CHAPTER 16
DAKOTA
The next day, Murr brings a dead deer, with small three-pronged antlers. The meat is delicious and we season our portion and roast the larger amount into shreds to feed the cats. Murr doesn’t eat with us, but he never does. He probably eats deer when he’s out hunting.
He hangs around, too. He’s there when I wake up, and while he doesn’t follow us into the bookstore when we head to bed, he’s usually out in the parking lot when we do. It’s like he’s waiting for us to go to sleep before he feels he can.
“He definitely thinks of us as a couple of strays he has to feed,” Rabbit announces to me after a week of this.
I nod agreement, because what else can it be?
I’ve never heard of dragons adopting humans as pets, but I’ve also gone out of my way to avoid forts—the human settlements—as much as possible.
No one wants a young mother with a daughter unless one of us is willing to open her legs.
I’d rather take my chances out in the wild on my own.
I just worry it’s not the right choice for Rabbit as a young girl, but leaving her behind in a fort isn’t the answer, either.
Today, when Murr drops a deer for us, I realize immediately that it’s diseased.
There’s something wrong with it, the hide mottled and strange.
When I cut it open, the organs are discolored and off, and I pull away a kitten that’s trying to climb the hide.
“This is bad, Rabbit. We can’t eat this one.
It’s sick. I don’t know if the meat is any good or not. ”
We examine it together, and Murr arrives while we poke at the deer corpse. I hate to turn down a gift, but I show him the innards of the deer and shake my head. “Meat’s bad.”
“Bad?” he echoes. It’s a word he’s picked up recently. “Meat no good? No cats? No Dakota?”
I’m impressed at his grasp of our language after only a few days. I shake my head. “No, it’s no good for them or for us.”
One of the cats rubs against his leg and meows plaintively.
Murr scoops it up and strokes the cat’s head, thinking.
He sets the cat down again and gestures at the dead buck.
“Meat…” He pauses, trying to find the right words.
Through a variety of hand-signals and the few words he does have, he tells us his plan—he’s going to get rid of the bad meat and find something new.
“Murr yes meat Dakotah Ribbit cats,” he declares. Then he gestures at the ground again. “Stay.”
With that, he springs into the air, changing into his dragon form right over our heads and nearly scaring the shit out of me.
I bite back a whimper of terror because it’s just Murr, and watch as he scoops up the dead deer and heads off.
The cats screech a protest, meowing wildly and circling around us.
“You guys are spoiled,” Rabbit says to them. “He’ll be back.”
I look around the parking lot, and more cats are flooding over, tails up with excitement. “I’m sure he’ll be back soon enough. He knows they’re hungry. We can go ahead and start a fire for now.”
While I pull firewood from our small stack and add it to our designated “firepit” (basically just a pothole in the parking lot), Rabbit plays with the cats.
She’s crafted a feather toy on a shoelace, and the cats go wild for it.
Each time they lunge, my daughter laughs with delight, and it’s the best sound in the world.
I grew up with pets, and it’s so hard to tell her we can’t take care of one.
I know she’s an animal lover and she’s lonely, but we can’t feed a cat.
They’re meat eaters. Maybe a dog would be different, but we haven’t had the opportunity to find one to adopt.
I feed tinder to the fire, watching as Rabbit runs circles around the parking lot, chased by a pair of big gray tabbies. I know this is Murr’s home, but he seems to like us, and I love the bookstore we’ve settled in. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to share space for a while…
“Hello, ladies.”
The stranger’s voice calls out across the parking lot, and I jerk to my feet, turning. Rabbit stops in her tracks, looking at me.
A strange man with a battered ten-speed bicycle wheels it toward us. He’s got long, unkempt hair and a scraggly graying beard. His clothes are weatherbeaten, and he has an oversized pack on his shoulders, a bedroll perched atop it.
A fucking nomad. Someone who doesn’t like the rules that the forts lay out, and so they decide to take on the apocalypse solo.
Which wouldn’t be such a bad thing in theory, but nomads have gotten a bad reputation for a reason.
They’re rapists and murderers, thieves and dealers, and generally the worst people around.
Most didn’t leave a fort of their own volition, like we did.
And as a woman alone with a child? I know you don’t trust any man who approaches you with a friendly smile on his face.
I pick up one of the heaviest sticks in the firewood pile and heft it like a weapon.
I’ve gotten lazy with Murr around— my spiked bat is inside next to my bed, along with my crossbow.
I’ll beat a motherfucker to death with firewood if I need to, though.
I gesture at Rabbit and she races to my side, huddling behind me.
She’s got her utility knife, but I don’t want her to fight if she doesn’t have to.
With my daughter safe at my side, I lift my chin and point the stick at the stranger. “Don’t come any closer.”
He stops his bike and puts up the kickstand. “That’s not very friendly of you.”
As if he deserves friendliness simply because he’s shown up? “What do you want?”
“Thought I’d come say hi. Been smelling smoke on the breeze and figured there was either a resident dragon or company nearby.
Glad it’s not a dragon.” He smiles, showing a missing tooth underneath that bushy beard.
It doesn’t mean anything— dental work is hard to come by in the After— but the sight of him still strikes me as vaguely menacing.
Maybe it’s his too-friendly expression. No one’s friendly in the After. Everyone’s on alert at all times.
The fact that he’s trying to be chummy makes me distrust him.
Even though he’s mentioned dragons, I don’t bring up Murr. People have been kicked out of forts for being sympathetic to dragons, and I don’t want him getting curious and sticking around. “We don’t need help,” I say. “And we don’t have anything to share, so you can just keep on going.”
He ignores the warning in my voice, bending down to offer his hand to one of the calico cats. “Looks like you’ve been sharing with these little guys, or else they wouldn’t be so friendly.”
“They don’t have any food to share, either.”
The man straightens, and the smile remains on his face, but his eyes are cold. “Not very friendly of you.”
“No, it’s not, is it?” I keep my voice flat, dispassionate, even though my heart is racing wildly.
He glances over at the bookstore, at the tarps we’ve hung over the broken window up front, and then at our firepit. “This your squat?”
It feels like a loaded question. If I say no, what’s to stop him from deciding to move in?
If I say yes, he knows exactly where we live and where to find us from now on…
and that we’re two females alone. Women don’t travel alone unless they’ve got a protector or they’re desperate, so I decide to lie.
“My husband is going to be back in a minute.”
The nomad grins, flashing that gap in his smile at me again. “Sure he is, darlin’.”
“I’m not your fucking darling.”
He tilts his head. “You’re kind of a bitch, actually. All I wanted was a little conversation.”
I will not show fear. I will not show fear. That’s what he wants. He’s testing us to see if we’re going to panic. “You’ve had it. You can go now.”
“Shame.” He scratches at his beard. “I wouldn’t mind a little feminine company. I can provide for you two if you need a man.”
“Like I said, my husband will be back at any minute.”
He blinks, unfazed. “Be a shame if I had to fight him for you.”
Instead of scaring me, his words piss me off. I’m so sick of men thinking that women are just things to be fought over. This is why we’re out here alone instead of in a fort. “Just fucking try it and I’ll cut your throat from ear to ear if you even get within six inches of me or my daughter.”
As if he can read my thoughts, he smiles again and gazes at the horizon, not moving an inch. “They sure are friendlier in forts. Don’t suppose you know where the closest one is?”
“Head east. Away from here.”
“That where you’re from?”
I don’t answer.
“Strange to me that a man would leave his woman and his daughter alone out here if there’s a perfectly safe fort nearby.”
I don’t reply. I can feel Rabbit’s trembling fingers lacing into the back of my worn leather belt, as if she can somehow get reassurance from touching me.
I grip the stick tighter, reminding myself how I handle a fight with a larger opponent.
Try to get a good strike or two. If that doesn’t work, pretend to faint and sag in his grip.
It’ll allow me to get the advantage again.
Go for the balls or the back of the knee.
Above all else, try to do damage. Mark him up so others will see the proof.
The silence continues between us. One of the cats in the parking lot throws itself down and starts washing itself in front of us, the most absurd moment to choose, really.
The nomad heaves a sigh and puts his hands up in the air.
“All right, all right. I can take a hint. Nice meeting you two ladies. May we meet up again sometime.”
Over my dead body.
I know he’ll be back. He’s going to wonder about us and see us as easy pickings. He won’t be able to resist. We both know he’s not going anywhere near the fort. He was just testing me to see how I’d reply when he brought it up.
Both Rabbit and I stand in place, watching as he gets back on his bike and slowly pedals off into the distance.
My hand hurts from gripping the rough branch so hard.
I want to race in and get my crossbow, but I also know that if he sees me running, it’ll be construed as weakness, and then we’ll never get him to leave us alone.
It feels like an eternity before I take a deep breath and acknowledge that he’s not coming back, at least not right away. I turn to my daughter. “You okay?”
Her lower lip trembles, and for a moment she looks much, much younger than her fourteen years. “What do we do, Mom? Do we have to leave?”
For a moment, I wish I was Rabbit’s real mom. Maybe I’d know how to comfort her better in this moment. As it is, I pull her close, wrapping her in my arms even as I keep an eye on the horizon. Just in case. “It’s going to be all right.”
“But a nomad knows where we live now,” she says, voice shaky.
“Yes, and Murr will be back at any moment. He won’t let that guy try anything. Remember how protective he was of his kittens? He just thinks of us as more kittens. It’ll be fine.”
She brightens, and then her smile of relief fades just as quickly. “Unless he thinks of that guy as a kitten, too.”
I snort, brushing her hair back from her face. “Did he strike you as even vaguely kitten-like?”
“No.”
“Exactly.”
She manages a small smile. “He’d probably take one look at Murr’s dick and freak out.”
“Very true,” I agree, and manage to laugh without it sounding too horribly forced. It takes everything I have not to scan the horizon, looking for a pair of wings.
Where the hell is the damn dragon when you need him?