After The Virus (Book 1): After The Virus

by Archer, Simon

  “Yum, manure,” she said. “True organic farming.”

  “Yep,” I looked around and rubbed my neck. All the activity of the past few days was catching up with me. “We should check back occasionally and get a feel for the orchards.”

  “Fresh fruit would be nice,” she said. “Do you know how to make preserves and stuff?”

  “I used to help Grandma with it, but she did all the prep and cooking,” I replied. “So, not really.”

  “One more thing to check books for.”

  We finished our unspoken break and did a quick search of the rest of the farm buildings. The Norrises had a nice, new storage barn that had, among other things, a few boxes of root vegetables that must have been harvested towards the end of the season. There were turnips and radishes, onions, potatoes, carrots, and even a box of parsnips. All of these were stored in a walk-in cooler that covered about a quarter of the barn.

  “This is a treasure trove,” Jackie observed.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m going to bring the truck over so we can load it up before we corral the animals.”

  “We’ve got bags of rice and dried beans over here, too,” she called out as I started for the door.

  “Damn,” I complained. “We’ll have to make a second trip after we take the animals, or we could load up the trailer and then get the livestock on the second trip. What do you think?”

  “First trip is my vote,” she said. “The animals will be less work to load and unload since they move under their own power.”

  “That makes sense,” I said. “Alright, let’s finish packing up what we can, then we’ll offload and come back.”

  “Right.”

  I did bring the truck over to make loading it easier, and we managed to get most of the root veggies and dried rice and beans loaded up. That left quite a bit of fertilizer and a surprisingly robust collection of seeds, more than enough to plant all the fields and the house gardens.

  Jackie went around and wrangled the animals, leading them in a more or less two-by-two line into the livestock trailer. I watched in curious disbelief. Once again, if this wasn’t something I’d seen, I wouldn’t believe it. It wasn’t as fast or neat as the way she’d handled the two bulls, but it was the best job of herding I’d seen outside of sheepdog competitions.

  She hopped out and closed up the trailer, then looked at me and grinned brightly.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  “As I’ll ever be,” I answered.

  We piled into the truck, both of us now smelling strongly of livestock and mulch and good, old-fashioned dirt. Jackie flashed me a smile and leaned her head back tiredly against the headrest while I drove.

  “I don’t know about you,” she said slowly. “But I’m already tired.”

  “Would you think any less of me if I said I was, too?” I asked. “I haven’t worked this hard since basic training.”

  “I have a feeling it’ll be awhile before either of us get fat,” she said, chuckling a bit. “I think I should be good for the second run, but I’d like to carb up a bit before we leave again.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” I said. “I could use some food, too.”

  It had been a long few days. We’d accomplished a lot, but we’d been working almost continually for at least twelve hours a day, with short breaks to drive from place to place. There was still a lot to do, but once we’d accumulated all the supplies we needed, we could take a break before we did all of the building and organizing we needed to do.

  I figured I’d save that news for later. Jackie might just fall out if she knew that the usual reward for work well done, more work, was coming.

  The drive back to the farm was over quicker than I expected, and we didn’t talk nearly as much as we had earlier, but we were tired. We’d push for the rest of the day, then sleep late tomorrow if we could. Maybe I’d break out some beer or whiskey tonight.

  “What do you like to drink?” I asked.

  “Huh, what?” Jackie snapped her head up and gave me a bleary look. She’d been dozing while I drove.

  Good old power naps. They’d kept me moving through a fair bit of my military career.

  “Do you drink alcohol?” I tried again.

  “What college student doesn’t?” she countered.

  “Point,” I said. “Seriously, though, what sorts of booze do you like?”

  “Rum, tequila, and vodka, usually. Sometimes with mixers, but usually straight,” she replied. “Why?”

  “Damn,” I said with a laugh. “We might have some tequila back at the farm, and I may have some vodka in the cottage, along with a bit of cheap beer, but for rum, we’ll have to make a run.”

  “Are you meaning to get me drunk, Mister Forrest?” she asked in her best debutante voice.

  “Only if you let me,” I replied. “Mostly I was thinking in medicinal terms.”

  “Lubricate me out of my knickers?” she giggled.

  “Is that the only thing you’ve got on your mind?” I countered.

  “No. Sleep is pretty much first, but sex is a close second.” She gazed at me with bright eyes as I glanced over for a moment.

  “That’s pretty much where I am, too,” I said, braking easily to turn down the driveway to the farm. “Are you sure you want to finish up getting the rest of the stuff from the Norris Farm today?”

  “I know me,” she replied. “I’ll find an excuse not to do it tomorrow, drag you along, and spend the day sleeping and fornicating.”

  “That does have a certain appeal to it,” I mused, braking to a stop. “Where do we want to put the animals?”

  “I don’t know. The main pasture, I guess. It should be big enough until we can relocate some of them to the Roberts place tomorrow.”

  “That works for me. Time to work your magic.” I backed the trailer up to the main gate of the biggest pasture and put the Dodge in park. We had attracted the attention of the horses and goats, but the cows didn’t care. They just stood where they had been and watched us, chewing their cud.

  Jackie slid slowly out of the truck and made her way to the gate, opening both and then guiding the new gaggle of critters into their new digs while the current residents looked on. I half expected at least one goat to make a break for it, but none of them did. It was almost enough to make me believe in the supernatural.

  Maybe the young woman was actually a witch, and she’d enspelled me with her wicked wiles. I watched her finish up and close the gate, then reluctantly disembarked as well, and began unloading the bed. She joined me with a heavy sigh but didn’t shirk at all as she mostly kept pace with me.

  At this rate, we’d still have plenty of daylight when we returned to the Norris farm to gather the items we hadn’t been able to get this trip.

  Once we completed the unloading, we exchanged tired looks of resignation, piled back into the Dodge, and set out. This time, the empty livestock trailer would serve to let us carry more of the agricultural supplies.

  “You know ag, right?” I asked Jackie as I drove.

  “A little,” she replied, then shrugged. “Not as much as I’d like about planting fields, I’m afraid, but I do know gardens.”

  “We can find some books on it,” I said, managing a bit of a grin.

  “Very true,” she laughed.

  16

  Once we finally finished offloading the seeds, fertilizer, potting soil, and other materials, we had a quick bite to eat and went straight to bed after feeding and checking on all the animals. In a brazen display of wastefulness, I left the water heater on so we could wake up to the blissful joy of hot water instead of having to wait for it.

  Yes, we went to bed smelling like we’d worked all day in the fields, but neither of us cared. We were just that tired.

  Morning came all too soon, and I woke to the sound of the shower running. It was cozy and warm in bed, and I really didn’t want to get up, but I forced my aching body to get up and head into the bathroom. Jackie was in the shower, humming along to some tune I didn
’t recognize.

  I wondered if she was the kind who was self-conscious about sharing space with someone using the bathroom. Guess I’d learn real quick, I figured as I sat down.

  “Morning,” I said, voice a bit hoarse.

  “Hi,” she answered. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

  “Needed to be up, anyway,” I said, then yawned. “Too much to do.”

  “Going to join me?” she asked.

  “Think I just might.” Even tired and sore, there were just some invitations that you didn’t refuse.

  A bit later, but still early, with the morning chores done, we sat around the table in the dining room, eating the last of the chili. The cats watched us from the sideboard.

  “If you can deal with powdered milk, we can start eating cereal,” I proposed.

  “Or we could start actually making a hot breakfast,” she countered, pointing her spoon at me. “We’ve got eggs and bacon, so long as the power lasts, plus oatmeal and grits.”

  “I’m sold,” I said. “Maybe switch off who cooks and who cleans up?”

  “Sounds like a plan to me,” she replied, then turned her attention to the bowl of chili in front of her.

  I did the same, and we ate in silence for a while. The warm food, along with a slightly chilled Mountain Dew, did a bit to wake me up. I just couldn’t bring myself to drink coffee with chili, and Jackie seemed to share my thoughts on that. She had a Coke sitting open next to her bowl.

  At some point, she caught me looking and smiled. The two dogs milled around our legs, hoping for something to fall on the floor. Charlie was mostly good, but Sasha begged shamelessly, moving from one of us to the other.

  I smiled back, then looked down at my half-full bowl. It really needed more cheese, but I didn’t want to get up. After staring at it for a few moments, I finally worked up the energy to start to rise but was interrupted.

  “Do we still want to head into Montgomery?” Jackie asked between bites.

  “I think we should. The longer we wait to do anything, the bigger the chance something will go wrong,” I replied, idly stirring my own bowl with my spoon. “We’ve been lucky so far that nothing’s caught fire or exploded, I suspect.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she frowned. “I’m-”

  “Jackie, dear,” I interrupted. “There’s no need to apologize for anything. Either of us could have put a stop to things at any time, and we didn’t. It’s not your fault. It’s not my fault. Let’s just not worry about it, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said, giving me what I suspected was a look of relief.

  “Good,” I said with a smile. “Now, I ain’t complaining at all about anything that’s happened, and I hope you’re happy with things, too.”

  Jackie nodded and beamed, blushing brightly.

  “Hell,” I said with a grin. “Let’s try to keep it that way, then.”

  “But we still have to go to Montgomery,” she grumbled a bit. “Now I really understand why you want to make sure everything is secure here.”

  “Exactly,” I told her, nodding. “We saw several instances of fires started in abandoned areas because someone left a stove or a heater on, or even left a campfire unattended. There’s so much that can go wrong, now, with all the people gone. We can’t really afford to risk much of anything.”

  “Should we be…?” She looked at me, eyes wide, and chewed on her lower lip.

  “We can’t be afraid of everything, either,” I asserted. “You’re on the pill, for now, and both of us are clean of anything else, I’m sure.”

  Jackie nodded. “Mom drilled me to make sure I got regular checkups, especially if I was...umm...active.”

  I nodded and smiled faintly. “Guessing you were?”

  “Yeah,” she said, blushing. “I never had much luck finding guys that really clicked with me, or wanted the same things I did. Not until I met you, at least.”

  “My lucky day, then.” I grinned and set to finishing my breakfast while she lapsed into silence and did the same.

  Once we were done and washing up, she asked, “What do we do if we run into a fire or something?”

  “Avoid it,” I replied. We went together and got our gear. “If it happens here, we’ve got water and fire extinguishers. I’d say start with the extinguishers and use water as a last resort. We’ve got a risk of chemical fires around here, so best to use the right tool for the job.”

  “Got it.”

  We continued talking about safety and emergency response as we loaded up into the truck. I’d filled the gas tank from the stores last night once we’d put everything away, so we were good to go. The dogs gave us a noisy escort to the edge of the property and then faded back once I turned onto the road.

  That was when I caught a glimpse of black smoke rising up in a thick column above the trees to the Northeast. “Well, shit,” I muttered. “Speak of the devil.”

  “What?” Jackie looked over at me, then followed my gaze and swore as well. “So much for luck. Do we check it out?”

  “Yeah,” I shook my head. “Damn it all. I’m not sure what’s in that direction, but there are lots of things it could be. At least we can assess the situation and see if there’s much real danger to us here.”

  “So much for avoidance, huh?” she teased as I headed us in the direction of the distant fire.

  “This is close enough to home that I want to make sure there’s no risk to us,” I replied. I shouldn’t have felt defensive, but after just giving the advice to avoid things like fires, well, this just seemed like a big taste of karmic whiplash.

  Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, the fire was a good distance away, off the interstate, and not likely to spread. It was a convenience store, and, somehow, we’d missed the gas tanks going up. As low as the fire was burning when we arrived, I estimated that it had happened last night, probably while we were otherwise involved, or maybe after we’d collapsed for the night. Distance had probably played more of a part, though.

  “Well,” Jackie observed. “That sucks.”

  “I guess you see what I mean about surprises, now?” I asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” she replied. “I got it, but what the hell could have set it off?”

  I stared at the smoldering building and the ruins of its gas pumps. If the power had still been on, I’d have blamed a spark from that, maybe a rat gnawing on wires or something. Maybe there’d been some sort of freak electrical event last night. A storm with a lightning strike could have done it, but there was no evidence of rain or anything else in the area, despite the overcast sky.

  “Hell if I know,” I admitted finally. “Feral cat smoking a cigarette flicked it out when he drove by, and it chanced to set fire to one of the hoses?”

  “Don’t be an ass,” she muttered and frowned at me.

  “I’m not,” I said. “I really don’t know, and I can’t think of what it could have been.”

  “Oh, okay,” she reached over and put a hand on my shoulder. “Sorry, I just thought you were messing with me.”

  “No,” I said. “I really don’t know, and I don’t like not knowing.”

  Aside from some kind of accidental spark or mysterious lightning strike, the only thing I could think was that a fire had been deliberately set, and that thought made me nervous. It not only meant that there was another survivor around, but that they weren’t above just destroying shit. Maybe they were watching us, even now.

  I made a slow circle and scanned the nearby area while Jackie watched me curiously.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “Let’s get on the road, and I’ll tell you,” I replied, heading back around to the driver’s side of the Dodge.

  Once we were back on I-85, I accelerated up to seventy and held it there. Jackie was silent for a few more minutes, then opened her mouth to ask something.

  “Overactive imagination,” I said before she could ask me. “I started thinking that maybe, just maybe, someone could have set that fire. Then I started to worry that we might be being
watched, my skin started crawling, and I had to get us out of there.”

  “Did you see anything?” she wanted to know.

  “No,” I replied. “That doesn’t mean it wasn’t there, though.”

  “Just that you didn’t see it,” she finished my thought.

  “Right. Now with any luck, if it was someone with destruction on their mind, they won’t know where we came from,” I continued. There was absolutely no reason to hide anything from Jackie, not if I wanted her to be safe. We had to be on the same page, and I couldn’t keep secrets. Hopefully, she felt the same way, too.

  “You’re thinking that if it was a person, that by being destructive, they’re showing that they’re dangerous, right?” Jackie asked. She kept her eyes on me as I drove.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Someone would have to want to start a fire big enough that it’d get to those underground tanks and set them off.”

  “It really couldn’t be an accident?”

  “Maybe,” I admitted. “I just can’t imagine how.”

  She lapsed back into silence and turned to look out of the passenger window as the scenery rushed by. Time passed, and I focused on the road ahead. I didn’t like the sudden rush of paranoia that this event had given me. Humans were dangerous as hell, destructive ones even more so, and I hated to think that some crazy or murderous individual just might be out there.

  It bothered me even more that there was a chance they knew just as much about weapons and survival as I did.

  “Okay,” Jackie said at last. “I’ll back you up on this. Say it is somebody that’s out there, and they deliberately set that fire. How do we deal with them, other than hoping they don’t find the farm?”

  “Hrm,” I grunted. “I don’t like the idea of hunting them, and there’s probably a ninety-nine percent chance I’m wrong about it, and there was some kind of freak accident or storm last night that caused the place to catch fire.”

  “I get that,” she said. “I just want to make sure we’ve got the worst case situation handled.”

  “We’ve got dogs at the farm,” I said. “They’ll be a deterrent to anyone that isn’t excessively determined.”