They Called It The Apocalpse

Chapter 21

Thalia opened her eyes to find Tate's leg spread across her torso, she frowned and shoved it away as he grunted. He was spread out like a star fish with his face against the canvas tent and his legs violating her personal space. She struggled out of her sleeping bag and crawled towards the door of the tent, unzipping it carefully but managing to catch her finger as she did. It pulled sharply on her fingernail and it chipped, a long streak of manicured polish chipping from the top along with a triangle of her natural nail. She chirped in pain then drew her finger back to examine the damage and whined quietly at the imperfection that her nail had now become. Slower this time she pulled the zip again and it opened onto the camp site. The logs were still in their correct positions but the camp fire had seemingly gone out, leaving nothing but ash scattered in a circle where it had been. Jason sat on the furthest seat away from their tent, he had. A can of spaghetti and appeared to be munching through them raw. "Do you know how disgusting that is?" She asked as she took a seat on the opposite end of the log, "you're literally eating stringy mush." He looked up at her with a glare that conveyed his exact feelings on what she'd just said, that looked told her that he didn't care what she thought and that food was scarce so anything was good, no matter how disgusting. Thalia rolled her eyes and looked off into the forest surrounding their camp, she had a sever intolerance to Jason because when he wasn't making her feel afraid she just felt sick of him. Something made a thunk noise then rolled into her foot. She looked down and found a can of peaches, it was battered and dinted with a fading green label that had cartoon peaches and things scattered across the front and she bent down and picked it up to discover that it was still within its use by date. She looked over at Jason with raised eyebrows. "What?" He asked grumbling the words through his own food. "Really?" He shrugged, cramming was mouthful of congealed spaghetti sauce and pasta strings into his mouth, she winced away from his gross show of survival skills then pulled the ring pull on the can and begun to eat them, fishing them out one at a time with her fingers. "Where's Cassie?" She asked as she peeled a string off flesh from the rind of one of the peaches then stared at Jason. He chewed loudly then threw his spoon down into the can with a loud clang. "Sleeping." He spat through a mouthful of food, pieces of spaghetti spraying the floor. "Now excuse me i need to take a leak." He grumbled as he got to his feet and headed through the tents into the woods.
"Why did you feel the need to tell me that?" She called after him, clearly disgusted by his ways.
"Cause you've asked me about pretty much every thing fucking else." He shouted back as he continued his search for the best tree to hide him from his fellow companions.

Thalia ate in silence as the tent rustled then Cassie's bedraggled hair appeared, she emerged into the sunlight and stretched up into it. She yawned, the pink, specked inside of her mouth showing to Thalia and she wondered if she'd got tonsillitis because tiny yellow spots lined the sides and back of her throat. "Morning, Thalia. Did you sleep well?" Cassie greeted as she traversed the long path around the fire and wound up to where Jason had left his bag. She dug around inside and produced a tin of preserved corned beef then dug into her own bag that was around her shoulders and produced her fork. She sat down next to Thalia and smiled at her. Despite the face that Thalia hadn't responded to the first question yet Cassie launched into her second. "Where's Jason gone?"
"Well, where do you think he's gone?" She asked and Cassie shrugged as she pulled the twist key on the side of the corned beef and watched as the delectable (compared to most of the other food) beef became visible. "Has he gone to collect fire wood?" She asked and Thalia took a deep, annoyed breath. "No. He's gone for a bathroom break." Cassie nodded as she dug her fork into the edge of the crumbling beef and savoured the mouthful she took of it. Whilst they ate in silence Tate awoke, his neck stiff and sore as he sat up and emerged into the fresh air, he rubbed it as he waltzed over to the theres and plonked himself down where Jason was sat before. He produced the stale popcorn after slyly plunging one of his hands into Jason's bag and crunched merrily on the hard clusters that had stuck together. Footsteps crunched through the woods as someone approach and Jason reappeared around the side of the tents, he stomped up and over to the wooden log then stood over Tate and stared at him with tired but angry eyes, "come on man..." he grumbled as he shook his head then stepped round him and plonked himself down with the effort of an exhausted worker after a full shift. He produced the map from his pocket, scattering an abundance of paper onto the floor with handwritten letters. Tate bent down to help him collect them up but he shot him a glare, "leave them." He growled as he tucked them all into his hand and crammed them back into his pocket.