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It wasn’t one of Jake Jensen’s better ideas. But it was an idea, and it had been an awfully long time since he’d had one, so Carlos went with it. He figured Pooch came along for the ride to keep the two of them out of trouble.
It was far too late for that.
“Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells! Jingle all the way!” Jensen could carry a tune when he wanted to, but he obviously didn’t right at the moment.
“Man, if you don’t shut up, I swear to God I’ll stuff that scarf down your throat.” Pooch looked out at the new snow and sighed. “We couldn’t have found a better car for this?”
This was a road trip two days before Christmas. With Jolene and Jimmy safe at the armoury and everyone starting to settle down, Jake had decided that they should see what the hell home looked like.
Beth and Jenny described Nashua as a ghost town—everyone they knew had either left or gone zom—and since Jolene had been in California when the whole damn thing started, they had no idea what had happened to Springfield.
Luckily the second town was on the way to the first, so Jake had grabbed one of the jeeps and they’d taken off, telling Dalton and Clay that they were surveying the area for anything salvageable. It wasn’t a lie. The area was just a couple hundred miles bigger than Dalton normally patrolled.
The roads were always a mess now, blocked by crashes and abandoned cars, and you had to take that into consideration. The drive from Middleton to Springfield should have taken forty-five minutes, so it was an hour and a half later when they finally rolled into Pooch’s driveway.
“Damn, I’m sick of eerie,” Pooch whispered. Carlos felt for him. It was strange to see your own home deserted.
The whole subdivision was empty, it looked like. Power was out to all the traffic lights, so it was probably out in the houses, too. A lot of places they’d gone through on their way north had had substation failures and it looked like that was a problem here as well. A year of no one to maintain infrastructure was a great lesson in how fragile modern technology really was.
“Think anything’s left?” Jake wondered, climbing out of the backseat and stretching.
Pooch sighed and got out himself. “One way to find out.”
The door was locked, which struck Carlos as… odd? Surreal? Jolene had left thinking she and Jimmy would be in Southern California for a week and now, nine months later, Pooch was fishing the spare key out of the flowerpot on the porch.
It smelled. Bad. The freezer was full of food gone to dust, but the stench lingered. Mold was the worst, though, and they found that the roof had caved in above the master bathroom upstairs.
“Knew I should’ve had her replace that damn thing,” Pooch grumbled as he and Carlos stared at the snow coming through the ceiling to settle into the filthy bathtub. He was shaken by the place. It had to be weird.
“Hey Pooch?” Jake drawled from the bedroom. “What is this ?”
Pooch sighed and walked back into the bedroom. He seemed to know exactly what Jake was talking about.
“It was a present,” Pooch explained dismissively.
“He looks just like you,” Jake laughed. He was holding up a stuffed black chihuahua with POOCH written in silver on a red tag around its neck. Carlos didn’t laugh, but it was a near thing.
Pooch took it out of Jake’s hands, but more gently than he probably would have had it been anything else. He froze a second before walking around the bed to the table on the other side. “I wonder…”
Pooch kneeled down and did something to the table’s base and a drawer popped open. “Damn. Can’t believe it’s still here,” he breathed.
Carlos watched as Pooch brought a worn old wooden jewelry box up onto the bed and opened it.
“Man, what did you do, rob a pirate ship?” Jake asked incredulously. The box was full of gold rings and chains and pendants and even some coins.
“Jolene’s been collecting these since before I knew her—some’s just crap costume stuff, but there’s a ring from her grandma in there; a couple of coins from the Civil War.... She made me build that false drawer to hide them.” He sniffled, sliding off his backpack so he could put the box in it for safekeeping. It took him less than a second to decide to add the chihuahua to the pack as well.
“Looks like a good Christmas present,” Carlos remarked quietly.
“Yeah,” Pooch agreed.
Jake’s voice was gentle, but he clearly wanted to get to their next destination. “Anything else we need to take back?”
Pooch wiped his eyes and nodded, sliding his pack on as he led them out into the hallway to a small nursery. “Um… We’ll see if she left any of Jimmy’s…” He chuckled suddenly and stopped. “Jimmy’s a god damned year old now,” he observed. “Don’t need any infant shit.”
Carlos continued into the nursery anyway. It was perfect—Jolene and Pooch together, even though she hadn’t even known Pooch was alive when she finished decorating. A stuffed animal sat in the corner and brought a smile to Carlos’s face.
“Elephahippoceratops,” he murmured, going over to pick it up.
Pooch had found the ugly thing in… Buenos Aires, maybe? Carlos didn’t even know. It was before Max, and Pooch had been missing Jolene. She was pregnant, but not very, as Carlos recalled. Anyway, it looked like what they called it: an elephant’s body with a hippopotamus’s head and four bright gold horns sticking out of the top of the nose.
“No way,” Pooch laughed, taking the thing like it was precious. It was big, too, so he just tucked it under his arm. “God, I think Jimmy’s almost as big as it is now.”
“Should have brought a carseat,” Jake agreed, a giddy joy in his voice. “Jimmy is going to love him. It’ll be like regifting!”
Pooch chuckled, but he wasn’t too self-centered not to notice Jake’s nervous energy. “One more thing and then we’ll head for New Hampshire,” he promised.
The small black box he retrieved from the hidden drawer in his own bedside table was familiar—some sort of military award. “Iron Cross,” he explained quietly. “My granddaddy was a hell of a soldier.”
And without another word, they were out the door, Pooch locking it behind them, and strapping the damn elephahippoceratops into the seat beside Jake.
“Jenny said a wave of zoms went through the neighborhood as she and Beth were getting out,” Jake told them as they got back on the highway without seeing another living soul. “Wonder if their house is in that kind of shape?”
It was, surprisingly. Jake smiled big to see the door and windows intact, though the power was out here, too.
“Unlike you, Pooch,” he teased, producing that stupid keyring with the bright green rabbit’s foot on it. “ I keep a key.”
The ranch house smelled, if anything, worse than Pooch’s place had; a sign that Jenny and Beth had made a much hastier retreat.
“Damn, you better have Jenny fire the maid,” Pooch said, looking at the mess. The interior looked like a tornado had hit, and unlike the front, the windows and doors on the back of the place were crushed in in several places.
“They fought their way out,” Carlos said quietly, knowing Jake had already come to the same conclusion.
Surprisingly, Jake grinned. “If anyone could, it’d be my sister.” He looked around as if trying to figure out where to go first. “Bethy’s room,” he decided, leading the way down the hall.
They retrieved Beth’s laptop, her diaries, a stuffed mouse that looked well-loved, Jenny’s laptop… The two of them didn’t seem to have a lot of momentos, but Jake was the same way. Not much they wanted to remember, Carlos guessed. Jake dashed into the room he used when he visited, but didn’t seem to find anything worth keeping.
“I think that’s it,” Jake said, looking around the place with much less longing than Pooch had his house. A place you visited was different from home, after all. “If we’re quick we can—”
He stopped dead, staring at the shelves that flanked the fireplace in the main room. “Fuck,” he whispered. “I forgot she kept that.” He walked forward and took down a snow globe. It had been broken at some point, but the scene that should have been encased in glass was still intact.
“Smurfs?” Pooch asked incredulously. “Jenny had a Smurfs snow globe?”
“I stole it for her when I six,” Jake admitted quietly.
“You little thief,” Pooch joked, though he was careful about it. They knew next to nothing about Jake’s childhood, and every bitter little morsel had to be savored.
“Mom got pissed at me—I don’t remember why.” As Carlos knew, there didn’t have to be a reason. “Took my piggy bank, if you can believe it. I think I wanted her to take me to the mall to buy my Christmas presents for everyone?” He shook his head, forgetting it. “Anyway, I snuck out later and found this in a dollar store down the street. Jenny loved the Smurfs—no, actually, I think I loved the Smurfs and wanted to share it.” He chuckled, running a finger over Smurfette where she was trimming the tree with Papa Smurf and Handy. “She knew I stole it, I think. And Mom and Dad would have killed me if they found out, so…” He looked at it wonderingly. “All those years, I figured she just got rid of the evidence, but after Max, it was suddenly back again.”
“Maybe she kept it as evidence of something else,” Pooch said, clapping him on the back.
Jake nodded and slid the snow globe into his pack. He looked out the window and groaned. “Shit, look out there! We’re screwed.”
They might be, Carlos thought. The snow had been falling steadily since they walked in the door, and the jeep was covered. The road looked like a pond, it was so smooth.
“We’ll make it,” Pooch said confidently. “But we’d better get a move on if we’re going to get back before dark.”
They piled into the jeep and started down the road at half the speed they’d been going before. It took them three hours just to get back to Springfield, but by then the snow was letting up.
So of course, the zombies came into play.
“Zoms at two o’clock,” Jake said suddenly, as they were making their way through a particularly bad patch of road. He rolled down his window and Carlos did the same and they started shooting.
“Shit!”
Pooch’s call got jumbled in a slide of ice and the squelch of a zombie hitting the windshield and the sickening roll of the jeep, and suddenly Carlos was hanging from his seatbelt as the Jeep lay on the driver’s side. His head was ringing, though from injury or the abrupt sequence of events, he couldn’t say.
“You okay?” Jake asked, pain in his voice, though he sounded strong enough. “Either of you— both of you?”
“Fine,” Carlos answered, fighting to disengage his seatbelt. Jake was firing again, and the sound was loud in the confines of the overturned vehicle, setting Carlos’s head to pounding even more. Pooch didn’t answer, or they couldn’t hear him over the noise.
“Great, I’m glad,” Jake replied. “Want to help me save our asses, then?”
Carlos spied his pistol against Pooch’s leg and grabbed it up to start firing at the horde heading toward them from the front. He looked down at their third and hissed. “Pooch is out. I hope.”
“Shit,” Jake growled. “One shopping trip, gone to hell.” He kept firing and the zoms kept coming. “We’re gonna run out of ammo before we run out of zoms, you—”
Carlos brought up his hand to silence him as a repeating rifle started stuttering out in the night.
“Thank God,” Jake whispered, and started shooting again.
With the extra firepower, they managed to finish off the zoms, but not quickly enough for Carlos’s liking. Pooch still hadn’t moved, and as he finally put his pistol down, Carlos could see blood trailing from Pooch’s head onto the driver’s side window, which was shattered bits of safety glass on the ground.
“I’m gonna climb out,” Jake said, leaning over the seats to peer at Pooch worriedly while Carlos crouched down to get a better look.
“Be careful,” Carlos said sharply. “Just because they shoot zoms, doesn’t mean they won’t shoot you.”
“Words of wisdom,” Jake agreed, loading another clip into his gun. Then he slammed the door open and climbed out onto what was now the top of the jeep.
Pooch’s pulse was strong, if a little fast. Carlos wanted to get him out of the jeep, but until Jake came back and told him it was safe, he’d just stand guard instead. Pooch shifted a little, which Carlos took as a good sign. He looked around the inside of the vehicle.
Their packs were in a jumble on the back seat. Jenny and Beth’s computers were probably smashed, but maybe Jake could salvage the hard drives. He snorted to see that the elephahippoceratops was still safely strapped in, the snow starting to cover its top side as it fell in from the open side door.
Jake should have been back by now.
A loud engine rumbled nearby and Carlos grabbed his own pack out of the pile, rooting through until he produced another pistol and more ammo. A large SUV pulled up in front of them, lit by the jeep’s headlights. Damn it, Jensen, where are you?
“Hey, Coug!” Jake called, his silhouette suddenly captured by the headlights of the SUV as he came around from the passenger side of it. “Look who I found!”
A slight, skinny, curvy shadow came out of the driver’s seat.
“Aisha?” Carlos whispered, disbelieving. They hadn’t seen her for nearly two months! His head really hurt...
She was suddenly in front of the busted front window, looking at Pooch with concern. “Let’s get the windshield off and get him out that way,” she suggested. She met Carlos’s eyes, but he was having a hard time processing her actually being there. “Cougar?” she asked. She looked away toward Jake. “Did he hit his head?”
Jake had been busy prying the windshield off, apparently, because it was suddenly gone and he had a hand carding through Carlos’s hair.
“Man, Cougar,” Jake whispered, his fingers finding a painful lump that made Carlos see stars. “Come on. We’ll get you both out.”
Which they must have done, because the next thing Carlos knew, he was lying down in a moving car with an elephahippoceratops as a pillow.
“...to Middleton to hook up with you, but the bridges are out all along the highway.”
Aisha. Carlos had really thought they’d seen the last of her.
“I’ve never been so glad to see the infrastructure crumble,” Jake said. He was hurt, but his voice held more worry than pain. “How you doing, Pooch?” he asked. Carlos listened carefully for the answer.
“Head’s killing me, but I’ll be all right.”
There was the sound of someone shifting on leather, and Carlos felt a hand on his head. “You with us yet, Cougar?” Jake asked, the hand caressing slightly.
Carlos nodded, pretty sure talking wasn’t going to do his headache any good at all.
“We’re nearly back to base,” Jake said quietly. “Looks like we got a Christmas present for Clay, too.”
“You say the sweetest things,” Aisha purred cheerfully.
*****
Christmas was, surprisingly, Christmas. Middleton was a functioning town, after all, and though the stores were empty and the pickings slim, people cobbled together trees to decorate and garland to hang. Dinner wasn’t exactly traditional, but there was enough for everyone.
And there were presents.
Turned out the computers weren’t so damaged, and Jenny and Beth were thrilled to have them back. Geekery ran in the family, as Pooch said. Jake produced the Smurf snow globe, but Jenny immediately demanded he keep it. He didn’t argue and Carlos wasn’t surprised.
Jolene nearly lost it when Pooch presented her with the jewelry box, but proclaimed that the best present was having him and his “thick-ass head” here with her and healing. Jimmy, for his part, fell asleep on top of the elephahippoceratops and nearly killed all of them with cute.
Clay didn’t make a big deal about it, but he and Aisha sat close together. Carlos didn’t figure they’d stay at the party long and hoped they could find a little privacy so he could welcome her home.
Because it was kind of home. He’d always maintained that, wherever the Losers were, that was home. His family were gone and the team had been filling in for them nicely for years. No need to stop now.
“So,” Jake said, sitting down next to Carlos after grabbing them a couple of beers. “Seems like Springfield and Nashua are off the list.”
“Hell, I’m staying right here,” Pooch said, hugging Jolene to him tight. “Couldn’t find a contractor to fix that roof anyway.”
Aisha chuckled. “Dalton told me the town needs to be repopulated.” She smirked at Clay. “I saw a great colonial a few blocks over.”
Clay shrugged. “I’m game.” He grinned at Aisha’s shock. “Hell, I’m too old to go traipsing around after zombies any more. Let them come to me.”
Jenny and Beth looked happy and content…
“To the Losers of Middleton, then,” Jake said with a smirk. “He smiled at the whole group of them. “The Extended Edition.”
And then he looked at Carlos, tentatively. “There’s nowhere we need to go, right?”
As if Carlos was going anywhere Jake wasn’t. He gave his lover a kiss and Jake smiled.
“Hey, um… I didn’t ever really want to admit to this, but…” Jake handed Carlos a cardboard box. “You remember that firefight in Bahrain?”
Carlos didn’t. He remembered the day before, and he remembered waking up in a field hospital with a hairline skull fracture a week after, but the firefight itself was a complete blank. He’s lost his favorite hat in that fight.
“Yeah, well, I um... “
Carlos opened the box and glared at Jake. “You stole my hat?” He pulled it out, the leather still soft. A bullet hole and blood that he didn’t remember marred it, but inside the brim was that same badly-drawn cat face with whiskers it had had before Bahrain, courtesy of Jake. “I loved this hat!”
“You nearly died in that hat,” Pooch pointed out.
“You’re not going to—” Jake started.
Carlos put it on, feeling the comfort of it, even as it rubbed at the goose egg on the side of his skull.
“Oh my God, that’s gross, Cougar.” Jake stared at him a minute, like he was going to rip the hat off his head.
“Don’t touch the hat,” Carlos warned.
Aisha laughed. “Good to see nothing ever changes with you guys.”
Carlos looked at his friends, his family. Together for Christmas. He hadn’t even thought Jake would live to see Christmas this year, but…
“Feliz Navidad,” he murmured, pulling Jake down to kiss him again.
“Ew, not with that hat on,” Jake protested, though of course he kissed him anyway. “God, I’m sorry I ever gave it back to you, now.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t know there was a blood-covered hat sitting in my guest room,” Jenny groused. She looked at Carlos sternly. “You’re cleaning it before you set foot in my house again.”
“You don’t have a house,” Jake pointed out.
Jenny grinned. “Aisha and I have been talking. The house across the street from hers is nice.”
“Who let the women go house-shopping?” Clay asked no one.
Aisha smacked him hard in the chest, and the talk went on.
Talk of home…. Carlos could get used to that.
******
the end