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It was a kitten. A little ginger ball of fluff with blue eyes, bedraggled from wolf slobber and painfully thin. Carly picked it up and cooed at it. The poor baby was trembling, but what cat wouldn’t be after being clasped in the teeth of a wolf? She peeked beneath the kitten to see if it was a boy or girl.
“Sam, where did you find her?” Carly asked as if Sam would answer. He sat, his eyes hopeful, his tail swishing back and forth across the floor.
Justin sighed. “I guess we’ve got a cat now, too.” He sounded a little glum at the prospect, and Carly cast him a reproving look.
“Poor baby is starving! Justin, would you get me a packet of tuna?” He did, and Carly tore it open. She stood the cat on one of the counters and fed the tuna to her bit by bit, slowly, as not to upset her stomach or overfeed her. Justin came back in a few minutes with a plastic tray he’d filled with sand he got from the banks of the nearby creek. He laid it down on the floor by the stove with a sigh. “What’s her name?” he asked Carly in a resigned tone. “Frodo? Arwyn?”
“Tigger,” Carly responded, and Justin burst into laughter.
“From Lord of the Rings to Winnie the Pooh? Is this the baby’s influence?”
Carly grinned at him. She put the kitten on the floor and was surprised when she trotted over to Sam and rubbed her cheek against his leg. He lay down, and the kitten curled up beside him.
“I’ll be damned,” Justin said with a shake of his head, and went back to transporting the medicines down into the cellar.
From the outset, Tigger was Sam’s cat. She followed him everywhere, and Sam showed remarkable patience toward her. He never snapped or growled when Tigger attacked his tail or climbed all over him. It was Sam who taught her to hunt, though Carly sincerely wished he’d skipped those lessons when Tigger began to bring back “presents” of half-eaten mice and moles. Carly always acted as though she was thrilled with them, though, and even pretended to eat them to spare the cat’s feelings, which Justin found hilarious.
Justin was gone a lot during the day over the first few weeks in their new home. He was scouting the countryside for supplies and any potential threats. There was no one in the nearby homes, and he stripped them of both food and firewood. The latter he stacked on the porches around their house as he collected it.
He had found a harness for Shadowfax, and she willingly pulled a large wagon for him when he went on these collecting missions. Justin had fitted out the barn for her, covering the floor with a thick, comfortable layer of straw and stacking the bales of hay he’d brought back so she could eat in the winter. There were also bags of feed, for variety’s sake; Shadowfax would be snug and warm during the winter.
Carly was worried about Shadowfax, for she seemed to get fatter every day. Her belly had an odd bulge that didn’t seem natural, and Carly started to wonder if she had picked up a horse disease or worms during their journey. Other than the huge, swollen belly, she seemed to be healthy and happy, so Carly didn’t think it was colic. She didn’t seem fevered from what Carly could tell—she couldn’t get Shadowfax to leave the thermometer in her mouth long enough to be sure—and she showed no signs of distress. The book on horses Carly had gotten from the library didn’t contain a reference to symptoms of horse illnesses, so she spent hours looking over the various ailments listed under the Diseases section, trying to find one which just made the belly swell up. But the book seemed designed for people who already understood about caring for horses, and Carly was at a loss. She asked Justin to get some de-wormer for all of their animals if he found a veterinarian’s office.
He didn’t say anything, but she could tell he was worried about Shadowfax, too. At some point, their little menagerie had ceased to be just Carly’s animals and became Justin’s, as well.
Justin woke before dawn and dressed quietly. He went around to Carly’s side of the bed and pressed a kiss to her cheek. “I’m heading out, honey.”
“Mmph,” she replied and burrowed down into her pillow. He tucked the blanket up around her neck and tiptoed from the room. He felt a little guilty for leaving while she was still asleep, but he thought it would be easier on her. She worried about him when he traveled around the countryside; if she’d known where he was heading today, she would have begged him not to go and he would feel awful for refusing her. So, he was cutting the Gordian knot by sneaking out like a coward. Sam hopped off the foot of the bed and followed Justin downstairs, wagging his tail.
Justin opened the front door to let Sam outside and began to arm himself from the cache in the hall closet. In the back of his mind, he heard Lewis’s voice dispensing advice on firearms: Take as many guns as you think you need, then double it. He put a handgun holster on each hip, his knife in the back of his belt, and loaded extra clips into a backpack.
Sam butted the door open with his head. He looked up at Justin questioningly and gave a wag of his tail.
“No, buddy, stay here and guard Carly,” Justin said. As if Sam had understood what he said, he headed for the stairs. “Don’t wake her up!”
Justin closed the door behind him and headed for the barn. Shadowfax gave one of her snorting rumbles when she saw Justin and ambled over to him. He spoke to her softly for a few moments before he began to harness her to the wagon. He kept returning his gaze to her bulging sides. He wished he knew what was wrong with her.
Despite the amount of exercise she got every day, she continued to swell. Justin had little experience with horses, except what he’d picked up in the Middle East, where some of the people still used them as daily transportation. He theorized she had a blockage of some type in her digestive system. It frustrated him to be so powerless to help her. The bulging stomach didn’t seem to bother her, and she seemed otherwise healthy, so he hoped it was something from which she could recover on her own—and not only for Carly’s sake.
Shadowfax and Sam were the first animals he had let into his heart since Winston died, and as much as his practical side might urge him to protect himself, there was no way he could keep his emotions disengaged.
He and Shadowfax started out down the road just as the sun broke over the horizon. He expected to reach town by about noon, and his estimate was not far off. He watched Shadowfax carefully for any signs of nervousness as they approached the small town, but she seemed relaxed.
The streets were silent except for the chirping of birds from the nearby trees and the skitter of a few fallen leaves across the pavement. Justin kept a watchful eye on the windows of the buildings they passed, searching for signs of movement or the flash of gunmetal in the folds of a curtain. He listened carefully for any interruption to the chatter of the birds in the trees, which, experience had taught him, was an excellent indicator of danger.
Weeds were growing up through the cracks in the pavement, and many of the buildings were already showing neglect; some were missing shingles, and others had broken windows. Nature took over quickly without maintenance. Many doors had been forced open and hung ajar like gaping mouths.
Justin stopped the wagon in front of a grocery store and unharnessed Shadowfax; he didn’t want to leave her vulnerable. The horse tossed her head and butted his shoulder with her nose before ambling over to check out the selection of vegetation at the side of the parking lot.
The glass door in the front of the store had been broken. Justin pushed it open and crept inside. The lack of debris on the floor among the shards of glass told him the window had been broken recently, and though his instincts and senses told him he was alone inside, he remained cautious.
He clicked on his flashlight and swept the beam across the room. The shelves were mostly bare. There wasn’t even enough to fill his backpack, but he carried it outside and loaded it into the wagon before heading to the baby aisle.
It gave him pause to see the shelves of diapers untouched.
Justin didn’t know if Carly had noticed the lack of babies and children, and he certainly didn’t want to bring it up. He didn’t like to think of it or speculate as to the reasons why. If he was wrong about the baby being exposed to the Infection while in the womb, they could be facing the grief of losing their child after it was born. The idea terrified him. Already, he could feel a bond of love forming between himself and the baby, and the bond grew stronger every day.
He had tried to hold his heart in check and had tried to caution Carly to do the same with his warnings of the things that could go wrong. But she couldn’t hold back any more than he could. A few centuries ago, parents could expect to lose half of their children before adulthood, but Justin imagined they hadn’t been any more successful at “protecting” their hearts from the grief of loss, as much as they expected it.
