“It’s a little bit depressing, don’t you think?” he asked, draining the remains of his tea, but not taking his hands off of it. “That’s not all though.”
“What else?” Chelsea asked in a much kinder tone.
He took a deep breath, “Well, to be honest, I was going to save this until you trusted me a bit more because it’s kind of farfetched.”
“Zach, there are blood thirsty monsters running amok trying to turn any flesh bearing thing into one of them by drinking their blood and gouging on their bodies. There’s no way it is any more fucking farfetched than that unless you have seen a rainbow contaminated running around leading people to its pot of gold,” I finished, clarifying my position of the topic.
“Alright, alright already,” He said, waving his hand through the air. “I guess you are aware that God is playing a game with us, right?”
I nodded, not knowing whether to agree or disagree but doing it anyway.
“Well, you remember how we all, us eight, planned on meeting in Kansas if this contamination thing ever got solved, because it was the fairest place for all of us?”
Chelsea and I nodded, remembering the oddity of the post.
“Well maybe that isn’t as random as you think,” he said, his face becoming more smug but not too arrogant. “A government rep contacted me, or I did him. He said that any survivors that I knew of should go to their respective power plants immediately as they could. It is the closest way to get military protection and a safe passage to the last haven in America. Can you guess where that haven is?” he asked.
“Kansas,” I replied. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”
“Nope. No shitting. Apparently the contaminated don’t like to move too far inland,” he said. “Kansas City has yet to see one, according to him.”
“How do you know that you can trust this guy?” Chelsea asked.
“The same way that I can trust you, well not really, but it sounded cool,” He laughed at his own joke. “I tracked his IP address, just like I did with yours. I searched it, and it checked out as a Kansas City based IP address, so at the very worst, he’s routing us through the Kansas City servers which are still running which means it has power,” Chelsea was about to speak, but Zach raised his hand to quiet her. “Before you ask, I could have gone directly there, but you guys were on the way anyways. Power in numbers, right?”
“So you think that we should
“Noise in numbers too, don’t forget that,” I added.
“So we can trust you, Zach?” Chelsea asked.
He reached under the table and pulled out a nine millimeter handgun, “I don’t know, can you?”
Chapter 14
Thirteen had always been my lucky number. I hated superstitions and the thought process behind them. To me, everything was chance. For example, the first guy to walk under a ladder was a dumbass. He was probably looking for an excuse for why he was so stupid as to walk under a ladder. If one makes the executive decision to walk under a ladder, they should be prepared for the potential consequence of the ladder falling on their dumb head. Throwing salt over your shoulder or knocking on wood to avoid a ‘jinx’ is just silly. All that it did was hurt your knuckles and make a mess of the floor.
Call me crazy or whatnot, but I liked to tempt the fates. I was never one to fold under the pressure of another’s wishes. I think that is why I liked the number thirteen so much. It as something that people avoided and tried to counter, but it is just a number. How many hotel floors go from twelve to fourteen? That’s only the numerical representation. Just because they changed the thirteenth floor to a higher number, fourteen, does not make it any safer. Just like in supermarkets, the thirteenth aisle is now suddenly the fourteenth. This superstition or managerial inability to count was what fueled my feelings towards my favorite number, thirteen, and it was November the thirteenth.
I was ready for this.
“Put it down,” I said in a stern voice, condemning the gun wielding man in front of me.
“Okay,” Zach said and placed the weapon on the kitchen table as if it was nothing more than a toy. He slid it across to my position, as if I was eating off of the gun. He then sat back with his hands folded behind his head. “Anything else I could do for you?” He asked smugly.
I picked up the gun. I had only shot one once in my life, about three years ago when I was eighteen. My friends and I went up to East Bumblefuck, New York, to a glorified shack with a ton of open space. He brought a .22 and a .337 for us to shoot. Both were rifles and had nothing to them. This handgun was different, as if when my fingers slid around the grip and touched upon the trigger I gained an amount of power, a greater strength than before. I pointed it at Zach.
He held his hands up defensively, “Woah, cool down there. Sorry if I scared you, but the moment was too precious to not try the joke. I just gave you my gun, doesn’t that say something?”
I felt a hands nestle above my own. Chelsea was looking at me, giving me a light look of understanding but restraint. She lightly shook her head ‘no’ and pulled the weapon away from me.
“Do that again and I will shoot you,” I said to Zach.
He waved his hands in an apology, “Yes, yes you are right. It wasn’t my
