Maintenance
The electricity and running water is nice. She’ll concede that much.
But not being slowly exsanguinated by mosquitoes or waking up covered in ticks or finding pale worms in her shit after hours of a cramped and contorted stomach? Better.
---
When they first began they couldn’t produce enough penicillin to save a single person. Too little, too unstable, too inconsistent. They always had soap and alcohol and a kettle of boiling water on hand to sterilize, but you can only do so much. Magnesium sulfate? Zinc sulfate? This isn’t as simple as making lime or lye.
In the beginning, Carter had the hope that they could shore up a surplus of antibiotics and start a little enterprise. Sell, trade, whatever—Voere bought into the idea, too, kept trying to get Tommy and Maria on board. Make Jackson a place that traders would prioritize, that bandits would reconsider attacking. But that dream died just as quickly as the bacteria they exposed to their penicillin.
---
They keep a stockpile of emergency fuel. Just enough barrels, stacked in the back, cool and dry and away from curious eyes. Biofuel loses potency after a month, but if stored in ideal conditions, it can last years.
These are far from ideal conditions. But they do it anyway. They swap it out once a year. The lesser stuff they relegate to lamp fuel.
People always ask for more. They point to the beet harvest, say that an extra gallon here or there can be spared, ask for more on holidays. But living in Jackson has made them soft. They don’t remember living in the cold and dark.
Now, when they ask for more fuel, Pike usually just points to the trees outside the walls and says “go get it.”
---
Everyone calls her Pike. Not Ms. Pike, not Miss Pike, not Miz Pike, not Missus Pike. Pike. Just Pike.
There’s only a handful of people that know her first name—or care, anyway. A smaller handful, with Eugene gone.
It’s a thought that gives her pause, sometimes.
---
Pike thinks Dina is all right.
She doesn’t get squeamish at the sight of blood or pushing needle through skin and tissue. She isn’t overly enthusiastic about it either, which is also good. People excited to see insides-on-the-outside make bad doctors and worse soldiers. She’s a little flighty and jokes too much, but she never wastes anything. She’s still mostly a kid, apocalypse or not, motherhood or not.
There was a time early on that Dina affectionately called her ‘Pikey,’ however.
She didn’t speak to the girl for three days.
---
When a horse gets old, or breaks a leg out afield, there’s not much you can do but put it down.
The difference is that most people don’t start skinning and field dressing the animal then and there.
A horse has a lot of surface area, hence, a lot of skin. They weigh over a thousand pounds—and a lot of that is edible.
The first time Tommy saw Pike pop out a dead horse’s eyeball, he laughed. “That’s disgusting. What’s it taste like?”
“Calories,” she had said, tossing it into the well-worn cookpot. It hissed and crackled.
The people of Jackson don’t turn up their nose at raccoon or opossum. Skunk—well, cut out the glands and mix it in the stew or burger with something else, people won’t notice (or pretend not to). The older generation is more sentimental about beef and pork and venison and less keen on organs, but the kids see meat as meat. Good for them. Even fish head soup goes well with them—“it makes you swim better,” Joel said, his expression neutral. They bought it.
Nonetheless, horse meat is a hard sell. Especially when it had a name like ‘Starlight’ and you used to comb its mane.
Dogs? Forget about it. When feral dogs roam too close to the livestock the ranchers just shoot them full of arrows and dump them back into the woods to be carried home by their compatriots. Twenty to forty pounds of meat each, thrown away. Waste of nutrients, if you ask Pike. But no one asks Pike.
Cats? They eat the mice and rats and the infected seem to avoid them for some reason, so they leave them be. Don’t make good eating, anyway, Pike knows from earlier times. Stringy and tough and still torment you from the inside after death. And they’ve got enough town cats sauntered through town and along fences that the kids would never forgive her.
---
Pike watches Seth wipe out the inside of a glass. He’s been at that glass a while.
“I mean, if it were my daughter… I guess I would’ve hit him too.”
Pike drinks.
“She’s not a bad person,” he continues, finally placing the glass down. “She’s a credit to the community. But she and Dina and—what’s her name? Cathy? Katrina?—are around kids. You don’t want them getting confused, about how things work. More confused, I mean, with this Cor-dee-ceps business.” He gestures out the window. “JJ’s going to be the only boy in town with two mothers. How’re you going to explain that to him?” He looks down. “Not enough boys her age, maybe,” he mutters.
Pike drinks.
“And we’re getting old. Jackson’s getting old. We need grandchildren, not…” He waves. “Young... professionals.” He frowns. “And Dina… I never thought… because of her and Jesse, you know.” He sighs. “That boy is a smartass. Definitely his mother’s son. Reckon a girl can only take so much.”
Pike drinks. Or tries to: her glass is empty. She places it on the bar counter. Better quit while she’s ahead. She doesn’t want a repeat of how she and Seth first met—took years to smooth that over. Maria thought ‘pistols at dawn’ was a joke, until it wasn’t.
“I’ll see you around, Seth.”
---
It’s Pike’s turn for kill duty.
(When she was sixteen and starved for honor, Ellie offered to be placed on kill duty. Joel and Tommy and Maria were dead silent. Pike just said, “no.”)
When it’s someone from Jackson who gets bitten, it’s a little different. The infected says their goodbyes, writes out their will, and then heads to the clinic. Voere pumps them full of diethyl ether (nitrous oxide isn’t enough) then poisons them with whatever’s on hand. Funeral is usually the next day.
Kill duty is a less elaborate affair. Someone from outside the walls—traveler, bandit, loner, whoever—doesn’t get the same ritual. They get stripped and checked over at the main gate, at gunpoint if they don’t cooperate. And if they’re bitten? Well.
They walked less than a mile out of Jackson. “This is it.”
It’s a small hollow in the trees. Easy to miss, right before sunrise like this. Push through and you’ll find a little cabin nestled inside.
No one lived in that cabin.
The man grunted, halfway to a laugh. “You gonna lock me in there, until I turn? Is that it? Solitary?”
“No. I don’t have the time.”
The man laughed, all the way, this time. He didn’t struggle when they tied his hands behind his back, patted him down. Didn’t need to gag him, either. At worst, the guards would have to hogtie the condemned and toss them over the back of a horse, thrashing all the while. But Pike likes walking them. It has a sense of finality to it, even if her current charge dragged out the ‘finality’ part with his limp.
Pike gestured to a tree a stone’s throw from the cabin. “There.”
“You going to hang me?”
“Forgot the rope.”
The trunk of the tree was marred, scored deep with holes.
“Ah. Firing squad.”
“That’s it.”
The man’s gait slowed as he neared the tree. Slowed and slowed until it seemed like he was barely moving. He just looked at it for a while, from the roots to the top of it. He rubbed awkwardly at his left calf with his right foot. They took his boots—they were nice boots, and less work for the cobbler—but they gave him a few pairs of old socks beyond mending. They’re black with dirt now.
“Thanks,” he said.
Pike waited.
“For the bullet, I mean. Always thought hanging was a sorry way out. And most would just stick my head in a bucket of water for a while or bash my head in with a shovel.”
“It’s a handload,” Pike said.
“Still. I appreciate the effort.” He took those last few steps. He turned, lined his back straight with the trunk of the tree. The sound of his shirt against the bark was loud.
Pike disengaged the safety on her rifle. “Anything else? Last words? That kind of thing.”
The man looked pensive for a moment, studying the ground. And then: “Nah. I’m good. Ready when you are.”
Pike didn’t miss. The sun crested the horizon.