken,” Ron said.

  “It’s true,” I said.

  “How can you know this?” Molly said, stepping forward. “You don’t know that for sure.”

  I shrugged, “I’m sorry. I suppose there is a possibility that there is a safe place somewhere, but I got on the internet, and—“

  “When was this?” Molly asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe three or four days after it hit Clayfield. They said it had crossed the river. I tried to call my mom in St. Louis and--”

  “It might not mean what you think it means,” Ben said shaking his head. “We’re sticking to our plan. We’ll probably come back after the government gets things running again.”

  Molly turned and went back into the kitchen.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “We didn’t mean to upset you, but—“

  “We have to have hope,” Ben interrupted again, sounding perturbed.

  “Okay,” I said. “But Sara and I are still planning on growing some food. I hope you are right, and we don’t need it.”

  Ben looked back and forth between me and Sara then he called out to Molly. She returned to the room.

  “Why don’t you and Adam give Sara a tour of the house.”

  Molly looked a little confused by the request, but nodded and motioned for Sara to join her.

  When they’d gone into the other room, Ben came in close to me.

  “What are you doing with her?”

  “What?” I said.

  “Are you…taking advantage of her?”

  “Sara? No.”

  “She’s just a girl, you know,” he said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, you are obviously having sex with her.”