street. Zoe, bundled in gloves, a beanie, and a long coat, waved to her from near the general store.
“Good morning!” Zoe’s round face was pink from the cold, but her grin was huge. “You’re up early.”
“I was about to say the same to you.”
“Eh, I like to get here before the crowds. I make a coffee and read the newspapers.” She winked as she unlocked the store’s door. “I’m working on a collage demonstrating how the U.S. government has been systematically infecting tofu in order to experiment on the vegan population, and you never know when you might find a piece of evidence in a seemingly innocent news article.”
Keira was tempted to laugh but didn’t want to offend her companion. “Wow. That sounds…intense.”
“Oh, it is. There’re hints that they were planning to use mass-spread hallucinogenics to fake the moon landing, but it ended up being cheaper to send someone to the moon for real. C’mon in. Were you after more rice or something?”
Keira flexed her shoulders as she entered the store. The lights came on in sporadic bursts, flickering as though reluctant to be woken. The cluttered space looked strange when it was void of other shoppers, as though it belonged in a dystopian world. “I found a little black cat last night. Well, technically, he found me. Could you keep an ear out for anyone who might have lost him?”
“Can do.” Zoe shed her jacket and dropped it behind the counter. She leaned against the counter as she flexed her shoulders. “Is it super fat? That might be the Torries’. Or if it had a white nose and paws, that’d be the Childs’.”
“Sorry, it’s completely black and small. Kind of scrawny.”
Zoe shrugged. “Doesn’t ring any bells, but I’ll ask around. Did you want some coffee or anything?”
Keira cleared her throat. She’d had the entire walk to decide how she should phrase herself, but the words were still difficult to say. “He needs something to eat. But I can’t afford to buy anything right now. Is it possible… I mean, would you consider giving me some food for him? Even meat scraps would be okay.”
Zoe’s expression was impossible to read. She tilted her head to one side and pursed her lips. After a second, she said, “How about a trade?”
Keira found it hard to meet the other woman’s eyes. “I…don’t have much to give. I could clean the store. Or get you the money later—”
“Nah, I was thinking more along the lines of coffee.”
“Huh?”
Zoe shrugged artlessly. “Let me buy you a coffee again. I spent half of last night thinking up theories about how you ended up in Blighty, and I’m literally dying to run some of them past you.”
The offer seemed too good. Keira raised a skeptical eyebrow. “That’s all?”
“Look, you don’t even need to do it if you really don’t want to. I’ll still give you the cat food. I’m not a monster. Jeez.”
Before Keira could object, Zoe grabbed her sleeve and dragged her farther into the store. She snagged a basket on the way past and shoved it into Keira’s other hand. “We’ll get him some dry and some wet, so he can choose his favorite. And treats. Cats love treats.”
The anxiety bled out of Keira as she watched her basket being filled. “Hey, we don’t need all this. Just enough food to last a day or two until I can find his owner.”
Zoe plucked a pack of cat toys off the shelf and threw them on top of the food. “Better to be prepared.”
Keira shook her head incredulously. “Prepared for what? The zombie apocalypse?”
“Yeah, either that or the AI-sentience Armageddon. It’s really a toss-up for which will happen first.”
At that, Keira had no hope of holding in her laughter, but Zoe didn’t seem to care. She maintained her grip on Keira’s sleeve and pulled her back to the register. “I’ll get these bagged up for you. So is that a yes for coffee? The café doesn’t open for like half an hour, but I bet I can bust down the back door and disable the alarm—”
“No! That’s okay!” Keira, concerned by the turn the conversation had taken, jogged to keep up with the sales assistant. “I can meet you there later.”
Zoe’s shoulders slumped. “Ugh, but I won’t be free again until my lunch break, and that’s literally hours away.”
“Work on your doomsday plans until then,” Keira suggested. “I want to get this food back to the cat. Besides, I’m expecting a visitor, and I don’t know