Fighting for Rain - BB Easton Page 0,8
be. I can practically smell the Hello Kitty bath bombs and body sprays clustered around the checkout stand.
Wes tightens his grip around my body and grinds his teeth in his sleep. I want to let him hold me a little longer, but I can tell that whatever he’s dreaming about is about as fun as being set on fire by Bonys.
“Wes.” I tap his thigh, which is about all I can do with the death grip he has on me. “Wake up, babe. It’s morning.”
Wes swallows and yawns and rubs my upper arms with his hands as he comes to. “Hmm?”
“It’s morning. We made it.”
Wes shifts his weight and sits up straighter behind me. Then, he lets his forehead drop to my shoulder with a groan. “You woke me up for that?”
I laugh. “I thought you were having a nightmare. Did you see the horsemen?”
He grumbles something into my hoodie that sounds like a no.
“Really? Me either! I saw the banners, but the horsemen never came.” I frown, thinking about how the Bonys were about to light me on fire, but at least it was something new. After spending a year dreaming about the four horsemen of the apocalypse killing everyone on April 23, getting burned alive by a deranged motorcycle gang feels like an improvement.
“Yeah, I saw the banners too.” Wes yawns and lifts his head. “But then everybody turned into zombies and tried to eat us. I got to hack your boyfriend up with a machete though, so it wasn’t all bad.”
“Wes!” I turn sideways in his lap, ready to snap at him for using the B-word again, but the sight of him hits me like a ton of bricks.
His soft green eyes are rimmed with red. His jaw is peppered with stubble. His face is covered in dirt and ash, and the collar of his blue Hawaiian shirt has Quint’s blood on it. The reality of what we’ve been through comes crashing down around me as I gaze into Wes’s beautiful, battle-worn face.
It happened. All of it. The eighteen-wheeler explosion. The overdose. The house fire. The shoot-out at Fuckabee Foods. My parents …
Wes gets blurry as my eyes fill with tears. I squeeze them shut, trying to block out the images of my daddy in his armchair and my mama in her bed. Their faces … oh my God.
They’re really gone, and the apocalypse never came to make it all go away.
I cover my mouth with the sleeves of my hoodie and look up at Wes. “What are we gonna do now?” My voice breaks along with the dam holding back my tears.
Wes pulls me against his chest and wraps his arms around me as an ocean of grief drags me under. “Don’t you remember what I told you?” he asks, rocking my jerking, trembling body from side to side.
I burrow my face into the side of his neck and shake my head, gasping between sobs.
How can I remember what to do? I’ve never lost my entire family in one day before.
But Wes has.
“We say fuck ’em and survive anyway.”
“Right.” I nod, remembering his pep talk from two days ago.
“So, what do we need to survive today?”
I sniffle and lift my head. “You’re asking me?”
“Yep. In order to say fuck ’em and survive anyway, the first thing you have to do is say fuck ’em, and the second thing you have to do is figure out what you need to survive. So, figure it out. What do we need?”
“Uh …” I wipe the snot and tears from my face with my hoodie sleeve and sit up. “Food?”
“Good.” Wes’s tone is surprisingly not sarcastic. “Do we have any?”
“Um …” I look around until I spot my backpack in the opposite corner of the entryway. “Yes. And water but not much.”
“What else do we need?”
I look at the puddle inching closer to us. “A better place to sleep.”
“Okay. What else?”
My eyes drop to the torn, bloodstained spot on Wes’s sleeve. “You need to take your medicine. You need a new bandage too, but my hands aren’t clean enough to do it.”
“So, we’ll add find soap to the list.”
I nod again, surprised at how relieved I feel. Empowered almost.
“So we need supplies and shelter …” he summarizes. “What else?”
“Hmm …” I pull my eyebrows together and look around, hoping to find some clue in the dank, dusty, cobweb-covered hallway.
Wes clears his throat and taps the handle of the gun sticking out of his holster.
“My daddy’s gun?”
“Self-defense.” He smirks. “Supplies. Shelter.