This Isn't the Zombie Apocalypse

37. Firetruck

We walked for days.

Ana wasn't getting any better, and I couldn't help, but neither could anyone else because there wasn't anyone else, so we walked. We just walked. And talked. There wasn't anything else to do besides try to keep dry and wait for the sun to come out. It was mostly idle chit-chat—Ana going on and on about this and that. I listened and occasionally piped in with my own comments and stories.

We didn't bring up the fact that we were lost, that Ana's leg was infected, that Calvin was dead. We didn't bring up the fact that Life and Death were still on the loose.

We just—avoided all of that.

Not that I was complaining. Everything was out of control, but I could do this. Aimlessly traveling was my specialty. I had done it for over a year, surviving on my own, and I could do it again—even if I had Ana slowing me down.

I could do this.

oOo

The Big, Avoid-At-All-Costs Topics were at last discussed in the most peculiar way.

It was the middle of the night, tucked away inside another abandoned building, and Ana was dead asleep. I was not. Why? Because the dead should have no reason to sleep.

I was testing my new-found abilities of being dead—something not nearly as cool as it sounded. I couldn't control anything. Like the turning-into-a-ghost thing? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Nada. It did not happen, no matter how hard I tried. (Also on the list of things I could not do: being dead. I still wanted to eat, drink, sleep—eat even more—all the icky living crap. My brain refused to shut down—which was odd because I did not enjoy thinking. Too much wasted energy.)

Anyway—me, working on being dead. It wasn't going too well. It was dark (because it was night—duh), and I couldn't see anything because being dead did not give me super eyes—or super powers of any kind, really. I was exhausted, stumbling around blindly and muttering under my breath. I kept on telling myself, "You're dead, you idiot. Sleep is for the weak. And the living," which did nothing to help me.

So, here I was, wandering around in the dark, being generally stupid, when I stubbed my toe. No idea what it was, but it hurt. A lot. And so I tried to properly express my pain in the best way possible for a dead person.

"SON OF A B—WITCH! I said witch!" I cringed and clutched at my pinky toe (the most susceptible to pain since it had been shot at before) while hopping around in a dignified manner.

Now, why witch? Because Ana had woken up to my screaming—not shrieking—and was scowling and scolding me like I was five and said a bad word. Which, yeah, but I was also older than her, okay? Ana did not need to give me a lecture on having a better vocabulary and using better words, blah, blah, blegh. I'd been biting my tongue ever since I had met Ana, and I wanted to say what I wanted to say.

If I went overboard, well. They were just words. Words that rhymed with duck and hit and clam. And some more that I may or may not have made up. In long, winding sentences.

After my little tantrum—where I balanced on one foot and shouted in a direction I only later learned was opposite to where Ana had been sitting—I flopped down on the dirty floor and started searching for my backpack. If that was a stupid idea and my toe was throbbing even more, I didn't show it. Except for a small groan.

And there was a sniffle. Not mine, but Ana's. Then Ana, in a strained voice, choked out, "I just don't see the point," and burst into tears and tales of how it was "Uncle Alex that always taught me there was a better way" and "Uncle Alex would carry around a pocket dictionary" and—and—and I felt like the worst kind of person for stomping all over her and her dead Great Uncle Alexander Calvin.