Flesh Eaters by Joe McKinney

Author:Joe McKinney [McKinney, Joe]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Tags: Horror, Lang:en, Dead World
Publisher: Pinnacle Books
Published: 2012-02-20T23:58:32+00:00

Eleanor took an MRE from the table and a plastic gallon jug of water and looked around the room for Madison. She found her sitting on the edge of a cot with no sheets, preparing her own MRE.

“You mind if I join you?” Eleanor asked.

Madison looked up at her with forced nonchalance and shrugged. “It’s a free country.”

Damn it, Eleanor thought, feeling the heat rising in her cheeks. Why is this always so hard? Times like this she didn’t feel like other moms. She’d watched other women handle their kids’ attitudes in public with patience and self-control, even though it was obvious they were burning up inside. Eleanor figured she missed that part of the deal when they were handing out mothering skills because at times like this, when she made an honest effort and Madison just tossed it back in her face, all she could think to do was get mean. It infuriated her, both because her daughter was being a little shit and because she wasn’t being enough of a grown-up to deal with it. Jesus, she thought, why did parenting have to be so damn hard?

But this had to be done. They had to talk. It couldn’t go on like this. Eleanor knew that, and she suspected that Madison did, too.

So she sat down next to Madison and unpacked her MRE. The entree was beef enchilada in sauce, which wasn’t great, but at least it wasn’t chicken fettuccine. God, that stuff was awful.

Beside her, Madison was filling her meal pouch bag with water. Eleanor watched appreciatively as her daughter activated the chemical heater and dropped it into the water, then folded over the top of the pouch and stuffed it into the entree carton. That done, she leaned the carton against the leg of the cot to keep the assembly properly inclined, then opened up her package of peanut butter and spread it on some crackers.

“You know your way around an MRE,” Eleanor said, genuinely impressed.

“I’ve eaten a bunch over the last two weeks.”

Eleanor opened her mouth to tell Madison not to take that tone with her, but closed it again. That wasn’t going to work here. It would just drive Madison further away.

She separated out her own MRE, prepared her own meal pouch assembly, and then tucked the instant coffee into the back pocket of her jeans. Her clothes were still wet, but there wasn’t anything she could do about that.

“Hey,” she said to Madison, “what’d you get for dessert?”

“Chocolate pudding.”

“Ah, you got the good one. I got banana pudding.”

“I don’t like the banana pudding.”

“No, me, either. I guess you won’t switch with me then, huh?”

Madison tossed her dessert pouch into Eleanor’s lap. “Here, you can have mine. I’m not all that hungry anyway.”

“Baby, I was—”

“Don’t call me baby, Mom, I hate that.”

“Oh,” Eleanor said. “Oh, okay. I . . . I’m sorry, Madison. What would you rather I call you?”

“I don’t care. Anything but baby. I’m not a kid.”

“Madison, come on, you’re not even thirteen.”

As soon as she said it Eleanor knew it was wrong.

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