Dead Outside (Book 1) (19 page)

“No,
I think we need to talk about this,” I persisted. “I don’t get what the big
deal is. It’s just a ring on her finger to make her feel better.”

“I’m
not going to marry her just to make her feel better,” he turned around and
yelled at me. “Call me old-fashioned but that’s not how it works. You marry
someone because you love them.”

That
struck a cord with me, “So what your saying is, you’ll fuck my sister, but you
don’t love her enough to marry her? Am I getting this right?”

“Oh,
because your sister was such a saint before I started dating her.” It was a low
blow. Roxie may have been a bit promiscuous before she started dating Nick, but
that was a low blow nonetheless.

We
stared each other down for almost a minute. If we were in a safer place I’m
sure it would have come to blows, but we were both still clear headed enough to
know that was stupid to do here.

“Go
check the garage before you say something you’ll regret,” I ordered him.

He
took a few heavy breaths then stormed off into the garage. I looked down and
saw my hand was balled into a fist.

I
released it and picked up my duffle bags. I figured I would check the house’s
DVD collection for something new to watch, we were almost out of movies. I
looked for about fifteen minutes and only found a few old action movies we
didn’t have.

“Sam!”
I heard Nick yell from the garage. “I think you’re going to want to see this.”

I
begrudgingly headed over there. When I walked in I saw an open locker, when I
got closer I saw the contents of the locker. There were two hunting rifles, a
revolver, and plenty of ammo for all three.

“Holy
shit,” I proclaimed as I observed the arsenal of weapons in front of me. “This
will definitely help me sleep better at night.”

Nick
wasn’t looking at the locker though, he was on the other side of the garage,
looking at a large stack of boxes. “I know, lots of ammo and weapons, but this
is what I wanted you to see.”

When
I got closer to the boxes, I could read what was written on the sides of them,
Vodka, Whiskey, and Tequila. Nick and I looked each other in the eyes and even
though we were both still mad we couldn’t help but smile. What’s the point of
surviving if you don’t enjoy it?

Chapter Nineteen: Party

7:00
PM, December 9

The
supplies we gathered from the neighborhood filled the bed of the truck. It was
a decent haul even without the alcohol. We didn’t have to leave anything
behind. The neighborhood was relatively small and some of the houses were
completely empty, most likely foreclosures from the bad economy.

We
didn’t find much in the way of weapons or ammo in any of the other houses. But
the one locker gave us some high powered hunting rifles and plenty of ammo for
them.

The
road to the school was pretty congested with the ones that tried to follow us
when we left in the morning. I did my best to swerve around them, but every
once in a while I’d hit one. Luckily I put a grill guard on this truck to
protect the radiator.

Nick
and I didn’t talk about him and Roxie the rest of the way back. I probably
didn’t convince him of anything, but I at least put the idea in his head that
it was the right thing to do. I wasn’t going to keep pestering him about it, at
the end of the day it was his life, his decision.

To
break the silence he asked about Sarah and me, “So have you had sex with Sarah
yet?”

“I
think you know the answer to that question,” I answered candidly. “Our rooms
are right next to each other.”

“So
does that mean?” It took him a second figure out what I meant. “So you can hear
us when we…”

“…Have
sex?” I finished his question for him with a smile. “Yes, we can hear
everything you two do in there.”

“What’s
holding you back?” he changed the subject right away, not out of embarrassment,
in our old apartment the walls were even thinner then the ones here.

“Every
time we get close she stops,” I admitted. “She either starts to cry or gets
angry.”

“Well
you should probably stop doing whatever angers her,” he suggested rather
sarcastically. “She probably doesn’t like it.”

I
rolled my eyes, “It’s not me making her angry dumbass. She remembers the shit
that happened to her months ago at Rodger’s house.”

Usually
just thinking about him was enough to anger me. Saying it out loud was even
worse. I squeezed the steering wheel. Nick must have seen how angry I was
getting, because he didn’t make another joke.

“I’m
sure she’ll come around,” he tried to calm me down. “Just give her some more time.
That’s what I do when Roxie and I don’t agree on something.”

I
couldn’t help but laugh at him, “And that has worked out so well for you so far
right?”

Nick
cleared his throat to change the subject, and called Roxie on the radio as I
pulled around the back of the school. “Roxie, can you open the back door for
us? We’re pulling in now.”

“I’m
already here. I’ll open it when I hear you,” she responded. She always waited
by the door when we were out, just in case one of us was hurt so she could
patch us up. But I think she was more interested in checking out all the
supplies we got.

The
area outside the roller door was clear. As soon as I pulled up Roxie pulled the
door open. We drove inside and Roxie let the door drop.

I
shut the truck down and Nick and I opened the doors and got out. Roxie walked
up to the truck to inspect its contents. It didn’t take long for her to notice
the cases of booze.

“Really?”
she asked, giving Nick and me a judgmental stare. “You guys risk your lives
going out there, and you made a stop at the liquor store?”

“Roxie,
come on,” Nick tried to stop her from lecturing us.

“No,”
she cut me off. “I didn’t say anything when you went out there to get these
trucks, but this is getting ridiculous, you shouldn’t be taking risks like that
for things we don’t need!”

“Roxie,
we didn’t go out of our way, the cases were in one of the houses in the
neighborhood,” I informed her. “We didn’t take any unnecessary risks to get
anything. Besides, we got these rifles in the same house.”

“I
still think it was stupid,” she was still clearly upset, despite seeing the
rifles, “You better not have left any food behind to make room for any of it.”

Nick
grabbed some of the bags of food out of the truck bed. “Roxie, cut us some
slack, this wasn’t our first rodeo. We grabbed all the food we could find, and
then we filled the rest of the truck with the alcohol because we had room.”

“Well
if you think it was so stupid you don’t need to have any,” I grabbed a few bags
of food myself.

 “That’s
not what I meant.” She got a bit flustered, and then grabbed a bag,
conveniently one that was full of mostly just toilet paper. “I just think you
need to be more careful out there.”

“Careful
is my middle name,” I jested. “Besides, we got enough on this trip alone to
last us a long time.”

We
were in the middle of the courtyard when I noticed Sarah leaning on the railing
upstairs, a rifle slung across her back. “What’d we get?

“Food,
guns, and booze,” I yelled up to her. “And plenty of them.”

“About
damned time,” she responded excitedly and then started walking toward the
stairwell to help us carry the bags up. “I haven’t had a decent drink in
forever.”

She
met us halfway up the stairwell and grabbed one of the bags from me. “Watch,
that ones pretty heavy,” I warned her.

“I
think I can handle it,” she answered with a smirk as she pulled the strap of
the duffle bag over her shoulder.

It
took us all four trips to carry everything upstairs. I set the last bag down in
the kitchen and pulled out the small bottle of whiskey I found in one of the
houses to make myself a drink.

“Starting
the party without me?” Sarah opened the door and leaned against the doorframe.

 “On
the contrary,” I grabbed a second glass and poured, “I was just about to go and
find you so we could start.”

“Sure,
you were,” she said skeptically grabbing the glass from my hand. She took so
large of a gulp some of the liquid poured down her cheeks. She wiped it off
with her wrist. “That little bottle won’t last long. I think we might need to
break out the big bottles.”

I
took a large gulp out of my glass as well, “You might have the right idea.” I
held up the now empty small bottle of whiskey.

“Well
we aren’t getting any younger,” she set her now empty glass on the table.
“Let’s go get those cases out of the truck.”

I
set my empty glass next to hers, “Yes ma’am.”

Nick
and Roxie were already pushing a flat cart full of the cases of alcohol toward
the stairwell when Sarah and I stepped outside.

“I
thought we were reckless in gathering such useless supplies, Roxie,” I yelled
down at them.

Roxie
was pretty far away but I could see her sour face from the balcony. “Since you
already got it we might as well enjoy it.”

I
turned to Sarah and smiled, “Looks like we’re going to be having a party after
all.”

8:00
PM, December 9

After
we carried the alcohol up to our living space we didn’t waste any time opening
the bottles up to begin celebrating. Though, to be honest, we didn’t really
know what we were celebrating. I guess just being alive and lasting this long
was enough, but I think we just wanted to feel normal for the first time in six
months.

Sarah
and I were drinking our regular mix of whiskey and coke. Nick was taking shots
of vodka straight, and following it with a chaser of whatever soda he could get
his hands on, which was currently root beer. Roxie was drinking Long Island iced teas.

We
had one of the stereos hooked up to Roxie’s iPod. Every once in a while one of
us would go over and change the song. Right now it was playing some classic
rock.

Roxie
pulled me aside, “So, did you get a chance to talk to him while you were out?”

“Yes
and no,” I answered honestly. She didn’t seem too pleased with that answer
either. “I talked to him, but he just brushed me off.”

“So
what should I do then?” she asked, finishing her drink. “How am I supposed to
be with someone who doesn’t love me?”

“I
don’t know,” I put my hand on her shoulder. “But don’t give up yet. You know as
well as I do that he’s more easily persuaded and interrogated while drunk.”

“You’re
right,” she sighed. “Just promise me you won’t threaten him, that’s only going
to make things worse.”

“Okay,
I promise,” I agreed reluctantly, remembering the threats I made to her
previous boyfriends. Sure the relationships might not have worked out in the
end, but I made sure Roxie wasn’t hurt too badly. “I’ll talk to him in a
minute, but he’s not going to talk to me if you’re standing right here. Go talk
to Sarah on the other side of the room.”

She
nodded in agreement and walked over to Sarah who was mixing herself another
drink. I sat down on a couch and took my hat off to scratch my head, and then
put it back on.

Nick
stumbled over toward me. He’d already had quite a few shots, and had lost any
and all balance he had while sober. He had a ridiculously large smile on his
flushed face, and his body was leaning back and forth, unable to sit completely
still.

“We’re
lucky,” he said in a terrible impersonation of a British accent.

I
laughed. It didn’t take much alcohol before he started to talk in that accent.
The funniest part was it wasn’t on purpose. “Why are we lucky?” I indulged the
drunken statement.

“We
have the means to survive here indefinitely,” he paused to take another shot,
followed by a grimace from the sharp taste, “And we both have someone to spend
the rest of our lives with, not to mention each other.”

“You
know,” I smiled and patted him on the shoulder, “You say the smartest things
when you’re drunk.”

“No,”
he insisted, “I mean it. Imagine if we didn’t have someone, what would be the
point of surviving?”

“If
you think that then why won’t you marry my sister?” I asked him, knowing his
drunken state would give me a more honest answer.

“I
don’t know,” his smile and his British accent faded. “I wanted to love her, I
really did, but I just don’t know if I do.”

It
was an honest answer. I wasn’t sure at first what to say next, I didn’t want to
say something that would make him close up. “Why don’t you think you love her?”

He
took a longer pause then I did, “I care about her don’t get me wrong,” he
slurred. “But I don’t know if I
love
her.”

I
let out a sigh, maybe if I told him about how I felt about Sarah he would get a
better idea of what he felt. “When I’m around Sarah I feel… better. When I see
her I know everything is going to be okay.” I took a gulp of my drink, “How do
you feel around her?”

Nick
took another shot, “I guess that’s how I feel too, but I don’t know. I just
have doubts.”

“Everyone
has doubts,” I reassured him, “Hell I have doubts. I didn’t know if you guys
were even alive five months ago, but I never gave up hope, you shouldn’t
either. If you even have the tiniest bit of hope, then act on it.”

He
sighed deeply, “And if I don’t?”

I
took another gulp and poured Nick a shot, “I’m only going to say this once, so
listen carefully.”

He
took the shot from me, but didn’t drink it right away, “I’m listening. What is
it?”

I
leaned in close and broke the promise I made to Roxie, “If you break up with my
sister, I’m going to throw you over the balcony and into the zombies outside.”

He
looked at me nervously. He didn’t doubt my seriousness, if anything he was
searching for how to respond.

Before
he could say anything I patted him on the back, “Relax, I know you’ll do the
right thing.”

While
we were talking, Sarah and Roxie were looking over at us and giggling. Nick
noticed and stood up rather quickly.

Nick
looked over at them, probably using it as an excuse to finish our conversation.
He puffed his chest out and pointed at them with an outstretched arm. “What are
you two harlots whispering about?” he asked returning to his horrid accent.

Roxie
responded without missing a beat, in a much better British accent, “None of
your damn business,”

Sarah
and I burst into laughter simultaneously as Nick and Roxie began spouting
various profanities and insults back and forth in their British accents until
they too started laughing. Sarah smiled at me, her cheeks had a red hue to
them. “What are we going to do with these two?”

“I
saw we ship their tea drinking asses back to England,” I joked in response. She
laughed so hard that she fell off the couch she was sitting on.

I
jumped up to help her, but didn’t realize how drunk I really was, and tripped
over myself onto the floor next to her. We both laughed at our drunken
clumsiness, and then just stared into each other’s eyes. We just stared at each
other for a few minutes. I brushed the hair out of her face and behind her ear.
She blushed slightly, and her smile grew slightly.

She
leaned in and kissed me. It only lasted a few seconds, but it felt like an
eternity. The butterflies in my stomach went crazy, fluttering almost up and
out of my mouth and into hers.

She
pulled away and looked into my eyes. Smiles covered our faces. I was so close I
saw my reflection in her eyes. It was the look I’d been missing, and I didn’t
waste another second. My hand grabbed the back of her head, pulling it closer
to mine. My lips locked onto hers again, and a lifetime of wanting and pining
poured out into that one kiss.

We
pulled away at the same moment. Her eyes were still closed, and she bit her
lower lip, and almost inaudibly said, “Wow!”

Her
eyes opened and I saw the light I’d been missing. She had a longing in them
that took me a moment to recognize. I glanced over to Nick and Roxie, they were
still in the room, and Sarah noticed the same thing.