Free Ground Zero by Rain Stickland Page A

cannibals, and he’d gotten over his disgust a little bit, Neil had already boiled up some peas and carrots and was just dumping them into the blender.
    “Why don’t I feed him the vegetables while you eat? You’re still really hungry, I’m sure,” Neil said.
    “I don’t know if he’ll take food from a stranger. Then again, he hasn’t really seen any strangers until now, so maybe he’ll be fine.”
    When Neil smiled at Jake, and held out his hands to see if he would reach for him, Mac felt her heart constrict. The kid looked nothing like Neil, but Mac couldn’t help wishing in that moment, that it was possible for her to have more children. Neil would have been the father she’d always wanted for her kids.
    “Mac!” The sharp quality of Gilles’ voice indicated that she had missed something he’d said.
    “Sorry. What?”
    “I asked if Huntsville was the only place you saw people like that.”
    “Oh, right. Yeah, they were the only ones that we know of, but then they’re also the only people we interacted with, aside from Lisa. Everyone else just stared as we drove by, so we have no way of knowing how they’ve been surviving. Of course, they were in remote areas, so they could easily have their own gardens and such. Most people did out here, even when there were grocery stores.”
    “True,” Gilles responded thoughtfully.
    “Gilles, would you mind helping me move the exercise equipment out of that room over there once I’m done feeding Jake here?” Neil nodded his head to indicate which room he meant, and Gilles said he would.
    They hadn’t really discussed where they would be putting Lisa and Jake, but for now it was the only thing that made sense. There was a toilet and shower directly off the room, though none of it was really finished yet. Just the floor was down because she’d gone with radiant, in-floor heating when she’d been planning the building.
    The other closed-off rooms in the house were already occupied, and there were no spare cabin-like buildings they could move into, though Mac made a mental note to start planning one. She had no problem with sharing land and supplies with people. Not even strangers. But when it came to her privacy she was very leery of sharing her own house for long stretches of time.
    It was a good thing it was already the end of February. The lack of snow was also a blessing. They could get started on another building right away. Of course, they had to get the new panels set up, too, so their power reserves weren’t hitting close to empty by the time the sun came up every day. They already had six cabins built for the people who had come along after the power went down, so those eight panels would be a big help. She had originally bought more than enough to supply power to the main building, and the building that was being used to house the ferrets, but circumstances had changed with all the extra people.
    “How did you get this place started?” Lisa was looking at Mac, waiting for her answer and spooning up more soup in the meantime. Mac had just taken her first bite of the sandwich Neil had shoved in front of her right before he started feeding Jake, so she tried to swallow it in a hurry. Instead it stuck in her throat.
    “Hang on,” she choked out, and ran around the counter to get herself some goat’s milk. Once she’d managed to finish swallowing, she offered some to Lisa who looked like she wasn’t so sure about drinking it. When she did finally try it, the surprise on her face made Mac laugh.
    “I know. I was expecting it to be really weird-tasting myself the first time I had it, but in a way I was looking forward to it. It’s lower in lactose than cow’s milk, and I’m lactose-intolerant. I love milk, though, and everything it goes into, so having the goats has been great.
    “To answer your question, I’ve been planning this place for about twenty years. My daughter and I bought the land a couple of years ago, finally, and it wasn’t long