Eve

Chapter 31 (Part 2)

I didn't really drown myself. I wasn't really planning to. I mean I wanted to, don't get me wrong, but that's what sucks about human nature. We're hard wired to live. To fight for survival, even when life sucks big time. We can rationalize all we want: I don't wanna live anymore. The world is filled with zombies and everyone I love is dead and, quite frankly, I don't believe in the afterlife, but if it turns out there is one, I think I can talk my way into Heaven. Just give me five minutes with JC.

But no matter how much you say that to yourself, your body still wants to live. It just won't let go.

"I know you hate my guts, Eve," Innara said, over the hissing of the fire between us, "but we sort of have no one else to talk to in the world."

I looked up at Innara's face, golden with the light of the bonfire. It was dark and dead quiet but for the splashing of waves a few feet to our side. We were under the Santa Monica Pier, between wooden poles, cold and miserable over the sand.

"Ok, you don't have to talk... but I did save your life," Innara mumbled, biting onto a piece of bread, the last she had in her backpack.

Because she shared all the food she had with me along the week. The food she took from her house in Big Bear when her family was attacked and killed.

God, must everyone I hate be nice to me?

"Thank you," I said, low enough that I was hoping she wouldn't hear me. "And I'm sorry I punched you."

"What?"

"I'm sorry I punched you," I said, louder. "But you had it co –"

"Don't ruin the moment, Eve." Innara thought for a second, a smile forming in her lips. "But yeah, I know I can be pretty punch-worthy sometimes."

I stopped. Then I smiled a bit too. "Yeah, you can."

"Hey, we found some common ground," Innara said, offering me the bread. "Talking shit about me."

I chuckled and grabbed the bread. I ate in silence for a while. Then I asked, "Why did you have to give me such a hard time in school, Innara?"

Innara shrugged. "I don't know. Honestly. I just..."

"You liked Damian, didn't you?"

Innara's eyes went up to me. "Yeah... yeah, kind of. I mean, I thought he was cute. But it wasn't that."

"What, then?"

"I don't know. I just – that's just how I learned to get ahead in life, you know? It always worked for me."

"Being a bitch?"

"Putting people down. It projects confidence. My mother used to tell me the most important thing you do when you walk into a room is make sure everyone knows you're better than them, even if you don't feel that way."

"My mom used to say I was a spoiled bitch because I picked the Sesame seeds off burger buns before I ate them."

Innara laughed, and I let myself laugh too. And then, like two silly idiot girls, we couldn't stop. She'd try to catch her breath, I'd break out laughing again, and then she'd laugh because I was laughing and I'd laugh more. After a while, we didn't even care if we were being loud, our laughter echoing through the deserted beach, carried up with the wind towards the city to whatever fucking zombie wanted to hear us.

Yeah, yeah, she was a bitch, but so what? I was kind of a bitch too. We were being bitches together and the world was being a bitch to us. So let it be. Everyone's kind of a bitch, sometimes.

"What do we do now," Innara asked between gasps, as our laughter started to die out.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean we have no food and no place to go and we haven't seen a living soul in a week."

"Oh, that..."

We raised our eyes to each other at the same time, the incandescent light of burning specks sparkling upwards between us. The warmth of the fire was keeping the front part of my body warm and the back cold, and it felt very weird and it made me think of childhood, for some reason.

"I don't know, Innara... I guess we just wait around to die."

Innara scooched around the fireplace to my side, and her eyes were lit up by the yellow light. They were red, but she wasn't crying.

"I'm really fucking scared, Eve."

She moved a bit, and the light shifted to her shoulder, where a nasty cut was showing from a ripped piece of her Versace shirt.

"How did you do that?" I asked.

"I don't know. I think it was back in the woods."

The blood was dry, but the cut was swollen, and there were dots of pus in it. It looked nasty.

I grabbed the little blanked Innara had brought with her in the backpack and pulled her close, closing my arm around her shoulder. I threw the blanket over our backs and we leaned our heads sideways against each other. We sat there in silence for a while.

"Do you reckon zombies shit?" I asked, as we both eyed the fire. "I mean, they eat, right? So they have to take dumps, from time to time."

Innara rearranged herself against me, chuckling. "Aren't you ever scared, Eve?"

I looked down at my phone by my leg on the sand. The last time I had found a place with an outlet that worked had been three days before, and now I was keeping the phone on only a few hours at a time. The battery was on 9%. No internet signal. No phone signal.

No sign of Damian.

"Yeah," I whispered, feeling Innara's breath slowing down as she drifted to sleep. "Yeah, I get scared, Innara. All the time."

Innara snored loudly once. I closed my eyes.