Love in the Age of Zombies (Book 2): Zombies in Paradise

by James K. Evans

  “Do you buy them from other collectors or rock hounds or what?” Kevin said, figuring with their kind of money buying and collecting Petoskey stones would just be another hobby.

  “Buy them? I don’t buy them, where’s the fun in that? I find them,” she said with a slight note of indignation. “Living on the edge of the lake, I can spend as much time hunting for them as I want. So I hunt a lot!”

  “I’ll bet you have some nice ones!” he replied, curious about her collection.

  “Oh, I do have some nice ones . . . would you like to see them? Follow me!” and, taking him by the hand, she led him to the stone water feature. Water collected in a bowl on top and cascaded down a series of increasingly large rocks. It almost sounded like music as the water fell onto different-sized stones. The base of the fountain was a square trough filled with more stones onto which the water splashed. All of the stones were Petoskies. They were by far the largest and most beautiful Petoskey stones Kevin had ever seen. Many of them were about the size of his fist. A few were the size of softballs. Surrounding them were Petoskey stones ranging from golf ball to jumbo marble size. The definition and clarity on them was simply amazing! Every one was a better specimen than Kevin had found.

  He bent over and picked one out of the splashing water. It had very little cloudiness, and the light border around each cell was bright and distinct. They had been polished until they gleamed like glass. This was by far the best Petoskey stone collection he’d ever seen; museum-quality pieces, if there was a Petoskey stone museum. “These are incredible!” he exclaimed. “The size and definition are amazing!”

  “I have to admit, I cheated a little,” she said. “I learned that soaking them in a weak bleach solution for a few minutes before polishing really brightens them up. I’ve been doing that for years. Then I polish and burnish them.”

  “I can’t believe how big some of these are! I’ve never found any this size!” he said, “And Lord knows I’ve looked!”

  “So you like them big, do you?” she asked. Hearing a curious tone in her voice, Kevin turned around to face her. She was unbuttoning the last two buttons on her blouse, then, looking Kevin in the eyes, she slowly pulled it open, putting her breasts on display. They were as spectacular as the Petoskey stones, large and beautiful. Both breasts were marvelously tanned, topped with dark, erect nipples. They were mature breasts, and gravity had begun taking its toll, but they were incredible. Kevin didn't know much about cup sizes but knew she had big cups. As he stared, his eyes wide and mouth open, she shrugged the blouse onto the ground and turned so the sun caught her breasts at an angle, accentuating their size. With a smile on her face she enjoyed his enraptured gaze.

  “You don’t know how hard it is for me to say this,” he said, forcing himself to look her in the eyes, “but I’m a married man. Hell, I’m still a newlywed. Thanks for whatever you might be offering, but I have to say no.”

  “Are you sure?” she said. “I can tell you’re a boob man, and honey, I got the boobs!” She turned from side to side, causing them to sway.

  He stood there, staring at her wonderful breasts. They really were exceptional. “You look incredible, and you have no idea how tempted I am,” he said, “but all the same, I’m afraid not.”

  Just then a man walked around the corner of the house, carrying a shotgun. Seeing Lee standing in front of Kevin, topless, he stopped short and looked from her to Kevin and back again with his mouth agape.

  “What the hell is going on here?!”

  “Jake! Thank God! I didn’t want to, he forced me!” Lee cried out plaintively.

  “Wait! That’s not true! I didn’t do anything!” Kevin protested, backing up.

  Scowling, Jake gave Kevin a hard stare. “I don’t know who you are. I don’t think we’ve met. But I walk around the corner in my own place and find you assaulting my wife?!” As he said this he began to raise the shotgun.

  “No, it wasn’t like that, I swear!” Kevin exclaimed.

  “You sonofabitch!” Jake shouted, the gun pointed straight at Kevin’s chest. Before Kevin could react, Jake pulled the trigger. As if in slow motion, Kevin could see a projectile leap from the barrel of the gun. He felt a concussive force hit his chest. Or expected to. He jerked back, feeling nothing but abject fear. The physical effects of the shotgun blast to his chest would surely kill him. But the blast never came. Instead, a small yellow plastic ball fell onto the patio and bounced away. That’s all. No concussive force. No blast of fire from the barrel of the gun. Instead, there was a fairly quiet pop! A split second after Kevin flinched back, Jake and Lee both burst out laughing.

  “We’re just playing with you,” he laughed, “we love doing that! This isn’t even a real gun, it’s just an airsoft gun!” Kevin staggered and almost fell over. His bowels had nearly loosed themselves. He felt blood rush to his brain as a massive surge of adrenalin coursed through him. His heart was pounding. The man came over and shook Kevin’s hand. “No hard feelings, my friend. It’s just our sense of humor. Seriously though, did anything happen between you two?” Jake asked, eyebrows raised.

  “No!” Kevin shouted.

  Lee chimed in. “I offered, but all he did was look,” she said, sounding dejected. Kevin glanced over at her. Still topless, she sat down in a chair, leaned back and put her hands behind her head. She was relaxed and made no effort to cover herself. He probably should have been angry, but the relief at not being dead was overpowering. Jake looked at him, the gun now lowered. “Are you gay? It’s okay if you are! We’re cool with that, too!”

  His heart still racing, Kevin felt a little bit dizzy. “No, I’m not gay,” he stammered. Things were getting more bizarre by the minute.

  “I didn’t think so. You don’t strike me as a man who’s gay,” he said, looking over to Lee who still made no effort to cover herself.

  “He’s a newlywed,” Lee chimed in, “And I’m sure he’s not gay. He couldn’t keep his eyes off me!”

  “I have a pregnant wife and . . . well, you know how it is.” He felt a mixture of frustration, guilt, and an overall sense of weirdness.

  Jake noticed Kevin glance at Lee’s breasts. “I never get tired of them,” Jake said, “Even after fifteen years of marriage. You should have seen the photo collection we had on Flickr! I still have all the files, but it was more fun to have people look and comment. Toward the end we had over ten million views!” he said proudly as he placed the toy gun on one of the tables. He headed behind the bar to pour himself a pint of Stormcloud, then sat down next to Lee. “So what’s the story, Lee? Who’s our new friend?”

  “This is Kevin. He came paddling by in a canoe while I was sunning myself on the beach,” said Lee. “I waved him over and boy, was he glad to see me! He seemed thrilled to meet another survivor.”

  “I’ll bet he was glad to see you,” Jake said with a smirk. Looking Kevin full in the face he asked, “So what’s your story? We all have one these days.” Kevin proceeded to tell them about his house in Ann Arbor, meeting and falling in love with Michelle, his solar panels and hydroponic grow room. At that, Jake perked up and for a few minutes they compared notes on the methods they used, lighting, and fertilizer.

  At one point, Lee finally rolled her eyes and sighed loudly. “Okay, fine, you both like the same toys. So how did you get here and why? Where’s your wife?”

  “To make a long story short, two days ago I left Ann Arbor in a borrowed Jeep. I took mostly back roads but had a few interesting things happen along the way. I got as far as Lake Menekaunee—do you know where that is?”

  “Of course, it’s the lovely resort that used to be a lumber town. A hidden jewel. One of Michigan’s best-kept secrets.”

  “Absolutely. I was just north of Lake Menekaunee on M-22 when I came to a barricaded bridge over the outlet from the upper to the lower Lake Menekaunee. It was getting late, so I drove to the resort to spend the night. But I had a couple of interesting experiences and ended up on the beach in the middle of the night. When it
was light this morning I started riding my bike toward Frankfort.”

  “When you say interesting experiences do you mean zombies or something else?”

  “My interesting experiences,” Kevin paused, “involved both zombies and humans, although not at the same time. Partway up the beach I saw a sailboat on the lake. That convinced me to go on. I borrowed the canoe from an abandoned house.”

  “Why are you so intent on getting to Frankfort?” she asked.

  “Three of us live together. Me, my wife, and our roommate. He’s a doctor, my wife is a nurse practitioner. She’s also over four months pregnant with my baby, and Doc is afraid she has a medical condition.”

  “What kind of condition?” Lee asked.

  “It’s called preeclampsia. But don’t ask me to explain it.”

  “We know what that is,” Lee softly said. Jake patted her on the leg reassuringly. “We went through that ourselves. It didn’t have a happy ending for us.”

  “Sure it did, Hon,” Jake said. “You’re still here. I still have the opportunity every day to make you happy. And you still have the chance to make me happy. And you do.” She looked up at him, her eyes expressing an intimacy between them that made Kevin feel bashful and privileged at the same time.

  Kevin felt strange, talking to a man whose wife sat topless before them both. He went on, deliberately turning his eyes away. “We heard a broadcast on the radio. It said Frankfort was a safe haven and had a hospital and doctors. I came here to see if it was true. If it is, I’ll go back to Ann Arbor and bring them here.”

  “You mentioned your house in Ann Arbor had solar power and a hydroponic grow room. Why don’t I show you my setup while you explain yours? I think you’ll be interested in what you see! If you can peel your eyes from the view here,” Jake said with a wink. He gave Lee a quick kiss then stood up. “Walk this way.” He began walking with an exaggerated limp. Kevin stood up and mimicked his walk. When Lee laughed out loud, Jake look back and laughed as well. “I’m glad you have the same sense of humor we do!”

  They walked around the side of the house and Kevin was immediately impressed. There were two commercial-sized greenhouses, the glass sparkling in the sun. Kevin saw indoor fans, outdoor louvers, and lighting equipment.

  “I started off with this one,” Jake said, ushering Kevin inside. Kevin saw plants of all different sizes, from sprouts to full grown tomato plants. He saw seven or eight people working in pairs, taking care of the plants. The air was humid and smelled vegetative. “As I got better at it, I continued to expand.”

  Kevin was taking a close look at the lights. “So you’re supplementing the light using LEDs?”

  “Yeah, the Chip-On-Board LEDs. I started off with metal halide for vegetative growth and high pressure sodium for flowering and fruiting. When I switched to LEDs, I immediately saw a huge difference in the plants, and I got these COB lights not quite a year ago. They’re incredible. The LEDs are set to switch on whenever the lighting drops below a certain lumen level. So on a sunny day like this, they’re not on.” They continued to walk around, Jake proudly showing Kevin his equipment. Kevin asked a lot of questions, some of them simply out of courtesy. He was very familiar with the technology and equipment, although Jake was operating on a scale much bigger than what Kevin was used to. “ . . . and the CO2 level is automatically regulated as well.”

  “How are you able to increase the CO2 levels? Did you stockpile tanks of it before the Collapse?” Kevin asked.

  Jake smiled. “That’s the sweet part of this deal. When I started running out of carbon dioxide, I went to see Brian and Rick at Stormcloud. Have you ever brewed beer?”

  “Are you kidding? I’ve been a homebrewer for years!”

  “Ah, so you know what’s created during fermentation!”

  “Of course! Alcohol and carbon dioxide! Are you saying you use the CO2 Stormcloud generates from brewing?! That’s pretty cool!” For years Kevin had been letting his homebrew ferment in the grow room, taking advantage of the CO2 from the plants essentially the same way Jake used it from tanks. “But how do you compress the gas into tanks?”

  “That took us awhile to figure out, but we modified an air compressor and fed it straight carbon dioxide. We’re not able to get as high a PSI in the tanks as the liquid gas companies used to, but it works pretty well. Let me show you the other greenhouse.” They exited the greenhouse and entered the second, a mere twenty feet from the first. Immediately Kevin smelled a strong odor reminiscent of a skunk—but he knew better. In front of him were a hundred or so marijuana plants, divided into different sections. A half dozen people were tending the plants. Some sections were completely sealed off.

  “Why are those sections sealed?”

  “That’s the genetic lab. We have both male and female plants that we’re cross-breeding.” Jake replied.

  “Lee told me you were a provider before the Collapse, but why are you still growing it? Surely there aren’t that many medical marijuana patients in a town the size of Frankfort!”

  “There didn’t used to be. Not before the zombies. But once the dust settled and people got over their initial panic, they began to realize the bind they were in and how dependent they were on pharmaceuticals: all the folks on antidepressants and antianxiety drugs, people with chronic pain, epileptics, even people who were taking melatonin for sleep. When they figured out they couldn’t get a refill at the drug store next time they ran out, some of them were desperate enough to try marijuana, something they’d always fought against legalizing. Word got around that it worked for some people, so other folks tried it.”

  “So you have a bunch of people walking around town stoned all the time?!” Kevin asked, somewhat surprised.

  “A lot of the strains we grow are high in CBD and low in THC, so they’re only marginally psychoactive. You don’t get much of a buzz. You know what CBD is?” When Kevin shook his head no, Jake explained. “CBD is a chemical in marijuana that doesn’t make you high, but has a lot of health benefits. Before last October, research was being done in other countries to confirm reports of CBD’s affects on cancer, neuroinflammation, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s, nausea, anxiety and schizophrenia.”

  “A few people in town knew about those studies and suggested weed might help some people. When it became obvious that people were using it as medicine, the town council decided not to enforce any kind of prohibition. This was just, oh, three months or so ago. The Crescent Moon bakery even has a small section of marijuana edibles. And people have figured out ways to use the whole plant. Some folks in town are trying to make hemp clothing, and hemp paper is already available, although not much. Once regular paper ran out, people began to realize how much they needed it, especially with no electronic gadgets to record notes. Used hemp paper can be recycled to make new paper. We’re hopeful we can make hemp rope, since the hardware store ran out of plastic rope.”

  “But to answer your question from earlier, no, Frankfort doesn’t have people walking around stoned all the time. Now and then you can tell when someone is using it, but you could tell when they were using prescription drugs, too. You know the biggest problem they’ve had with marijuana? Trying to decide whether to allow it in public. Right now they’re treating it like alcohol. They have an open container law; now they have an open joint law, too. You don’t get in trouble for having it or smoking it, but you get in trouble for using it in public. You can’t take a bottle of Jack Daniels to the library and drink it, and you can’t smoke a joint at the library, either.”

  “There are still some people who are very vocal in their belief that, at best, marijuana bad and, at worst, it’s a sin. Many of those people are also very vocal in their belief that drinking is wrong. But already, people are much more casual about it. I guess now we’ll find out whether medical marijuana was really just an excuse to get stoned.”

  They had been walking up and down the rows as he talked. Kevin had grown a couple of plants when Tammy was sick, and appreciated
how healthy the plants were. It was interesting to see the differences between strains, too. Some were tall and lanky, others were short and dense. Some of them had a purple cast to the leaves and buds. But the smell was a bit overpowering and he started getting congested. Jake noticed and steered them back to the front, where they stepped out into the open air.

  “Jake, I really appreciate you showing me around, but I’m on a mission to check out the Frankfort hospital and talk to the staff. I guess the bridge over Betsie Bay is barricaded, so I need to get back to my canoe. I left it on the beach.”

  “You’re right, the bridge is a no-go, but you don’t need to take your canoe. We can take my boat. Michelle and I will drive you down to the dock and take you over ourselves.”

  Kevin felt grateful. “Man, I’d really appreciate it. I’m anxious to get the skinny on the hospital and get back to my wife.” Even referencing Michelle made his heart ache.

  “Let’s get down to the dock then,” Jake said, “I’ll pull the Tesla around.”

  Kevin’s jaw dropped. Finding his voice, he said, “You have a Tesla?!”

  “Of course! It’s a great machine. I’ve had it for a couple of years. With the power we generate, I keep the batteries charged all the time. I haven’t used gas in months! I’ll be right back. Why don’t you get Lee and meet me by the driveway?” He disappeared toward a freestanding garage on the other side of the house. Kevin headed back to the patio, where Lee was sweeping sand off the patio with a broom. She had her blouse on, but it was completely unbuttoned.

  She smiled as she saw him and said “So how’d you like the grand tour?”

  “It’s amazing! I can see why the city feels indebted to you. How does the city decide who gets the fresh vegetables?”

  “The city has a lottery system. It seemed the only fair way. But the people who work in the greenhouse get more than those who don’t.”