August 29, 2010
~*~ LG ~*~
Lori covers her yawn, but Abby sees it and giggles. They're trundling down to the sheep pasture in the dawn light in the Polaris, along with Jazz, Carl, Beth, and Sophia, who all look in various stage of awake. She could point out the farm girl easily, since Beth is the only one as alert as Jazz and Abby. Jazz is driving down the narrow gravel road slowly so the pair of blue heelers following can keep up.
Her morning jaunt to observe with the sheep is due to a combination of actual curiosity and wishing to make some sort of connection with the still-aloof Jazz. He's fast becoming her son's best friend on the property, and Abby adores the boy maybe even more than her own father. When Carol asked Jazz yesterday what he wanted for supper on his birthday today, he asked for moussaka and bourekia before digging out a cookbook and locating a container each of anari and halloumi cheese from the basement fridge with shy smile.
Hearing a teenager explain he made the cheese and can make plenty more if Carol uses it up made Lori curious about the process. She's made homemade mozzarella before, so she asked if it was similar. Thus, today's field trip, where apparently Jazz's little "hobby farm" of sheep, as Merle termed them, is actually a flock of seventy ewes, their lambs, and three rams. The boy's always up so early in the morning because he comes down every day to milk the ewes. By himself.
"Why such a big group today if you normally do the milking yourself?" she asks.
He shrugs a little, unlatching the gate to let them in the small pasture that holds the sheep barn. "We have to get the ram lambs separated today, because they're getting too old to stay with their mamas. They start to try to cross breed after three months, and these lambs were born in June while I was gone. Gage looked after them for me, but he didn't milk them, just let the babies have it all, which was fine."
The two dogs dart forward to the next gate, waiting patiently. Lori's still not sure how many dogs are actually on the two properties, other than they're all friendly enough. These two, if she heard Jazz correctly, are Betty and Wilma. They lope out into the field, rounding up the sheep with careful precision, helped along as Beth shakes a can of feed at the far end of the little alley between the paddocks.
"We helped him move the other sheep to the new pastures yesterday and put up the electric netting between the mamas and babies," Carl explains as Sophia and Jazz remove the netting Carl mentioned to let the lambs access the full pasture again. "So, it's just the ones with lambs that are ready to leave their mamas in there right now."
The scene of organized chaos slowly sorts itself out, with about two dozen ewes ending up in a paddock that borders one side of the barn.
"Now comes the fun part," Jazz says. "Remember, the boys are the ones with the blue numbers sprayed on their back. Make the girls stay behind and we'll let them join the others tomorrow."
Lori makes sure she stays out of her way, but really wishes she had a camera or video of the entertainment that follows. Beth and Jazz manage to capture their little ram lambs with the ease of practice, but Sophia and Carl have a few mishaps with errant, confused lambs. But soon enough thirty lambs are in the paddock that borders the one they were already in, while only twelve female lambs remain behind. All the lambs are complaining at the fence about their missing mothers.
"This is a lot of sheep," Lori remarks. She leans over the paddock fence and grins when one of the little males is perfectly happy to get a head scratch, while Beth is urging half the sheep into one side of the barn with Carl and Sophia's help.
"Katahdin ewes have twins and triplets. I've even had quadruplets, but it starts risking bottle feeding or passing off a lamb to an ewe with fewer babies at that point. The ram lambs will stay in pastures bordering their mamas for about a week before I move them elsewhere. Makes weaning easier on them."
"And the females?"
"Those will stay in with their mamas for another two months. Normally, these ewes would be bred again next, but since I wasn't here in June, I've got a different flock that I'll breed now that missed their normal breeding point and let these spend a little more time raising their ewe lambs since I'm going to keep all the ewe lambs this time. Normally I would sell all but maybe two.
"They aren't very wooly?"
"When I wanted my first sheep for a 4H project, Dad said I had to use hair sheep, because he wasn't shearing a bunch of smelly critters for wool I wouldn't really want to market anyway. Plus, most wool sheep don't do well in humid climates like Georgia. These come from a breed that's from the tropics."
"How old were you?" She's guessing young, if Merle's concerned about needing to help when Jazz seems fully independent with his sheep.
"Ten. It was when we came back from visiting Scout in Cyprus. We liked the lamb dishes and Dad figured at least I wasn't asking for calves like Honey did for her project at the same age. Each of those little miniature Jerseys cost as much as an entire flock of my sheep."
She follows him as he heads for the barn. She realizes the part they've entered is separate from the rest of the barn and realizes it's the milking parlor when she sees the other three kids setting up sheep with the simple lure of dumping food in to the feeding mangers and letting each ewe hop up. There are six little stalls on either side, so she figures that's why some of the ewes were gated off from entering. They're obviously used to the process, as a couple of those have their head over the half-door to baa about being outside still.
He's very patiently explaining to Sophia and Carl how to clean their sheep's udders and hook up the milking machine. When Lori steps forward to help, the teenager actually makes eye contact for a brief moment when he smiles and steps over to hook up the next ewe while Lori slowly works her way through the process. All in all, in the time that Lori, Carl, and Sophia have six sheep ready, Jazz and Beth have finished the other six and are readying the equipment. Each helper is handed a milking bucket contraption and Jazz demonstrates how to hook up the equipment.
"You can milk by hand, but since it's just me, this is just a lot faster."
It takes about two minutes each sheep to be milked. As they unhook the sheep, Jazz explains to his three newbie helpers that it would take a little longer with goats or even a dairy sheep breed, but the katahdins are more known for having lots of lambs than producing a lot of milk. But as he empties out what the six sheep produced into the machine that looks like it refrigerates the milk somehow, Lori sees that Sophia has noted a little over two gallons of milk on the clipboard. It seems like a lot of work for what she knows will only produce just over a two pounds of cheese, but perhaps as a byproduct it makes sense.
The six sheep are released, and Beth lures in the other twelve, although Jazz calls out a reminder not to milk three of them.
"Is there a reason?" Lori asks.
"One of them lost their only lamb and another didn't conceive, so they don't have any milk. But I always let the ones without lambs come up and share in the snack." He reaches out to fondly rub at the cheeks of one spotted ewe. "And McGonagall here, she's old enough that I don't breed her more than once a year. She's just the boss of the bunch for now."
She thinks it's rather sweet and wonders how she ever thought the boy is older than he is. The remaining nine sheep go equally as well, adding another two full gallons to the tally. Everyone scrubs up at the sink.
"You do this every morning?" Carl asks, sounding a little incredulous at the idea of getting up every day for this.
"Well, I could miss a day if I wanted to, since the lambs will just drink the extra milk. I usually keep it staggered though, so normally I'd have lambs almost year-round. You'll get to help me oversee the lambing later next month for the ones that are pregnant right now. But we'll have a gap in babies. Normally, I would have bred the third flock in July."
"And you have forty or fifty lambs each time?" The number is a little staggering to Lori.
"Thereabouts. They usually have twins, sometimes triplets. I don't milk the triplet mamas, and sometimes we lose lambs. There were forty-five born in this flock in June while I was gone, so we lost three. The young one lost hers, and we lost one each out of sets of twins. On the lambs I had before school ended, there are thirty-four left from the April-born lambs and ten from last August. Those are the ones you see up in the pastures by the house with the horses and mini-cows. And we have lambs due next month."
They're back outside, with Jazz carrying the box with the quarts of yesterday's milk and sitting it in the back of the Polaris. They put the mother ewes back in the pasture with the female lambs. The poor males bleat anxiously in their paddock.
"What will happen to the ram lambs?" Carl asks.
Jazz gives him the sort of sideways glance that tells Lori he's not entirely sure Carl will like the answer. "Well, I won't risk this many non-castrated rams on the property with so many kids around, since I'm going to have to start using mobile paddocks to avoid overgrazing. So, these will be castrated this week, and then I'm going to start using them as lawnmowers round the property until they're old enough to be butchered."
Carl grimaces a little, but probably not as much as he would have months ago when all he really knew about the meat on the table was that she bought it at the supermarket and that he preferred pork to chicken.
"And the older lambs?" Lori asks, curious.
"They're six months old and almost nine months now. Normally, a portion of any flock ends up in our own freezers. You've seen those downstairs right?" Everyone nods, and Lori understands the reasoning for commercial level freezers in the basement a bit better now. "I used to split it with the Eldridges, and we get pork from their pigs in exchange, just like I traded milk and cheese for veggies. I used to sell them at market for ethnic and religious holidays. I would probably have sold almost all my lambs in September for the end of Ramadan and Rosh Hashanah."
"Does that mean we're going to eat them all right now?" Sophia asks, looking mildly disturbed. Lori can relate, just a little. She's not much better than Carl, in the reality of where her meat came from. She enjoyed lamb chops before... when she didn't think about the fuzzy faces like she could now.
"No, just the older ten, which are what I have left from what sold for Easter and Passover dinners. While there's a market for sixty-pound lambs normally because of the holidays, I rather wait until they're closer to a hundred pounds, so the other twenty-four will be in December and the ones from today in February, most likely. Today's probably would have ended up Christmas lambs before, though."
"How much meat per lamb?" Beth asks. She's been so self-assured about helping Jazz with the animals that Lori forgot that Hershel raised cattle, so sheep might be mostly new to her as well.
"If you wait until they're about a hundred pounds, about forty-five pounds of meat. That's usually around nine months for a Katahdin ram lamb, maybe a little older for a wether or ewe lamb. There are sheep that get bigger faster, because they're bigger when full-grown, but those breeds don't do well at all here in the heat and humidity due to parasites. It's not a lot of meat, compared to cattle, but a lot easier to raise and on less land. And we'll be able to tan the hides too. Arthur and Lenore have a little building down on their farm for it. People used to bring all sorts of hides to them."
"I do have one weird question," Sophia says. "What is with the weird triangles in between all the paddocks?"
Jazz laughs so softly Lori isn't sure it's laughter at first. "Dog jump gates. The sheep can't usually make it through because their legs don't maneuver correctly to step through the vee part. But the guardian dogs can. Dad got tired of the dogs scaling the fences when they were patrolling. But that's why I closed off the one between the ram lamb paddock and their mamas, because lambs are more likely to figure it out." He glances at his watch. "If we don't get back soon, they're going to run out of breakfast."
That gets everyone loaded up and Lori is thoughtful on the way back. She knows Jazz also helps with the other animals, many in makeshift corrals, that Arthur and Lenore collected from lost neighbors so they wouldn't starve. Right now, the property has everything short of cattle and pigs, she thinks, of the common farm animals, and the Eldridges already raised a good number of pigs as part of their farm. There's a truly impressive amount of poultry that roam inside the two larger pastures during the day and the coop's been expanded twice that Lori's seen, because somehow out of all the farm animals in Georgia, poultry seems to survive best and longest without human help. The supply run groups just keep collapsible dog crates in their trucks now.
She doesn't think Jazz has left the property since they arrived. For the first time she wonders if that's because he wants to stay behind from the supply runs he was part of in Atlanta, or if everyone's just left him with too much responsibility to feel like he can leave.
When they arrive back at the main house, she decides maybe it's time to ask a few more questions of Carol than she has about work schedules.
~*~ MD ~*~
"If we don't stop having these emergency builds, I'm going to yank out what hair I got left."
Carol just laughs at him from where she's exchanging the water cooler at their latest build. "At least this one doesn't have to have a foundation?"
"Trust Glenn to find an actual rabbit farm still up and running and people willing to relocate only if the bunnies do too." Merle and Hershel both were fetched when that alert came in on the radio. The vet only asked if Merle thought they could spare time from the warehouse to build a barn for the rabbits, then offered to go out with the other teams sent to provide more haulage and extra hands for dissembling a rabbitry with nearly 700 rabbits. Luckily it was an off day for Scout and Shane's teams, so in addition to Glenn's two already on the farm, they now sent seven more teams of four, plus Hershel.
So now Merle's building a rabbit barn, grateful these folks at least had stacking cages so he's not needing two of the damned things, and they're going to have a lot of bunnies out in the weather for the better part of the week. He briefly considered just converting the warehouse, but the place is going to end up enough of a chaotic hodgepodge without dumping farm animals all over the place, and might as well keep the rabbit barn near the other barn, supply wise.
"Be nice to have all the rabbit meat that no one has to chase through the woods though, and Lenore looked about deliriously happy talking about rabbit manure at lunch."
"That woman's obsession with manure is a little off-putting." Not that Merle blamed her really, since it was part of her livelihood. "Just wait til she has to truck in the manure Jazz composts for her from his sheep and the other critters."
Carol's expression shifts to worried as soon as he mentions his son, and Merle glances down to where Jazz is talking rather animatedly with Miguel as they work together to set one of the support poles. The young Vato has spent all his extra time not needed to help his cousin in the nursing home on Merle's building projects. He thinks it's the first time the teenager has ever been able to work with his hands on something other than a car, and the boy's good at it, just like Jazz.
"Something up with Jasper?" he asks softly, concerned about that little furrow in Carol's brow.
She sighs a little. "Lori came to me with some concerns about him being overworked. She thinks we need to set a more formal schedule for the teenagers than just letting them volunteer for whatever crew and rotating a few through kitchen and laundry duty. I asked around, after she talked to me, and I guess I thought the other kids were helping him a lot more than they are, but apparently, he's doing the majority of the animal care on this side of things himself. Normally, that might not be terrible, but he's on your building crews as often as he can be too, and Lori says he's helped her hang laundry twice this week and he has done breakfast prep at least twice too. Carl and Sophia both say that in the evenings, when I thought he was playing games with the other kids, he's sitting with them, but usually with a textbook making notes."
Merle rubs at his chin, studying Jazz for a moment. The teenager doesn't look overly tired, as Merle's seen him get sometimes when he's been burning the candle at both ends, especially during football season. But he also knows if they don't keep an eye on it, Jazz has a hard time setting limits for himself if he thinks someone needs his help. "I'll have a talk with him soon as he and Miguel finish that post."
"And I'm going to set a work schedule for each of the teenagers to rotate through the chores, so that the less appealing ones don't get skimped on by letting the softer hearted kids take on extra days on them."
He reaches out to draw her in for a half hug and kiss, smiling when she doesn't draw away from the fact that he's dusty and sweaty in the late August heat. "Him working on his birthday didn't strike me as much different than his norm. Glad he's got a lot more people keeping an eye out for him now. Speaking of kids, where are Sophia and Abby?" Normally a new project like this, Sophia would be in the thick of things, and with Daryl and Jazz here helping posts, it's doubly odd that Sophia's out of sight.
"Honey borrowed both girls for a project, which I suspect involves something for Jazz's birthday later."
"Hopefully it won't involve glitter. I like to think I banned all the glitter from the house, but I wouldn't put it past her to have a stash somewhere."
"He already told me what he wanted for family supper, so I let Katherine know to expect about two dozen less for the main supper tonight."
"You up for cooking for that many? It can be smaller."
"I'll be fine. Patricia and Glynnis will be around if I need them, and Beth's already offered extra help. The moussaka is oven baked anyway, and you have enough gadgets stashed around that kitchen to stock a TV chef show. It doesn't look much harder than a vegetarian lasagna, so it'll be fine. I've never worked with phyllo dough before, but Patricia has, so we'll get that sorted. At least now I know why you have so many odd bits and bobs ingredient wise, if Jazz likes Greek and Turkish food so much. I wasn't sure what some of them were for, until I read through a few recipes. We'll make a sweet and a savory on the bourekia."
He lures her in for another kiss, glad that she took the unusual request and rolled with it. Jazz would have happily eaten whatever she suggested as an alternative, but this will be the best present she can make the boy. "I'm guessing the supplies didn't make much of a dent in the credits toward personal food supplies in that system Patricia set up?"
"Not in the least. I think we're all working way too much, and I don't think Patricia counted anything already in the house as part of the larger inventory anyway. It feels a bit selfish, til I realize that no one who lives there with us ever seems to take any time off. Even Patricia's been sitting and sewing or knitting."
"If you want to expand out the meal, he's never met zucchini he wouldn't eat about his weight in, and if you check his stash in the basement freezer, there's probably enough milk frozen to make some ice cream for everyone. His favorite's peppermint. Should be a handwritten recipe in the big purple binder in with the cookbooks. Those are Jazz's adaptations, if you can muddle through his handwriting."
"I'd almost feel decadent having ice cream when everyone else is."
Merle shrugs. "So, make a bunch of fruit sorbet for everyone else tomorrow. Might take some relief off the canning crew on playing catch up with all the melons, peaches, and berries Lenore's people been hauling up." He's actually glad that doing a special dinner for Jazz has her off the canning crew for the day at least. She's about as bad as Jazz for fluttering around from project to project, keeping all the ducks lined up. He can already see the logistics of sorbet for 200 spinning in her head, so he finishes his drink and gets one last kiss before going to kidnap his boy off the work crew for a break.
~*~ SW ~*~
There are a lot of things he's done in his life - before and after the apocalypse - but Shane thinks figuring out how to load up and haul several hundred rabbits in cages is one he is lucky to be unlikely to repeat. In the end, they disassembled some of the cage systems and loaded the parts onto the trucks, with some strapped fully assembled onto two flatbeds. The bunnies themselves are getting to ride in a chicken hauler appropriated from a chicken processing plant in a nearby town. By contrast, rounding up the handful of other animals deemed fit for transport was easy, including a jenny who really didn't care for the idea of going on the livestock trailer at all.
The family that ran the farm is doing a final load up of what they're taking with them. Scout's with them, gently reminding them that their property isn't so far away they can't come back for anything forgotten by joining a supply run going that way. Which reminds him that Hershel's along for this trip.
The older man is doing final checks on the animals, and Shane knows he worries about the chicken transport because even sanitizing it isn't a full guarantee the poultry didn't leave something nasty behind the rabbits might catch. But he can't imagine that seeing the bulk of this farm going on the road isn't a heartache when most of his farm was left behind.
When he steps up to look into the livestock trailer and pet the jenny, who is perfectly happy now that she's actually in the trailer with her buddies, Hershel chuckles. "Keep that up and you'll have a new best friend. She's a healthy little thing."
"Last time I patted a donkey was some petting zoo thing for Carl's school, I think." Shane fumbles in his pocket and shows Hershel the granola bar and the vet nods, so he unwraps it for his new pal. "You wanna try a trip down to your farm? See what else can be brought up?"
Hershel takes a minute to reply, and Shane lets him mull it over. "Even between the two properties, there's no real space for my cattle, even if we brought them all. We could try to transport them to that old horse farm in the other river bend, but I don't know that the fences there would stand up to walkers if they came in. Afraid we'd just be adding a lot of smell and movement to attract herds without a good enough payoff. And there might not be any left. All it would take is one herd finding the place and they'd be mostly defenseless, even if we did leave the gates open so they could go free."
"You had horses though. Think they'd be around still? Might not be able to take all the cattle, but could find spots for a few more horses and maybe a few of the cows. Cars won't last forever, and as much as I would like to unlearn that supper discussion about insemination y'all had the other night, you do have those frozen tanks we've been gathering from vet offices and farms." And isn't that a weird thing to know is in the barn loft now... about a dozen tanks of frozen farm genetics that Hershel says will last indefinitely as long as they can keep liquid nitrogen supplies. "Damned walkers can't be around forever, right?"
"I wouldn't think so. Even if the virus keeps them protected from decay, in the end, their bodies can't renew and repair. It's why we find immobile or trapped ones looking like they're starved and they can't really move fast enough to attack. Eventually the large herds of them wouldn't be around, but I suspect we're looking at a few years, maybe as long as a decade."
"So, is it feasible to keep a few regular sized cattle in the secure areas for that long?"
"Maybe not that long, but long enough that we could get the horse farm secure in a year or two."
"Yeah, because let's face it, after a year or two, we're unlikely to be finding groups to take in. They're going to have their own settlements. Eventually we can expand instead of coping to keep up."
"It's a decent area to expand, like the castles in Europe. They just added new layers to protect, although we have the advantage that we can probably enclose areas by years rather than by decades. I'll talk it over with Merle. See how feasible a timeline there would be to add the horse farm property, especially since we haven't begun reinforcing either the Dixon or Eldridge property fully yet."
The shipping container idea Merle originally thought of for the main Dixon acreage ended up being how they reinforced any weak points on the Eldridge one, since it was the weak point and too many people had to be exposed in the fields. It wasn't solidly enclosed, not like the nightmare thicket around the Homestead itself, but it didn't give Shane security nightmares either. Walkers wouldn't make it on the property at all, and humans, well, they wouldn't get on property without triggering a lot of alerts they were there. All the military or former military had tested for lapses and so far, none. Thank God they lived in the era of solar powered security systems and people bright enough to cobble them together.
"Best be getting on the road, I think," Hershel says, looking where the remnants of the Brasfield family is loading up at last. Of the multi-generation family of nine, only five survived both virus and aftermath of family member attack, plus one poor exchange student whose year abroad turned permanent residency when she wasn't allowed to fly home at the end of the school year. Lydia Teoh Jia would never see her home again.
He smiles as Scout swings into the cab of the truck he's driving. They've enough drivers today that she rode with him out and back. He's enjoying the throwback to their early days together, before being able to move the greatest number of vehicles each trip and to have the most experienced team leads split them up most days.
"Glad the road's reasonably clear between here and home," he says after she leans in for a kiss. He shifts to lead the line of vehicles off the now-abandoned fifty-acre farm and she nods.
"Gonna have to set up some sort of obstacles. I figure it's that clear because no one wanted to try crossing through the lake area when the government was saying head south, but I wouldn't mind ways of knowing if other groups have been through. Just because that asshole down in the southwest hasn't shown up anywhere yet doesn't mean he doesn't have teams out as far as us yet. I'm hoping that man we interrogated was truthful that the man was obsessed with Atlanta and part south."
"We're going to have to go scout him out eventually."
"Yeah, but I prefer it to be after we aren't trying to figure out where to cram too many living beings in too little space first. Can you imagine if we end up with another Grady and the people don't want to stay in that town he's walled off? No way we can handle another fifty now."
"Maybe once winter's underway. Be a good time for a small team and a long drive then."
She nods and glances at her watch. "I was starting to think we wouldn't make it back by supper time and end up with bare leftovers of Jazz's birthday supper. You know Carol's going to go all out and spoil him."
"I sure won't mind eating something cooked by Carol solo again. The ladies running the kitchen are putting out good food, but it's not up to our ladies' standards."
"Glynnis is still overseeing breakfast and lunch," Scout says, but grins. "And you know she'll lecture you about how quantity cooking can't be as complex as family sized meals. Might find yourself on kitchen duty if she hears you talking like that."
"Better veggies than laundry. I prefer it left to my imagination whose underwear is whose."
"Still traumatized by helping fold and sort and now knowing what underclothing every female family member wears?"
"Hell yes." But he's joking and she knows it. He can't let it be like the quarry, where he didn't lead by example on helping with chores. He knows the younger men, especially the teenagers, are definitely paying attention when he and the other men seen as leaders are part of some chore that traditional Southern machismo might see as too girly. Scout may be conflicted about being part of the council, staying on when Patricia shifted off only because she did know she was considered in authority for both her road crew and the Grady civilians. But Shane really would like to stay a part of it longer term than Scout wants to. He enjoys being part of planning for not just the day-to-day safety of the community, but their futures as well.
The trip passes in close to what would be normal time before - just under two hours for a formerly hour trip isn't bad now. But unlike most supply runs, this one's going to be a doozy, he thinks as they pull in, knowing that time is ticking to get the delicate rabbits out of the chicken transport cages before they overheat once the truck's not underway creating a breeze.
He and Scout are both halfway to one of the trucks with the equipment on flatbeds, knowing those cages are at least still assembled and should go first, when he hears a name he knows, but also knows Scout never wants used.
"Salome!"
He pauses and turns faster than she does, seeing an exhausted looking blond man striding toward them at speed. As soon as Scout turns, she takes off and meets him halfway. Shane isn't sure who is trying to crush who more in the enthusiastic hug, but the man's tall enough to actually lift Scout off the ground a few inches. When he finally puts her down, she turns with one arm still around the newcomer's waist and motions him forward. He doesn't think he's seen her so overjoyed since Merle woke up back at quarry camp.
"Shane, this is Christopher," she says. He offers a hand in greeting as she continues. "Christopher, this is my fiancé, Shane."
That term is definitely surprising to the man, who Shane knows is one of Alaina's missing sons now that he has his name. He hopes for the older woman's sake that more than just Christopher made it back. It also makes Christopher notice the necklace, hanging loose after Scout stripped down to a T-shirt when the trip went easily and the August heat got to be too much. He lifts it and rubs a thumb across the inscription. "Without you, I am nothing. In Chamorro, no less. It sounds like you've finally found the right one."
The fact that Christopher can clearly read Chamorro is a little disgruntling, except that Scout's face damn near glows at the compliment. He reminds himself that for all the history between these two, it's only been friendship for nearly a decade. He's her best friend, and that's far more important than the ex-boyfriend label.
"I certainly have. Where's the others?" She looks hopeful now, but guarded, like they all are when discussing potential for loss.
Christopher's happiness fades. "Just me, Bryce, and Audrey. Amber, Dylan, and Chase were gone before we got there. Audrey survived by locking herself in the attic and climbing in and out a window for supplies. Couldn't bring herself to put them to rest."
"Oh, hell, Kit, I'm so sorry."
So's Shane. Out of Christopher and Bryce's sister's family, only his thirteen-year-old niece survived and Chase was only eleven. Scout used to babysit both kids in high school, so worry over the missing Roberts' clan has featured in a few of Scout's nightmares. He reaches out to brush the back of Scout's hand to draw her attention quietly.
"You stay with him. Go see Bryce and Audrey. I'll lead the rabbit wrangling."
The smile it earns him is well worth the next few hours of rabbit poop and sweat.