Tooth and Nail (Draft In Progress - Book One)

Chapter 19 - Much Ado About A Little Something

Tamerlyn was the first to approach me about getting out of the house. I was expecting it to be Avery, but Tamerlyn has always been more free with what she's thinking.

"Jezebel," She said to me. "How long do you think we'll last, staying here?"

I looked up from the book I was reading - Animal Farm - down to where she was standing at my feet, the arm of the couch. "I was actually just waiting for someone else to say they didn't want to stay."

Her eyebrows perked up, and she made a content face. "Do you have a plan?"

I was tempted to look back down at my book, to ignore her and leave her to come up with a strategy with Allen on their own. I'm glad I didn't and that I sat up, gestured to the cushion next to me, and told her this instead. However, the fates were always jerks, and fate, like a pool of water, always levels itself out to its liking, no matter how many stones you throw. Here, I was just a stone in Tamerlyn's pond. "Tam, we have a small issue with being here, and a bigger collection of problems with leaving."

She nodded. I knew she could read my mind as if I had every conflict listed out in front of us. "Newt."

"That's one of them," I nodded back. "But lets look at what's out there."

"Zombies." She started.

"Walkers," I corrected. "Walkers, and locked doors to homes we wouldn't be able to get into for the nights if we traveled."

"Okay," She twisted her face and looked at her feet, thinking. "We could find a car."

"Cars make noise, run on gas, and the roads are packed from all of the abandoned cars that we don't have time to movie."

"It's a wasteland out there!" She shouted. "We could go-"

"Tamerlyn, even if we did find a car with a full tank of gas and had a destination and a good chance of getting there, Walkers don't have borders. I'd bet that even if we took the time to clear the streets enough to get out onto the Toll Road and head somewhere North, we're still at risk of meeting Walkers at the other end of our road."

She walked away down the hall and into her closet. I returned to my reading and tuned out the house. Page after page after page until bang.

I looked back up at the house and towards the front door, waiting for the explanation of a gun going off inside, probably attracting the attention of everyone and everything out on the street. I waited for Allen to come rushing around the corner with apologies for accidentally firing while cleaning his gun. I don't know why I didn't spring right up into motion to see what happened, and now I do feel sick about it, since me being there a second sooner could have meant saving Newt from Tamerlyn's bullet.

—

She wants me to make a plan on my own? Ha! I had a plan when I walked up to her. I thought she could tell, we can all tell, that little boy is the elephant in the room, weighing us down with things we cant say and places we cant go, and things we cant do. He is the broken link in the chain that could drag us out of this place and into somewhere so much better. We could go anywhere! We could be living in the lap of luxury downtown in a hotel penthouse, wearing anything from Macy's we could want, playing Monopoly with real money. And instead we're stuck here, babysitting a kid whose brother we already killed off. Foster isn't even a factor anymore. Why do we have to be the ones to suffer through waiting on this boy to run away or pick up a gun and try to go out and kill Walkers and spend his summer vacation hungry? Why can't we just send him off now?

Because that's sick and immoral, Tamerlyn. God, I hate it when I have to listen to myself. There's always something that has to be done and not even I can do it. This is the Goddamned apocalypse and I can't even take care of myself, let alone a little boy whom I have no affection for. I have affection for Jezebel, for Avery, even for Allen and Drew. Newt is a curveball in this game that could have gone perfectly. We left Haven. We made it to Avery's. We should have just been overstocking and taking a car out of here to some place like Jezebel's camp out in Spicewood. Its south, but its remote, its on the lake, its quiet and secure and we could be happy there. But now we're babysitters.