Still Dying: Select Scenes From Dying Days Read online

  "Who said anything about making love?"

  Tosha laughed at him. "Making love? Who the fuck says that?" She put her hands up in the air and started gyrating her hips. "I'm talking about fucking, grinding against me as you grab my ass and squeeze."

  "Damn you." Rasta Dude walked to the door. "I'm going to get more of my things and bring them over."

  "You can move them into her room," Tosha said and stopped, plopping down on the chair. "Are we going to bring the furniture, too?"

  He shook his head. "I don't have much stuff worth moving, and I'd rather crash on your couch in case we're attacked or looters show up."

  "We're wasting time."

  "There's nowhere to go. Without any news, we'd be walking in a snowstorm blindly until we froze to death."

  Tosha stood up. "Duh."

  "What?"

  "We went into the old woman's apartment because she had a radio. We need to get it, and clean up the dead bodies as well. I don't know how you keep walking past them each day when you leave." Since her sister's death, Tosha had refused to venture out for supplies, using the excuse about getting the apartment organized for them. She didn't want to see her sister's mutilated corpse.

  "I'm afraid if I drag them into the street, it will attract more attention. And I can't move them alone."

  "Tomorrow I'll help you with them."

  "We need the radio and whatever else she has down there. Put a pair of shoes on, if you can fit them over fifteen pairs of socks."

  "It's only three pair. I'll grab the bleach and garbage bags. And a bandanna to cover my face. I think I have gloves here, too."

  "And a hat?"

  "Good thinking."

  "That was a joke," he said.

  "I don't want my hair getting in my face. I haven't washed it in too long and it gets all frizzy and unmanageable. On your next looting session, try to find me some shampoo."

  "Before all this, you ran out of shampoo?"

  "I have this cheap shit Mathyu keeps buying. I want real stuff, but we can never afford it. I let her handle the money things, since I'm so bad at it. She's the only reason the apartment looks halfway decent. She spends her morning cleaning up after me so she can spend her afternoon on her computer, doing her job. Then she has her nights free to play stupid videogames."

  Rasta Dude stared at her.

  Tosha turned away and went to the window, shoving her face between two blinds and hr nose touching the cold glass. She tried to fight the tears. "I wanted to go first into the other bedroom. I had the baseball bat. I'm the aggressive one, the bitch who picked fights and beat on people. Not Mathyu. She talked her way out of confrontations, making friends with people. She was always the better person, and I was the street thug who tagged along and never learned a fucking thing."

  "You can't blame yourself."

  Tosha turned to him. "Why not? It really is my fault. Even with all this shit going on, she was still smiling and still having a fun time. She thought her life was a fucking videogame, and this was another level to complete. I should have opened that door."

  "I'm sure she wants you to live. The only way to do that is to stop feeling sorry for yourself and do something about it. Weren't you just saying how much you jump into things, take charge, and act instead of react?"

  "I don't remember those words," Tosha joked but she knew what he was getting at. She wiped her eyes with her sleeve. "I guess it's time to stop the crying and get on with my life. Shit, even if I wanted to give her a proper burial, it's so damn cold outside we couldn't dig her a grave."

  "What if we wrapped her in blankets and hid her in the alley until this all blew over? Then we can bury her remains."

  Tosha thought about it. She didn't want to toss her sister away like garbage. But she knew Rasta Dude was kidding himself if he thought this was magically going to end on a good note. "I'll get some of my blankets. Hers are the only ones that are actually clean."

  He picked up the hand axe and nodded. "Don't forget your baseball bat."

  Tosha went into her room and stripped her bed of the sheets and blanket and willed herself to be strong and not cry when they got downstairs. Mathyu would want her to get her shit together and stop being a crybaby.

  "Let's do this," she said, her words sounding big and bold but her mind reeling at what they had to do.

  Armand Rosamilia is a native New Jersey boy currently living in sunny Florida, where he waits impatiently for the zombie apocalypse and watches the Boston Red Sox devoutly. When not writing horror, reading horror, listening to Heavy Metal or sleeping, he is doing something completely different.

  He loves fan mail or people wanting to talk about Manowar and Slayer.

  [email protected] and at www.facebook.com/armand.rosamilia

  http://armandrosamilia.com

  Dying Days series

  http://armandrosamilia.com