Teresa was sitting at the dining room table when the Hunter walked in. Strikingly beautiful as always, she had let her hair grow out and now wore it in a thick pony tail. She’d stopped wearing her banger leathers of late and today was dressed in a pair of blue jeans and a pale gray sweater that offset her dark eyes.
In the distance, down a hallway, he could hear Barb Cass happily chasing the kids, but Teresa was absorbed with something on the table. As he walked up, he saw that it was a lined pad of paper and some pencils and that she was slowly, carefully writing something. She looked up at him and smiled, a pretty decent grin for once, and put down the pencil.
“Jack!” she said. He was still getting used to being called that, but it was getting easier. Teresa looked at the bag in his hands. “That what I think it is?” she asked, arching one brow.
“You know it,” he nodded, handing it over.
Eagerly, she took the bag, opened it, and took a good sniff. Then she sat back down and started wolfing them like there was no tomorrow. Reading and writing and the niceties of etiquette and proper civilization, all things she’d been trying very hard with, all that was fine, but these were her favorite! Happily, he waited and then nodded at the pad and pencil.
“What ya got there?” he asked. “More school work?”
“Nope,” she said between healthy bites, smiling brightly. “I’m gonna write a book! All about the adventures of Dr. Kaes an’ Mr. Lampert an’ how they saved the world. You know, the whole story, like, so everybody’ll remember. So they don’ forget why they still here. So whattaya think? Sound like a good story?”
Jack Shipman smiled and nodded. “I think it sounds like a great story,” he said. “But then, who knows? Maybe it’s not over yet.”
“What you mean?” she asked, cocking her head adorably, a hint of whipped cream on her lower lip. “What ain’t over?”
“Us,” said Shipman. “You, me, Barb and Erin and Doug and the kids, the whole city. Did you know that there’s a story goin’ around of a link-up with Baron Zero? Some plan to get the old phone lines workin’? Guess that’s kinda what I meant. We ain’t done yet, you know? Humanity.”
Teresa nodded, her attention straying back to her writing, and finished off the cakes. Shipman smiled indulgently, glad at her disinterest. Maybe tomorrow or the next day, he’d tell her about the plans for the Dr. Justin Kaes Memorial or how they wanted to rename Haight Street Howard Lampert Boulevard. But there would be time enough for that. For now, he went to look for the Kid; he’d promised to take him to the movies, and Santiago Junior never, ever forgot a promise. And besides, the movie, The Wizard of Oz, was a sort of sentimental favorite.
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Plaguesville, USA
Jim LaVigne
Published by Permuted Press at Smashwords.
Copyright 2011, 2012 Jim LaVigne