Free Apocalypsis 04 - Haven by Elle Casey

Freak, but I don’t know. She’s not my cat either.”
    I laughed. The kitten known as Fuzzybeans was climbing back into his lap to lick her paws and wipe her face. “I’m not so sure about that one. I think she’s selected you as her pet.”
    Fohi smiled as he patted her on the head. “Yeah. All the pussies like me, what can I say.” He leaned over and grabbed the other one too, putting her in his lap with the other one.
    I gagged on my own spit.
    Yokci barked out a laugh and then turned away so we couldn’t see his face. Paci laughed silently, head down.
    “And on that note, I’ll be leaving,” I said, standing to go get my breakfast.
    “Take Fuzzybeans with you, would ya? She’s eating all my food.”
    “Hell no,” I said. “She’s your cat now.”
    ***
    I joined Peter and his minions in the place he’d set up as City Manager central in front section of the lobby. He’d found paper and pens and had been busy writing out lists of things to accomplish, inventories of all our supplies, and plans showing the layout of the prison.
    “Whoa,” I said, picking up one that looked like a blueprint or something, showing the section I knew housed the kitchen and our impromptu crematorium. “This is good. Who did this? The detail is amazing.”
    “You can thank Bianca for this little jewel,” he said, taking it gingerly from my hands. “I’ll just put that back where it belongs if you don’t mind. Don’t want anything to happen to it, do we?”
    “I had a shower in the rain yesterday, you know. I don’t smell anymore.” I checked my pits just to be sure and then smiled.
    “Yes, but it only takes one drop of sweat to smear the ink, you know. I just wish I had some plastic sheet protectors.” He frowned, looking out the windows into the distance. If I didn’t know any better I’d think he was planning a pilgrimage to Office Depot.
    “I think you’d better give up on whatever little fantasy you have cooking in your bean right now. You’ll just have to keep everyone away from all your little lists and drawings. Maybe put them behind glass or something.” I was attracted again by the detail in Bianca’s drawing. “What’s that right there?” I was pointing to a section that showed something with hashmarks going through it.
    “It’s a shower facility. We’re not sure what we’ll use it for. Someone suggested we find a way to pump rainwater from a roof cistern into the pipes, but I’m not sure if we’ll have the engineering knowhow to do that or not. We’re also kind of missing the cistern part of the plan.”
    I nodded my head, impressed someone would even dream of doing it. “Maybe not today or next week, but how about next year? I’ll bet we could find what we need out there somewhere, and probably not that far from here.”
    “Anything’s possible. All I know is, we’re here to stay, and we’re going to find a way to make things work. There’s no reason why we can’t have some of the comforts we used to have. Showers are a must if we’re going to keep disease and illness to a minimum.”
    “I agree. So what’s Bianca’s deal? How’d she get so awesome at this?”
    “She took a bunch of drafting classes in school. She wanted to be an architect. Her mom was one I guess.”
    “Sweet. Maybe with this group and anyone who joins us we can have every career field represented. It’ll be like in the olden days when kids did whatever their parents did.”
    “Not every job needs to exist now, but the ones that matter in this world could, like engineering and making things and farming,” said Peter. “I wanted to talk to you about the library.”
    I frowned. “What library?”
    “Well, first of all our library.” He pointed to another map, to a square that looked like it was probably a large room of some sort. “Here’s where we’re putting all the books - in the former prison library, which was pretty crappy, actually. You and I brought the most, but some of the other kids had