The King of Clayfield - 01 (12 page)

I slid a black dress
 
over and next to it
 
was a lacy,
 
red chemise. I paused. It had been...too long. I wondered how Betsy might have looked in
 
it, and then I felt disgusted with myself for thinking it, especially now that the world had gone to hell.

I'd been
 
divorced for a while,
 
but it was still
 
difficult for me
 
to get in the "single" mindset. I hadn't put much effort into dating again. Betsy had set me up with one of her friends,
 
but that didn't work out. My mom was always on me about going to church so I could
 
meet a
 
"good" woman. Now the selection of
available
women had shrunk dramatically.
 
The selection of
good
women...well.... Right now, the world being what it was,
 
the definition of a
good
woman was
 
going to be a woman that knows how to take care of herself and would care enough about
 
me to put a bullet in my head if it ever came to that.

I
 
slid
 
another
 
dress in front
 
of the lingerie
 
and
 
turned
 
my attention to the shelf above the clothes. There were some small boxes and photo albums. I pulled
 
the boxes down.
 
One was
 
full of old Valentine's Day and
 
Mother's
 
Day cards.
 
Two of them were full of
 
loose photographs. I pulled a picture from one of the boxes. It was Betsy and the kids opening presents two Christmases before.
 
Tears welled up in my eyes. Seeing their smiling faces took away the anger I'd felt toward them. They'd been good friends to me. I hoped they'd made it someplace safe.

A vehicle pulled up
 
outside.
 

"Jen."

I put the box of photos on the bed and ran to the back porch. It wasn't the Blazer. It was an older,
 
red and white pickup. I stepped back inside the house, trying to figure out what to do. I looked around for something to use as a weapon and grabbed an umbrella from the corner.

I
 
went out onto the porch to see the occupant or occupants of the truck and find out their intentions.

It was Jen, after all.

I ran out to her, resisting the urge to hug her. I couldn't let her know how happy I was to see
 
her.

"What the hell?" I said.

"I thought I'd be back before you woke up.”

"What the hell?" I said again.

"Come help me," she said, walking to the back of the truck. She let down the tailgate.

The bed of the truck had
 
lots of stuff in it, including a
 
gas-powered generator.

"Is this the same one?"

"Yep," she said, grinning.

"How?"

She climbed up in the bed. The generator had two small wheels on it. She pushed it toward me.
 
It took both of
 
us to lift it out.

"How did you get this in here by yourself?" I said.

"I backed the
 
truck to a low spot so that the tailgate was close to the ground, then I just
 
wheeled it in. My granddad used to load his
 
riding mower that way."

"But what about the people?"

I parked the Blazer down at that church early this morning then I set off the alarm and hid. They started showing up within a
 
few minutes, and gathered around
 
the noise. There were a
 
lot of them--probably thirty.
 
They were
 
really pissed
 
about the horn, you should have seen them."

"Are you crazy?" I said. "You could have been killed."

"While they were busy with the Blazer, I ran up the road to that old lady's house and took her truck. The keys were in it. Then I drove back to get the generator. I saw more of them headed toward the church. They're everywhere; we just haven't been seeing them."

"Why would you do something like that by yourself?"

She handed me the extension cord.

"I needed to make up for yesterday," she said. "I wanted you to know that I'm not a liability.
 
I can help you. I can do stuff."

"Jen, I don't think you're a liability."

She hopped out of the bed.

"I know we don't know each other very well, but I think we should stick together for a while."

"Of course," I said.
 

She pulled out the shotgun we'd left the night
 
before and handed it
 
to me.

"He was gone," she said.

"Who?"

"The man I shot," she said. "I must not have killed him, after all."

We stared at each other a moment, both of us pondering whether or not it was a good thing.

"I got some
 
good stuff," she said.

I looked in the bed. There were
 
two more guns in there--another shotgun and a rifle--and several
 
boxes of ammunition. There were also several plastic bags. She
 
started pulling
 
them out.

"I got food," she said, smiling. "There's bacon in there...and coffee."

"Where did you--?"

"I'll tell you about it over breakfast," she said. "I'm starving.”

I finished unloading the truck while Jen got
 
breakfast going. A lot of the food she brought back would need refrigeration, but we could just store it outside for a while. We'd probably eat it all before
 
the
 
weather warmed.
 
I put the food that
 
I knew we wouldn't use right away into the cab of the truck to keep it from attracting animals and cracked the windows to keep the sun from building up too much heat.
 

When I went into the shop,
 
I was met with the
 
wonderful aroma
 
of frying bacon.

"I checked for eggs, but there weren't any," she said. "Maybe you should see if the chickens are
 
doing okay.
 
They probably haven't been fed in a while."

I headed outside.

"Also," she said, "You might see if there is a campfire coffee pot in the house.”

I walked around to the pen and looked inside. It was muddy in there. The snow was nearly gone. There were three of them in there scratching around.
 
It looked like two Barred Rocks and a Rhode Island Red. They would need water, too; their automatic
 
waterer
 
that kept the water from freezing was operated
 
by a little solar panel, but it was
 
almost empty. I opened the gate and went in with them, then walked over to the coop, which was really just a back room of the workshop. It had a larger door
 
for people
 
with a smaller door set in the bottom for the chickens.
 
There was a
 
wooden bin
 
just inside the door that had a partial bag of chicken feed in it. There was another
 
Rhode Island
 
Red
 
in the coop, and she made a big fuss when I came in. I scooped out some feed and poured it in a pan that was on the floor, and then I got another handful and threw it on the ground outside.

There was no campfire coffee percolator inside the house. There was an electric
 
drip coffee maker, though. I took it back to the shop.

When I got back, the bacon was almost done, and Jen was starting on more oatmeal. I put a pan of water on the stove.

We were down to our last bottle of water, and I didn't want to give
 
it to the
 
chickens, so
 
I went outside with the five-gallon bucket to get some snow. There was still some in the shaded areas, under the trees and behind the house. I scooped it up and brought it inside to melt for
 
the chickens.

I put in the filter, and measured out the right amount of coffee. When the water on the stove
 
started
 
to look like it would boil,
 
I poured it into the filter cup of the coffee maker and let it drip down into the pot.

"I went back to that brick house with the red barn,"
 
Jen said, chewing her bacon. "You know, the one that had the four wheeler. There ain't nobody there. The door was unlocked. The table was set, and there was food on it; it had been there a while. It looked like they were in the middle of the meal and just got up and left. Nothing was disturbed. It was kind of strange.

"I just loaded up with the basics, but they have a lot of good stuff. We should go back and clean it out.... maybe even move over there. They have a wood stove in the house."

It didn't sound right. I knew things were different now, but it just didn't sound right.

"I don't know," I said. "It doesn't set well
 
with me."

"What?"

"Looting."

"This ain't looting," she said. "Looting is when you take TVs and shit. Looting is when you take stuff that belongs to somebody. This is scavenging.... salvaging."

"Feels a lot like stealing," I said.

"Yeah, well how does that bacon taste, huh? And how about that damn SUV you've been driving? I looked in the glove box at the registration. It
 
ain't yours."

"That was different," I said, "I was running for my life, and I knew the woman was infected."

"Nobody was there, dammit!
 
You ain't going to make me feel guilty about this."

"I'm sorry, Jen," I said. "You're right, but think about this: we aren't the only healthy people; we can't be. What if we break into a house, and we take stuff that belongs to healthy people? What if someone came in here while we're gone and took our stuff?"

Jen laughed, "
Our
stuff? This is Blaine's place, remember? You're justifying stealing when it suits you."

I sipped my coffee to keep from having to reply.

"Okay," she said. "From now on, we'll only go into homes we know are abandoned. Would that ease your conscience?"

I nodded.

Everything was so wrong now. I hadn't even had time to really think or process exactly how different life would be.

"I'd hate to leave this area," I said. "I grew up here. It's home.
 
But, maybe we should try to get across the river soon. Try to get in a safer place."

"I don't think they stopped it," she said. "I think the whole world is screwed. I
 
tried the radio
 
in the
 
truck this morning.
 
Most of the stations aren't broadcasting anymore, and the ones that are keep airing a recorded message telling people to stay indoors.

"But we have the generator and your laptop," she continued, "so let's see if we can get online. If there
is
any safe place out there, they'll still be broadcasting."

"Do you really think the internet will be working?" I asked.

"Should be," she said. "I'll bet those servers have backup power. I don't know how it all works exactly, but my cousin used to tell me about internet backbones...or something like that. He said it would be impossible to destroy the entire internet all
 
at once. It's only been a couple of days since the disease hit Clayfield. I don't see why there still wouldn't be cities with electricity. I would think those power plants would run for a little while without people around. We probably just lost a sub-station in Clayfield
 
or something."