“You have a plan, right?” Jackie asked finally, just as I was slowing the truck to turn off.
“I’ve got the start of one,” I admitted. “I wanted to talk with you a bit more and see if we can turn it into something grander than that.”
“Perhaps I can help, then,” she said. “I was once known to be quite good at grand.”
I gave her a sidelong look. Her face was unreadable, save for a faint smile that teased the corners of her full lips.
“Good,” was all I said.
“I suppose you need to know what I can do,” the young woman continued. “Well, first, I did grow up on farms, so I know what to do with animals. I loved the outdoors, so I learned to hunt, fish, camp, and such. All the boys were kind of scared of me until they decided I was one of them. It was fine, I guess.”
“Once I graduated high school, I went on to Auburn for a wildlife ecology and management degree. I was looking for a job in the park system that would let me spend time out in the wilderness.” A soft sigh escaped her, and she leaned her head back on the headrest. “I was also a cheerleader. It was a lot of fun, and it kept me in shape, along with rock-climbing and swimming.”
So this was life stories one-oh-one, I thought. Jackie was certainly a treasure with even half the skills she implied. I was rather pleasantly impressed as I turned off the paved road. The truck and trailer bounced a little bit as we rolled down the dirt driveway.
“What about you, Henry?” she asked. “What’s your story?”
There it was, the question I’d both expected and dreaded since we met. I was pretty sure Jackie had seen the photos that Grandma had of me in my dress blues and a couple of my deployment photos that I sent back.
“How about I tell it to you once we get the animals situated, make ourselves some coffee and an early dinner?” I asked.
Hopefully, she’d settle for that. I didn’t like talking about myself for lots of reasons, but trust was earned, and she had laid out her basic background for me. I felt obligated to do the same.
“I can be patient a while longer,” Jackie replied. “And you’re right, I’m starving, and I’m sure the animals are anxious. I’m pretty sure that we’ve got a lot to talk about, too.”
“We do,” I said, nodding. “And even more to actually do.”
7
Dinner ended up being a little later than I expected since my search of the pantries and icebox turned up the fixings for a big old pot of chili. The frozen meat and such wouldn’t keep that long without power, so it was probably best to go ahead and cook it up.
At least the stove was gas. I turned the heat down to simmer and wandered back into the dining room where Jackie sat, Ghost and Pepper watched from atop the sideboard as the young woman lounged at the table with Sasha in her lap and a book open where she could read it without the dog getting in the way.
“What’s that?” I asked as I joined her.
We’d been busy as hell for a couple of hours after getting back from the LaGrange region, but the animals were all nestled away in their pens and pastures, fed, watered, and introduced. There had been no issue introducing the new critters to the old. Even Sasha had gotten on with the girls and the Roberts’ dogs. It was the strangest thing I’d seen, but then I shouldn’t have been too surprised, Jackie was a regular animal whisperer.
“Oh,” she looked up and smiled faintly at me. “I just wanted to start researching what we might need to grow and when, and there were books on small plot gardening over there.”
Jackie pointed at a small bookcase that sat by the sideboard, mostly ignored by the cats. They continued to stare at her after glancing dismissively in my direction.
“Cool,” I said and put my hands on the table. “I’ve been thinking more about what we need to get all this in order…”
“Feeling intimidated?” Jackie asked with a faint quirk to her lips.
“Maybe,” I said with a snort. “This is just a situation that’s so outside anything I ever expected, that I’ve got to make it up as I go along.”
“As we go along, you mean,” she asserted. “I reckon I’m all-in, Henry, but you owe me a little bit of a storytime like you promised.”
“I did, didn’t I?” I let out a sigh and leaned my head back. The smell of the cooking chili was already making my stomach rumble in anticipation. I always did make a mean batch, especially with the home-grown vegetables and butcher shop meat from local cows that Grandma kept around. “I best get started, then.”
“Yep,” she said.
“Fine,” I said, then laughed and shook my head. “There’s no big secret, Jackie. My name is Henry Forrest. I did six years in Uncle Sam’s Army about five years ago. I have a mechanical engineering degree, lived with my Grandma on the farm here, and owned a small auto shop about three miles away.”
“I served in the Middle East, mostly Afghanistan, as a Ninety-One B,” I continued.
“A what?” she asked.
“Wheeled vehicle mechanic,” I replied. “I kept the humvees running, tinkered with tanks and half-tracks, and generally learned every damn thing there was to know about internal combustion, gears, and hydraulics. It wasn’t the most glamorous job, but I did end up seeing a bit more action than some. Enough to get a Purple Heart and a couple of meritorious conduct medals.”
“You were shot?” Jackie asked, eyes wide.
I nodded. It really wasn’t something I liked to talk about, but maybe it had been long enough.
“Three places,” I told her. “Fortunately, nothing important was hit, so I just had a hospital stay away from the war zone and a few weeks of P.T. Then it was back to work until I finished out my term.”
“About two years in, I lost my parents to a car accident. I almost took early out, but then decided that I needed to stay where I was and finish my term. It’s what they would have wanted, and it’s what I wanted.” I paused for a moment, leaned back in my chair, and pushed my hair back from my forehead with a casual gesture of my left hand. Then I looked over at Jackie. “It kept me out of trouble.”
“Not all trouble,” she observed. “Or you wouldn’t have gotten yourself shot.”
I laughed at that. She had a way about her, and I found it easy to talk to her. Stories I’d never wanted to tell rose in my mind, and I had to fight to hold them back, to keep the words from streaming forth from me in an unending flood. After all this time of people wanting to hear my war stories, I’d found one person that I actually wanted to share them with.
“There’s quite a bit more,” I said slowly. “But I think I’ve said enough for now. If you knew everything about me, we wouldn’t have a lot to talk about, would we?”
“It’s kind of fascinating,” she said, leaning forward to rest her elbows on the table and her chin in her folded hands while she looked at me. “I never really got to talk to any veterans, at least not recent ones.” She frowned slightly. “I get the feeling that you don’t really want to talk about it, and that’s okay. All things in their time, I guess.”
I nodded slowly.
“Thank you for telling me about yourself,” Jackie said with a smile. “Speed-dating session one is now over, and you might want to check the chili to make sure it hasn’t scorched.” She left the book open on the table, helped Sasha down from her lap, and rose, then stretched.
Speed-dating session? I wondered to myself. A joke, I guessed, but I couldn’t read her as I stood as well, flashed a pensive smile, and headed for the kitchen. She followed and started to putter around with cleaning while I checked the bubbling pot, and stirred the dark-red, delightful-smelling contents.
The chili was ready, by the most basic sense of the word, but it would be best if it simmered at least another hour, then sat overnight. I said as much, but Jackie just shook her head.
“I’m way too hungry to wait for perfection,” she said. “Where are your bowls?”
I pointed to one of the nearby cabinets and said, “Stoneware and dishes are there,” then indicated a draw
er, “Silverware is there. Napkins and such are in the sideboard.”
“Thanks,” Jackie said and went about setting places while I filled two bowls with chili, pulled out some cheese and sour cream, and oyster crackers.
Two places were set, and she was waiting impatiently in one chair when I emerged with our food. I set down a bowl in front of her, then took the second place with my own bowl.
“Are you sure that’s still good?” the young woman asked, pointing at the sour cream.
“Yeah,” I nodded. “The fridge wasn’t without power for more than a day, best I could tell. It’s the only thing running on the generator in the basement.”
“I thought that’s what I heard. About how long will we be able to depend on power?” she asked while she added a generous helping of sour cream and cheese, then shook some crackers over the whole thing.
“A lot depends on what I can do with scrounging up fuel, and if I can find a good diesel generator. The ones we have here, just running the fridge, and maybe a couple of other items will use about ten gallons a day. All the gas-powered stuff like the water heaters and the stove is propane. A full tank of that lasts about a month, but it’s been around ten days since the last refill of the house tanks.” I added cheese and crackers to my own chili and stirred it while I spoke. “Propane, unlike gasoline, doesn’t go bad.”
“I’d heard that about gas. Guess that’s one thing they got wrong in all the apocalypse movies,” she observed around a mouthful of chili.
“Some of them had operating refineries, though,” I mused. “Gas Town in Fury Road, the settlement in Road Warrior. I’m not real familiar with the zombie shows, though. Wasn’t the sheriff guy in Walking Dead mostly riding a horse?”
“Rick Grimes, and yeah, he went into Atlanta on a horse in the pilot.” She was tearing into the chili like there was no tomorrow.
I let her eat without any more questions and dug into my own bowl with gusto. It was a good batch with nice mouth burn and texture since I’d added the beans a bit later. My chili was never the same thing twice, and this was no exception. I could easily admit the batch was one of my better ones, and we’d likely be able to put away some of it.
Jackie was the first to go for seconds, then I did, and we slowed down a bit on the second round.
“I didn’t realize just how hungry I was,” she commented. “I don’t remember eating much of anything until now.”
“You did,” I said. “Just not much. I didn’t, either. This pot might not last more than a day or two.”
She laughed and shook her head, then looked down at her bowl and back at me before saying, “You said you were thinking about a plan. I want to help.”
“You are helping,” I said. “But I’d like you to take over the animal chores particularly. You’ve worked wonders with them after just meeting most of them yesterday, and, frankly, you’re a lot better with critters than I am.”
“Okay,” she said. “Anything else?”
“Probably quite a bit,” I said. “We’ll share cooking and cleaning. Do you know anything about mechanics, solar power, or electricity?”
“No, but I can hunt, fish, and field dress my kills,” she countered.
“Nice,” I said with a slow nod. “We’ve got overlap there, so when it comes down to it, we can play hunter-gatherer. How about edible plants?”
“I know which ones not to gather,” she replied. “What about you?”
“Survival training,” I answered. “Mostly desert, though, which we won’t necessarily have to worry about. We’ve got three wells on the property with both manual and powered pumps.”
“That’s really going to be handy,” she said. “Could we maybe build an elevated tank or something, so we have water pressure?”
“So you don’t know mechanics or electricity, but you know how a water tower works?” I teased.
“I read,” she retorted. “I wasn’t in college on a cheerleading scholarship, you know.”
“I didn’t, but that’s pretty damn cool, Jackie.” Well, it was, even though with the current situation, a lot of degrees and study programs had been rendered absolutely worthless. This girl, though, had a good survival skillset, and I meant to hone that over the weeks to come, so long as she could put up with me.
We finished eating and cleaned up. I turned the heat on the pot down even further before heading out to sit on the porch. Jackie followed. I took a place in a heavy wicker chair, and she took the obligatory Southern rocking chair.
For a time, we sat in silence as the sun kissed the horizon below the trees. The shadows grew longer, and the lack of the usual lights, outside of the little solar ones I’d installed along the walkways, hinted at a dark night ahead, especially since it seemed to be a new moon.
“I need to go out looking for a fuel tanker tomorrow, and maybe a propane truck or three,” I said at last. “It’ll be easier with two people.”
“I’m game,” Jackie said, the rocker creaking as she shifted. “Should we light a few lamps before it gets too dark?”
“Probably a good idea,” I replied. “That reminds me, we’ll need kerosene or some other fuel-oil for lamps, as well as candles.”
“Where are they, and I’ll go get them?”
“Look in the pantry, top shelf,” I replied with a gesture back towards the house. “There should be a couple of storm lanterns and some matches. I keep the propane ones out in the workshop.”
“Cool.” Jackie stood and brushed by me on her way inside, and I leaned back and closed my eyes, letting my ears try to track her as she moved through the darkened house.
From the foyer and sitting room into the kitchen wasn’t a stretch, but I lost track of her after that. A few minutes later, I heard her again, coming to the door with the clink of glass and metal coming with her. I smelled the burning wick and oil and felt the light.
“I wasn’t gone that long,” she protested, thinking me asleep.
“I’m awake,” I told her. “I was just listening.”
“Right,” she said dubiously, setting the lamp on the porch railing with a quiet clank and clatter.
I opened my eyes and turned my head to watch her settle back down in the rocker.
“Thanks for doing that,” I said.
“No problem,” she said, leaning forward and putting her elbows on her knees as she stared out into the yard. “It’s so weird how quiet the world has become. Do you think this happened everywhere?”
Considering my early attempts with radios and other communication devices weren’t that extensive, I couldn’t be completely sure, but my gut told me that it was very likely.
“I think so,” I replied after a moment’s reflection. “That doesn’t mean I’m going to stop looking for survivors. I just don’t plan to get my hopes up.”
“Yeah,” she mused. “It’s just us.”
There was an odd wistfulness to her voice that caught me, and I gave her a sidelong look. Her expression was still as she kept her eyes focused out into the growing night, and I could read nothing. I turned my gaze back to the yard and leaned back in my chair. It creaked under my weight as we settled into a comfortable, thoughtful silence.
8
Jackie had breakfast cooking when I made it up to the house in the dawn hour of the next day. The animals had bedded themselves down but were stirring a bit. A light fog hung in the air, and it was cooler, I thought, than it had been the day before. If we had a cold front coming, then I’d definitely want to prioritize getting additional tanks of propane laid in, along with firewood.
I’d slept fine and woke up at my usual time. The lingering ick that had been clawing at the back of my head and the pit of my stomach was gone. Hell, I felt better than I had in a while. Even the old aches from my war injuries didn’t bother me.
I opened the door to the smell of bacon, pancakes, and eggs sizzling away in an array of cast-iron cookware that Jackie tended with the nimbleness of a short-order cook. She didn’t even glance my direction when I stuck
my head into the kitchen.
“It’ll be ready soon,” she called to me. “Go sit down and I’ll bring things out.”
“Cool,” I responded. “Thanks.” If breakfast was half as good as it smelled, I’d probably propose marriage. As it was, it was hard not to try to sneak in to steal some bacon before going to sit in the dining room. Jackie had already set the table, and I took a place.
It wasn’t long like she said, and a couple of minutes after I settled in, she came in first with a tray of pancakes.
“You can get started,” she said, before turning to return to the kitchen.
“Do you need a hand?” I asked after her.
“Nope,” she replied. “I got this.”
She certainly did. Breakfast was pancakes with warm syrup, butter, scrambled eggs with cheese and thick-cut bacon. I wasn’t about to complain about her digging into the food stores. Non-perishables, even with the generator-powered refrigerator, needed to be used before we started digging through the cans and dried foods.
I thanked her again for cooking and started loading my plate. There was more than enough food here for a family of eight, but we had a busy day ahead, and lots of calories to burn.
She matched me bite for delicious bite, with a broad grin on her face. Few words were exchanged during the whole meal, but we stuffed ourselves remarkably full. There was a normal-sized meal of leftovers for two left when I finally conceded defeat. Jackie hiccuped and pushed back from the table as well and gave me a queasy grin.
“I think I overdid it,” she said.
“You and me both,” I added. “Where d'you learn to cook like that?”
“I worked at a mom and pop diner as the breakfast cook on Saturday and Sunday, and the dinner cook on weekdays. Everything had to be just so,” the young woman replied, then leaned back in her chair and folded her hands over her stomach. “Can we sit a few before heading out?”
After The Virus (Book 1): After The Virus Page 5
