Mountain Daddy's Nanny

by Samantha Leal

  Fawn raced to the pool’s edge, “Oh god you’re so brave, you saved us all!” She yelled, choking back tears.

  Cass felt flattered, “It was no big deal, I just…”

  But Fawn threw her arms around Jack, “You’re the bravest man in the world.”

  Cass laughed, “Did I miss something?”

  The following few minutes seemed like hours, but the bus finally arrived in the compound. Cass guided it to the edge of the pool.

  “Do you want me to load everyone up,” Jack asked.

  “No, these roads are too dangerous at night, especially with all the rain we’ve had. We can’t afford to get stuck or stranded. For now I think it’s best to stay here. “

  “You think we’ll be safe?”

  “Hell no, there’s another swarm of zombies on their way here. And these ones are gonna be extra rotten and nasty, believe me. Now listen, here’s what we are gonna do.” She pointed to the bus, “The resort’s water softening system uses salt. I threw twenty huge bags of it in the bus. We need to make a circle around the dining hall building. I’ll explain later. We should then have enough food and water inside to figure something out…or maybe just ride it out. Maybe they will get tired and decide it’s easier just being dead.”

  “What? What’s going to stop the zombies… high sodium?”

  “Trust me. Just get a circle made fast.”

  Cass sat down next to Talin’s basket while Jack organized a work party. She popped open the basket and picked up Talin’s head. “I hope you can make a bigger circle work the same way you did before, ‘cause I’m kind of banking on it.”

  “Such a clever girl,” He said with a smile, “But remember, I need everyone inside the circle before I can start the incantation.

  Cass lifted up Talin’s head and pressed her lips to his, “I love you Talin,” She whispered. “And don’t you worry, as soon as we get organized we’ll find a way to get you your body back.”

  Fawn was handing out bottled water to the workers. She stopped, watching Cass, with a combination of shock, awe and revulsion on her face.

  Cass turned to her, “What, you’ve never seen two people kissing before?”

  The exhausted survivors hustled, encircling themselves with the rocky industrial salt as fast as they could. Jack gathered all the weapons and ammo he could find. He handed Cass a rifle and distributed three more among the most able bodied of the tourists. Other survivors were stacking furniture and broken rubble as a rough barrier. Fawn was busy handing out water, pausing intermittently to admire her new hero, and lover, Jack.

  Cass picked up Talin’s head and handed it to Fawn. “Take him inside and give him a hand if he needs it… Sorry Talin, no pun intended. Do whatever he says…he’s gonna save us.” Fawn just stared at the severed head for a moment.

  “Hello, my name is Talin.” He said, with his most charming smile, “What’s yours?”

  The smile calmed her down, “umm…hi, I’m Fawn,” She held up a water bottle, “Are you thirsty?”

  Chapter 17

  The magic circle was only two thirds done… but the next wave of extra-dead zombies had arrived. Cass appeared calm, but she was just too numb to register any more shock.

  Cass watched the creatures shuffling across the lawn towards the compound. Some of them were surprising agile and quick. “Those are the cemetery zombies! Hurry up people!” She looked down at Talin, “We’re lucky it took them so long to get here.”

  “Maybe they stopped for lunch.”

  The wave of zombies began to pick up speed, in response to the shouting and barked commands. They began to build a momentum like an oncoming stampede.

  “Christ, they’re running.” Cass said nervously.

  “Okay,” Jack said to his shooters, “All you can do is slow them down, so aim for their legs. Use short bursts and hit the kneecaps if you can. But don’t waste any ammo.” The horde came within range, “Fire!”

  The first shots were effective. Cass shot the legs out from under at least two while Jack hit three. The other shooters missed but kept firing. The barriers of furniture and rubble slowed the zombies down … but only for a few moments.

  “We finished the circle!” Shouted a middle aged balding guy. He looked like he was having the worst mid-life crisis on record.

  Cass, Jack and the shooters quickly fell back into the dining hall, barricading the door behind them. Talin began the incantation as the zombies bashed at the doors and windows.

  Cass had a horrifying thought, “What if they’re inside the circle when the spell is completed?”

  Talin just continued muttering the spell, louder with each passing sentence.

  A zombie ran headlong into a floor length window shattering the glass. Jack opened fire, shooting its legs out from under it. Another raced in behind it and pounced on Cass. They fell to the ground in a tangle of tanned and decaying flesh as they wrestled furiously. Its hands clasped around her windpipe. Cass felt herself becoming weaker, losing the battle as she did her best to keep it’s gnashing teeth away from her.

  Talin’s voice reached a crescendo and stopped, “It is complete.” He said.

  Cass was barely conscious when the zombie suddenly relaxed its grip. It stared at her for a moment…or would have if it still had eyes, until, in a rasping croak it said, “ahh…thank you,” as if in relief. Then it went limp.

  The other zombies that had entered the circle weaved unsteadily and then collapsed as well.

  Cass examined her opponent’s body, “It’s dead… again. I mean really dead…like supposed to be dead…oh you know what I mean.”

  Jack looked out the window, watching in relief as the zombies outside the circle began to wander off into the jungle, “They’re leaving,” He shouted to the heaven’s as well as to the assembled crowd.

  There was tremendous excitement until Talin chimed in.

  “The circle makes us more or less invisible to them…but there is no need to tempt fate… So please keep it down!”

  The survivors complied.

  Fawn raced over to Jack, throwing herself around him with all her might. “Oh Jack, we made it!”

  Jack was surprised, as he actually felt his heart skip a few beats with her embrace. She was a cute kid, and truth be told he realized he had actually developed something of a bond with her. Maybe it was just the whole zombie thing that had kind of thrown them together, or maybe there really was something there…

  He hugged her back , kissing the top of her head, “Yeah, looks like we are going to be alright after all.” Maybe more than alright, he thought as he held her tight, caressing her back and nuzzling her to him.

  Cass picked up Talin’s head and cradled it in her lap.

  She looked at him and smiled, “How long does the spell last?”

  “As long as the circle remains intact we are safe.” Talin replied.

  Cass was beyond exhausted. It had been a hellish night, but they were finally safe, thanks to a circle of salt. She looked outside and did her best to smile. Surveying the carnage she knew they had paid a heavy price. It had been an insane night. Scores of tourists and soldiers had died, and then come back. Some of those were just so much hamburger, while many were even now wandering the surrounding jungles in search of human flesh. She had not had time to even think about the safety of the other villages on the island. They would be at the mercy of the horde. And then there was the whole my-boyfriend-is-just-a-severed-head thing to contend with. But she was confident that with his magic they could remedy that as well. They just had to bunk down for the night. With the new day they would figure out their next move. At least for now they were safe.

  Then the first drops of rain began to fall… thin rivulets of water were already coursing across the earth as it quickly turned into a downpour.

  THE END

  Finding Love in a Dark World: Book 1

  Cynthia Wilde

  Copyright © 2016 by Cynthia Wilde. All rights reserved.

  No part of this
book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic of mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Prologue

  Earth is not what it once was, or so the story goes. It had been over twenty years since the third World War began. America was pulled into a conflict between China and Japan over a small set of islands that bordered the two nations. Russia and Iran jumped on one side and most of Europe and Australia jumped on the other. What had begun as a little dispute over a little island in the sea ended up killing billions of people.

  War no longer resembled the entity it once was in the beginning of the 20th century. There were no more boots on the ground. Instead, war was fought with drones and weapons of mass destruction; nuclear weapons were a threat now turned into a reality. Once the first strike was launched, many more followed. No one even knew who started it or why it had begun, and there were few left to wonder. Less than one percent of the population survived the combination of bombs, radiation, EMPs, hunger, civil wars, weaponized flu strains and the full breakdown of society. Many people could not deal with the world the way things were. Many were driven to end their suffering themselves, taking their families with them.

  Large cities were turned to rubble and most people didn’t dare go near them. Hundreds of thousands of house pets had taken over the urban areas. They had changed from comfort providing companions into radioactively-charged beasts. A few human survivors still lived in the midst of the chaos, though they lived in the underground, only coming out in the mornings while the beasts slept. Humans were no longer the top of the food chain. They had to learn humility in their new role in the world.

  Humans now carved out small communities that were usually no more than a few hundred people, and they quickly learned to stay close together for safety. There were no governments, though there were leaders and followers as there had always been. Man’s evils still found their way into this new world, as they always had in the past.

  1

  Jessa sighed. It was going to be another hot day. She looked up at the sky and didn’t see a cloud in sight. There hadn’t been rain in weeks and the plants needed it. She resigned herself to fetching pails to water the garden instead. After she was done in her own yard, she still had to tend to the community garden in town. She braced herself for a long day.

  They were always long days. She couldn’t remember it any other way. If only they still had those huge irrigation booms that she remembered passing in her childhood. She had passed by them as a little girl, riding in a car back then, with the wind blowing her hair back from her face. Jessa smiled from the memory.

  After a few hours of watering, Jessa was finally finished, with that part of her day anyways. Her son was wandering around the flowers, looking for bugs. She had to smile at his antics. He was always happy, no matter what. She had feared that the death of his father would make him change for good, but after only a few years he was getting back to himself. Kids were resilient. Jessa sometimes wished that he could remember like she did, the way things were, but maybe this way was actually how it was supposed to be. Maybe it was easier for those that did not have the “before” memories to make the days now seem so much darker by comparison. Or maybe it was better to think of those memories of happier days as bright patches that lit up her life, however fleetingly, before the sun was blotted out again.

  “Shane my love, time to come help me in the greenhouse, we have a lot of planting to do this afternoon.”

  “Coming Mom.”

  The rest of the day was spent under the clear plastic of the three greenhouses in the community garden. It was Jessa’s responsibility to make sure there were always new sprouts and plants to replace the old for the next crop. The village she lived in did not have a name, but they had taken her and her son in after her previous home became uninhabitable. Something had been present in the water, and it had killed most of the community. Her husband, Kraven had gotten them across what once was Mississippi before he died. Jessa found the small village twenty or thirty miles north of his final resting place. She was not sure what state she would be in now, maybe Kentucky would be a good guess, though it really didn’t matter where those once important imaginary lines were now.

  The weather was decent there and with the rise in global temperatures, it was far enough from the equator to be habitable. Most gardens could be maintained all year round. There really were only two seasons at this point, the wet and the dry. For the moment, it was the dry season.

  “Hey Jessa, are you coming by for dinner tonight?”

  Jessa cringed a little inside, yet put on the fake smile that she had learned to add on in the morning when she brushed her hair. She could not stand Teresa and it seemed the women had annoyingly made it a point to make her a friend.

  “Yeah. We will be over in a bit after we both wash up.”

  “Okay, I have a friend coming over too. I think you guys will hit it off.”

  Jessa had to smile to herself as she turned away. No doubt this was another one of her neighbor’s ploys to get her with someone. Why was it that everyone who was married or with someone decided that everyone else must do the same? She would never understand that.

  Considering her general lack of any feeling of connection with her neighbor, she doubted that Teresa would ever choose someone that she would even actually consider being with. There were slim pickings in the town. There were quite a few men, but hardly any that were in any way her type. Men actually outnumbered women three to one and as a result it was seen as ludicrous to be a single woman in the new world. Naturally she should be adding to the population and be in the process of creating more babies, or so the prevailing wisdom went. With so many people lost in the last couple of decades, there was a constant push to procreate. But many women were lost in labor, as modern medicine was a thing of the past.

  Relationships and sex were just not in her plans at this point. Jessa had lost her true love a few years before and she still was not ready to even think about starting something new. She wasn’t even sure if she wanted to stay where she was. She had barely found anyone to talk to that she had anything in common with, and there was only one other child Shane’s age. But for the time being this was home to Jessa and her five-year-old son. She was trying to make the best of it. Anything would be better than being on the road, or heaven forbid being close to one of the old cities. Those were dangerous places in this new world.

  Walking into the little house that Jessa was given when she moved into town, she instructed Shane to pour some water in the basin and wash himself. It was still warm enough outside to enjoy the cooler water and he happily went into the bathroom to take a sponge bath of sorts before they went to Teresa’s house. Teresa was also the mother of the one boy Shane’s age, Aidan, so Jessa tried extra hard to play nice with the neurotic housewife next door.

  Sighing again when she saw her reflection in the mirror, she poured herself a small basin of water to wash up in. She grabbed a wash cloth and started to wash away the day’s sweat and grime and she quickly was able to see her face once again. The years had not changed her that much, though there were a few more lines from the last time she had cared enough to look. Deciding that her hair needed the same treatment, she refilled the basin with water and unwound her waist length hair to dip into the water. She quickly had her blonde hair cleaned and combed.

  “Mom, are we going to Aidan’s tonight?”

  “Yes honey, as long as you still want to go.”

  “Yeah I do. Aidan found a new toy car yesterday and I have been dying to see it and he just got back this morning.”

  “Well if you would spend some time looking, maybe you could find some new toys too. There are tons of houses that haven’t been searched up the hill that are safe to go to.”

  “I know Mom.” The last syllable dragged out for emphasis.

  2

  Jessa decided on one of
the dresses that she had not worn in a while. She did not know why, but she wanted to look nice for once. She even put on a little makeup before she brushed her hair out and left it down. The dress held close to her curves and accentuated the woman’s long legs. She usually did not dress that way so as to deter unwanted attention. As the new girl in town she got a lot more of it than she wanted anyways. They had been there almost 6 months in the town with no name and she still was receiving lascivious looks from all the wrong people.

  About a half an hour later, Jessa knocked on the door of Teresa’s little villa style home with her son swinging his arms by her side.

  “Come on in, dinner is almost ready.”

  “Do you need any help?”

  “Sure, come on in the kitchen, the men will be here soon. You look real nice. I don’t see you dress up much. Is it because of the fella I told you about?”

  “Well there is rarely a reason to anymore, so I thought, ‘Why not?’”

  “Isn’t that the truth.”

  Shane ran off in the direction of Aidan’s room, knowing the way by heart. Teresa had one of the larger houses in the community and the two boys played there often. Her house was bigger, not because of her family size, but because she was married to the leader, Billy. He was a nice enough guy, though Jessa didn’t like the way he looked at her when his wife looked the other way or tended to something in another room. That was just another reason to dislike Teresa. She was unable to keep her man on a leash.

  Jessa couldn’t stand those types of men, one eye always looking for a woman on the side. Times had changed with so many more men to women, and as such, a woman had to be extra careful even going out of the community. There was no longer an option to be a victim or the luxury to leave personal safety in someone else’s hands. Luckily, Jessa was raised to defend herself from just about anything.

  A person could not be over ten years old without a gun or some similar type of weapon. People used crossbows, spear guns, and sometimes just relied on hammers or crowbars. Whether it was a gun or a baseball bat, one thing you could count on was that everybody was packing something. While many would think this would make things more violent, it seemed to have the opposite effect. People respected each other and their space a lot more than they used to back when government and business ran the world.