“Thanks, Ivy.” I put my arm around Lana’s waist. “I like the idea of carrying enough gas with us we don’t have to stop at a station. That last stop was too close.” I’d almost lost her, and my arm tightened in response to that memory.
“The trailer is a great idea and the car does have a hitch. So we just have to find one. Heck, maybe there’s one in the barn.”
None of us really wanted to explore the grounds, not after our reception yesterday, but we needed gas and we needed containers. And weapons. “Did any of you find a gun?”
“There’s a gun safe, but I’m not sure where the key is,” Dan said from the other room. “Maybe on one of the people we … uh, met yesterday.”
Right.
Lana said, “We can arm ourselves with knives from the kitchen and hope we find something better in the barn.”
“Or that we find the gun safe keys.”
“That too.”
“Let’s get dressed then and get to it. I’m getting antsy here.” Ivy disappeared to the washroom to get our clothes out of the dryer.
I leaned against the cabinet and pulled Lana to me. “You want to wait here with Owen while we go hunting?”
“Yes,” she said promptly. “Are you kidding? I’d rather never go outside again, though I want you with me in here.” Before I could protest, she said, “I know you’re going to insist on going and I’m not stopping you, just saying I want you with me.”
I kissed her, a gentle, lingering kiss that left her cheeks rosy. “I love you so much.”
“You too, babe.”
I rolled my eyes and gave her a tiny shove. “Way to ruin the moment, dweeb.”
She laughed and leaned in again, making up for her comment with her talented tongue. It was my turn to have hot cheeks as we parted to dress.
Owen wasn’t happy to be left behind until Lana found the cookies and poured two glasses of milk. “Wanna eat Oreos with me, kiddo?”
He’d frowned for the longest time between the front door and the cookies, but cookies won out in the end.
“Thank you,” Dan said, and Lana waved him off.
Ivy and I armed with knives, Dan with his crowbar, we eased down the steps and to the barn, our nerve endings on high alert. It might have been a good thing I didn’t have a gun at that point; we stepped inside and a barn cat startled off a workbench, knocking over cans of spray paint and WD-40. I screamed and spun, knife thrust outward, only to see the grey and white striped tabby dash under the wooden slats of a stall and disappear. Heart hammering, I apologized and we waited nervously to see if one of them heard my cry and was coming to investigate. “Sorry,” I said again after the minutes passed by without incident.
Ivy waved me off. “The only reason I didn’t scream was because I was too damn scared to do even that. At least you had your knife ready to stab.”
We found a big pair of bolt cutters that Ivy thought must have been used to cut barbed wire and removed the lock on the white tank. Ivy confirmed it was gas after I asked how we’d know, saying farmers were often supplied with dyed diesel that had to be used specifically for off-road farm equipment. “Besides, even clear diesel is easy to spot; it’s oily and doesn’t evaporate like gas.” She clicked off the hose and screwed the cap onto the dusty gas can we’d found in a shed. It joined three others on the roof rack, giving us a total of seventeen gallons. The find—and the remaining room on the roof—made me want to stop at other farms along the way to see if we could get more. Seventeen gallons of gas would get us another four hundred miles, but we had to go at least three times that. Three stops for gas at least, three times when we would risk our lives to fill up.
We found a machete to add to our arsenal, as well as a couple of hammers, a pitchfork, and a strange tool that looked made for zombie killing. It had a long wooden handle and a metal, pointed cone at the end. I assumed it was for poking holes in the ground for planting, but it would work great for jabbing them in the face.
We loaded these things in the car and then Dan searched the bodies on the ground outside to find a set of keys he used to get the gun safe open. “A shotgun, two hunting rifles, and a handgun,” he said, looking almost happy. “I found the ammo on the top shelf of the closet and more on a shelf in the mudroom, along with a cleaning kit.”
We all stood staring at the small arsenal laid out on the table and Dan must have noticed our expressions, because he said, “I can teach you all how to handle them, all but the handgun. I never really used one. But the rifles, yeah.”
“Hunter,” I said, and he nodded. I itched to hold the handgun though I had no idea why. It had never been an itch before and the incident with the cat didn’t bode well for someone like me to have a gun, but maybe I could get used to it. I certainly liked the idea of having weapons that could kill one of them dead long before they got close enough for me to put a knife in their eye.
“You remember what I said about weapons, right Owen?”
Dan’s little boy nodded solemnly, his big brown eyes on his dad. “Don’t touch.”
“Right. Always treat them like they’re loaded. Never point them at anyone even if you just took all the ammo out and you’re sure it’s empty.”
Owen nodded again,
