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stinks!”
he said, slamming his fist on the table, making Elizabeth and
Michael jump. He left the kitchen without finishing his
meal.
    The next morning he left the house at
daybreak and spent his day alone in the woods with an ax. Come
winter, learning to chop wood might be the difference between life
and death. Then again, he had found chainsaws in the shed as well.
All he needed to do was get them running again.
    Gas was difficult to come by, but in
light of how much work it took to cut a tree down by hand, he was
willing to expand his search parameters. The gas supply had dried
up fast when everybody fell sick. At the plague’s peak, after the
power companies had shut down, he paid five hundred dollars for a
single gallon. Finding a full can of fuel hidden away somewhere
would require a lot of footwork.
    By afternoon the blisters on his hands
bled. The idea of a chainsaw seemed better and better with every
throb from burst blisters, but for now he had to tax his aching
back and arms. When he finally saw the tree fall, he let out a
whoop and danced in a circle. Something about sweating under the
strain of hard physical labor cleansed a man’s soul.
    He would go home, apologize to
Elizabeth and Michael for being a big grumpy ass at dinner last
evening, and take them out to the woods to show them his
accomplishment.
    Despite being tired to the bone, his
steps felt lighter, his thoughts brighter and more optimistic, as
he walked toward the house. He could do this—survive and
thrive—even if only for a while. A cheerful whistle passed through
his lips as he stacked kindling into his arms. He made his way
through the woods, into the yard, but never noticed the hump in
what had previously been more or less flat lawn until he tripped
over it and fell flat on his face, kindling jumbled uncomfortably
beneath him.
    “ Dammit!”
    Finding his footing, he looked around
for the sticks he had gathered, but they had disappeared under long
vines with curling tendrils. Vines that he could swear were
extending even as he stared. Huge fan-like leaves further concealed
the ground. As he leaned over to peek under a leaf, an apple-sized
green ball caught his eye.
    “ What the…”
    Straightening abruptly, he realized he
was standing in a pumpkin patch twenty feet wide. “Impossible,” he
whispered. The boy’s seeds had sprouted during the night to fill
half the yard.
    “ Michael!” he bellowed.
“Elizabeth! Come out here! Hurry!”
    In a minute, they were rushing into the
yard, Elizabeth carrying a mixing spoon, Michael his coffee can of
jewelry. Zena trotted behind them, pausing to bite at a moth
flitting in the air.
    Elizabeth’s mouth dropped open at the
sight of the vines taking over the yard. Spellbound, she and Red
linked hands.
    “ It’s a miracle,” she
said.
    “ I told you we’d have pie,”
Michael said matter-of-factly, and by the end of the week they’d
eaten three.
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 9
     
    Red, Elizabeth, Michael and Zena spent
the week after Michael’s pumpkins sprouted roaming nearby towns and
the countryside, scrounging for seeds. During their travels, they
went through the small town located just down the road from their
new home. Before the plague, Red had driven through it a dozen
times, but had never stopped, never paid it any mind. For the life
of him, he couldn’t remember its name. Even before the plague it
had stood half-empty. What a shame, considering the old brick
buildings still had a lot of life left in them.
    Over several days, they visited a
string of small abandoned towns, which seemed to be less picked
over than the city. Michael drove Red nuts with his insistence on
checking every home for jewelry boxes. He’d pull out drawers and
open closets looking for coins, gems, silver and gold—anything
precious and portable.
    “ Let me teach you a little
something about the law of supply and demand,” Red would say, not
hiding his irritation with the boy’s obsessive hobby.
    Michael