Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 119764 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 599(@200wpm)___ 479(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 119764 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 599(@200wpm)___ 479(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
“Murr yes meat Dakotah Ribbit cats,” he declares. Then he gestures at the ground again. “Stay.”
With that, he springs into the air, changing into his dragon form right over our heads and nearly scaring the shit out of me. I bite back a whimper of terror because it’s just Murr, and watch as he scoops up the dead deer and heads off. The cats screech a protest, meowing wildly and circling around us.
“You guys are spoiled,” Rabbit says to them. “He’ll be back.”
I look around the parking lot, and more cats are flooding over, tails up with excitement. “I’m sure he’ll be back soon enough. He knows they’re hungry. We can go ahead and start a fire for now.”
While I pull firewood from our small stack and add it to our designated “firepit” (basically just a pothole in the parking lot), Rabbit plays with the cats. She’s crafted a feather toy on a shoelace, and the cats go wild for it. Each time they lunge, my daughter laughs with delight, and it’s the best sound in the world. I grew up with pets, and it’s so hard to tell her we can’t take care of one. I know she’s an animal lover and she’s lonely, but we can’t feed a cat. They’re meat eaters. Maybe a dog would be different, but we haven’t had the opportunity to find one to adopt.
I feed tinder to the fire, watching as Rabbit runs circles around the parking lot, chased by a pair of big gray tabbies. I know this is Murr’s home, but he seems to like us, and I love the bookstore we’ve settled in. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to share space for a while…
“Hello, ladies.”
The stranger’s voice calls out across the parking lot, and I jerk to my feet, turning. Rabbit stops in her tracks, looking at me.
A strange man with a battered ten-speed bicycle wheels it toward us. He’s got long, unkempt hair and a scraggly graying beard. His clothes are weatherbeaten, and he has an oversized pack on his shoulders, a bedroll perched atop it.
A fucking nomad. Someone who doesn’t like the rules that the forts lay out, and so they decide to take on the apocalypse solo. Which wouldn’t be such a bad thing in theory, but nomads have gotten a bad reputation for a reason. They’re rapists and murderers, thieves and dealers, and generally the worst people around. Most didn’t leave a fort of their own volition, like we did.
And as a woman alone with a child? I know you don’t trust any man who approaches you with a friendly smile on his face.
I pick up one of the heaviest sticks in the firewood pile and heft it like a weapon. I’ve gotten lazy with Murr around— my spiked bat is inside next to my bed, along with my crossbow. I’ll beat a motherfucker to death with firewood if I need to, though. I gesture at Rabbit and she races to my side, huddling behind me. She’s got her utility knife, but I don’t want her to fight if she doesn’t have to. With my daughter safe at my side, I lift my chin and point the stick at the stranger. “Don’t come any closer.”
He stops his bike and puts up the kickstand. “That’s not very friendly of you.”
As if he deserves friendliness simply because he’s shown up? “What do you want?”
“Thought I’d come say hi. Been smelling smoke on the breeze and figured there was either a resident dragon or company nearby. Glad it’s not a dragon.” He smiles, showing a missing tooth underneath that bushy beard. It doesn’t mean anything— dental work is hard to come by in the After— but the sight of him still strikes me as vaguely menacing. Maybe it’s his too-friendly expression. No one’s friendly in the After. Everyone’s on alert at all times.
The fact that he’s trying to be chummy makes me distrust him.
Even though he’s mentioned dragons, I don’t bring up Murr. People have been kicked out of forts for being sympathetic to dragons, and I don’t want him getting curious and sticking around. “We don’t need help,” I say. “And we don’t have anything to share, so you can just keep on going.”
He ignores the warning in my voice, bending down to offer his hand to one of the calico cats. “Looks like you’ve been sharing with these little guys, or else they wouldn’t be so friendly.”
“They don’t have any food to share, either.”
The man straightens, and the smile remains on his face, but his eyes are cold. “Not very friendly of you.”
“No, it’s not, is it?” I keep my voice flat, dispassionate, even though my heart is racing wildly.
He glances over at the bookstore, at the tarps we’ve hung over the broken window up front, and then at our firepit. “This your squat?”