“Kasey?” Jake asked.
“Yeah, it’s time to take a break. Let’s move, before more runners show up.”
Mia and Jake were hesitant, turning their horses to follow me out of Laurel Grove. The wind was picking up, causing snowflakes to float around my face. It would be a cold couple of nights, sleeping on the ground. I held onto the thought of a hot bath and a warm fire waiting on me back at the club.
* * *
In the middle of the afternoon on the second day of our trip back home, we came upon something we hadn’t seen since the winter before.
The old man didn’t move when we approached him. The question of whether he was dead or not was quickly answered the closer we got to the porch. The rocking chair he sat in moved back and forth, barely and very slowly, but it did move. The man, however, did not. I thought maybe he was deaf or something. Jake and Mia followed my lead, dismounting and following me into the small front yard. All of us stared at the old man like we’d seen a leprechaun. A tall, wrinkled-up leprechaun wearing overalls and a flannel shirt, but still.
If the temperatures hadn’t risen into the upper 40’s like they had since the snow, I would have mistakenly assumed the old man had frozen to death.
I looked at each of them before shrugging my shoulders and taking a few more steps toward the porch. “Hello?”
I waited a few seconds, saw no reaction from the old man, and turned back to Mia and Jake with my arms out to my sides. Jake flapped his hands, gesturing for me to try again. I rolled my eyes and turned around.
“Hey, are you okay?”
The old man slowly rocked, back and forth. I moved a few steps closer.
“Mister, are you alright?”
Again with the rocking, except I thought I saw his right eyebrow twitch. I had walked right up to the porch and was maybe four feet from the man. After lifting one foot and resting it on the top step, I leaned over and braced myself.
“We’re not here to hurt you, Mister.”
The old man extended his right arm, the one closest to me, the hand of which was holding what looked like a Colt .44. It was aimed right at my nose.
“Yer goddamn right yer not, kid,” he answered. His right eyebrow twitched again. This time I could tell it was because he was smiling.
“Whoa, whoa, easy.” I instantly threw my hands up and started backing away.
“I’d stand still if I were you.”
I did as I was told.
I caught Jake out of the corner of my eye shouldering his rifle but not raising it. Moving my eyes slowly, I saw Mia doing the same. They were afraid of leveling their barrels and causing the old man to react. I didn’t blame them. I cleared my throat and made a mental note to kick my own ass later.
“Excuse me, sir?”
The old man kept his hawk-eyes on me a few more seconds. His face was rugged and hard, one that had seen and been through a great deal in his however many years of life. They were clear and focused, and that said something about the mind behind them.
I held my hands out to my sides. “My name’s Kasey. We’re really not─”
“I don’t care who ya are, kid. Don’t care about yer business, either. I mind my own. So best you be on yer way.” He raised one eyebrow, the Colt stayed on my nose.
“Okay, okay. We can do that. You mind lowering that gun?” I asked.
“Kasey,” Mia hissed from behind me. I ignored her.
The old man snorted a raspy chuckle. “I do mind. There’s bad folk out there. Sumbitches try takin’ what’s not theirs. Yer no different.”
I snorted back. “Do we
look
like bandits?”
The old man roved his eyes over us, one at a time, his gun hand never wavering, before finally settling them back on me. Jake and Mia had cussed and whispered my name again. I was focused hard on the man with the gun. When I thought he was going to pull the trigger and send me to that happy hunting ground in the sky, the old man barked out a laugh. Just one.
“Tell ya what, kid. Yer a contrary little shit.” He studied the three of us, then jerked his chin. “Folks call me Pepper. Might as well come on up, sit a spell.”
I breathed a silent sigh of relief. “Nice to meet you, Pepper. And don’t mind if I do.” I started forward and realized the other two weren’t moving. I turned around and shot them a look. “Well, what the hell you waitin’ for? C’mon.”
“Aye, aye, Boss,” Jake answered, giving me the crazy look, yet following just the same. As I stepped around Pepper’s feet to take the chair next to him, I heard Mia complaining to him.
“We don’t have time for this.”
“We’re gonna make time. That old man’s the first livin’ person we’ve seen in how long, so we’re gonna make nice and sit on that damn porch for a spell.”
Mia didn’t have a reply for that.
* * *
“That’s the dumbest damn thing I think I ever heard.” Pepper smeared another spoonful of homemade apple butter across a piece of bread (homemade as well), and stared at us from across the table.
Just after sundown, the old man had persuaded us to stay the night. It really hadn’t been that hard to do; after sitting and talking with him for three hours, I’d already decided that if he didn’t extend the invite first, I was going to ask. Michael had adamantly protested to us staying, bitching so loud over the radio I had to go out back by the shed to talk to him. Eventually he gave in and let me have my way. Later, Jake told me that Pepper reminded him of an older and rowdier version of his own grandfather, Mr. McKinley. He also made the comment that he was very glad his grandma hadn’t been with us, or else we’d have never been able to tear her away from the old man.
Pepper offered supper to us, and after we saw how well stocked he was, we took him up on it. He had canned goods coming out of his ears, I assumed from a well-kept garden over the summertime, and loads of homemade jelly and apple butter. He bragged for at a least half an hour over having made the bread himself. I suppose that, for an old man living alone through the Zombie Apocalypse, it
was
quite an accomplishment.
The bigger accomplishment was the fact that not only had he survived as long as he had, but he was actually thriving.
“It’s all true. We’ve been out there, we’ve seen it.” I wiped my mouth and crumpled the napkin into a ball. “You’ve been safe here, isolated. But out there?” I jerked my thumb behind me in the direction of the front door. “It’s a nightmare.”
Jake and Mia added their two cents to our story as it was told. We’d been informing Pepper of the general state of shittiness the world was currently in. Unfortunately he refused to believe it.
“I’m sure yer right, kid. Folks’ve went and lost their damn minds, that’s a fact. Never thought I’d hafta kill to protect what’s mine. But I have.”
“You had to,” Jake spoke up.
Pepper shoved away from the table, grunting as he stood, and walked over to stare out the small kitchen window above the sink. He was silent for a long time, his back to us and his arthritic hands resting on the counter. Mia and Jake grew restless and fidgety. I stayed their impatience with a stern glance.
“Yeah, I did. They ain’t right anymore. I damn sure didn’t lose no sleep over it either.” He turned to face us and leaned against the counter. “I’m just an old man. Don’t know much. You learned me there’s more goin’ on out there ‘n I can understand, sure.” Pepper shoved off the counter and shuffled back to the table. He placed his palms against the wood and locked his eyes on mine. “But
I
know it can’t be helped. There’s nothin’ for it. Yer too young to have to do what ya do. All of yuns are. Them people out there ain’t right in the head, and you gotta protect you and yours, but the killin’ of it ain’t for kids. It’s for old folks like me. Ones who don’t have much to live for anymore, don’t have much to lose, and are already too hard to give a damn either way.”
With that, Pepper left the room. Left us to chew over what he’d said. We didn’t discuss it, didn’t make smart remarks about how the old hillbilly didn’t know what he was talking about. Never acknowledged out loud that the old man had been absolutely right. We knew it, we
felt
it. We
were
too young, with too much life left ahead of us. And what sort of life would it be now?
We sat at the kitchen table a while longer, then moved off to our sleeping bags spread out on the living room floor.
November 18th: Winchester Country club
The Winchester had changed quite a bit over the summer. All the outbuildings had either been torn down or remodeled to suit our needs. The concrete wall was taller, finally making Michael happy with its twenty foot height. Four watch towers had been erected; one on each end, and two in the middle, cutting the wall into thirds. Most of the golf courses inside the wall had been plowed under, making way for various vegetable gardens. What hadn’t been planted in seed had been fenced off for pasture. The resident horses appreciated this immensely. All told, the residents of the Winchester were doing just fine, and that wasn’t counting the aid we received monthly from the military. That was the point, wasn’t it? Independence was the key (well, one of the keys), to survival in the new world. Michael and John foresaw this early on, and made sure that all their requests to the military were for things that would help us towards this goal.
Except for the candy requisitions. Those were for the kids.
Speaking of the kids, some of them had moved on to bigger and better things. A month after the National Guard had set up at Blueville Correctional and announced its presence, one of the scouting parties stumbled upon a group of survivors in the next county over. Their camp was reasonably fortified, and with the help of the Guardsmen, became a veritable fortress. As it turned out, some of the residents at that location were related to some of the kids at the Winchester. The kids couldn’t pack their shit fast enough. The only ones left at the club were Sam and two others, Elwood (who everyone lovingly referred to as Elly, even though he was a boy), and Meredith. They also happened to be the oldest of the Winchester kids, which took some of the pressure and responsibility that comes with raising small children off the rest of us.
Nancy spent most of her time teaching the other females of the household how to can and preserve the food grown in the garden. We didn’t spend much time preserving any of the meat that was brought in, since wildlife seemed to be in abundance around the area. When we wanted it, we went out and bagged it. Simple as that. She had also taken Abby (another Blueville resident), and little Meredith as apprentices, teaching them all she knew about nursing and medicine in general. As a matter of fact, everyone at the club had fallen into the role of teacher at some point, passing on what we’d learned in our lifetimes to those who were otherwise clueless.
Such is the way with an isolated community. You either learned to be self-sufficient, or you died. You either taught the generations after you how to survive, or they died. This philosophy had been taken to a whole new level since the dead suddenly began walking among the living. I use the word “walking” very loosely. When everything else was wiped away like chalk from a blackboard, all the bells and whistles that came along with living in the 21st century snuffed out before you could say butter-my-ass, all you had left was nothing more than what your ancestors had to work with back when working together meant survival. Community, teamwork, life. If you weren’t a team player, you met your end quickly and with a fair amount of horror to boot. Or worse, you ended up taking everyone down with you, screaming and fighting until their last breath.
I thought about these things as we rode back to the club. Daisy had fallen back a bit from the others, mirroring my temperament perfectly. I was feeling unsettled and wanted to be left alone. She, too, wanted to be alone. As far as she was concerned, these new horses weren’t her family, not like the others had been. The ones she had grown up with. Of course, they were dead now and she’d just have to get over it. Just as I would have to get over my own family being dead. And Ben. And Zack. I’d fooled myself for months, thinking I had. Now the game was almost up, bottom of the ninth, bases loaded. That hole I had tried so hard to fill, at times pretending it wasn’t even there, was growing too massive to ignore. That hole was pissed for being neglected, clawing and chewing its way outward from deep within my gut.
At least I wasn’t afraid anymore. Of
anything
, and that’s not an exaggeration. Whether this was a good thing or a bad thing…well, the jury was still out.
“When we head out tomorrow, I think we should take the cowboy with us,” Mia was saying, referring to Jonah. She and Jake were riding together about two horse-lengths ahead of me. Apparently that meant I was invisible, suddenly being struck deaf and unable to hear them talking about me, even if it was indirectly.
Jake shook his head and resisted the urge to glance back at me. “Nah, let’s not go there.”
“I think we need to, Jake. She needs a break. An extended break.”
“We all need a fuckin’ break, Mia. You know someone passin’ em out?”
Jake shifted in his saddle, lowering his head and darting his eyes in my general direction for a split second. I pulled lightly on the reins, slowing Daisy and falling back a little more, watching and listening to their exchange quietly.