Total pages in book: 16
Estimated words: 15337 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 77(@200wpm)___ 61(@250wpm)___ 51(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 15337 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 77(@200wpm)___ 61(@250wpm)___ 51(@300wpm)
I couldn’t help it.
After a few lines, I joined in.
We sang until our lungs hurt.
And, of course, until one of the zombies got desperate enough to try his hand at swimming. Then hilariously went ass-up in the water, bobbing there in the waves.
“Did we leave all the food on the shore?” I asked, cuddled into his and my shirt since the sun had gone down and the air had taken on a chill.
“Only half of it,” Caleb said, going in search of the rest of the food, bringing it up, so we could have a picnic under the stars.
“I know, man, I just brought the one can of tuna,” Caleb apologized to the cat who was eyeing him like he was being starved to death. “We weren’t supposed to be here this late.”
Unfortunately, though, there were still zombies on the shore. We couldn’t see them anymore, but we could hear their little grumbles every now and again.
We were hoping that they’d be gone by morning.
We weren’t going to be taking chances, though.
The plan was to suit up with weapons with Caleb wearing Toddy on his back in the backpack he’d brought, then getting to shore, and making a mad dash to the car, leaving the boat in the water.
“Worst case, we can run to the water again,” he reminded me when I must have shown some reaction to the plan, even though, objectively, I knew we had to get off of the boat and back to some sort of structure. Then, “Come on, Catie with a C and ie, it’s just an adventure. And, hey, if we have to die, we had fun, and went out with a bang, right?” he asked, brows wiggling.
I had to admit that if the end was near, I was kind of glad to have spent some of my time with his crazy ass.
Luckily, though, we made it back to the car. And the car made it back to the mansion before crapping out on us.
“You’re not leaving,” he informed me as I shuffled my feet in the driveway. “Come on, Catie,” he said, shaking his head at me. “I have this giant mansion here. Where it’s safe and cool and comfortable. Not to mention badass and fun. Why the hell would you go back there?”
And, well, he had a point, didn’t he?
And I was getting too accustomed to being with him, with not being so alone and lonely.
“That’a girl,” he said, throwing an arm over my shoulders and yanking me against his side. “We do have to go back eventually, though. We can’t let that perfectly good pasta and wine go to waste.”
“A man after my own heart,” I said.
Lightly.
I said it lightly.
But it wasn’t long until he truly was.
After my heart.
It also wasn’t long before I was giving it over to him.
Willingly.
Happily.
And it was maybe the biggest adventure of my life.
All thanks to a boy in a graveyard having a silent rave in rubber ducky shorts.
Ten months later
“What the hell?” I gasped, jumping at a loud, and getting louder, sound that seemed to shake the walls of our impenetrable fortress. “What is that?” I asked, having to yell to Caleb despite him being just a few feet away, trying to scoot a particularly large spider that neither of us wanted to squish into a cup to bring outside.
When his head turned in my direction, his gaze was uncharacteristically serious.
“That’s a helicopter,” he yelled back. “Landing on the roof,” he added.
And it all clicked then, making me immediately understand his look of shock with just a hint of worry.
If a helicopter was landing on this roof, there was only one explanation.
I mean, sure, in a wine-soaked giddy mood, we’d gone up there and painted our own version of an SOS on it.
Almost out of wine.
So, yeah, it was possible that an actual rescue team saw it, and was going to come and check to see if anyone was still alive inside.
But it seemed slightly more logical to assume that the owner of our palatial mansion where we’d lived and thrived and fallen in love was back to reclaim it.
Just as suddenly as the deafening sound of the helicopter started, it stopped, and Caleb made his way over toward me.
We were both frozen, unsure what we were supposed to do in this situation. I mean, the world ended. All the laws went out the window. Looting and stealing and squatting were all just what we had to do to survive.
He couldn’t exactly been pissed.
“We kept the place pretty clean,” Caleb reasoned.
“You’re forgetting the water slide and the bowling alley and the mural we painted in the dining room.”
“It added some much-needed character.”
It was our very terrible attempt to recapture the day on the beach. There was a boat with both of us on it, zombies on the shore, and one in the water with his ass up. We’d even painted Caleb’s dearly departed big-boobed lady float. And the severed hand I’d needed to detach from my wrist.