Queen of the Living

Chapter 4

    The pig had been walked and breakfast was ready.  Nawal had made do with the little Jack had in his kitchen: cheese and onion omelettes and waffles with raspberry yogurt on them.  Not much to it, as there was not much to pick from.  Nawal wondered how anyone survived with such little food in the house.  Not surprising, there was plenty of beer and wine coolers in the fridge.

    “Hey, not bad,” Jack said as he sat down at the table.  “Didn't even know I had any yogurt left over.”

    Nawal poured two more cups of coffee before joining Jack at the table.  “You didn't have any syrup, and I figured it was a little early for beer.  You do have a lot of beer.  And mustard.”

    “It's for the sandwiches.”

    “Naturally.”

    “So hey, what are you going to do now?”

    “I'm not sure.  I guess they'll try and find the guy, although they seem to think there's a big conspiracy going on, so he won't be alone.  But once they find him, we'll make him talk and go from there.”

    “You gonna kill him.”

    “I don't know.  It hasn't all sunk in yet.  I don't want to kill him.  I don't want to kill anyone.”

    “If I understand everything, then you're already kind of dead.  Wouldn't you want to find out why and get back at whoever is trying to kill you?”

    “Wouldn't it be whomever?”

    “Hmmm, dunno.”

    “Whatever.  If you think it's so easy, maybe you can kill him for me.”

    “No way.  Look, I'll help you in any way that I can, but I'm out of my league here.  You're just going to have to come to terms with that.  If science fiction and fantasy books have taught me anything, it's that whenever a conspiracy is involved, it's much bigger than me, and probably much bigger than you.  But you're in it, so you better get used to the fact that shit is going to be hitting fans.”

    “I know.  This totally ruins my week.”

    “I bet it does.”

    “That was sarcasm, by the way.”

    “I bet it was.”

    “Hey, I'm going to take a bath.  Do you mind cleaning up?”  Nawal stood up and began walking to the stairs.

    “Not a problem.  One more thing before you go.”

    “What's that?”

    “Nice shorts.”

    Time passed quickly for Nawal, a side-effect of falling asleep in the bath.  Her cell phone beeped, waking her and signaling that she had received a text message.  She had set it on the side of the bath out of habit, yet now she wondered what kind of excuse she would have to come up with for whomever had sent her the text.  Out of town, running for my life, seemed appropriate.  The message was from Jack.

    You've got more company.  Talking cat and dog looking for Nou-Nou, assume that's you.

    Nawal listened for noise in her room, finally hearing the muffled sound of Vermilion complaining, as usual.  She couldn't quite make out what he was saying, but she understood Verm letting the others know that she wasn't going to like it.  Whatever 'it' was.  The cat and the dog must have been the ones she had seen on her bed yesterday when she woke up from being dead.  If that was the case, then the dog was in fact the lazy looking wolf.  Maybe he could eat Verm and all this would be over.  Fat chance.