“Yeah, that was a good decision. Do you like to cook, Nikki?” Rachel asked as she stirred the pot of stew.
“I’m decent at it, nothing special,” Nikki said. “If you want to sit down and rest, I can keep an eye on the food.”
Rachel smiled. “I’m fine. Besides, I think you’d rather be out in the barn with Fred and the horses.”
Serena laughed. “You’d have to fight Sammy for his attention. Why do you want to go traipsing out in the wilderness with Fred anyway?”
“It’s not my style to stay cooped up in a walled compound,” Nikki replied. “I like to hunt and fish. I want to be able to go out on my own and survive if I have to. I mean, I already can, but I want to be at Mister Fred’s level. I heard he once rode over three hundred miles on horseback in a couple of weeks. Is that true?”
“It’s true,” Rachel said. “That was after he was shot and left for dead. There’s a lot about Fred McCoy that most people don’t know about.” She blew a tuft of hair out of her face. “Hell, there’s a lot about him even I don’t know.”
“Tell us something about him,” Nikki urged.
She walked over to the table and sat down. After a moment, she gave a small smile. “Here’s one only a few people know. When the plague burned through America, Fred was living in Tennessee. He had a daughter named Betsy. I think she was nineteen or twenty and she was living in Los Angeles. He wanted to go to her, but with zeds everywhere, he knew the odds were impossible to travel across the country. It gnawed at his conscience for a long time. Finally, he couldn’t stand it anymore and he went to find her.
“And he did,” Rachel said. “But she was infected.”
“Wait, you said he was living in Tennessee when it went bad, right?” she asked.
Rachel nodded. Nikki frowned. “How far is it from Tennessee to Los Angeles?”
“About two thousand miles,” Rachel said.
“So, you’re telling me he travelled two thousand miles in zombie infested America to find his daughter?” Nikki asked.
“He did. That’s how he met Sarah.”
“Who’s Sarah?” Nikki asked.
“Sarah Fowkes,” she said. “Fred met her at an air base in Oklahoma. She was a major in the Air Force back then. They struck up a friendship and he convinced her to fly him to Los Angeles. He found her, still in her apartment, but she’d become infected. Fred killed her and then they flew back to Oklahoma. They’d become an item and he stayed with her for a while, but he was homesick and asked Sarah to come back to Tennessee with him.”
“Did she?” Nikki asked.
“Not right then. She felt she had a duty to stay at Tinker Air Base. She stayed about six months before deciding to rejoin Fred. She loaded up a military vehicle and headed east. She found Sammy and two women named Kate and Kyra Redbank somewhere along the interstate. They were stranded and starving. Sarah rescued them and convinced them to come with her to Tennessee.”
“I’ve met them,” Nikki said. She didn’t say it out loud, but she had an instant disliking to the two women. Rachel seemed to sense this and gave a knowing nod.
“So, they show up and she’s told Fred is dead. It’s a long story, but the group of people Zach was living with were ambushed and he was shot. Zach and his kids were abducted. It’s a long crazy story. I’ll give you the short version. Even though Fred was shot through the chest, he lived. Not only did he live, when he found out Kelly, Zach, and Zach’s kids were alive and living at Mount Weather, he hopped on a horse and rode up.”
“That’s the three hundred mile ride you heard about,” Serena said.
“Yep,” Rachel said. “You ride horses a lot, right?”
“I do,” Nikki said. “I know what you’re thinking, and I’d have to say riding three hundred miles on a horse after being shot would be tough. Really tough.”
“Yep,” Rachel said.
“I’ve heard some of this story,” Nikki said. “This is where some crazy Marine Colonel had a bunch of people murdered and then kidnapped Zach and his children.”
“Yep. Once I give birth, I’ll tell you the whole story over a bottle of wine one night,” Rachel said. “It’s like a soap opera.”
Nikki laughed. “You got it.”
“Tell her about that man who was smarting off during training,” Serena suggested.
“Yeah, there was this young man who was going through some of the mandatory training at Weather. He wasn’t listening to the instructors, one of whom was Fred, and then he made a few smartassed remarks.”
“What’d Fred do?” Nikki asked.
“He shot the tips of his ears off,” Rachel said. “But only a little bit of skin off the top.”
“Holy shit,” Nikki exclaimed. “I bet nobody smarted off to him after that.”
Rachel and Serena laughed. “You got that right,” Rachel said.
“Alright, so, when Fred learns Zach and family are still alive, he comes up to Mount Weather.”
“He did,” Rachel said. “Now here’s another story about Fred. You see, he and Sarah had been an item back when they met each other in Oklahoma, but they separated. When she finally came looking for him in Tennessee, she was told he’d been killed. It wasn’t too long before she and I became an item.”
Nikki stared a long moment to see if Rachel was joking. “Really?” she finally asked.
Rachel smiled. “Yes, we did.”
“How did Fred take it when he found out?” she asked.
“He was a gentleman about it. She was a wonderful woman and Fred wanted her to be happy, but I knew she was in love with Fred and Fred was in love with her.”
“What did you do?” Nikki asked.
“I told them they belonged together,” she said.
“Wow.”
“Yeah, that was two days before she was killed,” Rachel said. Suddenly, her eyes started watering. She stood with a little
