Page 37 of Doomsdate

“What do you want, a medal?” she asks, squatting down on her haunches to cook the food and squinting up at me.

It goes on like this for the next hour—Maisie asking me to do basic, and I mean basic, camping tasks and watching on in stunned disbelief as I bumble my way through each one until she finally shows me how. She’s a patient teacher, though, and mostly kind. When she’s not laughing at my terrified face.

“Bears? We have to worry about bears, too?”

“No, not really. Black bears are responsible for one death about every three years, on average.” She tries to smother her laugh as she shows me how to make a bowline knot. The firelight makes her glow vivid against the snowy forest, a lone firefly lost in winter. “And it’s been a very cold season, so the bears should still be in hibernation right now, but we should still tie up our food, just to be safe.”

I narrow my eyes at her just so. “You enjoy scaring me, don’t you.” She’s sitting close enough to me on this wooden bench that her warmth mingles with my own, and I want to scoot even closer. Unfortunately, Chicken is floofing between us, the little scamp.

“Maybe a little.” Maisie gives me a small half smile. “Now try again, Professor.”

So I do.

It’s after dinner when the real lessons begin.

“Since we’re traveling together for the next few days, I need to know you’ve got my back,” Maisie says as she strings up our remaining food high off the ground with a bowline knot so effortless it puts my earlier attempts to shame. She turns to face me, placing her hands on her hips. “And that means you need to learn how to fight.”

“I know how to fight,” I retort, but even Chicken looks skeptical. “In theory.”

I…do not know how to fight. I was a library kid who grew up into a library adult. Like the misunderstood tarantula, I depend on my intimidating physique to scare off any would-be predators, while in reality, I’m a fuzzy, gentle boy.

Maisie raises an eyebrow, and then I remember how just this morning she rescued me from a tree.

“Okay, I don’t know how to fight. Violence isn’t really my thing, and every time you kill a zombie, I feel like I’m going to faint.” I take a deep, calming breath. “But I will learn. Because I have to.”

Maisie guides me through the fundamentals of front kicks and push kicks until my thighs feel like achy rubber. When we start to sweat, she removes her outer clothes, leaving on only her skintight base layers and boots, and makes me do the same. Something about hypothermia and frozen sweat? I don’t know. The supple curves of her small, round breasts under the thin layer of soft gray wool drown out everything else. Each time she places her deft hands on my hips, guiding me through the right pivot for a roundhouse kick, or on the inside of my rotated thigh, urging me to aim higher, kick harder, a burst of resolve ignites inside me. I want to be useful. I want to protect her.

But unfortunately, I’m me. Ungraceful, uncoordinated, hopeless me.

After I stumble through a push kick that sends me sprawling onto the ground, Maisie sighs.

“That’s enough for tonight,” she says, and I gratefully collapse on the bench by our fire, drinking purified snow and feeling embarrassed.

“Sorry. I’ve never been much good at physical combat maneuvers.” They were easily my worst grades in the military academy my parents forced me to go to for high school. “Or survival skills. Or”—I pause for another drink—“camping.”

“Aren’t you afraid of dying just, like, all the time?” Maisie regards me from behind her canteen before tipping it back for a long drink herself.

“Not until recently, no.”

Maisie snorts. “What weapon did you pick out at REI, by the way? I forgot to incorporate it into your training.”

My eyes light up as I reach over and grab the box from my bag. “You’re gonna love this—it’s a Fun & Stun!” I open the cardboard and remove the hiking pole, sleek and black and covered in zany blue lightning bolts, and proffer it to Maisie. “It’s got a stabbing end like your trekking pole, but it also has a built-in Taser that delivers a hundred million volts to your target.”

Maisie frowns as she turns it over, then reaches for the box to read more. “This delivers a charge that’s weaker than a single Christmas-tree lightbulb, Everett.”

“But—it says here—”

“That voltage claim is a marketing ploy. It’ll make a pretty lightning bolt for you, but the actual charge would make a grown man twitch for a few seconds. Probably won’t do jack to a zombie.” Maisie hands it back. “We’ll focus on training with the stabby end tomorrow.”

The lightning bolts don’t look nearly as zany anymore. I sigh, then lean it against my side of the bench. “How did you learn all this?” I gesture loosely to the fire, the jug of purified snow, the fundamentals of weaponized electricity. “Have you always been a prepper?”

Maisie eyes me warily. “It’s a whole story.”

“I love story.”

“It’ll just make you think I’m weirder.”

“Hmm.” I tilt my head to the side in consideration. “Pretty hard to get weirder than beheading my neighbor to save my cat.” I stroke Chicken’s soft gray fur as she sleeps on my lap. “And owning a mace.”