Fire Birds (39 page)

She got up and put her coat on over her flannel pajamas. Then walked over to the dresser and looked in the mirror. I put on my own coat then stopped to kiss her on my way out the door.

“It’s November fifth,” she said. “It was four months ago today that Danny and them left.”

I looked at the calendar by the mirror. “I’m sorry,” I said.

She picked up her brush and pulled it through her hair.

“I’ll bet it didn’t freeze in Biloxi,” she said.

“Probably not,” I said. “I’ll bet he’s there now enjoying the pretty weather.” I always tried to put a positive spin on the conversation when we got on that topic.

She didn’t reply. She just brushed her hair while tears glistened in her eyes.

I left our bedroom and went out into the lobby. Laney stood by the wood stove looking at a months-old Cosmo magazine. She saw me, ripped a page from the magazine, and put it into the stove.

“I’m just working on the fire,” she said.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll get it. Does Tim need any help with the chickens?”

“No,” she said. “Gail’s mad because I ran a space heater in our room all night, and drained the battery bank.”

“We have other things around the terminal that need power, like the well and the blower for the stove,” I said as I knelt and stirred the ash with a poker. “It’s been cloudy for more than a week. Thankfully, it cleared up last night, and we’ll get some sun today. As winter gets closer, we might have to move everyone in here around the stove so we use less of the electricity.”

“Together in one room?” she said. “We need privacy.”

“Don’t I know it,” I said.

“Couldn’t we install more solar panels or batteries? Or put woodstoves in the bedrooms?”

“I guess so,” I said. “It was a lot of work installing the stove in here. Moving in here on cold nights would be easier. Talk to Tim about it, and see what he says. I think he’ll agree.”

Gail walked into the room with a box of instant pancake mix, a skillet, and a spatula.

“Is the fire going yet?” she said. “I want to start on breakfast.”

“Not yet,” I said.

“I would have made it on the range,” she said, “but Laney put her needs above everyone else’s…again.”

“I’m sorry, Gail,” I said. “I should have got up early and checked the fire.”

“We’re almost out of coffee too,” she said.

“How almost?” I asked, feeling alarmed.

“We’re down to our last can. At the rate we drink it, we’ll be completely out within a week.”

“We’ll go out and find some more,” I said. “In the meantime, we can stretch what we have with dandelion and chicory root. Blaine had some chicory growing at his house. If I can find it, I’ll dig some up today when I go to collect the persimmons. We’ll have to dry it first.”

“I didn’t know you were going anywhere today,” Laney said.

“Neither did I until I saw all that frost out there on the ground.”

“The water ain’t working,” Cheryl said as she entered the room. “Is it frozen or is the pump dead?”

“Could be both,” I said.

“Laney drained the batteries running her electric heater and hair dryer last night,” Gail said.

“Hair dryer?” I said looking up at Laney. “Really?”

“I said I was sorry,” Laney said. “The sun is rising now, so they’ll recharge. It’s not like the world is coming to an end. I’m going out to check on Tim.”

“Get the eggs if there are any,” Gail said. “Lula needs milking too.”

Laney left in a huff. I put some small pieces of wood in the stove to feed the fire.

“It’s going now,” I said to Gail. “Give it some time and put some more wood on it later. It’ll be a while before it’s hot enough to cook on.”

“Gail, I’ll get dressed then I’ll help you with breakfast,” Cheryl said and went back to the bedroom.

I walked to the other side of the lobby area in the corner where large windows looked out at the airport’s runway. There near the window were six tomato plants in pots as well as ten more pots with spinach, lettuce, and arugula. They were a little wilted.

“We’ll need to keep these watered,” I said. “That wood stove will suck the moisture out of everything.”

Gail nodded, but I don’t think she heard me. She was already too interested in Laney’s magazine.

I left the terminal and walked out to the nearest hangar. We had emptied it of all the cars and divided it up with welded wire as housing for the animals. The concrete floor wasn’t very cozy, but it would do until we could arrange for something better. Laney was by the door with the goats. Tim saw me come in and waved me over to the far corner.

“It just bit her head off,” he said, pointing to the bloodied body of a hen. “It didn’t even bother to eat her. Such a waste.”

“Weasels will do that,” I said. “So will skunks.”

“So you don’t think it’s a possum?”

I shrugged, “Did you figure out where it’s getting in?”

“No,” he said.

“We might need to build a small shelter for them in here that’s tight where they can roost. If something gets into the hangar right now it doesn’t have a problem getting to them with nothing more than wire around them. We have that lumber left over from where we blocked in the window around the stove pipe.”

“I wanted to save that in case we needed it,” he said.

“I think this qualifies,” I said. “We’re down to three hens and four of the babies. We only have the one rooster, and I don’t want to risk losing him for sure. We should at least close him up at night.”

“Okay,” he said. “We can work on that today.”

“Get Laney or Gail to help you on that,” I said, “After breakfast, Cheryl and I are going to take a couple of horses over to the Lassiter farm to dig the sweet potatoes. Then we’re going to stop by Blaine’s place and check his persimmon tree. This freeze will have all that ready to harvest. We might check some houses while we’re out, if we have time. Gail said we’re almost out of coffee.”

“We’ll probably have to go out farther than that to find coffee. We’ve picked nearly every house clean between here and the Lassiter place.”

“I know,” I said. “It won’t hurt to have a second look for a place we might have missed.”

“I heard a gunshot again this morning,” he said. “It was far away, but I’m sure that’s what it was. That’s the second one in three days. They sounded like they came from the north.”

I frowned. “It’s hard to tell direction with just one shot.”

“I’m pretty sure the north.”

“Maybe they’re passing through. Maybe they won’t notice us. We should avoid shooting for a few days just to be sure they can’t locate us.”

“They could be friendly,” he said. “They could need help.”

“I know,” I said, “but if they aren’t, we might not be able to recover from a raid, not with winter coming on. We can discuss it with the women tonight at dinner.”

It took Cheryl and I almost an hour to travel from the airport to the Lassiter farm on horseback. We brought guns along, but we didn’t expect to use them. We hadn’t seen a “goon” since late September. I doubted they were all gone, but I was confident that we wouldn’t be running into groups of them.

“You don’t think they damaged them too bad when they trampled them down back in the summer?” Cheryl asked.

“Sweet potato plants are tough,” I said. “They came back strong. We should be able to dig up a lot.”

We passed two human skeletons in the road near the entrance to the farm and rode through the open gate.

“Sweet potatoes make me think of Thanksgiving,” Cheryl said.

“It’s almost time for that,” I said.

“It might sound funny saying this, but I feel really grateful this year,” she said. “I’ve lost everything from before the outbreak, and it won’t be the same without Danny, but this might be one of the best Thanksgivings I’ve had. We should do it up right–turkey and everything.”

“I’ve been hearing turkeys in the woods late in the evenings,” I said. “I think that could be arranged. We still have two or three weeks until it’s officially here, but we should plan something special.”

We dug up the garden plot and got a pretty good haul; we filled the wheelbarrow twice. Then we put them in the little greenhouse on the property to cure. We’d return in a week or so to retrieve them when they were ready. After that, we headed over to Blaine’s place to get the ripe persimmons from his tree.

“I don’t know why we’re bothering with the persimmons,” Cheryl said. “I’ve had those big Asian ones, and I like those, but the little ones that grow here are awful. You must have to put a lot of sugar in them to make them tolerable. I’ve eaten them, and it was like my mouth shriveled up inside.”

“You’ve never had a ripe one,” I said.

“Yeah I did.”

“No you didn’t. If that’s your experience, then it wasn’t ripe. The unripe fruit isn’t sour like other fruits, it’s….well…I can’t describe it. Anyway, they’re not ready to eat until after the first freeze. Just wait and see. I promise you will change your mind about them. After a freeze, they turn sweet and juicy and delicious.”

I pulled back on the reins and stopped before we got to Blaine’s driveway. There was smoke rising from the chimney of Blaine’s workshop.

“Shhh,” I whispered to Cheryl. “I’m going to go check this out.”

I dismounted and gave her my reins. Then I climbed the hill by the road and crouched in some brush where I could get a clear view of the building. There were three bicycles next to the door, but I didn’t see any people. I was about to climb down the hill again when the door opened on the shop. A woman stepped out. I almost didn’t recognize her.

“Betsy?”

Her head jerked up, startled. She turned to escape into the building, but then a dawning of recognition came over her face. She ran to me and hugged me. She was so skinny. She’d aged years during the past few months.

“Oh God,” she cried. “I thought we were the only ones left.”

“How long have you been here?” I said.

“I don’t know,” she said. “A month, maybe.”

I nodded over at the bicycles. “Who’s with you?”

“Lydia and Aaron,” she said.

“The kids?” I said, a smile spreading. “That’s great news. We haven’t seen any kids in a long time. What about Blaine?”

She shook her head and looked at the ground.

“Oh,” I said.

Betsy looked back toward the driveway as Cheryl led the two horses in.

“That’s Cheryl,” I said. “There are five of us that live together over at the airport.”

“Five? That sounds real nice.”

“What are things like on the road?” I asked.

“Better now,” Betsy said. “Still bad, but better. We don’t see the undead out there much anymore. You’re the first living person we’ve seen since we got here. Clayfield is in such bad shape, I didn’t expect to find anyone.”

The door on the shop opened, and young Lydia stepped out with a gun. She was scrawny and dirty.

“It’s okay, baby,” Betsy said. “They’re friends.”

The little girl gave Cheryl a suspicious look but lowered the gun.

“I’m hungry, momma,” she said.

“You both look hungry,” I said. “Are you getting enough to eat?”

“We’ve been eating nothing but pecans and persimmons the past three days,” she said. “We ran out of everything else, and I haven’t been able to find anything in any of the neighbors’ houses.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I cleaned them out months ago.”

I looked over at Lydia cradling that big gun and was amazed at her transformation. The last time I’d seen her, she was healthy, clean, and on her way to a birthday party. Cheryl opened her saddlebag and pulled out the leftover pancakes and a small jar of apple jelly she’d wrapped up for our lunch. She poured a little jelly on the pancake then rolled it up and offered it to Lydia. The girl looked to her mother for permission.

“Say thank you, sweetie,” Betsy said.

“You’ll come back and live with us,” I said. “We have plenty of room and food. The kids will be safe.”

Aaron timidly stepped outside. Cheryl offered him a pancake.

“I wish Blaine was here,” Betsy said. “After we saw there was no safe zone and that my family was gone, Blaine did his best to get us home. He wanted to come back to Clayfield so bad. Then he got sick and turned. That was a horrible time for us...” Her voice faltered. “But…but we made it back. I got back here for him. We scattered his ashes under that big oak tree over there. He loved that tree.”

I rode one of the bicycles back to the airport. Betsy and Aaron were on my horse. Lydia doubled up with Cheryl.

“Are we going to ride in the airplanes?” Aaron asked as we drew near to the airport.

“No,” I said, “but there are three of them parked there. You can play in them all you want. We also have goats and chickens.”

“Don’t forget TV,” Cheryl said. “We might need to look around for some kid-friendly movies.”