Madix looks over at me knowingly. “How you doing?”
I roll my eyes. “Sheriff called you?”
“Yep,” he says, scratching the short black beard across his jaw.
“I’m fine,” I tell him. “Surprised you or Theo didn’t come down here earlier.”
“Almost did,” he admits. “Sheriff told us to not to, and to get our sorry asses back to work on fixing up the roof.”
I laugh, grateful that the sheriff filled them in but knew not to send them down here, since that would’ve just made me feel even more like a burden.
“You lock up in here while I secure the back?” I ask.
“Yep,” Madix says, silencing the incessant buzz of the “Open” sign by turning it off. I head to the back to start locking everything up, and hear, “Why the fuck is there a person-sized smudge on the front door?”
I chuckle to myself as I finish securing the place, turning the alarms on before walking out and locking up. We walk to the parking lot, and I open up the passenger door of Madix’s truck, letting Puddles hop in first.
“You guys finish up repairing the roof?”
Madix shakes his head. “Ran out of shingles. Gonna have to swing by the hardware store to pick some up when they open in the morning.”
I nod and flip the radio on as Madix drives to the diner. None of us are even remotely capable of making edible food. Bachelorhood, base life, deployment, and military Meals-Ready-to-Eat—MRE’s—pretty much doomed us, so the local diner is our salvation. It helps that it’s damn good food.
I wait in the truck while he runs in to grab our dinner, and I see the girls inside perk up at his presence. I chuckle to myself as he strides right past them, oblivious. The news starts up and pulls my attention away from the preening women in the diner to the smooth voice of the local radio DJ.
“Over half a million cases of the Handshake Plague have been confirmed on the east coast, along with a high number of reported cases that continue to rise throughout the rest of the country. Everyone is being told to contact their nearest hospital for information on the mandatory vaccinations, and refer to local officials for travel restrictions. Medical masks have sold out, and citizens are starting to panic, despite the president’s address that they are working hard to contain the rapid spread…”
“What the fuck?” I wonder aloud, just as a knock on the window startles me. Madix motions for me to roll it down. “Jolene says they’re out of peach pie today. You want blueberry?” he asks.
I nod, and he turns and heads back inside. I tune back into the radio, but a twangy song has replaced the ominous news report. I pull out my phone and try to open a search engine so that I can figure out just what in the hell is going on in the rest of the country, but as usual, my internet is taking forever to connect. I have full bars, but service is spotty as fuck in this town.
The internet issue doesn’t usually matter, since the three of us don’t give a fuck about having any kind of social media presence. To be honest, we don’t even use it much anymore. Living in this town is like living in the fifties, but we needed a break from all the bullshit, so we welcomed the lifestyle change. This town definitely doesn’t boast any free wifi spots or Facebook Pages. Nope, they stick with their small local radio tower and a weekly newspaper that usually runs a story about whether or not a new stop sign should be installed. It’s a quieter, slower way of living, but it serves as a good balance to the loud and messy bombardment from our own internal shit.
Madix opens the driver’s side door and climbs back in the truck, placing the dinner bags in the back seat, and shoots Puddles adon’t you fucking darelook. Puddles sits down with a huff, ending their stare-off, while Madix puts the truck into gear and starts to drive towards our house on the outskirts.
“You hear about the shit that’s going down in the rest of the country?” I ask, unable to let the foreboding statistics that I just heard go.
“Yeah, we caught a couple reports on the radio earlier, but you know how the media likes to hype all this shit up. They get off on scaring people and then sell them something that will supposedly solve the problem.”
I huff out a chuckle, unable to deny the legitimacy of that statement.
“Well, if shit does go down, we’ll have to addavoiding plaguesto the pros of living in a small, defensible town.”
Madix cracks a smile. “In peace, prepare for war.” he sounds off, mimicking the tone and cadence of our old unit leader.
“Rangers lead the way,” I respond automatically, and knock my knuckles against Madix’s outstretched fist.
Puddles immediately sits up and lifts her paw to land against ours, and Madix lets out a snort. “I can’t believe you trained her to do that.”
I grin and scratch her behind the ear. “I didn’t train her. She’s just smart. She likes to be included.”
“You’re such a needy chick, Pud,” Madix informs her playfully.
Puddles leans in and licks his neck, leaving a nice string of slobber on his collar. He grimaces and lifts his shoulder to his ear, trying not to run us off the single lane road that leads up to our place. “Fucking gross.”
It takes a good twenty minutes of curvy back roads to get to our house. For a weird hermit fucker, Theo’s uncle sure did have good taste in real estate. Ten acres to ourselves, a five bedroom spread with exposed wooden beams, and a brook in the back. It’s a little touch of paradise I never knew I wanted until we were here, standing on the edge of the property and taking it all in.
Madix parks, and as soon as I open the door, Puddles jumps out with me, while I grab the food and head inside. Our entryway leads into an open floor plan so I can see the kitchen, which we just finished updating, and the living room, which we’ve turned into a makeshift gym. There’s a treadmill, a weight machine, a bench press, and some more free weights lined up on the far wall. We tried to hang a punching bag too, but we learned the hard way that the ceiling wasn’t equipped to handle the weight, which is why there’s a plaster patch clearly visible.
