Addison gasps. “Emma! Don’t be rude.”
“I’m not trying to be, but it’s not chicken, Momma,” she says, as if her mother has no clue their meat is of the mystery variety.
Addison keeps glancing at Wyatt like he’ll yank the fork out of her daughter’s mouth and tell her she doesn’t deserve breakfast. It’s the funniest shit he’s seen all day.
He’s never minded kids. They say what they mean, and he appreciates honesty. “You’re right, it’s not chicken. A couple of squirrels and a possum.”
“I knew it,” she whispers, mostly to herself.
“She’s grateful, we both are. It doesn’t matter what it is.”
“We heard them fighting outside in the woods before you showed up,” Emma continues. “Then they stopped. I guess because you got them?”
“Emma,” Addison hisses.
The kid said one sentence and didn’t get flattened, and now she wants to talk his ear off while her mother is about to have a fit at the table trying to shut her up. One corner of his mouth quirks into a barely there half-smile. This is the highlight of his day so far.
“That’s right. ‘Cause I got ‘em. The woods are full of dinner. You should both learn how to catch a few things. You can’t go to the store anymore.”
Addison watches this interaction with a conflicted expression. Might be waiting for him to kick them out for being obnoxious. Or worse, for him to make some creepy comment and look at Emma wrong.
Wyatt knows what she worries about. He’s not dense enough to be unaware of the obvious. There are no rules anymore keeping the monsters in check, and plenty left willing to use the crumbling of society as permission to do some awful shit.
There’s nothing he can do to convince her that he’s safe aside from giving it time.
“I would appreciate learning how, but Emma will be staying in the house,” Addison replies evenly.
“I wanna learn—”
“No. You’ll be staying in the house.”
The kid nods with a frown.
“Alright. I only got enough supplies to last the next day or two. We need to head out and set some traps soon. If you wanna come, then come.” He finishes his food and drops the dishes inthe sink. “The fence is up first. It’s not keeping anything out lying on the ground.”
Addison’s footsteps grow closer behind him as he aims for the door and steps outside, leading her to the shed for a few rolls of wire and clippers before they traipse out to the front pasture and find one of the dead stumbling through a gap.
He stabs it through the skull and then kicks it with a scowl. “You fucked my damn fence, you nasty son of a bitch.”
It’s only then that he notices Addison is still staring like she expects that thing to get back up.
“That used to be someone. A person,” she scolds gently, as if he’s forgotten that the rotters used to be doctors and farmers and school teachers.
“It’s not anymore. And he’s not coming back a second time. Grab the feet, and I’ll get the arms. Let’s throw him down the hill.”
Reluctantly, she does as he asks. The long side of the goat pasture sits a few feet away, filled with curious little animals that scamper toward the fenceline to watch them fling a dead body toward the ditch.
One by one, the goats tense and topple over as the rotter rolls past them. It’s a gruesome game of bowling and they’re the pins.
“Oh shit,” Wyatt winces. “You weren’t joking.”
“Not in the slightest.”
“Are they…okay?”
He’s never seen such a thing in all his life, and he’s mesmerized by the sight.
“They seem to recover surprisingly well.” She shrugs. “I’m not really sure what they’re useful for, to be honest, other than entertainment. They’re a bit too skittish for milking.”
