Four: Safe and Sound

However surprised Amber was at my decision to stay in the little sanctuary we found, I can say that it wasn’t nearly as surprised as I was… But I couldn’t argue with her; shelter, a regular supply of food, and clean water, versus an unknown wilderness and unpredictable weather.  I had to trust that she was right about the weather in Appalachia.  I didn’t know the area, but she grew up there.

“All right,” I said slowly. “We’ll stay until the weather warms up.”

Amber’s eyebrows raised slightly, her big green eyes looking bigger and greener in the gray dawn.

“You want to stay, too?”

“You make a good argument for it,” I said matter-of-factly, sitting back in the old recliner.  It reminded me a bit of the one I had… Before.  I felt a little pang as I pushed the headrest back and heard the familiar, mechanical creaking of the foot rest rising. 

Amber flopped back on the couch.  It was hard not to look at her; she was gorgeous.  Most people, at least the ones I interacted with any kind of regularity, lost the light in their eyes pretty quickly after the world went to shit, but Amber was still holding hers.  She didn’t have the worn, beaten down look so many folks seemed to carry, the slouched shoulders and down cast eyes, the dull vacant expressions and hollow smiles. I wondered how she survived this long without it being snuffed out of her.

“What?” she said.

“Nothing,” I said.

“You’re staring.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling my cheeks warming. “I told you, you’re nice to look at,” I admitted. I’d felt myself softening a little towards her since the first night after we left the QZ, but being warm, comfortable, and full of actual food, not ration bars and jerky, had me in a mellow, agreeable sort of mood. It was a feeling of relaxation I couldn’t recall experiencing since the night before the outbreak, snuggled up on the couch with Sarah, watching a dumb movie.

“You might be too, if you ever smiled.”

I huffed derisively.

“And if you shaved.  Maybe a hair cut.”

“Anything else?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

“No, I think that’ll do it,” she said with a soft smile. Her left cheek dimpled slightly. “Do you want to check out the other buildings today?  See what else we can find?”

“Actually, I…” I took a deep breath. “I kind of want to take a day off.”

“A day off?”

“I’ve been going full speed, full on survival mode for a while. I just… This is a nice, quiet place, like you said, peaceful. I kind of want to enjoy it. Like you said, a piece of peace.  Who knows how long this will last? Better soak it in.”

“I like the sound of that,” Amber said, a grin spreading across her face. “I’m going to clean up a little bit and then I’ll make breakfast.”

“You don’t have to-”

“I like to cook,” Amber insisted. 

“All right,” I said mildly.  She pulled the Tweety Bird sweatshirt I found for her over her head, then stood up and stretched.  My eyes traced the lines of her body, the curve of her hips, the gentle lines of her shoulders, and yeah, her ample chest.  She moved like a dancer, with precise grace and fluid movements, her clothes pulling tight against her curves as she stretched, twisting this way and that. Eventually, she worked out whatever knots were plaguing her and grabbed one of the pots of water I boiled the night before.  She went into the bathroom down the hall with it, and I heard the sound of moving around in there.  I tried not to imagine her stripping down and sponging herself off.

Get a grip, boy. I chastised myself. Amber might be the prettiest girl I’d seen in a long time, maybe ever, but that didn’t mean I could oogle her, or fantasize about her like that. 

I sat back in the recliner, trying to remember the last time I’d thought about a woman like that.  Tanisha, Sara’s mother was one when we were dating, but since her?  Maybe that one teller at the bank I cashed checks at, the one that wore short skirts, low cut silks blouses and strong perfume. There had been one particularly hot evening when Sarah was away at a sleepover and I spent the night tossing and turning before taking business into my own hands, thinking about what kind of panties she wore under that short skirt.

Amber emerged from the bathroom in a fresh shirt and a pair of well worn jeans. Her long dark hair was pulled back into a long braid going down her back, but little wisps fell out around her face.

“Feel better?”

“Much,” she said. “Not as good as a hot shower, but I’ll take what I can get.”

“Yeah, I would give my left arm for a hot shower,” I agreed. I decided I should clean up a little too, and made my way into the bathroom.  A thick layer of dust coated most of the room, but Amber had wiped off the counter.  Out of habit, I opened the drawers of the vanity and took stock of what was left behind; an unopened box of toothpaste, which I grabbed eagerly, and some beauty implements I knew by sight but not by name. The next drawer yielded some disposable razors, floss, and condoms.  I chuckled, pulling the strip of silver wrapped packages out of the drawer.  Out of habit, I checked the expiration date, only to discover they were long past their prime even before the outbreak. I tossed them aside and resumed searching.  I found little else of value to me, but then I spied a box of tampons in the back of the cabinet beneath the sink and grabbed them for Amber.  I didn’t know if those things expired or not, but I’d leave that determination up to her.

Amber was humming and sashaying around the kitchen when I came out of the bathroom.  If I squinted a little and filtered out the obvious neglect and the dust, it could have been a morning 20 years ago, when I was some kid with a hangover and a pretty girl I met down at the bowling alley in my apartment. Looking at her in that cold morning light, the white gray sky filtering through the moth-eaten curtains in the kitchen window, I felt something shift in my chest.  It was as if a sort of emotional tension finally released, and I felt my body follow suit.  I moved closer to her, crossing my arms over my chest and leaning back against the counter, watching her mix things she found here and there in the kitchen together in another pot.

“We’re running low on water,” I said, straightening up and collecting some of the empty pots we were using..

“Sorry,” Amber said apologetically.

“Nothing to be sorry for,” I said.  “I’ll fill us up.”

I went out to the back porch, keeping my eyes moving around as I pumped.  It was bitterly cold, and the temporary reprieve only made it bite that much harder when I opened the door. I barely got one pot full before I had to come back inside and put on my jacket and gloves.

“It’s gotta be close to zero (Author’s Note: Farenheit) out there,” I said to Amber as I passed by.

“I can pump water too, we can take turns.”

“Amber, I’m not trying to hint around that I want you to do something, I’m just making conversation.”

“I wasn’t aware that’s a thing you do,” she teased.

“I’ve been making conversation with you this whole trip.”

“Not the whole trip, but yeah, I guess you have lately.” She was still smiling, and I couldn’t help but smile back when I looked at her.

You poor idiot, I thought.  She’s gonna wrap you around her pretty little finger and there isn’t a damn thing you can do to stop her. I paused, realizing that meant there were some hard truths I was going to have to tell her.  I wasn’t ready for that just yet.

“Anyway,” I said. “I don’t mind getting the water, you’re making food for both of us, I can do something to help out.”

Still smiling, Amber bit her lower lip slightly, turning back to whatever she was making. I filled every available pot with water, and then started looking around the house for something bigger that we could maybe clean up and store more water in. The pump was certainly convenient and I wasn’t trying to look a gift horse in the mouth, but it was cold outside, and the pump was stiff from cold and disuse.  I doubted a little thing like Amber could manage it, but I wasn’t dumb enough to say that out loud to her.  I was about to trek across the snowy yard to the woodshed out back when I remembered I said I wanted to do nothing but relax that day.

Amber finished making breakfast, which was just more soup, but with slightly different ingredients.  It still beat tough jerky and stale granola bars by a mile and more.  Amber sat cross legged on the floor in front of the fire, looking into the flames as she ate.  Uncharacteristically, she was quiet, seemingly consumed by thoughts.  At one point, she reached over to her pack, and reached around inside. Eventually, she put her hands on whatever she was worried about, and her face relaxed.

“Everything all right?”

“I just… I brought a… I don’t know what to call it, something I’m really attached to, I guess, and I just… I like to reassure myself that I haven’t lost it.”

“I see,” I said, and without thinking, my eyes drifted down to my wrist, where the broken watch stayed frozen on at the time Sarah took her last few breaths. I cleared my throat and finished my meal.  I helped Amber clean up, and then we settled back down in front of the fire.

For a long time, she didn’t speak.  She put her sweatshirt back on, and then pulled the blanket around her shoulders.

“You cold?” I asked, surprised. The living room was plenty warm enough for me, but Amber was smaller than me, I supposed.

“Cold, anxious, scared,” she admitted.

“What are you scared of?”

“What aren’t I scared of?” she said softly, and suddenly, I realized I was seeing the real Amber, stripped of her bravado and cheerful confidence.  She was a tired, scared young woman all alone in a terrifying reality, with only me for company and protection, and I’d made it clear that she shouldn’t expect either from me.

“I won’t let anything happen to you,” I said.

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

That stung, even though I knew she didn’t mean for it to.  She couldn’t have known, but all the same I felt my walls sliding back into place.  I stood up and walked out of the living room.  Amber looked up, surprised.

“Did I say something wrong?”

Yes, but you didn’t know.

“It’s nothing,” I said, leaning against the chicken counter.

“Tell me,” Amber said. 

“To what end?” I said. “So we can both feel like shit?”

“It might make you feel a little less like shit,” she said. “You don’t have to carry it all by yourself, Joel.”

I didn’t say anything.  I heard Amber rustling around in the living room, and after a moment, she came and stood next to me.  She placed a small, carved rosewood box in front of me.  It reminded me of a jewelry box; it didn’t look big enough to hold anything useful.

“What’s that?”

“My son,” Amber said softly.  “His ashes.”

That knocked the wind out of me

“It was a couple years before the outbreak.  I was about 7 months along.   I was in a car accident.  A dog ran across the highway and some poor old lady swerved to avoid hitting it, and lost control of her car.   She hit me doing seventy miles an hour.  I went into premature labor and lost the baby.”

“I… I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” she said. “But the reason I shared that with you is because I want you to know a couple of things:  The first is that I understand grief, Joel.  I am intimately familiar with it.  And you are grieving. I typically subscribe to the theory that there’s no wrong way to grieve, so if this is your process, this is your process.  But I also want you to know that you don’t have to do it alone.  If we’re gonna stay here through the winter, maybe you could relax your position on the whole “we’re not friends.” thing, and let me try to carry some of this weight for you.”

That admission made me look at Amber a little differently.  When she gave that big speech dressing me down for calling her naive, I thought she was just speaking about the horrors of the world since the outbreak. The realization that she was a fully real person with a lifetime of heartaches and joys of her own should have been obvious, but it took her telling me about her loss for that to sink in.

I sighed heavily, and carried my weary body back over to the couch and sat down, leaning forward with my elbows on my knees.  I rubbed my face for a moment, feeling the coarse, patchy stubble I let go wild these last few months scrape against my palms.

“She wanted me to bring home a cake,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.  Amber sat down next to me, and I felt the warmth of her hand on my arm, even through the sweatshirt. “I got home late from work and forgot.  She wanted to celebrate my birthday.” I felt hot tears stinging my eyes. 

Amber’s arm slid around my shoulder and I realized I was shaking, and suddenly my body wracked with the sobs I’d been keeping buried deep since I woke up in a FEDRA hospital with a bandage on the side of my head. I don’t know how long I cried, but Amber held me while I did.  She didn’t try to push me to talk, or tell me it would be okay, she just held me, her hand moving gently back and forth across my back.

Finally, it passed, and I regained my composure.  I cleared my throat, standing up.

“Fires getting low,”  I said.  I put another few logs in, using the poker to arrange things.  I stared into the flames, and then I felt Amber come sit beside me.

“What was her name?”

“Sarah,”  I said.  “She was turning fifteen.  She was… So beautiful.  And funny. And smart.  And tough. She fought so hard.”

“She sounds incredible,” Amber said.

“It was outbreak night… We were running… I said I would keep her safe.  I said I wouldn’t let anything happen to her… And… I failed.”

“No you didn’t.”

“You weren’t there, you don’t know-”

“What happened on outbreak night was the most horrible thing imaginable,” Amber said. “I saw a little boy get ripped apart while his mother was still holding his hand. She tried to pull him away but all she got was his arm. Plans fell out of the sky and cars were running off the roads, into crowds of people.  Fathers killed their own children. No one could do anything about that.”

“It wasn’t infected that got her, it was a soldier.  Because I wasn’t fast enough to get her away.”

“You didn’t fail, Joel.  Someone else made a choice, and your suffering is because of that choice, not what you did or didn’t do.  He didn’t have to shoot her.  They didn’t have to shoot anyone.”

I didn’t know how to explain my feelings to Amber, how to make her understand that I did fail Sarah and it cost me everything. It took something from me and I didn’t think I would ever get it back.

“You did the best you could,” Amber tried to sooth me.

“And I failed! My best wasn’t enough and my daughter is gone!” I exploded. “Everyone I’ve ever loved has either died or left me.”  I felt my fists clenching at my side, and I saw Amber stiffen, steeling herself for my temper. Somewhere in the back of my mind, beneath the pain and anger and sorrow, the memory of what she said about Paul, about how he treated her flashed back to the surface.

I stood up quickly, pulling my coat over the hooded sweatshirt, and grabbed the rifle.

“Stay in the house,”  I said hoarsely. “Stay warm.”

“Where are you goi-”

“To get some air.”

My breath floated up into the morning air, the white vapor curling through the snowflakes.  I made my way out to the woodshed, gun at the ready. We hadn’t been out here yet and while my blood was running hot enough for a fight, I still didn’t want to go looking for one… But I needed a quiet moment to process all that Amber said that morning, and all that I said back.

She knew what it was like to lose a child.  The ugly, mean part of my brain wanted to fire back that she never held her child, never taught him how to tie his shoes, or ride a bike, or spell his name.  Did he even have a name? But presumably at seven months along, he was a child very much wanted.  No, I couldn’t compare her pain to mine like that. Pain is pain and loss is loss. 

The woodshed was dark and windowless, so I left the door open behind me, moving slowly with my rifle drawn.  I nearly tripped over something, and then realized it was a cellar door hatch.  I wasn’t going down there without a flashlight and Amber standing watch, so I left it be for a moment.  I moved slowly through the shed.  There was some kind of mechanical equipment covered by a plastic tarp and a thick layer of dust.  I carefully pulled the tarp free and stared at the mental box for a moment without realizing what it was.

A generator.

“Aw, shit,” I said, my face breaking into a grin.  If we could get it to work… Well… Winter might not be so bad. I knew I needed to poke around in the other houses and the little general store to see what was left, but this… This was more than I could have hoped for… Assuming I could get it working, that is. I cast my eyes around the woodshed.  Some tools, a large stack of wood, and some lumber. 

How the fuck was this place still so well stocked?  How the fuck was all of this here?

Amber mentioned there were little forgotten places like this in the hollows.  Maybe her idea of a commune wasn’t so far-fetched.  Maybe someone did find a farm stocked like this and decided to open it to others. Bleeding hearts could live through the apocalypse, I supposed.

I realized that my discovery had calmed me down, and now the freezing morning was leeching through my clothes.  I turned and trudged back inside, eager for the warmth of the fire.

Amber had cleaned up from breakfast, storing the unused portions of our food on the unheated back porch, trusting the below freezing temperature to keep it from spoiling for a day or two. She’d obviously done a sweep around the house, making tiny little piles of useful things she found.  I heard her thumping around up stairs and then suddenly I heard her scream.  There was a strange slithering sound and then the sound of something massive bumping down the stairs.  I ran through the house and came around a corner just in time to see Amber sliding down the last few steps on a twin sized mattress.  For a moment she looked startled but then her face broke into a wide smile and she started giggling. I stared at her incredulously, and when she looked up at me, she just laughed harder.  

When she finally stopped, she sat upon the mattress and wiped her eyes.

“I’m sorry, that didn’t exactly work out how I planned.”

“How didn’t you plan it?”

“I planned for me and the mattress to come down separately, but I lost my footing.”

“You should have waited for me to come help you.”

“I thought I had it under control. And besides, you were busy.”

I didn’t reply. Busy seemed an odd way to describe it, but I supposed I preferred that to brooding.

Amber stood up and started to wrestle with the mattress.

“Here,” I said, taking it from her.  It was heavy, so I couldn’t begin to imagine how she thought she could handle it. “What’s the plan for this?”

“I thought we could put it in the living room, and one of us could take the bed and the other could take the couch.  That way you wouldn’t have to sleep in the chair,” she explained. “And we could still stay warm by the fire.”

“That’s… That’s thoughtful of you.”

“Just trying to make the most out of what we have,” she said with a smile.

I decided not to tell Amber about the generator until I knew if I could get it running.  There was no telling if there was any fuel around for it. I didn’t want to get her hopes up, but I could tell she was thrilled at the prospect of having a safe, comfortable den for the winter. I pushed the mattress to where she wanted it, down in front of the fire, close to the couch.

“Something on your mind?” she asked me.

“Hmm?”

“I asked if you had something on your mind,” she said. “You’ve got that look.”

“Just thinking about some stuff we should be on the lookout for.”

“I thought you were taking the day off,” she teased, and she grabbed a sheet from one of the piles she made, and started tucking it around the mattress. I raised an eyebrow at her.

“The pot calls the kettle black, I see.”

Amber chuckled.

“I just want you to be comfortable tonight,” she said. I blinked. 

“You’re not taking the bed?”

“You’re taller than I am, the couch is fine for me.”

I shook my head.

“I can sleep just about anywhere, I’m not picky.” 

Amber shook her head.

“Suit yourself,” she replied, and she tossed a pillow onto the couch.

“You were busy while I was gone.”

“You were gone awhile.”  She flopped down on the bed, and grabbed a book from yet another pile and snuggled under a blanket. “You’re staring again.”

“Sorry,” I grumbled.

“You can look at me if you want to, Joel.” She shrugged. “I used to take my clothes off and dance for money. I’m used to it.”

“Maybe I’m not looking at you like that.”

“How are you looking at me, then?”

I swallowed hard, unsure of how to answer.