“You’re afraid I’ll hurt you because you’re different?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s a valid fear because no one is perfect, but I’d never hurt you on purpose. What that means is if I should inadvertently hurt your feelings, you wait for an appropriate time to let me know. We’ll fix it. That’s what socializing is… that’s what friends do.”

  “Yeah, easy to say, but damn, I get mad and it eats on me, and then I either strike out or avoid the person.”

  “If you recognize that, then you can change it, but don’t think it’ll happen overnight. You can depend on this… I am your friend. You can talk to me. I won’t try to change you, only help where I am welcome to step.”

  Truthful, I said to her, “That’s the kind of talk I’ve always ran from. Teachers tried it and it didn’t take.”

  “But you want it to take with me. Tell the truth.”

  Unbidden tears flowed from my eyes. “Yes.”

  Annette moved as if to comfort me. Too soon, too much, angry, I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and said, “Don’t touch me.”

  She smiled and settled back into her seat. “Well I’m glad we made it through a session of bonding without you shooting me. It’s settled. You’re a girl and you want a friend. Just remember, I’m not Billy, I’m Annette. We need to stop wasting time. What’s next for our list?”

  Caught by the sudden change, I asked, “What?”

  “For our trip—, what else do we need?”

  Later, at the pool while we bathed, she gave me the privacy I needed, but it was a comfort knowing she was near.

  ************

  Sun barely up, according to the thermometer beside my door the clear morning dawned at seventy degrees, shifted my gaze from the thermometer to Annette standing on my stoop, the reason for me opening the door to begin with, I said, “Man, the sun is—.”

  “I know, but Jesus, I feel like a kid ready to go to Disneyland. I woke before dawn, fidgeted so much that I woke the rest of em. Preeja has breakfast ready.”

  “Well now you’ve woke me too. Go away. I’ll be over as soon as I’m dressed.”

  She looked me up and down. “Tank top and shorts, you’re already dressed.”

  I’d slept in them, but wasn’t changing. “Yeah I am, but go away until I’m all the way awake. Jeez.”

  Breakfast was scrambled rehydrated-eggs covered with a brown sauce made from dried sausage-bits. It wasn’t the normal free-for-all round table of talk. I believe the early hour caused that. Pushing my plate from me to signal I’d finished cemented that belief.

  Vikas said, “Eat, my children and we can return to our beds.”

  I burst out laughing and drew confused looks from everyone. “Vikas, sometimes your English can make some delicious sentences. You just said, ‘Eat my children’.”

  Preeja laughed, “Is that what makes it a delicious sentence.”

  Sans the children, everyone got the joke. Sunil said, “Words of eating children are not comedy.”

  Annette said, “Chill, Sunil. Almost anything can be funny if said properly.”

  Sunia said, “If that was funny, I do not believe Sunil and I will laugh this morning.”

  Vikas said, “I think we have the reason to return to bed. Our humor did not wake with us.”

  Unable to pass it up, I said, “See what you did, Annette?”

  She frowned and shrugged. “No one wakes late enough for your macabre humor.” She pushed her plate and stood. “Preeja, thank you for breakfast, I apologize for the early-hour disturbance. We’ll let you all get more sleep.”

  Billy’s four-wheeler or ATV as Annette called it was a four-seater with a small baggage compartment extending past the rear wheels. We’d loaded our gear the evening before. On impulse, I decided to hook the smaller trailer to it.

  Holding an AR, Annette automatically took the rear seat so she’d have a clear field of fire if trouble happened, and not have to fire past me.

  I climbed into the driver’s seat, propped my AR within reach if needed, placed my pistol on the passenger’s seat to enable a fast grab for something to shoot with while driving and we were off.

  We were going to inspect the McNairy county property first. A left onto the paved road abutting our gravel one, would take us most of the way to the property. After that, a few turns would carry us into an undeveloped area of ridges and low-laying swamp and bog.

  The turn to leave the main road took us in a direction I hadn’t traveled since the bombs fell. It was eerie to pass homes and farms and not see anyone out.

  We were perhaps twenty minutes into the trip when Annette pointed to a small house. “Pull into the driveway.”

  I stopped in the road. “Why.”

  “See that chicken coop behind the house near the shed? I thought I saw chickens in it.”

  “Yeah, well you’ll probably see chickens in lots of coops. We’re in farming country.”

  Annette said, “I know that, but think; if the owners are alive, we can’t have theirs, but if the owners are dead, with no one to feed them, any chickens inside coops will starve to death.”

  I shook my head, “Now that worries me. If you saw live chickens wouldn’t that mean someone is alive here tending to them?”

  “Hell, Maybe. There’s one way to know for sure; pull in the driveway and honk your horn.”

  “Horn doesn’t work.”

  “Then pull in and we’ll shout. As a matter of fact, perhaps we should’ve been checking houses all along.”

  “That would be dangerous. Heck, we’re in danger sitting still like this.”

  Annette shrugged. “Your call, but I think we should do a census; know who’s in the area that we’ll travel on moving day.”

  I pulled in and we shouted. With Annette at the ATV, I went to the door and knocked. Then I beat on it. No one came to open it.

  Annette joined me on the porch and shouted. “If you’re home all we want to do is check your chickens. If you’ve been feeding, we’ll leave.”

  I followed her to the coup. She had seen some. Dead chickens littered the fenced scratching area. The ten or so hens that rushed the fence, clucking like crazy, were sickly.

  I said, “Look how the carcasses are picked clean. They’ve been cannibalizing the dead ones. Their feed bowls are empty, so is the automatic water jug. I think they’ve eaten well enough, but they’re dehydrated.”

  Annette said, “Then I declare them abandoned, let’s feed and water em and claim them when we move.”

  The chore was an easy one. The nearby shed contained feed in buckets. A gutter at the roofline in the rear routed water to a fifty-gallon blue plastic barrel that had a tap and a short section of hose.

  I used a shovel from a tool rack in the shed and tossed the dead chickens out of their run.

  Annette checked the hen house, found dozens of eggs, but I suggested throwing them out, as we had no idea how long they’d been in the nesting boxes. “Only thing as bad as cracking a rotten egg is cracking one that’s has a half developed chick.”

  Walking back to the ATV, Annette asked, “So, do we check every house?”

  “We don’t have time to stop at every house, but if one seems occupied we’ll go close enough to shout.”

  “Cool, but if we come across more like this place that we think is abandoned and has a chicken coup, let’s check it out. I don’t think ten hens will give us enough eggs and have some chickens to eat. Imagine what Preeja can do with a fresh chicken.”

  “Have you ever killed, gutted and plucked a chicken,” I asked.

  She smiled, “My father taught me how to kill, gut and skin a chicken. Skinning is easier and less messy than plucking… and you can wash off that white, gooey slime the skin leaves on it.”

  Gaining the driver’s seat, I said, “I’ll bet’ja Preeja will want the skin on it. I doubt people in India would waste the skin.

  Climbing in behind me, she said, “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

  Not many houses that we passed by appeared to have occupants, but checking them did slow us down. We came across another place with a coup but all the chickens were dead.

  Getting close to the turn for the farm I wanted to check, we stopped in front of a house set near the road. On the porch, two baskets of healthy green ferns hanging on hooks gave evidence someone was tending them.

  It took several shouts from us, shouts declaring that ‘We come in Pease’, not those exact words, but the door opened and a man poked his head out.

  “I’m armed and my boy’s got a bead on ya. What are you girls caterwauling about?”

  Annette called back, “We’re out checking on who’s still alive. My name’s Annette and this is Tempest.”

  “We’re the Grant’s.”

  I called out, “Do you have a boy named Josh. I went to school with a boy named Josh Grant.”

  There was a pause before he answered. “Yeah, he knows you. He says you’re crazy.”

  That pissed me off. “I’m not any crazier than he is. Besides that, ask him why he failed English lit… I’ll tell you why, he’s dumber than a doorknob.”

  A middle-aged woman with frowzy brown hair pushed past the man and came onto the porch.

  “We won’t invite you closer because you might be carrying the plague. You girl’s shouldn’t be out like this. There’re bad elements running the roads. Young gang of teenage hooligans rode by the other day with a bunch of boys in the back bed of their truck throwing beer bottles at our house.”

  Annette asked. “Are there more people living close by?”

  The woman answered, “We ain’t been out looking, but three people we know drive past every once in a while. They ain’t the sort to bother nobody. The closest one’s a mile or more from here. There’s probably more than we know about. Anybody with any sense is staying at home.

  The man came out onto the porch to join the woman. “Have you girls heard any news about what’s going on?”

  I called, “Only a little bit, enough to know the Federal Government’s gone, blown up and that there was a plague loosed on us.”

  “Is the plague still killing people?”

  “I’m not sure, but I wouldn’t chance going into town or into any place that people might go looking for food and such.”

  “You girls seem healthy enough,” the woman said. “You wouldn’t have any extra flour or cornmeal where you come from? I wouldn’t mind trading for some.”

  I considered bartering might be handy in the future, and said, “Trading sounds good. What do you have?”

  “We ain’t got much left, but we have eggs a’ plenty and if you have enough to be worthwhile, smoked bacon or ham.”

  Annette playing an innocent, said, “We have some supplies, but like everyone we know, we’re running low. We’ll ask the grownups when we go home.”

  “Tell em we’ll trade fair.”

  I drove away with them still standing on the porch watching us go.

  Annette said, “Diplomacy doesn’t rank high with you, does it. You called their son an idiot to their face.”

  “He told em I was crazy.”

  “What exactly did you do at school to earn that reputation?”

  I stopped the ATV and turned to talk. “They called me crazy for lots of reason, but for fighting mostly. There was a clique at school; snob-brat-yuppies who picked on poor kids who didn’t wear the latest fads or have perfect makeup and hair. I taught em not to do it to my face and not to snicker when I passed by them.”

  “How’d you manage not to end up in juvenile detention?”

  “Fighting’s normal in country schools, it’s only in the cities where they make a big deal of it. I think what got em calling me crazy was the time I ran out on the basketball court during an in-school game between the Varsity and Junior Varsity and kicked one of the players for spreading a story that I left menstrual blood on a seat in the library.”

  Annette said, “That was a nasty lie for him—.”

  “It wasn’t a lie. My first cycle caught me by surprise, but he didn’t need to tell everybody. Anyway, he was running down the court when I kicked him and when he fell, I got on top of him and began pounding his face. He got a punch in and man did my nose squirt blood, it got all over us.

  “Even with my nose bleeding, I kept on hitting the asshole. It took two coaches to drag me off him and out of the gym. My nose quit bleeding and that was it, but his face carried bruises for two weeks.”

  Annette said, “I’m picturing them dragging a bloody hellion out of the gym. I can see how that would earn you the title of crazy.”

  Shrugging, “Yeah, but there were other things that kept the title going.” I turned from her anticipation of more stories, cranked the ATV and drove on.

  Before coming to the turn for the farm that was our destination we passed by one more house, old, dilapidated with an open section of roof. A mile past that I turned and drove a half mile of curving drive bordered on both side by split rail fences, those bordered by untouched forest.. The drive followed the slight rise of a winding ridge.

  We came to the last curve and the forest beside us ended, the ground flattened and spread into open fields fenced into sections. Fifty yards away, standing like an oasis on the fields, was a huge house surrounded by a scattering of hardwoods, trees I knew were pecans. Farther in the distance behind the house were two barns and several sheds and outbuildings, one a barracks like structure similar to the one the gang had, but smaller.

  I stopped and turned to speak to Annette. “There’s a little telescope in my backpack. Use it to scope the place for signs of life and then I’ll do the same.

  While digging for my telescope, Annette said, “This is really isolated. Did you notice that the debris on the driveway, limbs and stuff wasn’t crushed?”

  “Maybe that’s a sign that no one is—.”

  Annette, telescope to her eye, cut me off. “Uh, oh, there’s laundry hanging on a line and—. Oh shit, here come three dogs, big ones!”

  I didn’t need the telescope to see the dogs. The tone of their barking suggested anything but friendly. I cranked the ATV and was about to spin out of there, but the dogs stopped their charge and Annette shouted, “Wait, a man came on the porch and called em off.”

  I shut off the engine.

  The dogs returned to the house and joined the man on the porch. He was shouting something, but I couldn’t understand him. Annette, looking through the telescope said, “He’s waving us to come on.”

  “Is he armed?”

  “Holstered pistol and holding a rifle, but he’s not pointing it at us. He has binoculars hanging on his chest. He knows we’re girls.”

  “What do you think, should we go?”

  “Yeah, but drive with one hand and have your pistol held low in your other.”

  I took it slow and stopped in the circular drive thirty feet from his porch. A new Ford hybrid pickup truck was also in the drive, but I could drive past it if needed.

  As soon as I stopped, I realized I knew the man. “Mister Kincaid, you were my physics teacher.”

  At the sound of my voice, the dogs began to growl. Mister Kincaid spoke softly to them and they shut up. He gave them another command and they left the porch, trotted around the side of the house and were gone. Turning to me, he said, “Tempest Fuller. In a strange way, it makes sense you’d be a survivor. What do you want here?”

  “It’s not Tempest Fuller, it's Tempest Waters now.”

  “Did you get married?”

  “No, but Sam Fuller wasn’t my daddy, Allen Waters is.”

  “I know an Allen Waters. He used to teach at the high school, now he writes.”

  “That’s the one.”

  “And that’s a point in your favor. Allen Waters is a decent man, but Sam Fuller wasn’t fit to be anyone’s parent. Not meant to offend you, I couldn’t stand the man.”

  “Believe me, I’m not offended.”

  “What do you want here?”

  “Nothing, now that I know this house is occupied.”

  “What if it weren’t occupied?”

  “Then I’d look it over and decide whether to move here or not. We’re looking for a place safer than where we are.”

  Without turning from us, he called, “Maggie, come out here.”

  A late-middle-aged woman holding a rifle came through the door.

  “Maggie, keep an eye on them while I check them for weapons.”

  Maggie shifted her rifle but didn’t point it at directly at us.

  I called out, “Don’t leave the porch. I’m holding a pistol. We don’t want trouble. I’m going to crank and leave.”

  “Were you planning on shooting me?”

  “No, just being careful. These aren’t normal times.”

  Mister Kincaid barked a short laugh and said, ‘”Far, far, far from normal times. I’ve only left the place once, long enough to determine the worst had happened and that we were at war. Had to walk it, but I knew before I left that we’d suffered an EMP. My truck wouldn’t move and all our media outlets went dead. We didn’t know what to expect, an invasion… our imaginations were more stressful than reality.”

  He continued, “You probably know more about the situation than we do. The fact that you’re here looking for a secluded haven tells scores. If we can trust you, I’d appreciate it if we put our weapons aside and we talk.”

  I wasn’t good at judging people. Again, I deferred to Annette. In a low voice, I asked, “What do you think?”

  “I’ve been watching him and the woman. I don’t think they mean us harm.”

  To Mister Kincaid I said, “Do you have anything to drink?”

  “Yeah… er warm soda, water. We can make tea or coffee.”

  “No liquor?”

  “Well yes, but—.”

  “I’m kidding. If you meant harm, I don’t think you’d hesitate to offer us whatever we wanted. I’m holstering my pistol. We’ll leave our rifles in the four-wheeler. I’d appreciate it if the lady lowered the rifle.”

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11