I shook my head, “I’ve shot before, but only rifles, never a handgun. I’m sure I’ve played enough military games glorifying ‘merica to get the hang of it,” I said, grabbing the gun back and playing with its switches.
“Well, I can show you. My father was a Buffalo hick before he became one of the contaminated,” his voice trailed off almost into a whisper. “I had to shoot him with that very gun. He charged me in the middle of the day, outside the front door. Right in plain view for the whole street to see. People saw and ran. One lady threw her makeup case at me. Kind of funny, actually. Everyone was so mad and afraid of me, that was until the other contaminated emerged, hissing and scourging the streets of Buffalo for anything that they could sink their teeth into. The sidewalk is still bloody.”
Holy hell Batman! This is when I decided that Zach was no longer hiding things from us. You don’t shoot your father and just tell that to anyone, though I guess there weren’t a lot of people left to tell, but it’s just not something that comes up in casual conversation.
“You know what the worst part is?” he continued. “I didn’t have the small balls needed to go and bury him, my own father. I was too afraid to go walk the ten feet in front of my house to drag his body into the backyard and dig a hole. Ha! I guess some sort of cruel irony decided to eat away at me, that’s what the contaminated did to him until there was absolutely nothing remaining.”
Chelsea was giving him the look, the look of sorrow and pity. “My whole family is missing. My parents were gone a long time ago,” I think she shot me a look of contempt. I guess she still harbored a bit of disappointment for me withholding that bit of information on her parents. “And the rest of my family was on the west coast, and nobody has heard anything from them in a long while. I’m almost all alone. Just Daryl here,” a high pitched meow came from the back of Chelsea’s chair and Coal popped up and onto her lap. “And Coal, don’t forget about her. She gets testy.” The cat padded Chelsea’s legs for a minute before finally settling down onto her lap, a light purr erupting from Coal’s belly as it rumbled up and down with her light breathing.
“What about you, Daryl?” Zach asked.
I guess this was how people eying down the end of the world crisis of contaminated broke the ice, “Family’s fine, as far as I know, well mostly. My two younger brothers were at their respective schools when the emergency signal finally came here. The military went there first. My mother also taught at the schools so she was evacuated right along with them. My father was working right near a safe zone when the call hit. I convinced him just to go there since I had grandma at home. Chelsea came then to stay for a bit as we waited for the military to come and pick us up. Grandma got on the convoy as Chelsea and I decided to stay to let others get on, the military claiming to be back in three days. We’ve been waiting patiently for the last month.”
“Wow, your family got pretty lucky,” he said.
“Well, sort of. My father said that he would get my older brother who lived in Newark, but I don’t know if that ever happened,” I said. “I have a feeling that my brother is just living there barely noticing what’s going on around him. I doubt he’d even flinch at the sight of a contaminated. That’s just how he is.”
“That’s Dan, right?” Chelsea asked.
“Yeah. Dan probably doesn’t even know that something like this is going on right now and is just chilling at home wondering why he has no power. Needless to say, I am not worried about him.”
“Sounds exciting,” Zach said. “Do you guys think you could spare a bite to eat? As I said, I’m half-starved from Buffalo, and I didn’t stop at a McDonalds on my way down here. Passing out probably wouldn’t be the best thing for my health.”
I smiled though I don’t know why. He just held a gun up to me, albeit it was not loaded and the safety was on, but still, “You like hotdogs?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “I’m just kidding. I’m not going to be picky during the end of the world. Hotdogs sound great.”
It was good because all of this talking had started to make me hungry. I could use the excuse to break a few apart and have them myself, which I did. I threw three on the stovetop, not literally. They began to sizzle and cook in their own grease.
“Ketchup?” Zach asked.
Chelsea and I burst into laughter, probably more than we should have. Zach recoiled as if he had done something horribly wrong before I waived my hand. “No ketchup. Inside joke. Don’t worry about it,” I said through small fits of laughter.
He sighed, obviously annoyed that he was left out of the loop, but he would stay that way. “So does this mean that I’m part of your group?” he asked bluntly.
I stopped turning the hotdogs for a second. I had not thought about that in our short meeting with Zach. It was an interesting question at the least. If we included him in our ‘group,’ then that would mean that we would have to go through another person’s worth of food which in turn would force us to make more and more trips to the supermarkets and such.
