All That I See - 02 by Shane Gregory Page A

leave a note for the Somervilles—tell them to stay here until we get back.”
    She quietly tossed out some more scratch, and the chickens cautiously made their way back toward us.
    Finally she said, “I don’t want to risk your safety. Maybe I should hole up somewhere until—“
    “No,” I said, putting my hand on her leg. “We’re in this together.”
    She smiled wanly, but didn’t look at me.
    “Here , chick chick.”
    I put my arm around her, and she leaned against me.
    “ We should take Mr. Parks up on his offer,” she said. “It would be better if there were more of us.”
    “Are you wanting to leave with them?” I asked, concerned.
    She shook her head, “No. I don’t think so. I mean, it might be nice to see new places one day, but I don’t think we’d find things to be any different than they are here. It might be more dangerous in other places. I just thought we could stay together for a while. Maybe they could help us with some of the things we have planned before they decide to leave. Who knows, maybe they’ll decide to stay.”
    “They seemed nice, ” I said. “I don’t see any harm in going in with them for a while.”
    “ He was my favorite teacher. Let’s drive out there today and tell him.”
    “Okay,” I nodded and watc hed the chickens.
    She stuck her hand under my face. It was full of the chicken feed.
    She grinned, “These are seeds, aren’t they?”
    “ Well , yeah ” I said, “But the corn in there has been cracked, so—“
    “No,” she said. “I’m talking about these little round ones.”
    “I don’t know what they are or if they’re safe for humans to eat.”
    “It’ s millet,” she said. “There’s an article in one of your magazines about millet. It has recipes and everything. It’s supposed to be really good for you.”
    I held out my hand and she poured the grain in.
    “I think those other ones might be wheat,” she said.
    I turned and looked into the truck. We had a lot of animal feed back there. Some of it was pellets, but a lot of it was straight grain. I thought we could eat the corn if we had to, but I hadn’t really considered using it as seed.
    “Good,” I said. “It looks like we’ll be set on grain, but we still need to find more vegetable seeds.”
    Sara hopped down off th e truck, and the chickens ran away.
    “Let me find some paper to write a note for t he Somervilles then we can go.”

 
    CHAPTER 12
     
    We followed Ben Parks’ directions, and drove out to the house with the green mailbox. On the way, we passed a fenced-in field. There were several cows in the distance, huddled together around a big oak tree. Nearer, was a dead cow. Five zombies were hunched over it feeding on the carcass. Sara slowed the vehicle then stopped. There were seven other partial carcasses spaced out around the pasture. One of the creatures looked up from his meal and stared at us.
    “I wish they all would die,” Sara said.
    The creature stood and looked at us more intently. I wondered how much actual thought was going on in its head.
    “We should come back later when we have more weapons and take care of those before they kill the rest of those cows,” I said.
    Sara nodded and drove on. I followed Ben Parks’ instructions: east to the stop sign, make a right, first house on the left, number seventy-one on a green mailbox. I was surprised I remembered.
    The driveway was blocked by a wrought iron gate and flanked by a stone fence about three feet high which was topped with another three or four feet of wrought iron fencing that ran across the front of the property. The sides and back of the property were enclosed in an old barbed wire fence that had an additional three feet of welded wire around the bottom. The fence was old and the strands of wire had been swallowed up in places by the twisted trunks of Bois D’Arc trees. The whole place was surrounded by pasture.
    It was a large house, more than a century old, and it was made from the same