Subject Number 67

Chapter 8

8

"So, obviously, this is my bedroom," he gestures around before he leads me down the hallway—which is actually more of a tunnel. It branches off in two directions, and he takes me down the left side first. We find ourselves in a musty room, with an electric lamp standing in the far corner, illuminating an old clawfoot tub in the center of the room with a shower head hanging above it. There's no curtain.

"Wow," I breathe, running my hand along the edge of the tub. "This is amazing."

"It's a tub..." Two cocks a brow, not understanding my enthusiasm.

"Exactly," I say. "At the Factory...they bathed us by spraying us down with a pressure cleaner..." I flinch, remembering the pain of the ice-cold water burning my skin like a thousand bee-stings. The event would leave my flesh raw for a week—just in time for the next one.

"Are you kidding me?" Disgust is clear on his face.

I shake my head. "I can't remember the last time I took a real bath."

"You can take one later if you'd like. But my hot water only lasts for a few minutes."

"That's better than nothing."

"Come on," he grabs my hand again, leading me back into the tunnel and straight across to the other side. We end up in a makeshift kitchen area, with a single electric burner and a table kind of jutting halfway out of the wall. There's just enough space for two people—which makes me shudder, thinking of One and Two in the early days following their escape. At least back then, they had each other...now, he had nobody. Just him, alone, in a blistering, empty world.

"Do you have a lot of activity outside?" I ask. "Like, zombies...or other people?"

He chuckles darkly. "There aren't other people. They're all on the coasts. Or dead."

I grimace.

"You can look around, if you want. You know, get yourself accustomed to everything."

"I'm not going to be staying here for very long," I say quickly, before immediately wishing I hadn't. His green eyes cloud over with an emotion I can't quite place, telling me it definitely wasn't what he was expecting to hear.

"I mean," I stammer. "I'll just be here until I'm well, and then I'll get out of your hair. I don't want to be a burden."

"You're not," he says. "You can stay as long as you'd like."

I frown, pulling my bottom lip in between my teeth. "I—"

"No offense, Sixty-Seven," he says. "But where would you go? The world's gone to shit. I guarantee if you even found another survivor, they wouldn't be nearly as friendly as me."

I flinch, knowing very well that he's right. "I'll go to the West Coast," I say unconvincingly.

"To the other Dome?"

I shrug. "There will be people there."

"You'll have to wear long sleeves for the rest of your life."

"A small price to pay."

He purses his lips for a moment, holding my eyes before his flick away, and he gestures to the cabinets behind me. "The one on the left has cups, bowls, and plates. I have a few of each; picked them up on supply runs over time. Right cabinet has canned goods—it's empty now, obviously," he continues as I rummage through them, taking a peek inside each one.

"The first drawer has silverware—and by that, I mean plastic forks and spoons I acquired on my adventures."

I snort. "Nice."