Cora (Love in the Apocalypse #2)

4. Derrick

Chapter four

Derrick

“ T his house makes too much damn noise,” I complained as I padded barefoot into the kitchen.

“Hey, look who finally found clothes!” Remi cheered sarcastically when he saw me.

I shrugged. “If you don’t like it, don’t look,” I retorted. Being indoors meant I could afford to go nude without the risk of getting a mosquito bite on my dick. I was going to take advantage of that luxury every chance I got.

“We’re sharing a fucking bed, asshole,” Remi retorted, throwing an apple at my head.

I caught it before it hit me. “Your point?” I asked, biting into the fruit. “There’s always the couch if you’re that uncomfortable.”

“You couldn’t get me out of that bed if you pissed on it,” Remi replied.

I wrinkled my nose. “That’s fucking gross, you sicko.”

“I didn’t sleep well either,” Isaac stated, changing the subject before we got too out of hand. “I think Remi is right. We have some rodents in the walls. As long as that’s where they stay, I’m more than willing to ignore them. Rodents are a small price to pay for a roof over our head.”

“If we stay here, we will want to set up a perimeter around the property.” I took another bite of the apple and chewed it thoughtfully. We had come into the mountains because they seemed to be zombie light, but that didn’t mean there weren’t still zombies up here. A perimeter would go a long way toward keeping us safe.

“What did you have in mind?” Trent asked.

“A trench with wooden stakes,” I replied.

“Oh, is that all?” Remi scoffed. “Let me go get my backhoe and chainsaw.”

“I’m not saying that it will be an easy job,” I replied, rolling my eyes. “But it’s a job worth doing if it means keeping our new home safe.”

“He has a point,” Trent said. “I can work on the stakes. I don’t mind.”

“Do you know how long it will take us to dig a trench around this place by hand?” Remi asked.

“A while,” Isaac conceded as I went to the fridge and opened it. “We can go outside and see where trenches are needed and where they aren’t.”

“Who ate the rest of the chili?” I asked. Nobody spoke as we all looked at each other accusingly. “Really, guys? Nobody is going to fess up? It’s not that big of a deal. If you had late-night munchies, just say so. Not saying anything is making this weird.” Still, nobody spoke. “Ok then. We’ll pretend this isn’t weird.” I closed the fridge and sat at the kitchen table.

“Trent, I could have sworn you got up in the middle of the night,” Isaac said.

“Yeah, to go to the bathroom,” Trent replied. “Not to eat the rest of the chili. I didn’t touch it. It must have been one of you.”

“Either someone is lying, or someone sleep-eats and doesn’t know it,” Remi laughed. “Either way, I’m gonna be watching all of you more closely from now on.”

I shook my head. “Back to the security of this place, I like Isaac’s plan. Let’s see where natural barriers could work in our favor and where we will need to dig some holes.” Isaac looked at me in surprise. “What? Most of the time, your plans are excellent. Other times, you have us sitting out in the forest for days watching jackshit happen in an empty house.”

I finished my apple and tossed it in the trash. “Come on, let’s get this day started,” I urged as I went outside. Looking around, I realized there weren’t nearly as many natural barriers as we might have hoped. Walking around the house, I realized there weren’t any—just forests around us.

“On second thought,” I said as Remi came to stand beside me and rested his arm on my shoulder, “perhaps we should build a fence instead.”

“Now you’re thinking with your big brain,” Remi laughed.

I rolled my eyes at him. There’s never been a moment since I’ve known Remi that he took a hundred percent seriously.

Seven and a half months ago

I watched Remington run around the abandoned playground, giggling like a psychopath as he dodged out of reach of the zombie that was trying desperately to catch him.

“I say we just leave him here,” I said to Isaac quietly. “This is too much fucking crazy for any of us to deal with.” We had found him walking along the side of the road a couple of weeks ago, and honestly, that first encounter should have been all the warning we needed to keep driving. When we were within fifteen feet of him, he suddenly started flapping his arms like wings and jumping into an odd rendition of what I assumed must have been the chicken dance.

“We can’t leave him here,” Isaac admonished with a chuckle. “He keeps life interesting, and his skills are proving useful.”

“You said weird wrong. Remi keeps life weird,” I replied.

“I’m not weird; I’m fun,” Remi yelled as he jumped on the merry-go-round and spun it.

“Ok, fun-time-Charlie, are you done?” I asked. “We’re losing daylight.”

“That depends,” he replied, jumping off the merry-go-round and climbing to the top of the slide.

“On what?” Isaac asked.

“On whether Trent is done making eyes at the young lady down the street. Are you going to go talk to her or not, kid?”

We stumbled upon this zombie-free town a few days ago, and they were gracious enough to let us stay, with the understanding that it wasn’t a permanent visit and that we were expected to move on soon. The man who ran the town had a daughter about Trent’s age, and he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her in her presence for more than ten seconds the entire time we’d been here.

“I’m twenty-two. I’m not a kid,” Trent argued, flipping Remi the bird. With great effort, he finally dragged his eyes away from the girl. “I’m ready to leave whenever you are.”

“You’re not going to make a move?” I asked.

“What’s the point?” Trent asked. “We can’t stay, so why bother.”

“He has a point,” Isaac said, clapping his younger brother on the back.

“Yeah, but why should that stop you?” Remi asked. He slid down the slide, stood, stabbed the zombie in the head, and joined us at the fence. “If this world has taught us anything, it’s that life is too fucking short not to enjoy it when you can. Walk your ass down there, sweep that woman into your arms, kiss her senseless, and then take her to bed for the rest of the fucking day.”

Trent turned three different shades of red. “I can’t— I don’t— I’ve never— I don’t want to,” he finished lamely.

“Wait,” I said, trying not to laugh because the last thing he needed was for me to laugh at him. “You’ve been with a woman before, right?”

“What?” Trent sputtered. “Of course I have. Lots. All the time.”

I looked at Isaac, and he shook his head.

“Oh, yeah, then my idea would be terrible for you to do,” Remi said. “You need an older woman who can teach you a thing or two before we let you loose on an innocent girl.”

“Can we stop talking about this?” Trent asked.

“What about her mom?” Remi suggested.

“I thought we were leaving,” Trent said, grabbing his backpack and walking toward the edge of town.

“You don’t have anything to be embarrassed about, Trent!” Remi called after him. He jumped the fence, grabbed his bag, and chased after him. “I’m sure there are plenty of virgins left in the apocalypse.”

Isaac and I laughed as we grabbed the rest of our stuff and followed along behind them. “How the hell is he still a virgin?” I asked.

Isaac shrugged. “Beats the shit out of me. He had game but always managed to get himself friend-zoned in the end. If the outbreak hadn’t happened, I think he was getting close. There was this girl in his class that was always following him around. You could see the determination in her eyes. Don’t get me wrong, I fully believe she would have been the girlfriend from hell with how obsessed she was with him, but he would have gotten laid.”

We walked in silence for a while, lost in our thoughts. We were only a few years older than Trent, but by the time I was a senior in high school, I had long since lost my virginity. “When did you lose your virginity?” I asked.

Isaac gave me a weird look. “That’s a weird thing to ask,” he replied.

“It’s not weird considering we were on the subject,” I argued. “I’ll go first. I was fifteen when Annie Cambridge let me flop around on top of her like a dying fish for the best thirty seconds of my life up until that point.”

Isaac laughed. “A whole thirty seconds? You lasted a long time. I was fourteen, and by the time I got inside Mary Ross, who lived next door to my grandparents, I was so worked up that I think I only lasted about ten seconds. It was also the best ten seconds of my life; Mary didn’t seem too impressed.”

“We have to make sure Trent does better than we did,” I laughed. “How we go about that, I don’t know.”

“What don’t you know?” Trent asked as we caught up with him and Remi at the gate.

“How to make sure you last more than thirty seconds during your first time,” Isaac replied.

“Why are you still talking about this?” Trent groaned. He turned and pushed the gate open without checking to make sure the coast was clear first. Remi slammed into his back, knocking him to the ground as the zombie on the other side of the gate lunged for him. Remi shifted, shoving his bag into the zombie’s face to keep from getting bit as he fumbled for his knife. Just as me and Isaac jumped forward to take out the zombie, Remi managed to put him down.

We pulled the body off of them and helped Remi and Trent to their feet.

“Thanks, man,” Trent said to Remi.

“Anytime, brother. I can’t let you die a virgin, can I?” Remi replied, making us all laugh.

As it turned out, we needed someone in the group who didn’t take things too seriously. Remington was a constant shining light in an otherwise dim world. We’d be lost without him, and I’m glad we decided to keep him around.

“It’s still going to be a lot of work,” I replied.

“True,” Remi conceded, “but not nearly as much work as digging fucking trenches.”

“Hey, check it out!” Trent called. We followed the direction of his voice and found him on the other side of the house, standing next to an old pickup truck. By old, I mean this truck was considered old ten years ago. “Do you think we could get it running?”

I shrugged and looked at Remi. He was our resident mechanic. The car we had been using only just died a few weeks ago, but it would have died sooner if it wasn’t for Remi.

Remi circled the truck before popping the hood and checking out the engine. “It looks like it is in pretty good condition. The owner took really good care of it.”

“What’s that?” Isaac asked, kneeling beside the truck and looking at something under it.

“What’s what?” Trent asked.

We all knelt beside him and quickly saw what he was talking about. It looked like a trap door. “Where do you think that goes?” I asked.

“I don’t have a single clue,” Isaac replied.

I crawled under the truck and cleared the dirt and debris from the depression where the handle was located. I pulled on it as best I could, but the door didn’t move.

“Here,” Remi said, sliding me a flathead screwdriver.

I tried to pry the door open, but it was solid and did not go anywhere. “It must be locked from the inside,” I said as I crawled back out from under the truck.

“Inside where?” Trent asked.

“That seems to be the million-dollar question,” I replied, dusting myself off.

“Maybe when I get the truck running, we’ll be able to move it out of the way and figure out a way in,” Remi said.

“Or there’s another way we haven’t found yet,” Isaac suggested.

“Either way, we aren’t getting through that door anytime soon,” I said, pointing.

I rounded the corner of the house to check out the rest of the property and damn near got bit as I ran into a fucking zombie. “Fuck!” I yelled. I fought the fucker off of me long enough to get my knife out. I plunged it through his eye and tossed the body into another. There were about five in the yard, and we took them all out together. “Right, we need to get moving on that fucking fence,” I panted as Remi and I put the last one down. “There are too many directions these fuckers can sneak up on us from.”

“How exactly are we supposed to get materials for a fence?” Trent asked.

I looked at him like he was stupid and gestured all around us. “The trees?”

“There’s a workshop over there,” Isaac said. “It’s got power tools and chainsaws.”

“Is it smart to use them?” Remi asked.

“I think the speed they will give us is worth the risk,” I said. “Just keep your eyes open for any of the dead the sound might attract.”

“Derrick is right,” Isaac said. “Everyone stay buddied up, one person acting as a lookout if you’re using any of the power tools.”

I went to the workshop and poked my head in to see what we had to work with. “I’ll start digging holes,” I said, grabbing the post-hole digger. While the others started cutting down trees and chopping them into more manageable fence-sized pieces, I started digging holes, keeping my eyes peeled for any zombies that might try to sneak up on us. There was no way of knowing how many were in the surrounding forest, and they didn’t tend to make a ton of noise unless provoked.

The nice thing about the type of fence we were building was that it didn’t take more than some half logs and posts with holes cut in them. By mid-afternoon, Remi and I were able to start building the fence while Trent and Isaac continued to chop. During a small break, when everything was quiet, I looked toward the house and nearly pissed myself when I saw a girl standing in the window. Time seemed to stop as my brain made sense of what I was seeing. She was beautiful in an underwhelming way, and her eyes seemed to beg me to save her.

“Holy fuck!” I yelled as I snapped back into reality. I looked at Remi, who jumped at my sudden shout and pointed toward the house.

“What?” he asked, looking around frantically to identify the threat.

I looked back at the house and saw the window was empty. My shouting got Trent and Isaac’s attention, and they came jogging over to see the problem. “Tell me you saw her,” I said to Remi.

“Saw who?” he asked.

“I swear to God, a girl was standing in the window. She was pale, blonde, and small,” I explained. They all looked at the house and then back at me.

“Do you see her now?” Trent snickered.

“No, asshole, I don’t. But she was there. I know what I fucking saw,” I growled.

“If a girl was wandering around the house, I feel like we would have noticed her,” Isaac stated. “Maybe you should take a break. You’ve been digging holes in the hot sun all day. Get a drink and cool off.”

“I didn’t fucking imagine it,” I argued.

“Maybe it was a ghost,” Remi suggested. “Maybe the house is haunted!”

“Be serious,” I replied, rolling my eyes.

“I was,” he replied indignantly. “At least my theory makes more sense than you seeing a living, breathing girl.”

I ignored him, and we all went back to our tasks. As I worked, I kept one eye on the house’s windows.

I knew what I saw.