“Cool if I sit?”
Rosaline covers her strawberry filled mouth as she replies, “Mhm.”
Sweetie giggles again, and sits down next to her. She strokes the stone against the blade of the hatchet.
“So, you don’t talk much. You not like me?”
“I like you!”
Horror rushes through Rosaline as bits of strawberry fly out of her mouth and land on Sweetie’s leg. Her face reddens again, embarrassed with how she blurted out her answer.
“Woah, unnecessary nena!” Sweetie exclaims staring down at her leg.
“I’m so sorry, I’m...uh...I don’t know why that happened.”
Rosaline hastily brushes the strawberries off the woman's leg. Rosaline’s gaze moves up to meet Sweetie’s, and she realizes that she’s now just rubbing her hand on Sweetie’s knee.
“I think you got it.” she says with a grin and raised eyebrows.
Rosaline’s hand snaps back to her plate. She stares down at her food. Her stomach turns. Inside her mind she bangs her head against a wall over and over, terrified with how clumsy and nervous she’s being.
“Hey.” Sweetie’s says, her head titled down, her hair falling over part of her face.
The nervous warrior breathes in deep as her eyes slowly move to match Sweetie's gaze again. Sweetie brushes the hair off Rosaline’s cheek, smoothly tucking it behind her ear.
“It’s cool nena. You're nice. Clumsy and weird, but nice.”
A strange warm feeling fills Rosaline. Sweetie's tenderness bringing a smile to her, "You too." she replies.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“What about the boy?” Daisy asks, her concern layered into every word.
Daisy is younger than her traveling companions, the married couple Jack and Norman. Before the world went to shit she was their neighbor. She would frequently join them for dinner. They enjoyed watching bad movies together and laughing at the absurdity contained within them.
Being an interracial gay couple presented many unjust trials in their life, but they love each other, and above all else that’s all that matters to Jack and Norman. Since the outbreak, the absence of bigotry has been the only enjoyable aspect of the tormented world they now live in. The diseased care not about ones race, gender, or sexual identity. To the diseased all breathing, heart pumping humans are the enemy.
They found the boy the previous night. He was ill and weak and didn’t respond to anything they asked him. At first they thought he was infected, but soon realized he’s far too docile to be part of the monsters that have relentlessly ravaged the world.
His arms are covered in healed scars. They’re not scratches or bite marks, he’s a cutter. They don’t know why, or what drove this boy to be this way. He’s quite young, and appears to have just entered into his teenage years. Norman thinks he’s thirteen or fourteen.
Before the outbreak Norman worked at a hospital as a doctor. This has been monumentally helpful as they try to survive the savage lands of America. Jack is a bit older than Norman, fifty-one years to Norman’s forty-seven, and he was the Executive Chef at a high class restaurant. He loves food, which has been disastrous for his taste buds, but helpful to their little group overall.
Daisy, now at thirty-eight years of age, was quite accomplished in her young life. By age twenty-three she had graduated law school and passed the bar exam, having graduated high school early at age fifteen. At the age of twenty-five she had already paid off her school debt and bought the house she financed, remaining a neighbor of Norman and Jack. She was career driven and spent little time developing a social life. Her profession focused life ended at age twenty-seven, when the outbreak hit.
The boy hasn’t spoken since they found him. His weakened state has allowed them to care for and help him. Norman recognized his symptoms as food poisoning, most likely salmonella, and a pretty nasty case of it. They still have medicines on them, though minimal, and the boy has been recovering.
Jack looks back to Daisy. He knows they can’t abandon this boy. He wipes the blood from the crowbar across the dirty shirt of the diseased who lay motionless before him.
“I’ll carry him, I guess. We can’t stay here any longer. If one made it here then others probably will too.”
Norman rubs his husband’s back. He can feel Jack shaking, even if only slightly. None of them were prepared for the surprise brought upon by this diseased. It spoke to them. They’ve never heard this before. They didn’t know the diseased were capable of speech.
It asked for help. Norman knows this will haunt him. He can only imagine how this will affect Jack, the one who put it down. Jack has kept the crowbar for safety, but he never thought about how he would feel if he had to use it. He’s shocked that he didn’t freeze up. All he could think about was the safety of Norman. When he looked into the eyes of that thing and saw nothing there he knew what he needed to do.
Jack would carry the boy for the next few hours, stopping intermittently when sickness returned to the boy. He would make the saddest noise when he felt the sickness coming back to him. It broke Jack’s heart every time. He wonders who this boy is, who he was, and how he came to be out here by himself. Judging from the state he’s in Jack figures this boy’s story isn’t a pleasant one.
The boy is dirty and putrid. He looks as if he hasn’t bathed in years, and it’s likely that he hasn’t. His hair is long and matted together in clumps, his lips are dried and cracked, his fingernails are caked with dirt and dried blood, his skin is leathery and course, his weight has decayed enough for his bones to show and his face to be sunken in, his clothes are ripped, and his shoes are worn out.
They don’t know if his parents are alive or how to find them. They don’t
