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KATE
My jaw falls open. I snatch the ham away from Johnny.
“Alvarez, is that really you?” Tears of emotion fill my eyes. “This is Kate.”
“Say ‘over,’” Johnny whispers.
“Over,” I say.
“Holy fucking shit,” comes the response. Even through the static, I hear the emotion in Alvarez’s voice. “Damn, woman. I’ve thought about you and Frederico every day since I left you. Meeting you guys saved my life. Every time things got hard, I told myself, Alvarez, if those two old fools can run two hundred miles on foot, so can you. I can’t believe you guys made it! Over.”
“Frederico didn’t make it.” My throat constricts. I blink to keep tears from spilling. “Over.”
“Shit. I’m sorry to hear that. He was a tough old bastard. I could tell that much. Over.”
I nod, then realize he can’t see me. “I know,” I croak. “He was a good friend. How did you get to Fort Ross? Over.”
“Long story. The short version is that I met up with some people along the way. A few of them were going to the fort and let me tag along. Are you safe? Over.”
“As safe as can be expected. Over.”
“I wish you could come here. We need good people to get this place up and running. Over.”
I sigh, my eyes traveling over the maps. Fort Ross is probably a solid two hundred miles from here. “Too far,” I say. “But I’m glad you’re safe and alive.”
“How’s your arm? Over.”
I glance down at the atrocity on my arm that is the stitches from Alvarez. “It’s healing.”
Johnny takes the ham from me. “Foot Soldier, this is Wandering Writer,” he says. “Are you the one who gave Kate those stitches?”
“Yeah, that was me.”
“Dude, those stitches make her look like the bride of Frankenstein. Did you sew those with a blindfold?”
Alvarez bursts out laughing. Johnny grins at me to show he’s joking. I roll my eyes, glancing down at the jagged black thread marring my arm. The stitches should be ready to come out soon. And Johnny isn’t far off from his Frankenstein comparison.
“I’m putting together a thrive list,” Johnny continues, speaking into the ham.
I tune him out as he rattles off the idea for his book. My eyes stray to all the maps Johnny has compiled.
Another cheer goes up from around the Xbox.
Alvarez has a group of survivors. He and Johnny are talking about farming, raising cattle, and fishing.
My survivors are playing video games.
They all need a drop kick into the present.
And I think I finally have a way to do it. I gather up Johnny’s maps.
The walls of the sitting room are covered with a mish-mash of posters and flyers, most of which pertain to music, bands, and ironic slogans. I pull out the thumbtacks, replacing the posters with maps from around the world.
“Mom, what are you doing?” Carter, taking a break from God of War, glances at me from his seat on the floor.
“Johnny has been talking to people around the world,” I reply. “Apocalypse survivors. All the red dots indicate towns where he’s spoken to people.”
One second, all eyes are glued to God of War. The next second, a hush falls on the Xbox enthusiasts. Johnny, having switched off the ham, is also silent. Every head stares at the maps on the walls.
I move to the side, letting them take in the breadth of the global epidemic.
“Dude,” Eric breathes, breaking the silence.
“There are dots in other countries,” Carter says dumbly. He looks like someone delivered a wicked left hook to his brain. Emotion ripples across his face.
It makes a part of me break inside. Instead of the twenty-year-old young man before me, I see the little four-year-old who fell off his bike. More than anything, I wish I had a Band-Aid to cover his wound like I did when he was four.
“The outbreak isn’t isolated to the American northwest.” I raise my voice, pitching it loud enough to fill the room. They need to hear me. They need to see the maps. “It’s worldwide.”
Johnny rises, crossing to point to a city in England. “Robert the butcher. Single dad, widowed. Three kids. He was butchering a pig when riots started outside his shop. When a man with a missing throat ran in and attacked him, Robert fought him off. It wasn’t until his cleaver went into the man’s head did it dawn on him that he was dealing with a zombie. He closed the shop and rushed to get his kids from school.” Johnny’s voice drops. “He was able to get the two smallest. The older one, who was at a different school, never made it home. Robert hopes she’s still alive. He and his two youngest kids are back in the butcher shop. He boarded up all the windows. He and his kids are aging and drying the meats. They have enough to survive for a few months.”
Johnny moves to another red dot, this one a port town in Texas. “Pamela Winchester. A manager of Target who moonlights as an amateur marksman. She’s got a thing for guns. When people started eating each other inside the store, she went straight home to her guns. She’s teamed up with a group of other amateur marksmen. They’re holed up in an apartment complex on tight rations. Pamela isn’t sure what they’re going to do when they run out of food, but she’s ready to start shooting anything that doesn’t look alive.”
God of War is completely forgotten. All eyes are riveted on Johnny.
I study the group of young men and women before me. There’s Lila, who looks like she wants to hide in a closet and never come out. Reed and Eric grip the Xbox controllers like they’re lifelines. Even Johnny, with all the information he’s gathered, looks like he prefers denial to reality. My son looks like he’s been run over with a freight train. I wish Jenna was here to embrace the moment with me.
I push on, determined to make them see. “You can’t spend your days in front of the Xbox anymore. The food will run out. The water will run out. Something else could happen and we might need to leave. No one is going to come rescue us. We either take care of ourselves, or we die.”
“What are we supposed to do?” Eric asks.
This is my chance. Eric has given me an opening. I don’t intend to waste it.
“Tomorrow, we go to Trading Post.” That’s the outdoor shop in downtown Arcata. “We stock up on survival gear. We make sure we each have a bug-out bag in case things go to shit and we have to make a run for it. After that, we scavenge. Every day. We clear every room in this building and gather supplies. We get solar panels and hook up the washing machine. We fortify the downstairs lounge. We figure out how to plant a garden. We make Creekside our home. A real home. And we always, always have a contingency plan in place.”
There it is. My sixty-second soapbox speech. I scan their faces, trying to gauge the impact of my words.
Carter lets out a long, slow exhale. “I’m in, Mom.”
“Me, too,” Johnny says.
“I’ll help, but I’m not going outside,” Lila says.
“I’ve been working out how to set up the solar panel,” Eric says. “Count me in.”
“So long as I can get high at the end of the day, I’m in, too,” Reed says.
Eric smacks him. “Dude.”
“What?” Reed says.
Chuckles ripple through the room. For the first time since arriving here, I feel a sense of hope.