"Yeah, they got in maybe thirty minutes before you did. Uh, is that a goat?" Ty asked. Trent and I started to giggle. Ty opened the gate up and we walked through.
Jeffrey loved his new town; however, trying to convince him to leave the plants alone long enough to reach to the school was a maddening trip. When we finally came close enough, we heard the kids playing on the playground with their tricycles that we found in a shed next to the kindergarten classroom, and then, the sound of their playing suddenly stopped. A moment later, I heard the pattering of feet that grew louder as they ran up to us. Jeffrey must have been spotted. They crowded around to check out the new group member. I heard Trisha admonish them for running off and I heard the sounds of her running after them. She stopped short when she saw us, and like her father, the first thing out of her mouth was, "Is that a goat?" It was a going to be the question of the night, I thought.
"Yeah. We'll tell you all about it inside. Let's go talk!" I replied.
When I found Tanya, Matt, and Lucas, I asked how the shopping trip went. Tanya's smile was absolutely radiant.
"I am so grateful that people didn't decide to stock up on fertilizer and plant food when the end came. We made out like absolute bandits, and I got so many more seed packets! We should be able to plant stuff for the next fifty years after this haul. We got a ton of those upside down tomato planter kits so we can set those up in the eaves of the school and the houses. Tomatoes will be taking over this place!"
Lucas came over to where we were talking and gave me a hug. "Tanya here is amazing. She can spot stuff from a mile away. We have a couple solar panels for each house, a windmill well pump, all this gardening stuff, tools and gloves and all. She also found a nice little shed for us to store the farming stuff in. We are set in the growing department."
Tanya had a deep blush flash across her face. "I had fun, what can I say?"
Lucas turned to face me and asked, "So what's all this talk about goats and new neighbors I keep hearing about?"
"We have some awesome new neighbors. Trent's trying to round everyone up in the cafeteria and we'll tell you all about them. It's a good thing." I grinned at him.
We all sat down in the cafeteria and Trent stood up and gave the rundown of our events, then Tanya gave hers. We had direction, we had jobs to do; we were all wrapped in hope and warmth. We were no longer going to survive-- we were going to
live
.
Life and Relationships
Over the next several months, we settled into life in Montana. We took advantage of the fall weather to put together the solar panels at each occupied home. It wasn't going to be a lot of power for each house, but really all we were after was enough lighting for us to see by. Trent did build a windmill to run power at the school and another at the auto-shop, with the metal forge set up next to it. As time allowed, he would add more to power other public places. Trent and Lucas discovered where the water pumps were for individual wells on public properties like the school, and rigged those with wind powered pumps, as well as the easier house property wells, giving us running water to the buildings. It was going to be a little bit before we could do the canals for the farm. We didn't want to start that project until spring was fully here because it would be a waste of resources that we needed right now for a job that could only be half done.
The winter was a surprise, to say the least. We thought that the time we spent in Heartsvale had taught us a lot about what winter was like to our band of Californians; Heartsvale was a cold wasteland, but it was manageable. We discovered that despite the psychotic mindset that had the loyal residents in its grip, there was a great deal of work that had gone into keep the residents warm and alive. It felt like we worked every day, practically deforesting Montana ourselves, just to keep everyone barely warm and fed. Hunting became more scarce as the colder weather took hold, and we went through the stores of canned goods we had gathered up faster than we had intended. We often chose to sleep at the school after we built a fireplace with a wood burning stove set up on one side in the multipurpose room. It was easier to only have one area for both heating and cooking, and take advantage of the body heat of so many of us in a confined area. As we sat together exhausted, we came up with solutions for the next winter that included us stockpiling fuel for the fires year round instead of doing this frozen scramble. We also plotted out how to retrofit all of the houses with wood stoves for cooking, so we wouldn't have to use our limited solar power to run electric ovens. Gas powered ovens were a relic of the past, as were hot water heaters. All of the propane tanks were empty at the café; no one had turned off the burners before the infected came in, and since the school was already out of session, the tanks must have been drained as a long-term storage safety issue.
Despite how hard that winter was, we couldn't feel anything but joy and happiness. We made it. We actually made it and found hope even in the hard times, and that was everything, not just to me, but to my immediate and extended family. When spring hinted that it was on its way with that first blade of grass, we felt like we had made it through the impossible, and indeed we had. I couldn't imagine the climbers of Mount Everest felt more triumph than we did as the snow began to turn into a muddy Slurpee. We learned so much that winter, from trapping to heating, that we felt like we were close to invincible.
It certainly didn't hurt that we traded my nursing and Kristen's herbal remedies like chamomile tea and ground eucalyptus leaves to boil in the house to treat our neighbors’ random respiratory illnesses for extra foodstuff. One of our best trades included our newest and most celebrated members of the group, Henrietta and Lucille, our egg laying hens, and their love interest, Ricky the rooster. Their coop was raided daily for our breakfasts. After a while, we decided to see if Lucille would be a good mother and let her have a nest that we didn't bother with. She had been tending it carefully, rarely leaving her guard post and duty to keep her eggs warm. It wasn't long before the grass wasn't the only thing that was proof of spring and life, as the baby chicks made their escape from their shell prisons. Drew was the one to discover that the chicks hatched when he went out to see if Henrietta had made her breakfast donations. The chicks were a huge hit, and they followed Lucille everywhere. It was funny to see them struggling to keep up with their mother, and the little peep noises they made were cute enough to put a smile on everyone's face.
As soon as the ground was thawed enough to start planting, the entire town was drafted to the garden crew and we were out in full force. All of the women put in time ripping out that field, turning the dirt, making organized rows, while the men worked on the canal, and before long, we turned the dead grass into something that would keep our bellies full. When the last seed packet went into the ground and things resembled something like a life we were going to be living, it struck me that we didn't even look like ourselves anymore. We were a well-organized team, and now that we were all living in our own spaces, the bickering that was going on in Idaho had stopped. We all learned more and more tricks to being self-sufficient out here, and all the traces of being city slickers seemed to slip away.
For now, we still depended on our foraging runs, and I wondered how long it was going to take to not need to go poking around vacant areas around us, because I really looked forward to not needing to do the vulture routine. There was a lot to be said for continuing to do the runs though, there were still so many resources out there, including things we didn't expect. It was during one of these scavenging runs that we discovered the home of a shut in. He must have fallen early after threshold hit, because he had an abundance of untouched supplies coming out of everywhere and a neat unexpected little treasure, a Ham radio with a large antenna array. His corpse lead us right to the radio, and I can only assume that given the mountain of blood pressure and cholesterol prescription pills and the way the corpse was forever frozen with his right hand over his chest, that he had died of a heart attack before he had a chance to use everything he had squirreled away. At least they would be put to good use. We loaded his supplies, and with an almost boyish glee on Trent's face, the radio and antenna.
On the way back, I heard Trent go on and on about how much he had wanted to own a Ham radio and that he studied to for his license, but couldn't make it past the Morse code requirement when he was younger. No such requirement existed now, and there was no governing body that was going to kick him off the airwaves for not being able to tap out some cryptic message. He couldn't wait to turn that post office across the street from our house into a radio station, and barely managed to work through unloading all the food at the mercantile. As soon as that last can was off the truck he took the truck to the post office and began to unpack the equipment and set up his new toy. I stayed behind to stock the shelves of the store so I would be out of his way as he transformed a dead letter building into a communication station.
While I continued to stock shelves, I had the opportunity to admire the work that was going into this building. I loved our store. It was a silly little thing, not much more than a thrift store with a pantry, but it was ours. We took everything out of all the houses and put it up 'for sale' there. When a kid was outgrowing something, the old stuff was dropped off there, clean and ready to use, and the next size up was gathered. We opened our store up to Jack's group as well, and were surprised to find that they decided to set up something similar in their town that our people were welcome to use as well. We never had a whole lot to trade between our groups, but at least they were different things and it kept our supplies fresh.
The time I spent making house visits to Clyde's Park were less frequent as people began to trust me more. We welcomed them into our town and clinic any time they needed me. At first there was the rare patient, and people waited until there was a rip roaring infection from something as simple as a puncture wound before they called for help and I had to race over there. Now, there was a more steady stream of people coming to me and the infections were much less serious. It kept Trisha and me busy during the day, but it paid well in food variety and other seed packets. I felt like we were something out of Little House on the Prairie as I took chickens as payment for a family of sick people, but at night, I went home feeling like I made a difference and was thrilled that our chicken coop was getting almost crowded; a full coop meant that we would be able to kill a couple off and make a special dinner over at the café for everyone.
Our groups continued to blend together in social settings. We had our new friends over for dinner, and it was nice being able to meet people that weren't a part of our group. I noticed DaWayne was taken by one of the girls from Clyde's Park, a pretty little thing named Shayla. Shayla was this petite girl that stood no more than five feet tall, and she bore a striking resemblance to a fairy, down to her blonde pixie haircut and her large blue eyes. She had just turned eighteen-years-old, and she was the kindest girl that I had met in a while. It was cute to see her next to this big teddy bear of a man that held her close under his arm. I think he was immediately taken with her, and not because she was one of the first girls that we came across in the right age group that he wasn't related to. I wondered if the zombie apocalypse happened just to make these two meet each other, and tried to imagine another path that would have led these two together if it hadn't happened.
As promised, Terri brought us over a female goat that was old enough to mate with our Jeffrey. I felt like a mom on the eve of a kid's prom date when they first met. We named her Jane, and it didn't take long for her to become pregnant. I was so excited as her stomach began to swell. About 5 months later, poor Jane was acting like she hated life. I grabbed the walkie and called up Terri to ask her if she knew what was going on. She laughed at me, and said I was going to have a grand-goat, and that she was on her way over.
Goat births are a messy, messy ordeal. We were in the shed with her as the baby was beginning to crown. Terri wrinkled her nose and studied the way the hoofs came out.
"Good thing you called, you've got yourself a breech." I looked at Terri in wide-eyed horror. I had never even considered the possibility of a breech goat. She took off her flannel top shirt and squatted next to Jane, patting her on her back. She murmured her reassurances to our uncomfortable goat and reached inside of her, expertly pulling out the kid. Baby goats kinda look like a drowned rat crossbred with a dog, if you ask me, but Jane seemed to love her. Mother and kid bonded quickly, and she was very attentive to her newborn.
I was surprised how taken I was with this little guy. He was the size of a puppy, and an active little thing. I loved watching him bounce around the grass and play. I giggled when he wandered too far from his mom and started to cry, and Jane would always holler back until he found her, and vice versa. I never realized how talkative goats were. We, of course, went the cheesy route and named him Billy the Kid, and incorporated the name into a history lesson for the kids.
This was life now, and it was almost easy to forget that there was still a whole apocalypse going on. We were reminded of this every once in a while with sharp cracks of the rifle being fired. We still had to be prepared for the zombies and they came in odd waves. We would go a few weeks without seeing one, and we would fall into this sense of security that we were fine, until suddenly, a wave of several dozen would come in. We would warn Clyde's Park about the swarm that was passing through and they would do the same for us whenever possible.
Drew was becoming a very good hunter, better than I would have expected for a twelve year old. If nothing else, the waves of zombies were awesome for target practice. We trained him on both the gun and the compound bow, and he seemed to prefer to use the bow. His aim was exceptional and I was proud of him. I was surprised to find that Abigail was also very good at zombie patrol. They were both growing up so quickly. She definitely was a far cry from that six, almost seven year old that she was when this all started. At nine, she was a great deal more mature than most people were in their late teens. She became this quiet person who could just be still for a while, and she could sit almost like she was in deep meditation with the wind blowing in her hair. She could also be this firecracker of personality that could outrun the fastest of the other kids and keep going, make sarcastic comments, or entertain everyone with overly animated stories.
It was still my first instinct to want to put these kids in a safe room and board them up. I saw these little people up on the wall, and my eyes had the capacity to still tear up instantly. These were children, and while I only gave birth to one of them, these were
my
children, and I wanted to keep them safe and protected in a china box. These kids were my reason that I kept going, and here they were, standing in the breeze with bows and arrows, playing a macabre game of Cowboys and Indians, but in real life. Seeing them both so calm and so serene in the middle of this made me want to die a little. These guys were babies. My babies, and they were fighting for their lives, for everyone's lives up on the wall, and this was their normal.
I walked over to them and put my arm around Drew before drawing Abigail in my embrace. I stood there in silence with my arms around them both and we remained there watching the swarm of dead people moaning and beating on the steel containers in a dub-step off-beat rhythm. I wanted to hold them together forever, but I had to let them go and let them be who they were turning into, guardians of our home, and let them be the flowers that were supposed to bloom in the worst conditions. These two were my orchids. With one last squeeze I stepped back and asked them how they were doing.
"Today, we are shooting the brown haired ones. Yesterday it was red hair, but that got boring with all the blood. I have five that were knocked out, so far," Abigail proclaimed proudly. "I would have had more, but my sight on my arrow must be messed up or something. A couple went whizzing by their heads, and that was annoying."