“Can we keep him?” Teresa asked. She’d been sitting in a bed of clover with the skirt of her long dress shielding her legs from the sun. She must have scavenged the sunhat she was wearing as well. Good. Hopefully it would keep her fair skin from burning. The boy’s calico cat was luxuriating in her lap, its one eye staring up at her adoringly while she stroked its stomach.
“The cat or the boy?” I asked.
“Both?” she asked hopefully.
“No. Absolutely not.”
“We can’t just leave him here,” Macon chimed in. We’d left our packs back at our overnight campsite in the woods, but he had his axe draped across his shoulders, sweat staining his pits and both beefy arms hooked over the handle like some sort of apocalyptic pinup model. He was currently on watch in case a friendly neighborhood Rabid attacked.
“Why not?” I demanded. “He was doing well enough without us.”
“He’s all alone,” Macon said. “He’s a sitting duck for some band of raiders.”
“We’re a band of raiders,” I reminded him, though we were more like scavengers than raiders. Raiders tended to steal from the living, rape, and murder, rather than just quietly burglarize empty homes and move along. “And besides, he has a brother. A big, nasty brother who will be here any minute to slit my throat.”
“He’s been on his own for a while now,” Artemis said, because I’d briefed her already. “His brother’s probably not coming back.”
The same thought had occurred to me, but I wasn’t going to give a double dose of bad news to Kitten.
“Don’t we have enough mouths to feed?” I asked, appealing to her common sense.
“He can help us scavenge,” Teresa said.
“And he knows how to grow stuff,” Macon added. “That’ll be useful when we reach Promised Land.”
“Ifwe reach it,” I said because I still wasn’t convinced that the place existed, and even if it did, how did we know that this supposed colony of homesteaders was any safer than what we’d been doing? “Besides, who says the little brat won’t gut me in my sleep?” I spied the upstairs window, making sure there wasn’t a rifle pointed in my direction.
“He’ll cool off,” Artemis said in her typical self-assured way, “and besides, that’s why we keep watch.”
Did I really want the kid’s presence to be a constant reminder of being a mother killer? To have to look into those fiery brown eyes and see my own callousness staring back at me? Not fucking really. Hit a little too close to home, if I was being honest. Sensing the public opinion was not on my side, I appealed to our only other company member who was as pragmatic as me. “Gizmo, what do you say?”
He glanced up from the radio he’d been fiddling with and adjusted his glasses. “What?”
“That hissy, spitting little kitty upstairs. Do we take him with us or leave him behind?”
Gizmo shrugged because unless it had wires, batteries, or a microchip, he couldn’t be bothered. “I dunno. Ask him what he wants to do.”
“With him we’ll have six,” Macon said, “which is better for team sports, and you won’t have to be alone anymore when we pair off for scavenging.”
“Respectfully, we’re not building a little league team here, and I don’t see him increasing my threat potential. I’m fine on my own,” I said staunchly.
“Great, then it’s settled,” Artemis said with a nod. “We can ask him tomorrow, once things have calmed down.”
“Someone is going to have to collect dinner off the kitchen floor,” I grumbled. “The little bastard threw everything but the kitchen sink at me.” It was kind of cute, actually. Not that I would admit it to anyone else.
“I’ll take over once you’ve… you know,” Artemis said. “Wrap the body tightly. Burn the bedding too. Macon can help.”
“This isn’t my first rodeo,” I growled.
“Mine neither,” Macon grunted.
If I was the reaper, then Macon was the undertaker, mainly because he was the only one of us strong enough to haul the corpses. It was a community service we provided, burning the dead bodies of Rabids. It killed the virus and prevented scavenging animals from feasting on their tainted flesh and spreading the disease. We all had to do our part.
I glanced at the sky and determined from the position of the sun that the boy’s time was up. I donned my snug, leather gloves to protect any open cuts on my hands and raised my bandana to cover my mouth and nose, mostly to dampen the smell.
“I’m headed upstairs,” I told them.
Artemis laid a hand on my shoulder. “Thank you for doing this. I know it’s not easy.”
