Assuming Room Temperature (Keep Your Crowbar Handy Book 3) (20 page)

There was bound to be pancake mix in there somewhere. Maple syrup too.

CHAPTER NINE

Jake and company rumbled into Langley just over two hours later.

They’d taken the long way back by circling far to the west, paralleling Highway 44 as whey worked their way south to cut east again along Route 412. It had been a long drive.

“Whoa! What happened to you guys?” Henry Sampson was one of the men standing guard a-top the town’s western barrier, riot shotgun in hand, looking goggle-eyed at the schmutz-coated vehicle.

“Some of us got inventive.” Jake’s tired gaze flicked to Kat and Elle for a moment. “Any problems today?”

Sampson’s massive shoulders rose and fell. “Meh. Not too awful much. About a dozen of the things in the last few hours, but other than that it’s been quiet. Oh! Did you happen to hear a big-ass explosion an hour ago? There’s a huge smoke cloud up—”

“Dude...” O’Connor pointed at a charred zombie hand stuck in the gap between the hood and their Hummer’s crash plate.

The hulking man smiled, bright teeth contrasting against his weather-darkened complexion. “George is gonna be pissed he missed the fun, isn’t he?”

“Please open the gate.” Jake pulled one of the few remaining American Spirits from the pack in his vest pocket and lit up with his battered Zippo.

“Those things will kill you, you know,” Barker called from the backseat. “Also, second-hand smoke has been proven to cause—”

The doctor broke off when he noticed O’Connor’s unblinking stare coming at him from the rear-view mirror.

“I’m just saying.”

“Doc, there’s someone you need to talk to even more than me about his smoking habit. His name’s George.” Jake was just a little too done in
not
to set up that conversation. It was sure to provide much-needed amusement later. “Beatrix back there is his niece, and she can tell you, unlike me, he puffs away all the time. Smokes Cubans too.”

“Dear Lord. How can he stand them? I’ll speak with him immediately, after I’m settled in.”

Barker missed Jake’s sarcastic tone, but Cho didn’t. She leaned over and whispered to him.

“That’s mean. Funny, but mean.” Kat’s voice was almost obscured by the noise of their Humvee’s engine, even though her lips brushed lightly against his ear. “It’ll be a blood-bath.”

O’Connor grinned as the dump truck that made up the bulk of Langley’s back door rumbled away. He dropped their Hummer into gear again then pulled through swiftly, and a swell of relief passed over him when once the barrier clanged shut once more. They drove east until reaching Beach Drive and turned left to follow the shoreline. Ripples in the current on The Lake of the Cherokees glittered in the afternoon sun, postcard-perfect and slightly painful to his still aching head, but still creating a nice image. With all the horror in the world—especially now—Jake would take whatever small comforts he could get.

When he parked before the front of Sunset Bar and Grill the survivors began exiting the Troll, Jake simply leaned back in the seat. What had originally been a supply run not only became a rescue, but an extermination as well and he was tired. Very little about life nowadays
didn’t
exhaust him. Dealing with the creatures, fighting other unstable or malignant-minded humans, attempting to mediate personality conflicts within their group, keeping them all alive... It was wearing on him something fierce.

“Hey there, hero. You coming?”

Jake opened his eyes and turned his head left to see Kat standing there on the Troll’s running board. She’d opened his door without him noticing, and was bending over slightly to peer at him beneath the roof’s edge.

“It’s alright, you go ahead. I’ll be there shortly.”

“Nah, I’d rather stick around and bug you.” She crossed her legs, hung her grandfather’s sword over the driver’s side mirror, and then leaned a shoulder against where the door and frame met.

O’Connor put one his ‘stern’ face. “I need a minute to myself, Kat.”

Cho raised her eyebrows and laughed.

So much for stern,
Jake mused.

Kat turned serious. He’d only seen her do so a few times since they’d known each other, and the intensity in her eyes was surprising. “What’s up?”

Oddly, Jake didn’t even think about trying to lie. “I’m tired. Bone tired. If we actually make it to Pecos, the first thing I’m going to do is sleep for a week. Then we’ll worry about getting over the Rockies... I know you’re able to deal with all this better than most. George told me about everything you did while I was, well, out of it. You did a
fantastic
job keeping it all together. You’re... Arggh! What’s the word I’m looking for?”

“Awesome?” Cho quipped helpfully. “Bad-ass? Devastatingly sexy?”

O’Connor scowled. “Why do you turn everything into a joke? I do know you’re not as scatterbrained as you pretend to be. And no. None of those, but It’s right on the tip of my tongue.”

Cho waited patiently. Patience wasn’t really her thing, but she managed.

His brow furrowed deeply in concentration, then Jake’s face lit up. “Amazing! That’s the one. Amazing.”

She put on her most vapid expression. “I am, aren’t I?”

O’Connor chuckled. “You’re horrible.”

Kat hadn’t heard him laugh,
really
laugh, since back when he’d met Laurel that night a Bueno Dave’s. It was nice. Taking hold of his hand and ignoring Jake’s protests to the contrary, she pulled him from the cab and bumped the Hummer’s door shut with one hip.

“Come inside with me.” She insisted,

Jake gave her a wry look. “You don’t actually understand the meaning of the word ‘no’, do you.”

“No.” She tugged him gently him towards the Sunset. “Hurry. Something in there is smelling pretty yummy, and I’m starving here.”

They mounted the stairs hand-in-hand and Jake had to admit, whatever was on the menu for community dinner that night
did
actually smell good. Moving through the doors and into the lobby, the pair came to a dry erase board someone—presumably Mooney—had placed on a chair outside the dining hall. It read:

**
Spaghetti Tuesday Canceled
**

Cornmeal battered salmon cakes to be served with

-mashed potatoes (powdered)

-hush puppies (Stove Top Stuffing balls)

-baked beans (fresh from the can!)

Drinks: Dandelion Tea, Coffee, Water.

No complaining. Unless you want a slap. In which case, complain all you want.

O’Connor didn’t know what to make of that. “Um...”

“Who cares? It’s not MREs! I’m eating it!” Kat made for the hall and he had to hurry along in her wake. She refused to release her grip on his hand. “I swear, if I had to watch George get all excited over getting the Linguine with meat sauce one more time...”

The dining room was already full of people, many of whom were nearly finished with their meals. Most were a bit grungy and wore slightly threadbare clothing, but that was normal. No more laundromats due to Doomsday rolling around. He and Kat didn’t look much better. Grass stains and mud were plain on Jake’s ensemble from crawling through the foliage with Bee when they’d approached Grady General, along with a few speckles of blood scattered here and there. Bullets tended to send body fluids flying in every direction, and he’d been pretty close to the ghouls who’d caught rounds behind the ambulance.

Kat looked a
little
better. There were a couple goopy spots on her shirt—since the driver’s window had been down when she’d gone GTA in their Hummer—and like O’Connor, had some smears on her face, neck and arms from all the smoke generated by Elle’s dynamic solution to the Vanita horde, but all-in-all still looked darned good.

He noticed that fact as his pretty companion raced them to the buffet station, and Jake paused to take a better look as she grabbed a pair of plates for them. Even with the grunge, Kat still stood out among the rest of them. And not just due to her blue hair, either. Her personality bubbled through when she spoke, causing most people to smile despite the desperate times they lived in, and her slimly-muscled physique caught many an appreciative glance from men (and a few women) as diners began clearing their plates and exiting the hall.

Jake saw Mooney and a pair of older women working the buffet-style serving line to the right as he thankfully took the plate Cho thrust at him and stepped beside her to look at the offered foodstuffs. It didn’t look too bad.

“Load me up,” Kat told the Sunset’s proprietor firmly.

Mooney laughed. “Canned salmon fritters and sides, comin’ at ya’.”

Once they’d taken seats at a table near one of the hall’s large bay windows, Jake and Kat dug in with gusto. The corn-meal battered fritters were pleasantly crispy, and had wild green onions diced throughout that cut the overpoweringly fishy flavor common to salmon. O’Connor tasted a dash of garlic powder too as he chewed, happily mumbling his appreciation. The potatoes were bland, and he’d never been a fan of baked beans, but he ate them anyway. Not doing so wasn’t an option because, unlike prior to civilization going belly up, no-one wasted food anymore. If you liked what you were eating: great. If you didn’t: it was fodder. Just hold your nose, close your eyes, think of Christmas, and swallow.

“Mooney’s going to spoil us.” Cho popped one of the stuffing balls into her mouth and noshed away happily. “Oh. My. God. These are
fantastic.”

“Always liked Stove-Top,” Jake agreed around a mouthful of fritter. “Never thought to have it with seafood though. It has a lot of rosemary, and that goes great with nearly any type of fish.”

Kat took a swig of her dandelion tea. “This is good too. Laurel used to make it when we’d go to the Ren-fairs. Way cheaper than paying six dollars for a—”

Her voice cut off and she looked at Jake apologetically.

He continued chewing, gaze focused on his plate as he shook his head. “I’m not going to go catatonic again.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s alright.” Keeping his eyes downcast, O’Connor pushed his empty plate to one side. “I’m gonna head over to the western barricade. Let Rae know we found
most
of what she asked for.”

“I’ll come with you.” Kat said quickly when he stood.

He shook his head. “You relax and finish eating. I’m going to walk, so you drive the Hummer back to the Mimi once you’re done.”

Cho looked unconvinced. “Are you sure?”

“I just need time alone to gather my thoughts. It’s not like any of those things can breach the town’s barriers anyway, so I’ll be fine.”

O’Connor made his way between the now-sparsely occupied tables without meeting anyone’s eyes. He didn’t want any company, and left the hall without saying a word.

If he’d looked back, he’d have seen the worried expression on Kat’s face.

He began striding towards the center of Langley. After rounding Little Blue-Disney State Park and passing Island Outfitters—the only real ‘store’ left in the mostly abandoned town—the sound of quickly approaching footfalls reached his ears. While it was likely one of the little township’s survivors, Jake had learned long ago not to take chances and made ready to draw his Hammer.

The blonde-haired Gwen came running at him from around the corner of ‘Pistol Pat’s’. Pat’s had been a mom-and-pop ice-cream shop. One of the little small-town “drive-up and have a seat on one of the picnic tables” huts that had no dining room or indoor seating. It had just enough room for inside for four or five employees to constantly bump into one-another as they took orders at the window for Coney dogs, malts, and soft-serve cones. The hut was dark now, its orange and red neon never again to blaze like a beacon of better times in the humid summer night.

Gwen came skidding to a halt when she saw O’Connor half-crouched, hand on his repeater. “Whoa!”

Jake let out the breath he’d been holding and straightened. “Sorry. I just heard someone running at me.”

“No problem. Jumpy much?”

Like Beatrix, Gwen hadn’t been with their party when they’d originally set out from Columbus. Jake and company had rescued her from a group of Corn-Fed-Red assailants who’d tied her—
and the now deceased Donna—to a pair of pool tables in a pizza shop, when they’d been searching for a pair of off-road motorcycles. Their captors were currently fertilizing the area around the
pizzeria.

Elle had blown most of them up when she’d shot a rocket propelled grenade into the restaurant’s large propane tank out back, and Kat had shredded the last with the Troll’s mini-gun.

“Being cautious.” Jake started walking again. “Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean zombies aren’t trying to eat your face. Did you need something?”

Gwen fell in beside him, stretching her legs to keep up. “Nah. I ditched Leo and Elle back at the Mimi. They were getting all doe-eyed at one another, and I didn’t need to hang around for the show. I thought you might want to talk anyway.”

“About what?”

“Well,
something’s
bothering you,” she kicked a small rock in her path towards the curb. “You’ve been brooding more than usual. Since you snapped out of the fugue, that is.”

Jake thought about telling her to mind her own damn business, but reconsidered. He didn’t know where the urge came from but suddenly, he
needed
to bend
a compassionate ear. He stopped, took a seat on the curb, and lit a cigarette as she sat beside him.

“I’m having trouble remembering the sound of Laurel’s voice.”

“Oh.” Gwen wrapped her arms around her knees. “You guys got together the night everything happened, didn’t you.”

That pushed him to recant the night they’d first met at a comic book/gaming shop-turned bar. How they’d talked for nearly three hours straight after Laurel finished performing her set on Bueno Dave’s tiny stage, how they’d made plans to spend the following day—and maybe the following night—together.

“Not having her here keeps me awake at night.” Jake finally wound down, even more exhausted now that he’d spoken about it. “I just sit in the Troll—or up there in the Mimi’s drive unit—and the memories won’t stop coming, but I can’t remember her voice anymore. I can see her face but...that part’s gone.”