Her only freeze-dried food is twenty times better than what anyone else makes. I rinse, dry my face, and take the bag from her as we enter the yard. The few clouds in the sky are lit in shades of orange and yellow. The start of a perfect spring day.
Rose freezes and points straight ahead. My adrenaline spikes until I see a gray-brown rabbit hopping through the grass. “So cute,” Rose whispers. “I should probably be thinking of him as dinner, though. You think he burrowed under the fence or there’s a hole somewhere?”
“Let’s check just in case.”
Her hand goes to her knife in a sheath from Always Ready. She wears it all day, as I do my own. We start at the back fence, making a circuit, but there are no holes, no loose boards, no gaps. Only the quiet shuffle of feet from the road.
We head toward the camper. “I know we missed Easter and Passover,” Rose says when we’re far enough from the bodies, “but what’s today?”
“You really don’t know?”
“I really, truly don’t. Of course you do.” She side-eyes me, smiling. “You probably have an internal clock and calendar.”
I do, but I’m not telling her that. She’ll tease me for days. “May Fifteenth.”
“Dang it. We missed May Day.”
“You celebrate May Day?”
Rose raises a fist. “I love my union brothers and sisters.”
“Goes with the braids.”
She elbows me. “It’s also the pagan festival of Beltane. We could’ve had fun with that. I can picture you dancing around a bonfire clad in only a kilt.”
“Who needs a kilt?” I ask, and Rose covers her mouth before her laugh makes a sound. She sneaks a glance to find me smiling and matches it with her own.
It’s as though the spring day has made its way inside me, too. I feel light, even with the zombies on the road and a night full of bad dreams. I wouldn’t be caught dead dancing around a bonfire—or dancing in general—but I can almost see how one might. Rose would fit right in at a pagan festival with her wild red hair. When I think of Rose, I think of her hair; the two are inextricably linked in my mind.
Rose puts on water to boil while I make coffee, then she sticks her head into the small pantry. “I forgot about the Velveeta! This is gonna be good.” She throws a frying pan on the stove and removes a giant can of spinach flakes from her bag. “We need fresh food, not that powdered eggs, Velveeta, and dried spinach are fresh. But we’ll have the illusion of fresh food, since that real spinach betrayed us.”
She squints at the directions on the can, then mutters and moves to the closest window. I fish my reading glasses from my inner coat pocket and dangle them in front of her. “What’re those for?” Rose asks.
“For seeing.”
Rose takes the glasses and holds them up to her face. “Hey, it’s magic. Who knew?”
“Everyone.”
She sighs, handing them back to me once she’s done. “Thanks. I don’t know why I refuse to give in to this.”
“Because getting old sucks.”
“It’s terrible. Let’s not do it anymore. Deal?”
“Deal.”
I watch the coffee sputter into the pot while Rose putters around, slicing the Velveeta and mixing the egg powder with water. She sautés the rehydrated spinach, then sets it aside. “Maybe we should have a garden if we can get some seeds. I haven’t had one in years. I gave up after I spent more time online trying to figure out why everything was dying than I spent in the actual garden.”
“My mother gardened,” I say. “She was good at it. She grew her own chili peppers for harissa in little greenhouses.”
“I love harissa. I’ve only had it a few times, but it was delicious.”
“It’d be good with those eggs.” I remember my mother toasting the spices and grinding the dried chilies for the smoky, spicy chili paste, and my mouth waters for the tastes of my childhood. Not for the first time, I wish I’d learned to make them. “My mother’s harissa was the best. And her marak kubbeh. That’s like a stew soup.”
“What’s in marak kubbeh?” Rose asks while she whisks the eggs.
“Kubbeh are meat-filled dumplings. She’d fry up the meat with spices, stuff it in little pouches of dough, then cook it in broth. Marak means soup in Hebrew.”
I think I must be boring her, but she seems interested with the way her head is cocked. Since she does most of the cooking around here, she likely is. “What kind of broth?” she asks.
“She made different ones, but usually with tomatoes and zucchini or eggplant.”
Rose peers sadly into her bowl. “And we have powdered eggs.” She pretends to pout and stamps her foot. “I want kubbeh. Are they both Moroccan dishes?”
“Harissa is. My mother said her kubbeh was Iraqi by way of Israel. My grandfather was Moroccan and my grandmother Iraqi.”
“Both your parents were from Israel?”
“My mother was. My grandparents were smuggled into Israel and lived in the refugee camps until they got housing. They moved to America when she was young. She met my father as a teenager, and the rest is history.”
I loved my mother fiercely, maybe because it was the opposite of how my father loved her. I often wished she’d never met him, had lived a happier life. She shushed me when I once said as much, claiming she’d never regret having me, but I’m sure she regretted staying as long as she did.
Rose has paused in her cooking to listen. When she smiles uncertainly, I realize I’ve stopped speaking and am likely frowning. I quickly add, “My mother was Sephardi, specifically Mizrahi, meaning her family came from North Africa and the Middle East. My father was half Ashkenazi Jew, meaning half his ancestors came from Europe. Confused yet?”
There’s more to it, but I doubt she wants a course in Judaism. Rose wags a finger. “Hey, I know my Ashkenazi from my Sephardi. You forget I grew up in New York. I’ve been to my share of Bar Mitzvahs and Seders. I’ve even found the hidden matzah.” I smile, and she continues, “But where the heck did Jensen come from?”
“A Dane snuck in somewhere along the line.”
Rose laughs, picks up her bowl, and whisks again. “My ancestors came over by boat during the Potato Famine. Not nearly as exciting as being smuggled to Israel.”
“Maybe not for you. I’ll bet they were excited not to starve to death.”
“I guess.” She winks and dumps the eggs into the pan, then turns to her other ingredients.
Sheila was Ashkenazi, and I didn’t care which traditions we followed, only that we celebrated the holidays. Those were the few times, in later years, when there were no fights with Clara, when we’d call an unspoken truce. Fighting during the holidays was too reminiscent of my own childhood. Looking back, it might be the one thing I did right as a parent to teenagers. This miniscule victory doesn’t fill me with pride, but it’s something.
Mitch enters and makes a beeline for the coffee pot, interrupting my thoughts and nodding while she passes. “Morning. Coffee.”
“Morning, sunshine,” Rose says. “I’m making a big-ass omelet thing.”
Mitch grunts while she pours coffee. I fill two mugs with the brew, then add that weird brown sugar and a spoonful of looted powdered milk into the one I hand Rose. “Here you go, Red.”
“Thank you.” She sips her coffee, then peers at me over the rim of her mug. “Red?”
It’s too late to take back the nickname that’s been bouncing around my mind for days now. “It fits, no?” I ask in a light tone, hoping she won’t take offense.
I’m relieved when Rose beams and kicks Mitch’s foot. “Hear that? Red is a real nickname, unlike that Ro bullcrap. Get on the ball, woman.”
Mitch grunts dismissively—she barely speaks before her first cup of coffee. The kids enter with Willa, then chat while they drink coffee. Jesse’s fingers move on the counter as if searching for a guitar, which brings to mind Rose’s offer that I play with him. Resuming an instrument in an environment where quiet is paramount isn’t the smartest move, but
there has to be a time when you tell the world—or the zombies—to fuck off. A moment when you take your chances and do the thing because it’s good, or right, or makes someone happy. Maybe even if that someone is you.
I set my mug on the counter, startled by this notion. There’s no future to speak of, no world as far as we know, and I’m half-interested to see where it goes. It’s a blow to my old worldview, but maybe a new world needs a new worldview. And there’s the minor detail that my old worldview sucked.
Rose turns off the stove and sniffs the pan. She always smells her food before she eats, and I’m pretty sure she thinks no one notices. “Breakfast,” she says, and cuts the thick circle of eggs like a pie, placing a slice onto the dishes Holly lays out. The kids bring theirs to the table. Rose pushes the largest slice toward me and hands Mitch a plate. She leans against the counter to eat her own. “This is better than I thought.”
“No peanut butter today?” I ask. We found MRE packets of peanut butter at Always Ready, and she usually smears one on a pilot cracker for breakfast with some of her rapidly depleting honey. “I thought eggs gross you out.”
“Only sometimes. And powdered eggs are fake eggs, which are kind of gross but not slimy.”
“I’m beginning to think you have a lot of weird food rules.”
“Don’t get me started on that,” Mitch says to me now that caffeine has hit her bloodstream. “She’s the worst with food.”
“What?” Rose’s mouth drops. “I don’t see you complaining when your meals arrive magically on the table.”
“It’s why you make the best food, but you’re still the worst.”
Rose shrugs and lifts another forkful. “I can live with that.”
I take a bite. It is better than I expected, with a smoky taste and just enough heat to make it interesting. When I say as much, Rose answers, “Smoked paprika and chili powder. I threw them in at the last minute. You inspired me with your talk of deliciously spiced kubbeh.”
My next forkful of egg reveals an auburn hair, which I extract from the remainder of my breakfast. There’s no escaping her hair. It winds around things and sticks to any and every surface. I found a strand inside my sock the other day. “Another prize?”
“Oh God, really? I put my hair up for just that reason.” Rose holds out her plate. “Sorry. Take mine. I’ll finish yours.”
I cover my plate protectively. “Nope. Now that I know what goes into the making of it, it does seem like a prize. It’s been pineappled nightly and slept on silk pillows. It’s the veal of hair.”
Rose tosses her head back with her laugh. “And no baby cows were murdered in the making of it. Though a few silkworms might’ve met their end.”
“Who’s murdering baby cows?” Holly asks from the table.
“Nobody, unfortunately,” Mitch says. “I would kill for some fresh meat.”
Holly’s retort is interrupted by the same loud hum we heard in town, along with the clomp of feet on asphalt. She sits up straight, face drained of color. I jump along with everyone else when it’s followed by the long, insistent peal of a truck’s horn. Maybe an air horn. It’s far off, coming from the west, but lack of ambient noise makes it feel as though the world is ending all over again.
“Shit! Pop.” Rose drops her plate on the counter and sticks her head out the door. “He’s coming.”
A few moments later, Sam enters the RV. “Can’t see much from the house, so I figured I’d best come up here in case we need to leave.”
Rose nods, fist clenched to her chest. I walk outside and stop beneath the trees. From this vantage point, I’ll see the zombies once they pass the fence and before they move out of sight around the curve. The others join me as a pack of dead people appear, covering both lanes. They round the curve and keep coming, a steady stream of zombies following the sound and each other. They limp and stagger and groan their way west. The horn sounds again, this time for a good fifteen seconds. It splits the air and destroys any peace the spring day has brought. If this number of zombies comes to the fence, it’s going down. There’d be no driving through them, no escape but to run, yet nowhere to run to.
I pull Clara to my side, then see Rose and Mitch have done the same with Holly and Jesse. Sam watches the road, his eyes hard in a network of lines and his hand on his holster. Someone else is alive, and that someone is leading zombies out of town. The horn comes again, more distant now, though it lasts for thirty seconds, broadcasting its location to every zombie in the area.
“Like the pied-fucking-piper,” Sam says in a low voice. Rose nods, flinching when something rattles the fence by the road.
It takes an hour for the pack to pass the house. By the time it does, I’m no longer hungry.
39
Rose
The road has been quiet since yesterday, especially after a series of explosions rumbled somewhere off to the west. At first, I thought it was thunder. We don’t get many thunderstorms in Oregon, and I always relish them. As a kid, I’d sit at our apartment window with Pop and Mom, watching lightning strobe on Brooklyn streets while thunder rattled the glass in the window frames. Thunderstorms were one of my favorite things, both because of the raw power of the spectacle and because my parents made me feel safe from that intensity.
But this was something else, something purposeful. On the one hand, I welcome living people. On the other hand, I don’t know who they are. Absurdly, my stress levels have been low for the past week, aside from zombie skirmishes. Though we’re barricaded in a house and surrounded by dead people, life behind the fence is calm, except for the worry about something coming through.
We’ve decided to give it a day or two and then drive into town. If nothing else, maybe we’ll find news of the outside world or the estimated date of zombie death. I’m no expert, but the thousands of zombies that passed yesterday looked pretty fucking mobile.
Thirty days, my ass.
I lift the well bucket and dump it. The kids sit at the patio table playing cards fifty feet away. I can’t hear what they say, but I see how Holly’s smile drops quickly when she thinks no one’s watching. Although she insists she’s fine, every zombie she kills seems to kill some of the life in her. She’s always required time to process big changes, and this is a change of epic proportions. I’ve been standing back to give her space, but I’m worried. In this world, you can’t fall down, then get back on your feet and brush yourself off with no harm done. Not with a zombie bite, at least.
Mitch, sitting on an overturned bucket, follows my line of vision. “She’ll be okay. It’s a lot to take in.”
“I wish she would talk to me. It’s not healthy to keep it all inside and pretend everything’s fine.”
“Gee, I wonder who she gets that from.” Mitch stares at me, then lifts her shoulders and releases them with an overdone sigh. “I guess it’ll have to remain a mystery.”
“Bite me,” I say, and she laughs.
I watch the kids a moment longer, long enough to catch the way Clara’s eyes drift to Jesse again and again. She had a crush on him in high school, and for a time I suspected Jesse liked her in return, but it never came to anything. I always thought they’d be good together. I had no doubt that beneath Clara’s wild teenage side beat a loyal, loving heart; it’s only now on display for all to see.
“Our girl is thirsty,” Mitch whispers. “What does Jess think of that?”
I send the bucket down the well. “It’s none of my business. Though I’m dying to make it my business.”
“Have you plumbed Holly for information?”
“No. I’m not sure how she’d feel about it. She’d be partly happy, I think, but imagine being stuck with your best friend and brother all lovey-dovey?”
“Kind of like being stuck with you and Ethan on that trip we took to Mount Hood.”
“Seriously?” I ask. “Are you ever going to forget about that? I’ve been apologizing for over twenty years.”
“Nope. Craig tripping balls, along with you and Ethan sta
rring in your own production of Romeo and Juliet, was officially the worst vacation ever.”
I dip my hand in a bucket and flick water at Mitch, who ducks. When we were nineteen, we went to Timberline Lodge for a few days. Craig took far too many mushrooms, and Ethan and I were obnoxiously over-infatuated with each other. I apologized and was forgiven, though Mitch still likes to hold it over my head.
My smile falls the way it does whenever I think of Ethan at length. He passes through my mind a dozen times a day, and it always leaves me with a sick feeling of how he must have died: alone, terrified, and in pain. My anger has faded, and now I’m just sad.
Tom materializes, as he usually does when there’s work to do. He lifts a full bucket and walks it into the house. When the next bucket is full, Mitch lugs it up to the RV, where we have a siphon hose to fill the tank.
Tom reappears and watches as I dump out the next bucket. “Let me do that.”
I hand him the bucket and step back, then studiously avoid watching him. He fills and dumps the bucket before sending it down again. “You want to hear something funny, Red?”
A tiny buzz goes through me at the nickname. “Sure.”
“I didn’t want to come to your party. I was dreading it.”
There’s a teasing note in his voice, which I like almost as much as the nickname. That silly hormonal thing is not passing as quickly as I’d hoped. “So was I. But how is that funny?”
“Without fail, you’d find me in my corner and rope me into a conversation.”
I gasp in fake outrage. “That was my corner.”
“Which corner is yours?”
“All the corners are mine.” I’d usually been glad to see Tom because it meant I wouldn’t have to stand alone. He’d seemed so ill at ease that the desire to loosen him up outweighed my inhibition, which led me to talk. And talk. And talk. “I was being polite, and I would hardly call your side a conversation. There were three other corners, you know. I gave you plenty of opportunities to escape, but you always came back.”
“I did, didn’t I? Why’d I do that?”
The Cascadia Series (Book 1): World Departed Page 36