The Reanimates (Book 3): The Escape (12 page)

"She's pretty good, Mom. She was closer than I would have been at nine. Heck, I wasn't even shooting at nine." Drew wore a soft smile on his face as he looked at Abigail blush slightly.

I squatted down to their level, and picked up an unused bow, pulled an arrow of the quiver, and started to shoot the brown haired zombies alongside with them. It wasn't the most traditional game to play with kids, shooting just one type of zombie, but I had to admit that it was somewhat entertaining.

Every time the bodies grew thick, turning into a carpet of corpses that the other zombies would step on, we would make a lot of noise and draw them to a different portion of the wall. Once all the zombies were distracted, someone would come behind them and set fire to the bodies. It still was amazing how easy they burned, cord wood of death, and the flames burned around the containers that were holding them back. The smell of burning death seemed to mask our own human smells and we noticed at times that herds in the distance would change course when the smell of dinner was veiled. Invariably, there was a zombie that wandered over to the fire and stepped inside of the flame to see if there was some fresh meat waiting to be devoured. Whoever was standing nearby would shoot that flaming zombie before it wandered off into the woods and set Montana on fire.

Their lack of self-preservation still amazed me. They would step into the flames of hell if they thought there was a snack involved. They would continue walking even as they burned. They didn't seem to care for water much though; they would wade about knee deep before they changed their mind and stopped. I wondered why they would be fine to go into fire but stop at a little water. It couldn't be the sense of smell confusing them, the zombie death burn would have covered more odors than a bunch of water would, but this was what they did.

Zombie pyre did have a perk. For a few days, the other zombies wouldn't go back to where the smoldering remains of their infected brethren were, as long as they weren't in pursuit. In bad swarms it took several days to make a complete circle around the walls, but it was nice when they wandered past after the burn. It reminded me of that chalk that had pesticide in it that was supposed to keep the ants away. It worked for a while- it always wore off, but that time you had off from the ant situation was great. This was what corpse burn was like, a rotting gross smell that kept away the zombies.

In Southern California we lived in a burn zone, and I used to think that the smell of wet burned grass was the most disgusting fire related smell that ever was. I was wrong. Fortunately if you're exposed to something long enough, the senses learn to tune things out.

When the zombies were gone for a while, we would go back into our normal routines, and for Trent, that was playing with the radio. Jack was also really excited about the radio. He remembered all the time his dad spent playing with his radio towards the end of his life. Jack confided in me that his dad died of pancreatic cancer, and the thing that made him happiest was seeing how far he could reach with his radio. He had talked with someone in New York, and always wanted to be able to connect with the space station.

I wondered how many other survivor pockets there were. We surely couldn't be the only ones, and certainly not the only ones with a radio. It had been two and a half years since threshold hit, and people had to be craving contact as much as our two groups were. After Jack assembled his dad's radio, he and Trent spent hours talking over the radio. The two of them would chat at night, trying to be that candle in the dark that maybe other people would find as they tuned their dials. It was during this late night chitchat session that they met a group in North Dakota. I could hear Trent hoot in triumph from across the street while Drew did his homework and I read more from a medical textbook I found in the clinic. We looked at each other in massive confusion, knowing that the sound that he made was not one of alarm, but thrown by the volume he made. We both jumped up from our spots and bolted out the front door over to the post office to see what would have inspired the noise.

We found Trent sitting at the radio like a little boy on Christmas morning. I heard the voice of another man talking to Jack and I asked Trent who it was. He giggled and said that there was a group somewhere in North Dakota that was fifty survivors strong. They called their settlement New Jasonville in honor of their first leader. They were doing alright, and even had a trade route with another settlement about a day’s travel away. They talked late into the night, long after Drew and I were so tired that we could hardly keep our eyes open and turned in for the night.

When my husband finally joined me in bed, he was giddy over his new contact, and he renewed his belief in the possibility of a whole new way of contacting people and getting even stronger. Every camp he learned of had a surplus of some items and a wish for another. One of the wishes was for ripe tomatoes, for instance, a thing that Louise seemed to have a knack for, as well as a need for fruit, while they had a surplus in cows. It seemed silly, tomatoes and plums for a cow, but after a couple of years, there are things you just miss.

They had arranged a meeting on the radio for a couple of days later to discuss wish lists and to see if there was any point in meeting for a trade session. If there was, they would arrange a meeting place so everyone was on neutral ground to do our swaps.

"It's happening, Cali, we're getting there." Trent draped his leg over mine and his arm across my chest. I surrendered to the safety that was him, and the love that I felt. I felt everything relax under the pressure of him and I sighed happily. I turned my head to look at my husband who was smiling a long lost smile of hope. I cupped my hand on his jawbone and tilted his head up so he was just inches away from my face, and kissed him on his soft lips. As we kissed I ran my fingers across the stubble on his face, feeling the rough whiskers under my fingertips. His hand that was already across my chest found its way to my shoulder, and he turned me to my side, so our bodies pressed together as we kissed, long, deep, yearning kisses that connected us both together in this web that was us.

I loved him more than words would ever say. I loved that feeling of complete surrender as we peeled off our clothes in the darkness. We twisted together under the blankets, hands roaming, urgently seeking the other out in a prayer that we were close to feeling the other completely, like a blind person desperately wanting to memorize every curve of the other. He flipped me on my back and was above me, hovering over me for a moment, savoring every second as the need for him was filling in me, until it was nearly unbearable. When he finally slipped into me I was in heaven, I was complete and I was whole. He was my missing puzzle piece, and I was his, and the pairing of us eased the pain of not being like this all the time. It was sweet, the surrender that I had given, and as we were together, waves of peace, love, rightness, and a side order of lust, ripped through us both.

When we were done, we stayed naked under our blankets, stayed wrapped tight in each other’s arms. I think I was crying a little when I fell asleep; tears of joy, relief, sadness, I don't know, they just were. I closed my eyes and felt his chest rise and fall gently in the rhythm of sleep. I focused on matching his breathing pattern and fell asleep myself; the last thought on my brain was that I didn’t ever want to wake up, because when I did, I knew that the bubble would burst and we were going to be faced with reality once more. I didn't like reality. I wanted to stay here in a collapsed blanket fort with Trent forever.

Swap Meet

It was set. We were going to start a trade loop in four weeks.

As expected, the biggest wish list item was medicine. We didn't have a lot of that, in fact we were getting really low on stuff like antibiotics and even stupid things like Tylenol. That one was mind boggling. How does one find themselves low on things like Tylenol? I figured there was going to be a crap ton of over the counter pain medications in every house, every store. I didn't know where the black hole was that held all the over the counter meds, but I dreamed sometimes that I would find the hidden cache like I was a pirate in search of gold. Yes, I had become that person; pills were worth more than gold.

While looking for food, we came across a health food grocery store that boasted that no genetically modified food would ever be found in their store, and no chemical additives would ever be sold to the smart shopper that came there. The poster in the front door was of this three-year-old girl in pigtails and in a font that was supposed to be child-like, the words "My mommy loves me so much that she would never poison me with bug spray." I rolled my eyes. I laughed out loud at the zombies that were stuck in the store. The smug shoppers were stuck wandering around in a place where the food rotted faster than usual, and to be a bit glib, those zombies weren't nearly as well preserved as the others that we'd come across in a larger chain grocery store.

It was across the street from the overpriced health food store where we found this little building that caught our attention. The outside of the building looked to be hundreds of years old, standing out in a row of more modern designs. The facade was created from aged reclaimed red bricks. At first the name of the store didn't really catch my attention. What on earth could be of any use from some little shop named Spirit Quest? The paint in the window, although very faded, said they were a full service shop for magick supplies, and anything your spell needed, candles, oils, incense, herbs and stones were right there. We had been researching the hell out of herbal meds, and I adored Kristen and her skills in discovering new things to help us out. It was her interest that held the possibility of bridging the gap between alternative medicine and what I understood of chemical medicine. Yes, I was calling pharmacology chemical medicine. That started after a fight I had with her about what I was calling traditional medication. Kristen was mad at me because if one really stopped and thought about it, traditional medications were herbs. Long ago one peeled off a chunk of willow bark and ate it when they had a headache. That was traditional. It really wasn't until a corporation came about and started making powders from the willow bark and then sold the powder did we start thinking of that as medicine. I decided that calling meds by any separate designation really didn't matter anymore. Drugs were drugs now.

I refocused my thoughts as I was staring in the window of this shop. The listing for herbs made me pause a moment. We had this desire to open up a homeopathic pharmacy. If this place had the right stuff, it could turn that desire into an actual thing.

This was exactly what she had been wishing for, some silly little hole in the wall place that had options. Spirit Quest was a store primarily for people that practiced Wicca, and the herbs were more designed to be part of spells, but the wonderful thing about herbs was that there were options. We were definitely going to have to come back to this store soon and we circled this location on the map so we could find it again. When we came back to Wilsall and were unloading out discoveries, we told Kristen all about it. She was so excited that I couldn't help but to ask her if she wanted to come to the store with us and check it out.

We went back the next day. Kristen barely contained her excitement over coming with us, and she was grinning from ear to ear as we approached this old, weathered door with glass panes and a drawn roll-up shade, blocking the view from the outside. Everything was intact, and on a piece of paper below a hand painted sign that declared that the store was closed, was a hand-written sign that invited us inside, to take just what we needed, and to do a random act of kindness for another.

We tested the doorknob first and even with the weather-exposed metal and decay, there was this feeling that the door would work just as it always had, and this feeling was totally confirmed. With a gentle click and a minuscule resistance to the outside pressure, the door swung open, unlocked and unimpeded. It was like the owner understood that the end was happening and there would be people that needed help.

In our previous runs, we did a mad grab and dash sort of shopping trip, but we realized this was not the kind of trip we were on. In this shop, we were asked to use moderation where possible. We all intended on respecting this, not really wanting to tip the bad karma scales.

On every wall there were little packets of dried herbs, arranged by groups of primary uses in magic. There was a book next to the counter that said it was an encyclopedia of magical herbs, and as we flipped through it, we learned a lot. Kristen had talked about feverfew in the past, as it was supposed to be a great fever reducer, and we found it in the book. It was listed as a protective herb, but it also made the comment that it was excellent at warding off colds and flus. After we found that listing, we went to the protective section of the store and located a dried herb packet with the name of the herb printed on it, hanging on a hook with other protective herbs. Next to it, was a seed packet to grow them yourself, if you wanted to try. Almost all of the dried herbs were arranged like this, and the idea of growing our own medications was intoxicating. 

In a glass case near the register, there were extracts of various herbs, including elderberry, a general flu relief remedy, the obligatory St. John’s Wort for depression, ginger extract for nausea, and several balms for burns and muscle pain. I found crystallized menthol that I knew I could work into some jar of petroleum jelly, maybe extract some eucalyptus to make a chest rub. There were things called ear candles on a shelf to treat wax build up and I wondered if that could help several people in the group hear better and it might relieve pressure and ear pain in the kids. I'd try anything at least once.

Bolts of fabric lined one area; it appeared like the shop had a seamstress on their staff that was also a fan of making various costumes and all natural clothes. I saw all the fabric and I thought of the blankets that we were going to make, curtains, and of course, clothes, as I gathered up several bundles of the fabric. I hoped that Louise was serious about making a quilting class, because some of the fabrics in my arms were just perfect. Despite being a nurse, a kick ass zombie fighter, and an overall fun gal, I wanted to be involved with a quilting bee. It seemed like a lovely and ordinary activity, and I craved that normalcy deeply.

Kristen was smiling as she gathered the seed packets along with the ready to use herbs. She looked like she found her home after all, and she moved around the shop like she was floating in her long hippie skirt and flip flops. She had a clump of blonde hair that kept falling from behind her ear when she squatted down to investigate another packet. She absently pushed her hair back behind her ear and continued browsing. She had been trying to figure out how to plant stuff on her own, and was coming up empty at the home improvement store. This was her store.

I was shocked that this place was left untouched by scavengers, although, had it not been for the insistence of Kristen that there were more options out there, I'd never thought of some little magic store being worth a thing, and we actually found a gold mine. If we used these, and if they worked, we could really use them to extend the medications. I felt like dancing.

I was looking over this neat display of rocks when I came across a selection of amethyst. The card that explained the virtues of amethyst declared that it would bring good dreams when tucked under the pillow. I thought of all the kids and knew that there had to be plenty of bad dreams these days. I grabbed a couple handfuls and stuffed them into my pockets, to the confusion of Mike and Trent.

"We need some good dreams now, don't we?" I replied to the unasked questions on their faces. Mike and Trent looked at each other for a moment before they both donned a look of agreement and conceded the argument before it began.

Kristen walked up with a wicker basket tucked under her arm, filled with her treasures. Mike took her under his arm and kissed the top of her head, and we all walked out together to the truck and went home. As soon as we got there, Kristen went back to her house, reading a book on herbs as she walked. Something told me I wasn't going to see her out of her garden for days.

That night we had a meeting to discuss the upcoming trade. We were affectionately dubbing our very first trade meeting as our swap meet, and everyone was encouraged to add to the pile of stuff that could be traded out. It was hard to decide what to bring with us, because we never tried this sort of thing before. I rationalized that if the stuff we sent out came back, then there was no great loss, we still could use them. We were of course afraid that there was a trap in place so we didn't want to take anything with us that would have been a devastating loss if we had it taken and had nothing in return.

I went through the piles of sheets that had overstretched elastic corners and started to cut them up into large squares that could be either diapers or bandages after I soaked them in bleach. If these people had kids or if they needed something to dress wounds, I figured that would be helpful. We knew fruit was on their wish list so we went to the trees that had fruit already on them and filled some brown paper sacks with an assortment of nearly ripe fruit so it wouldn't spoil right away. It felt like every house had a fruit tree in the yard, so it was easy to justify giving away so much, and Louise added several preserves from the harvest that we had in the spring. Tanya brought a box of tomatoes, both fresh and jarred. Kristen made some medicinal herbal tea packets from the supplies we secured from the herb shop.

Trisha went through the book piles that were taken from all the houses and put in the school library. There were several titles that had more than one copy and so she put the second copy in a box. She hoped that the other groups would do this as well, because we were already tiring of the options we had in the library. I counted myself very grateful that my Kindle still worked and that there were a lot of titles on it that I still hadn't read, but that didn't mean that I stopped wandering through the other bookshelves in search for the next inspiring title.

Five days before the swap meet was planned to happen, we were supposed to have a radio meeting to finalize where we would all meet up. The entire group crowded around the radio to hear every word. This was better than going to the movies. We cheered when the first hello crackled over the speakers. After a few moments of idle chitchat, we listened as the plan was put together. We were to meet in Miles City and trade our items, since that was a nearby half way point. Trent told them that we were going to be bringing several random things so there should be many options to choose from. The man on the other end swore that our group would not be disappointed with their offerings. When they signed off, we sent the kids off to play so we could discuss who would be going on the trip. It was decided that the men should be the ones to go, mostly because they didn't know anything about these guys or if they were going to try to pull some sort of stunt. I hated when the guys were doing the macho man who keeps the women folk at home routine, but I did have to grudgingly admit that they could be right. It might be better if the tough looking guys went, and besides, someone needed to stay behind and defend the town.

Ultimately, Tyreese, DaWayne, Mike, Lucas, Matt, and Trent were going on this run. They looked like a good group of tough guys and I felt confident that no one would try to stir up too much trouble. I was glad that there were people from Jack's group going as well. No one in our crew knew too much about general animal stuff, and since the North Dakota crew said that they had cattle that they'd consider swapping, it only made sense to make sure we had someone who knew how to tell a healthy cow from one that wasn't.

I kept thinking that I really, really hoped there would be a cow involved. Jack's group had one and it was nice getting milk from them every once in a while, but I always felt somewhat guilty when we traded for milk because milk seemed to be quite the commodity. The goat milk that we were getting to use now that Billy was getting a little older and eating weeds was nice, but it would be awesome to be able to have real cow milk of our own. It made me smile to think that I was looking forward to cow milk. Before the zombies happened, I hated milk. I hated how thick it was and I didn't really think it tasted that good. Of course, now that it was hard to have, I decided that I liked it and missed it. I couldn't wait to make things like butter, cheese and ice cream, and in my imagination, the food we would be making would be light years beyond what I ever bought in a store. The apocalypse was trying to make my inner fat girl come out. I thought about food nearly constantly.

The guys left a day early to get a head start on finding the town and to make sure there wasn't any group of marauders staking out the meet. The radio wasn't like a phone call, anyone could have been listening to the when and where details. When they were about to drive through, hauling a horse trailer that held the little treasures, I ran the bus gate open and resealed the opening when they were through. I sat there watching them from the driver’s seat of the bus as they left, when I noticed that along with the boxes in the trailer, there was Matt, with his gun at the ready, just in case. I continued watching silently until the corner was turned and I couldn't see them at all.