32. Got Anything Against Rabbit? -Finn
Thirty Two
Got Anything Against Rabbit? -Finn
We hit the off-ramp and—somehow—got lucky.
The road opened up, not much, but enough. The city fell away behind us. Debris littered the shoulder, things I didn’t look at too closely. But the lanes ahead were clear, and for the first time since we’d left the house, we were actually moving.
Cars lined both shoulders—some pulled halfway over as if the decision to stop had simply expired, others kissing at odd angles, the result of one driver braking and another not reacting in time.
Doors hung open. A suitcase. A child’s backpack.
A paper coffee cup still sat in the cupholder of a sedan , as if its owner had just stepped out to check something and would be right back.
They hadn’t come back.
I tightened my grip on the wheel and kept my eyes on the road ahead.
“We’re going to need gas,” I said, scanning the horizon, running the math automatically. “As soon as we get a little further out, we start looking for something we can siphon from.”
Libby shifted in the passenger seat, still pale but present, still holding herself together with whatever she’d been using since this morning. “That’s what the garden hose in the back is for?”
“Yeah.”
Something moved across her face—not quite a laugh, but in the neighborhood of one. “I thought it was for a garden,” she said. “I didn’t want to ask.”
“Tomatoes on I-95,” I said. “Classic.”
From the backseat, Lily made a sound that couldn’t decide what it was—somewhere between a sob and a giggle, shaky and thin, but real.
“Honestly, at this point, I wouldn’t even question it,” she said.
“Add it to the list,” Fiona muttered from beside her, head tipped back against the seat, eyes closed for exactly three seconds before opening again. “Step one: survive the apocalypse. Step two: establish roadside agriculture.”
The city continued to thin behind us, buildings giving way to stretches of treeline and open land. The air even looked different out here—less choked, less orange-tinged from whatever had been burning back in the city.
Not safe. But better. Measurably, undeniably better.
“Can you grab the map?” I said, holding my right hand out.
Libby pulled it from her bag and unfolded it across her lap, spreading it carefully. Her eyes moved across it with the focused attention of someone who’d decided the map needed all of her right now because thinking about anything else meant thinking about the alley.
“Maine,” I said before she could ask. “We stay on this until we hit the split, then we push north.”
She nodded, tracing the route with one finger, and didn’t look up immediately.
Maine. Home.
Not just a direction on a map. An actual place. My land, my compound, the animals—all of it still there, I assumed, still waiting, while I’d been too busy chasing the next problem to think about any of it.
My land. My cabin. The animals.
I looked at my hands.
“They’re probably dead,” I said, low enough that it might not carry to the backseat.
Libby’s eyes came up from the map. “What?”
“My animals,” I said.
Lily’s head came up immediately from whatever she’d been staring at in her lap. “What kind of animals? Do you have goats?”
“Yeah.”
Something changed in her expression—a small, involuntary spark that had no business surviving everything that had just happened to her but had apparently decided to, anyway. “I love goats.”
“Yeah, well. I’m hoping they loved me enough to figure out the latch and not just sit there starving in the pen.”
Fiona raised an eyebrow. “Your contingency plan is that the goats break themselves out?”
“Goats are the most stubborn, ornery, impossible animals on the planet,” I said. “If anything’s making it through this, it’s them. They don’t die out of spite. They outlive things just to be difficult.”
Another laugh from the backseat—slightly less fragile this time.
Libby’s mouth curved, faint and tired but genuine. “So our long-term survival strategy rests primarily on the shoulders of some angry farm animals.”
“Damn right,” I said. “You ever actually spent time with a goat? They’re basically indestructible and deeply unpleasant about it.”
“I want to meet them,” Lily said, with a conviction that suggested she’d already started naming them in her head.
“You might end up eating one of them,” I said.
Lily’s face went through several things at once.
“… oh,” she said finally.
Fiona snorted. “Welcome to the food chain, kid.”
Lily pulled a face that suggested she intended to revisit that information at a later date and not before. “I’m going to pretend it’s from the grocery store.”
“Probably for the best,” I said. “You have anything against rabbits?”
“Rabbits?” Lily said.
“When I was starting out, I got into meat rabbits. Let a few loose to do what… well, rabbits do.” I paused. “I’ve got quite the population going.”
* * *
The road stretched ahead of us, long and open and blessedly clear. The sound of the tires on the asphalt was the most ordinary sound I’d heard in days. I let it fill the vehicle for a while without putting anything else over the top of it.
Her eyes met mine for a second, then she pressed her lips together and looked back down at the map.
“Got it,” I said, turning my attention back to the road.