The King of Clayfield - 01 (26 page)

"You've been exposed. Don't think of it as drinking," Jen said. "Think of it as medicine."

"No," Sara said, "It's wrong to drink."

"No," Jen said, "It's wrong to turn into a mindless monster when you don't have to."

"I'm only
 
nineteen," she said.

Jen laughed, "Is this a religious thing? Because Jesus made wine, you know."

"My pastor says that what Jesus made wasn't really wine. It was just grape juice."

Jen laughed again, "Yeah, well your pastor is a friggin zombie, now."

Sara looked like she
 
was going to cry.
 
I knew I had to stop it. The three of us might be together for a while, and we
 
all needed to get along.

"Jen," I said. "Don't."
 

Jen gave me an angry look then poured herself a glass. She put the cork in the
 
bottle then went back to the counter.

"Sara," I said. "Jen is right. We've all been exposed to the virus today. You
 
don't have to get drunk. I think the Bible says not to get drunk, doesn't it?”

"But it's wrong," she
 
said, shaking her head.

Jen returned to the table with a glass in her hand.

"Here," she said. "Apple juice."

Sara took the glass warily.

"But let me tell you something," Jen said, "If you get sick, it's your own fault."

Sara sniffed the glass then took a drink.

"Thank you," she said.

"We're just trying to help you," I said.

"How about we
 
change the subject," Jen said. "Sara, what's up
 
with the letter
 
jacket? Are you on the basketball team or something?"

"Oh," she smiled. "No,
 
it was my boyfriend's jacket. He let me wear it. He's in college now at
 
U. of L."

"What about you?"
 
Jen said. "Are you in school?"

"I go to the community college part time, and I work at the church part time."

With all of the questions, I realized that I really didn't know much more about
 
Jen than I did Sara. We'd been together
 
since Friday, and we hadn't
 
really talked.
 
We'd never gotten to know one
 
another.

We continued to eat and talk. Jen waited on us, refilling our bowls and glasses. After a half hour, I noticed that Sara was really coming out of her shell. She was more talkative and smiled more. I was glad to see that she was warming up to us. Then
 
she got an odd look on her face.

"I feel...strange. My
 
bottom lip is kind of
 
numb, too. Is that a part of the virus?"

"I don't remember that being a symptom," I said.

I looked over at
 
Jen, and she winked at me.

"Sara, hon, you really should drink a little something before
 
you start getting the fever."

"I
 
can't," Sara said.

"If you
 
turn, then I'm going to have to shoot you, and I like you too much. Please don't do that to me. You don't have to drink
 
much--just a little wine."

They stared at each other then Sara nodded.

"Okay," she said, "Just a little wine."

Jen returned with the merlot.

"This is a dry wine," she said. "That means it isn't very sweet. We do have some sweet wine, if you would rather have that."

"No," Sara said. "This will be fine."

Jen poured her a half a glass.
 
She sipped it and made a face.

We all moved into the living room. The
 
kerosene heater was doing a good job of warming the room, but not the whole house.

"Why don't we stay here," Jen said.

"Well, yeah," I said. "I don't want to go out in the dark."

"No," she said, "not just for the night, but for a while. It's a nice little house. There's a woodstove in the basement. I didn't start a fire, because the kerosene was quicker, but it looks like the vents in the floor open to the basement, so it ought to heat the whole house."

"I like it here, too,"
 
Sara said.

"I don't like how it's enclosed by woods," I said. "We need to be able to see something
 
coming from far away."

"True,"
 
Jen said. "But I don't think Blaine's is ideal for a long stay. It just isn't comfortable; we'll be crammed in that little shop. If this is going to be a while, then we should try to make ourselves as comfortable as we can."

I nodded.

Sara got up and went down the hall to the bathroom. When she'd shut the door, Jen grinned.

"I mixed some of that sweet white wine with her apple juice. She never knew."

If Jen
 
had
 
done
 
that to Sara
 
the week before, it would have been appalling, but
 
a lot had changed in
 
the last week.

I shrugged, "Whatever works."

When Sara returned, we both smiled innocently. She smiled back, sat down, and continued to nurse her merlot.

"I don't want to go into town any more than we have to," Jen said. "I need time to rest and process this shit. It's just too much to have to deal with everyday.
 
They're out here, too, but there aren't
 
as many of them.
 
I think we should make a list of things we might need, then go in and collect it in a single day if we can."

"Are we going to look for other survivors? Are we going to meet up with
 
Mr. Somerville again?" Sara asked.

"I don't know if I have it in me to search the town for survivors every day," Jen said. "Somerville would probably
 
need some help, though.
 
I'm sure he'd take you in if you want to stay with
 
him."

"I kind of like being with you two," she said. "You're closer to my age."

"I appreciate that, hon, but I don't feel that young."

"We could live almost anywhere," I said. "There will be more free houses than occupied houses. If it weren't for all the infected people walking around, it would be an exciting prospect--living however we want to. The truth is we can't live however we want to. We have to live carefully, even more carefully than we did before."

"We can still have a comfortable and relatively safe place to come home to, can't we? We could store up some stuff so we don't have to get out there any more than necessary, right?"

"Sure," I said. "But there are more like us out there, and I think it is important to connect with them if we can. We don't have to all live together, but we're going to need each other eventually."

"Tomorrow," Jen said, "We should find a big truck, like a U-Haul, and go around collecting supplies. Then,
 
when we find a suitable place to
 
settle in, we won't have to go out as often. I'm afraid going all the time is going to get us hurt or killed...or worse."

The
 
three of us slept in the living room of that little house around the kerosene heater. It ran out of fuel in the middle of the night, and we woke up the next morning
 
cold and with headaches. We were all concerned about the headaches at first, but realized that it was probably our sinuses from breathing the
 
kerosene fumes. I didn't know this at the time, but those things will smoke when they run out of fuel, because the wick continues to burn. We were all congested in our chests, too.

It had started raining during the night. We didn't want to go out collecting supplies in the cold rain, so we decided to have some breakfast and wait it out. It was still raining after lunch, so we loaded up some of the stuff from the house and drove over to Blaine and Betsy's
 
place.

I got a fire started
 
in the shop while
 
Jen went in the house to change into her own
 
clothes. She and Sara were going to go through the clothes Betsy left to see if something would fit Sara.

I checked on the food Jen had brought back
 
from that one house when she went out by herself. The stuff that had been frozen was now thawed, but it was still cold enough that I didn't think it would be bad. I would need to find a thermometer somewhere so we could keep track of temperatures. We were in the latter end of
 
February, and in this part of Kentucky the temperatures might get down in the teens or
 
they might get up in the fifties--there was no way to know. We would definitely need
 
to save our canned and dry goods and start eating on all this perishable stuff.

The chickens needed water again, and they were hungry. I considered letting them out of the pen, so they could fend for themselves whenever we were away, but I didn't want to lose them to predators. We were going to need their eggs soon. In fact, I thought we should probably add more chickens to our supplies list, and a rooster, too (to make more chickens). A milk goat or cow would be good, too, but we could do that later.

Jen and Sara returned. Jen had changed, but Sara was wearing the same clothes. They were both carrying an armload of novels. Jen also had a
 
notebook.

"If it rains a while, we're going to need something to distract us," Jen said. "I don't know what you like to read, but I got a little of everything."

I nodded. I wasn't really interested in
 
fiction right then. I thought it would be more important to read some of the information I'd printed off at my house that first night. I could see the need for escape, though, so I didn't insist they read what I thought we should all be reading.
 
I grabbed my bag and went in the house to change into my own clothes.

It
 
was too bad that Blaine's home wasn't equipped with a wood stove or some form of alternative energy. The house wasn't anything special--just a manufactured home--but the location was perfect. It was on a small hill, and there was nothing but open fields to the front and back of the house, so we would be able to see anyone approaching. There was a large pond nearby that had bass, bluegill, and catfish. There
 
were mature fruit
 
trees,
 
pecan trees,
 
blackberries, a small vineyard.... It would be a good location to settle down. I'm sure there were other places like this, too, but how would I find them in February? I could probably identify certain trees and plants, but not in winter when there were no leaves.

I got an idea that we could spend the rest of the winter somewhere else, then when spring arrived, we could move back to Blaine's house.

On my way back out to the shop I looked across the road to the cow field. In the distance was a dead cow. A pack of ten dogs were eating on
 
it. They weren't coyotes or
 
coydogs that you see sometimes. These were family pets.
 
They were mostly mutts of different sizes, shapes and colors, but I saw a couple of purebreds in there, too.
 
Some of them were lying down or playing with each other. They were wagging their tails. They
 
didn't look mean or vicious. I wondered if they'd brought the cow down or
 
if they'd found it like that. If we were going to have livestock like a milk cow or goat, then we would need to collect them soon. Animals like that would be easy prey for predators with nothing to protect them.

Jen and Sarah were sitting on the mattresses and
 
talking when I got back. They'd made coffee.

"We're making our shopping list," Jen said, holding up the notebook.

I took one of the old lawn chairs down and sat.

"What do you have so far?" I said.

"Other than food and clothes, we're having a little trouble figuring out what we'll need."

I went over to the stack of papers I'd printed off from those websites.