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“You’re taking good care of him, Carly,” Justin said, with that uncanny ability of his to follow her train of thought. “He’s getting good exercise, a healthy diet, clean water, and a safe place to sleep. Wolves can live up to twenty years if they’re with humans, twice what they’d have in the wild.”
“We need to get him some vitamin tablets to make sure he’s getting everything he needs as he grows.”
“I’ll keep an eye out for them.” Justin erected a spit and suspended the rabbit over the fire. “Guess what? Next one, you get to clean.”
“Ugh.” Carly shuddered.
“There’s no crying in baseball,” Justin said. “And there’s no being grossed out in an apocalypse.”
That evening, Carly gagged and grimaced her way through cleaning the young raccoon Sam brought them. Justin said it was a perfect animal for her to practice on as it was large, and they weren’t going to eat it anyway. She perforated the organs in a couple of places—any one of them would have tainted the meat and rendered it inedible, but Justin declared it a good first try. He brought her a bowl of bleach-purified water and the container of antibacterial soap, and Carly spent a good twenty minutes scrubbing the blood from beneath her fingernails.
Sam seemed insulted they hadn’t eaten his catch, so he took the bloody corpse from Justin with a huff and went over to lie down and eat it himself.
As their dinner cooked, Justin showed her their progress on the map, and she was surprised to see they were near the U.S. border. They’d been traveling for a month and a half, and it seemed like Canada was endless. She couldn’t believe they’d actually completed half of their journey.
“Are you sure you don’t want to keep on going?” Carly asked. “Another month and a half and it will only be the middle of October.”
Justin shook his head. “We’re going to be traveling slower now since there are more cities in our path. We’re going to have to take side roads and sometimes leave the roads entirely.”
She tilted her head. “We can’t ride the bikes through a field.”
“We’re going to have to do a lot of walking, Carly. I’ll load up Shadowfax as much as possible and pull the wagon myself until the terrain gets too rough, but we’re probably going to have to carry a good bit ourselves.”
Carly took a deep breath. “All right, then.”
Justin smiled at her, pride gleaming in his eyes. “We’re not going to make it as far as I’d hoped, but I’d like to try to make it through North Dakota before we hole up. It just depends on how much progress we make.”
They retired to the tent to snuggle inside their joined sleeping bags after dinner instead of playing their usual card games or reading. They zipped the tent flap closed and heard Sam’s indignant huff on the other side of the nylon.
Justin drew back from a sweet, passionate kiss and traced his fingers over her cheek. “Maybe we shouldn’t do this until we have a backup,” he said reluctantly.
“There are other things we could do, you know.”
He grinned and blinked his eyes at her with exaggerated innocence. “Such as?”
“Shall I demonstrate?”
“Please do.”
Carly smiled wickedly and disappeared beneath the sleeping bag.
In the morning, Carly found Justin in front of the campfire, doing some sort of elaborate martial arts dance. For such a large man, he moved with incredible grace, probably the product of years of training.
“Whatcha doin’?” Carly asked as she emerged from the tent, still in the tank top and pajama pants she had donned last night. She’d woken earlier than usual this morning. Usually, she slept until Justin woke her, so she’d never seen his early morning routine.
“Tai chi.”
“Mmm. I used to get those from Starbucks.”
“You’re thinking of chai tea,” Justin said automatically and laughed. “You’re teasing me, aren’t you?”
“Yup.” Carly grinned at him. He arched out one leg and followed it in a turn—a flowing motion that reminded her of a slinking jungle cat.
“Smartass. Get yourself some coffee. Breakfast will be ready soon.”
She eyed the pot sitting on some hot embers. “We’re not having oatmeal again, are we?”
“Yes, we are.”
