Fic: Little House After The End
So I guess I sat down to work on that steampunk fic, and this came flying out instead. I don't even know, you guys.
Title: Little House After the End
Author: fera_festiva
Fandom: Little House on the Prairie (books, not television programme)
Summary: The charming and delightful tale of the Ingalls family’s extraordinary life as they do their best to survive after an onslaught of unspeakable undead horror.
Words: ~5,000
Rating: call it PG-13 for mild implications of violence; bleakness. :]
Notes: Given that she died in 1957, I'm not Laura Ingalls Wilder; nor do I have any affiliation with Popcap Games. I’ve left things deliberately vague here, but given that Grace isn’t born and Mary can see, you can assume this takes place somewhere between On the Banks of Plum Creek and By the Shores of Silver Lake. Big thanks go to my awesome Mama for the extensive and invaluable beta. ♥
ETA: komakoma drew some wonderful fanart for this story! It is here. Go and look! ♥
Little House After The End
Prairie Days
There was once a girl called Laura, and she lived with her sister Mary, and her mother and father, whom she called Ma and Pa, in a little wooden house after the apocalypse.
The little house was built of store-bought lumber. It was a real house, with a cellar and an attic and a lean-to where Ma's stove was kept. It had real glass windows, and the windows had pretty lace curtains that Ma had made. The roof of the little house was wooden, too, covered over with tar-paper and then more wood, so it would keep out the rain and snow in the winter. The beds had pretty quilts, and the table was covered in a red-and-white cloth. Ma's china shepherdess stood on the bracket Pa had carved for her, long ago in the Big Woods. That shepherdess had not been scratched nor cracked in all her years travelling from the woods to Indian Territory, nor to Plum Creek, nor during the attacks of the long summer when the horror had first come. Life in the little house was cosy.
Outside the house was the well and the stable. In the stable lived the horses and the cow, and the pretty little calf. The little house was surrounded on all sides by a patch of land, where useful plants grew, and after that was a strong, high fence. And outside the fence roamed hordes of the undead.
Every day, there were chores to do. The cow must be milked and the animals fed and given fresh water. Beds must be made, and the breakfast dishes washed and wiped and put neatly away. The dishpan must be emptied and the floor swept. Then the day’s housework would be done: laundry, or ironing, or baking. For the rest of the morning, Laura and Mary would study their lessons, and Ma would hear them. And at noon, they would all sit together at table and eat a fine dinner.
In the afternoons, once the dishes were done, Laura and Mary could do as they liked, so long as they did not go outside the fence. Mary would stay in the house and mend her padded armour, or sew on the nine-patch quilt she was making. But Laura liked to help Pa with the planting.
Today, Pa was planting mushrooms. There was a rare mushroom in the woods, white, with a many-coloured cap. It was difficult to find, and the woods were far off on the horizon, and they were very dangerous. But this mushroom would make the undead turn around on the spot and walk back in the direction they had come from. Pa had gone to the woods with his gun and gathered every mushroom he could find, and now he was planting them around the fences. An undead who came across that mushroom would smell it, or try to eat it, and would walk away from the little house.
Laura liked to help Pa plant the mushrooms. They were pretty and smelled wonderful. But she must be very careful, and watch out for the undead at all times. Here by the fence, even a big girl, almost grown as Laura was, might be snatched by the undead, and her father would have to let them take her, for there would be no way to save her. So Laura was wary.
Pa had also planted garlic. The undead did not like the smell of garlic. It would make them turn around and walk away. Ma cooked the garlic, too, and it was good to eat. And she rubbed it on the clothes when she did the washing. The scent of the garlic would protect them all from attack.
Many crops grew inside the fences. As well as the garlic, there was corn, which could be dried and eaten through the winter. There was wheat, which would be made into flour. And there were pea plants and snow peas, squashes, melons, hot peppers and other good things.
They no longer had a pig, for pigs must roam free to eat acorns they find in the woods. A pig that roamed free now would soon be taken by the undead. If they touched it and it got away, it would become an undead pig, and not good to eat. And if it did not wriggle out of their grasp quickly enough, the undead would feast on it. But they had a cow, and the cow had a calf. So they could have a little milk each day, and sometimes, if there was enough milk, Ma could churn butter and keep it in the cellar.
The cellar was full of good things. There was the tub of cool, creamy butter, and ropes of garlic and onions, and dried corncobs. There were pickles and preserves. There were barrels of potatoes, and a barrel of crisp dried grasshoppers. Laura did not like to eat grasshoppers. Their long claws and sharp jaws were ugly and they crunched when you bit them. But she knew better than to complain. Times were trying, and grasshoppers were plentiful and could not be infected by the undead, so Ma caught them, and dried them in the sun and wind, and they could be eaten.
There was a smaller barrel, full of store-bought sugar. There were three arms and part of a back, all smoked in sweet-smelling hickory and hanging in the cool and the dark, to be eaten in the winter. There was a jar of the bitter bark that Pa chewed before he rode away from the house, to keep him awake and alert. Laura longed to try the bark, but Ma said it would give her strange waking dreams, so she was not allowed. The barrel of salt was there, too. They must not eat the salt, because Pa used it to make bullets. But sometimes, Laura would dip her finger into the salt and taste it, just a few grains. And there was a barrel of deadfat, which tasted so like bacon fat that you would never know where it came from.
At first, Ma had not liked to cook with deadfat, because she did not want to be like the unspeakable horrors roaming the prairies. But deadfat was clean, and besides, there was no other fat besides the precious little amount of butter Ma could churn. So Ma said, "Sometimes we must take that which Providence gives." And she cooked with the fat every day.
For supper that night there was fried cornmeal mush with rats-tail scraps, rye'n'injun bread, and butter to spread on the bread, and fresh milk.
"I declare, Caroline," Pa said. "We’re living better now than we ever did before the horror came."
"Oh, Charles," Ma said, but she looked pleased. And Laura knew what Pa said was true. Ma’s cooking was delicious, and they were resourceful. There were no horse thieves to worry about these days, nor wolves or bears. And they had all come to realise that the Indians were no threat. Pa said all men were brothers now, and it was true. The Indians spoke in words Laura did not know, but they had medicine and weapons they would trade for food or furs or information. So it was true what Pa said; in some ways, things were better now.
Still, Laura ached to run outside on the wild prairie, to wade in the creek, to learn to drive horses, to shoot, and to hunt. And more than anything she yearned to go West again. But until something happened to make the prairies safe again, they had to stay where they were.
"Still," she thought. "I suppose this means I won’t have to teach school." She would not say this to Ma, but she was grateful all the same.
After supper, Pa made bullets. He always made sure he had plenty of bullets, for a man without them could not fight off the undead from a distance. He had to approach them and fight them with an axe, or run and hope they could not catch him up.
To make the bullets, Pa poured the molten lead into the casing. When it hardened and cooled, he popped it out of the casing, and that made a hollow bullet. Then he packed a little salt inside it. When he had made many of these bullets, he pushed them into a lump of clay with their pointed ends down, and sealed each one with another drop of molten lead.
Finally, Pa cut a cross shape into the head of the bullet. Ma said this was so Pa’s bullets would have the protection of Heaven. But Laura knew that it was really because a bullet with a cross in the head would split on impact. It would explode in the head of an undead, and its brain would be destroyed. This was the only way to stop one.
Pa said Laura was still too young to shoot at the undead herself, and she had to mind him, though she longed to help protect the house and land. But she was allowed to help to clean up after a horde passed. Pa would sit on the wooden tower he had made from sturdy oak and willow, and pick off any undead that approached the house and gardens. After a time, the others would learn that there was no meat for them there, and the herd would move on, moaning and grunting.
After they had gone far away, Pa would venture outside and dig holes in the ground. He would use a long pole to push the bodies into the holes, then he would cover them over again. He did not know if there were wolves left, but a wolf that found that body might eat it, and then it would become possessed with the rage of the undead. An undead wolf was more dangerous than any ordinary wolf. So Pa covered the bodies with earth and rocks.
Then Laura and Mary could come outside the fence and pick up any stray bullets. There were very few, because Pa was such a good shot. The girls must be very careful not to get even a drop of blood on their calico dresses, for the blood of the undead could do terrible things.
The New Fence
Pa was building a second fence. They had one around the garden and field, but there seemed to be more undead on the prairie now, and Ma was afraid of the fence being breached. So Pa was building another. With two fences and all the protective plants, the little house, the family, and the livestock would be well shielded.
First Pa waited for a clear, bright morning when there were no undead near the little house. He took his gun, the scarf for his face, and his padded armour.
He harnessed the horses and drove them down to the creek bank. He cut four tall oak trees, and hauled those trees up next to the fence. Then he took his axe and cut each tree into four long, thick logs. He split each log in half along its length, and then again, so he had sixty-four logs, each with a sharp point along one side.
That was all the work he could do on the fence that day, for the sun was setting, and the undead liked to roam the prairies at night. He must come indoors until the morning, and barricade the gate and the door.
The next day, he dug sixty-four little holes around the perimeter of the garden. Into each hole he placed a log, with its sharp edge pointing out. These made the fence-posts. Then he went to the creek again, and this time he returned with a pile of good young willow branches. These were bendy and strong, and would go in between the posts to make the fence.
Laura wanted to help Pa make the fence, but Ma said, "Outside the fence is no place for young girls, not when there are undead afoot".
Laura longed to build the fence with Pa, but she must do as Ma told her. So she stayed in the garden and watched from a distance. But she could bring Pa a cool drink of water when he needed one, and keep a look out for hordes in the distance. It was easy to see if one was approaching even from the ground, for flocks of black vultures and crows followed them, pecking at their moldering flesh and the remnants of their eyes if they stilled long enough.
The next day, Pa went back outside and began weaving the willow branches into the fence. He planted a thick willow branch in the ground, in between two fence-posts, and bent it over to meet with another branch on the other side of the next post. He tied those branches together at the top, making an arch. He did this all around the fence. And that was all the work he could do that day.
The day after that, Pa said Laura could help. He needed her to stay on the inside of the fence, so she could help him weave. This time, he passed the thinner branches in between the arches he had already made. He planted the cut end into the ground. Then he took thinner branches, and thinner still, and wove those into the gaps. Laura stood inside the fence and pulled branches through the gaps that Pa’s hands could not fit through.
Finally, the fence was finished. A willow-branch will grow if it is planted in the ground, so the fence would grow thicker with time. The house could only get safer.
Pa wiped his brow. "Well, Flutterbudget," he said. "That’s a good, strong fence that no horror can get through. And I couldn’t have done it without you." And Laura’s heart swelled with pride.
Pa Goes To Town
Sometimes Pa would ride out on one of the horses and look for other survivors. He did not usually see anyone, but sometimes he met a traveller or a group of Indians, and then they would trade stories and tell each other of places where supplies might be found. Last year, he had met an old friend, Mr Edwards, the wildcat from Tennessee who had once swum a swollen river to bring Laura and Mary their Christmas candy. He had survived the first waves of undead horror and was living on the move, travelling on horseback and relying on his wits. He had promised to visit, but he never had.
But today, Pa was going to town. He had not gone to town for a long time, for where there were many people there would also be undead, and the towns were not safe. But last week Pa had met an Indian, and the Indian had told him that the settlements were becoming empty. All the people had fled, or had become undead themselves. Then the undead had nothing to eat, so they roamed out of the towns on the prairies. This made the prairies more dangerous, but it also made the towns safe. So Pa could go there in search of supplies.
Ma did not like Pa taking things from town. "I never thought I’d live on stolen goods," she said faintly.
But Pa said, "Times are changing, Caroline. There's no man in town with any use for those supplies, so we may as well make use of them."
So it was settled. Pa saddled the horse, Beau, and rode to town. He did not take the wagon, because the wagon was too heavy, and he would not be able to escape quickly if a horde of the undead came. But he carried two large sacks which, strapped together, would fit over Beau's back, and he would fill them with anything useful he could find in the empty stores and houses. Laura, Mary, and Ma stood at the gate and watched him ride away before securely closing it, leaving only the latch-chain hanging out, so Pa could let himself in again.
All that day, Pa was gone. There were chores to do, and Laura could tend to her patch of snow peas, or sew on her own armour, or help Ma with the washing. But she was too worried about Pa to concentrate on her lessons.
After supper, as the sun went down, Laura said, "What will happen to Pa if the undead catch him?"
Mary said, "They won’t catch him."
Laura said, "They might too catch him. Why isn’t he home yet, Ma?"
"Girls!" Ma said sharply, looking up from her mending. She paused, then said, "It’s bedtime."
Mary obediently began to unbutton her dress. But when they were tucked up in bed, Laura asked again, "Why isn't Pa home yet?"
Ma paused again, then said, "I don't know. But Pa is a good shot and a good horseman, and he will be back by morning."
Under the quilt, Laura asked Mary, "Do you think the undead caught Pa?"
"I don’t know," Mary said quietly.
"Girls, it’s time to sleep," Ma said again. So Laura put her head on the soft pillow and tried not to think about Pa, out there on the prairie where the undead roamed, and soon she fell asleep.
In the morning, Laura woke suddenly and went to the big bed, but still there was only Ma.
"Is Pa home?" Laura asked.
"Not yet, Laura," said Ma. "He probably found somewhere in town to sleep, or an Indian to trade with. He will no doubt be home by tonight."
"But -"
"Don’t contradict, Laura," Ma said, and Laura was quiet.
In the mornings, there were chores to do. The cow must be milked, then led to a grassy patch inside the fences to graze. The cows and horses needed water in their trough. The beds must be made. Then Mary and Laura must wash their hands and faces while Ma made breakfast.
She fried cornmeal cakes and potatoes in deadfat, and there were dried apples fried with onions and garlic, and the fresh milk. Mary set the table, and they sat to eat. Without Pa, the house felt very empty. Nobody said anything as they ate, nor as Laura washed the dishes and Mary wiped them. Breakfast was over, and still Pa was not back from town. Nobody knew what to do.
The Long Wait
All that day, Pa did not return from town. Mary and Laura helped Ma with the chores, and the dinner, and the dishes. They sat with their lesson-books and tried to study. But Laura's eyes ran over the words without reading them, and when she glanced at Mary, she saw that Mary was just as distracted, though she was normally so good.
"Let's not worry about Pa, girls!" Ma said suddenly. "If there’s anyone able to make his way to town and back through a horde of the undead, it's your Pa. Why, he survived three days under a snowdrift in a blizzard, and he walked two hundred miles in patched boots to find work. Of course he will make it back to us."
But Laura could see that Ma was frightened, too, despite her happy words. And, to her shame, she began to feel a prickling in her eyes, and a lump in her throat.
Three days more passed, and still Pa was not home. On the morning of the fourth day, Ma forgot even to smile and pretend any longer. Her eyes were sad and scared as she shaped the cornmeal cakes and sliced the potatoes. Nobody spoke as they ate their breakfast.
Then suddenly there came a crash from outside the house, and moments later, a loud scraping at the door.
"Get behind the fur pile, girls," Ma said sharply. Mary and Laura ran to hide there, and Ma took her rifle from above the window. The scraping at the door sounded again.
Ma quickly and quietly cocked the gun.
Laura and Mary clung to each other behind the pile of furs, and as the door creaked open Ma lifted the gun to her shoulder...
And the door opened, and it was Pa!
Forgetting that she was a big girl, Laura screamed with joy and jumped up from the pile of furs, but Ma caught her, and Pa said,
"Wait, Half-Pint."
And Laura saw that Pa's clothes were splattered with blood and fragments of skull. There was no telling how many undead he must have shot.
Pa explained that the town had been almost empty, but the undead had been thick on the surrounding prairie. It had taken him a long time to circle around and get past them. When he finally got into the town, it was almost sunset.
He had explored all he could that night, going into abandoned houses and the general store. Then he found a stable with its door almost intact, and he and Beau waited there. He had not slept. He had eaten store candy for his supper, and chewed bark to stay awake. If a man lost his horse, there was little hope of surviving.
At sunrise, Pa had gone out again, and begun to explore the rest of the houses. He had meant to fill the sacks and ride out of town. But in the night, the undead had come in.
"Must have picked up my scent," said Pa.
The undead were roaming the streets already, moaning and scratching at doors and walls. Pa helped himself to goods from two houses before they got too close, and then he ran. He had barricaded himself and Beau into that stable again.
Thankfully, there had been hay stored there for Beau to eat, but there had been nothing for Pa. So he had waited for the crowd of undead outside to thin a little, then climbed up the stable wall and onto its roof. The undead could not climb, so he was safe, but he could not leave without the horse. There was nothing to do but wait.
Finally, Pa's hunger had got the better of him, and he had gone exploring, rooftop to rooftop.
"Charles!" Ma said faintly. Laura knew what Ma was thinking, because she was thinking it too: if Pa had fallen, the undead would have devoured him before he could pick himself up.
"I know, Caroline," Pa said soberly. "But I didn’t know what to do. Stay in that stable and starve, or risk not getting home to my girls? I thought for a long time about what to do. But I was so hungry I could scarcely think straight."
So he had climbed and jumped between rooftops, and where he was able, he had gone down into the empty houses and the store, and even the old schoolhouse, and looked for food. He had eaten just enough of what he found, and put the rest into the sacks to bring home, to keep them all from starving through the year.
But Pa was in a dilemma. He could not leave without his horse, because he could never cross the prairie on foot with those sacks without meeting trouble. But to leave, he must ride Beau through those crowds of groaning, wandering undead.
Finally, at dawn, he had saddled the horse and ridden out as fast as he could. Of course, the undead had been waiting, and they had chased him almost all the way home. He had been shooting at them for miles. By the time he had approached the little house, he had run out of bullets. He had had to hit them with the butt of his rifle if they came close, instead of being able to take them out from a distance. He had had to circle away from the house until he shook them off, both he and Beau becoming all the more tired. It had taken over an hour to get inside.
Laura and Mary were sober. They must keep away from Pa until he had taken off his bloody clothes, and carefully cleaned his hands and face and his whiskers, and made sure that he had washed away all the pieces of brain and flesh. The undead gave off a bad kind of air when they were destroyed, and their blood was bad. If a girl breathed that air, or got even a single drop of the blood near her mouth, then her father would take her into the barn and cut her head off with an axe.
So Pa left the sacks, and went back outside. He took off his breeches and his shirt and the scarf he had tied around his neck, and put them away from the house, near the woodpile. Ma would look at them to see if they could be saved. If they were too soaked in the blood of the undead horror, then she would burn them. He checked his hands and face for blood.
Then Pa washed carefully with store-bought soap. He poured freshly-drawn water over his head again and again until he was sparkling clean. Then he rubbed himself over with garlic, and put on the fresh shirt and trousers that Ma brought him. He was completely clean. Not a single spot of blood was on his body.
"There," he said, and his eyes twinkled. And then Mary and Laura could go to him and hug him properly.
"I’m famished, Caroline!" he said. "A man needs more than candy and old bread to live on." So Ma fried up more cornmeal cakes, and merrily they sat at table again. Then Pa unloaded the sacks he had brought from the town. They were filled with good things.
He had brought salt in a large sack - enough to refill the barrel in the cellar, and more besides. There was another sack, the same size, filled with grain. There was a smaller sack of light brown store sugar. Before the undead came, Ma would have saved this away for company, but visitors were few and far between now. There was a large paper sack of lead shot, which Pa could use to make more bullets. And there was a whole side of bacon - real bacon, from a pig. There was no telling how old it was, but bacon does not spoil.
"Why, Charles - bacon!" Ma exclaimed. "Wherever did you find it?"
Pa explained that he had climbed up into the attic of the general store. No other looters had thought to look there, where the storekeeper kept his own supplies for the winter. And he had found the bacon. He said, "I’m sorry I couldn’t bring the salt pork, though."
He explained that there had been a barrel of salt pork in that attic, but without a wagon he could not bring it home. Laura was sad, because she loved salt pork, although she understood why Pa had not brought it.
Then he reached into the sack again, and Mary gasped. There was a whole bolt of calico, cream-coloured, with little brown flowers, and only a little dusty from being in that abandoned store so long. Ma could make new dresses for Mary and Laura from that calico. She would have made a new dress for Carrie, too, if Carrie had still had need of dresses.
Next, Pa brought out a paper bag filled with candy. He gave one piece to Mary and one piece to Laura, and they might have that piece of candy now, but the rest would be stored in the cellar and brought out on special occasions.
Finally, Pa reached into the sack one last time, and he brought out the best present of all. For he had brought Mary and Laura each her very own gun. Mary’s was small and dainty, but Laura's was a long, sleek rifle with a beautiful polished wooden butt. Laura could not speak. She had never seen anything so wonderful.
Mary said, "Thank you, Pa". And then Laura remembered her manners, and she said, "Thank you, Pa," too. But still she gazed in wonder at that beautiful rifle.
"I’ll be teaching you girls to shoot," Pa said, his eyes twinkling. "It’s time you learned, so you can protect the house when I’m not here." Ma could shoot too, of course, but you could never have too many snipers on a homestead when there were undead outside.
Then Pa continued, "I’ll be needing accompaniment, too, on days I have to ride out. Seems like a man can do with all the protection he can get. What do you say, Half-Pint?"
"Oh, Pa - really?" Laura gasped. If she rode out with Pa, and they each carried a gun, they would be able to bring the wagon. They could travel farther afield, and bring home better goods and supplies. They might even meet other survivors. Laura thought her heart would burst with joy.
That evening, after supper, Pa played his fiddle, and they all softly sang:
Beyond this world of toil and care,
Beyond this veil of gloom;
There is a land, a happy land,
A place we call our home.
Oh, yes, we’ll trust Him while we live!
We’ll trust Him when we die;
And then when all our work is done,
We’ll reign with Him on high.
After the song finished, they sat quietly. Laura listened to the wind on the prairie, and the lowing of the cows in the stable, and the distant moans of the undead.
Yes, she thought. Our world is filled with toil and gloom. But we won’t have to wait until we get to Heaven to find a happy land that is our home.
Title: Little House After the End
Author: fera_festiva
Fandom: Little House on the Prairie (books, not television programme)
Summary: The charming and delightful tale of the Ingalls family’s extraordinary life as they do their best to survive after an onslaught of unspeakable undead horror.
Words: ~5,000
Rating: call it PG-13 for mild implications of violence; bleakness. :]
Notes: Given that she died in 1957, I'm not Laura Ingalls Wilder; nor do I have any affiliation with Popcap Games. I’ve left things deliberately vague here, but given that Grace isn’t born and Mary can see, you can assume this takes place somewhere between On the Banks of Plum Creek and By the Shores of Silver Lake. Big thanks go to my awesome Mama for the extensive and invaluable beta. ♥
ETA: komakoma drew some wonderful fanart for this story! It is here. Go and look! ♥
Little House After The End
Prairie Days
There was once a girl called Laura, and she lived with her sister Mary, and her mother and father, whom she called Ma and Pa, in a little wooden house after the apocalypse.
The little house was built of store-bought lumber. It was a real house, with a cellar and an attic and a lean-to where Ma's stove was kept. It had real glass windows, and the windows had pretty lace curtains that Ma had made. The roof of the little house was wooden, too, covered over with tar-paper and then more wood, so it would keep out the rain and snow in the winter. The beds had pretty quilts, and the table was covered in a red-and-white cloth. Ma's china shepherdess stood on the bracket Pa had carved for her, long ago in the Big Woods. That shepherdess had not been scratched nor cracked in all her years travelling from the woods to Indian Territory, nor to Plum Creek, nor during the attacks of the long summer when the horror had first come. Life in the little house was cosy.
Outside the house was the well and the stable. In the stable lived the horses and the cow, and the pretty little calf. The little house was surrounded on all sides by a patch of land, where useful plants grew, and after that was a strong, high fence. And outside the fence roamed hordes of the undead.
Every day, there were chores to do. The cow must be milked and the animals fed and given fresh water. Beds must be made, and the breakfast dishes washed and wiped and put neatly away. The dishpan must be emptied and the floor swept. Then the day’s housework would be done: laundry, or ironing, or baking. For the rest of the morning, Laura and Mary would study their lessons, and Ma would hear them. And at noon, they would all sit together at table and eat a fine dinner.
In the afternoons, once the dishes were done, Laura and Mary could do as they liked, so long as they did not go outside the fence. Mary would stay in the house and mend her padded armour, or sew on the nine-patch quilt she was making. But Laura liked to help Pa with the planting.
Today, Pa was planting mushrooms. There was a rare mushroom in the woods, white, with a many-coloured cap. It was difficult to find, and the woods were far off on the horizon, and they were very dangerous. But this mushroom would make the undead turn around on the spot and walk back in the direction they had come from. Pa had gone to the woods with his gun and gathered every mushroom he could find, and now he was planting them around the fences. An undead who came across that mushroom would smell it, or try to eat it, and would walk away from the little house.
Laura liked to help Pa plant the mushrooms. They were pretty and smelled wonderful. But she must be very careful, and watch out for the undead at all times. Here by the fence, even a big girl, almost grown as Laura was, might be snatched by the undead, and her father would have to let them take her, for there would be no way to save her. So Laura was wary.
Pa had also planted garlic. The undead did not like the smell of garlic. It would make them turn around and walk away. Ma cooked the garlic, too, and it was good to eat. And she rubbed it on the clothes when she did the washing. The scent of the garlic would protect them all from attack.
Many crops grew inside the fences. As well as the garlic, there was corn, which could be dried and eaten through the winter. There was wheat, which would be made into flour. And there were pea plants and snow peas, squashes, melons, hot peppers and other good things.
They no longer had a pig, for pigs must roam free to eat acorns they find in the woods. A pig that roamed free now would soon be taken by the undead. If they touched it and it got away, it would become an undead pig, and not good to eat. And if it did not wriggle out of their grasp quickly enough, the undead would feast on it. But they had a cow, and the cow had a calf. So they could have a little milk each day, and sometimes, if there was enough milk, Ma could churn butter and keep it in the cellar.
The cellar was full of good things. There was the tub of cool, creamy butter, and ropes of garlic and onions, and dried corncobs. There were pickles and preserves. There were barrels of potatoes, and a barrel of crisp dried grasshoppers. Laura did not like to eat grasshoppers. Their long claws and sharp jaws were ugly and they crunched when you bit them. But she knew better than to complain. Times were trying, and grasshoppers were plentiful and could not be infected by the undead, so Ma caught them, and dried them in the sun and wind, and they could be eaten.
There was a smaller barrel, full of store-bought sugar. There were three arms and part of a back, all smoked in sweet-smelling hickory and hanging in the cool and the dark, to be eaten in the winter. There was a jar of the bitter bark that Pa chewed before he rode away from the house, to keep him awake and alert. Laura longed to try the bark, but Ma said it would give her strange waking dreams, so she was not allowed. The barrel of salt was there, too. They must not eat the salt, because Pa used it to make bullets. But sometimes, Laura would dip her finger into the salt and taste it, just a few grains. And there was a barrel of deadfat, which tasted so like bacon fat that you would never know where it came from.
At first, Ma had not liked to cook with deadfat, because she did not want to be like the unspeakable horrors roaming the prairies. But deadfat was clean, and besides, there was no other fat besides the precious little amount of butter Ma could churn. So Ma said, "Sometimes we must take that which Providence gives." And she cooked with the fat every day.
For supper that night there was fried cornmeal mush with rats-tail scraps, rye'n'injun bread, and butter to spread on the bread, and fresh milk.
"I declare, Caroline," Pa said. "We’re living better now than we ever did before the horror came."
"Oh, Charles," Ma said, but she looked pleased. And Laura knew what Pa said was true. Ma’s cooking was delicious, and they were resourceful. There were no horse thieves to worry about these days, nor wolves or bears. And they had all come to realise that the Indians were no threat. Pa said all men were brothers now, and it was true. The Indians spoke in words Laura did not know, but they had medicine and weapons they would trade for food or furs or information. So it was true what Pa said; in some ways, things were better now.
Still, Laura ached to run outside on the wild prairie, to wade in the creek, to learn to drive horses, to shoot, and to hunt. And more than anything she yearned to go West again. But until something happened to make the prairies safe again, they had to stay where they were.
"Still," she thought. "I suppose this means I won’t have to teach school." She would not say this to Ma, but she was grateful all the same.
After supper, Pa made bullets. He always made sure he had plenty of bullets, for a man without them could not fight off the undead from a distance. He had to approach them and fight them with an axe, or run and hope they could not catch him up.
To make the bullets, Pa poured the molten lead into the casing. When it hardened and cooled, he popped it out of the casing, and that made a hollow bullet. Then he packed a little salt inside it. When he had made many of these bullets, he pushed them into a lump of clay with their pointed ends down, and sealed each one with another drop of molten lead.
Finally, Pa cut a cross shape into the head of the bullet. Ma said this was so Pa’s bullets would have the protection of Heaven. But Laura knew that it was really because a bullet with a cross in the head would split on impact. It would explode in the head of an undead, and its brain would be destroyed. This was the only way to stop one.
Pa said Laura was still too young to shoot at the undead herself, and she had to mind him, though she longed to help protect the house and land. But she was allowed to help to clean up after a horde passed. Pa would sit on the wooden tower he had made from sturdy oak and willow, and pick off any undead that approached the house and gardens. After a time, the others would learn that there was no meat for them there, and the herd would move on, moaning and grunting.
After they had gone far away, Pa would venture outside and dig holes in the ground. He would use a long pole to push the bodies into the holes, then he would cover them over again. He did not know if there were wolves left, but a wolf that found that body might eat it, and then it would become possessed with the rage of the undead. An undead wolf was more dangerous than any ordinary wolf. So Pa covered the bodies with earth and rocks.
Then Laura and Mary could come outside the fence and pick up any stray bullets. There were very few, because Pa was such a good shot. The girls must be very careful not to get even a drop of blood on their calico dresses, for the blood of the undead could do terrible things.
The New Fence
Pa was building a second fence. They had one around the garden and field, but there seemed to be more undead on the prairie now, and Ma was afraid of the fence being breached. So Pa was building another. With two fences and all the protective plants, the little house, the family, and the livestock would be well shielded.
First Pa waited for a clear, bright morning when there were no undead near the little house. He took his gun, the scarf for his face, and his padded armour.
He harnessed the horses and drove them down to the creek bank. He cut four tall oak trees, and hauled those trees up next to the fence. Then he took his axe and cut each tree into four long, thick logs. He split each log in half along its length, and then again, so he had sixty-four logs, each with a sharp point along one side.
That was all the work he could do on the fence that day, for the sun was setting, and the undead liked to roam the prairies at night. He must come indoors until the morning, and barricade the gate and the door.
The next day, he dug sixty-four little holes around the perimeter of the garden. Into each hole he placed a log, with its sharp edge pointing out. These made the fence-posts. Then he went to the creek again, and this time he returned with a pile of good young willow branches. These were bendy and strong, and would go in between the posts to make the fence.
Laura wanted to help Pa make the fence, but Ma said, "Outside the fence is no place for young girls, not when there are undead afoot".
Laura longed to build the fence with Pa, but she must do as Ma told her. So she stayed in the garden and watched from a distance. But she could bring Pa a cool drink of water when he needed one, and keep a look out for hordes in the distance. It was easy to see if one was approaching even from the ground, for flocks of black vultures and crows followed them, pecking at their moldering flesh and the remnants of their eyes if they stilled long enough.
The next day, Pa went back outside and began weaving the willow branches into the fence. He planted a thick willow branch in the ground, in between two fence-posts, and bent it over to meet with another branch on the other side of the next post. He tied those branches together at the top, making an arch. He did this all around the fence. And that was all the work he could do that day.
The day after that, Pa said Laura could help. He needed her to stay on the inside of the fence, so she could help him weave. This time, he passed the thinner branches in between the arches he had already made. He planted the cut end into the ground. Then he took thinner branches, and thinner still, and wove those into the gaps. Laura stood inside the fence and pulled branches through the gaps that Pa’s hands could not fit through.
Finally, the fence was finished. A willow-branch will grow if it is planted in the ground, so the fence would grow thicker with time. The house could only get safer.
Pa wiped his brow. "Well, Flutterbudget," he said. "That’s a good, strong fence that no horror can get through. And I couldn’t have done it without you." And Laura’s heart swelled with pride.
Pa Goes To Town
Sometimes Pa would ride out on one of the horses and look for other survivors. He did not usually see anyone, but sometimes he met a traveller or a group of Indians, and then they would trade stories and tell each other of places where supplies might be found. Last year, he had met an old friend, Mr Edwards, the wildcat from Tennessee who had once swum a swollen river to bring Laura and Mary their Christmas candy. He had survived the first waves of undead horror and was living on the move, travelling on horseback and relying on his wits. He had promised to visit, but he never had.
But today, Pa was going to town. He had not gone to town for a long time, for where there were many people there would also be undead, and the towns were not safe. But last week Pa had met an Indian, and the Indian had told him that the settlements were becoming empty. All the people had fled, or had become undead themselves. Then the undead had nothing to eat, so they roamed out of the towns on the prairies. This made the prairies more dangerous, but it also made the towns safe. So Pa could go there in search of supplies.
Ma did not like Pa taking things from town. "I never thought I’d live on stolen goods," she said faintly.
But Pa said, "Times are changing, Caroline. There's no man in town with any use for those supplies, so we may as well make use of them."
So it was settled. Pa saddled the horse, Beau, and rode to town. He did not take the wagon, because the wagon was too heavy, and he would not be able to escape quickly if a horde of the undead came. But he carried two large sacks which, strapped together, would fit over Beau's back, and he would fill them with anything useful he could find in the empty stores and houses. Laura, Mary, and Ma stood at the gate and watched him ride away before securely closing it, leaving only the latch-chain hanging out, so Pa could let himself in again.
All that day, Pa was gone. There were chores to do, and Laura could tend to her patch of snow peas, or sew on her own armour, or help Ma with the washing. But she was too worried about Pa to concentrate on her lessons.
After supper, as the sun went down, Laura said, "What will happen to Pa if the undead catch him?"
Mary said, "They won’t catch him."
Laura said, "They might too catch him. Why isn’t he home yet, Ma?"
"Girls!" Ma said sharply, looking up from her mending. She paused, then said, "It’s bedtime."
Mary obediently began to unbutton her dress. But when they were tucked up in bed, Laura asked again, "Why isn't Pa home yet?"
Ma paused again, then said, "I don't know. But Pa is a good shot and a good horseman, and he will be back by morning."
Under the quilt, Laura asked Mary, "Do you think the undead caught Pa?"
"I don’t know," Mary said quietly.
"Girls, it’s time to sleep," Ma said again. So Laura put her head on the soft pillow and tried not to think about Pa, out there on the prairie where the undead roamed, and soon she fell asleep.
In the morning, Laura woke suddenly and went to the big bed, but still there was only Ma.
"Is Pa home?" Laura asked.
"Not yet, Laura," said Ma. "He probably found somewhere in town to sleep, or an Indian to trade with. He will no doubt be home by tonight."
"But -"
"Don’t contradict, Laura," Ma said, and Laura was quiet.
In the mornings, there were chores to do. The cow must be milked, then led to a grassy patch inside the fences to graze. The cows and horses needed water in their trough. The beds must be made. Then Mary and Laura must wash their hands and faces while Ma made breakfast.
She fried cornmeal cakes and potatoes in deadfat, and there were dried apples fried with onions and garlic, and the fresh milk. Mary set the table, and they sat to eat. Without Pa, the house felt very empty. Nobody said anything as they ate, nor as Laura washed the dishes and Mary wiped them. Breakfast was over, and still Pa was not back from town. Nobody knew what to do.
The Long Wait
All that day, Pa did not return from town. Mary and Laura helped Ma with the chores, and the dinner, and the dishes. They sat with their lesson-books and tried to study. But Laura's eyes ran over the words without reading them, and when she glanced at Mary, she saw that Mary was just as distracted, though she was normally so good.
"Let's not worry about Pa, girls!" Ma said suddenly. "If there’s anyone able to make his way to town and back through a horde of the undead, it's your Pa. Why, he survived three days under a snowdrift in a blizzard, and he walked two hundred miles in patched boots to find work. Of course he will make it back to us."
But Laura could see that Ma was frightened, too, despite her happy words. And, to her shame, she began to feel a prickling in her eyes, and a lump in her throat.
Three days more passed, and still Pa was not home. On the morning of the fourth day, Ma forgot even to smile and pretend any longer. Her eyes were sad and scared as she shaped the cornmeal cakes and sliced the potatoes. Nobody spoke as they ate their breakfast.
Then suddenly there came a crash from outside the house, and moments later, a loud scraping at the door.
"Get behind the fur pile, girls," Ma said sharply. Mary and Laura ran to hide there, and Ma took her rifle from above the window. The scraping at the door sounded again.
Ma quickly and quietly cocked the gun.
Laura and Mary clung to each other behind the pile of furs, and as the door creaked open Ma lifted the gun to her shoulder...
And the door opened, and it was Pa!
Forgetting that she was a big girl, Laura screamed with joy and jumped up from the pile of furs, but Ma caught her, and Pa said,
"Wait, Half-Pint."
And Laura saw that Pa's clothes were splattered with blood and fragments of skull. There was no telling how many undead he must have shot.
Pa explained that the town had been almost empty, but the undead had been thick on the surrounding prairie. It had taken him a long time to circle around and get past them. When he finally got into the town, it was almost sunset.
He had explored all he could that night, going into abandoned houses and the general store. Then he found a stable with its door almost intact, and he and Beau waited there. He had not slept. He had eaten store candy for his supper, and chewed bark to stay awake. If a man lost his horse, there was little hope of surviving.
At sunrise, Pa had gone out again, and begun to explore the rest of the houses. He had meant to fill the sacks and ride out of town. But in the night, the undead had come in.
"Must have picked up my scent," said Pa.
The undead were roaming the streets already, moaning and scratching at doors and walls. Pa helped himself to goods from two houses before they got too close, and then he ran. He had barricaded himself and Beau into that stable again.
Thankfully, there had been hay stored there for Beau to eat, but there had been nothing for Pa. So he had waited for the crowd of undead outside to thin a little, then climbed up the stable wall and onto its roof. The undead could not climb, so he was safe, but he could not leave without the horse. There was nothing to do but wait.
Finally, Pa's hunger had got the better of him, and he had gone exploring, rooftop to rooftop.
"Charles!" Ma said faintly. Laura knew what Ma was thinking, because she was thinking it too: if Pa had fallen, the undead would have devoured him before he could pick himself up.
"I know, Caroline," Pa said soberly. "But I didn’t know what to do. Stay in that stable and starve, or risk not getting home to my girls? I thought for a long time about what to do. But I was so hungry I could scarcely think straight."
So he had climbed and jumped between rooftops, and where he was able, he had gone down into the empty houses and the store, and even the old schoolhouse, and looked for food. He had eaten just enough of what he found, and put the rest into the sacks to bring home, to keep them all from starving through the year.
But Pa was in a dilemma. He could not leave without his horse, because he could never cross the prairie on foot with those sacks without meeting trouble. But to leave, he must ride Beau through those crowds of groaning, wandering undead.
Finally, at dawn, he had saddled the horse and ridden out as fast as he could. Of course, the undead had been waiting, and they had chased him almost all the way home. He had been shooting at them for miles. By the time he had approached the little house, he had run out of bullets. He had had to hit them with the butt of his rifle if they came close, instead of being able to take them out from a distance. He had had to circle away from the house until he shook them off, both he and Beau becoming all the more tired. It had taken over an hour to get inside.
Laura and Mary were sober. They must keep away from Pa until he had taken off his bloody clothes, and carefully cleaned his hands and face and his whiskers, and made sure that he had washed away all the pieces of brain and flesh. The undead gave off a bad kind of air when they were destroyed, and their blood was bad. If a girl breathed that air, or got even a single drop of the blood near her mouth, then her father would take her into the barn and cut her head off with an axe.
So Pa left the sacks, and went back outside. He took off his breeches and his shirt and the scarf he had tied around his neck, and put them away from the house, near the woodpile. Ma would look at them to see if they could be saved. If they were too soaked in the blood of the undead horror, then she would burn them. He checked his hands and face for blood.
Then Pa washed carefully with store-bought soap. He poured freshly-drawn water over his head again and again until he was sparkling clean. Then he rubbed himself over with garlic, and put on the fresh shirt and trousers that Ma brought him. He was completely clean. Not a single spot of blood was on his body.
"There," he said, and his eyes twinkled. And then Mary and Laura could go to him and hug him properly.
"I’m famished, Caroline!" he said. "A man needs more than candy and old bread to live on." So Ma fried up more cornmeal cakes, and merrily they sat at table again. Then Pa unloaded the sacks he had brought from the town. They were filled with good things.
He had brought salt in a large sack - enough to refill the barrel in the cellar, and more besides. There was another sack, the same size, filled with grain. There was a smaller sack of light brown store sugar. Before the undead came, Ma would have saved this away for company, but visitors were few and far between now. There was a large paper sack of lead shot, which Pa could use to make more bullets. And there was a whole side of bacon - real bacon, from a pig. There was no telling how old it was, but bacon does not spoil.
"Why, Charles - bacon!" Ma exclaimed. "Wherever did you find it?"
Pa explained that he had climbed up into the attic of the general store. No other looters had thought to look there, where the storekeeper kept his own supplies for the winter. And he had found the bacon. He said, "I’m sorry I couldn’t bring the salt pork, though."
He explained that there had been a barrel of salt pork in that attic, but without a wagon he could not bring it home. Laura was sad, because she loved salt pork, although she understood why Pa had not brought it.
Then he reached into the sack again, and Mary gasped. There was a whole bolt of calico, cream-coloured, with little brown flowers, and only a little dusty from being in that abandoned store so long. Ma could make new dresses for Mary and Laura from that calico. She would have made a new dress for Carrie, too, if Carrie had still had need of dresses.
Next, Pa brought out a paper bag filled with candy. He gave one piece to Mary and one piece to Laura, and they might have that piece of candy now, but the rest would be stored in the cellar and brought out on special occasions.
Finally, Pa reached into the sack one last time, and he brought out the best present of all. For he had brought Mary and Laura each her very own gun. Mary’s was small and dainty, but Laura's was a long, sleek rifle with a beautiful polished wooden butt. Laura could not speak. She had never seen anything so wonderful.
Mary said, "Thank you, Pa". And then Laura remembered her manners, and she said, "Thank you, Pa," too. But still she gazed in wonder at that beautiful rifle.
"I’ll be teaching you girls to shoot," Pa said, his eyes twinkling. "It’s time you learned, so you can protect the house when I’m not here." Ma could shoot too, of course, but you could never have too many snipers on a homestead when there were undead outside.
Then Pa continued, "I’ll be needing accompaniment, too, on days I have to ride out. Seems like a man can do with all the protection he can get. What do you say, Half-Pint?"
"Oh, Pa - really?" Laura gasped. If she rode out with Pa, and they each carried a gun, they would be able to bring the wagon. They could travel farther afield, and bring home better goods and supplies. They might even meet other survivors. Laura thought her heart would burst with joy.
That evening, after supper, Pa played his fiddle, and they all softly sang:
Beyond this world of toil and care,
Beyond this veil of gloom;
There is a land, a happy land,
A place we call our home.
Oh, yes, we’ll trust Him while we live!
We’ll trust Him when we die;
And then when all our work is done,
We’ll reign with Him on high.
After the song finished, they sat quietly. Laura listened to the wind on the prairie, and the lowing of the cows in the stable, and the distant moans of the undead.
Yes, she thought. Our world is filled with toil and gloom. But we won’t have to wait until we get to Heaven to find a happy land that is our home.