“This is not for dogs,” I told her in the severest tones I could muster, but she only smiled up at me and cocked her head. Well, that had never worked on my old dog Sadie, either.
I could have nuked the sausages, but for some reason it felt better to rustle out a skillet and cook them the old-fashioned way. The savory smell filled the kitchen, and my stomach rumbled. After digging around in the freezer, I located some frozen home-style potatoes and added them to the mix. Yes, I really needed some fresh fruit or vegetables, but right then I was suddenly too tired to bother with going out to the greenhouse. It could wait another day.
What I did find, tucked under one of the counters, was a wine refrigerator. “Thank you, Mr. Real Estate Developer,” I breathed, looking at the gleaming bottles, all chilled to a perfect fifty-four degrees. Not that I knew the first thing about wine, but I did know about needing a drink, and boy, did I need one.
I selected a Black Mesa Montepulciano. I had no idea what a Montepulciano even was, but it sounded exotic. Probably far too exotic for my prosy meal of sausages and potatoes, which were still happily sizzling away on the stove top, but I doubted anyone from Wine Spectator magazine was going to drop in and grade me on my wine pairings.
There was a drawer seemingly dedicated only to wine openers and related gadgets — stoppers, little metal collars with padding inside to keep wine from dripping down the side of a bottle after it had been opened. I’d never been able to manage a waiter-style corkscrew, but there was also one of those “jumping jack”–style openers, and I selected that and went to work on the wine bottle, keeping an eye on the potatoes and sausages the whole time.
The sound of a cork coming out a wine bottle has to be one of the happiest sounds in the world, and I thought I could use a little happiness right then. I pulled one of the heavy blown-glass goblets out of the cupboard and filled it approximately halfway. Everything I’d read and heard said you were supposed to let wine breathe, but I wasn’t going to bother with that. I took a sip and closed my eyes. No, I hadn’t been much of a wine drinker, had always ordered mixed drinks or tequila shots when I was out with my friends. Now, though, I started to understand the appeal of wine, the smooth darkness of it on my lips, the gentle warmth it seemed to spread through my limbs.
I allowed myself another sip, then went back to the stove so I could turn over the sausages and stir the potatoes around a little. They were basically done, so I scrounged in the cupboard for a plate and dumped everything onto it. Dutchie’s tail began to wag frantically, and I couldn’t help smiling.
“Okay, we’ll see if there’s anything left over,” I told her, then got out a knife and fork, picked up my goblet of wine, and went into the family room. No way was I going to be the only person sitting down at that massive copper dining room table.
But the family room was a much cozier space, and I settled myself on the couch and placed the plate of food and my wine glass on the coffee table. A flat-screen TV hung on one wall, although it wasn’t going to do me much good unless the real estate developer had a stash of DVDs hidden somewhere. He probably did, but in that moment I was too hungry to worry about it. As with so many other things, I’d go exploring later.
There was also a kiva-style fireplace in one corner, with a nice stack of wood in a basket next to it. After I was done eating, I thought I might light a fire and allow myself to simply sit here for a while, quiet, letting my food digest. Hell, maybe I’d even drink that whole bottle of wine. After everything I’d been through, getting drunk sounded like it might not be a half-bad idea.
But no…I knew I wouldn’t do that. Just the glass, and maybe half of one afterward. The voice had reassured me I was safe here, and had closed the gate to the compound behind me, but until I’d slept a few nights unmolested, I wasn’t about to let my guard down like that. Dutchie had proven to be a good watchdog, and I had a feeling a place like this had some decent built-in security, but even so, being careless seemed like a good way to get myself killed.
Instead, I drank the wine slowly, taking small sips in between bites of my food, until my glass was empty and my plate almost so. There were a few potatoes and the end of one sausage left, and I put the plate down on the floor so Dutchie could have the rest of it. Who cared if that wasn’t the most hygienic thing in the world to do? She was deliriously happy about getting some table scraps, and as far as I was concerned, she’d earned them.
Once she’d polished the plate clean, I picked it up, as well as my wine glass, and went back to the kitchen. The plate went in the dishwasher, and I poured enough wine into my goblet to get it to a little below the halfway mark. In the drawer with all the other wine accoutrements, I found a stopper, so I jammed that into the open bottle, figuring I’d finish it off the next day.
And although I was bone-tired, sitting in front of the fire didn’t seem so appealing after all. I might as well get more of a handle on this place that was now supposed to be my home. Going back to the family room, I discovered that the large carved cabinet placed up against one wall did in fact hold the real estate developer’s Blu-Ray collection. Most of it was fairly typical new-release stuff, with some action classics thrown in. There was also an entire shelf of porn, and I just had to laugh when I looked at it. It was pretty obvious what he’d intended to do with at least some of his time after surviving the zombie apocalypse, or whatever.
I closed the cabinet with one hand, lifted the wine goblet with the other so I could take a drink, and wandered off down the hallway that led to the bedrooms and the office. That was the space which really interested me the most. After flicking on the light — and marveling at how easy that was — I went into the room and took a quick survey. Again, the furniture here was dark distressed oak, a perfect match to the hacienda-style feel of the rest of the house. One wall was mainly window, covered in wooden shutters. Against another wall was a large desk with what looked like a brand-new iMac sitting on it.
There was also a gun safe. I set down my wine glass on the desk, then went over to the safe and tested the lock. I suppose it was silly to think that the thing would have been open, but I couldn’t help experiencing a stab of disappointment when the doors wouldn’t budge. My father had trained me not to leave guns lying around, and although I was sure they would be fine where I’d put them on the shelf in the closet, I’d feel even better if I could lock them up.
Sitting next to the desk was a file cabinet, and I opened that, quickly rifling through its contents. This was a trove — I found manuals for the computer, the drip setup in the greenhouse, all the appliances, the security system. That seemed to feed into the iMac, so I touched the space bar on the keyboard, waking it up from its sleep. Thank God it didn’t seem to be password protected; I was able to find the security program easily enough, which brought up a feed from a number of cameras. At the moment it was showing a grid of all nine of them, although it appeared that I could also expand one image and then rotate through them if I preferred.
Not that it mattered one way or another, as far as I could tell. By then it was completely dark, and the cameras didn’t show much of anything. I supposed it made sense not to have security lights blaring around the exterior of the house and the perimeter of the property; that would only serve as a beacon to show that someone was living out here. And actually, after I toggled around a bit, I realized that no lights were needed, as the cameras switched into infrared mode in the dark. Pretty high-tech.
How much had the developer spent building this place? I couldn’t begin to guess, but it had to be at least a million dollars. And all for nothing…well, at least where he was concerned. I was more than grateful that the house existed, and that the voice had found it for me, but it still seemed somewhat ironic that so much money had been spent to defend against something which ended up having no defense.
That thought sobered me, and I picked up my goblet and took a large swallow of wine. Dutchie had followed me in here, settling down on the floor in a little ball. There was something alm
ost resigned about her posture, as if she knew that once a human being started mucking around on a computer, they were going to be useless for a good number of hours.
But that wasn’t why I’d come in here. I only wanted to know what the room held, and now that I’d seen the kind of security that was protecting this place, I felt a good deal better. Had the system been on when I got here, and the voice had simply disengaged it to allow me to enter, or had he switched it on once I was safely inside the compound? He’d clearly intended for me to come here all along, so I had a feeling it was probably the former. There hadn’t been much chance of someone accidentally stumbling across this place, but even so, better safe than otherwise.
Among the manuals was the guide that had come with the gun safe. I flipped through it with one hand, sipping from my wine glass at the same time. When I got to the last page, I saw that some numbers had been written down along the edge of that leaf. The combination?
Only one way to find out.
I put down the wine glass and went over to the safe, then slowly spun the dial around to match the sequence of numbers I’d found inside the manual. There was a soft click, and the door opened outward.
Even though I’d grown up around my father’s arsenal, I couldn’t help letting out a gasp at what I found. There was — well, an arsenal worthy of holding off an entire horde of zombies. Shotguns and rifles and a parade of handguns, along with box after box of ammo. The problem wouldn’t be defending this place if necessary, but deciding which gun to use to do it.
Well, that and trying to squeeze my own meager collection in here.
I closed the safe, reclaimed my wine glass, and finished the rest of it with one swallow. After that, I took the empty glass with me and performed a quick inspection of the other rooms. Nothing out of the ordinary, just bedrooms decorated with the same taste and flair as the rest of the house. Another bathroom, not quite as luxurious as the one in the master suite, but still large enough that two people could comfortably brush their teeth in there or perform other bathroom prep as necessary. It seemed sort of a shame to waste all this space on me, but truthfully, so far I hadn’t come across any survivors I’d be willing to share this house with. Yes, there had to be some good people who’d made it through the Heat unscathed. I sure hadn’t seen them yet, though.
Suddenly feeling even more tired, I headed back to the kitchen so I could rinse out my wine glass and set it on the counter. For the first time, I noticed a door off to one side; I opened it and saw it concealed the laundry room, which was large and well laid out as well, with a state-of-the-art washer and dryer combo, as well as plenty of storage and a separate wash tub for scrubbing out stubborn stains, or whatever. Inside the cupboards I found what looked like a lifetime supply of detergent, along with all the spare towels and sheets for the various bathrooms and bedrooms. It seemed clear that the developer hadn’t been worried about the appliances using up too much of the power the solar farm produced.
Well, if he hadn’t worried about it, then I wouldn’t worry, either, when the time came. Right now I had enough clothes to last me another week, so laundry wasn’t exactly a concern.
The master bedroom had its own kiva fireplace, and I decided it would be better to have a fire there. Having a fireplace in my own bedroom felt deliciously decadent, and the thought of having the flames there to warm me through the night seemed extra appealing.
So I brushed my teeth but didn’t worry about my face, since I’d taken a shower only a few hours earlier, and then got some logs from the basket on the floor near the hearth and made a stack the way my father had shown me. There was a lighter on a shelf nearby, so I used that to get things going. Dutchie watched all this with some bemusement, but once the fire got crackling away and began to spread its heat through the room, she let out a contented little sigh and curled up on the rug, her eyes closing almost immediately.
I know how you feel, Dutchie, I thought. Even so, something in me was reluctant to turn off the bedside lamp, as if, once I had done so, I’d never be able to get the light back. Silly, I knew. It wouldn’t even be fully dark with the lamp shut off, as the fire was certainly adequate to illuminate the room.
Still, I sat there on the bed for a long time, looking at the glow of the lamp on the bedroom’s warm terra-cotta-painted walls, at the gold leaf detailing on the wall where the door was located. Everything felt cozy and quiet and safe, and yet for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to reach over to the lamp and turn the knob. Finally, I got up off the bed, went to the closet, and retrieved the Smith and Wesson revolver from the shelf. I laid it on the table next to the bed, then took a deep breath and shut off the lamp.
It wasn’t dark. The room danced with firelight, and wasn’t even completely silent, between the crackling of the logs and Dutchie’s soft snores. I settled my head against the pillow, breathing in the indefinable scent of clean linens. Had the caretaker put fresh sheets on the bed when he’d come by a few days earlier? It certainly seemed that way.
But I didn’t want to think about that, because then I’d think about how he was dead, and the man who’d built this house, and Elena and Tori and my aunt and uncle…my mother and father. Devin. Even as I tried to push those thoughts away, I could feel the telltale lump in my throat that meant I was dangerously close to bursting into sobs.
Don’t cry, I told myself. Don’t. It won’t bring them back. All you can do is keep living, so there’ll still be someone around to remember them.
At first glance, that notion might not have seemed very reassuring. Somehow, though, it did calm me, and I found myself falling asleep, succumbing at last to the weariness of the day and the softness of the bed in which I lay. The last thing I heard was a soft pop from the hearth as a log split and settled down on top of the others.
I’d never been much for dreaming. That is, I knew I must dream, because everyone did, but I hardly ever remembered any of those dreams. I was never the one recounting in excruciating detail my crazy dreams about flying or driving my car up the side of a building, or whatever. And I certainly never had those kinds of dreams, the kind you awake from all hot and bothered.
But I did that night.
I dreamed I lay in that bed, with the warm glow of the fire flickering against the walls and the comforting scent of wood smoke in the air. The strange thing was, I dreamed that I slept, and that I awoke to strong arms around me, holding me close, and someone kissing me. In my dream, I didn’t think that was strange at all. I opened my mouth to this dream man, tasted the sweetness of his lips, felt him release me from the embrace so he could caress my body, even as I reached over to touch him, to feel his arousal.
And it seemed so natural for him to press me down into the bed, to push himself into me so that we were moving together, my legs wrapped around him, driving him farther into me. This was all done in complete silence; only when the orgasm hit did I finally cry out, but softly. And he said nothing at all, although I could feel the climax shudder through him as well. We stilled, lying in bed, our breaths filling the silence. Then his lips brushed against my cheek, and I heard him whisper, Beloved.
I sat up in bed then, heart racing, and pressed my palms flat against the mattress. Shaking, I put one hand to my chest. Unlike in the dream, I was still dressed, wearing the sleep shirt I’d put on before I went in to brush my teeth. My mouth tasted of mint, not…him. And I could tell that no one had touched me. Things didn’t…feel…any different.
Just a dream. A horribly vivid dream. In a way, I could even understand it. I was feeling alone, and the voice had been my only real companion for the past few days. All right, I had Dutchie, but that wasn’t exactly the same thing. Was it so strange for my subconscious mind to turn that disembodied voice into a sort of dream lover, someone to make me feel as if I weren’t the only person left alive on the planet?
Maybe not, but I still felt shaken to my core. I pushed back the sheets and blankets and duvet, then crawled out of bed and went to the bathroom. There, I splas
hed water on my face, trying to calm myself, and telling myself I should be glad that I was someplace where I had the luxury of running water.
That no-nonsense thought did help me to regain my composure somewhat, and I headed into the bedroom after that, pausing to put another couple of logs on the fire and stir it up a bit with the poker before finally returning to bed. Through all of this, Dutchie had slept peacefully, apparently not discommoded at all by my wandering around.
I got back in bed, then pulled in a deep breath, and another. After everything I’d been through, was I really going to let a dream rattle me? I told myself that I needed to let it go, that everything would be fine.
I just wasn’t sure whether I believed those reassurances.
Chapter Ten
I spent the next few days really getting myself accustomed to the property and everything on it — the greenhouse, the solar farm, even the garage, which was hiding a Polaris ATV in the farthest bay. When I found that, it somehow made me miss my father even more. He’d always wanted one, but a vehicle intended solely for off-roading was a luxury that just hadn’t been in the family budget.
As the voice had told me, there was a good deal of food stored in the basement. Scratch that; there was enough food down there to satisfy the most rabid prepper, shelf after shelf of canned goods and staples such as flour and sugar and cooking oil, and enough spices that I could probably bake something different every day for the next year and still not use everything up. In fact, the basement was so extensive that I got the impression it was actually bigger than the house itself, spreading beyond the walls of the structure directly above it.
The greenhouse was set up on a drip system, one supplied by the same well that gave the house its water. I found a good deal of produce that was at its peak or even just past it, so I harvested that as best I could, eating what needed to be consumed right away and putting the rest in the refrigerator. On the bookshelves in the office, there were a number of reference books on all sorts of topics of interest to the homesteader or survivalist — home canning, sewing, weaving, butchering…even how to make your own bullets. In fact, I found the molds for that very activity down in the basement, along with a quantity of black powder and other supplies. I had to hope none of it would explode and send Dutchie and me sky-high one day.
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