Mikey doesn
’t say anything, and a tug of guilt lies in my gut.
I turn to look at him, noticing him looking more worried than before. “Jesus, what now?” I snap.
“That movie used to scare the crap out of me,” he says with a shudder. “Why would people do that to each other?”
I scowl. “Are you serious? People don
’t do that to each other, that’s why it’s a movie.”
“But they could.” H
e gestures around us. “Look at this place—it has serial killer town written all over it.”
“Shut up, Mikey.” A shiver runs down my spine now. Damn it. “It
’s just a stupid movie that isn’t even scary, and this town is nothing like that.” I look back out the window. “Nothing at all,” I repeat, not believing my own words.
Emily comes in, followed by Alek. “It
’s freezing.”
“I know
.” I head to a walk-in closet and pull open the pine doors, shuffling through the racks of clothes, finding nothing but summer outfits. “Stupid summer apocalypse.”
I reach
up to the top shelf of the closet, standing on my tiptoes, and fumble around until my fingers grip a large cardboard box, and I pull it down. I rifle through the contents, finding only old photos, books, and old pottery—mementoes from a life long ago. I step back inside and reach up again, grabbing another box and stepping backwards with it until I can set it down on the bed. I tug open the corners and pull out sweaters and winter coats with a whoop.
“Score.”
Emily comes over, sees my find, and smiles the biggest smile I’ve seen all day. Together we rifle through the belongings until we are decked out in sweaters and thick coats.
“That
’s so much better,” Emily says, snuggling further down into her coat. “You need to see if there’s anything in your size, Alek.”
“I
’m not wearing women’s sweaters,” he states seriously.
“Dude, it
’s just a sweater,” she says as she roots through some of the drawers in the room. “You’ll freeze at this rate. You need dry clothes no matter what color they are. Now stop being a baby.”
“
I’m not wearing women’s clothes,” Alek grumbles at Emily’s back as she moves on to a second drawer.
“Alek, it
’s only a sweater,” Mikey laughs. “Quit being such a baby.”
I look at him with
a raised eyebrow. “Well, go on then. Go find something to wear.”
“What?” He stops laughing, eyeing the box and then me. “I don
’t think there’ll be anything in my size.”
“I bet there will,
” I reply.
“No, no, I
’m a big guy…”
“Not that big,
” I interject. I shuffle through the box, finding a couple of things that would be around his size, and hold them up. “These’ll do.”
Mikey
’s eyes go wide. “No. Hell no, I’m not wearing that!”
Emily turns back around with an armful of clean socks and smiles.
*
It
’s my turn to keep watch, but really, only Emily is actually sleeping. That girl can sleep through anything. Alek cuddled her until she fell asleep and then stood up with a stretch and a yawn. He comes into the bedroom where Mikey and I are talking, and sits down.
“You should sleep while you can,
” I whisper to him.
“I know, but my
mind won’t turn off. I can’t seem to turn it off. I keep coming up with different plans.” Alek shuffles on the small sofa bed to get comfy. It groans under his weight. “I keep thinking about Fallon and what he’s going to do now.”
“I wouldn
’t worry about that—he’ll be getting his soon enough,” Mikey says from the window. His dark eyes search the snow-covered streets for signs of movement, but as of yet he’s found nothing. It’s eerie, the lack of movement—unnerving, even—when we should feel a little more relaxed. He turns to look at us, the brightness of the snow casting shadows across his face. “He’ll be staying hidden for the moment. Even he isn’t stupid enough to go out in this weather.” He plucks at stray fluff on his sweater, inciting a giggle from both me and Alek.
“It really suits you, Mike
y,” Alek snickers.
Mikey groans. “Like you
fared any better than me, man.”
It
’s true—both of them look like complete idiots in matching his and hers Christmas sweaters. Alek got the better of the two with the male counterpart to Mikey’s red
All I want for Christmas
is you
sweater; but truth be told, his green
You got me babe
sweater is equally hideous. I chuckle, getting dirty looks from both of them.
“They
’re warm though, right, man?” Mikey tugs his hands into his sleeves.
“Yeah, good fucking
thing too,” Alek grumbles again. “I’m starving.”
“We all are. Hopefully in the morni
ng we can get out of this freak show place. Right now, I’d rather be fighting deaders than waiting around to find out what the hell’s going on here,” I say.
“
Well, this could be a destination for us. I was just showing Nina, I found this downstairs.” Mikey hands a little pamphlet to Alek.
“What is it?” He flips through it.
“Army barracks?” He looks up to Mikey. “I don’t get it.”
“I
’m thinking this place will be in lockdown, fully secured, and it’ll have more ration packs, sleeping bags, equipment—maybe even some weapons.” Mikey smiles. “It’s a couple of miles from here. If this weather keeps up it’ll be a hellish walk, but if we get a break in the storm I reckon we could be there in a couple of hours.”
Alek smiles back. “Now that,
sounds like a plan.”
I pull another blanket over me, still shivering underneath the giant pile of duvets and fur coats. The temperature has dropped rapidly in the last couple of hours. And from the looks of the snow outside, it ain’t going to get better anytime soon.
“I
’d do anything for central heating.” I shiver.
“I would hug that radiator to death.” Emily
’s muffled voice sounds out from under the covers.
“Oh God, me too. I would
turn it up so high I’d be sweating like a pig and only wearing my underwear.”
“So hot that I
’d be in a bikini!” Emily mumbles.
I
close my eyes and picture my once toned body in my favorite electric blue bikini, my feet padding along the beach somewhere with the sea lapping at my feet. Margarita in hand, cool sunglasses on—that would be heaven. “Damn you!” I groan.
“What? Me?”
“Yeah, you. Now all I can think about is being at the beach sipping on a margarita.”
“Sorry.”
She continues, “Sounds like some good thoughts, though. All I can think about is turning into a block of ice right here, right now. Like when you try to wake me in the morning, I’ll be a frozen statue.”
I squeeze my eyes shut,
blocking out Emily’s image and keeping the lovely beach image in my mind a little longer. The heat from the sun is beating down on my now golden brown stomach and I’m eating a fresh pineapple.
Jesus, where am I? The Bahamas?
A man walks up, his long dreads swaying by his waist. He’s selling juicy ripe melons and I smile and buy one, my mouth instinctively watering as I take a bite and the juice slips down my chin. A thought occurs to me. “Emily?”
“What?” Again, her voice is muffled. I don
’t know how she can sleep like that—though she’s not technically asleep yet, but whatever; I can’t have my head under the covers for more than a minute without feeling claustrophobic.
“Do you think there are
Rasta deaders?” I ask, giving a small frown as I imagine the Rasta with the melons turning into a deader and invading my harmonious beach scene. His long dreadlocks are now covered in blood, and the watermelons he carries in his straw bag are no longer watermelons but heads. “There must be, right? I mean, the last news I heard was that this thing—whatever it is, was global. So that would mean all kinds of crazy deaders, including Rasta deaders.”
“What
’s a Rasta?” she replies with a yawn.
“What? You don
’t know…urgh.” I frown harder as in my mind the Rasta deader begins to get a little too close for comfort and I have to smash my margarita across the side of his head. Ice cubes and my delicious drink pour down his rotten mangled face. He falls on his back, and then I’m grabbing an umbrella out of the sand and slamming it through his cold, dead brain. Stupid deader, ruining my fantasy.
I open my eyes back up, thinking about how to explain
to her what a Rasta is. “Rasta is short for Rastafarian. It was a religious movement that started in Jamaica like way back in the 1930s or something like that. It was only small to start, but ended up getting pretty huge and spreading worldwide.”
“How do you know all this?” Emily interrupts.
“There was a Rasta singer I used to listen to all the time called Bob Marley. He used to sing about standing up for yourself and being free, and loving one another.” I close my eyes, hearing the music playing in my mind and envisioning dancing around my living room to his songs. “Out of all the religions, this one made the most sense I guess.”
Silence encompasses us, and after a minute or two, Emily pipes back up. “I still don
’t get it.”
“You don
’t have to,” I groan. “Forget I said anything.”
She shuffles out of her
hole. “No, tell me. It sounds important to you. I think I remember my mom talking about some hippies with long hair at one point. Is that the same thing?”
“They
’re not hippies,” I laugh. “They do have long hair, though, or dreads. Their religion says that they can’t cut their hair, so they grow it long and twist it into dreads. It could be that they just didn’t want to cut their hair and so made that shit up, but either way, that’s how they were distinguishable—because of their hair.”
In my mind
I’m back in my beach chair, soaking up the rays again, with the twice dead Rasta by my feet. I use him as a footstool after stealing a joint out of his pocket. Rasta, priest, monk—he gets the same treatment any deader would get. “I don’t even know what my point was anymore. I just had a weird thought about all the different types of deaders that we see.”
“It is pretty weird, huh?
It makes you wonder, who survived and who didn’t. I wonder what celebrities survived. I mean, we’ve met some people that I wouldn’t have thought would survive this sort of existence, yet they do. I never would have thought I would be alive today.”
“Bob Marley once said
‘
You never know how strong you are until being strong is the only choice you have
,’” I reply wistfully.
“Sounds like
he was a clever guy,” she says and fumbles for my hand under the covers. She finds it and gives it a squeeze.
I snort
out a laugh, touched and amused by this whole conversation. “He was a weed smoking Rasta with longer hair than me, but yeah, I guess he was clever. Extremely.”
She squeezes my hand again.
I know what she’s thinking about, but I don’t want to go there. I want to put certain things out of my mind, at least for the moment.
“Go to sleep, Emily.”
I release her hand and let my breathing even out as if I’m sleeping, and she eventually shuffles back down into her cocoon. But I’m not asleep; really, I’m thinking of another quote from Bob Marley—the one that got me through those scary days and nights trapped in that little dark room of horrors, when all hope seemed lost and I didn’t think I could take any more. When all I had to cling onto—to keep me going, to keep me alive—were thoughts of Emily: rescuing her, protecting her, getting her somewhere safe.
The truth is,
everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.
*
Snow has blanketed the entire town. From house to house, shop to shop we go, finding nothing but snow. Morning light plays across the snow banks, making them glisten and sparkle as the sun rises higher. Each home we enter is the same: frozen. As if left untouched in all the years that have passed since this began.
“Has anyone noticed that nothing is dusty?” I run a finger along the useless TV and bring away a relatively clean finger. “I mean, there should be dust, right?
I liked to keep a clean home, but even I wasn’t this good.”
Mikey frowns. “Yeah, there should
be. A hell of a lot by now.”
“So
I’m guessing you’ve come to the conclusion that I have and that someone is living here?” I head into the kitchen and try the cupboards for food. Emily already checked and found nothing, but I have the urge to check again.
“Someone is living here?” Emily looks around us
warily.
“Not
here
here, but here.” I gesture around us and get frustrated when she doesn’t catch my meaning. “Like, the town here.”
“Oh, that
’s less creepy.” She sighs.
“Really? It
’s less creepy having a town with no deaders but a food-hoarding clean freak? Because whoever it is has taken every scrap of food, drink, and medicine from every house we’ve been in so far. We’re in the middle of the apocalypse and their top priority was dusting. That’s
less
creepy and weird to you?” I raise an eyebrow.
“Well
, when you put it like that . . .” She laughs nervously.
I try not to laugh back,
I really try, but a smile graces my lips eventually. It pulls on the scar on my cheek. It’s still healing, but getting much better. Of course it will be there forever—not like I can go find a cosmetic surgeon around here. But I’ll be glad when I feel comfortable enough to smile again without worrying that my face is going to split open.
“L
et’s go, get out of this fucking weird town. There’s nothing here,” Alek grumbles.
“No, l
et’s check a couple more houses, man. Whoever it is, or whatever it is, can’t have cleared out all of them. There has to be something…somewhere.” Mikey heads to the front door.
We
’ve long ago given up going to the back door and trying to sneak in, since it really makes no difference. No one has confronted us, and we haven’t spotted any deaders. It’s a ghost town.
“
Uh, guys,” Mikey yells from the front door. “You might want to come and see this.”
We all look between ourselves
and then rush to the front door, tripping over each other to get there first. You’d think we’d have more sense than to go barging off into the unknown, but our fear was left in someone’s living room about three houses ago, when we all came to the conclusion that there really was nothing to fear around here—or at least nothing we’ve stumbled upon in the immediate vicinity.
Alek is first
to the doorway, closely followed by me and then Emily. I push my way through to the front using elbows and knees, since both men seem to be transfixed by whatever it is out there. I stop when I finally reach the front.
In the middle of the driveway
is a basket of food. It’s only small, but there’s clearly enough in it for us all to get something from it. I take a step out to go and get it, but Mikey grabs my arm and pulls me back.
“Don
’t.”
“Why? I
’m hungry,” I snap.
“It could be a trap.”
“Damn it, I hate it when you’re right, Mikey.”
I look
all around us and up and down the street, from window to window of all the houses surrounding, but don’t see anything out of place—just the little basket of food beckoning me to come and get it, and some footsteps in the snow leading away from it.
“There
’s no one here,” I grumble.
“
You can’t be sure of that. Someone put that basket there. We need to think about this logically. They could have snipers, deader traps, anything,” Mikey says in a hushed voice.
I roll my eyes. “Shut up. You do not believe that.”
“That’s not the point. It
could
happen,” he says seriously.
“This is stupid,
” I whisper.
“Better to be safe than sorry.” Mikey turns to Alek. “Go to the bedroom window, see if you can see anyone hiding. Maybe we can attach the curtain po
les together, create a long enough stick to pull the basket toward us?”
“Also stupid,” I whisper again. I decide to
throw caution to the wind when my stomach grumbles loudly, making Emily jump behind me. I take a deep breath and run for the basket.
My feet slip
on the fresh snow, my heart beating like a herd of wild buffalo in my chest. I reach the wicker basket, grab it, and head back to the house, all the time waiting for the whizzing of bullets to go zooming past my ears. I hear Mikey shouting—but thankfully no bullets—but I refuse to look up. I just keep placing foot after foot in front of one another until I make it back to the door and charge inside, barging past Mikey and the others and heading straight into the living room.
I hear the door shut and they all storm
into the room. I grin, they frown. This is bad.
“What?”
“What do you mean, what?” Mikey shouts. “I just said that it could be a trap, and then you ran out there anyway. You could have been killed.” Mikey looks seriously pissed, and it’s all I can do to not roll my eyes at him again.
“Well, I couldn
’t see anything, and we’re hungry. This,” I point to the food in the basket, “is food. Now stop yelling at me and let’s eat.” I pull some of the cans out, trying to ignore his angry stare, and begin to distribute everything between us. SpaghettiOs, canned beans, chopped tomatoes, and some tuna. My stomach growls again. Alek and Emily dive straight in, ignoring mine and Mikey’s little spat. Sure, he’s right and I was being reckless, but hey, aren’t I always? Besides, his stupid stick idea was just that: stupid.
Mikey grabs the crook of my elbow. “I want a word with you.” He pulls me from the room, and
I go with him without argument because let’s face it, I kinda knew that he was going to do this. So I’ll suck it up and take it like a big girl.
I cross my arms in front of me. “What?”
Mikey places both his hands on my shoulders, looking into my face, his own expression one big giant frown.
“I said what? I
’m hungry and I want—”
Mikey cuts me off by placin
g his lips on mine, gently kissing me as his hands move to the back of my head and he presses his body to mine. He parts my lips with his tongue, and I open up to him, embracing his kiss—almost feeding off it as if he were my life support and the kiss my oxygen. Mikey pulls away, leaving us both a little breathless, and my chin a little itchy from his beard.