After a few moments Frank nodded to himself and pushed back his chair and stood up. Automatically, Maggie and James did the same. I followed after a moment's hesitation. It was starting to feel a bit surrealistic, almost as if I were in a play or something. Frank reached out and put a hand on my shoulder gently. “Son, you can stay here for as long as you need. I'm indebted to you for helping out my family. There's not a whole lot of good people left in the world like there used to be. If you had ill intentions you'd already showed them way before now.” He removed his hand and turned to Maggie.
“Why don't you all go get your things unpacked and you can put him in the guest-bedroom. I'll go see what we got down in the freezer and work on some dinner, after you're settled, we'll make lunch and go over our options.” Maggie leaned over and kissed her father on the cheek, “thanks Dad.” She turned to her son and signed something and he nodded, looking at me but no longer with a sense of hostility. Perhaps I passed the hardest test of all, getting the Colonel's approval. If I was alright by him then I'd be okay for the boy. I said my thanks and followed the boy out the door. Maggie stayed for a few moments then came out to help.
In about half an hour we had our things unloaded off the ATV's and personal effects were distributed in our rooms. Other items remained on the ATV's as they had no immediate place or use. My room was exactly what the Colonel had said it was. A plain guest room with the few traditional family pictures on the wall, a chest of drawers, a single bed already made up and a chair with a desk sat in one corner. Part of me was tempted to see if there was an ethernet cable outlet under the desk for a lap-top, but I realized that I was thinking old-school now. Times were changed and all of us would have to get used to doing without all the nice amenities of life that we'd grown accustomed to. For myself I was used to it. I was able to take a week-long backpacking trip into the mountains and not be jonesing for the internet or wondering how many e-mails I would have waiting for me when I got home. I never did like our dependence upon technology too much. I made a bet with myself that if I asked the Colonel he'd probably feel the same way.
Like the rest of the house the room was spotless. I was hesitant to put my dirty pack down anywhere on the floor when Maggie appeared in the door way with several sections of newspaper. “Here, you can put your things on these so to not muss things up.” I stared at her for a moment amazed. She smiled, “you're not the first overnight guest we've had in this house since this began and as you've already noticed dirt isn't very welcomed. We have two full bathrooms, after lunch you can take a shower, I'd uh suggest it.” she teased with a wrinkle of her nose.
“That would be great” I honestly replied, “but I gotta ask, how are you all getting power here, and gas for the water-heater?” She came into the room another step and was serious. “Dad was also in special forces, so that kind of training makes you prepared for any eventuality. This whole farm is self-sufficient. We've a underground natural gas tank about a quarter-mile from the house with a pipe line leading to it, the shed has a large capacity generator that's gas operated, fed by the fuel tanks you saw outside. It's fuel efficient, using no more than a couple gallons a month.” She stepped past me and to the window of the room, opening up the blinds and pointing out to a spot in the fields beyond.
“Dunno if you can see them but we've got a solar panel array out in one of the fields which help reduce the fuel generators output thus saving us more energy.” She turned to me looking a little embarrassed, “yeah, dad's one of those “survivalists” and put a lot of money into this place. We've a weapons cache in the basement that would rival any small military outpost. I'll show you that later.” I looked into those blue eyes of hers.
“I really appreciate the level of trust you shown me so far. From what your dad has said earlier, sounds like you guys got burned a couple of times.” Before she could answer her father's voice took us by surprise at the bedroom door.
“That much is true, in the early days of this outbreak people were showing the true colors of their hearts, lot of them were blacker than midnight in a mineshaft.” His face was grim with memory. “You also find out who your true friends are in times like these...” his voice faded with sad memories for a moment, then came back to normal, “you also learn to develop a sense about people and you learn to trust it.
“Like I said, you've already shown your own intentions and well, I trust Maggie's intuition as much as my own. You seem to be alright for the moment and that's enough for me.” I nodded in agreement, “I've had the same feelings about you folks as well”. I replied. I've learned a lot about the Jungian philosophy of mankind during all of this. I'm guessing that a lot of people aren't the same as they used to be. Wanting to survive and being willing to do almost anything, takes whatever values a person might have had and tosses them right out the window. I shrugged, “Like you said, the good and the bad are where you find them. You deal with each of them accordingly.”
He smiled and beckoned us to leave the room. “C'mon now, I've got lunch ready, nothing fancy, just some sandwiches. I'm hoping that dinner will be thawed out in a couple of hours. Hope you like Italian.”
Maggie smiled at her father and followed him on out. I stayed for a moment, looking out the window. Everything felt alright, but part of me was still feeling that prickle of unease. I shrugged it off thinking it was just being on edge for the past 48 hours. I laid out the newspaper on the floor, and picked up my pack and placed it on top, leaning it against the chest of drawers which stood by the closet door. A framed picture on the wall above the chest caught my eye. Actually it was one of those with a collage type mattes with various shapes outlining individual photos. Almost all of them were of Maggie either alone or with someone else. Maggie at Boot Camp, Maggie holding a baby in her arms that had to be James, Maggie standing besides a tall, handsome man in full dress uniform and her in fatigues in front of what appeared to be an Army base barrack. Presumably this man was her husband, long dead, killed somewhere outside of Baghdad a long time ago. A picture of a toddler standing naked, except for a diaper, in an old fashioned plastic wading pool with a quite attractive woman holding on to the girl's waist. No doubt Maggie and her mother. Still one more of Maggie in dress uniform standing next to the Colonel in his own dress uniform, the background was kind of obscured, but I could've sworn I've seen it before. Still, in all of those pictures, Maggie was the ideal of happiness. It radiated out from her eyes and from her smile. I wondered for a moment when was the last time she was that happy.
She was probably like everyone else left alive on the planet, before the outbreak of the dead. Having a life, with it's little triumphs and tragedies, nothing particularly remarkable. Then the outbreak, plague, or whatever it was arrived and shattered everything that everyone ever knew and loved. I looked at those pictures again of the woman I just met. Wondering if circumstances hadn't gone to hell like they did over the last few months, if this woman and I would've ever met. All things considered I felt that it was more likely not, than it being a possibility. Would we have been attracted to each other? Would it had been awkward? The way we met two days ago definitely was awkward but in times before we wouldn't have been in fear of our lives. Anyway, I had no particular reason, nor the money to make the journey that I was making now. Not that I needed money these days anyway. I doubted that I would've made the same route that I took. I was always attracted to the Rocky Mountains and had thought about making a trip there. At the time, however I wasn't really interested in a relationship beyond the bedroom. There was this one woman at work, whom would blush prettily everytime we spoke or caught each other's eye, likewise she caught me doing the same thing, though I blushed for different reasons. Still, our greetings were always cheerful and sincere. The “no fraternization policy” at my job kinda put a damper on any desires to ask her out. It was also my proclivity for being horribly shy at things like that.
Maggie, on the other hand would've likely have met some guy on the base where she was working, gotten to know each other, and likely would've married, settled down and had another kid or three. At least that's the impression I got from her. She must've loved the traveling and adventure the military gave her before she was forced into early retirement like so many veterans of the day. The “war against terror” definitely took on a whole new meaning once the first zombie bit into the first victim.
Frank's voice calling me from the kitchen broke me out of my musing. I called back that I would be there in a minute. I went over to my pack and opened the top and carefully dug out the items that I had packed on top of my spare clothes and laid them on the bed. They weren't dirty, but I still was careful to look them over before placing them on the spread. I took out my shirt, pants, socks and boxers, giving each a sniff to see if they had any objectionable odors, they didn't. These I laid out on the bed and put the things that were on top back into the pack. Spare magazine for my sidearm, a gallon sized ziploc bag of fire starting materials and miscellaneous tools, the extra canister of compressed butane that went to my camp stove. Closed up the pack again and I took one last glance around the room out of habit. Marking where everything was and taking the mental picture that I stored in my brain. Again my eyes were drawn to the Maggie collage on the wall. Again, I was drawn to those wonderful blue eyes of hers.
No comments:
Post a Comment