Chapter 2
There are two point five people occupying this house. That’s not what he expected when he decided to come here.
Wyatt almost trashed the whole plan more than once, uncertain if he could trust the people who gave him this address all the way up in Alaska, claiming it was safe.
He’s long since run out of options, though, and after a run-in with someone trying to hijack his plane, he fished out the crumpled piece of paper from his pocket that held the location of this farm.
“If you find yourself in need of somewhere safe, this may be a good place to start,” Nora told him, pressing the address into his palm before she chose to stay behind at the arctic outpost he’d been trying to evacuate.
At least she had a good reason. She wanted to be with the person she loved at the end of the world, and if that meant facing an apocalypse in the middle of nowhere with only the two of them and a few penguins, then so be it.
He thought it stupid at the time. Now he realizes those two might have chosen the safest place left on the planet.
Wyatt can’t imagine what that kind of love must feel like.
The type that would make someone do such a reckless thing, like turning away a rescue plane to avoid being separated. He’s certainly never found it himself.
What he has found is a woman and her kid in this very house that was meant to be empty.
Never intended to cohabitate with anyone, but kicking them out onto the street means certain death.
He could be underestimating Addison, though.
She damn near attempted to stab him in the back.
Might have, if he didn’t clock her attention drifting to that knife.
She’s got two kids to protect, one that can’t be more than ten years old, and another still cooking in her belly. Messing with a momma bear is how a man gets killed.
He still has doubts about her story, wondering if the husband could be nothing more than a figment.
Staring up at the peeling ceiling, one hand hovers over his bruised and broken middle as if that could help it heal faster.
This place isn’t at all what he expected, not that he expected anything specific.
It’s worn down, cracked, and blistered, sitting in the middle of acres of farmland.
He’s starting to have second thoughts about risking his plane to make this journey, hoping he’s done a good enough job of hiding the damn thing before heading the rest of the way on foot.
The blood crusting his arm and his shirt is a reminder of how easily he almost lost it in a scuffle when he refueled in Wyoming.
The plane is all he has left.
His last chance at making it somewhere safe, if such a place exists anymore.
Addison must be telling her kid not to trust him right about now.
Or, planning to spike his meals with whatever she might have found around here.
Maybe slit his throat while he sleeps if he looks at her wrong again.
If this place is the end of the road for him, then so be it.
Maybe he’ll get lucky, and they’ll be gone when he wakes up.
That would be easier. He can’t spend his days taking care of dead weight or looking over his shoulder every second.
They aren’t his problem. It isn’t worth worrying about, he tells himself, as he finally begins to drift. This woman and her kid made it this far without him. It’s not his job to take in strays.
She’ll probably want nothing to do with him anyway once she figures out that he’s been lying through his teeth about this property belonging to him. He is nothing more than another looter, stealing what she’s already claimed.
* * *
The house is silent when he wakes.
He expected the others would be…doing something. Anything. He was looking forward to the distraction from his own thoughts, but he can hear himself think, and that’s never good.
Maybe they left. That’s what he wanted, so he should be thankful. Not that imagining them getting torn apart by a rotter is anything to be thankful for. Fuck, he should have told Addison how congested the roads are. How often he had to hide from a group of the dead.
Then whispers seep through paper-thin walls on his way to the kitchen. Good. They need to go, but not yet. Not until it clears up.
He supposes they’re hungry. Those granola bars aren’t enough. Not for a kid, and especially not for a pregnant woman.
At least cooking breakfast is something to do.
He marches out to the porch and grabs the game he caught on the way here to skin in the front yard.
He should show them how to do this. Well, maybe not the kid.
Something tells him that talking to her would be the fastest way to have Addison lunging for his gun.
Wyatt drops the knife and heads back inside, only to realize he’s covered in blood. Knocking on their door like this to offer a crimson-soaked cooking lesson won’t go over well.
It’s not his job to teach them anything, anyway. What the hell is he thinking?
He cooks the food over a fire and washes his hands in the creek before taking it inside to stand in front of their door with two plates. They got him serving them, and it’s only been a day.
His booted foot slams into the door, and he waits while they scurry around inside.
“Made breakfast.” He practically shoves the plates into Addison’s hands when she cracks the door open.
“Thanks. What is it?”
“Chicken. Tell her it’s chicken,” he says quietly, knowing that the odds of the kid eating what he caught are slim if she knew what it was.
Addison nods, and the faint sniffle of the girl catches his attention. She’s red-faced and sad, like every child left on this rock has been since the turn. Some things are simply a given now.
“You don’t have to stay in here. I mean, you can. It doesn’t matter to me. Just saying there’s a whole house and nobody else using it, so…” His words run together while he shifts on his feet. “Yeah, okay. Whatever.”
Then he turns on his heels to leave them alone and eat his own breakfast in the kitchen.
She should shoot him now and be done with it, he thinks, remembering that promise he made. Not because he thought he could win her over. He can’t.
If he does anything in the next thirty days that makes her think she’s safer with him dead, then he deserves the bullet. Now, he wonders if his shit attitude will end up irritating her enough to pull that trigger either way.
“Can we sit with you?”
He nods at her careful question from the hallway. “Suit yourself.”
They take up the green pleather chairs across from him, avoiding eye contact but doing a decent job of inhaling their food.
“This is good. Thank you again,” Addison says.
“It’s nothing.”
“You said you grew up here. Can I ask when you left?”
He cringes internally. He never said he grew up here. She inferred that herself. “Are we playing twenty questions now?”
“No. No, sorry. You don’t have to answer. I talk too much, always have.”
He wanted them to come out, and now he can’t have a proper conversation without making her feel like he’s scolding her.
Knowing a few things about him won’t matter. They won’t be around long enough to use it against him. “I’ve been away for a long time. Working up in Alaska.”
Her brows arch. “Really?”
“Really.”
“Doing what, exactly?”
Flying a charter plane, almost falls out of his mouth before he remembers that he doesn’t know her from a rotter on the street. “Hunting. Fishing. Tourist ferries. Not much to do up there except transport the idiots dumb enough to vacation at the top of the world.”
“Did you enjoy it? Other than your clients being idiots, of course?”
He nods, remembering how peaceful it had been up there before the shit hit the fan. “Yeah, I did.”
There’s something else on the tip of her tongue that she wants to ask him, and he leans forward half an inch before catching himself. Maybe she thinks better of it, shaking her head almost imperceptibly before the room falls silent again, leaving him to wonder what it could have been.
“You got anyone else you’re looking for? Waiting on? Other than your husband and his seven brothers?” Wyatt asks.
She reddens a shade at how he calls out her previous lie, as if he has any place judging a liar when he’s already told her half a dozen of them. “No one else. You?”
He shrugs. “No one left alive.”
“I’m sorry.”
No one left alive because he was too fucking late in getting to his ex-wife, he thinks bitterly. There’s a burn at the edges of his eyes that irritates him enough to drop his fork on the plate with a clatter.
The way the others jump in unison is like a slap back to the reality of their situation, and he softens his voice in silent apology. “I, um, saw some goats. Back there.”
“You didn’t have them before?”
He shakes his head.
Addison forces a smile. “A few of them faint. Be careful if you go back there to see them. We’ve already toppled a few by mistake.”
“Toppled?”
“I am not joking in the slightest.”
Well, now he’s curious about these fainting goats, but that’s a mission for another day.
“This isn’t chicken,” the kid says suddenly.
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.