by Lissa Bryan
Her cart hit an unseen obstacle, and the jolt knocked the knife out of her hand. Carly looked around for it, but it must have skidded under a shelf as she saw no sign of—
“Mother!” Merle appeared at the end of her aisle and ran toward her.
“No, please, Merle, it’s Carly Daniels! Carly!”
Merle’s eyes glittered with eagerness. He ran toward her with his arms outstretched. Carly backed away, her own arms stretched out to ward him off. Her foot tangled around an empty rack of potato chips, and she fell with a short scream of surprise.
Merle’s face was the brilliant red of the Infected, and sweat beaded on his forehead. He was grinning merrily as he bent over to grab her. But the grin disappeared when Biker Guy swung the nine iron into the back of Merle’s head. Merle fell like a sack of potatoes onto his side, out cold.
“Important safety tip,” Biker Guy said, “weapons only work if you keep them with you.”
Carly tried to blink back tears. “Is he . . . Is he dead?” She reached over to check him for a pulse.
“Jesus! Don’t touch him!” Biker Guy lunged forward and grabbed her hand before she could make contact. “He’s one of them!”
“I knew him!” Tears spilled down Carly’s cheeks against her will.
Biker Guy glanced down at Merle. “If he’s not dead, he’s going to wake up with one hell of a headache. If he is, I’ve just saved him from a lingering and painful end.”
He used his grip on Carly’s hand to pull her to her feet. She tugged her hand from his and dashed away her tears. “I hate just . . . leaving him here.”
“Ultimately, it makes no difference,” Biker Guy said.
Carly didn’t want to admit the truth of that statement.
Biker Guy propped the nine iron on his shoulder. “What’s your name again? Harley?”
“Carly,” she said, correcting him automatically. He must have heard her shout it at Merle. “Carly Daniels.”
“I’m Justin Thatcher.”
She stuck her hand out for him to shake, an automatic courtesy. He took it in his own massive paw and gave it a gentle shake. “What were you doing here?”
“Shopping.” Justin gave her a small smile.
“In the middle of the night?”
“Yeah, just like you are. What a coincidence.”
Carly flushed. It was rather obvious she’d been trying to avoid him. “Thank you for helping me.”
He handed her golf club back. “Told you I was a nice guy.”
Carly grabbed her cart. “Yes. Thank you. Bye, now.” She rammed the potato chip rack aside and hurried up the aisle.
“I’ll walk you back,” Justin said.
“No need. Thank you.”
She could hear a smile in his voice. “No trouble. It’s on my way.”
Carly stopped at the register and pulled out her checkbook. She wasn’t going to itemize as she had on her previous visits; one hundred dollars should more than cover it. She clicked her pen and began to write.
“What are you doing?” Justin asked. He leaned on the conveyor belt beside her and grinned.
“Paying,” Carly said shortly. She signed the check with her loopy signature and slipped it through the slot in the cash register’s till. His grin faded when he saw the list Carly had been keeping on the shelf beside it.
She knew what he was going to say, and she didn’t want to hear it. She quickly stuffed the cans into her canvas tote. She put her arms around the bag of dog food and tried to lift it out of the cart, but the position was awkward.
“Let me get that.” He lifted it easily and tucked it under one arm. “You have a dog?” he asked. She knew why he was surprised. There didn’t seem to be many dogs or cats that survived. She hadn’t seen one in weeks.
“Obviously. Why else would I be buying dog food?” Carly pushed her empty cart up to the front and tucked it into the row with the others.
He shrugged. “Because there isn’t much food for people left.”
Carly blinked. “So you think I would eat dog food?”
“It’s food. It’s not like it’s dirty or anything. The FDA monitors it just like food for human consumption.”
“Gross,” Carly muttered.
“Before this is over, I’ll wager you’ll eat worse things than dog food.”
Tears stung Carly’s eyes. “Stop it.”
He nodded. “Okay. I’m sorry.”
They walked in silence back to Carly’s apartment building. “I’ll take that.” She tugged at the bag of dog food. “Thank you.”
“You sure you won’t let me carry it up for you?”
The thought was alarming. “No, uh, that’s not, um, necessary. I’ll get it.”
He transferred the bag to her, and she staggered slightly under its weight. She tried to fish her keys out of her pocket, mentally kicking herself for not doing so before he handed her the fifty-pound bag. He watched with an expression of slight amusement as she struggled and juggled and tried to keep her tote from slipping off her shoulder.
“Need some help?”
“I’ve got it.” She managed to work a hand into her pocket and then promptly dropped the keys. He bent to pick them up, and she panicked. He had the keys to her apartment now!
But all he did was unlock the lobby door and hold them out to her. She snatched them from his hand and darted inside, where she felt safe. He stood on the other side of the glass door and watched as she charged up the stairs as quickly as she could.
Carly was exhausted and out of breath by the time she reached the third floor hallway. She set down the bag of food with a grunt and dropped the tote beside it. She braced herself on the doorframe for a moment to rest. She used to use the Stairmaster at the gym. She shouldn’t be so tired, but then again, she hadn’t been eating much these days and that could explain why she felt so weak. She grimaced at the bag of dog food. She wasn’t that desperate yet.
Carly unlocked her apartment door and dragged the bag inside instead of lifting it. Sam danced around her in circles. He was obviously praising her skills as a hunter. She tore open the top and scooped out a bowl of it. She had learned from her dog-training book that owners were supposed to give dogs the same food all the time in order to avoid upsetting their stomachs, but Sam seemed to be thriving on his varied diet.
She put all the cans away, except for a can of ravioli she opened and consumed on the spot. Both she and Sam finished eating at about the same time, and they settled into their spots on the sofa together. Carly stroked Sam’s fur absently, thinking about Justin, the Biker Guy. He’d had her at his mercy in the store after he’d hit Merle, but he hadn’t tried to hurt her. Instead, he’d offered to carry her groceries.
It made her nervous because she wanted to trust him. Her father had warned her about that before he got sick. He’d said there would be bad people out there who would pretend to be nice so that she would let her guard down. He’d warned her to always be cautious, always be vigilant, and to trust no one. She was on her own, just her and Sam. That thought made her feel small and lonely, made her want to hide in her little apartment, where she felt safe from the huge world outside. But that safety was an illusion. The door to the lobby was glass; it would only take one rock to break down that barrier. And her apartment door was made of thin metal over a foam core—meant for insulation and sound-dampening, not for security. One well-placed kick and it would fail.
She hugged Sam and wondered—not for the first time—if she should move somewhere else. But where? The thought of leaving her home and everything familiar was terrifying. She wanted to be home when the world returned to normal. She just wasn’t sure how long she was going to have to wait for that, or how she would survive in the meantime.
Justin, the Biker Guy, was still there when Carly looked out her window in the morning. She surprised herself by feeling strangely relieved. How odd that he had become something stable in her world.
He was cooking something. He had set up some kind of tripod over the
fire, and hanging from it was a strange, small, circular, flat surface with arms at the sides joined over the top. He was using it as a frying pan. He looked up and waved at her. She ducked behind the curtains.
Carly took Sam down to the interior courtyard using the back stairs. He bounded out the door and sniffed around, looking for the exact spot while she watched the windows around them, growing more nervous by the moment, as she always did. She felt like a rabbit in the middle of a football field. No place to hide.
“Hurry up,” Carly said to Sam, but he was intent on locating today’s precise deposit location, using criteria only dogs knew. After he finally finished, Carly cleaned up after him and dropped the plastic sack into the overflowing trash can. Back inside, where it’s safe. Sam followed at her heels. Like his namesake, he was always cheerful and exuberant. His tongue lolled out of the side of his mouth as he bounded around beside her.
Carly filled his bowl with dog food again, but something strange happened when she went to fill his water bowl. Nothing came out of the faucet when she turned the taps. There was a strange clunking and sputtering sound, but no water.
She tried the bathroom taps with the same results. Nothing. Carly felt her heart sink. She knew nothing about plumbing, so fixing it was impossible, and she had no idea what she was going to do. She could get bottled water from the store to drink, but that wouldn’t help when it came to hygiene and flushing her toilet.
Carly considered her options for a moment and then went over to the window. She unlocked the top and slid it open. It would only open partway, as a safety feature, but it was large enough for her to stick her head out.
Justin looked up from his cooking and waved to her. “Hi, Marly!” he called.
“Carly.” She corrected him automatically. “Um, Justin . . . Do you know anything about plumbing?”
“Sure.”
“My water doesn’t work.”
Justin stood, wrapped the handle of the skillet-thing in a cloth, lifted it off the fire, and set it aside. He walked over to stand beneath Carly’s window, craning his neck back to look up at her. “What do you mean, it doesn’t work?”
“I turned on the tap and nothing came out, and it made weird clunking noises.”
“The noises are from air in the pipes.”
“Oh.” That couldn’t be good. “How do I get it out?”
Justin shrugged. “I can’t tell you without looking at it.”
“Can you . . . can you at least suggest something for me to try?”
“Not without looking at it myself.”
Carly bit her lip. “Can you look at the pipes in the basement and fix it from there?”
“Nope.”
Carly was on the verge of telling him to forget it, but then she thought about not being able to flush her toilet. “All right,” she said. “I’ll be right down.”
She left the apartment door slightly ajar and walked downstairs to the lobby. Justin was waiting by the door. She hesitated for only a moment and then pushed it open for him. He strolled inside and started up the stairs as if he knew right where he was going. With a small frown of concern, Carly hurried to catch up to him.
She opened the door to the third floor hallway, and Justin blurted out, “Jesus Christ!” He grabbed Carly by the waist and thrust her behind him.
Startled, she peeked around his side to see what had alarmed him so much. “Oh, that’s Sam. He must have pushed the door open.”
“Carly, where did you get him?” Justin asked, speaking slowly, never taking his eyes from Sam. Sam, for his part, simply stood there and eyed Justin with curiosity, his head tilted to the side.
“I found him outside, trying to eat out of the trash. He’s still just a puppy.”
“That’s no puppy,” Justin said. “That’s a wolf.”
“Oh, don’t be silly.” Carly pushed past him, darting around the arm that tried to block her path, and went to rub Sam’s head between his fuzzy, triangular ears. “See? He’s gentle and friendly.”
“A wolf isn’t a dog, Carly. They’re not pets.” His tone was gentle, but firm, as though he were trying to get her to see reason.
Carly’s eyes flashed with anger. What did he think she was going to do? Say to Sam, Oh, sorry, you’re the wrong species, and toss him out to fend for himself? “I’ve had him since he was a baby. He wouldn’t survive out there alone.”
“Carly—”
She knelt and hugged Sam. “It’s none of your business! Go away! I don’t care about the water now.”
“All right,” Justin said, trying to sound soothing. “Calm down. I won’t take him away from you, okay? Now, let me see your pipes.”
Carly hesitated. Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea.
Justin spread his hands, as if to show he was unarmed, harmless. “Carly, if I was going to hurt you, I would have done it by now, don’t you think?”
She’d had a similar thought earlier. But it was another long moment before Carly led him into her apartment and pointed at the kitchen. He went inside and opened the cupboard doors under the sink. “Hmm. Interesting.”
“What?”
“I’ve never seen anyone put their cleaning products in alphabetical order.”
Carly sighed. She wanted to know how to fix her plumbing, not his opinion on her organizational skills. “Can you tell anything about the water?”
Justin unhooked the fat white pipe shaped like the letter J. He showed her the interior. “See? No water. Your pipes are empty, Carly. You used it all. The water is gone, and it won’t come back because there’s no electricity to run the pumps.”
“What am I going to do?” Carly wasn’t really asking him. She rubbed her forehead. Water had always been something that was just there at the turn of a tap. She had no idea what to do, and a sensation of dull panic churned in her gut.
“You can’t stay here.”
She had been thinking the same thing earlier, but hearing Justin voice it upset her. “This is my home,” she said. “I can’t just leave it!”
He was quiet for a moment. “What were you planning to do this winter? You don’t have a fireplace and the temperature is usually around freezing or just above. It’s not as cold here as most people think it gets in Alaska, but you could still freeze to death.”
She looked at him in confusion. It made little sense to her that Justin was worrying about winter when everything would surely be back to normal by then. Order would be restored, and the lights would be back on. Carly would be back to managing the souvenir shop, and the stores would be full of groceries.
“Go away,” she muttered.
“Carly—”
“Go away!” she cried. Sam, sensitive as always to her moods and correctly identifying Justin as the cause of her distress, let out a growl and bared his sharp little milk teeth. Justin didn’t even glance at him.
“All right, Carly. I’ll go. I’ll be outside if you decide you want to talk.”
“Just go!”
Justin nodded and pulled the apartment door closed behind him. Carly slid down to the floor in front of her silent refrigerator. Tears slid down her cheeks, and Sam licked them off gently. He wagged his tail, but Carly remained where she sat, unable to move or think.
When Carly peeked through the curtains the next morning, she found Justin sitting on his bucket by the fire, stirring something in a pot hung below the tripod while he read from a well-worn paperback. She slid the window open.
Justin waved to her and called “Hi, Charly!”
“Carly,” she said. He didn’t seem to be very good with names.
“Would you like some oatmeal? I made plenty.”
Her mouth watered at the thought of hot food. She’d never particularly cared for oatmeal, but it sounded absolutely delicious. But still Carly hesitated. She hadn’t figured out what Justin wanted. He could be dangerous. Just because he hadn’t chosen to strike yet didn’t mean he was safe.
“I have coffee,” he called.
That sealed
the deal. “I’ll be right down!” Carly called. She went into the bathroom and brushed her teeth, rinsing with water from one of the bottles she’d found by her door when she’d taken Sam for his last trip outside for the evening. She could only surmise it had been left by Justin—perhaps as a peace offering—though how he had gotten inside was anyone’s guess.
She thought it was very nice of him, especially after the way she had yelled at him yesterday. After she’d calmed down, she’d felt embarrassed about it. He was trying to help, even if he didn’t understand why she was so reluctant to even consider leaving her home.
Her wavy, caramel-colored hair was petulant at being denied its daily wash and conditioner treatment, so it frizzed and stuck out all over her head. Her vigorous brushing made things worse before she pulled it back into a ponytail. Her brown eyes were bloodshot from crying after last night’s bad dream about her parents.
Carly retrieved a bottle of maple syrup from the cabinet, just in case he didn’t have any, and put it into a small bag with a bowl, mug, and spoon. Justin appeared to be alone, so it would be silly for him to carry around extra dishware if he didn’t need it.
She put a leash on Sam and led him down the front stairs. Puppies needed to be socialized, according to the dog-training book Carly found at the grocery store. They needed to be around people in different types of situations in order to grow up to be friendly, well-behaved dogs. Sam was already very well behaved, though not due to any vigorous training on her part. He was sharply attuned to her moods and body language. All she had to do was look at him crossly to make him stop whatever he was doing, and he seemed to have a remarkable memory for those moments.
Justin had set up a second bucket as a chair for Carly. She sat down on it, and Sam lay down on the sidewalk beside her. “I brought some syrup.”
Justin smiled. “That’s great. All I have is sugar.” He already had enough dishes, made out of lightweight metal, and he scooped out a portion of oatmeal for her. “You might want to put your bowl under it since we don’t have a table. Those aluminum dishes can get hot.”
Carly did as he suggested and then drizzled syrup over her bowlful. “Thank you.” She handed him the syrup, and he did the same.
