Page 6 of My Apocalypse Cowboy
"About those chickens..." He grins. "Maybe approach them more like patients, less like enemies."
He hands me a towel that appeared from nowhere, and I attempt to clean the worst of the mud off my jeans. It's hopeless—I'm soaked and filthy and it's not even noon yet.
"Let's try the chickens," Joseph suggests. "Less chance of drowning in a water trough."
The chickens, it turns out, are even worse than the cows.
"They're so... aggressive," I pant, clutching the egg basket like a shield while a particularly vindictive hen pecks at my boots.
"That's Gladys. She doesn't like strangers."
"Gladys needs therapy."
"Gladys needs to lay eggs. That's her job."
"Well, she's not very good at customer service."
This time Joseph doesn't even try to hide his grin. "You're afraid of a five-pound chicken."
"I'm not afraid. I'm being strategically careful."
"With a chicken."
"A hostile chicken."
"Rebecca." He steps closer. "You outweigh her by a factor of twenty. You've got opposable thumbs and higher brain function. You can handle one cranky hen."
"Easy for you to say. You're not the one she's trying to murder."
"She's not trying to murder you. She's protecting her territory. It's instinct."
"Great. So I'm being defeated by instinct."
"You're overthinking it."
He moves behind me, his chest brushing my back as he reaches around to guide my hands on the basket. The contact sends heat shooting through me that has nothing to do with embarrassment and everything to do with the way his breath tickles my ear.
"Confident movements," he murmurs, his voice dropping to that low rumble that does things to my insides. "Don't give her time to think about it."
I try to focus on his instruction instead of the way his hands cover mine, warm and sure. But when I reach for an egg, my concentration shatters completely. I fumble, knock over the water dispenser, and somehow manage to step directly into the mess.
Before I can process what's happening, I flash back to the old world—where I would have just driven to the grocery store and bought a dozen eggs for three dollars. No hostile chickens, no mud, no wondering if these are the last eggs I'll see for weeks.
"In my past life, YouTube would have taught me how to do this," I mutter, trying to salvage my dignity along with the eggs.
Joseph chuckles. "In your past life, you didn't need to know."
The sound that attracts them is part crash, part splash, and entirely loud enough to carry across the valley.
The zombies stumble into the yard twenty minutes later—three of them, drawn by the noise. Slow-moving but persistent, with the single-minded determination of the truly dead.
"Stay behind me," Joseph orders, already moving toward the rifle he keeps mounted near the barn.
But I'm already moving too, grabbing the pitchfork I'd abandoned earlier. Three years of survival have taught me that freezing gets you killed.
"Rebecca, get back."
The first zombie lurches toward me, and instinct takes over. I drive the pitchfork forward, catching it center mass and using its own momentum to drive the tines deep. It drops, twitching.
