About Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

by Angelia Sparrow
23 pages / 10000 words
Available file types - html. lit, pdf, prc

Catherine McAllister didn't expect to be widowed in Indian Territory, her husband dead in a freak accident. When her neighbor and best friend Amanda is left alone as well, the women move in together. Soon, they find friendship was the least of it, and settle in as a married couple to make a go of their joint homestead.

When zombies begin devouring their livestock, they treat the invaders like any other predator. Aided by Amanda's mother-in-law, Half-Moon, Catherine leads the local homesteaders in defense of all their wives and children. Will they be able to keep the things that go bump in the night off their land?

Sample

Eli came dashing across the fields just at sunset with Shep close on his heels, panting too hard to bark. I was trying to calm a skittish colt enough to halter it and he blew that prospect all to hell.

"Ma Cat!" he yelled, gasping for air. "Ma Cat, you better get over to the sheep pen."

I hung the halter on the fence post and got a glare from the colt, a pretty black stallion with a white blaze, from where he'd retreated to the other side of the paddock near the barn and his mama. "Spit it out, boy."

"'Sbad, Ma Cat," he panted. Shep flopped on the ground, too tired to do anything else. "Ma's out there now, but you better bring the shotgun." He dashed into the barn and I reckoned I knew what he was going for. I grabbed the Springfield and ran for the paddock.

The sheep pen was at the far end of the spread, about half a mile. I wanted to clean Amanda's plow for making Eli run that half-mile, although he could do it in less than seven minutes by my pocket watch. I swung onto the paint horse bareback like an Indian and kicked it with my heels.

Amanda and John's ranch had butted up against mine and Luke's, and what with both of us being widows now with three sons between hay and grass, and four daughters not old enough to marry, it seemed only right to smash them together to get more work done.

Eli was Amanda's boy and him and his sisters all looked like her and Luke: short, pretty and very, very fast. Abigail was her baby at twelve, and a better hand with a needle we wouldn't find in all of Indian Territory. John had died when she was just a tyke, caught a fever clearing a swamp.

Better way to go than my Luke. My Luke had been smart, too damn smart for his own good. Read all the time he wasn't farming and kept trying to build the stuff he read about. Arky Meedy's Steam Cannon blew up in his face about five years ago.

Men and their new-fangled ideas. Difference engines to keep count of people and clockwork wings to make them fly through the skies. Burt Newley's principles to take them to the moon. Steam weapons and gadgets. And all sorts of stories of clockwork servants coming out of the cities since the War. I was glad we'd lit out for Indian Territory right after Luke came back. Those things weren't nothing for people to be messing with.

I yanked the paint's mane as we came close to the paddock. He slowed and stopped. I saw the problem right away.

We'd been hearing weird tales outta Louisiana for a long time now, about slave-holders who couldn't give up free labor after the War and had just killed all their slaves and had voodoo men bring them back. Hadn't thought much of the stories and never quite believed them.

But I'd seen drawings in the newspapers and in the penny-dreadfuls that Jack and Billy liked to read. I knew what the slow-moving thing was. It used to be a man; now it was a zombie. It sorta dragged itself along, like a bear with a broken leg. The skin was nasty rotten gray except where there was blood on it. In a couple places, the flesh was gone completely and bone showed through.

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