48

"I don't like it" Jessica said as she tried to talk them out of it but the men folk were determined.

"We have to go, we need to get the baby formula since your mother refuses to let her suckle and it's our only window" her husband argued.

The women stood watching as the Jeep roared off, and then Jessica hefted the rifle to her shoulder, lifting the scope to watch the vehicle until it was just a spec. She was turning to enter the gateway when an old bus rumbled up, the woman who leaned out welcoming and smiling "hey there, am I on the right road for Clementine?"

"Yeah, but it's not very good there" Jessica called back, not wanting to have their meager stock diminished by others. But there was another village, further away but likely as good I guess "If you turn left at the next fork, the village that way has some good shops and I think there is still a school full of things."

The woman laughed as her little children looked out the windows of the bus, her husband clearly a large black man who was sitting on the roof of the bus cross-legged, a gun across his lap.

"That's just Boomer" the woman called out as she put the bus in gear to go "Come on Randy, leave the poor dog alone!"

They turned to see another man on the side of the road, kneeling as he petted the dog and then rose, saluting and running for the bus as he yelled "Alright Bon, god. Don't leave me behind again ya mad cow!"

With soft laughter, the bus took off and Jessica wondered if they should have intuited those ones in.

They seemed safe but in this time of The End of Everything, was anyone safe?

.

.

"The house bus had stained glass windows?" Ianto asked, and then laughed softly as he shook his head and she wondered what she had said that had tickled him so. He adjusted the sleeping baby in his arms and then chuckled "Wait until Bonnie sees you."

Jessica wondered who Bonnie was, and why the house bus meant something.

"So… what next?" Ianto asked after he let her wool gather for a while.

"When Stan returned he was covered with blood, shaking and my father was half dead in the back. Both grandfathers… gone." She took a sip of her drink, and then let her head drop before continuing.

.

.

"What happened" Jessica screamed with horror, her father's soft groans heart-wrenching to hear.

"It was like a bloody ambush. We didn't even get into the village, they were at the roadblock by the one lane bridge. Dwayne and his men but… they were those things. Their uniforms covered in blood and torn.. Jesus. Your grands both went at once, pulled out like the fuckers had super human strength." Stan was almost in tears as he tried to help her father out of the back "come on, help me!"

Jessica could hear her mother screaming, then as she turned to ask her why she was doing that the rifle her fella had snatched from the passenger seat barked, her father falling back into the well of the vehicle to jerk and convulse.

"DADDY!" she screamed with horror as the thing that had been her father tried to lunge for her.

Stan fired close to its head this time.

.

.

"And that's how we found out that you could change into one of those things that quickly" she placed her drink down, no longer thirsty and Ianto nodded with a grimace. Yeah. That fast.

"Mama was never the same, the baby already depleting her and then this… it was like the beginning of the end. She just… withdrew into herself." Jessica looked at her drink, letting her finger run around the rim of the glass.

"Down to just the four of you. Mama, you, Stan and bubba" Ianto nodded.

"We agreed to stay put, a few neighboring farms were ransacked for what we might need and then we simply closed the gates and went dark. Settled into this new life."

"Until…"

"So then came the bugs in the third year, decimating our crops and any livestock we hadn't managed to get in the barn. It came like a wave, like one of those sandstorms in the movies, ya know?" she asked and Ianto nodded, the Clicker Swarm had cost them too.

"So, we agreed that with winter coming we should just prepare to hunker down. Close the bunker hatch and just …. Well… survive. The animals were not to happy and we lost some due to the cold in the barn but other than going up to feed out once a day, we stayed underground. Of course. We found ourselves having to deplete the herd a bit when the thaw didn't come. I mean, how were we supposed to know it would last almost two feckin years!"

Ah yes.

That first long winter.

Now Ianto knew the timeline here.

"And that was when Mama died."