10. Rosie
Chapter ten
Rosie
W ilder spent most of the morning going back and forth between the apartments on our floor, dismantling furniture and using odds and ends to piece them back together. By the time I woke, he was already up, sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of orange juice and a protein bar sketching out a plan. He told me he’d gotten a degree in engineering, and it fascinated me how he could put pencil to paper to create a plan. I wished my education hadn’t been so useless. What the hell would I do with my knowledge in Art History? I was supposed to start an assistant curator position at a museum in the new year. A lot of good that would do us now. I suppose I also wasn’t planning for the apocalypse, either.
My ears strained with every sound, although I knew most of them were only Wilder trying to secure the stairwell doors so nobody could wander up them like we had. The trick, he’d explained, was creating something strong enough to keep people out, but that wouldn’t trap us if an emergency made it necessary for us to leave in a hurry. I shuddered at the thought of having to run out of the apartment without a plan.
I worried every time he left. Then I worried about the fact that I was so worried about a man I’d known for a matter of days. Was it pure desperation that connected us or something more? I didn’t have the luxury of finding out the answer to that question. To keep myself busy, I sorted through our haul of food and supplies, organising it all by expiration date and then arranging the items in a way that made sense, at least to me. The cereal went with the shelf stable milks. The syrup with the pancake and waffle mixes. The cans of soup and beans with a can opener.
“It’s just me,” he said, walking into the apartment after knocking softly twice.
We’d devised the simple code so I wouldn’t have a heart attack each time he returned. Wilder slid the dresser back into place and joined me in the kitchen.
“That mean you’re done for the day?”
He nodded, wiping sweat off his brow despite the cool temperature in the kitchen.
“I think the latch will work really well.”
“I never had any doubt,” I told him, even though I didn’t know the first thing about it.
Wilder set a heavy hardcover book on the table, the spine covered in a layer of dust. I ran my finger over the gold lettering, exposing the title.
“An Almanac?”
“Yeah. It’s got info about when the sun rises and sets, weather predictions…I thought it might be useful.”
I lifted the book over my head. “Doubles as a hefty weapon, too.”
A soft smile played on his lips, but it didn’t reach his eyes.
I set the book back down, settling into the kitchen chair I’d claimed as my own and began leafing through the thin pages.
“That took me longer than I thought. Do you still want to check out the storage locker?”
I tapped my fingers over a tide table.
“Let’s do it. Even if it’s just to figure out where it is.”
“That’s what I was thinking too. We’ll get the lay of the land and if we need to take some more time to figure things out, we can.”
“Do you think we have that much time?”
Wilder read between the lines.
“I know that freaked you out last night. But I promise I secured the doors really well. If we’re going to get out of the city on foot, we’re going to need a plan. I don’t want to half ass this.”
The logical part of me knew he was right, but my base urges told me to keep running, just like I’d done a few days ago. My body didn’t want to stop. Not with Barrett so close anyway.
“Listen. We’re a few days away from the National Park. If we can get some gear and find a Ranger cabin or something else, I think we’d have much better chances there.”
A chance. The idea that our very lives were up to a game of probabilities was terrifying. If we stayed in the city, the likelihood of running into hostile humans and zombies was high. If we left for the wilderness, we were exposed to the elements and animals and perhaps a whole host of dangers we hadn’t considered.
“What about the base you guys came from? Why couldn’t we go there?”
Wilder picked at his lower lip.
“First, they flew us in. I’d have to look at a map but it’s far. Second…I’m not sure I want to go back.”
“Do you want to tell me why?”
“I don’t think they’re gonna look after us anymore, okay? I don’t have a way to prove that. It’s just a gut feeling. You’ll have to trust me on that–”
“I do.”
Wilder opened his mouth to keep speaking, like he had more points he could use to convince me, but then he processed what I’d said.
“You do?”
“Sure. I trust your judgement.”
“Okay. Shit, that was easy.”
“I’m a civilian anyway. I was sort of worried they might turn me away if we showed up together.”
“I’d never let that happen,” he said, pinning me with a hard stare.
I believed him. And that scared the hell out of me.