The A-Game (new version)

Chapter 15.

In and out, the soap bubbles stared at me like thousands of exophthalmic eyes. "eyeing" me up as if I were the very meat being scraped from the submerged plates, the tiny circles of the sun's reflection bobbed along the convex surfaces like the pupils of dreaming children.

I dipped the wash rag in and out of the water and began to clean the next plate, trying to ignore the conversation taking place in front of me.

"We can't let him go," Janice was saying.

"We can't just cart him with us to Iowa..." Paul argued.

"We can't just untie him and leave him here either. How will he survive?"

"Give him a gun. Drop him off away from town... everyone's happy."

My gag reflex bobbed threateningly in my throat, the taste of bile scraping down my esophagus as I worked my finger under a large chunk of dried, ketchup paste.

"As if we can trust him with a gun! He could've killed Misty back there. A fifteen year-old, unarmed girl, cornered inside a gigantic drain and he couldn't've cared less..."

"So we kill him, then," Paul said, seeming to have reached some level of exasperation. He seemed to have reached the belief that his open willingness to murdering someone would persuade his wife in agreeing with him.

"HHHHHHHMMMMMPPHHH!!!" Came the small, gagged, protest of a man bound tightly against the trunk of a lamppost.

What the heck, ketchup? The gouged chunk of ketchup paste clung harmlessly like a fleshy amoeba to the bottom of the washing basin. However, it still had left a thin veil of red, ketchup residue. It would not come off.

Janice gave a sigh that at first seemed to admit defeat. But she persisted, now at level with her husband, with exasperation at the situation itself. "We can't leave him. He'll die without a gun to protect himself, and with a gun, he'll..." there was no speaking outright of what this man would do. It was a sudden, unspoken agreement.

"Walking Dead......season 2....although my recollection of events are a little foggy...."

"Leo, not now..." Janice said, her exasperation now clearly evident in her voice.

"No, just listen. It was episode 10. I remember because Misty and I were talking about it right before 5th period during Study Hall. We were both supposed to be studying for our science class, and we got off track by talking about the scientific possibility of the zombie apocalypse-," (Oh, the irony) "- So we started talking about her progress in watching the series. She told me she had finished episode 10 of the 2nd season only the night before."

"Fine, get on with it then," Janice said.

I finished scrubbing the demonic stripe of ketchup off the plate and set it aside, grabbing the next one. Great. More ketchup. With a sigh, I withdrew my hands from the wash bin. The bin was an old storage container, pilfered from the back storage room of the furniture store behind us. We were outside an abandoned strip mall (abandoned as most things were 5 days into this apocalypse). I was sitting closest to the store, with my back pressed against the glass window, and my butt positioned on the uncomfortable bench, the wash bin of cold, soapy water sitting below me.

"Okay, so..." he began. I knew he was entering one of his dazes. He had told me about it before, glorifying it as if his "dazes" were none other than the holy grail. When he entered them, he spoke in monologue. He had no need to pause and think about what he'd say, because he could see it before him as he described everything, clean and unedited. He spoke without knowing it, because his mind was submerged in his land of zombies and gore. It was the most straight-forward and honest you'd ever see the one and only, adamant Leo. How ironic it was, seeing him submerge himself in a world of zombies and dirt crusted survivors, when he was already in one. "-Season 2, Episode 10 of The Walking Dead, Miles Out.... the scene where Rick and Shane's long standing tension finally reaches its breaking point with the knowledge that Randall, a captive from an alternate group of survivors, knows who Maggie is and where they live. However, the fight between the two is not what this concerns. Before Shane and Rick started fighting over this, they left a knife on the ground, with a bound Randall placed a good ten or so yards away from it. In time, he would be able to crawl towards the knife and use it to set himself free from his bindings, with the benefit of Shane and Rick being long gone by the time that happens. So, with the time it takes Randall to free himself, Shane and Rick have used to get far away from where they left him. We could do this with Jerold."

"Jerod." I correct him.

"Whatever," Leo retaliated numbly. Janice sighed and turned to Paul.

"I can't believe I'm saying it, but Leo's wacky Walking Dead knowledge could be the answer for once..."

"Fiction or not, the writers don't pull stuff out of thin air," Leo retorted silently, crossing his arms across his chest.

"Alright so we... tie him up, let him lay some yards away from a knife or something and we leave him a gun and some food?" Janice stated questionably.

"It's the only thing I think will work," Paul responded.

"Hmmmph!" Jerod said.

"I'll.....untie him from the lamppost then, and then rebind him."

I worked at the thick knot of blood-red ketchup. It was just as stubborn as the last, if not more so. The water was cold on my fingers, and I was not looking forward to scrubbing for another ten minutes with water of such temperature. The cold of it reminded me of the water tower. I pushed it to the back of my head the way I had been doing so ever since we had left, captor in tow. With a silent gasp, the dread wasn't going away. I kept feeling my heart return to the sheer terror that something was wrong. It radiated within me, and reverberated within my ribcage, arresting my heart with this horror. It was the unsettling reality that awoke my senses and told me that I wasn't feeling this in memory of that night, but because I was a receptor, and I could feel a wrongness settle in on me just as it had the first night, when I lost everything. My body went numb. The plate I was holding dropped from my fingers, and the impact was cushioned by the water. It sloshed with a ker-plunk over my jeans, reminding me of how I had wet myself only five days before.

"Something's wrong!" I yelled, my voice rising in an uncontrolled break that caused me to squeak. I stood up from the bench, nearly tripping as the momentum carried me almost past the heavy bin, despite my feet planted behind it. I steadied myself and worked my way around it. Janice had paused in the act of untying Jerod, her face a mirror reflecting concern.

"What?" she said, her lips parting in bewilderment.

"Don't tell me there's some radioactive monster that formed from all the food gunk you've been scraping." Leo joked.

"Shut up," I said, paying no attention to how rude I was being.

"Misty-," Janice apprehended.

"No! Something. Is. Wrong." I insisted. A great burst of wind sent my red hair flying. I suddenly had a vision of a candle, white and pale, with a large flame flickering violently around it's wick. It was how I felt: small, but with the fiery, wild, uncontrolled passion of a candle flame.

"Misty, I'm sure everything's fine. You're just being a bit para-,"

But Paul never finished his sentence. Echoing all around us, and dicing our eardrums like sautéed onions, a gunshot sounded.