by Kypers, Ryan
“Hey,” she said, grabbing the back of my shirt in a gentle and affectionate way. “I’ve never really thanked you for everything.”
“Everything?” I asked.
She smiled, “Yeah, for all of this. You took me into your home and have provided more than what should have been expected from a boyfriend only dating me for a few days before this all started.”
She was standing now, arms around me. “You have really taken care of me better than I could ask for. So, thanks!” she pecked me on the cheek at that.
I stood, awestruck at Chelsea’s appreciation. I had never thought anything of it when I provided for her. It was just something that I did without thinking, and I figured that to be a good thing. Well, it was a good thing until I smelled burned eggs fuming up from the pan in front of me. “Shit, shit, shit!” I yelled as I flipped the eggs onto the plate to the side. “Sorry about that.”
Chelsea merely smiled, “I’m sure that I am able to cut around the burned section,” she said, taking the plate from my hand. “And I expect some bacon on the side.”
I laughed at her request, “Right away, miss.” I pulled the bacon out of the freezer and broke off a couple of pieces (which was not easy as my smart ass decided to do it fully frozen). “Just to clarify things,” I said as the bacon sizzled on top of the frying pan. “Just because it is the end of the world, it does not mean that you can wear the pants.”
“Would you rather I didn’t wear pants?” she asked, eyebrows raised.
I had to control my bacon for a second, “Just remember, Jesus is watching!” I pointed up to the sky and we both belted out laughing uncontrollably. Chelsea even managed a full on snort, extending the moment.
We had finally settled down after a good thirty seconds. I remembered to flip the bacon over, cooking it in its own grease. “I had a dream last night,” I said.
Chelsea was chewing her eggs, but was able to motion with her hands that she was interested.
“It was about the first contaminated that I killed,” I said, toying with the eggs in the frying pan. “Sometimes I’ll still think of it, every now and again.” I turned off the burner and placed the bacon on a napkin, draining some of the grease from it. “It bothers me, but I can’t pinpoint how. I don’t regret killing the thing. I mean it was pretty much already dead, but there’s something about the whole scenario that just really makes me cringe inside.”
I brought over the plate of bacon, laying it on the kitchen table for us to eat.
“Well you shouldn’t worry about it,” Chelsea said, picking up a piece of bacon. “It’s you or them. That’s the unfortunate way of things now…” her voice trailed off.
I think I finally realized why the first time that I killed one of the contaminated was finally bothering me, and Chelsea did too. If it was me or them, I would have to kill Chelsea as if she was nothing but a monster, a contaminated. I did not want that. She may be the last person that I will ever interact with, and she is my girlfriend.
Her fork fell to the plate with a light clatter, not as if she threw it down, but more of a light drop with a weighty contact. I was about to go over to her when she got up and walked away to the hallway, she walked swiftly as I heard light footsteps going up the stairs to the bedroom.
I was pissed off, not at her but myself. I’d been able to keep her spirits up for so many weeks, helping her remember that the military should be coming back any day now, reminding her that we could survive on our own, her parents…
Coal jumped onto a chair, her head just poking over the kitchen table. Her nose was sniffing into the air in the direction of the bacon and eggs. I cupped my hand around her cheek and scratched her behind her dark ears. She was purring within a few seconds. I had to smile at that. My cat was the only thing that could always cheer me up no matter the situation. She was so sweet and innocent that I could not help but smile when she was around.
I snapped off a piece of the crispy bacon and held it out for her to sniff. Before long she snapped it up into her mouth, teeth not even grazing against my skin. I went to get another piece of bacon and saw the burned remains of the eggs that I had made for Chelsea. I took the entire plate and placed it on the floor for her to get too. She happily jumped off of her perch on the chair and began purring while eating burned egg. Whatever makes you happy.
I made my way up the stairs and into the bedroom. Chelsea was slumped over the edge of the bed, her hands in her face. She did not hear me coming. “Hey,” I managed to say. Proper words for proper times. “Uh, you know, I’m not quitting on you yet.”
“It doesn’t matter. You know what those military guys told us, it spreads once it’s able to enter the bloodstream,” she wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “I’m just going to end up like any other contaminated.”
I sat on the bed behind her, gently placing my hands on her shoulders. “Well,” I began. “At least you’re my contaminated.”
Chelsea let out a soft snort of laughter at that. She turned her head, puffy red eyes staring into my own. “Well when you put it like that, it makes it sound so much better, as if I have herpes or something like that.”
“You have herpes?!” I said, doing my best acting job at being surprised. “What else aren’t you telling me?”
She laughed, a full laugh this time. Her white teeth, straightened from years of excruciatingly painful braces showed through. I relaxed a little bit. The only thing worse than being in an apocalyptic scenario where nerds in their mother’s basements got more and more excited with each waking day until they got their throats ripped out by blood mongering monsters was bad enough, was the future realization that I might have to do it solo, and I really did not want to have to go through that alone.
“Come here,” She said still smiling. She pulled me close with a hand behind my head straight in for a kiss, a sweet and loving kiss. It was unquestionably the best kiss I have ever had up until that very moment in my life.
“Woah,” I said.
“Something wrong?” she asked.
“That was just, woah.”
“Let’s see if I can’t wow you more.”
“What about the herpes?!” I am such a smooth talker.
“Shut up.”
Safe sex guys.
Chapter 6
I was downstairs on the dark brown living room couch, petting Coal while reading a book on Ancient Rome when I heard Chelsea’s footsteps coming down the stairs. “It’s about time. If you took any longer showers, we’ll run out of water,” I yelled through the hallway door.
The door opened with her frown popping through. “It’s not like anyone else is really using any of the reservoir water,” she countered. “I think I’ll use enough for everyone, just to keep things normal.”
“Well what if Coal wants a bath?” I said as I scratched her under the chin. “You want a bath, don’t you little girl,” I said in my best baby voice.
Chelsea laughed at me at that followed by an awkward silence. She finally spoke up after a good solid thirty seconds of quiet, which in retrospect was kind of nice, as I was trying to read, “We’re low on supplies.” I loved how she was so blunt with her thoughts, unless I got her mad. Then vagueness and one word answers became her best friend.
I sighed, placing my bookmark, a three of hearts playing card, “Well what can we do about it? I mean we still have a decent amount of canned stuff in the basement and that’s not going to go bad anytime soon. We also have running water which is heated too, though we should probably be conserving what gas we have left. I wonder how much gas we do have left.”
“Please focus,” she said as she sat down on the couch on the other side of Coal. She began to pet the cat as she spoke, “We really should go out and see if there’s anything useful that we can get our hands on. I mean we can’t live on what we have here forever, and I’m beginning to have my doubts about the military ever returning.”
That hit me in the chest harder than I thought it would. I had always been able to say it t
o myself, inside my own thoughts, that the military probably was not going to be returning to get us. They probably had larger fish to fry, or shoot multiple times in the head or whatever. Hearing Chelsea say it really put the final nail in my hopes of the military returning. We were among the forgotten few, the brash survivors still trying to find their way in this skeleton of a world.
“I guess you’re right,” I said in a more depressing way than I intended to.
She lay a hand on top of my own, “Daryl, dear, I’m always right.” We both laughed at her statement. It was amazing to see how hard I tried to keep her spirits up and she did it for me without any effort whatsoever. It put a strange feeling in my chest.
“Alright, what’s close enough that we don’t need to drive and can get to closely and easily?” I asked. We had cars, two in fact, but I did not want to drive them. Cars are noisy and attract the attention of many contaminated and deer. I already had too much interaction with cars and deer in the past, and I would rather avoid all confrontation with the contaminated if possible. I also wanted to save the cars for an emergency situation. If, for some outlandish reason, the house was compromised and the contaminated took it over, I wanted to save the cars as our way out.
“Well there’s the deli down the street, which is probably the closest place to here, only about two blocks, right?” she asked.
I nodded. “Yeah, it’s only two blocks. Do you think it will have anything of actual use though? I mean the deli would have a lot of refrigerated things that are probably expired, and I personally don’t enjoy the flavor of moldy.”
Chelsea’s face scrunched in thought, “Hm, maybe. But at least it will have batteries and other things that we can save and use in case the power ever does go out. And, let’s be honest, after four weeks without any, a chocolate bar would be most welcome.”
“Anything for you, my dear. I would gladly risk my life for the chocolate that the lady most desires,” I replied with my deep announcer’s voice, though it cracked at the end. “Alright, I’ll go check it out. Wait here for me-“
“What?” she raised her eyebrows and shifted her head to the side as if she did not hear me properly.
“I’ll go check it out-“
“Problem!” She said with a raised hand. “You can’t go alone.”
“Oh come on. I am more than capable, and it’s only two blocks, not a couple of miles. I’m sure that I could be there and back within thirty minutes, tops. If it comes to it, I can always sprint home. It really isn’t that bad of a run,” I said.
She shook her head, “And what if a few of those contaminated attack you? What then? Yeah, you are good with that baseball bat, but there’s only so much that one person can do against a bunch of them!”
“And what are you going to do, Chels?” I said it harsher than intended. “I’m sorry, but you are in no condition to go out and fight against the hordes of hell. I can’t risk you for some batteries and chocolate.”
“But you can risk you?!”
I knew I dug my hole, “Please don’t guilt me into letting you go. You are recovering from a sickness and are possibly fighting off another. You shouldn’t be exerting yourself. I’m faster than you and more slippery for them to catch,” I took her hands in my own. “I won’t be able to perform as well thinking about you.”
“Was that why you were a bit off last night?”
“What? No! Oh you perv,” I chuckled, thankful that she was dropping it, for now anyway. I wiped the embarrassment off of my face, “I’ll need you at the door, ready just in case something does happen.”
She nodded her head in agreement.
“I’ve laid out a bunch of other baseball bats and weapons that we can possibly use in the mudroom. There’s a wrench, but it’s kind of really heavy, so I’d leave that. There’s a copper pipe which is nice and solid, but is short on reach.” My mind was racing, trying to think of something that Chelsea could use to defend herself if needed.
“You know I did play softball at one point, right?” she said.
I nodded, “Yes, but the baseball bat doesn’t kill very easily. You need to put a lot of force behind it and you are not guaranteed a solid hit. The contaminated move in strange ways and a miss is more possible than you might think. I mean, you have to time your swings with the proper power. If your first shot misses then you probably will be off balance and then that will leave an opening for the contaminated to-”
“The bat will be fine,” she said with a hint of finality in her voice, cutting me off.
“Okay then,” I said as I stood up, grabbing my crimson Rawlings baseball bat leaning against the door. “Let’s do this.”
I opened the thick wooden door at the front of the house and peered outside. It was a beautiful day out. The sun was up, warm and not too bright to see well. A few clouds littered the sky, but they were high above with no threat of rain. There was a cool breeze counter acting the sun above, but keeping the temperature at a decent, if not slightly chilly sixty degrees.
I looked up and down the street. It was entirely void of life, but almost looked as if everyone was merely sleeping. Cars were parked in driveways and a sprinkler system was even running. Lights that had never been turned off still shone but were overwhelmed by the sun’s own. It was as if something took away all of the people living on the street but left everything exactly how it was. Actually that is pretty much what happened, barring two.
Once the street had been confirmed safe by my standards, I stepped onto the porch and down the front stairs onto the lawn. Suddenly an idea occurred to me. I went up to my car and opened the driver side door. In the door pocket, an air horn lay, still usable. It was something that I confiscated from my friend Joe a while ago when he decided to misuse it while I was driving. Joseph thought it would be funny to let the air horn wail while I was doing sixty-five down the highway, making me flinch every time the horn was squeezed in the concealed area of the car. Needless to say he never got it back.
I ran the still good can of condensed air up the porch and handed it to a very confused Chelsea standing in the doorway. “Take this,” I said.
“Okay, got that. But why?” She asked. “Are you going to forget where you live and this is to flag you down with?” she added, she always added.
I pointed to the kitchen, “On the back of the kitchen door, the pockets, there is some tape. If something happens and you see me getting chased by a swarm of contaminated, use the tape to create a sound bomb!” I said, extremely excited at my idea. “Just go from the bottom up with the tape. Once it’s screeching your ears out, just throw it somewhere that I won’t be, or at me if you’re really mad.”
She gave me a peck on the cheek, “I hope we won’t need this.”
“I know, and I hope that you’re not mad,” and with that I was off, back down the porch and onto the street. Well I was not fully on the street, as that would have been stupid. I stayed on the sidewalk and remained low. My steps were light and my biggest advantage was being in running shoes, though hopefully I would not need to run. Being held up in a house for the past few weeks most likely had affected my endurance whilst running, and I did not want to test that with a pack of raging cannibals at my heels.
I made my way to the end of the street without incident, though I almost tripped on a storm drain once. There was a large tree at the corner of the street with red leaves not yet fallen from the autumn’s chill on an open lawn. I ran up to it and concealed myself behind the tree. I poked my head out, first to the left, nothing, then to the right, nothing. I looked back to the left out of force of habit. I swear that I saw a tumbleweed fly by, but my mind could have been playing tricks on me.
I crossed the street after looking both ways, force of habit, for cars. Walking across the street in the middle of the day was so awkward with the ear splitting silence coming from all directions. It was almost as if I was taking a midnight walk around town with the silence but void of the running televisions and occasional cars driving past, illuminat
ing the way. Once on the other side, I could see the deli. It was close, no more than a few hundred feet away, and there were no signs of the contaminated anywhere. My pace quickened, though I made sure to keep my steps light and as quiet as I possibly could.
I reached the deli’s door in a few quick seconds and opened it with the tingling of little bells hanging off of the door. I was greeted by that fresh deli smell, or not at all. It smelled of ruined and rotten meats. The air was thick with it and I saw why. A body lay behind the counter next to the register. There was an entrance hole in its head, but the exit wound was facing the tiled flooring. Dried blood washed all around the body as flies still swarmed to it. I estimated that the body had been here for at least four weeks, as that was the last time that the military was here, and I had not killed this person.
Combining with the beautiful scent of the rotting corpse, the meat behind the deli counter was swelled and a lovely shade of green and always pleasant whitish cream mold. Though the refrigerators were still running, there is only so much time before any meat goes rotten. A shame, really, I could have frozen some of the meat to save. Chelsea and I could have had a hopping barbeque with some of the different meats there.
I quickly made my way over to the freezers, which smelled considerably less horrid as fresh air was constantly being pumped through to keep the food cold. There were a few boxes of ice cream, whipped cream (that could come in handy…), and little else with actual nutritional importance.
The open refrigerator had hotdogs in them which hadn’t yet expired. I grabbed four packets of twenty hotdogs each. I could freeze them, so at least we could have some variety in our meal, albeit that variety would be hotdogs and for a very long time.
I found a few loaves of bread that had no mold on them, yet, though they were a day or two past the expiration date. I took two of these and made my way down some of the other aisles.
Finding the chocolate was easy. There was a whole rack of it and in great variety. I threw a bunch into my bag, now bulging. There were also a few packets of pasta which could be nice for a romantic dinner, if we were able to have one.