We were both in her room when she finally smiled and declared that we were done.
“And thank you so much.” She put a hand on my chest. “I can’t tell you how long I’ve been wanting to do this.”
I wanted to tell her how long I’d wanted it, how long I’d been praying for this moment, for this opportunity. But I couldn’t do that. Not yet.
“You want a beer?” She asked.
“A beer?” I blinked. “Sure.”
I started to move toward her kitchen, but she stopped me. “Have a seat. Relax. I’ll get it for you.” She nodded towards the bed and winked before turning for the door.
I remained standing for a few seconds after she left. She’d invited me to sit on her bed. She was practically throwing herself at me.
Maybe I’d misread her conversation at the shop. Maybe the boy had been lying to his friends. I smiled and sat on the bed. She liked me. Of course she liked me. We were meant to be together, but I hadn’t expected her to realize that.
I looked around the room.
Her tastes were interesting. Unlike the living room, her bedroom was muted. Almost dark, with an earthy feel. The furniture was mostly natural wood, and her covers were a dark grey.
And there were dozens of photographs on the wall. All of them were of bugs. I looked closer. Wasps. Her wall was entirely covered in pictures of wasps.
“Hymenoptera pompilidae.” Michelle handed me a glass of beer and sat down a few inches away from me.
I could feel her body heat on my skin. I could hear her breathing. Goosebumps raced along my body. I took a deep drink to hide my nervousness. “Hymen, what?”
She laughed and punched me gently in the arm. “Hymenoptera pompilidae. A spider hawk.” She nodded at the pictures. “That’s what they are.”
“Oh.”
“They’re fascinating creatures. You know how they nourish their young? They catch a spider. They’ll sting it. Not enough to kill it, just enough to paralyze it. Then they drag it back to their burrow, lay eggs in it, and seal it up nice and tight. Eventually, the eggs become larvae, and the larvae consume the spider. They eat it from the inside out, saving the organs for last so that it’s alive for as long as possible before they finally let it die.”
“You, uh, you really like wasps, huh?”
“Oh yes.” Her expression became deadly serious. “They’re my power animal, you know.”
“Your power animal?”
She nodded. “My yoga instructor does guided meditations, and he introduced us. It was a very big moment in my life.”
“Oh,” I replied. Uncertain of what to say, I took another long drink.
“Power animals are very important, you know. They guide us. They protect us. They teach us who we really are.”
“I see.” I didn’t see. “I don’t know what my power animal is.”
“That’s too bad. I can’t tell you how much I’ve learned from my power animal.”
“Like what?” I finished off my beer, never taking my eyes off of Michelle.
“Before I learned about my power animal, I lived like an insect. I thought that the fact that other people were bigger than me, stronger than me . . . I thought that made me prey. So I let people prey on me. Understanding what I am, what I truly am, I realize that I’m not weak. I’m the predator.”
I opened my mouth to reply, but no words came out.
“The thing that I love most about my power animal isn’t the fact that it’s a predator, though. It’s that it’s a super predator. In the insect world, the spider is dangerous, powerful, one of the most fearful creatures out there. But to the spider hawk, it’s a tool.”
Something was wrong. I felt . . . wrong. I tried to stand, but my muscles weren’t listening to me.
“Now, obviously, I can’t use you like an incubator. For one thing, I’m not pregnant, but even if I were, feeding you to a baby can’t be healthy.”
She smiled and pinched my cheek as I slouched slowly over in the bed. “But I’m betting I can get at least a few good meals out of you before you die. Unless my date tonight turns out to be a vegetarian. Hmmm, I probably should have asked.”
***
Return to Table of Contents
Shallow Graves
My first clue that something was wrong with Buster was the flies.
Flies had become an issue back when things fell apart. The rotting corpse of civilization became food for someone, at least, and for a little while afterwards the flies had become atrocious. Eventually, though, the population diminished all the way down to intolerable.
So it took me a little while to realize that more than usual were attracted to my dog. But when I did notice, I knew exactly what it meant.
“Calm down, Betty,” I muttered to myself. “You’re just being paranoid. He’s a dog. Flies like dogs.”
But I knew I was lying to myself. It was more than that. It wasn’t as though Buster’s problem was the worst thing that had ever happened on the farm. Truth to tell, it didn’t even make the top ten. But while Buster wasn’t the closest friend I’d ever lost, he was my last one.
No. No, I couldn’t let myself think that way. Danny and Elise hadn’t even been gone that long. Just over a year. Given the state of the car they took off in, and how hard it was to find usable gasoline these days, a year wasn’t long at all. Even Carl, Simon and Bobbi could still be out there. I’d given up on the rest, though. Either they’d found a safe place and were staying there, or, more likely, they were dead.
And after Emily died and Bob shot himself, that just left me and Buster, waiting for the rest of them to come back.
I rubbed Buster behind the ears and told him he was all right, trying to convince myself that he’d just rolled over in something foul when I had my back turned.
Still, I kept him in sight as I worked in the garden that morning. He behaved normally. Well, except for being completely still the whole time. What dog doesn’t scratch from time to time, or mark the fences, or chase his tail. Or something? Anything, really.
I collected the last of the broccoli and moved on to the brussels sprouts. I was getting tired of both, but if you want to survive the apocalypse, you have to make certain dietary sacrifices.
When things first started, we’d been in pretty good shape in terms of food. The garden hadn’t started out quite so large, but we had the fruit trees, the pecan orchard, even chickens. When the cities started dying, we still had enough to eat, and some left over to trade with the refugees who came through.
But the refugees weren’t the only ones to come through. After them came the hordes, and with the hordes the plague itself. It spread from humans to rodents, and from rodents to everything. It took half the herd in a single night. When we discovered what happened the next day, we slaughtered them all, the infected and the clean. We burned the bodies of the infected, then smoked as much of the meat from the clean ones as we could. The power had gone out long before, so freezing it wasn’t an option. Most of the meat spoiled, but we got enough jerky to last for a long time.
After that, the chickens started to go. We didn’t realize there was a problem until we cracked open an egg that had been laid rotten.
Now all I had to eat was an endless supply of beef jerky and whatever fruits or vegetables I could get to grow.
I pulled a few beets to add to my basket and headed back to the house with Buster close behind me. I glanced over my shoulder with almost every step, but he never got closer than his usual three steps back.
When the chickens first started turning, Emily used to wonder at how different they were than the people who turned. Bob said that the disease just worked differently on animals than people. Emily thought it was simpler than that; she claimed that the disease made everything act on their baser instincts, and since most animals were acting on instinct anyway, they didn’t change their behavior much at all. They did turn violent eventu
ally, but it took longer, and they only attacked creatures smaller than themselves, which hadn’t worked out well for the cats, but was comforting for the rest of us.
People who turned, however, they went after everything. Anything that moved was fair game.
Maybe dogs were instinctively loyal. They were pack animals after all; when the cows turned, they didn’t attack each other. Maybe Buster thought I was his pack.
Or maybe he just wasn’t there yet, and I’d wake up one morning with his teeth wrapped around my throat.
At the back door I paused, setting my basket down so I could hang onto my shotgun while I unlocked the deadbolt. Vaguely I remembered a time when I would have put the gun down. If I thought really hard, I could even remember a time when the garden wasn’t surrounded barbed wire.
I held the door open for Buster, who strolled over to his still-full food bowl and lay down on his rug.
The best thing was to take care of it right away. To take him out, put a bullet in the back of his head, clean up, and go about the rest of my day.
I sighed, rinsing my pickings off in the well water I’d pumped that morning. As with every day for the last year I had the amazing choice of salad or stew for dinner. Wet veggies or dry. For the thousandth time I found myself wishing I’d helped my mother cook back when I was a little girl. Maybe she could’ve taught me some trick to turn vegetables into ice cream. God how I missed ice cream.
As I ate the salad I found myself wishing, for the thousand and tenth time, that I had some kind of salad dressing.
After dinner I cleaned the plates in the well water, dried them, and slipped them back into their spots in the cabinet. It didn’t occur to me until I was almost done that I’d spent almost twenty minutes with my back to Buster.
Cursing myself for a fool I picked up the shotgun and turned. Buster lay exactly where I’d left him. The only thing that moved were his eyes, following me across the room.
I needed to act. I needed to kill him now. The longer I waited, the more complacent I’d become. Aiming the gun at Buster I took a step forward.
It was Tuesday. Tuesdays we cleaned the traps. I lowered the shotgun and clicked my tongue. “Come on, Buster. Let’s take a walk.”
Buster stood and padded over to the front door.
We’d started on the traps after a small horde of the infected came at the farm. Only about fifty or so had attacked us, but we’d spent a lot of ammunition driving them back, and nobody had slept that night. The next morning Danny had proposed the traps. It hadn’t taken much convincing. Digging the pits took a while, especially when we hit a layer of rock about a foot down, but they’d proven themselves well worth the effort when the larger waves started coming through. The only problem was that they had to be periodically cleaned out; otherwise the undead would stack up so high on the punji sticks that the next wave could walk over their backs.
These days I didn’t have nearly as many to deal with, just the occasional straggler who wandered in, and from time to time an infected deer or boar, but I liked to keep the pits clean. One never knew when another wave might sweep the area, and every one of the bastards that speared himself to death was one less that I’d have to worry about up at the house.
On these walks, Buster kept ahead of me. He was on guard and alert, expecting trouble. Just the way Bob had trained him.
At the one pit that needed cleaning, he stood guard while I descended the small ramp we’d made for this exact use. I wore two pairs of gloves as I cut the piglet corpse off the spikes and hung its rotting meat from the bait hooks that hung over the pit.
When I finished the circuit, Buster let me lead the way back, taking position a few steps behind me, constantly scanning the area for trouble.
I tried again to convince myself that nothing was wrong; that Buster was perfectly healthy, maybe just a little out of sorts, but as I looked at him I noticed a small cut on his leg. It wasn’t enough to incapacitate him, but on an uninfected dog it would have resulted in a limp, or whimpering, or something.
I turned away from Buster, biting my lip hard enough to draw blood.
As we approached the house, I veered toward the tool shed. Most of the tools had been moved to the house long before, but we’d decided years before to keep the tools that would come in contact with contaminated bodies away from where we slept and ate.
I deposited the tools for cleaning the traps in their bucket and grabbed an all-too-familiar shovel. Buster followed me as I headed over to a small fenced in section of the yard. Originally it had been a flowerbed, but the flowers were long gone, replaced by mounds of dirt, each one marked by stones, or wreaths, or crossed sticks.
Buster lay down a few feet away, his head on his paws, his eyes on me, as I leaned my gun against a stone marked ‘Bob’ and began to dig.
I found myself soaked in sweat in a matter of minutes but kept digging until I had a hole three feet deep, two feet wide, and four feet across.
Buster climbed to his feet when I whistled at him, and padded down into the hole, laying down at my command, his unblinking eyes still fixed on me.
I patted his head and rubbed behind his ears, whispering the kindest things I could think to say to a dog.
After a while I realized I was just putting things off. I leaned the shovel against Bob’s marker and picked up the shotgun.
Buster didn’t move as I leveled the weapon at his head. He just stared.
My hands shook as I pressed the stock against my shoulder. I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and began to squeeze.
Only I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.
I shook my head, chided myself for a fool, and tried again. But, again, nothing happened. And all the while Buster lay there, staring up at me.
After the fifth failed attempt I wiped away my tears and lay the shotgun back against Bob’s marker.
“Stay, Buster.” I commanded. “Stay. Good boy.”
Picking up the shovel, I began dumping dirt on top of the dog. Honestly, it came as a surprise when he didn’t move.
A few more scoops and his head was covered. I picked up the shotgun again and aimed, but even without his eyes on me, I couldn’t pull the trigger.
I put the shotgun back down and continued shoveling. Slowly, Buster disappeared. When I’d finished, I patted the dirt down and stared at the newest grave. He needed a marker of his own, but somehow putting a cross up didn’t feel right. After a bit, I headed into the house, coming back with his dog bowl, which I half buried at the head of his grave.
That night, I dreamed of muffled howls and claws scratching at the front door.
The next day was harder than I expected. It wasn’t like there was more work to do, like there had been every other time I lost a friend. In fact, there was less. I no longer needed to feed Buster, or groom him. I wouldn’t have to worry about cleaning any of his hair off the furniture, or trying to find something for him to chew on.
Still, without him around, everything was a hundred times harder. Without Buster watching my back, I felt eyes on me whenever I left the house. Gardening alone was miserable and unending: I stopped my work at the slightest sound. Even my morning trip to the well to pump the day’s water felt more exhausting.
I worked through the frustration, though, and the next day I found myself somewhat less miserable. The next day seemed somewhat less gloomy, as did the day after, and the day after.
By the end of the next week, I had embraced my new routine. Not to say that I was over the loss of Buster, but I didn’t have to talk myself out of bed every morning. I was still more vigilant than I had been, though, which was why I noticed the wagon before it had even started down our quarter mile lane.
The lane was the one part of the farm we hadn’t booby-trapped. The infected didn’t seem to follow manmade routes, so we’d left it as it was in the hopes that survivors and traders would make their way to our front door.
When the mule-drawn wagon turned
into our entrance I gathered together some fresh food and blankets and a few of the extra guns we’d accumulated over the years. Hopefully they’d have something decent to trade. Maybe some seeds that I didn’t already have, or better yet, a puppy.
I actually teared up a little when that popped into my head.
By the time the wagon came to a stop in front of the house, I’d collected most of the tradable supplies I had into the living room and come up with a rough estimate of how highly I valued each one.
A tall man wearing a white shirt climbed down from the wagon and offered a smile that made me more than a little nervous. “Good day to you, ma’am.”
“Good day.” I answered back, keeping my shotgun aimed at the ground somewhere between us.
Another man, red from the sun with long hair and a stained shirt stayed on the seat next to the one the tall man had vacated. He didn’t even look at me.
“You boys traders?” I asked.
“Among other things.” The tall man’s smile widened. “Have you got much to trade?”
I hesitated, then nodded. “A bit. Some fresh vegetables from the garden. Some tools. What about you?”
“Why we’ve recently come into possession of some very desirable property. Meat, fresh and uninfected.”
Fresh meat? My mouth watered at the thought of it. “What kind?”
“Pork.” The tall man looked amused. “Quality stuff, too. We’ve been enjoying it for the last couple of days, haven’t we, Carter?”
The man on the wagon made a non-committal noise and continued staring anywhere but at me.
Pork. I could almost taste it. Cooked right it would last a while, and I could mix it into almost any meal. I licked my lips.
“And how certain are you that it’s clean?”
“Oh, one hundred percent. Would you care to look over the merchandise?” The man waved towards the back of the wagon.