Page 10 of Embers

He yanks up his underwear since they must have slipped down in bed, and then he pulls his jeans on over them and stuffs his feet into his shoes. He walks outside without a word.

He probably assumes I’m still asleep.

He’s gone to use the outhouse, wash up, and then feed the pigs and chickens, like he does every morning.

I slept better than I expected last night. In fact, I slept better than I have in months. Maybe I’ve finally accepted that this is my life now, and there’s nothing I can do to change it.

Whatever the reason, I know exactly what I’m going to do today.

I jump out of bed and pull on my jeans over the panties and tank top I’ve been sleeping in. When Cal is done in the outhouse, I run outside to pee, and then I come back inside and get busy.

The first thing I do is pull the cardboard off the windows to let the light back into the cabin.

The air is full of dust. I can see it hanging in the air as the sunshine streams in. So I open the front door and all the windows in an attempt to blow out the stale air.

Not that outside air is fresh anymore, but it’s better than what we’ve been breathing in here.

I get the broom out of the storage closet and start pulling the bedding off Cal’s bed and my mattress. All of it needs to be washed. Today looks clear, so I should be able to hang it outside to dry. I’m working on the cobwebs in the corners of the ceiling when I’m aware of a presence behind me.

I turn to see Cal standing in the doorway, staring at me. “Whatcha doin’, kid?”

“I’m not living in a wolf den anymore. If I’m going to stay here, then we’re going to make this place nicer.”

He doesn’t respond. Just watches me. Almost cautiously, if I’m reading him right.

“This is happening,” I tell him in a brisk voice. “So go on out and haul in some more water because we need to scrub this place down.”

3

Year Four after Impact, Summer

Two years later,I’m standing in the truck bed of Cal’s pickup with a rifle propped on my shoulder.

For the past year, we’ve had to go farther out from our mountain to find houses and out-of-the-way shops that haven’t yet been scavenged. Anything in a town or a city is a hopeless case. If the local residents didn’t clear them out early on, then the gangs or droves will have already hit them and emptied anything worth having. Our only hope for scavenged food and supplies are the small farms and isolated cabins and run-down quick shops scattered throughout the rural regions surrounding us.

Yesterday Cal and I packed up for an overnight trip and headed north. We found three different unpillaged houses over a hundred miles and did really well with our haul. We collected more canned goods than we’ve seen in eight months. At one house, there was a closet full of clothes. The man’s sizes fit Cal just right, so I bagged up trousers, undershirts, boxer briefs, socks, and conservative button-down shirts. Envisioning him in that final item keeps making me giggle. He scowls every time I do, demanding to know what’s funny, but I haven’t yet told him.

The woman’s clothes are too big for me, but I can make a lot of them work. I’ll have to since for six months now I’ve been making do with two pairs of shredded jeans and three tops on their last threads. At another house, we found menstrual pads for me, which is a relief since I was getting low. My period hasn’t been regular—either from stress or diet or environmental factors—but I definitely don’t want to go without the supplies I need. At the same house, we also found more cleaning supplies than we’ve ever gotten our hands on before and bedding that looks almost new. The third house was mostly cleared out, but I found books.

So many books.

This morning we decided to take a couple more hours to search before we head home, and we just now discovered this old place—a two-pump gas station with a hole-in-the-wall shop.

I was so excited at the sight of it I actually squealed, a sound that earned me a long-suffering sidelong look from Cal. That kind of thing doesn’t bother me from him anymore, so I just smiled. “Don’t give me that look. If you were the squealing kind, you’d be squealing too.”

He snorted at that before we climbed out of the truck. I got into position here in the back while he grabbed his tools and focused on priorities—checking to see if there’s any gas in those tanks.

The afternoon is hot. Hotter than I can remember in ages. The sun still looks grungy in the grayish sky, but it’s brighter than it’s been since Impact. Maybe the dust layer in the atmosphere is finally starting to clear after four years.

I wipe sweat off my face with the back of my hand and scan the old road in both directions. There’s not a flicker of motion anywhere, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe. I don’t lower the rifle. “Anything in there?” I call out to Cal, who’s kneeling next to the underground tank he just pried open.

“Yep. Lots of it.”

My heart jumps in excitement. Finding gas nowadays is like finding gold.

Cal had tanks full of it in one of his outbuildings when Derek and I first arrived at his place, and we’ve been able to replenish the supply fairly often with whatever we can siphon out of abandoned vehicles. But we haven’t found this much in more than a year.

He gets out his large siphon pump as I open the nozzle of the fuel transfer tank he keeps in the back of his pickup. It’s always taken up almost half the room in the truck bed, but it’s worth it. If we ever run out of gas, we’ll have trouble surviving.

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