Cassie and I end up sleeping together on the roof, only being woken up by the sunrise. We rush back home, fearful of Ivy guessing what we were up to. Not long after we get back, everyone else wakes up, and after a short breakfast, Vince returns to his story.

  For a brief moment, I didn’t even realize where I was when I woke up. Just an unfamiliar room that I didn’t pay any attention to before collapsing into bed. And then the memories came rushing back.

  The fire. The people I killed, the lucky ones who choked to death on smoke, and the unlucky ones that lasted god knows how long. The man I shot, put out of his misery, his brains splattered across the sandy ground, a whole eye spilling out of the mess.

  It all came back to me, and took whatever I had in my stomach with it. I scrambled for a trashcan, a bag, anything. Ended up pulling out the drawer of an end table and vomiting in there. When I could finally force my eyes open, I saw a puke-covered Bible staring back at me. Should have taken that as a sign.

  Rusty stood by me the whole time, his head pushing into my side, just reminding me he was there.

  The two of us eventually managed to leave the room. Mara was relaxing on the couch, just waiting.

  “Heard you wasting calories.” She said.

  “I- yeah. It was mostly just bile.” My voice certainly sounded like I vomited. Hoarse and gritty.

  “You got any place to go?” She asked.

  “No.” We just burned down my father’s home, and she knew that.

  “You want food? Prove you’re not going to not be a burden.”

  “I thought I did that last night?”

  “And you puked like a little bitch. You going to be able to kill again?”

  “If I need to, yeah.” She had food, and I didn’t. I didn’t think I was telling the truth, but what choice did I have? If I left that building on my own, I was as good as dead.

  “And your mutt?”

  “He’s saved my life already. He’s sniffed out hidden food, and he’s not afraid to fight to protect me.”

  “Sounds like he’ll be more useful than you are.” She got up from her couch and walked over lazily to the kitchen. From the cabinet she slammed a container of oats and a gallon of water on the table. “We’re leaving in an hour.” She returned to her couch.

  I opened up the water and took a gulp, trying to wash the bile from my mouth.

  “Don’t you fucking dare waste water too.”

  I swallowed, burning my throat once again.

  The wood burning stove was still gently crackling. I put together two bowls of oatmeal and sat them on the fire. Rusty and I both tore into them. It was the first real meal we’d had in a long while. Just plain oatmeal, and maybe the best meal I’d ever had.

  It wasn’t long before we ended up back in the car, traveling down a familiar road. A pillar of thick black smoke still billowed into the air. We drove over a hill and it came into view. The house was reduced to nothing more than ashes and burnt out wood, all collapsed into what was once the basement.

  “It’s still burning.” She noticed.

  The smoke was coming from the grain silo, billowing out the top.

  “I told you it burned slowly.”

  She pulled up to the old house, parking just outside.

  “See if your mutt can find some food.” She ordered.

  “Come on Rusty.” I gave him a tap, and he hopped out. The two of us made a slow lap around the house. Would have been real easy to find some food if she hadn’t burned it all. I know why she did it though. Insurance. If we got killed doing what we did? She wanted to make sure they’d die too at least.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  The barrels of water could be seen through the layer of ash and cracked bones. Of course the water had boiled from the heat, and every barrel was ruptured. Every piece of metal in the house was warped and blackened, even today I would have left most of that scrap behind. The only good part was that the chickens were missing. The people who took over the house must have eaten them, they didn’t die from the heat.

  The old barn was still standing. I pulled the doors open, and found they’d hollowed it out. The stall doors were ripped off their hinges and tools thrown haphazardly in the corner, just to make space for their cars. Our tractors and all the machines we latched onto them were around the back, sand piled halfway up their wheels. Nobody cared what happened to them.

  Mara’s car started up, and she made her way over to the entrance. She stepped out and headed for the trunk, pulling out a couple of tools. Rusty and I took a slow lap around the inside of the building. I wasn’t dumb, if anyone survived the fire, this is where they’d be. I kept my hand on my pistol, I’m just lucky I never needed it. I guess we did our job too well.

  Rusty pointed at one of the cars. I tried the handle, only to find it locked.

  Mara came up next to me. In her hand she had this hammer that ended in a ceramic point. She slammed it into the window, shattering the thing. An alarm went off, and she didn’t so much as flinch. She just reached through what remained of the window, unlocked the door, and handed the hammer to me, leaving me to deal with the thing.

  I scrambled up to the driver’s seat, popped the hood, climbed back out and pulled the wire off the battery. I was lucky all these cars were old. I’d find out later that newer ones had a backup battery, just for the alarm, and I didn’t know how to disconnect the wiring harness yet.

  Rusty hopped in and started digging through the supplies in there. He’d signal which bags smelled like food, and I’d pull out everything of value. We moved from car to car. We were lucky, with all the supplies in the house, they hadn’t bothered to make sure they got everything out of the cars.

  Mara taught me how to siphon fuel that day. Electric cars weren’t common back then, and even if we found one, power generation was nothing more than a pipe dream. We had to use gasoline, made from a black liquid pulled straight from the earth that cars ran on. Stuff spoiled after a few years, which is why we eventually switched over.

  Anyway, siphoning involved sticking a tube down into the gas tank, and sucking it out with your mouth to get it started flowing. First time I tried I sucked too much, got a mouthful of gas. I can still taste it. She just laughed that same laugh she had when watching the house burn down.

  After every car we drained, she took her knife and left a deep scratch in the trunk.

  “Why are you doing that?” I asked.

  “Always mark something you know is empty. Don’t waste the calories checking what you don’t have to.”

  We loaded everything into her car and moved on, checking houses far faster than Rusty and I did on our own. She marked every house when we were done. I guess both of us proved our worth. Rusty found some hidden food, and I did most of the hauling.

  We ended up heading back to her place only when the sun went down, and I brought most of the stuff inside. Lots of food, lots of water, lots of gas. Everything a person could ever need.

  “So. You got a story?” Mara asked once I was finally done. “Or are you going to be boring as shit?”

  “Other than my dad’s house being raided, him telling me to run, and eventually finding my way here?” I ask.

  “Yeah, come on. Spill it.”

  “My parents lived apart. I lived with my mother in Dallas for most of the year, only visiting Dad’s during the summer. She dropped me off at his house when everything got bad. That was last year.”

  “Alright, boring as shit it is then. She’s dead by the way, Dallas is a hell of a shitshow, I barely got out. Plenty of food left over, but no water.”

  “I think I knew that.” Although, I never needed the thought of her dying of dehydration in my head. That definitely kept me up some nights. “Did you live here, you know, before? With your family?”

  She laughed at that.

  “No, asshole who lived here is out back if you want to talk to him though. Fucker sneered at me every time he passed.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I had the balls to beg on my hands and fucking knees not to starve to death. Guess my starving body ruined the view on his walk to lunch. Middle of winter? Heat of summer? He didn’t give a shit. The look on his face when I found out he lived here? Priceless. It’s just a shame that look didn’t last too long.”

  I glanced towards the door, where a rusty stain sat just at the entrance.

  I started to make plans to get out right then. I just needed to find a way to do it safely. The best plan I had was loading her car up with food and water, and driving until the thing gave out. I just wasn’t sure that’d be far enough, and the only key I’d seen was in her pocket.

  “Dont piss yourself, I’m not going to kill you. Not while you’re worth more than the bullet, anyway.” She smiled to herself, silently laughing at her own joke.

  And just like that, my plans for escape were wiped away. She knew, I could see it in her eyes. The second I tried to leave was the last breath I’d take. She made that crystal clear.

  I was stuck. I thought about killing her, just for a moment. She deserved it after everything she did. I couldn’t though. I wasn’t that kind of person yet. The man I killed still stared into me, the image lodged into my brain.

  Conversation, predictably, died there. I ended up making another two bowls of oatmeal, and Rusty and I retreated back to our room to eat. He calmed down a little once we were away from Mara, but he was still far from comfortable in that house.

  “I know buddy.” I did my best to comfort him, and he did his best to do the same for me.

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