Bella wasn’t happy with it. She made herself clear. “I’ll not do it. I will not do it. I can’t.”

  John said, “Then don’t do it, but if you see someone, call out and stay away from them. One of us will do what’s needed.”

  “What about you, Preeja?” Annette asked.

  “I will not want to, but it is for my children that I will kill.”

  While Vikas and I were gone, Annette and the children had brought in wood, not only for the big cabin, but also for mine. After checking with Preeja on the mushroom situation and learning that all were gone, I called for the children to grab their pails for a new hunt.

  From the way they responded, they were ready and willing. So was Annette. “Let Sunil and Sunia lead us today and I’ll walk with you. You guard our twelve and three and I’ve got six and nine.”

  Following the children into the woods, I noted that as Annette talked, her head never ceased moving, she’d often turn and walk backwards a few steps, diligently minding our six. Though we both held our rifles at ready, I realized she was more mindful of our surroundings.

  “Annette, how much time did you spend training your survival skills with your daddy?”

  “With dad, mostly it was the range; with my boyfriend, oh lord, summers, we spent untold hours practicing survival skills and techniques. Marlon was deep into conspiracy theories. That’s the reason I broke up with him. He went further and further off the rails.”

  “My friend Billy, the one I told you about that the yellow jackets stung to death, he was into conspiracy theories, end of the world coming sort of thing. He was proved correct.”

  Annette laughed, “Did Billy believe everyone was implanted at birth with a device that tracked your location and read your mind? Did he believe that an alien entity was in control of our governments and financial institutions? Marlon did. He actually believed that the mirrors in public places, especially government building were two-way glass.”

  I had to agree that Marlon seemed a strange one. “No, Billy only believed in sensible conspiracy theories.”

  “At the beginning of this past summer, Marlon grew suspicious that I was a spy and that my body was loaded with implanted devices. He insisted I have an MRI if I wanted to continue a relationship with him. I refused, and naturally he took that as an admission of guilt.”

  “So you dumped him?”

  “Oh yeah, dropped him like a bug filled Bolete mushroom.”

  The second Annette said the word ‘mushroom’, Sunil called for our attention. “What is this? It is so beautiful. Is it a mushroom?”

  He pointed to a rich spot of yellow at his feet. Scattered around us were several more of the beauties.

  “You bet it is, and one of the best tasting of all.” I bent to remove the funnel shaped shroom from the ground, pinched an edge and held it extended.

  “This is a Chanterelle mushroom. Sniff it. What does it remind you of?”

  Annette sniffed, “Fruit of some sort, almost citrus.”

  Sunia sniffed. “Ooo, it smells like an apricot.”

  Annette said, “Yeah, that’s it’ apricot.”

  “Does it taste like an apricot?” Sunia asked.

  I shook my head, “No, but it has a peppery flavor. Notice the funnel shape and the smooth firm flesh of the top. See how the edge of the cap is irregular, doesn’t make a perfect funnel?”

  “It has gills,” Sunil said.

  Nodding, I said, “Yes, that’s another identifier. I read the chanterelles can also be orange or white but I’ve only found the yellow. This mushroom can be dried and used later so let’s gather all we can. I’m sure your mama will know these.”

  The Chanterelles was numerous, but widely scattered. Annette and I let the children do the searching and we did the guarding. While hunting for the yellow goodies, they also harvested some Boletes. Within a half hour, their pails were full and Preeja would have two more gallons of mushrooms for her kitchen.

  With the children skipping ahead of us, we headed back to the cabins. The day had grown noticeably darker; the clumps of alligator-hide sky were denser, no longer white, but grey edged and bottom-heavy black.

  Annette noticed me glance at the sky. “The clouds don’t seem thick enough to hold much rain.”

  “It’s not these clouds… they’ll be pushed further north. If it repeats what it did before, wall-clouds will follow them.”

  “How long do you think that’ll take?”

  “If I remember right, these clouds stayed all day and most of the night. They intrigued me and I was outside when in the distance to the south I began seeing lightning. Man, that storm produced some hellacious bolts and thunder. Bolts came so fast that it kept everything lit up and the thunder was non-stop.

  “Leading the storm was the hail. I remember it covered the ground two or three inches deep. The rain melted it soon after. The storms were scary but exciting.”

  Annette asked, “Storms, There were more than one?”

  “Oh yeah, the storms came and went for two days, but it rained non-stop, sometimes a drizzle, sometimes in buckets-full.”

  Recalling how long the storms lasted made me doublethink the supplies Vikas and I carried to the shelter. To Annette I said, “I don’t think we stashed enough food and water in the shelter.”

  The cabins were in sight. I called to the children, “Run ahead and tell the others that Annette and I are going to put more supplies into the shelter.”

  ************

  Going to the barn, I followed behind Annette. She was taller by several inches and her fitted jeans accented the womanly shape that my body refused to find. It made me wonder if she was correct, that bad diet had delayed my growth and development.

  Thinking about womanly shape made me remember that my menstrual cycle was due and the one thing Billy definitely hadn’t stocked were pads. I asked Annette, “Are you on the pill?”

  “No. Why do you ask?”

  “We’ll need to stop by my old house to grab some pads.”

  “How far is your house?”

  We had broken from the woods, so I pointed to the left at where I used to live. “It’s right there.”

  She swerved to the left, but I straightened her out.

  “No, there’s a low area that’s always swampy and soft. We’ll need to go to the road.”

  At Sam’s house, Annette followed me upstairs to my bedroom. She eyed the stack of boxes and bags. “What do you have here, maybe five-feet by ten? No wonder you can live in your little cabin.”

  I didn’t like being in the room. “Yeah, my cabin’s my palace.”

  I rummaged in a box at the foot of my bed for menstrual pads. Annette was looking through my books on a bookshelf attached to the wall above my narrow bed.

  “You have a lot of nature books; Freshwater fish, Trees of the Eastern United States… there’s six or seven I wouldn’t mind studying.”

  ‘If you want to carry them, bring em with you.”

  “I think I will. The kids and I will have a ball learning the names of trees and birds.”

  I stood holding a partial package of thirty pads. Annette said, “You’re a virgin, huh. Those things are nasty to use. Next time you’re out, try to score some tampons.”

  She must have noticed something in my expression. “There’s nothing wrong with being a virgin, but once you’re not, you’ll appreciate the difference between pads and inserts.”

  Considering we were in an apocalypse, I couldn’t imagine how I’d become a non-virgin, then thought, romance seemed unattainable, but rape was certainly imaginable.

  “Do you have something I can put the books in?”

  I pointed to the boxes and bags filling my space. “Pick something and dump whatever’s in it on the floor.”

  She emptied the contents of a small suitcase onto my bunk and stacked the books in.

  “John and Bella told me what happened to you concerning the man you thought was your father. From the way they talked about him, I bet you were glad to find out he wasn’t your real father.”

  I answered with thought. “It made killing him easier.”

  “Jesus Christ Tempest, that’s an awful thing to say.”

  “I could’ve, should’ve lied, huh?”

  Annette closed the suitcase. “No, simply not voicing your callous disregard for another’s life would’ve sufficed.”

  Maybe it was her statement, maybe it was sheer dislike for Sam, but I said what I felt. “I don’t give a shit about Sam’s life anymore that he gave a shit about mine. I don’t give a shit about anybody else I’ve shot.

  “I wish I didn’t shoot that woman at your camp, but she pissed me off, and you can’t call a bullet back. I’ll not let her stupidity haunt me.”

  More words I wanted to say flowed from my mouth, “I’m not crazy for killing those people. My friend Billy told me that in the heat of heat of battle sometimes a person might overdo killing. That happened, but if I used plain logic, I went into a den of murderers and thieves: I’d have been justified killing every adult there.”

  Annette hefted the book-laden suitcase from the bed. “No, you’re not crazy. Your ability for rational thought eliminates that. Sociopath might fit. Your mindset is brutal. Combine that with the quick thinking and the mechanical methodology of you in action that I observed at the camp and you are truly dangerous.”

  “Makes you glad I’m your friend, doesn’t it?”

  “Your sarcasm aside, I am glad you’re who you are, it saves me from having to be you if shit happens.”

  I was pissed off and I know it showed in my tone. “There isn’t, ‘if shit happens’. Shit has happened and I’ve taken care of it…. More than what you did and you were right there with the worst of them... I want to be alone for a while. Let’s get the supplies over to the shelter so I can shed myself of you.”

  To me, in a mocking tone, “Oh lord, I’ve hurt your feelings. You can go now; I’ll carry the supplies to the shelter.”

  I thought, ‘No, bitch, I’ve hurt your feelings’. I wanted to hit her, knew if I did her martial arts training would do me, I said, “Have at it,” went from the room, took the stairs two at a time and left the house.

  To my cabin, swiping tears as I walked, barely noticed the feel of a thin fall of warm rain on my skin. Yeah, she’d hurt my feelings. In the cabin without light, door locked, curtains drawn to accent my dark mood, I sat in Billy’s old recliner and cried. Realization came. I’d hoped Annette could be my new ‘Billy’. Lord, I needed someone to replace him, to anchor me, not make me feel subhuman.

  I sat on my pity-pot as hours passed. I thought to leave, to turn my back and not look back. Thunder crashed, lightning, intense and close, found its way through my curtains and lit the room. A few seconds later, following another violent crash that shook the house, God began emptying buckets of rocks onto my tin roof.

  Opened my door to nearly pitch-black; Lightning flashed and lit the downfall of hail bigger than golf balls. The concussion following the flash shook the ground and it felt as though its power lifted my cabin.

  I saw the door of the big cabin open, spilling pale lamplight past a figure silhouetted in the doorway. Again lightning flashed, revealed it was Annette, her hands cupped as she shouted in my direction. The clamor of ice balls on metal drowned her voice.

  She disappeared from the door, but a second later, she reappeared. Holding something over her head, she dashed down the three steps of the door-stoop into the storm-darkened evening.

  Lightning revealed her halfway to my cabin on her knees trying to hold a dishpan over her head with one hand and using the other to regain her feet. The hail was now the size of baseballs.

  I went to my bench to grab a flashlight to guide her, but as my hand closed on it she was at my door and inside my cabin.

  “Goddamn hail is like running on giant marbles. Fuck. I think I sprained my wrist. Freaking ice felt like rocks hitting me.”

  I used the flashlight to light my kerosene lamp. To my dilated eyes, it was as bright as the sun. The light lit her face, the flush from running made it beautiful.

  “Why’d you come out into it?”

  “For the excitement of it, but now that I did, I wish I hadn’t. Those balls are heavy enough to give you a concussion if one hit your head.”

  I lifted the aluminum dishpan she’d put on my other bench, fingered the deep impressions the hail had made and said, “It might’ve given your head dents like this pan.”

  “Yeah, well I kept expecting my fingers to be hit, they weren’t but my shoulders sure were. They’ll show bruises tomorrow.”

  We had to shout over the continuous racket of ice hitting the roof. I moved two chairs to a narrow bench and motioned for her to sit across from me. The closer proximity allowed us to speak slightly above a normal volume.

  She said, “It seems you and John are correct so far about the course of this storm. What comes next?”

  “If it follows course, the hail will stop. Then we’ll have a short stretch of downpour, warm rain that’ll melt the hail… well maybe not this time. They’re bigger and there’s more of em. It’ll take a ton of rain to melt those big ice balls.”

  “More like fat ice disks,” Annette said, “slippery fucking ice disks. I swear they got bigger running from there to here. They must be four or five inches deep by now.”

  Sitting across from her, listening to her talk, watching how the excitement of the storm animated her face, I found myself glad of her presence.

  “I’m glad you came over. I was mad at you, but—.”

  “I was too harsh. Everything fell apart so fast. Tempest, I know you don’t enjoy killing people, but I know you have the ability to mentally delete your actions, put them in a closet somewhere in your mind and forget about it. In our new reality, though it goes against everything I believed in, that’s a quality to envy.

  “Tempest, I was mad at you too, but you’re right about me. I knew the men were evil but I did nothing except occasionally telling myself to run away from them. I should've been planning how to kill them.”

  “Yes you should have, but you realize it. That’s the past and we’re in the now.”

  Annette smiled, “I’m glad we spoke about before. Look Tempest, I want to be your friend, but I’ve never met anyone like you.”

  I was weary of a conversation going nowhere. Besides, I kept catching myself staring at Annette’s face. “The heavier rain and high winds followed very soon after the hailstorm. As soon as it lets up we need to get everyone into the shelter.”

  Oh man did I find out I was speaking optimistically. Five minutes after I spoke the wind picked up and roared in with a howl that didn’t cease. The wind was strong enough to blow baseball size hail sideways. On the windward side of my cabin, barely missing us, a flurry of the balls took out my window, traveled eight feet and bounced off the far wall.

  The hailstones continued to pelt the outside wall and find their way through the shattered opening. Annette and I moved our chairs and the bench away from the stream of projectiles shooting past us and away from the frigid air that accompanied them. Within moments, the inside of my cabin was as cold as a refrigerator.

  The racket was so loud that shouting became useless. I felt Annette’s breath near my ear. “There’s no way we can make it to the shelter in this. We’d be beat to death.”

  I reached to touch her chin to indicate I wanted to speak. With mouth close enough to feel hair tickle my lips, I said, “If we get a lull in the hail, we’ll need to get everyone moving even if the wind’s still strong.”

  The hailstones bounced off the wall, rolled around and built up on the floor. Glancing at the tin roof above me, the metal had dimples as if someone had been at it with one of Billy’s ball-peen hammers. Football helmet and shoulder pad weather. Imagined walking through the storm with ice-rocks banging on the helmet and smiled. It would be an exciting walk.

  We sat across from each other, with the lamplight waxing and waning between gusts coming through the window.

  With talk impossible, I found myself staring into Annette’s green eyes, grew uncomfortable with the fact that she stared right back into mine. I shifted my gaze downward.

  With her foot, Annette tapped my shin under the narrow bench. Lifting my gaze, she pointed split fingers at me and then a single finger at herself. Her eyes locked mine and I accepted her invitation to stare.

  I don’t know how long we were like that, but as time passed we seemed to meld, I found myself seeing me in her eyes. For some reason my mind reviewed my childhood, the glories and downturns, the happy and the bad. As if reading my mind, with each turn of thought her eyes and expression reflected the emotions that my memories evoked. It had been a long time since I’d ever felt such calm of spirit.

  The hailstorm ceased so abruptly that it almost seemed the world ceased to exist. Annette broke eye contact and spoke. Still mesmerized by the intimacy of our joining, her voice seemed overly loud.

  “The storm’s over, let’s get them moving to the shelter.”

  Not only had the hail ceased, the wing had diminished to where we didn’t need to shout.

  A shudder coursed my body, taking away the remnants of the moment. Standing, I said, “It’ll be rough walking on the hailstones, but yeah, let’s get em moving.

  Following her through the door, waiting as she used a foot to sweep a path through the hailstones on the landing and from the steps, stepping onto the landscape of ice, we found it wasn’t rough walking, it was impossible.

  With the cessation of the storm, the temperature had risen. I was comfortable in only a pullover sweatshirt. The warmth melted the surface of each of the six-inch deep layer of heavy balls of ice, making them slide on each other as if greased.

  Annette lost her balance. Her hand automatically sought my arm for balance I didn’t possess. We went down in a heap.

  Annette began laughing. “Let’s try swimming to the cabin.”

  She began thrashing at the ice with extended arms and managed to slide a few feet before giving up and sitting up. Laughing harder, she said, “That was weird… I’ve never seen or been in such weirdness in my life. Look at the sky. The clouds are pink. Without a moon or stars I can see plain as day.”

 

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