A Matter of Days (10 page)

“Yeah, I can fire it.” I gave Rabbit a look that I hoped said to slide into the driver’s seat and be ready to move out if he needed to. His short nod led me to believe we were on the same
page. Twawki didn’t keep growling, but he wasn’t exactly showing signs of wanting to be Miss Tre’s friend, either.

I climbed out and took the rifle from her. Laid it against my shoulder. “Does it matter where I aim?”

“No, into the air is fine.”

I saw a V of Canada geese flying low overhead. I took aim and fired. I hit one and it tumbled out of the sky. I rubbed my shoulder and shook my ears to clear the ringing. I guess the practicing worked.

“Nice shot,” Rabbit said.

“Here she comes now.” Miss Tre pointed into the distance.

Across the fields a horse and rider covered the ground at a full gallop. From here I couldn’t tell if the rider was a man or a woman, but Miss Tre seemed pleased. “That’s Miss Othello. And Princess. You can give me the gun back now.”

I assumed Princess was the horse and Miss Othello the rider, but in this upside-down world I guessed it could go either way. Still holding the rifle, I tried to climb back into the Jeep, but Miss Tre’s walker was in the way, with her leaning on it.
How’d she move that fast?

The warning bells in my stomach began to ring. “Rab?” I said. Twawki heard it in my voice and began his low growl.

Miss Tre wrestled the gun from me. I think shock made me release my grip on it.

The rider held up a gun as she approached. “Don’t move.” Gray hair tumbled out of a big cowboy hat. “Where you from?”

“Uh, Seattle.”
Combat breathing, Nadia, remember—four counts in, four counts out
.

“What are you doing so far from there?”

“Heading east.” It was hard to concentrate with Rabbit’s wide eyes fixed on the gun that the granny pointed at me.

“Why?”

“We have family in Wyoming.”

“Where?”

“Outskirts of the park.”
Please don’t ask me what park I’m talking about
.

She jerked her chin toward the Jeep. “What’s in your car?”

“My brother, our dog, stuff from home.”

“Guns? Gold? Medicine?”

“What?”
Should we have all that?

“Do you have any guns, gold, or medicine?”

“No.” I tried to cover the shaking of my limbs by vehemently denying.

“Show me.” She gestured with the gun. “And if your damn dog gets out of the Jeep I’ll shoot it.”

Rabbit startled and made a soft noise. I moved around to the back door of the Jeep. “Robert, remember four in, four out.” Only Mom ever called him Robert and I needed Rab to keep his head. “Twawki, stay,” I commanded in my deepest dog-trainer voice.
Please know what I mean
. He didn’t move, but vibrated as if an electric current surged through him. I had a feeling that with one word from me, whatever that might be, he’d launch himself at the grannies regardless of his mangled paws.

I reached under the back of the driver’s seat hoping I remembered where I’d put them. A random can of ravioli came out first and then I touched the zipper of Mom’s cosmetic bag. I yanked until it slid free. I shut the car door, more to keep the dog in than to hide anything from their eyes. If they wanted to, they would toss everything out of the Jeep and take their pick.

“Here, this is our last can of food. And maybe there’s gold
in there.” I held out my offerings. The granny with the walker ripped the can out of my hand, dropped it into her housedress pocket, and tossed the cosmetic bag to the rider.

She unzipped the bag and held up the bottle of Mom’s perfume. “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?” She cackled. They both laughed as if they hadn’t in a long while.

“It’s the only thing with gold on it we have.” I tried to sound like an incompetent teenager. Only a moron would think the gold-painted plastic was real. Let them think I was dumb.
Let the enemy underestimate you, Nadia
. I heard Dad’s commandment in my head.

She flung the bag to the ground. “This isn’t real gold. You got your parents’ wedding rings?”

I wanted to throw myself down and gather it all up. “No.” Instead, I stood there and focused on my breathing. Keeping oxygen flowing to my brain was spectacularly hard to do.

“Do I believe you?” She narrowed her eyes and waited for me to flinch.

“They’re still on their fingers—in the ground,” Rabbit answered, one ounce pissed and twelve ounces instructive. Twawki added a rumble.

“Those gas cans—give us those.”

“They’re empty.” I shrugged, trying to seem unconcerned at losing them. One was empty, the others not so much. I took a step as if I was going to untie them.

They paused and shared a look. “You kids better hook up with a caravan. You’ll never survive out here.”

There are more cars out here? Of course there are
. “There’s a group of a dozen cars behind us coming this way,” I improvised.

“Why aren’t you with them?”

“They’re slow, lots of trailers”—I shrugged, behaving as if as a teenager my amusement was paramount—“we got bored.”

Rabbit nodded and huffed a sigh that might have been bored overkill but seemed to get the ladies to see us as incompetent.

“Tell you what, for that bit of information we’ll let you go. But listen up, head south through Utah. Do not keep heading this direction into Montana. There’s a militia that’ll marry you, kill your brother, and eat your dog.”

“She ain’t kidding.” Walker Granny nodded.

“Thanks.” I frowned.

Rabbit monkeyed over the seat as I opened the passenger-side door. I didn’t want to turn my back to them, but I wanted to get out of there before they changed their minds.

“How far behind you?”

“What?”

“The others—how far behind?” she repeated as if she began to smell my lie.

“Probably a day or two now.” I met her eyes and didn’t flinch. She nodded.

Once in the driver’s seat I hit locks on all the doors, raised the windows, and floored it in reverse. Reckless but too scared to care, I spun the wheel and turned us around. The Jeep’s tires bit into gravel and dirt along the side of the road. Rabbit was thrown against Twawki, who whined. “Sorry,” I said.

“Just get us out of here!” Rabbit yelled, wedging himself behind the seat.

Miles passed at a clip. I turned down the first smaller southern road I saw an exit for. Rabbit could figure out where we
were later. The sun lowered itself along the recliner of the horizon. “We gotta stop for the night.” I eased off the accelerator.

Rabbit climbed back over. “You did good. You didn’t act scared.”

“You think?”

“Yeah, better than I would have. I couldn’t breathe.”

“I guess we now know that roadblocks aren’t necessarily a good thing.” Would it have been too much to hope that survivors were kind and sweet?

“I’m sorry you had to give up Mom’s stuff,” Rabbit said in a small voice as he stared out the windshield.

“It’s okay, we need the room for supplies anyway.” My heart hurt a little.
A lot
.

“You convinced ’em. Dad would be proud.”

Quick tears stung my eyes and I blinked them away.
If I start crying I might never stop
. “There’s a farmhouse up ahead.”

Rabbit paled. “I don’t think I can handle going inside.”

“We don’t have to, there’s a big barn back there. There’s probably a place we can camp inside it.” I didn’t want to face the owners of the house either. “You sure you’re ready to stop?”

“Yeah, Twawki needs to pee.” Rabbit nodded, but I saw his muscles tense up as if waiting for the next blow. He used to be a kid who climbed trees and snuck candy and wasn’t afraid of anything. Dad’s death changed things.
Changed me too
.

I drove up a long, bumpy gravel driveway. We watched for any signs of life. “No one’s shooting at us.” A chicken trailed by six chicks dashed across the drive in front of us. I refrained from asking why they crossed the road, but I could hear Dad’s laughter.
He’d have asked
.

“It’s nice not being shot at.” Rabbit didn’t relax an inch.

“Can you drive?” I asked.

“Sure. Why?”

“I need to get out and open the barn door.”

The barn was the kind that movies showed—curved dome of a roof and painted red with a smaller door for people and a large sliding one for monstrous machinery.

“Take the gun and you shoot first.” Rabbit’s voice was strong. “Don’t be nice.”

Coming from my little brother this was almost laughable, but I nodded, holding the handgun with both hands. I approached the smaller door first. It was unlocked and the only smell that blew out was of hay and animals—not rotted ones. Just what I’d imagined a barn with horses and cows might smell like.

Somewhere nearby a chicken crowed.

I poked my head inside. A large sliding door on the opposite side of the barn was open. I didn’t see any animals, nor corpses of any kind. I nodded and leaned on the handle of the front sliding door. I couldn’t get it loose. I didn’t see a lock, but maybe it was rusted shut or something. “It’s stuck!” I yelled to Rabbit, and then shrugged, walking back to the Jeep and climbing in.

“What’s the deal?”

“The larger door is stuck. But there’s one on the other end.”

“There’s a fence.”

“I thought you liked demolition work?” I asked.

He grinned. “I can tear it down?”

“Enough for us to get inside, yeah.” I shut off the Jeep and we climbed out. It wasn’t hard to dismantle a few feet of fence.

Once inside the barn we fell into our routine. Scouting
around, keeping our eyes peeled as we set up beds. We knew to eat dinner when everything else was finished. We’d learned the hard way that we couldn’t keep food down when we cleaned Twawki’s infected paws. That night it took several hours. Again. His nose was dry and he was hot to the touch.

“Why won’t he eat or drink anything?” Rabbit asked.

“I think we need to find a clinic or something.”

“We can’t let him die, Nadia. It’s not fair.” Rabbit’s chin quivered, but there was only so much reassurance I could give him.

Maniacal squawking startled us to our feet.

“What’s that?” Rabbit yelled over the noise.

“It’s just a chicken,” I said as the bird raced out of the barn continuing to sound as though it was being strangled while singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

I moved closer to where the chicken had popped up from.

“Be careful.”

I peered behind a bale of hay. A nest of perfectly white eggs was tucked between the wall and the hay. “I found eggs.”

Rabbit loped over. I started picking up the eggs. Scrambled. Omelets. Deviled. My mouth watered with the possibilities.
How long has it been? Since we used up that dozen in the fridge. Months
.

“What if there are baby chicks in there?” Rabbit leaned over the hay and shone a flashlight at them.

“Would she leave them?”

“Um, I don’t know.”

“They’re cold to the touch. Wouldn’t she be sitting on them?”

“I don’t know.”

“We studied this in biology last year. They sit on them for weeks. I swear.” And then we dissected baby chicks instead of frogs. I left that part out. “We should eat some for dinner.”

The yolks were orange and the scrambled eggs were creamy. So good I almost didn’t miss bacon, English muffins, or orange juice. Twawki even ate a few bites.

As the last of the light fell, chickens came scurrying into the barn. A rooster exactly like the one on Mom’s dish towels pranced in and crowed at us before heading up into the rafters. Several sets of chicks and mothers found their sleeping spots around the barn. We used up water to brush our teeth and wash our faces. Made pallets up in the hay loft, leaving Twawki to sleep below. I’d learned the faster I fell asleep, the quicker the world was light again. So once Rab’s breathing evened out, I turned my brain off, refused to think about anything, and forced myself to sleep.

Blood-chilling, eaten-by-a-zombie-jump-five-feet screaming woke me from a sound sleep. Below us Twawki gave a woof and whined. I hit the flashlight realizing the screams came from my brother.

I tumbled gracelessly over to his thrashing. “Wake up. Come on, Rabbit, it’s a nightmare.”

He beat against me, slamming his elbow into my eye.
Ouch!
I held his shoulders with one arm while pinning his legs with mine. I was afraid he was going to hurt himself, or roll off the edge of the loft. He hadn’t had a night terror this bad since he was little.

“They’re dead. They’re all dead!” He sobbed, still so asleep I was afraid he’d never wake up.
What did Mom do?

I yelled in his face, “Wake up! You’re having a nightmare!”

He continued mewing. “We’re gonna die too.”

I started singing one of Mom’s favorite songs from the 1980s—I was off-key, didn’t really know the words, but I made up for it in volume. I tried rocking him, but he wasn’t that much smaller than me anymore.

Finally, by the second verse Rabbit stopped screaming long enough to gulp air.

“Dia?”

“You’re okay, you had a nightmare.”

“I peed myself.” His voice was slurred like he was still half-asleep.

“It’s okay, Rab. I’ve done it too. We’ll get a new sleeping bag for you. You can have mine. You want help cleaning up?”

“I’m not a baby.” He dropped the sleeping bag over the side of the loft. I kept my eyes lowered so he wouldn’t be embarrassed.

“Okay.” I climbed down and got Twawki to eat a little more of the cold eggs. I wasn’t sleeping another wink. Dawn couldn’t be far away.

Rabbit made a neat pile of his soiled clothes and slunk over to me.

“You want to stay here today? Take a nap later? Just chill?”

Rabbit shrugged, petting Twawki’s head. “What was in the shot Uncle Bean gave us?”

“I don’t know.” Something that helped us fight off the virus. Something that kept Mom alive even after she developed symptoms and was sick.

“What was in the box he gave you?”

“You’ve seen the map.” I swallowed, not sure my younger brother really needed to hear this truth. “The gun.”

“That wasn’t all.”

“No, not all. He wrote me a letter. And there were pills.”