I got excited just hearing the sound of his voice. But then, as I walked into the other side of the building, it turned to utter disappointment.
It was a golf cart.
Kevin was grinning. “Yeah, I see it. I know what you’re thinking. But get out of that box. This is something. Golf carts can probably go about twenty miles an hour, a hell of a lot faster than we can walk…especially in snow.” I nodded. “How far is Chipeta Springs from here?”
“I think about five miles—give or take.”
“So we could be there in less than an hour, buy some gas, fill up Larry’s truck, go fill ‘er up in Chipeta, and then be on the road heading home by nightfall. Or, even if we waited till morning, just to be safe, we could be back in Winchester. Tomorrow, Nina.” He was trying to convince me, but I got the feeling he was also trying to convince himself.
“All right. Let’s do it.” I didn’t mention that the golf cart itself might not have enough gas. What did I know? The little thing didn’t want to start, and I could tell from the sounds of it that it was reluctant due to the cold, but Kevin managed, after several tries, to get it started. I hadn’t even thought till now of the effect the weather would have on vehicles.
We’d been lucky in so many ways—finding the cart, knowing there was an easy route out of the building, that there were keys in the cart’s ignition, that it seemed to have enough gas…
But why would our luck prevail?
It didn’t, of course, because once Kevin got the cart outside and asked me to hop on, he started driving down the hill, toward the side of the house. At first, we slipped and slid a little bit, but it became evident after not too long that the cart couldn’t handle the snow. It was plain as day after a few moments why: the cart was built for summer—for green grass and gently rolling hills, not ice and snow and cold.
Still, Kevin persevered for a little while, braving the banks and mounds of snow, stubbornly refusing to give up. I considered saying something, encouraging him to see the foolishness of the idea, but I didn’t want to steal his thunder. He’d have to see it on his own.
In the snow, he was an excellent driver. That was a byproduct of living in Colorado—you either got good at driving in it or you stopped driving in snow and ice altogether—but Kevin was amazing. There were several times that I expected him to run into something, but he knew when and how much to turn the wheel, when to let off on the gas, when to give it a little more.
Unfortunately, his skills weren’t enough to make the cart go. It finally got to a point where the wheels turned and turned and turned but wouldn’t gain enough traction to move on. He got out and pushed, having me give it gas when he told me to, and the cart got loose, but it was only a few yards before it happened again.
I couldn’t see the disappointment on his face, but I could see defeat in his eyes. He clenched his jaw finally and said, “Maybe when it gets warmer.” He shook his head and hit the steering wheel with the bottom of the palm of his hand, the only emotional response I’d seen to the event stemming from his frustration, and then he looked at me, forcing a small smile. “If we can’t take this bitch, why don’t we snag a couple of rolls of toilet paper after all?”
Sounded like a plan to me.
Chapter Three
We discussed it on the walk back to my aunt’s house and decided to tell our companions what had transpired. It was late when we arrived—close to growing dark—but Larry and Vera already had the fire going. Larry had found some instant rice and was boiling it inside the fireproof Dutch oven my aunt had. He’d found some cubes of beef bouillon to add, and it smelled amazing.
As Kevin was talking, Larry pulled the rice off the fire and dished up four bowls of the meal. Kevin didn’t take a bite until he was done telling our story. By that point, Larry had all but finished up his food. “That sucks. Wanna hear what happened to us? I don’t know which of us had a better day.”
We were all alive. I counted that in the plus column.
But Larry started regaling us with his tale of how he and Vera had gone east in search of homes and people. Unlike us, they didn’t encounter any infected, but they did encounter people.
Paranoid people. People ready to kill Larry and Vera just for stepping on their property.
Larry said maybe it was because they approached through the woods, having gone through a barbed wire fence or two to get there, unlike the way Kevin and I were searching. He didn’t regret it, though, and said he would do the same thing the next day because he believed it saved time and he preferred the cover of the forest.
I thought the latter argument was solid.
“They didn’t have a big house and not like they had anything we’d want to steal, but before we could even approach their door to knock, a big guy, probably about Savage’s age, opened up the door, shotgun in hand, pointed at me, said we needed to remove ourselves off his property right this second, and if we didn’t, he wouldn’t be responsible for his actions. I explained that we just wanted to talk, that we were staying next door and trying to make contact with anyone alive. He threatened us again and said if he caught us on their land in the future, he’d kill us, no questions asked.”
“He wouldn’t even talk to you?” I asked, feeling incredulous. Even though I didn’t know my aunt’s neighbors and although the Bransons were a bit off their rocker, my aunt had never had anything negative to say about anyone around there…definitely not that there were any folks unwilling to help someone in need.
“Nope. No discussion.”
We were all quiet for a few moments, absorbing the implications. Finally, Kevin said, “Things must be a lot worse out there than we realize.”
If I’d thought I couldn’t worry more about my kids, I’d been dead wrong.
* * *
So we figured we would learn which places to avoid and which to approach as we continued moving out farther. For the next several days, Kevin and I decided to focus on taking from the golf cart house any supplies we thought we could use. We took the water backpack and considered taking a rolling suitcase but knew that would be a bad idea. The luggage was clunky and noisy and wouldn’t be easy to take on long hauls. We did find a bag that slung over the shoulder that, we thought, would work as long as we didn’t overfill.
I still felt guilty about pilfering from these people, but Kevin reminded me once more that they didn’t need these supplies, and—if they’d been good people when they were alive—they would have wanted us to have them. If they hadn’t been good people, “Fuck ‘em,” Kevin said, half joking. We’d already loaded up on toilet paper and paper plates, and we found some butter and decided to take a few clothes that we thought would fit Larry and me better than what we were already wearing.
It didn’t help that I was losing weight. I didn’t know that for a fact without stepping on a bathroom scale, but I could tell by the way the clothes were fitting. I could also tell I was starting to firm up like I hadn’t been in years. My lower legs had always been in decent shape, but the hill-climbing was strengthening my thighs. Other miscellaneous chores were helping my upper body shape up. What a stupid way to experience improved health benefits—being stranded in the forest with absolutely no luxuries and even without what I would have considered some necessities.
Still, I tended to try to find the bright side, and since the anxiety I felt worrying about my kids once more was weighing heavily on my mind, I needed some positives to focus on. Self-improvement was a plus.
Kevin and I were walking up the drive to that house on what we planned to be our last day of “mining.” Then we’d go back to looking for other neighbors. I think we would have focused on that first if not for a couple of things. First off, we never said it out loud, but I think we were all wondering if maybe we were the last of the uninfected. Well, us and the crazy shotgun guy down the road. Our encounter with the Bransons and the rich folks, coupled with the fact that no vehicles had driven up or down that road in days, lent credence to our suspicions.
S
econd of all, we hadn’t realized until we’d started “scouting” that the houses here were farther apart—on foot and through snow—than they’d seemed driving down the main road. Add to it, fighting the weather, trying to stay warm and hydrated, being on hyper alert the entire time made those journeys stressful. It wasn’t so bad when we’d already covered the territory we were walking to, because the landscape was familiar and we knew what to expect.
As we walked up the drive, I was quiet, once more thinking about my progeny, and, finally, I needed to talk. I couldn’t hold it in anymore. “I’m so worried about my kids.”
Kevin was quiet for a little bit and nodded his head. He wasn’t silent because the walk up the hill was winding him, although we both had had that problem the first few days of hauling water. Now, though, we were acclimated to the altitude and our bodies had adjusted to the work. He was, instead, pondering himself. Finally, he said, “Yeah, I’m worried about Alex.”
“Is that your daughter’s name?”
He smiled but he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking straight ahead, his eyes on the road and the woods. “Yeah. Short for Alexandra.”
We continued walking in silence again until I said, “I think about them a lot. Not just worrying and wondering in the here and now and not knowing. What sucks about being here is all the time it affords me to think. I can’t stop thinking about what a shitty mother I’ve been.”
“Now you’re just being hard on yourself, Nina. We all beat ourselves up about that. Trust me.”
I appreciated that he was trying to empathize and make me feel better, but part of me didn’t want to feel better. I wanted to wallow. “No, I’m not. I have been a shitty mother.” He started to talk, but I wasn’t going to let him. “Like…I never had the time to teach my son how to tie his shoes. What parent would ever say that? But it was true. I spent a few minutes with him one night—he was older than he should have been and all his friends already knew how. He was a smart boy, so it’s not like he wouldn’t have gotten it. But I was tired from work and I showed him a few times and then told him to practice. I think I was probably impatient. He never asked again and I didn’t think about it until months later…and then I saw him doing it. I think he learned from one of his classmates.”
“Did his dad maybe show him how?”
“Maybe…but his dad…had issues.”
“Oh.” Kevin didn’t say another word, probably afraid to take that road. I knew I’d have to tell him or leave him wondering.
“He had multiple sclerosis. Some days, it was like nothing was wrong with him, but most of the time, especially the older he got, the worse it was. Some days, he could barely get out of bed, let alone deal with our kids. It was all he could do to focus on himself, especially when he started treatment.” I sighed and walked for a while, not ready to focus on the additional guilt I felt over my husband and all I wasn’t able to do for him. “So, sure, I had reasons. I was busy working a lot—lots more than most people—to pay for the medical bills and the fact that I couldn’t support our family very well on my income, and when I was home, I was busy doing housewife things…so sometimes I didn’t give my kids what they needed. Sometimes I was impatient with them or just not able to do for them what I needed to.” I wasn’t about to go into all the injustices of life that had kept me so busy away from home—those were old arguments that I was tired of ranting about, although they were no less valid now than they were then. There was, first of all, the issues of health care and the fact that my husband was dying and I made just enough that he couldn’t get government health care coverage until the last year of his life. Up until then, it was all on me. Add to it the fact that, in spite of the awe-inspiring notion of women’s rights and also that, on the surface, everything appeared even keel and hunky-dory, I made less than my male counterparts. No, I wasn’t able to prove it, but I knew it. When I had male coworkers in the same job I was in but they were able to raise their families on their income alone, I knew something was awry…but proving it would have taken more energy and money than I had.
So I suffered. My kids suffered. My husband suffered.
My hopes had been, up until the infection, that my children would carve out better lives for themselves, that they’d take the advice that both their dad and I had given them and make sure they were better off than we had been.
Kevin’s words pulled me out of my trance, and I could see the large house in the distance. “Nina, all parents feel like they haven’t done right by their kids, but most parents who love their kids do the best they can.” We were both silent again for a few seconds until he added, “I haven’t known you for long, but you are caring and you do what it takes to make sure we’re all taken care of. If you were half that good with your kids and husband, I have no doubt that your kids love you and respect you and know you did the best you could.”
A tear dropped from my eye. I didn’t look over at Kevin but I had to get out the words. “Thank you. You managed to say the perfect thing.”
I could see him smile. “I don’t talk much, so at least I’m not a dumb shit when I do.”
I laughed. He was so not a dumb shit. Far from it.
* * *
Larry and Vera had been striking out. We were once again grounded by a storm for a couple of days, and Larry was telling us about all the hiking they’d done over the past week to no avail. There just weren’t any homes out that way, he said. They’d have to try venturing out farther.
In spite of all the bullshit I’d seen in my life, I tended to take people at face value unless they gave me a reason not to. Sometimes, I’d get a feeling, some weird intuitive vibe that would tell me to be cautious, but otherwise I believed people until they were no longer trustworthy. It could be that I caught them in a lie or found that they betrayed me or threw me under the bus. It had happened a lot at work, and once I stopped trusting someone, it was almost impossible for me to believe anything that person said again.
Until then, though, I viewed individuals as solid, decent people.
Larry was no different. He and I had a bit of a history together, having been neighbors as long as we had, and he’d never given me any reason to doubt him. He’d become a bit of a chauvinistic ass since we’d been grounded at my aunt’s house, but that didn’t mean he was a liar.
Something had been niggling at the back of my mind, though, and it wasn’t until Kevin voiced it that I began to think he was right.
We were walking down the road, this time going farther, trying to find new homes that we hoped had people we could connect with. I was beginning to think it was a futile exercise, the roads unmarred by tire tracks being my first and best evidence. Kevin asked, “How long’ve you known Larry?”
“I dunno. Ten years or so.” We walked a few more steps before I followed up with, “Why?”
“I dunno.” He was quiet for a bit, looking around as we continued walking. “Something about the guy bugs me.”
Yeah…I was beginning to accumulate a list of anti-love letters to Larry myself. “Anything in particular?”
He was silent for a while, something I was growing accustomed to when it came to Mr. Savage. Sometimes, it was as though he were searching for the right words or trying to be cautious about how he said something. He seemed thoughtful—and I appreciated that. “No, and that’s what’s bugging me. He just seems like…like he’s bullshitting about some things, but I can’t figure out why.”
“Well, Larry’s always seemed like a bit of a bullshitter to me. You know, like he’s trying to impress me or something.”
“Yeah, there’s that…” We walked several yards, all uphill once more, before he said, “The story about the guy with the shotgun. That seem phony to you?”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it much.”
“Just…something about it didn’t seem quite right to me. And it really pisses me off that I can’t figure out what.”
He made me think, made me question, something I hadn’t done since we’d
arrived here. “I thought it was kinda strange how the guy saw them coming before they could even get to the door. Like he was standing watch or something.”
“Yeah. You ever once think to do that out here?”
I pondered the idea. “We haven’t even been locking the doors.”
“Exactly. Why would this guy be so damned paranoid…especially now?”
I felt a chill charge my spine. “Unless there’s something that we don’t know.”
“Like what?”
“Something worse heading our way.”
I glanced over at him. His brows were furrowed but he kept his eyes on the road, doing a constant sweep of the landscape. “Yeah, but don’t you think he would have said something to Larry about that? Or don’t you think Larry—or even we—would have found evidence of it? More footprints than animals can account for? Dead infected bodies around the guy’s house? Something?”
“It’s always possible, right?”
“I guess.” We stopped talking then, but the seed had been planted in my head.
The next drive we hiked up had a large wrought iron gate up in the trees a little way in off the road and a high fence that we assumed surrounded the rest of the property. It was something unexpected and something I’d never seen before up here. The fence seemed to be one that would deter deer from jumping over, but it wasn’t something we could scale either. We could probably get through it with wire cutters, but we didn’t have any…and we had no way of knowing if there were survivors inside. If we cut through the fence and there were people inside, we’d be viewed as intruders—trespassers. That wouldn’t be a way to win friends, not that we were looking for any. We examined the fence more closely, looking to see if there was a way to open it, but we saw that there was an old speaker of some sort and an electronic lock at the gate. If the power had been on, we would have been able to talk with someone if they were inside.
Kevin took in a deep breath through his nose. “We can walk around the perimeter for a while, see if the owners created another way to get out.” I nodded. “If I had a car and wanted to leave, I’d cut down a section of fence, ‘cause you sure as hell aren’t getting through that gate if it’s closed.” No, but maybe there was another way to open it…like Kevin had said about garage doors before. We wouldn’t know how, though, especially on the outside, so it wasn’t worth mentioning.
Wilder (Savage #2) Page 2