Apartment 905, Sahin, Ned [black female authors .TXT] 📗

We leave the warehouse taking the snacks and water the mayor brought in. Toshi has the hammer. I have the lighter and the remaining bottle of the fluid.

“Let’s get out of this fricking town!” Kathleen says in front of the burning warehouse.

“We need to make a stop before we leave,” I say.

We go to the restaurant where we ate yesterday. There doesn’t seem to be anybody around this morning. Some of the elderly must be on their way to the ranger house with Harold. The rest of them are probably sleeping.

We walk to Harold’s house. There is nobody around. Toshi breaks the front window and unlocks the door.

We find Bernice curled up in the corner of the living room.

“Please… Please don’t hurt me. It was Harold making me doing things!” she says while whimpering and sniffing.

“I treated you like my own grandma! You trapped us! Shame on you!” Kathleen yells at her. She walks toward her but Toshi gets in between. Kathleen places her hands in her hair to calm herself down.

“You guys wait for me here,” I tell her and Toshi.

I walk down to the basement and pour the liquid on all over the shelves with Oxyrica and antidepressants on them. I stare at them for a second.

My inner voice that loves archiving talks to me. I decide to take a box of Oxyrica and antidepressants before lighting them up. I go back up to the living room. The smoke from the basement follows me.

“They will get what they deserve soon,” I say. Kathleen continues to yell at Bernice.

Toshi finds a few grocery bags and fills them with canned food in the kitchen. I take the 12-gauge shotgun and shells hanging on the wall. We then leave the house.

“Fuck you!” Kathleen yells back at the house.

I look around on the main street to see any cars we can use. We check them, but they are all locked. We may need to walk for a while until we find a car we can use.

I see the warehouse on flames a few blocks away.

It feels good to help the mayor, his son, and two other guys escape this town. I hope I see them again one day.

Goodbye Weldon Springs.

Chapter 20

“How much longer should we walk, Matt?” Kathleen asks. We have been walking for at least twelve hours a day since we escaped from Weldon Springs two days ago.

“Um… Probably three more months,” I say with a sarcastic voice. Toshi chuckles while wiping sweat from his forehead. The bright and hot sunlight is making our hike harder. It’s not the best time of the day to be walking.

Kathleen briefly smiles but then focuses on moving her legs again. Parts of her t-shirt is wet.

“We should have taken a car before we left,” she says.

“Well, we tried… We shouldn’t have accepted their dinner offer in the first place,” I say.

She glances at me. “We shouldn’t have left North Carolina.”

“You prefer serving food to Saviors than being free?” I ask.

“You mean the Saviors who caught me because of you?” She has a point.

“Ah… Guys, why don’t we give a lunch break? The view looks nice here,” Toshi says. I wouldn’t ask for a better best friend. He is a true lifesaver.

We are walking through farms to avoid the dangers of the road, but we still keep our eyes on the highway to ensure we are in the right direction. Without a map or compass, it’s hard to stay on the same route. We don’t want to end up in Mexico or Canada.

There is a small lake between us and the highway. We pass the tree line and sit near the lake where there are a few houses with piers around the area. I don’t see any human beings or animals.

We haven’t seen any cars passing by on the highway either. There are only some stalled cars. Even if we manage to shortcut one of them, their gas has probably been siphoned. Once the oil transport stopped worldwide, gas shortage caused people to hoard gas stations and unattended cars.

We open the gourmet canned ravioli we took from Harold’s house. I wonder how he and his friends are feeling after realizing they were tricked with the bogus information about the ranger’s house in the Mark Twain National Park. Seeing the warehouse and Harold’s home in flames must have been a second shock. I am sure they are looking for us everywhere now.

I have no regrets about what we did back there, though. They deserved it.

While shoving the rest of the beans into my mouth, I hear the bushes rustling behind us. I drop the can and turn back to see if there is someone in the tree line. Toshi and Kathleen scan the bushes as well.

I raise my shotgun and place my index finger on the trigger.

I remember Miguel’s advice during weapon training. He said the human startle reflex is about twenty pounds per finger. If I get startled while my finger is on the trigger, I will likely pull it without even thinking about it. I’d rather keep my finger there, though, because I know that a whole town of angry elderly is after us.

There are many short trees and bushes. If someone is watching us, he or she wouldn’t be able to hide long.

A teenager stands up behind the bushes.

“Hi,” He says while stifling a giggle. We look funny in our pajamas.

He is probably younger than fifteen years old. Looking at his dirty clothes and hair, I can tell that he’s been having a hard time surviving.

“Hi.” I lower my shotgun. “What is your name?

“Jason.”

“I am Matt. These are my friends, Toshi and Kathleen.”

They both smile. Jason doesn’t say a word. He looks at each of us from head to toe. I am not sure what he is doing here and why he wanted to approach us.

“What are you doing here, Jason?” I ask with a friendly voice, dropping my guard.