Complete Collapse

3

By the morning we were due to leave this town I had managed to get my sleep schedule back in order. My sister had proven untrustworthy when it came to waking me up, and that in itself seemed to kick my internal clock back into rhythm. Short bursts at long intervals. We didn't manage to recoup as many supplies as I would have wanted, but something in my gut told me it was beyond the time for us to move on. Staying in places like this was simply asking for trouble these days, and lately, I couldn't shake this feeling that something was coming. I pressed the anxiety deep down and regained my stoic face as I threw my new backpack over my shoulder and handed Phoenix her own. She had been getting on my last nerve lately with her incessant talk about the blond cowboy we had encountered, and it appeared this morning's journey would be no different.

"I don't know, Luce. I think he was into me." She broke the silence just as we reached the treeline. I rolled my eyes for what felt like the millionth time at her in the past forty-eight hours. 

"He stepped on your hand while you were picking up cigarettes and then tried to slit your throat." I reiterated the details she had told me about what happened in that back room. How the coast was clear and then she bent down to pick up a pack that was lying half-finished on the ground, only to be met with a heavy boot on top of her hand just as her fingers had wrapped around the carton. The way he smirked down at her and clarified that those happened to belong to him before he pulled her up from the ground by her wrists and pressed the knife to her throat, escorting her out to where I was in a showdown with Benjamin.

"Yeah, that's what I'm saying. He was giving me mixed signals." She turned the events over yet again in her head looking for something that absolutely was not present. 

"They wanted us dead, Phoe. This isn't some fairytale where you both will fall into each other's arms and find salvation. There is no room left for love in this new world. Especially for men like that. Besides, they're dead. I have no idea why you're still going over this as if it matters." I said with a bite of frustration. the sun was fresh up in the sky and already the heat had me almost wishing I had let those men kill me. I missed that pool and air conditioning. But at least we were entering some shaded areas before the sun got higher.

"Dead, right.." She said, her tone just a bit off. I put that down to her being upset at the fact the blond man and her would never meet again and how disappointed that made her for some reason. 

"I'm sure at some point if we survive for long enough we might find other survivors, and maybe one of them will be suitable to shack up with. But for now, you need to move on. He's dead and gone." I said again trying to get us to move on at last. It wasn't as if I didn't miss things about human connection too. Anthony never arrived at the cottage and thus, I too had been deprived of physical distraction from the world's destruction. But I still had to keep us alive. I didn't have time to dwell on what I may be craving, on what I am missing. 

"You are really trying to tell me you aren't upset about that Benjamin guy being dead?" She asked me with a slight scoff which left me shaking my head in disappointment. 

"Of course I'm not upset. He was dangerous. He would have killed us had I not thought of something." I said with a bite of anger remembering the way his stare tracked me, the way his gun was steady and focused. How every inch of him screamed lethality. It didn't matter that his eyes seemed heaven-sent, he had clearly descended to the furthest depths of hell.

"Yeah, but he was gorgeous. Exactly your type. The rest is just minor details." She nudged an elbow into my ribs.

"Not really. Besides, I don't even have a type. You know this." I said back as my eyes scanned the treeline we were walking through. This conversation would surely draw the attention of any corpses that may be lingering.