July 1, 2025; He hadn't found Tonya, and had finally given up for the time being. As he wandered back towards the cabin he found himself standing in front of the shed.

  The door was still wide open and he could see some random junk scattered about. Knocked over grey and blue Rubbermaid tubs containing old Christmas lights and ornaments and some other things Jake had stashed away. The shed still stank but it wasn't nearly as bad as it had been. He could see a makeshift wall that blocked off a lot of the shed. It consisted of 4 x 8 plywood sheets and 2 x 4's with more stacked tubs and boxes. Clay wrinkled his nose and started pulling everything out. He wanted to know what was behind the makeshift wall.

  It took nearly an hour of solid work to clear it out enough just to see there was a John Deere Gator Utility Vehicle with an enclosed cab. He smiled, remembering his brother mentioned buying one for hunting season the last time they had gone fishing. Once he could get to the damn thing though he opened the gas cap and could immediately smell soured gas. "Yep, we'll definitely have to drain that and find some fresh fuel." He stopped and looked at the dodge sitting with the hood up.

  "I can do that." Said Anna from the doorway. "I came to get you, Mr Clay. I think we're ready to turn the generator on" She sounded positive. "We've fixed all the damaged wiring and checked on the unit itself." She shrugged, "Martha wants to know if you want us to go ahead and start it?"

  "Yeah, go ahead. The sooner the better." He replied as he went back to working on clearing a way to roll the gator out of the shed. He heard a few excited cries and pretty soon he had some more help, Anna and Martha found him and after about thirty more minutes of moving boxes of junk a path was wide enough to pop it in neutral and roll it backward out of the shed.

  "We'll drain the tanks, and flush the fuel system and now that we've got the power up and running we can charge the battery." She hooked a thumb at the truck. "The dodge has a full tank of gas. Those fucking idiots didn't know how to fix the broken switch up front to switch between tanks." She patted the Gator, "This is way easier on gas and quieter than the truck."

  He nodded. "Right on. Hopefully, the battery takes a charge after sitting so long."

  "Give us until tomorrow morning, Mr Clay, if it can run, we'll get it running," Anna said with the odd smile of someone about to start working on something they love to do.

  "Alright, I'll leave it to you and Martha, Anna. Thanks." He replied, giving her a pat on the shoulder. He made his way over to the fire pit and soon found a cup of coffee. It was old but still drinkable. After going without for so long he wasn't going to complain. He even gave a little "Ahh" as he took a sip of the hot liquid. He walked over to the porch leaning on the railing as he looked at what everyone was doing. He took another sip.

  He could hear Freya and Tonya inside, she'd slipped past him somehow and he could see them through the door and windows sorting things, and writing down a list of supplies. Three or four women were doing laundry in big, large, Rubbermaid tubs, using a piece of grate to scrub the clothes on. Luke and Joanna were walking around the edge of the clearing, it looked like they were looking for something, and with an excited cry, they both dashed into the wood line. He took another sip and continued to scan the valley.

  Erin and Dolly were looking at different areas, he assumed for future reference, the former took a shovel full of dirt and inspected it. After a moment Dolly would write something on a pad of paper and they would move about five feet and repeat their little routine. He wasn't a farmer, so he didn't even try to guess. He had agreed to look for some seeds for them to plant, and he'd try to pay as much attention as he could but he'd leave things he didn't know shit about to those that did, if at all possible.

  He straightened, and walked to the other side of the porch, this time leaning on the logs of the cabin. From this side, he could see Sigrid now busy stretching the cat skin out. She was using some of the plywood he'd pulled out of the shed earlier and had some horrible concoction bubbling on a separate fire with Sonya stirring it. The other two Orc girls were scrapping chunks of meat off the stretched portion being careful. Clay didn't think they were sisters but they sure as hell acted like it. The fire at the other end of the valley they had used to incinerate the bodies had nearly died down now and it was somewhere between one and two in the afternoon.

  He took another sip. There was still some daylight left so he had an idea. "Freya." He called, then tossed the rest of his coffee back and turned to the cabin door. He could see her coming up the cellar steps as he went through it.

  "What do you need Uncle Clay?" She asked, her sandy-blonde hair disheveled and a streak of dust across her light-green forehead. "I can't believe Uncle Jake had all this!" She motioned to the counter already full of supplies they sorted.

  He smiled at her. "Mr either Freya. I'm gonna head to the top of the hill. I'll be back around nightfall." He said handing her the coffee cup. "If I'm lucky we'll be having a lot better breakfasts." He thought for a moment and then said, "Here kiddo, I'm going to need you to store this stuff in your armband." He began taking stuff out of his spatial storage, as he did Freya took the items he'd stored from the gas station into the bracelet Clay had given her.

  His storage empty except for a few bottles of water and some jerky as well as his weapons and other personal items. "Which way are you heading?" Freya asked. "So I know where to look. Just in case." Determination was set on her smudged face as he was about to walk out the cabin door.

  "Wolf Holler." He gave her a reassuring smile. "Two miles." He pointed northwest.

  She nodded. "Good luck then. I'll see you when you get back home." She waved and walked back downstairs. Already looking at the clipboard she had in her hand.

  He set out northwest as he said. Heading straight up the steep hill, moving carefully through the woods, especially when he reached the fog. Within forty minutes the hill leveled off into the top of the ridge and he immediately started to follow it around to where it met another ridge. After another hour of travel, staying along the tops of the ridges as much as possible. He could hear what sounded like a rooster crowing in the valley below him. He looked up in the sky.

  Good, the moon would be bright tonight. Well as bright as it'll get with the dust particles floating in the atmosphere. He should be just fine getting back home. He dropped off the ridge into Wolf Holler, carefully making his way to the old farmstead. He had known Loyd Founders and his family forever. That's why he didn't want to just walk out of nowhere. If the old man was still around, Farmer Loyd would shoot your ass and feed you to his fucking hogs.

  No, if the old man was alive, he was just visiting. Maybe see if they could use Erin or Dolly's help if there was anyone around. He just hoped the old man remembered him! It'd been a few years since he'd spoken to the man. And that was to help him and his son track a buck his boy had shot with a compound bow and ran onto Jake's land before laying down and bleeding out. Of course they hadn't ever had a problem with any of their neighbors trespassing. Around here everyone tried to look out for each other as best they could. Hell Jake and he had gotten permission to fish in the man's pond when he was fucking nine just for helping him put a few hundred bales of hay up in his barn.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  But he'd rarely interacted with the man for long. He was expecting to see anything but what he did when he got to the edge of the tree line.

  He could see old man Loyd's front yard had several dead bodies, now bloated and distorted. Nearby, chickens scratched in the dirt between the house and the barn. He took a deep breath and sighed. He could tell all those people had died trying to get to that house. Which didn't bode well. He knew the old man would be watching if he wasn't already. And he wouldn't hesitate to shoot. The evidence was lying bloated between him and the house.

  He could see an old steel water trough about thirty feet from the house. He didn't like it, but he also remembered the old man was damn near deaf from an artillery shell in Vietnam. He took another breath and quickly sprinted to the trough.

  He hadn't made it quite to cover before he heard "tat-tat-tat" and felt a burning from his left shoulder. He quickly hit the ground and slid the last four feet to the trough. "Tat-tat." He saw the bullets tearing up the ground inches from his fucking knee!

  "Farmer Loyd! Loyd Founders. It's Clay Benton! Me and my brother Jake used to fish in your pond. Don't shoot!" He yelled. "I'm not armed sir!" Hopefully, the old man could hear him. He cautiously raised his hands to show he wasn't armed. He dared only stick them up above the steel trough though.

  "Clay Benton?" Came an elderly man's voice.

  "Yes Sir," Clay said. He still didn't dare stick his head up yet.

  He could hear a woman's voice, low but still audible to him, even though it was coming from inside the house. "Did he say he was the Benton boy dear?" He heard the old man say something and then the woman spoke again. "Bah! Their neighbors, put the damn gun down and let's see what he has to say at least. Maybe he knows why Samantha and Jim changed. Or why those people attacked us." A moment later he heard the screen door open and close with a "bang". He peeked over the edge of the trough at a gray-haired woman a little over five feet tall standing on the porch. "Clay Benton, stand up son, let me see if it really is you. What was your momma's maiden name?"

  "Nelson. Maria Nelson." Clay said, slowly rising up.

  The woman nodded, settling her bifocals on her nose. "Looks like you grew some more since the last time I saw you." She squinted and then smiled. "I told your mother we should have arranged a wedding between you and our Kimmy. You two used to be close in school. Such a shame a strapping young man like you doesn't have a family to keep you in one place." She motioned to the door as she wiped her hands on her apron. "Come on in and have a glass of lemonade. I'm afraid it's not very cold though dear."

  His mouth instantly watered at the sound of lemonade. He cautiously made his way to the porch where Loyd's wife came back out of the screen door with a mason jar of lemonade. He took it with a "Thanks, ma'am." And took a long pull off the glass. It was so good he wanted to down it! But he refrained from giving in to the urge. He was going to savor the rest of it. He had noticed the house didn't have a satellite dish. If he remembered correctly, farmer Loyd was convinced TV and Radio just rotted your brain and made you slow. He didn't even want to know how they had felt about the Internet and smartphones.

  "Can you tell us what's going on? The last we heard was about two weeks after the Sky Rain. Something about Orcs and Saints. We couldn't get ahold of anybody." She asked as he saw Loyd come to the door, slowly. The man's eyes were heavy with black bags like he hadn't had enough sleep in a long time. He also wheezed as he walked out and took a seat on the swing next to the door. He kept the gun he had pointed away from Clay, but close enough to quickly correct that if Clay proved hostile.

  So Clay told them. Everything he knew. About the System Seed. About the few reported surviving cities. The mutations. The way the government shelters had expelled and denied entry to innocent people they deemed not human. The giant mutated beasts that attacked those shelters. The zombies. The slavers. The fucking nukes. Everything. As he did the woman took a seat on the swing next to Loyd. Their faces turned grim as he explained about the shelters. And the general state of the world he had witnessed on the way home.

  "Well, that explains a hell of a lot son, thank you. Loyd was wondering what levels were." She said. "Loyd, what are we going to do? You've been out of..." She was cut off by Loyd.

  "Nothing to do about it Etna. So Clay, what brings you here?" Asked Loyd, his bushy white eyebrows lowering as he narrowed his eyes at Clay. "Come to see what you could pick off our dead bones? As you can see," he gestured at the bloated bodies out in the yard, "We ain't dead yet." He coughed, trying to stifle it with a hand, which led to him coughing even harder for a minute and then hacked up some grey mucus and then went back to wheezing.

  "I won't deny I came to see if I could find any chickens." He put a hand up to hold off any response to that statement. "But when I saw the bodies I was more worried about making sure you folks were okay." He shrugged. "I don't intend on taking anything from our surviving neighbors." He flashed them both what he hoped was a disarming smile. "I really just missed fresh eggs."

  "Our? I thought Jake passed away." Said Etna, raising that thin eyebrow of hers.

  "He did," Clay said. "And Cindy was beaten severely a few days ago and died of her wounds before I could make it home. We managed to save my niece though." He briefly went over the events at the cabin when he'd arrived.

  "So you have a group of people with you? With a doctor and someone that can heal people like they were saying the last time we went to Houston?" Asked Loyd, still wheezing.

  He nodded. "Yep. And I was just trying to find some chickens to get some eggs. But I can see you folks are still kicking, so unless you're willing to trade a few then I wouldn't want to bother you?" He finished the lemonade and was about to thank them for their hospitality and take his leave when Loyd spoke to Etna.

  "What do you think, Honey?" He asked softly. His voice wheezing as if he were struggling with getting air in or out. The woman looked past Clay to the bodies lying in her yard and slowly stood off the porch swing.

  "I think we should. The Bentons have always been good neighbors, Loyd. And I'm afraid we won't be much longer in this world. How well could we keep them safe then?" Etna said. She turned and held out a hand to Loyd, who took it and stood slowly. Clay noticed some discoloration under Loyd's blue button-up shirt collar, but didn't think much about it right then.

  "Alright then." He looked from Etna and then to Clay as Loyd nodded and said, "Let's go inside and talk son. We might be able to help each other." He wheezed out as he stepped to the screen door and opened it his wife went through and Clay followed. They led him to the kitchen where Etna took his glass and refilled it and sat it in front of a wooden chair in front of him. Loyd gestured to the chair in front of it and said, "Have a seat."

  Clay obliged, and Loyd slowly sat across from him, Etna stood slightly behind and to the side of her husband, a thin wrinkled hand draped across his shoulders with affection. They looked at each other for a moment, then Etna nodded at Loyd with a sad smile.

  "I'll be blunt son, we're not long for this world anymore." He pulled down his shirt collar and Clay could see his skin was a deep yellowish-green color. "Dialysis. I was supposed to start it a month before everything went to hell. I was being stubborn." He saw Etna gently squeeze his shoulder to keep him on track. "Anyway, I've been out of my medications for a while now and things keep getting worse. I'm not going to be able to take care of anything here for much longer." He wheezed as he looked back up at Etna and she nodded as if to keep him going.

  "We'll trade with you. Barter always worked between our families, should do just fine for this too." He took a breath and continued. "If you can swear on your family name to do what we ask of you we'll give you all the animals we managed to keep." He nodded outside. "Hell, I'll give you everything. I have some other resources stashed away that we won't be needing." Loyd wheezed. "Is it a deal son? Those resources could do your group some good I think." He looked at him. One hand still resting on the black assault rifle with a scope and suppressor, and the other slowly drumming on the table.

  Clay swallowed hard. He had that feeling that his life was going to change drastically over the next few moments. Good or bad it was going to happen. He'd only felt this way twice. Once when he'd decide to leave home and go to welding on the oil rigs in the Gulf, and again when he'd married the succubus.

  He started to decline, but then he'd seen the look in Etna's eyes. That was the look of hope and desperation, and his mouth clicked shut before anything came out. He looked at both of them thinking through what they had said for a moment. Trying to will a solution to pop into his head but there really wasn't any.

  "Okay. What is it? I don't know if I can do what you need me to if I don't know what it is you need me to do. But I will do my best." Clay said cautiously, and Etna's face immediately looked relieved.

  "I believe you're plenty capable, Son. Or you wouldn't have made it this far." He nodded to his wife and Etna walked out of the room. "How old are you?"

  "Forty." He replied, getting even more nervous by the second for some reason.

  "Good." He leaned forward eyes flashing to Clay's ring finger, then back to Clay's eyes. "Ever married?" Clay nodded and took a drink of the lemonade in front of him, it suddenly didn't taste as great as he had first thought it had with the first glass. "What happened?"

  Clay's response was instant. "She was a gold-digging succubus that took me for everything and thankfully moved on to my ex-boss. The only casualties were my bank account and my ego." He replied dryly.

  Loyd chuckled. "Well now, that explains why. A strapping young man like you still hasn't gotten hitched again?"

  "No Sir, I haven't." He shook his head. He could hear footsteps coming down the hallway. "And now..." He shrugged as if to imply it was the apocalypse, who had time to worry about that shit. But as he looked up at Loyd he had a sinking feeling.

  The old man's grin looked like Clay had just stepped right into a neatly laid trap.

  ~Thank you all for reading! I hope to continue producing content you can enjoy.~

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