Chosen by Christine Pope (best romantic novels in english .TXT) 📖

But somehow, strangely, that cooperation did continue. We fell into a sort of pattern after a few days — rising early, eating breakfast, which was toast or oatmeal most of the time, taking turns with our showers, getting dressed, then doing whatever needed to be done around the place. Jace was full of plans, abetted by some of the books and manuals he found in the office.

“We really should build a henhouse,” he said one morning, about a week after he showed up. “I know people in the area had to have kept chickens. Eggs are a good, steady source of protein.”

“So are rabbits,” I replied, not bothering to point out that we’d been eating rabbit at least every other day. Wile E. Coyote would have been jealous.

“Now they are,” he said. “In the dead of winter, it might be more difficult. But those plans I found for a henhouse look dead easy. We just need to get some supplies.”

“What, you’re a carpenter and a web designer?” I asked, teasing. Sort of. What I knew about building henhouses was roughly the same as what I knew about brain surgery — that is, nothing. I didn’t think I was going to be much help.

He shrugged. “I picked up a few things here and there. It’ll be fine.”

And so, later that morning, we headed down into Santa Fe in search of a Home Depot, which wasn’t as easy as it might seem, considering we couldn’t exactly Google its location. But we found a yellow pages inside an abandoned dentist’s office, and tracked down the store from there. It was a good ways outside the city center, so I was doubly glad that we’d looked it up instead of driving aimlessly all over the place.

Jace had a list of everything he needed, and we “liberated” one of the trailers you used to be able to rent to haul your building supplies home. Thank God my father had invested in a tow package for the Cherokee, even though we’d never actually had any reason to use it. There just never seemed to be quite enough in the family budget to buy a trailer or an ATV.

It took a while to locate and then load all the necessary supplies — partly because we both kept finding things we thought would be useful and figured we might as well add them to the haul. But after the back of the SUV was packed to the rafters, and the trailer similarly loaded down, we drove off, moving slowly through the streets, since I had to keep zigging and zagging to avoid abandoned cars and trucks. We’d left Dutchie at home, much to her dismay, since we’d known we would need all the available cargo space in the Cherokee.

“It’s kind of strange, don’t you think?” I asked Jace after we’d cut back up on Cerrillo and were heading to Alameda.

“What’s strange?” he replied, his attention still on the list he held. Maybe he was worried that we’d forgotten something.

“That we haven’t seen anybody. I mean, even with a 99.8% mortality rate, there should still be a couple hundred people wandering around Santa Fe, right? Where are they?”

He did look up at that question, his gaze drifting to the empty sidewalks and dark windows of the businesses on either side of the street. “Lying low?”

“Maybe,” I said, but I wasn’t sure I believed it. By that point, it had been almost a month since the Heat first began to spread across the country. Anyone who was going to die was long dead. You’d think the survivors would be out foraging in earnest, getting ready for winter. “It’s just weird that we haven’t seen a single person.”

“Do you want to find more people?” His tone was almost sharp as he asked that question, as if he thought I wasn’t satisfied with his company, that I needed something more.

“I don’t know,” I replied. It was only the truth. Part of me wanted to know what had happened to everyone, but after my experiences in Albuquerque, I wasn’t sure being around other people was such a good thing. Yes, Jace had turned out to be all right — more than all right, really — but could I count on being that lucky a second time?

“They could be hiding,” he said, his tone thoughtful. “Or gone to Albuquerque, thinking that maybe if any center of government still existed, it would be there, in a place where there would be more survivors. There are probably a lot of reasons why we’re not seeing anybody.”

That explanation sounded logical enough. If it hadn’t been for the voice urging me to get out, would I have left my hometown, or would I have stayed there in the hope that people might gather in what had been the state’s most populous area?

I wouldn’t second-guess myself, not now. I really didn’t know. Then again, my run-ins with Chris Bowman and the man outside Walgreens might have been enough to convince me that it was time to get out of Dodge.

“You’re right, of course,” I said, and he smiled.

“It’s okay, Jess. We’re okay. That’s all we have to worry about right now.”

Oh, how I wanted to believe him. I just wasn’t sure if I did.

* * *

The henhouse did go together with surprising speed, and within three days’ time, we had a full-on chicken coop with space for six hens to nest, a perch that Jace built from a closet rod, and an enclosed run. He also hung a light overhead so the hens would be encouraged to lay even on gray winter days. It was all perfect, except…no chickens.

So we got in the Cherokee again, this time taking Dutchie with us, and started scouring the rural and semi-rural areas outside Santa Fe for any rogue chickens who needed a home. It actually didn’t take as long as I’d thought; about an hour into our search, we found a house with a flock of chickens scratching away happily in the backyard, apparently unaware that the apocalypse had happened and they’d been left on their own. We gathered up six hens and the rooster, who was less than pleased at being plucked out of his yard and put in the back of an SUV. Jace was a little scratched up by the time the procedure was over, but in the end we had everything we needed. All I could say was that I was very glad I’d had the forethought to lay down some plastic trash bags in the bed of the SUV before dumping the chickens back there. If he’d had a proper grave, my father would have been rolling over in it.

It took a few days for the chickens to settle down and start laying, but after that we were able to have eggs pretty much every morning.

“Next, the goats,” Jace said at dinner not too long after that.

“Are you still on that kick?” I asked. All right, I had to say that the whole chicken thing was working out pretty well. But the thought of having goats roaming around the property intimidated me more than I wanted to admit. When I was a little kid, maybe five or six, my parents had taken me to a petting zoo. All had gone well until one of the goats decided to eat part of my sweater. I’d screamed bloody murder, and my father had grimly lifted me out of the pen and carried me away. Needless to say, goats weren’t exactly my favorite animals.

“Yes, I’m still on that kick. We ate the last of the cheese two days ago.” His dark eyes caught mine, and he grinned at me, a wicked grin I’d come to know over the past few weeks…and one that invariably made my knees go a little wobbly. So far I didn’t think Jace had noticed what kind of an effect it had on me, but still, I couldn’t help getting annoyed with myself for not having better self-control. He clasped his hands together and said in mock-earnest tones, “Jessica, do you want to consign me to a cheese-less future?”

“Oh, for God’s sake….” I couldn’t help smiling back at him, though, and I spread my hands in a gesture of surrender. “Okay, I give up. So, say we find some goats. How do you plan on getting them back here?”

“Easy,” he replied. His grin now had an element of triumph in it. “We’ll just find a horse trailer and put them in there.”

Easy. Right.

As with the henhouse supplies, we went foraging for the trailer first. There were a number of horse properties in the area, so that wasn’t too difficult. The odd thing was, just as I hadn’t seen any people on any of our expeditions, so, too, were there no horses in evidence anywhere. They could have bolted, kicked down the fences and gates when it became clear no one was coming to feed them or give them fresh water.

I didn’t see any signs of that, though, and the voice’s words came back to me: The animals will be taken care of. So apparently I didn’t need to worry about the horses. I couldn’t help wondering, though.

Just as I couldn’t help wondering what had happened to the voice. By that point, I hadn’t heard him for more than a week. Now that it seemed I was truly settled with Jace, maybe the voice had moved on, deeming me no longer in need of any assistance.

I wasn’t sure why, but that thought saddened me a little. I hardly wanted to admit it even to myself, but I missed the voice. If nothing else, he would have given me someone else to talk to…if he’d stuck around. A few