Determined To Live (24 page)

He helps me to the
curb where I collapse, and throw up a few more times. He walks away
and comes back with a bottle of water that I take and sip slowly.

"Shit, Canada.
I'm sorry, baby, I didn't even think. Maybe you should wait to eat,
and maybe eat something besides what I gave you."

Ya think!

But I nod and smile
up at him before dropping my head and willing my stomach to stop
spinning. Finally, I tell him I think I'm better now and he helps me
back in the truck. We leave the rest stop behind and get back on the
highway, but my stomach still spins and the nausea is getting worse.

At
this particular moment I don't care how I feel about Jake, his leg is
available and I'm sick, so I use it as my pillow when I lie down. I
don't care when his hand comes down to rest on my hip, I don't care
that doing all of this will make him think I
do
care for him. Isn't that pretty much what I have to do anyway?

I close my eyes,
praying and willing the horrible head spinning and stomach spinning
to stop. I guess I fell asleep, because now Jake is waking me gently
and telling me it's time to get up. I push my hair out of my face as
he helps me up, then look around outside. We're in the parking lot of
a small discount store and I see no zombies, or even the living,
anywhere.

"Where are we,
Jake?"

"In a small
town about an hour before St. Louis. I figured you would need some
things that we don't have. So I stopped here since it seems to be
zombie-free, at least from the outside."

Damn. If it
weren't for the whole crazy-as-hell thing he's got going on, he'd
make the perfect man for some lucky woman.

Jake comes around
to my side of the truck and helps me out. When we get to the
entrance, he looks inside the glass doors before opening one. He goes
in first and I follow, then we spend the first several minutes
checking the store and the back rooms. Nothing.

It surprises me
that not even one zombie is in here - but then again - if I were here
when this happened, I'd get the hell out and go look for my family or
find safety too.

Jake
goes over and twists the weak-looking lock on the front door and I
grab a cart. I go through the hair product aisle, deciding I want
my
brand of shampoo and conditioner, soap, and all that good shit...if
they have it here anyway. I actually find myself looking at the
prices and a few times, passing something by I'd like to have had,
but refuse to spend money on when it's not a necessity. When Jake
laughs from behind me, I spin around and look at him, more than
half-scared that he's flipping out again.

"Canada, did
you really just pick that bottle of lotion up, look at the price, and
put it back?" he asks me with amusement.

"Yes!
Didn't you see the price? I thought this was a frikken discount
store. I can't afford that and still buy all the clothes I need. I
don't know how the hell they expect people to
live
..."
I stop, realizing now why Jake had been laughing at me. He's standing
in the aisle, one hand on his hip, one eyebrow raised, and his sexy
little grin in place. I grin back in embarrassment and turn away from
him, pushing my cart a little faster to get to the stuff I need
further down the aisle.

When
I stop and start throwing in several of each of the items, Jake
startles me when he leans over in front of me to drop an armload of
stuff inside the cart. I look down and see all the items I had looked
at, but hadn't been able to "
afford
."
I think he's gotten every single one of them off the shelves!

"Thanks. I'm
going to get some clothes. Why don't you grab a cart and get the
stuff you need while I'm doing that?" He agrees and walks to the
front of the store. As soon as he's out of sight, I grab all the
feminine products I can, as fast as I can.
Of
course, I know he'll see them eventually, but still!

I
leave the aisle and head toward the clothing, but when I get to the
kitchen section, I stop hopping and look longingly at the knives,
with their shiny blades of all shapes and sizes. But instinct screams
at me not to even think about it and to get the hell away. So I
do...
fast
.

I
go straight to the clothes and locate the shelves of sweatpants.
Finding my size, I scoop up every pile of each color and throw them
in the cart. Then I find bras, underwear, and socks and throw them in
too. After that, I walk around each of the racks and just throw in
whatever I see in my size, including PJs and nightshirts. Then I
remember Jake's
brilliant
idea of living in the mountains and grab several bags of thermal
underwear.

I see Jake's head
over the aisles coming in my direction so I wait for him. When he
appears, he has a cart behind him and one in front of him, and
they're loaded with mens products, food, drinks, and I don't even
know what else!

"You ready?"
he asks me

I nod and we head
for the door. I stop at the side of the door, out of the way, so Jake
can check to see if it's clear outside. After a good look, he nods
and opens the door. I follow him and his two carts out, and when we
get to the truck, I hold on to the door while he moves my cart. I'm
expecting him to open the passenger door, but when he doesn't, I look
back at him and see that he's staring at me. His expression cold,
hard, and mean.

Aw,
hell! Really? Are we back to
this
again?

I expect a slap or
a punch so when he raises his hand toward me, I duck, throw my arms
over my head, and let out a pitiful and scared "No!"

When pain doesn't
happen, I peek over one of my arms and see Jake standing in front of
me with sadness on his face now.

"Canada, I
told you I wouldn't hurt you anymore."

I
slowly -
cautiously
- lower my arms. "Then what were you doing? I'm sorry, but you
freaked me out."

"I
don't want to, but I have to search you. I have to make sure you
didn't pick up something you can use to hurt
me
,"
he explains to me.

Oh.
Well, why didn't he just say that instead of flinging his arm at me?
I don't like him searching me, but I'll take that over being beat any
day.
Thank
God I listened to my instincts when I was near all those knives.

So I let him search
me.

Finally
he's satisfied enough to let me get in the truck while he throws
everything in the back. I sit in the front and think about our time
inside the store.

The
old Jake was back for quite a while in there. The sweet, caring,
gentle man. Not the monster he's become now. Or had he always been a
monster and the good Jake was just an act; or are there really two
sides to Jake, and neither one is an act, but the vials were his
medication to keep the monster hidden? Either way, it hurts. It hurts
because I had come to care about the old Jake...a
lot
.
I miss him. But now, even if he stayed the "Good Jake" how
could I ever trust him,
forgive
him
,
after everything he's done?

It'll never
happen.

When he's finished
loading everything, Jake again attempts to feed us. This time he
chooses wisely and hands me a package of butter-flavored crackers and
cheese spread.

Works for me!
I'm so hungry, I probably could have ate those slimy, jell―

"Never
mind!"
my thoughts
scream when my stomach gives a quick spin. I smash my hand against my
stomach and breathe until the nausea passes. I quickly pull out the
crackers and spread a good-sized amount of cheese on one, then
sandwich it with another cracker. I pop it into my mouth, chew
quickly, and swallow.
I'm
really hoping that if I just get some food in my stomach, I won't get
sick again.

By
the time Jake has the back organized and gets in the drivers seat,
I've already wiped out half the package of crackers. It suddenly
dawns on me that maybe I'm supposed to be sharing with Jake, so I
make another and offer it to him. He declines, saying he had eaten
something while he was moving all the crap in the back. He doesn't
offer to tell me exactly
what
he had eaten, and I'm sure I don't really want to know - or care, to
be honest. So I go back to the crackers myself, happy that they are
all mine.
Mine!

But two crackers
later, I'm stuffed and I start worrying I might throw up again if I
shove any more in my mouth. So I put the lid back on the cheese jar,
and then put both cheese and crackers in one of the many pockets in
the door of the truck. Stomach full and nausea gone, I lean back in
my seat and watch the scenery go by.

After a while I get
drowsy and lay my head back against the seat, keeping it turned out
the side window. Jake's hand is on my thigh - kneading and rubbing -
but I ignore him. Houses pass by the window, some far from the road,
some not. We drive through some very tiny towns where the only living
thing I see are the dead. I see a few deer, a few cats, and several
dogs. One dog is white like the dog who saved me back at my dad's
station.

I
miss that sweet dog too. I wish I'd named her before I left. I wonder
if she's had her puppies? I hope she protects my family - my kids.
Becomes their guardian angel...
I
grin as I realize I've found her name, Angel.

Jake misinterprets
the reason for my grin, and squeezes my thigh that has long since
gone numb from all the attention he's been giving it.

"See there? I
told you you're gonna be happy with me. Didn't I tell you?" he
asks, his grin is as wide and creepy as that freaky cat in Alice In
Wonderland.
Damn thing gave
me nightmares, just as this thing sitting next to me is doing right
now.

I keep my face
averted from Jake, but nod my head, agreeing with whatever fantasy he
wants to conjure up.

Not many minutes
later, we pass the welcome sign for St. Louis and enter a whole new
world of chaos. It's incredible! Amazingly, people are still running
and screaming for their lives.

What
the hell!
Haven't
they learned by now that all this running around screaming and shit
does
not
work? Why don't they find somewhere safe? It's not like there's
nowhere to hide out in this big-ass place.

St.
Louis is amazingly screwed all to hell. Wrecked vehicles - some
having caught fire at some point before and some in flames or smoking
now - make being able to just drive straight down the road
impossible.
I've
been here during the rush hour traffic so I know how bad it was
then...and, well, it's still that bad.

Jake
has had to stop, back up, find different routes and a few times make
his own road out of whatever he can find to drive on. At one point we
end up having to exit off the interstate that circles around the
outskirts of the city and actually go
into
St. Louis. I quickly and easily realize that we're close to Busch
Stadium before I ever see it. And I also realize the last big game
was between the Cardinals and the Cubs.

How
do I know this? Well, the masses of red Cardinal shirts and hats,
mixed in with the blue of the Cubs, are a dead giveaway - no pun
intended. These two teams would rarely be seen hanging out with each
other,
especially
on game days. Even when baseball season's over, there are still
boundaries and lines that these two teams don't cross. But there they
all are, side by side and participating in the largest cannibalistic
smorgasbord the world has ever seen.

I stare in sadness
as a pitcher for the Cubs shuffles intently toward my side of the
truck. His face is slack and his eyes are nothing but black voids in
his head. His uniform is dirty and torn and a long, deep gash in his
chest had stopped bleeding long ago.