We enjoyed a few days of warm sunlight walks, with the middle of the day being almost hot, but as we crossed over the Kentucky line into Ohio, the air developed a bite to it that slowly turned into a chill that seeped into your bones.
Joel wasn’t much of a talker at first, but I’ve never let that stop me. I was able to extract little nuggets of information from him as we trudged down the old interstate. I learned his age, where he was from, and that he had a brother named Tommy, but I learned just as much from the things he didn’t say. It was clear he lost someone -someone important- and he carried that pain around his eyes, but he didn’t want to talk about it. I wondered who he might have been before the world went to shit; every so often, a smile or a huff of laughter he tried to suppress would light his face up, and I’d catch a glimpse of someone else… Someone who used to laugh a lot. Laughter just looked at home on his face on the rare occasion he did laugh.
I walked along beside him, a comfortable silence washing over us as we made our way along the tree lined road out of Kentucky, along the Ohio/West Virginia border. Joel would occasionally look around warily, and I didn’t miss how his hand hovered over his pistol on his hip.
“Something has you on edge, care to share?”
“I just don’t like this area… The terrain is too wide open for my tastes,” he explained. “Nothing specific.”
“If you say so,” I replied.
“I do say so,” he said. “I wouldn’t leave you in the dark if there was something dangerous, not if I knew about it.”
“All right,” I said, adjusting my backpack on my shoulders. He looked at the map as we danced along the Ohio/West Virginia border in the chilly afternoon light.
“There’s a village up ahead. It’s off the beaten path, so I think we should check it out. Keep our distance, see what there is to see. Might be supplies, or shelter,” he said. As he spoke, an icy wind picked up.
“Shelter sounds nice,” I said, trying not to shiver. I had made a concerted effort not to complain about anything, not the cold, not my aching feet, not the hard ground, not the disgusting food, none of it. I don’t know why I was so desperate to look like it didn’t bother me, but I was. I supposed that I wanted Joel to think I was tough, that he wasn’t making a mistake taking me to Pittsburg. We’d been on the road about a week at that point and he was just starting to warm up to the idea of me.
Around midday, we crested a small hill that looked down on the village from his map. We sat, concealed by tall grass and scrubby bushes, watching for a long time. There wasn’t any sign of life below, but that didn’t mean anything. Joel watched for a very long time, studying the shadows. At long last, he was satisfied.
“Stay close and quiet,” he said softly.
I nodded and fell into step behind him, moving as quickly as I dared. Once we were closer to the little village, I could see there was an air of neglect about it. It didn’t look like anyone had been here since the outbreak… but as we moved closer my breath caught in my throat. I clutched Joel’s arm automatically, pulling him backwards to me while I struggled to make my mouth form words. His eyes followed my gaze to the wide storm drainage ditch that ran parallel to the weedy road we traversed. A pile of bleached bones and skulls lay at the bottom.
“FEDRA,” Joel said darkly. I nodded. I’d heard of FEDRA going to the smaller villages and exterminating people when the QZs were full. It made me sick to my stomach just hearing about it. Seeing it caused me to bend forward and put my hands on my knees.
“You all right?” Joel asked, but his usual gruff voice had an edge of softness to it.
“I’m fine,” I whispered, trying to catch my breath. “I just… It’s a lot to take in.”
“Yeah,” he said, looking around, his rifle in his arms. “Do you need to sit down?”
“No,” I said. I stood up straight and we continued on into the little village, moving cautiously. The road that ran through town was flanked on either side by a handful of businesses; I could see a general store, an antique and thrift store, a little building that said “Museum” on the front, and another building that looked like maybe a post office. There were three dozen or so houses spread out. Most were old farmhouses or Victorian style homes, with porches and interesting craftsmanship. I could see Joel studying them, and I remember that he mentioned he did construction. I wonder what he thought about them.
“First things first,” he said. “Let’s find a place to hunker down. I don’t like how cold that wind is getting,” he went on.
I nodded in agreement. In the distance, the clouds were dark and heavy looking. Snow, or a very cold rain, was on the way.
We tried the door of the first house we came to, stepping up on the wide porch. The boards were weathered and gray, and creaked underfoot, but they held us. Joel put his hand on the doorknob. It turned but the door stuck. He pushed against it with his shoulder and after a moment, it opened.
“Warped,” he muttered, looking at the door. He stepped inside with his gun at the ready. The house was still and quiet, and except for a thick layer of dust, it looked untouched by the horrors of the outbreak. He moved through each room methodically, looking for signs of infected, or people hiding, but the house was empty.
“This is good,” he said. “Better than we could hope for, to be honest.”
I had to agree. The house was dry, and the couch, though dusty, looked plenty comfortable, but Joel went on.
“There’s a couple bedrooms upstairs,” he said. “If you wanted a bed to sleep in.”
That was music to my ears… But it wasn’t much warmer inside than outside, and I could hear the sound of the wind blowing outside. OId houses were drafty, I remembered. I saw a fireplace in the corner of the living room.
“Can we risk a fire?” I asked Joel.
“I don’t like the idea, but it’s getting colder and colder, I wouldn’t be surprised if it snows tonight.” He sighed, looking around, rubbing the back of his neck as he did. There was a small stack of wood next to the fireplace. “Yeah, we can have a fire.”
I set my pack down on the couch and then I went into the kitchen. I carefully opened drawers and cabinets looking for supplies. I found some canned food and stacked it up on the counter. As I searched the kitchen,I came to a door tucked into the back corner. I opened it carefully, and saw a narrow staircase that led down to some type of cellar.
“Hey,” I called to Joel, who was getting a fire going. “Did you see this? There’s a cellar off the kitchen.”
“No, I guess I missed it,” he said, coming over to me, gun in hand. “Let me go first.”
I stood back to let him by. He went down the stairs, and after a few anxiety riddle moments he called up to me:
“You’re going to want to see this.”
I made my way down the staircase, into the cellar. From the dim light in the small, rectangular window on the far wall, I could neat rows of free standing shelves. My eyes adjusted to the darkness and I could take in the details of the shelves. Rows and rows of masons jars full of preserved foods.
“You can preserve ground beef?” He looked incredulous at the slightly faded label on a jar next to him.
I chuckled.
“You can, but I dunno if I’d trust it.”
“You think these people were preppers?” Joel asked, taking the jar off of one of the shelves and examining it. I thought back to the land around the little village. It could have been farmland at one time, I rationalized.
“Actually, I think they were probably just farmers.”
“Farmers?”
“Growing up, my grandparents had a little hobby farm, and they had a pantry that looked something like this… Not saying these people weren’t preppers, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a farming community.”
“I’m surprised all this is here,” Joel said. “Everywhere else I’ve seen has been picked over pretty good.”
“Probably no one has found it yet,” I said. “West Virginia especially has a bunch of these little villages out in the middle of nowhere. I’m surprised this one is even on your map.”
“There’s so much…” Joel said, looking around. “Can’t really see us taking jars with us though, that seems like a recipe for disaster.”
“Yeah,” I said, looking around sadly at what we would probably have to leave behind. “But, we’ll eat well tonight.” I said. Even though my …Relationship… With Paul gave me elevated privileges and access to top tier supplies, most of what we ate was dehydrated or part of the MRE kits he got from FEDRA. This wasn’t as good as fresh, but it was miles better than what I was used to.
I pulled a few jars off the shelf, examining them.
“I used to like to cook, before…” I heard myself saying.
“Oh yeah?” Joel said absently, looking through some boxes in the corner of the basement. “Some camping supplies over here, sleeping bags and stuff.” He shouldered his rifle and started gathering things he wanted to take upstairs.
With my arms laden with jars, I headed up out of the cellar. The mason jars were heavy, clinking together as I went, and I was reminded again that it would be too impractical to take much from that cellar with us. It was a shame.
Back in the kitchen, I found a cast iron pot in the cupboard. Joel continued looking around for things that might be useful, and I heard him step out the back door. He came back a minute later with a look of disbelief on his face.
“What?” I asked him, setting the pot on the counter.
“There’s a hand pump out back.”
“A hand pump?”
“For water,” he said. “I guess maybe they had horses or something? There’s a big troth out there.”
“Does it work?”
“I’m about to test it. I wanted you to come out there because I can’t hold the gun while I pump.”
“You still think it’s dangerous here?”
“I’d rather be safe than sorry. There could be infected buried in some cellar in some other house, might not wake up til it hears me fuckin’ with the pump,” he said. I nodded, swallowing hard.
“Is that.. Common?”
“I’ve seen it once, and once was enough.”
“Okay,” I said as I followed him outside. The pump was stiff from disuse, but Joel was very strong, and after a few difficult pumps, he got it working, and water flowed from the spigot.
“We should boil it before we drink it,” he said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I have a couple of purification tablets in my bag, too.”
“Save those for when we don’t have a fire,” Joel said.
“Got it.”
I found a few more pots inside and we filled them with water. We took them inside and Joel arranged them over the fire to boil while I set about opening the jars I brought up from the cellar.
The smell of the preserved vegetables was enough to make my mouth water. There were a few spice jars on the counter in the kitchen of the little farm house, and for one fleeting moment, I allowed myself to pretend the last five years had not happened, that I was in my apartment back in Chattanooga with a rare night off from the club, making dinner for a man I was seeing.
That last bit gave me pause. I looked over at Joel. I hadn’t known him long, but traveling together like we were makes you form attachments pretty quickly. And… He wasn’t a bad looking man. Far from it. On the rare occasions he laughed or smiled, he was probably one of the most handsome men I had ever seen in real life. I turned back to the food I was preparing. Stewed tomatoes, green beans, carrots, potatoes… I decided to dump everything into the cast iron pot with some salt and call it a stew. I would have liked to add some of the meat we found, but I didn’t trust it. I’d never seen my grandmother preserve meat, and I wasn’t sure what the shelf life for it could be. The last thing we needed was to get sick… But the idea of actual meat instead of jerky or dehydrated chicken was tantalizing.
“It’s snowing,” Joel said from the living room. I looked out the kitchen window to see white flakes swirling around in the breeze. He came into the kitchen and leaned against the counter. “It’s kind of early in the season for it, isn’t it?”
“Have you spent much time in this region?” I asked him.
“No, mostly around Texas until about a year ago,” he admitted.
“We would get snow as early as early October up in the mountains,” I said.
“That’s right, you said you were from Virginia, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, up in the Blue Ridge Mountains,” I said. “My family had a little piece of property in a valley. It wasn’t terribly different from this place. Little village, maybe 2-3 dozen families.”
“How are the winters here?”
“Depends. Some years they were pretty mild, but some years, they could be brutal.”
He nodded, leaning in the door frame. He was clearly thinking about something, but I didn’t push. In the limited amount of time I had spent with Joel so far, I learned that he would share what was on his mind if he wanted to, and it was pointless to push him, because he would just get agitated.
“What’s all that?” he asked as I carefully maneuvered the heavy cast iron pot out of the kitchen and into the living room to the fire.
“Optimistically, it’s soup… Pessimistically… It’s something to eat, anyway.”
He slipped in front of me and cleared away some of the pots of water he boiled and then he took the cast iron pot from me. He carefully set it over the fire.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said, his tone a little softer than normal.
I went back to the kitchen and found dishes and utensils for us to eat with. It felt very strange to be doing something so normal, but I found that I didn’t dislike the sensation. I found a long handled wooden spoon and took everything back into the living room. Joel had resumed his search for useful things, and I could hear him digging around in closets down the narrow hallway that was off of the kitchen. I stirred the vegetable mixture in the pot, watching the juice from the tomatoes and other vegetables starting to bubble a little. I let it go for a while, then carefully removed the pot from the flames, setting it on the stone hearth.
“It’s ready,” I called to Joel.
He came back in the living room, wearing a hooded sweatshirt that advertised Skyline drive across the left breast. He handed me another sweatshirt. I pulled it on over my head.
“Tweety bird?” I raised my eyebrows. He shrugged
“I wouldn’t be concerned about being fashionable,” he said. “I’d be concerned about being warm.”
“Yeah yeah,” I muttered, spooning some of the “soup” into a bowl for him.
“It’s good,” Joel said. “Better than anything I’ve had in a long time.”
“Thanks,” I said. The “soup” wasn’t bad, but any non dehydrated food would be. After we ate, I looked outside. It was still snowing, and it was coming down hard. Already the ground was blanketed in white. The sun was setting beyond the trees outside. The living room was warming up, but the rest of the house was still almost as cold as it was outside.
“Old houses don’t have much insulation,” Joel said, voicing my earlier thoughts aloud.
“I probably won’t chance sleeping in the bedroom, then,” I heard myself staying. “I’ll sleep down here in front of the fire.” I was a little disappointed, but I’d slept on the ground plenty. The floor wasn’t any worse, and at least there would be a fire. I could sleep on the couch, I supposed.
“I don’t think I will either,” Joel admitted. “I’ve survived too much to freeze to death for the sake of sleeping in a bed.”
“It almost sounds like you were making a joke.”
“Maybe I was.”
“That’s kind of like seeing a dog walk on its hind legs,” I teased. He gave a small smile, and in the firelight, he looked ten years younger. Handsome. Without so many sorrows and burdens. “You have a nice smile,” I said before I could stop myself.
It was hard to tell in the firelight, but I thought he might have blushed a little.
“Uh, thanks,” he said. “You uh… You do, too.”
“You think so?”
“You know you’re a pretty woman,” he said.
“Maybe, but it’s still nice to get compliments,” I said, secretly very pleased he thought I was pretty. Men called me hot, pretty, beautiful, good looking, all the time. I didn’t have any illusions about myself. But hearing it from Joel gave me a little flutter in my stomach I hadn’t felt in a very long time.
After I finished eating, I sat on one end of the couch, and Joel sat in a recliner that he moved closer to the fire.
“I can sleep in this chair,” he said, reclining it. “If you want the couch.”
“You sure?” I said doubtfully.
“I’ve slept on much worse,” he assured me.
“All right,” I said. The wind howled outside, and the windows of the house shuddered. It was getting dark. I took off my boots and socks and massaged my aching feet for a few minutes.
“Feet hurt?” Joel asked.
“Yeah,” I admitted. I had tried hard not to complain throughout our trek because I didn’t want Joel to regret his decision to help me. “Why did you want to leave the QZ?” I asked him after a long silence passed between us. I put on some fresh, dry docks, and draped my old ones across the stone hearth to dry out next to the fire.
“It’s a long story,” Joel said.
“I’ve got nothing but time,” I said, even though I knew better than to try to push him to talk about something he didn’t want to talk about. He sighed.
“My brother and I were traveling together for the first few years after the outbreak, but back in the spring, we were doing a smuggling job with your guy Paul-”
“He’s not my guy anymore.”
“Right,” Joel said. “Anyway, we were doing a hand off outside of Baltimore and the contact was some woman involved with the Fireflies. You know about them?”
“Kinda, they’re rebels, right? Or terrorists, depending on who you ask.”
“Yeah… Anyway, she talked Tommy into joining up and going to Boston with her… My brother is… Impulsive. Always in trouble, and I’m always the one who bails him out… I guess… without him, I feel like I don’t have much of a purpose… I’m… surviving but not living.” It was the most personal thing he had ever told me. “Anyway, I thought I might go try to find him.” He shrugged. “I didn’t see a reason to stay in Lexington. I decided to head up to Boston and see if there’s a place for me there.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him what he’d do if he couldn’t find his brother, but I decided not to pull on that particular thread.
“How did you wind up mixed up with Paul?”
“We met in Chattanooga. He took a liking to me, and was sweet and charming. He looked out for me, made sure I had things other folks couldn’t get because of shortages; toothpaste, shampoo, all that stuff. Eventually, we started being romantic, and that’s when he convinced me to leave the QZ. He said he was working on a deal in Lexington, and he’d be running things. Chattanooga fell to infected, and we set out… He looked after me on the way to Lexington, and when we got there, he said I owed him for all he did for me… At that point, I was scared and didn’t know what else to do… But after a while, he stopped being so nice… He started being… And then my cat… So… Anyway.”
“I see,” Joel’s face was impassive. I shivered and moved closer to the fire, pulling one of the blankets he found around me. After a moment, I heard him get out of the recliner and he joined me on the floor by the fire. He sat about a foot away from me.
I don’t remember falling asleep, but I must have, because I woke up to the sensation of Joel rolling over on top of me. One hand came up over my mouth, and the other lifted a finger to his lips. Outside, I could vaguely hear the sound of footsteps. I couldn’t help how my body stiffened, how my breath caught in my throat. It was early, and the light still had a dim, grayish cast to it. It’s probably still snowing, I thought. My eyes went to the fire in the fireplace. It was stupid. We should have tried to stay warm with blankets instead of lighting a fire. Anyone could have seen the smoke.
I thought the storm and the cold would have been enough to keep people hunkered down, that we’d be safe, or else I never would have insisted Joel light the damn thing… The footsteps got louder, closer to the house, and I dared not even breathe for fear that the sound might travel through the paper thin walls of the little bungalow we’d been hiding out in.
Joel slowly pushed himself up on his arms, his body caging me as he raised his head just high enough to see out of the window. His brow furrowed and after a moment, a very small huff of laughter escaped his lips.
“It’s deer,” he said. “A whole herd of them.” He looked down at me, and then he cleared his throat, pushing himself away from me. “Sorry, I just thought… Well, if it was infected, I didn’t want them to hear anything.”
“No, I… I understand,” I said, but I could feel heat rising in my cheeks. I thought again that Joel was a good looking man; solidly built, with brown hair that had a few silvery strands of gray making its way through it. His beard was unkempt and patchy, but it gave him a rugged sort of look. He had broad shoulders and strong arms… And him rolling over on top of me like that was a reminder of the only thing I missed about Paul…He moved away from me and I sat up, looking out the window. I saw several doe and their fawns moving through the snowy landscape. I smiled, watching them.
“I should go shoot one,” Joel said. “Fresh meat would be nice.”
“No, they have babies.” I pleaded. “There’s plenty of food in the cellar.”
“Yeah, you’re right… it’s just… Tempting.”
“I know,” I said, gazing outside. The snow had stopped, but the sky was still heavy with white-gray clouds. The morning was so still, not even birds were singing.
Joel pulled off his hooded sweatshirt.
“It’s finally starting to feel a little warm here,” he said, sitting back in the recliner.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “About the fire-”
“No, I’m not going to argue with you about it anymore, you were right. We probably would have froze to death without it last night. If this house has any insulation in the walls, I’ll eat my boots,” he said, “I can hear everything outside.”
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“I’ll risk it, especially with the weather being as cold as it has been, and I don’t think anyones going out in this shit.” He gestured to the snow outside. Judging by the way the deer were picking their way through it, it must have been almost a foot deep.
I sighed, wondering what the next move was. Obviously waiting out the weather was the immediate plan… but then what?
Part of me wanted to continue north, to try to find that commune, to do what I planned to do when I left Lexington… Finding this little village… and Joel… hadn’t been part of the plan, but now that we’d spent some time together, I felt myself getting a little attached to him… And the village had shelter, some supplies, and was far enough out in the middle of nowhere that maybe it was a place to rest… at least for a little while.
“You’re awfully quiet… For you,” Joel quipped as he took a sip of water.
“Just thinkin’ about what I want to do when the weather clears.”
“Oh yeah? I thought you were going to go to Pittsburg.”
“I was, but…”
“But what?”
“Well, winters in Appalachia can be brutal… The cold… The Snow… All of it… And this place is… There’s shelter… Water… Some supplies… We haven’t looked through any of the other houses, who knows what we might find… I was thinking maybe I might stay here for a little while. Just… I’ve been on the move for a long time, I guess I just… I want a place to rest for a while. A little piece of peace.”
Joel blinked, surprised.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah… and I thought maybe…”
“…Maybe?”
“Well, you said last night you were… looking for a place to belong, a purpose… I thought maybe you might want to stay, too.”
“Stay here, with you?”
“I mean… If you… If you wanted to?”
Joel looked at me for a long moment before he answered.