A/N: Thanks for the guest reviewer for pointing out that Tamsin hasn't introduced herself to Bo before Bo knows her name. I added that in Chapter 2, so now Bo knows her name :). Sorry for that. And also to answer your question, no, Bo is not psychic.
Chapter 5 - Home, Sweet Home
Bo slept for a couple of hours, and when she woke up, she rolled to sit straight. Tamsin, who was sitting beside the fire sharpening her falchion with a piece of whetstone, raised to look at her.
Bo tilted her head at the blonde's sleeping bag, and smiled. Tamsin stopped what she had been doing, and gave Bo a simple nod.
She quiet lay down on top of her sleeping bag, and rolled on her side to face away from the brunette. Minutes later, she fell asleep.
Bo sat there vigilantly, but that vigilant phase only lasted for a short while. Soon everything around her became a quiet, warm blend, calming her down.
The crackles of the fire, decorated by an occasional snap or two. The chirps of crickets and katydids. The nightwind. The running creek afar.
When the insects stopped singing once in a while, Bo could practically hear the starlight fall, for she was surrounded by nothing but a dead silence, like the entire planet had suddenly gone unconscious.
There were no distant sirens of firetrucks or ambulances, no neighbor noises of any kind. No clock ticking, phone beeping, or A/C unit running. No dripping water from the tap, or fridge humming.
It was just her, Tamsin, and the silent world.
Bo glanced at Tamsin again, and saw her flipping to her back while sleeping. She couldn't help but smile when she saw the slightest frown between the blonde's eyebrows, as if even in her dreams she was aware of Bo's stare.
Bo couldn't stop but wonder why Tamsin would prefer travelling alone. Was it her way to avoid unnecessary contact with other people and possible liabilities? Or did she not like interacting with other people at all?
Or maybe she's too mean. Bo thought as she glanced at the blonde. She chuckled quietly, and when those soft, breathing sound died in the air, she was seized by that subtle pain that rendered Tamsin's face.
Bo licked her lips and paused, taking in that look, that look of being alone, that look of having lost everything, that look of being hardened by all the suffer one had had.
That look quickly went away, disappearing under the contrast of the light and the shadows, leaving Bo sighing.
They walked towards the city, away from the creek and into Creeksville. After trekking through the dirt roads and fields for hours, they entered a paved road.
It was close to the exit of the interstate, so there were quite a few houses and several small business places. However, none of them were occupied by humans anymore. Rats colonies, together with crows and starlings, happily became the residents.
Some of the house had been completely worn out or torn down, only with parts of their frames remaining. A few stray dogs were feasting on something behind those houses, their bodies looking unusually large. One of them raised and snarled at two women, but too busy eating to do anything to them.
"Watch out for those nasty shit, okay?" Tamsin whispered to Bo as she pulled the brunette closer to her and held her hand tightly. "If you draw their attention, they will not hesitate putting their teeth into your neck."
"Are those zombie dogs or something?" Bo asked, as she realized that those lifeless eyes and the thirst for flesh were exactly the same as the look on zombies' face.
"I don't know...maybe they have eaten too much rotten human flesh or something. Maybe the damn zombie virus got them too. Anyway, you should stay away from them."
Bo nodded. She wanted to ask about something else, but stopped when they passed by a house with two tire-flat, rusty cars in the front.
Half buried in the tall grass, the house had a big oak tree in its front yard. On a low, strong branch there hung three skeletons, one significantly smaller than the other two.
Their flesh was long gone, either eaten by the birds or completely decomposed. Their clothes were nothing but crude rags. The only garment that had remained in shape was a shoe on the smallest skeleton's left foot; its color had completely faded, though Bo could still see the tiny bowtie on it.
A strong gust forced the skeleton to swing and to knock into each other, and Bo had to close her eyes and turn away.
She forced herself not to ponder the tragedy that had happened here. She didn't want to pursue the answer of why the family had decided to hang themselves with their kid. She just couldn't bare the thought of them choosing to do so because there had been no other choice.
She thought Tamsin would mock her, or at least huff out a scoff from her nose. However, the blonde just quietly walked by her side.
A while later, they arrived at the intersection of the road and the interstate exit ramp. The stop sign had fallen down a long time ago, and so were the traffic lights.
The road sign on the other side of the road had had been painted over, the directions or the name of the cities covered. A big, red skull was painted on top of them. Under it someone had written "DANGER" with an arrow pointing ahead, and "DON'T GO" with an arrow pointing to the left.
Not knowing which direction to go, Bo took out her map, but the blonde pushed her hand down and give her a smirk.
"No need," Tamsin told her and headed to the don't-go direction. "This way."
"Umm...are you sure? Maybe we should look at the map first, I mean...I don't want to walk another 5 hours only to find us in some place other than Creeksville," Bo murmured, surprised by the level of confidence in Tamsin's voice.
The blonde scoffed. She turned to Bo and leaned in. "I'm too awesome for maps," she said in a low, teasing voice.
With Tamsin's lips dangerously close to her cheek and her breath so soft and warm, Bo's heart raced. She took a step back, and chuckled. "Okay," she said, "but if we end up in the wrong place later, you and I are gonna have a serious talk."
"I don't do serious talks, and I don't point at wrong directions," Tamsin said, a little carried away when she gazed at the city afar. Somehow Bo sensed a hint of bitterness seeping through the blonde's voice, and that pinched her heart.
They passed by gas stations, restaurants, condo communities, liquor stores. The traffic lights started to appear more frequently, with more gas stations and stores.
A Walmart supercenter appeared on their left side, its parking lot mostly empty, with a few trashed cars in the corner.
Bo turned to Tamsin, her head tilting to the supermarket. The blonde rolled her eyes, but gave her a nod.
They got off the road and headed towards the store, walking quietly side by side. After passing by the Walmart nursery, where a lot of pots were left behind and stacks of fertilizer ripped, emptied, or dusty, they arrived at the entrance of the store.
The automated glass door had a giant hole in it, its frame deformed; it looked like someone had driven a vehicle into it.
They went through the hole, carefully not to let themselves get cut by any of the sharp glass edges, and finally entered the store.
The fallen shelves and broken glasses greeted them. Empty packages of merchandise were everywhere. Dried blood spatters and bodies were scattered all over the place. Some of them had belonged to humans, while others had been walkers.
Bo sighed at a body sitting against the wall, with a bow in its hands, a quiver beside it, and its head gone. It looked like whoever it was, had put up a fight, and maybe they got bitten and someone else cut their head off to kill them.
"Need to take that home for dinner?" The blonde's teasing voice came to Bo.
Bo rolled her eyes and started to walk around the store. She looked for anything useful, but other than more bodies and trash, she found nothing.
In the electronic section, the locked display case was busted, the content gone, leaving a few game CDs on the floor stepped on and cracked. The nice TVs, computers and everything else were half gone, half broken. Only a few pieces of low end things weren't touched.
"I'm gonna go check out the warehouse in the back," a bored Tamsin told Bo and took off.
Bo nodded, a smile appearing on her lips as she watched the blonde leave. She went back to search shortly.
The things that weren't good for apocalypse surviving were left intact, while things needed for such purpose were all gone. The only useful thing she found was a pack of batteries that had been fallen under the shelf, maybe before everything had happened.
Hearing a click behind her, she turned around, her back against the shelf. She pulled out the dagger given her by Tamsin because she had lost her baseball bat to the cannibals.
To her relief, it was Tamsin holding a few things in her hand.
"Half of the warehouse was burnt down. Found a few cases of flour, oatmeal and stuff, should still be good. Some seasoning extracts, good stuff. I'll get them later," the blonde told Bo as she put a sewing kit she had just found into her backpack.
"Seasoning extracts? You are going to bake a cake later something?" Bo murmured, confused.
Tamsin couldn't help but laugh, her soft voice echoing inside the empty store. "Right, you are from government settlement. I bet you get a portion of basic supplies regularly," she murmured. "Including soaps right?"
"Yeah, one bar every 4 months. I'm out of it already," Bo said. Then she frowned at the blonde. "Why? They have anything to do with soaps or something?"
"They have everything to do with the pleasant smell of the handmade soaps for sure," Tamsin explained to her. "Wanna smell like vanilla instead of lard? You add a drop or two vanilla extract when making them."
"Making them...you make soaps yourself? From scratch?"
"Where the else am I supposed to get it then?" Tamsin said, rolling her eyes. "Like it's hard."
Bo shot her a cold stare, and followed her to the exit of the store. After walking quietly for a while, she eventually asked, "how do you make soaps from scratch?"
Tamsin huffed out a giggle, amused. She bit her bottom lip and looked at Bo, and saw the sincere curiosity in those brown eyes. Unable to resist it, she explained, "it's actually easier than baking a cake. You only need two things to make a soap. You need fat, and alkali. The fat from animals and the burnt ashes from plants would work. You soak the ash in water and let it sit for a couple of days, until the useful ingredients dissolve in the water. Then you put fat in and cook it down to thick, creamy paste. Put a few drops of extract in, and let the paste sit. When it's hardened, you cut it into bars, and place them aside for a couple of weeks before you use them."
"Just that easy?!" Bo beamed, her eyes wide open. "Wow!"
"It's never just that easy, sweetheart," Tamsin snorted. "It's hard to figure out the ratio of fat and alkali actually. Too much fat, it's too soft and can't clean properly. Too much alkali, it burns you, and dries your skin."
"Okay," Bo nodded. She pondered for a while, before she asked, "do...people in Brazenwood all make soaps themselves?"
"They can, or they trade one from the soap makers," Tamsin said, finding Bo's questions interesting.
She turned to look at the brunette after they entered the main road again. The afternoon sun shined on Bo's face, rendering her eyes so beautifully, so softly that Tamsin had to hold her breath.
The brunette seemed not to have noticed her stare though, she just rubbed her sore shoulders and stretched her back a little, before she headed to the city.
At around dinner time, they took a break under a bridge of a city freeway to eat some food and rest. Flock of pigeons living under the bridge cooed at them, very interested in their food. However, too afraid of their cooking fire, they didn't make a single move.
While cooking, Bo took out her map and looked for her current location, so she could estimate the distance between her and her destination, which was a red circle in the corner.
Before she had found the bridge on the map, Tamsin took a glance at her map. "Why did you circle out the canyon over there? No one goes there but tourists."
Bo raised to looked at Tamsin. "How do you know it's the canyon?" She looked down at the map. "It didn't say anything on the map."
Tamsin huffed out a light laugh and turned away. She licked her lips for a few times, before she said, "why are you going there?"
"Kenzi's there," Bo answered
"Right," Tamsin rolled her eyes. She paused for a few seconds, before she asked, "how do you know she's there? She texted you?"
"No," Bo shook her head and punched the blonde softly. She took a bite of her food while examining the look on Tamsin's face. "It looks like someone's interested in the story of Kenzi."
"Whatever," the blonde shrugged and went back to cook her food.
"Well, since you are so interested," Bo teased. "I guess I could share her story."
After getting an eye roll from Tamsin, Bo chuckled and continued, "Kenzi and I are both adopted. Well, unfortunately our parents, the couple who adopted us, died in a car accident when we were very young. So, it was like foster care after foster care for us. We ended up in different families in different states, but we kept writing to each other and managed to see each other once in a while."
"Wow, sounds like girlfriends to me," Tamsin commented, and Bo laughed.
"No, it's not like that," the brunette explained. "She's family." She paused for a while to devour her food, and then she continued, "anyway, we later started a small business together and we shared a house. That's how I know Kenzi."
"Boring," the blonde said, yet the look in her eyes nothing but teasing.
"Not long after that, the zombie outbreak started, and you know...a year later, this mandatory enlisting thing from the government. Every household has to at least have one person join the zombie-killing army?"
"Mhm," Tamsin nodded.
"We got the enlist notice, and I said I would go. We had this last dinner together to say goodbye to each other, but the next morning when I got up, she was gone ," Bo explained. "That was the last time I saw her. Days later, I got her email, saying that she joined the army and that everything was fine. Then… the internet service was shut down and we had to go by handwritten letters, but that didn't last long. Two years after she joined the army, I got an MIA notice from the government. It said that they lost her unit to the flesheasters, and that they weren't able to retrieve their bodies."
A long, heavy silence consumed them, each in her own thoughts. After what seemed to be forever, Tamsin murmured, "however, you just know that she is still alive because hmm...she told you in your dream?"
Bo playfully slapped the blonde on her arm, before she said, "no, for years I thought for sure she was dead. I mean, if she wasn't, she'd contact me, but...I thought I lost her, until a few months ago in the settlement, a group of new people came. They were from the military and had survived in the mountains for years until they found out about the settlement."
"Okay?"
"Anyway, we chatted about Kenzi, and one of them just casually mentioned about receiving a signal from the army chip somewhere around Creeksville."
"Army chip?" Tamsin frowned. "You mean those chips implanted in the zombie-fighting soldiers?"
Bo nodded and reached to the side of her neck. She tapped the lower part and said, "yeah, one of those implanted here for every soldiers to track their locations and stuff. According to those guys, each chip has a different frequency or something, and continues sending signals until the soldier dies."
"That could be some lone signal bounced back and forth through the clouds or something," Tamsin commented.
"No, it's not," Bo said. "I asked them to track it, and they received it again. They confirmed her identity by decoding the signal it had been sending. She's still alive."
"Yep, and she's been happily living around the canyon with the wild lives for years instead of contacting you?" Tamsin scoffed, immediately finding her tone too harsh.
Bo bit her bottom lip and watched the fire blankly for a few seconds, before she raised to gaze at Tamsin, her eyes sparkling behind the flames. "Honestly, I don't know what happened. I know Kenzi. I know her well, Tamsin. I know that if she has survived, she'd manage to find me. I left her notes and directions to the settlement in our old house. I know that would be the first place she goes to if she is still alive. Then, she'd come to the settlement and find me, or at least, send a message to me or something."
"But, it's been over 6 years. She never showed up, nor did she send any message."
Bo nodded as she put a handful of wood chips and twigs on top of the fire. She stared at those flames, partially in a trance. "I just...I have to find her. I need to figure out why the chip hasn't turned off if she is really dead. I need to know."
Maybe the chip works on zombies too, and she got turned. That was what Tamsin wanted to say. However, it stuck in her throat and choked her when she saw the tears in Bo's eyes. How could she crush her hope like this? How could she when the brunette was swallowing back her tears?
"So you asked the guys to triangulate the location of the chip and that location is somewhere around the canyon?"
"Yeah..." Bo muttered as she pulled out a handheld device from the back of her pants. "Those guys made this for me, said that the closer I get to the chip, the faster this light-" she pointed at at small light bulb in the middle of the device, "-would flash, but it would only work if I'm not too far away from the chip, so...I have to get there first."
Tamsin nodded. She cleared her mug and put out the fire, before she stood up and pointed to the left. "There's a outdoor store over there. Maybe if we are lucky we can find a bike or something to ride."
Bo frowned again. "How do you know there's a outdoor store?"
Tamsin let out a heavy smile. She tried to come up with some witty answers, maybe a snarky reply, but they formed a lump in her throat, and gagged her. She swallowed hard, and breathed. Looking away to avoid eye contact, she said, "I used to live in Creeksville."
As if it wasn't cleared enough for Bo to understand, she quickly glanced at the brunette who was gaping at her, and added, "I was born and raised here."
A/N: Yay, now Bo finally knows one thing about Tamsin, that she's from Creeskville, one of the zombie outbreak origins. They will talk more in the next chap, and there's gonna be a lot of Tamsin's flashbacks.
Thanks for reading and reviewing this story! Love you guys!