Chapter Fourteen – The Dragon’s Favorite Strays

Chapter Thirteen

DAKOTA

The pharmacy is pretty picked over, as most buildings are after so many years, but I’m happy with my finds. I dig through the old employee break room and find a few condiment packets and some sugar that’s dried into a hard lump at the bottom of a canister, but I’ll take it. Inside the store, there’s a bottle of shampoo with a bunch of gunk along the side, as if it exploded at one point, and I take that, too. I find a couple rolls of aluminum foil and decide those will take the place of a smoker. I can use those and some ingenuity instead of hunting all over the countryside for an actual grill. I don’t want to leave Rabbit for longer than I have to.

Murr has been pleasant company for the most part. He wants to help, even if he doesn’t know what he’s looking for. He just digs through piles of leaves and brush, fishing out objects and holding them up to me for approval if they’re filthy, and if they’re not, they go into the basket. Several of the containers he puts in the basket are empty (who leaves behind an old vitamins container, I ask you?) but I still appreciate a second set of eyes as we go through the rubble.

Once we’ve dug through everything at the front of the pharmacy (and Murr attacked a cardboard standee of a pharmacy employee), I head to the back to look for medication that might have been left behind. It’s unlikely – medication is the only thing rarer than food at this point – but I’m going to check anyhow. The pharmacy shelves have been picked clean, but I pull them from the walls and run my hands under the counters, looking for things that might have fallen into hard to reach places.

My efforts are rewarded with half a bottle of antibiotics. No idea if they’re still any good at this point, but I’m taking them with me anyhow. Along with the antibiotics, I’ve also got an eye cream that I’m going to try on the kittens with the worst eye infections. I don’t know if it’s safe for them or not, but hopefully there will be a book in the bookstore that can help with that. I can’t sit back and watch them with gummy, glued-shut eyes and do nothing about it. I don’t hate cats. I love them…I just can’t feed them in the After.

Living through the apocalypse has forced me to harden my heart.

With my bag stuffed full of my finds, I put the rest of the goods into a shopping cart and push it back to the bookstore. It gets stuck on the ruts and chunks of cement in the road, but I shove it along anyhow. Murr doesn’t carry any of it or push the cart, but I also don’t ask him to. I don’t want to feel obligated to him more than I already am. That haunch of meat we got? People have been killed for less in forts. Murr has been nice so far, but I also don’t want him to think he owns me or that I owe him something in return.

I’ve heard some sketchy rumors about dragons from the last fort we were in, and at the time, I chalked them up to absolute nonsense. Now that I’ve met Murr and seen that he likes to hang around in his human form and touched my cheek, I’m starting to side-eye those rumors with new interest.

I heard that some fort was giving women to dragons so they wouldn’t get attacked.

Which is bullshit…right?

At least, I hope it’s bullshit. But Murr hasn’t attacked, and everything I know about dragons says that they’re vicious and unpredictable and will tear a human apart without thinking twice, so the fact that Murr has been friendly makes me uneasy.

He wants something, and I don’t know what. A smart woman would tell him to buzz off, but…he’s a dragon. I also know that him being in a good mood is also instrumental to us staying alive.

“Dakotah,” he says, walking next to me. Then he points at his hand and gives me another expectant look.

“You…want the word for that? Or something else?”

He wiggles his hand and points at it, then at me.

“Hand,” I say, lifting mine and doing the same wiggle.

“Haaan,” he agrees, and then recites all the other words he’s learned so far from me. I’m impressed. His pronunciation continues to be shit but his memory is excellent. He holds his forefinger out. “Haan?”

“Finger,”

“Tiiinger.” He holds out his middle finger and it looks like he’s flipping me the bird.

I snort with amusement at that. “Still a finger.”

He touches his middle finger and eyes me curiously. “Tiiinger…ha ha?” He cocks his head as we walk, the curious expression on his face. “Ha ha?”

I shake my head, still smiling at the inside joke that I can’t possibly explain to him. “We don’t have the words for that yet.”

And then I slow down as I push the cart, eyeing him speculatively. Maybe there’s nothing sinister about his interest. Maybe he’s just trying to learn human language so he can communicate with people? But if so…why? Dragons haven’t had any interest in talking to people for years on end.

Does it have something to do with the healed rift in the sky? Or am I grasping at straws because the rift was healed about six months ago and suddenly I’ve met a friendly dragon after seven years of them being apocalyptic destroyers? That can’t be complete coincidence.

“I’m glad you’re a fast learner,” I tell Murr as we continue walking. “Because I have so many questions.”

He points at his thumb and waits for the word, oblivious to my musings.