He didn’t make himself a similar bed, but spread out a blanket on the ground and used a couple stuffed animals of his own as pillows.
“I have a sleeping bag if you want it.” I pointed at my packed duffle bag he’d dragged inside for me. “You’re welcome to use it.”
He tucked an arm behind his head. “I’m good. Besides, do you really want a smelly man sleeping in your bag? I haven’t showered in days.”
I hadn’t thought about that. “When you put it that way, no, but you look uncomfortable.”
“I’m good. I have all my stuff stashed at the motel on ninth and ninth. We’ll grab it tomorrow when you’re feeling better.”
The motel on ninth and ninth wasn’t far away, a few blocks at best. “I could’ve walked there.”
He smirked. “Yeah, I don’t think so. You’re still a bit loopy in the head and even though my muscles are hard to ignore, carrying you while walking your cat doesn’t seem all that joyous. There’s only an hour of daylight left anyway. Best to camp here and then figure out what we’re doing tomorrow.”
I settled against a large teddy bear with my face against its belly. “Do you have a car?”
He laughed. “Of course I do. Several in fact. Don’t you?”
“No, I was saving up for one.”
“Saving up for one? What’s with that?” He shook his head and continued to lie there all relaxed. “You’re doing it all wrong, my naïve little friend.” He waved his arm. “Just point at whichever car you like and say, ‘mine’ and it’s yours. That’s how I’ve been claiming things.” He pointed to a vaporizer on the top shelf. “That’s mine. See how it works?”
“Stop it, I’m serious. I need a car so I can charge my phone, call my dad, and get the heck out of here.”
“I see.” He dragged out his last word and turned to stare at the ceiling for quite some time before casting his gaze on me again. “Where have you been hiding for the past two months?”
My shoulders stiffened. “My dad installed a bomb shelter in our backyard.”
“Bomb shelter... nice. Lucky you.” He paused. “Here’s the thing, and I hate to burst your pretty little bubble, but it’s not going to be that easy. First, you’re not going to get any reception. I’ve tried. Second, do you think I would be hoofing it if I could be driving instead?”
He lay back on his pillows and stared at the ceiling again. “I don’t mean to knock your plans, I really don’t, but you’ve got to be realistic. The satellite systems have all gone haywire and the roads are either so littered with junk and debris they’re hard to maneuver, or giant craters have wiped out huge sections altogether.” He rolled his head to the side to look at me. “So I assume you haven’t seen I-15, have you?”
I shook my head. My chest grew heavier with each word he spoke.
“Between Natesville and Wilder, gone. There is no road, just a huge hole where those cities used to be. Viaducts have collapsed. Hundreds, if not thousands, of abandoned cars block good sections of road, and nearly every bridge between here and Madison has crumbled into the river. Those that do remain are hanging by a thread. I wouldn’t cross ‘em if you paid me. Well, maybe if you paid me.”
Natesville and Wilder? That was over a hundred miles from here. And Madison? That was the next state over. Another state. How big was this thing? I straightened and drew my knees to my chest. “What do you think happened?”
He kept his eyes on me and took a minute before speaking. “I wish I knew. Meteors are my guess, though it doesn’t explain the crazy weather patterns we tend to get now.”
Crazy weather? I wrapped my arms around my legs, trying to ease my rising panic. “You didn’t see it? Where were you?”
“I didn’t say that I didn’t see it, I just can’t explain it is all. I’m not a scientist.” He turned his gaze to the ceiling and tucked his arms under his head.
I waited for him to say more, but several minutes ticked by without a word. “You didn’t tell me where you were?”
He took a large breath and released it through his nose. “I know.”
What kind of answer was that? Now every worst-case possible scenario ran through my mind. Criminal? Mental patient? That was probably it. He’d escaped from a psych unit for the criminally insane. Great. “You’re scaring me.”
He glanced at me before looking back to the ceiling. “No need to be scared. I’m as gentle as a baby panda. Maybe even more so, but I’m not going back to my previous life, so the less you know about me the better. This is my opportunity to create a different, more improved life for myself.”
“So basically, you’re taking advantage of a pretty crappy situation?”
“I wouldn’t say that. I’d say it’s more like I’m trying to find the silver lining in all this mess.”
“There is no silver lining.”
He chuckled. “Potato potahto.”
“But what about when everyone comes back?” This wasn’t a game. At some point, people would return. They would, and... actually, I had no idea what would happen at that point. Not a clue, though I was certain anything this weirdo took and claimed as his, he’d have to return. I glanced down at my Doc Martens. Shoot.
“It’s been two months, kid. If they were coming back, they would’ve done it by now.”
“You’re delusional!” I threw the teddy bear at him. “They will be back! All of this is temporary and you’re crazy to think it isn’t.” I know I joked about it being the end of the world, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t! It couldn’t be. “People don’t disappear, you know? Especially this many people!”
He laid the teddy bear to the side and sat upright in the dim light, looking at me without a hint of anything but seriousness on his face. “Look around, because apparently they do.”
Tears pushed against my blinking eyelids, and I swallowed hard. My lungs began to burn and my chest compressed, squeezing the little remaining air out through my nose. But no air came in, as though a handful of cotton balls had been shoved into my throat. My blood thrummed inside my ears and my heart pounded, smacking my ribcage like an angry fist against a door. He had to be wrong. No, he was wrong.
I stood quickly, but then fell to my hands and knees, holding the ground, staring at the dizzying tiles spinning around me. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.
He knelt in front of me, took my face between his hands, and forced me to look him in the eyes. “It’s okay. You’re okay. Small breaths. Like this.” He took a breath in and released it. “Come on. Your turn.”
My arms flailed at my sides, smacking the air as though I was drowning, but he refused to let go.
“Look at me.” His eyes locked onto mine, and stayed with me even when I tried to remove myself from his hands. He mirrored my movements, turning his head as I turned mine. “Slow down. Relax. Everything’s going to be okay. You’re fine. Try a small breath now.”
I gripped his upper arms, hanging on to him out of desperation and fear that if I let go of this person, this one other person, the earth would spin so fast I would be thrown off the planet and float away.
“That’s it. One breath, now another.”
Somehow, a squeak of air pushed past the invisible blockage in my throat and my lungs found a hint of relief. Another tiny breath managed to follow the first, until I gasped, taking in miniscule sips of oxygen, one right after another.
“That’s a girl. Take your time. You’ve got it now.”
A word here and there broke through my erratic sobs. “You’re wrong.”
He tugged me into his arms, holding me against his chest while his large hand held the back of my head. “For your sake, I hope I am.”
“Here. You need to eat something.” He placed a tray over my lap before setting a bottle of water and a couple of pills next to a paper bowl filled with something I couldn’t distinguish, but which smelt an awful lot like canned dog food. “It’s the best I could come up with, but you need to get something in you that’s not all just sugary crap. So eat this. It’s go
t meat and vegetables. Of course, it’s all coated in fat sauce, but that’s beside the point.”
I lifted a spoonful and sniffed it, trying to make out the contents in the muted light. “What is it? It smells awful.”
“Canned stew. Nothing fancy like I said, but much better than chips and soda, or whatever you’ve been eating lately. I even warmed it up as best I could over a pine-scented candle, so enjoy.”
I hesitated, but with him sitting across from me, watching my every move, I managed to slip a bite of goo into my mouth and swallow it. It wasn’t half bad. “Thanks.”
He pointed his finger at me and winked. “You’re welcome. Eat up and then get some rest. Looks like tomorrow is going to be a long day.”
I let the spoon hover over the glop. “What are we going to do tomorrow?”
He plumped his stuffed animals and lay against them, seeming to settle in for the night. “Well, I had planned on pillaging the town and returning to my lair, but now that you and your cat have decided to come into the picture and make me a part of your gang and force some morals into me, I assume we’re going hunting for humans.”
Hunger left me, and I placed the spoon next to the bowl. “I thought you said there wasn’t anybody left.”
“I know what I said.” He rolled onto his side with his back facing me. “Doesn’t mean we can’t look.”
“I just want to find my dad, that’s all.”
“Then we’ll do everything we can to find him, but for now, can you please eat your semi-nutritious dinner and go to sleep? All your girlie chit-chat is keeping me from getting my eight hours of beauty sleep.”
I stared at his back and settled against the wall, slumping a little. He annoyed me, and I could hardly wait to be rid of him, but even though he might be a convicted serial killer or something equally terrifying, I was grateful I wasn’t alone.
Callie curled up next to him, lying next to his messy head. Apparently, she was grateful too. It didn’t even bother me that she chose him over me. I could live with that.
“Hey?” I fixed my blankets. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Seriously?” He rolled over and faced me, careful not to squish my cat. “You’re not done talking? It’s late, you know?”
“Sorry.”
He positioned Callie near his chest and scratched her back while keeping his dark eyes on me. “So what’s your question?”
I had almost forgotten what I had wanted to ask as I stared at him staring at me. “Umm, do you know that you never told me your name or asked me mine?” We’d been together for several hours now, and I had no idea what to call him beside the expletives that ran through my mind. But if we were going to be together for however long it may be, I should probably call him something other than “the crazy guy.”
“You know, when a guy breaks into a pharmacy and steals drugs for you and then manages to stitch you up, feed you congealed canned stew, and make you a sweet bed out of toilet paper and Snuggie blankets, you’d think you’d ask his name.” He smiled. “But you’re not that kind of person, are you?”
“I’m not... what? That’s not nice! I forgot to ask.” That kind of person? What did that even mean?
“If you say so.”
“You’re impossible, you know?” So aggravating. I brought the blanket up to my chin and rolled over with my back facing him. “Forget it. I don’t care what your name is anymore.”
He laughed, which grated on my already thin nerves. “Well, it’s Cole, and I would normally say it’s a pleasure to meet you, but honestly, I’m not so sure that it is.”
I scanned the various MP3 Players, headphones, and gadgets on display, searching for the car charger that would work with my particular phone. Dad didn’t have a lot of money, so I didn’t own a smart phone like most of the kids at my school. Cheap. Useful. Portable. Dad didn’t care about data plans, searching the web, or my desperate need to text my friends.
“Texting? Why do kids insist on finding ways to be less and less sociable? Call your friends and actually talk to them, or better yet, write them a note. That’s what we used to do back when I was in high school when nobody owned cell phones. We wrote on a piece of paper, then folded it into a triangle and tossed it at our friends when we passed them in the hall. Somehow, even without phones, we managed to communicate and meet up at the right places at the right time.”
He didn’t get it. No one wrote notes anymore, and even though my phone had its limits, I made it work and tried not to complain—too much. One girl didn’t even own a phone at all, not a cell phone, not even a landline, so I knew things could be far worse than not owning the latest gadget.
But as I looked at my phone, and the various modern chargers hanging there, I wished Dad hadn’t been so antiquated.
“You ready to go?” Cole approached, snacking on a half-eaten candy bar. A few unopened candy bars stuck out of the breast pocket of his jacket.
“Almost. I’m trying to find the right charger for my cell phone.”
He nodded, took a bite, and talked as he chewed. “Good, even if it is a little misguided. It shows you haven’t completely given up. You’re tougher than you thought.” He held the candy bar out to me. “Want a bite?”
Really? “Gross. I’ll pass.”
He shrugged, slipped the last piece into his mouth, and then opened wide to show me the mushy, chocolaty, brown mess on his tongue.
“Eeww. You’re disgusting!”
“Awesome.” Then he did it again.
“You’re worse than a child, I swear.”
He smiled. “That’s what I’ve been told.”
I was about to look through the chargers once more, but stopped and turned around as he began to walk away. “What did you mean I’m misguided?”
He grabbed a package of green ear buds and looked them over before placing them back on the shelf and opting instead for the neon-pink ones which he slipped into his pocket next to the pilfered candy bars. “We already discussed this. Satellites are down, remember? But if you want to figure it out for yourself, then that’s your right. Do what you gotta do.”
“I’m looking at chargers because my dad left me a message, telling me where he and my brother were, but my battery died before I could hear the whole thing.”
“Wow. Hate when that happens. The irony.”
“Can you please be serious for one minute? Please?” The longer I spent with this guy the more appealing my idiot brother looked.
He cleared his voice, raised his chin, and held up his hand in the manner of Queen Elizabeth. “Of course. Please proceed.”
I tipped my head and gave him an incredulous look. “Just be normal.”
He dropped his arm to his side and shrugged. “Now you’re confusing me. What do you want? Serious or normal? I can’t do both.”
“Forget it.” I waved him off and turned to the display of chargers again. “I don’t know why I even bother. You’re impossible.”
He came to stand at my side, our shoulders nearly touching, then grabbed a charger from the shelf, opened the package, and took my phone from my hands. He connected it at the base and smiled. “This should do the trick.”
“Thanks.” I tried to take my phone from him, but he held it outside my reach.
“Not so fast, short one. First, you need to tell me your name. It’s only fair since you know mine.”
I released an irritated breath. “My name’s Tess, and my cat’s name is Callie, in case you want to know that too.” I reached for my phone again, and this time snagged it from his grasp.
He glanced over his shoulder toward the back of the store where we’d left my kitten. “Callie, huh? You do realize your cat isn’t Calico but more like a Tabby, right?”
“I didn’t name her Callie because of the color of her fur! I liked the name, okay?”
He raised both hands, palms out. “I was only pointing out the obvious. No need to be all defensive.”
“I’m not being defensive—”
“Yeah,
you kind of are.” He took a step away from me, palms still raised. “Have you thought about checking out the women’s personal hygiene area by any chance? I hear they make pills for this kind of thing.”
“You’re kidding me, right? You didn’t just suggest my aggravation with you is due to PMS and not based on the fact you’re freakishly annoying?”
He removed a candy bar from his pocket and tossed it at my feet. “Look, chocolate.” Then he turned and took off down the aisle.
“You’re going to need these.” Cole knelt and placed several bottles of vitamins next to my already stuffed bag.
“I don’t have room. I can barely fit everything in there as it is.” My pile grew larger every time Cole left me and reappeared carrying more stuff—jerky, sunscreen, scarves, and gloves, packages of gum, knee-length socks, and now vitamins. “I won’t be able to carry my bag.”
“You make things more difficult than they need to be, I swear.” He left me again and returned with an empty shopping cart. Why hadn’t I thought of that before? Here I was, busting my back, when all along I could have used a cart like the homeless do—I was homeless after all.
I grabbed my bag to toss inside, but he pulled the cart away from me. “First things first—get in.”
“Huh?”
“It’ll be fun, I promise.”
“Yeah, I don’t think so, but thanks anyway.” Trying to understand Cole was like trying to understand calculus—nearly impossible. For a guy who kept confessing his “adultness,” he sure didn’t act any more mature than a ten-year-old.
I reached for the cart again, but he yanked it away. “Get in.”
“We don’t have time for this—”
“Of course we do! There’s always time for some fun, and right now we could use a little. You could use a little. Remember I said I’d only stay if you promised not to poop at my party?”
Poop at my party? “Do you mean be a party pooper?”
“Not much of a difference, really, but you promised, so get in or I’m walking out the bullet-riddled front door and not coming back.” He stepped backward, taking the cart with him. He turned it one way and then the other, testing me by wiggling it back and forth.
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