“I don’t know yet, Zach,” I said, plopping the hotdogs down in front of us with a set of forks. He nodded in thanks and began to dig into his two.
It took him a minute before he realized what I said, “Wait,” his voice was full of hotdog. “So I come here and bring you all of this information and a better weapon than you probably have but you won’t take me in?” he sounded desperate.
“I didn’t say that, now did I?” I looked to Chelsea and took her hand. “We’ll have to discuss it, privately. But for the meantime, you can stay in my grandma’s side of the house, but I’ll have the bullets to the gun, just in case.”
He looked from me to the hotdog to me again and pulled out the magazine filled to the brim with nine millimeter bullets. “Don’t use it until I show you how,” he said with a stern voice. “We don’t need an accident that will draw all of the contaminated in the area to this house.”
“Well, your car almost did that-“
“I cut the lights for a reason-“
“Guys!” Chelsea said, standing. “Shut up. This is stupid. ‘What if’s’ won’t happen if you’re careful and you both have been so far. So just shut up, it’s annoying.” She sat back down, a flair of annoyance across her face.
“Fair,” Zach said, finishing his second hotdog. “Well, I have a few more guns in the trunk of my car.”
“Why didn’t you say that earlier?” I asked, tired of his lies.
He shrugged his shoulders, “I figured you would have caught on. Who’s hick dad only has one gun? And a nine mil at that? C’mon man.”
Fair enough. I settled down again, fingering with the trigger and safety of the handgun, the feeling of power and security there still.
Chelsea yawned, “Okay, well I think the night is done for now. I’m going to bed,” she got up, leaving Zach and I at the table awkwardly.
He looked to me, “You two are amazing, really.”
“How so?” I asked.
He raised his bushy eyebrows, “You’ve been together for a little over a month yet act like a married couple.” A coy smile crossed his lips, “You going to do anything about that?”
It wasn’t an advance, merely an observation, “Watch yourself,” I said in a joking tone. “I’ll keep the hotdogs away from you.”
We both laughed. “Alright, I’m exhausted, not to interrupt our wonderful conversation,” Zach said, standing up and stretching.
“I’ll show you to your sleeping quarters,” I said standing up with him. We moved through the hallway and came upon my grandma’s addition apartment on the side of the house. I opened the sliding door which separated her section from ours and gestured inside. “This is your current room until we decide what to do with you.”
“Thanks, Daryl. I appreciate everything you have done for me,” he said, extending his hand. I took it and we shook. It was an okay shake, somewhere between a strong grip and a flaky fish grip. I’ll take it. “Have a pleasant night,” he said, moving about the room as if it was his own.
I made my way up the stairs and into the bedroom to see Chelsea slumped over. “What’s wrong, Chels?”
She shook her head, “It’s all over, isn’t it?” she asked.
“What’s over?”
“Us. This. The house. The field. Our life here in this abandoned place. Everything that we’ve worked so hard for is going away now. We can’t just leave Zach, that would be horrible of us. He told us a way out, the way to Kansas City. You can’t tell me that you haven’t considered taking it.”
I wrapped my arms around her. It was all that I could do, “I don’t know,” I said as the clock turned to November the fourteenth.
Chapter 15
I woke up with Chelsea’s head resting on my chest. Her back was moving up and down rhythmically with her breathing. I rubbed my eyes with my palms to remove the tired while trying not to wake Chelsea. Her head stirred and she looked up at me with tired eyes.
“Did I wake you? Sorry.” I said before waiting for a response. My hand brushed some of the hair out of her eyes.
“No. I couldn’t sleep,” she said.
“Why not? Do you feel okay? I sit that time of the month?” I asked cautiously. I had spare chocolate stores in case such a situation arose.
She let out a tired laugh, “No, you silly. I just couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking how nice things are here. Minus the contaminated, we’re in a type of paradise, you know. It’s quiet, safe enough, and there’s us. I mean I couldn’t ask for a better place to live, lest it be free of the contaminated, which is always a plus.”
I rubbed her back and kissed her on the top of the head, “You really don’t want to leave?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” She replied in a quiet voice, resting her head on my chest again. “I’m just afraid that once we leave, we’ll be leaving each other too. Here things are working out nicely, and I know we haven’t been together for a very long time, but it feels like an eternity. And it’s a nice eternity.”
I felt a strong pull towards Chelsea at her honesty, sort of like a gravitational pull, grabbing my chest and drawing me in. “I’ll tell you what, if you really don’t want to leave, we can stay. Zach
