softly, debating on when I should pry myself away from him, that was when I heard it. A soft, repetitive thumping. The sound of a heartbeat.
Chapter 7: Tricky Tricky
Ye shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil.
At first, I thought I was delusional. I was so overcome with grief I thought I might be having some sort of screwed up fantasy, but as I pressed my ear harder into his chest, and I heard it loud and clear. A heartbeat. And it wasn’t mine…
My head whipped upward and I scowled at him, “Oh, no.”I scrambled backwards, getting to my feet and peered down at him as he let out a gust of air from his lungs.
“Georgie,” he wheezed. Then he caught his breath and sinister smirk spread across his lips. “Did I ever tell you I was on the swim team in high school? Did you know that I held the record for holding my breath under water the longest.”
My breaths were short and rapid. My cheeks were red and tingling. None of this was funny. I was seconds away from killing him all over again. And this time it would be for real.
“Do you know what that record was?” Colin went on.
“No,” I said, grinding my teeth together.
“Three. Whole. Minutes,” he bragged as he sat upright. Then he began laughing. He laughed so loud the sound of his deep voice echoed off of the piles of rubble surrounding us. “You were like a depressing record,” he said in between laughs, “I never knew you were so emotional.” Colin rose to his feet and wiped the dust from his clothes. “You’re lucky, he mocked. “You’re free of this awful world that we live in.” Again more laughter. He hunched over and hugged his sides to catch his breath.
And me, I was fuming.
That was a cruel, wicked, evil prank to play on someone. To play dead like that, especially in the situation we were in was…. I couldn’t even come up with more words. The only thing I was focused on was how much I despised him at that very moment.
“You’re a jerk!” I yelled.
Colin exhaled, still smiling. He walked over and placed his hands on shoulders. “Calm down. It was just a joke.”
“A crappy joke.” As much as I tried to settle down I couldn’t. I felt betrayed. He probably just did what he did to see how I would react and I cursed myself for being so stupid. I backed away from him, stomping in the opposite direction. “Stay away from me!”
He grabbed me by the hand. “Georgie,” he sighed.
Yanking my hand away, I whipped my free hand around and backhanded him. “I said stay away from me!”
Colin’s mouth dropped open as he cupped the right side of his face. “Georgina, what do you want me to say? I’m sorry. Well, I am. I’m sorry.”
I marched forward ignoring him. “Leave me alone.”
“You can’t go off on your own! Mr. Baker said we have to stay together! And we haven’t found any supplies, yet!”
“I’m sure you can manage without me. And if you die this time, believe me, none of my tears will be shed over you.”
Pretty soon, I was far enough away from him that all I could hear was his voice echoing, “Georgina, drop the bitch act! It was a joke! Now come back here! You’ll be eaten alive out there.”
“I’d rather be eaten alive than spend any more time with you!” That was the last thing I said to him. And if he did shout something back, I couldn’t hear what he said. There had to be at least a mile between us and in my opinion; a mile wasn’t far enough.
My blood was boiling, and twice during my walk, I shrieked out so loud that I thought some of the anger, might have escaped through those screams but it didn’t.
The tattered sign that read Lincoln, Nebraska dangled over my head as I plopped down on a pile of metal and rocks. “I can’t believe him,” I growled. He had me so worried that I was frantic. I poured my heart out to him. And what do I get? Some joke. Some sick, twisted joke.
I kicked a rock in front of me and watched as it rolled across the dusty road. Seriously, what was he thinking? And why in God’s name would he think that I would think that any of this was funny? When I pictured him laughing, I had the urge to scream again. Instead, I picked up an even bigger rock and chucked it across the road. I focused on the tiny dust particles that circled in the air every time the rock bounced.
Part of me wanted to be elated that he was alive and not dead. When he initially stood up, there was a miniscule second where I thought about tackling him and placing at least a dozen kisses on cheeks. The educated part of me knew that how I reacted would be the way anyone in my situation would have reacted.
I thought of my parents. I imagined my mother’s face if my father ever pulled a stunt like this. Yeah, I don’t think even when my father was Colin’s age, he would have ever played a joke like that on my mother. After mulling it over it my mind, I came to the conclusion that I was not overreacting about Colin’s joke. Not at all.
After sitting in the same spot for about an hour, and tossing at least twenty more rocks across the road, I felt like I had finally calmed down. The brightness in the sky was starting to dim slightly and now I focused on another task. Finding Colin.
“Damn it,” I cursed as I wandered back the way I came. It probably wasn’t a good thing that I let my temper get the best of me. I shouldn’t have wandered off. I could have stayed with him and ignored him, while the rage inside me was writhing. No. That wasn’t a good idea, either.
When Frankie was a toddler, she used to do the same thing. She’d sit there and let her anger build. And build. And build up more. Until finally she was throwing a full-on temper tantrum. And those temper tantrums lasted for hours. They usually happened at night, so I’d be forced to listen to her incessant wailing as my parents tried to calm her down.
The next morning, I’d be exhausted because unlike Frankie, I had to get up for school. “Never be afraid to unleash a little bit of your temper,” my Mom would say. “It’s not good for you hold it in.” It was that simple memory got me up off that pile of trash and walking again.
As I walked down the road, something off to the side caught my eye, and whatever it was, it was sparkling. Glancing in both directions, my eyes rested on a piece of sharpened metal sticking out of the ground. I was definitely nervous to be out here all alone. That piece of metal would be an excellent weapon for me if I was attacked. But, I hesitated before picking it up.
Cannibals were blood sucking, flesh eating, bone picking humans/monsters, but they were very cunning and they were very smart. I had never seen any of their traps up close and personal but I had heard plenty of stories. The one that terrified me the most was one that Mr. Vickers told.
Once, when he was a gatherer, he found a glass jar, still intact, sticking out of the ground. Any gatherer that came across an object we could use would take the object, so Mr. Vickers yanked on the glass jar, pulling it out of the ground, and noticed there was a string attached to it.
He unwound the yards of string until he couldn’t anymore. The string became taught and he resorted to tugging on it. A few forceful tugs later, a female cannibal erupted from the dirt. She was extremely hungry. I remembered this part of the story specifically because Mr. Vickers put such emphasis on it. “You should have seen her,” he said, an eerie tone to his voice. “Her face was hollow and sunken in, like she was rotting away from the outside to the inside. Her teeth were sharpened to form fangs, and white saliva dripped from the corners of her mouth.” But that wasn’t the worst of it. “She snapped her teeth at me, like a beast with rabies, and when I looked
