Memories | TMR | Two

1:9

The Scorch

"So it says here that getting knocked out can last anywhere from five seconds to two hours... now, Addy, I don't know exactly how long it's been, but it's definitely been more than two hours."

"Daniel, shut up!"

It has been a total of nine hours since Adeline had attacked the unsuspecting girl.

In that time, the young pair had argued, dragged the girl across the shop floor, argued again, lifted the girl onto a chair, argued some more, tied the girl to that chair, and finished it off with another hour of arguing.

Now, however, Daniel sits on the ground, his knees bent and ankles crossed over each other, with an old medical book opened up over his lap. Adeline, on the other hand, has not so much as even thought about taking a rest and settling down.

"Addy, she might be dead" Daniel pipes up again, his shoulder hunched down and his face practically scraping over the paper as he reads, "I mean, you could have killed her."

"Daniel, can you shut up for one second and come help me!" Adeline shouts over to him.

"Help you with what?!" the boy questions, sitting up straight, loosely stretching his right arm out and pointing at the girl, "you've just been pacing back and forth for the past twenty minutes! What do you want me to do?! Walk across the shop with you?! Take a break for five fucking minutes!"

"I can't fucking do that, Daniel!" the redhead shouts back at him, charging past the unconscious girl with her hands tightly clutching her hair before reaching the wall, spinning around, and advancing towards the other side of the room. "What if she's one of them, huh? What if she wakes up and goes all crazy and we're fucking locked in here with her!"

"Well then maybe you shouldn't have smacked her across the back of the head!" Daniel responds, rolling his eyes and tilting his head back down to continue reading his book.

"Well if you hadn't of opened the fucking shutters, I wouldn't have had to smack her across the back of the head!" Adeline counters, unlatching her hands from her hair and throwing them out to the side, still briskly pacing past the bookcases.

"I couldn't leave her out there! She was screaming for help! And besides," Daniel starts, waving his hand passively, "she doesn't look like one of those things."

"Neither did Malorie. Or Richie. Or any of the other people that live on the streets, for that matter!"

"She could be one of those guys that's been coming to get supplies recently."

Adeline's footsteps instantly falter at his words. She spins her body around to face him, her hands curved tightly on her hips, her head pushed forward and slightly tilted as she stares at him. "Sorry?" she asks, "what was that about people coming to get supplies?"

"Oh, you know" the boy says, lifting his head away from his book, "the group that's been here this past week. I told you about them."

"Daniel" the redhead begins, exhaling a large breath and closing her eyes as she counts to ten in her head, "no you didn't."

Daniel squints his eyes at her, his mouth gaping slightly and the tip of his tongue shifting in between his two back teeth as he tries to remove the remnants of his fifth packet of crisps. "No, I'm pretty sure I did..."

Pulling her hands together in front of her face, Adeline touches the tips of her fingers against her lips and widens her eyes sternly at the boy. "No, you didn't" she says, drawing one hand away and pointing it out towards the front of the shop, "if you did then I'd make sure we were long gone by now!"