I walked inside my apartment and Andy followed me. I gestured to the sofa as I walked past it to the kitchen area, “Take a seat. You want a drink?”
“Uh, sure what do have?” Andy asked from the sofa.
“Bottled water, sodas.” The water had mostly come from the superstore while the sodas I had scavenged from my neighbors. I had seen beer and other alcoholic beverages in a few apartments but had left them.
“Root beer?” he asked.
“Sure.” I pulled two cans out of a box and walked around to the living room. I handed one to Andy and sat in my watch chair with the other. We sat in silence for a minute drinking our warm sodas.
“What’s with the couch?” Andy asked pointing to the short sofa standing on end by the door.
“I use it to block the door.”
“Ah, ok. So, today was a lot of fun. What are we going to do tomorrow?”
I couldn’t help myself and launched into my best mad scientist mouse voice, “The same thing we do everyday. Try to take over the world!” Andy stared at me blankly for a second while I broke down laughing for the first time in weeks.
Andy grinned and chuckled. “You got jokes now?”
“Sometimes,” I said wiping tears from my eyes.
“But seriously, what is the plan now?” he asked. He lifted the tab on his soda a strummed a twangy beat.
“Later I want to move those zombies off the road.”
“Why?” he asked.
“I don’t want bodies laying in the road.” I wasn’t foolish enough to think of the ones running around as people but once they were dead it felt wrong to leave them laying around. “It looks bad. The least we can do is move them into the ditch. Would you want your body to stay on the road?”
“I still don’t see the point but sure I’ll help out.”
“Also, we should try to move a bunch of food and water and anything else we could use out of the store. Not today but soon. We shouldn’t be walking around in the open unless we have to.” We needed to consolidate and not just supplies.
“Move it where?” Andy asked.
“I was thinking here. Not here here. We could use one of the other apartments for storage.”
“And what about me?” he asked.
“What about you?” I asked still weighing pros and cons of my idea. I still had time to not suggest the final part.
“Do I get some of the food or what?”
“You could move into one of the other apartments.” In for a penny, in for a pound; I guess.
“Are you sure? A week ago you didn’t want me knowing where you live and now you want me to move in.”
“You already know where I live and it’s too dangerous to be alone out there. It only takes two or three zombies to overwhelm a person. We’ve been lucky until now but we’re not going to be lucky forever.”
“Ok, sounds like a plan.”
***
Later we dragged the zombies off the road and I helped Andy pick out an apartment. He wanted an upstairs apartment.
“Upstairs I’ll be out of reach of the zombies.”
“But if they get on the stairs you’re blocked in.”
“Can zombies even go up stairs?”
We both stopped to look at the stairs leading up to the second floor apartments. I racked my brain trying to remember if I had ever seen a zombie step up on anything. “It doesn’t matter if they can do stair or not; you still only have one way down. Worst comes to worst I can go out the bathroom window in the back of the building.”
“I’d still rather be high up.”
“Ok,” I said, realizing he wasn’t going to be swayed. “That one,” I pointed at an apartment in the building oppisite mine, “still has a good door.”
“How do you know?”
“When I went door to door scavenging food and water, it was the only one that wasn’t locked so I didn’t have to bust the door frame to get inside.”
“Ok let’s check it out,” Andy said and started walking up the stairs.