Assuming Room Temperature (Keep Your Crowbar Handy Book 3)

by S. P. Durnin

  sake!”

  George shook his head in disbelief. “Fine! Fine. Jesus H. Christ on a flying mountain bike... That little piece of information would twist him inta’ nineteen different versions of fucked-up.”

  Kat feigned surprise. “Gee, you think?”

  “I’m serious, girl.” Foster went on to explain about the ex-writer’s ex-Nazi, ex-girlfriend—who was now ex-tinct—Nichole. Kat had met the awful woman and knew she and Jake had been a disastrous relationship prior, but she hadn’t been privy to the gory details. The first day of the Apocalypse, said blonde twit had shown up at Jake’s door, assuming he’d ‘save her’ and end up forgetting all about the reason their relationship had come to a swift end previously. What she didn’t know before that moment, was what that reason had actually been.

  Basically, Nichole had been all for bringing additional partners into their relationship. Granted, they had been female partners, but that hadn’t mattered to Jake in the slightest. He simply believed that sex was for more than pushing the human body to its fornicational extremes. It was supposed to be an expression of mutual affection, a way to become even closer to someone. Intimate on a level that defied the limitations of the skin.

  “Oh my God... How could she?” Kat put a hand over her mouth in shock. “You only have to be around Jake for a day to know he wouldn’t go for that!”

  George fired another round, blowing the head completely from a ghoul nearly five-hundred yards distant. “Yee-up. Bitch was a real piece o’ work. That’s one a’ the reasons I was so tickled you tossed her nasty ass out the Mimi’s hatch into that herd a’ face-eaters back near Cinci. He’s just not the type ta’ do what we used ta’ call ‘double duty’. Allan used ta’ heckle him about it in fun, but understood O’Connor’s thinkin’ is on it, an’ was a good friend to him. That’s why I didn’t make the skinny gink disappear a while

  ago.”

  “You could do that?” Kat raised a skeptical eyebrow.

  The smile that split the old man’s visage was, to say the least, troublesome. “Girl, it would’a been easy. You forget: I had any resource I could want, courtesy of Uncle Sam. That was because I had so much dirt on so many paper-pushers, I could’a been a zillionaire if I’d been so inclined. I jus’ couldn’t be bothered. Too much ta’ do, too many lowlifes ta’ send on a magic carpet

  ride.”

  “You’re kinda scary. You know that, right?”

  “It’s a talent,” Foster informed her loftily. “Heads up.”

  She looked around and saw one crowbar-toting writer heading for the barricade at an easy trot, accompanied by Rae. As the two approached, Cho again marveled that a woman so endowed was able to jog at all. If she would’ve attempted the same—and possessed such ‘divine augmentations’—Kat at least would have blackened both her eyes.

  Maybe even given herself a concussion.

  George knelt and waved them up. “What’s goin’ on?”

  “I need to borrow ‘Smurf-berry Bluebell’ for a while,” Jake told him as Rae scaled the barrier and joined Foster on top. “Rae agreed to take the rest of her watch since she’s on for the next shift anyhow. That way you’re not left short-handed, and we don’t have to bug Mooney for someone as a replacement.”

  The older man shrugged. “Works fer me.”

  Cho was looking daggers at Rae. “You told?”

  The curvy woman smiled, slapped a full magazine into her baby (a monstrous XM-8 rifle she’d assembled from component parts, ordered through Cheaper-Than-Dirt), and took the spotting glasses from Kat’s stunned fingers.

  The ninja-girl was so angry she couldn’t speak coherently and stomped one foot on the steel. “You promised that was just between us! You… You..! Ooooo! I’ll...get back to you.”

  After leveling an accusatory finger in Rae’s direction, Kat leapt from the top of the twelve-foot barricade, cartwheeled in mid-air, and landed nimbly on her feet to the surprise of all watching. They’d known she was exceptionally agile—the young woman had gymnastic skills that were second to none—but seeing her leap from a structure over twice her height, without even rolling when she landed? That was just impressive.

  Jake waved his thanks and ushered Kat towards Langley proper, before anyone did something permanent or painful to anyone else. She glared over her shoulder at Rae until they rounded Pistol Pat’s and moved out of view up the street.

  “What’s our boy up to?” George asked, honestly curious. Normally, the drama within their little group didn’t interest him in the slightest. He was there to break people and kill things, not to watch episodes of The Dating Game play out in real life.

  Rae filled him in and the graying warrior’s eyebrows went up.

  “Oh, really?” When his counterpart nodded her pretty head, he gave a grunt before focusing his gaze through the sniper scope again. “About damn time.”

  * * *

  “That miserable twat!” Cho kept walking, doing her level best to quash the urge to turn around, head back to the wall, and choke the life out of Rae. “I should’ve known she wouldn’t be able to resist talking! She spent all that time in an Internet chat-room, messaging about auto repair with George, for God’s sake. I’m going to shave her head when she goes to sleep! That will teach her to keep her trap shut!”

  O’Connor attempted to pacify her. “You’re making too big a deal out of it. What was that song? Just ‘Let it go-o-o-o’?”

  “I’ll rip her nostrils off when she’s not looking!” Kat obviously wasn’t listening.

  “You’re overreacting,” he said.

  “Kick her in her coochie!”

  Rolling his eyes skyward, he took Cho by the shoulders and steered her to the right up Beach Drive. Her insults towards Rae became ever more descriptive, and ranged all the way from ‘over-sexed, blab-happy, know-it-all’ to the ever popular ‘treacherous, silicone-chested, clam-box.’ Jake cringed over the last. He’d heard Foster refer to Rae using the exact same phrase before in a moment of towering rage, right after she suggested they take Brillo pads to the pin-up girl riding the bomb painted on the side of the Mimi. His old apartment sup had been incensed. To be fair, it was a nice piece and destroying it like that would’ve been sinful.

  Jake kept one hand on Kat’s shoulder as they walked. That way, if she decided to turn around he’d have a moment or two to react. Maybe he’d be able to outrun her back to the wall. He sure as hell wasn’t going to attempt getting between her and Rae if the claws actually came out. That would get him killed by one of the parties involved for sure.

  He tried to mollify her with a different tactic. “Look at it this way, Rae’s just jealous. She’s way too top heavy to pull off any cool ninja moves.”

  She gave him the Look. The one that said he was full of it.

  He nudged her from the road as they came abreast of a small peninsula jutting out into the lake—just south of Cedar Port Marina below the Sunset Bar and Grill—and strode into the grass.

  “Why the heck are we going out there?” Kat was still fuming. “Everything’s still covered with dew. We’ll get our boots soaked.”

  Jake moved into the lead, blazing a trail through the burrs and tall saw grass. “Will you just keep up? You’ll like this. I think.”

  “If it’s a boat with a working engine I’ll love it.” She grumbled crossly and stomped after him through the underbrush. “That will let me get way out over deep water without having to break my back rowing before I toss Rae overboard. With a cinder-block chained to her ankles. Naked. So the little fishies won’t have to work so hard when they start nibbling on her ti—”

  Cho’s voice cut off when they cleared the overgrown foliage and came out onto a rocky, lakeside beach butting up against a mid-length dock.

  “Wow. I wasn’t completely serious about the whole boat thing, but you know. Gift horses and all that,” she admitted.

  O�
��Connor kept walking and, curiosity peaked, Kat stayed on his heels.

  “It’s just up here,” he told her, body obscuring the far end, “Hope you like surprises, because this one might be a little... Um. Yeah.”

  Now she really wanted to see whatever he’d stumbled upon and tried to look over his shoulder. “Well, if you’d move I can—”

  Two boats from the end, Jake sidestepped and Cho jerked to a halt.

  On the end of the dock there was a blanket, a gallon jug full of what she assumed was Tang (since they had a ton of it), a couple of pint glasses borrowed from the Sunset, a pair of plates and utensils, two mismatched seat cushions and, in a glass-topped serving dish what looked like…

  Her mouth hung open. “Is that... a quiche?”

  “Yep. Made fresh this morning.” Jake gave her a hesitant smile. “Want to have breakfast with me?”

  Judging by her expression, he could tell Kat wouldn’t have been more surprised if Bigfoot had danced out of the trees in a ruffled hoop-skirt, sipping tea, and singing “Bohemian Rhapsody” in a flawless British accent, but managed to blurt out, “Hell yes!”

  The two of them plunked down on opposite cushions and Jake lifted the lid. The ninja-girl’s stomach growled savagely when her olfactory sense organs took in the smell wafting up from the still warm dish, causing him to swallow a laugh as he began cutting into the quiche. She all but snatched the portion from him and, using her fingers to lift it from her plate like a slice of pizza, unashamedly took a large bite.

  “Mmmmm,” Kat moaned around the mouthful. “This is great! We own Mooney big time.”

  “For letting me use the propane stove in his kitchen, yeah.”

  Cho sat up straighter. “Wait, you made this?”

  Jake nodded and forked some of his own slice into his mouth.

  She looked down at the fluffy goodness in her hand. She could taste eggs—likely powdered, but who cared—and a hint of the same wild-growing, minced green onions used in dinner the night before, but there was more in there. Things she couldn’t possibly be

  tasting.

  “Where did you find the cheese? And mushrooms? And is that…?” Using two fingers, she pulled a large chuck of bacon free from near the crust. “Oh. My. God!”

  O’Connor grinned at her reaction.

  Kat shoved the piece into her mouth. Yep. It was real piggy.

  “Are you a wizard? Seriously, are you? Where did you find actual bacon?”

  “The cheese is just dried Parmesan. Plenty of that around. And Mooney had a few envelopes of precooked bacon left, along with an enormous can of mushrooms. I only needed a cup, so he’ll use the rest of them for something over the next day or so. I traded him two cases of Meals Ready to Eat for that stuff. They’ll go a lot farther towards feeding people in Langley than a half-pound package of bacon would anyway, so no big loss. Besides, I gave him every last meatloaf MREs we had. I won’t have to suffer through choking down another one of those again for a while, so I call that a win-win.” He took another bite and chewed critically. “The crust didn’t turn out the way it should, but then there’s no butter left anywhere now. I had to fake it with a little olive oil.”

  Kat was clearly stunned. “When did you learn how to cook?”

  “Hello? Ghost writer? Edited cookbooks?” O’Connor reminded her. “I kind of taught myself the basics when I was in my teens, but really only started preparing new dishes when I was in college. You can only eat so many pizzas, burgers, and packs of Ramen noodles before you want something more you know. Anything more. I’ve had some long conversations with Leo over the last few months, too.”

  Trying to listen and stuff her face simultaneously looked like it was proving to be a challenge, but Cho seemed game.

  “You should open a restaurant when we get over the Rockies.”

  Jake waved his fork at her and worked on his serving. “No way! I’d tell the first person who complained about the food to piss off. The Better Business Bureau would blacklist me in a week.”

  “I could take out the director,” she offered, all but inhaling the last of her slice. “No-one would know. Don’t worry, I’ll even be able to make it look like a zombie attack if I use a little bit of creativity.”

  “If I didn’t think you might be serious I’d say you had a deal. I’m certain whoever is in charge in the Safe Zone would frown upon assassination over culinary differences.” He opened the jug and poured a measure into her glass. “Fresh from the can. Go easy though, that’s a ‘Mooney Mimosa.’ He started making them just after everything went to hell by mixing equal parts water and peach schnapps into the Tang.”

  Kat took a swig. “Whoa! More like Rum 151!”

  “He didn’t say anything about that.” Jake sipped and his eyes widened. “Holy…! It’s like gasoline that’s been passed over a lifesaver!”

  “I know, it’s pretty good.” She downed the rest of her drink as he gaped on in horror, then shook the glass at him. “A little more here?”

  “Didn’t you all just have just have a ladies’ night?” He poured another—smaller—amount into her pint.

  She downed that one too. “Meh. It was okay I guess. Just a bunch of girls sitting around, getting plastered and trying to outdo each other with stories about how wild we’ve been.”

  “You? Wild?” While O’Connor’s tone implied disbelief, his face implied something else entirety. “No, surely not.”

  “Humph.” She gave him an amused glance. “Smart-ass gaijin.”

  “I do my best.”

  Cho stuck her tongue out at him.

  “You wouldn’t want your face to freeze that way, would you?”

  “There are worse fates.” She shrugged.

  “Like what?”

  “You could be on the wall right now with George and little Miss Big-Chested Blabbermouth, not sitting here with me drinking mimosas.” She had him there.

  “Awful mimosas,” he clarified.

  “Semantics,” she countered.

  Jake nodded conceding the point and saluted her with his liquid awfulness. Kat took the win gracefully, then folded her legs Indian-style to look out over the lake. She could see the western shore in the distance even though specific details weren’t visible, and wondered aloud, “Kind of pretty here, huh?”

  “Yeah. It is.”

  Cho pointed at the dam holding back the waters of the Neosho River that fed the lake. “Do you think we’ll be able to do something like that again?”

  O’Connor followed her gaze. “You mean the dam?”

  Kat nodded. “Uh-huh. Can we bounce back from this? I mean, I know it’s never going to be like it was before the maggot-heads: but what’s next? Will people start over from scratch, or try to pick up the pieces, or what? That’s assuming it’ll even be possible for enough of us to stay alive, you understand.”

  If he lived to be a thousand years old, it would never cease to amaze Jake how Kat’s mind worked. He’d been wondering that very thing from the beginning of the outbreak, but hadn’t seen fit to voice his concerns with anyone. Not even with Laurel. It would’ve depressed her.

  “Chances aren’t good. From what we’ve encountered so far—at least on this side of the Divide—society has reverted to tribalism.” He pulled that from what he remembered from the required Psychology 101 course he’d suffered through and tried to explain. “While tragic, that makes sense. It’s human nature to gravitate towards other people during hard times.”

  “Like primitive man did, back when we all still wore wooly mammoth hide as underwear.”

  “Gather together around a leader who was really strong—even if they were kind of a dick—who could protect and feed them.”

  “Exactly like that. We’ve seen it in spades. The Purifiers, Penny’s old group with Rebecca... Hell, even here in Langley. Mooney really stepped up when everything went to shit.
There’s no way these folks would’ve survived otherwise.”

  Cho snorted. “We did it too.”

  That was a touchy subject for him. “No, the rest of you forced the whole ‘leader’ thing on me. That’s nothing like—”

  “You don’t get it do you?” Kat looked back to him in amusement. “That’s exactly what we did. Many tribes chose whoever they thought the best person was to lead. That doesn’t mean they were the biggest, or baddest, or the most intelligent either. Sometimes, they were just good at organization. Sometimes they came up with a new way of building shelters, or finding new food sources during hard times.”

  Jake became worried. “Yeah, but sometimes they were monsters. Hitler, Stalin, Attila... David Koresh... There are plenty of examples of men who’ve become drunk on power, and then brought about incredible levels of suffering.”

  “What about Lincoln? Washington? Churchill? FDR? Gandhi?”

  “Did you just compare me to Gandhi?” O’Connor’s face was quizzical. “Because I don’t think I’d look very good in a diaper.”

  Cho laughed at the mental image. “That’s right! I forgot, you don’t do underwear.”

  “Eh?”

  “Don’t all Irishmen ‘go regimental’?” She teased.

  O’Connor sighed. “Dear Lord, you have no idea how many times I’ve been asked that question. What is it about kilts that turn American women into slobbering animals?”

  “You could blame it all on alcohol, I suppose. Wow. That came out way different than it sounded in my head.”

  “So you ladies get beer-goggles?” He asked incredulously.

  “I said it came out wrong. Give me a minute.” Kat’s forehead wrinkled in thought while he waited. “I think it’s because kilts aren’t the norm. I’m sure they’re more common in Great Britain and Ireland, but they’re still pretty novel here. You only really see a man in a kilt when there’s a parade, or a funeral, or if it’s St. Paddy’s Day, so of course that occasion brings the question to mind. It’s kind of the same thing with fruitcake.”

  “Huh?”