This Isn't the Zombie Apocalypse

21. Promises, Promises

The silence was killing me, which was odd, since I spent over a year on my own.

Maybe it was because I couldn't talk to myself anymore or else Calvin would pull over and dump me on the side of the rode. Maybe it was because I had an actual living, breathing person, capable of an intelligent conversation, sitting in the seat right next to me. Maybe it was because I had grown used to how much Ana had talked, how her voice was always there, so common it became a white noise in the background.

A lot of maybes. But who cared why? Pick any reason, and the silence would still be suffocating, wrapping me up in a stifling blanket in the middle of a stuffy, enclosed space.

So I finally blurted, "Why six?" About the toilet paper, because I guess that stuff was important to know and not why the quiet was bothering me in the first place. Yay for getting my priorities straight. My teachers would be so proud.

Calvin frowned, his bushy eyebrows knitting together in thought. "I don't know. It seemed like a good number, a logical one. Three twos, or two threes, possibly?" He shrugged, like, oh, it doesn't matter, because it's just toilet paper, even when he stated not too long ago that he really liked toilet paper and that it's some important stuff. Well, not in those exact words, but pretty close. (He might've used something like cherished, but, eh. Minor details.)

"Is three a good number?" Always thinking things through, Calvin didn't seem to be one of those people that were superstitious. I guess people could have their little quirks, though, like how Ana kept her purple pen with her at all times. Like how I had a personal disliking to the number nine. Just different people and their different thoughts that nobody else would ever understand.

Glancing at me—little ol' me, sitting there, looking all creepy as I petted a baseball bat as if I were about to pound somebody's head like it was the next home run—through the rearview mirror, Calvin chuckled. "Lucky number three, right?" He shook his head. "I don't know, Cal. People like three, so maybe two threes make for even better luck." Another brief pause. "Hey, there're two of us, so one bit of luck for you and some for me. Or, you know what might have more luck than two threes? Three threes!" Laughing some more, Calvin flicked on the blinker, gently easing left. Why he continued to religiously follow the rules of the road, well, I didn't know. There was no one else on these abandoned roads, only leftover debris from what used to be a thriving city.

"Three threes make nine." I gave a tight smile, unconsciously gripping the bat tighter. Three threes. Nine. How fantastic. Next, Calvin will want to put a nine and Friday together. Yeah, I wasn't not fond of Fridays either. Sue me.

Nodding his head like everything now made sense, Calvin hit his steering wheel lightly with the palm of his hand to a mindless tune. He exclaimed, "I don't know why forty-two is the answer when it should be nine!"

I grimaced, although I tried not to. "Yay nine! Whoop." Twirling my finger around, I once again attempted to smile so that Calvin wouldn't figure out that anything was bothering me. (Because who the heck is bothered by a number so much? I mean, thirteen, yeah, some people say that's a bad number. But nine? No, nine is just sorta there. No bad luck with nine.)

Why did I bring up toilet paper? Why not ask what today was?

Wait. It was a Friday.

I hated my life. Could I trade it in, for, like, someone who hadn't died before?

At least it wasn't February. I hated February about more than anything, and not because of Valentine's Day. Hey, let's make everything seem better with a different perspective: It was great that it wasn't February of last year. And even better that it wasn't a Friday of a February of last year. More specifically, it was brilliant that it wasn't February ninth of last year.

Why did that date bother me so much, you ask? Well, ladies and gentlemen, that date was on my gravestone. Figure it out from there.

oOo

So after I basically shot down anything Calvin said by not doing anything in return—also known as moving and breathing like any normal living person—things went back to their eerily quiet ways.

And I was trapped with my own thoughts. Seriously, I should have had a job already as a professional thinker, with all of the thinking I did. Or maybe professional self-pity partier, because I pretty much drowned myself in horrible thoughts. Seemed legit, yeah? I would be totally perfect for the job.

Anyway, onto my boring, terrible thought of the day: Doctor Calvin.

But... Calvin was amazing. He was helping you save Ana! What was wrong with him? What was wrong with you for thinking something's wrong with super-duper, amazing Calvin?

It wasn't him; it was me.

The point: Calvin obviously didn't know about the whole Life and Death thing—the part where they actually existed and tended to have some face-to-face conversations every once and a while with me. And the part where I might have to save the world. (I was putting might in there for a reason, because, really, who wanted that sort of weight dropped on their shoulders? Not me. My ego wasn't that inflated, thank you very much.) Also, the little fact that I had died before was not something he knew. Ana probably told him she had died—or maybe he was there as her doctor—but I knew for a fact that she did not mention the tiny detail of Death and Life having their petty fight over her. Who would believe that unless it happened to them? No one. That left me to believe her. That left me to deal with all this mess since Ana wasn't here.

So, yeah, I was letting Calvin drive me to my doom.

Right now you're thinking: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Back it up. That's a bit overdramatic. You won't die. Where did this even come from?

Well, no, it wasn't overdramatic. I was being hunted down by Death. The thing that was above all that reaper crap. The head honcho. To sum it up: I was a dead man (boy, teenager—I didn't care) walking. Oh, I wasn't about to forget Adam, the man that started this whole issue by abducting Ana from the hospital. He'd probably shoot someone. Or me. So, yeah, if Death didn't personally get me, Adam would, and if Adam didn't kill me, Death would do so gladly. It was a lose-lose situation for me.

And now you're asking: "Well, why will you die, Cal? Why not someone else?" I was going to be the one to die because I wouldn't let Calvin or Ana or a kid like Skylar or even desperate Adam do it for me.

I was going to die because I couldn't let anyone else die on me.

Well, I shouldn't.