WILLA, стр. 46

“Are you sure? I could help you drag the pieces—maybe,” I replied.

The distance from where the bodies lay to the shed wasn’t that far, but I was tired, hungry, and filthy.

“Nah,” he said, waving me toward the house we were behind. “I’ve got this. You go wash up and rest.”

“All right,” I said, wiping my hands on my jeans. The action didn’t help clean them. “I’ll try to have lunch ready by the time you’ve finished and cleaned up.”

“Thanks,” he said, before turning to wheel the pile of body parts to the shed a few houses down from where we stood.

I scanned the houses, looking for the one the teenage girl might have lived in, as the possibility of me finding something to wear in it would be higher. I pointed to the back door of the one I thought we should occupy for the day, waited until I got an acknowledgment from Tanner, and then went around to the front of the house.

Someone had left the front door unlocked, for which I was grateful. I didn’t want to break one of the sidelights to get inside. I also didn’t want to search for another house on the off chance someone my size lived there.

When I opened the large wooden door, the nastiest odor hit me in the face. It smelled like death. Someone had died inside the house.

For half a second, I thought about shutting the door and picking another house, but curiosity about the party in the backyard remained in my mind. I wanted to know who the party was for and, sadly, what kind of gifts she’d received.

Morbidly enough, I also wanted to know whom the body or bodies belonged to and if they were outbreak victims or if they’d died later.

I propped both the storm and wooden doors open to let the place air out before going inside. By the time I could enter the small foyer without gagging, I was too tired to search the home. Instinct told me to do it before doing anything else, but I wanted to get clean.

Besides, a voice in my head reasoned that the smell indicated that no one alive or undead was in the house. Everyone had been out back for the party. And no zombies had rushed out the door when I’d opened it in search of fresh meat.

Nodding my head at my logic, I dropped our packs on an end table and started removing my outer layer of clothing. The furniture was too lovely for me to plop my dirty ass on it. I flung my shirt and pants out the front door. I’d deal with them later...or not at all if I didn’t want. Clothes weren’t a challenge to come by right then.

“Speaking of...” I said, grabbing a box of wet wipes out of the backpack I always carried with me and headed down the hall in search of the girl’s bedroom.

The room wasn’t hard to find. A glance inside the second door to the right showed me a bed piled with presents. I went into the attached bathroom and cleaned myself the best I could with the wipes and bottled water when no water flowed from the faucet.

Once I was as clean as I was going to get, I dove into the gifts. I won’t lie. I pretended that it was my birthday and the presents were for me. I’d missed my birthday and would probably miss many more in the years ahead. Indulging myself one time wouldn’t hurt.

The girl had received hundreds of dollars’ worth of gift cards, which were useless to me. She’d also gotten a fair number of cute outfits that were a bit too loose, but I didn’t care. I tried on every single one. Between what I found on the bed and what was in the girl’s closet, I wouldn’t want for clothes for a while if we stayed near the house. A fair bit of it was impractical for the middle of the zombie apocalypse, but every once in a while, it wouldn’t hurt to dress like the end of the world wasn’t going on around me, I told myself.

“And today’s that day,” I said, looking at my reflection in a mirror.

I wore skinny jeans and a top that barely reached my waist.

“This will get Tanner’s attention,” I told my reflection.

When he’d first found me, I’d been too tired, too sick, and too upset about losing my family to think much about the boy. As the weeks had passed, I’d slowly realized that I was crushing on him. He hadn’t appeared to return the sentiment. Tanner couldn’t ignore the outfit I wore. His reaction would tell me if he was interested in me or not.

“Oh, shit, Tanner. He’ll be finishing with the bodies any second now, and I promised him that I’d have food ready,” I said to the mirror.

I rushed from the room, snatched our packs off the end table in the living room, and ran to the kitchen. Relief flooded me at the sight of the immaculate room. Once the smell, which was already nearly gone, had left, we’d be able to eat and stay in the house for some time.

Dropping our food packs on the kitchen table, I headed to the back door to open it. I mentally went over the food items we had. If the home had a gas stove, we could have something hot. The soup sounded good.

After propping the back door open, I raised the kitchen windows. I looked out one of them for a long moment until I saw Tanner dragging an obese body, man or woman, I couldn’t tell from my location, through the grass and over to the shed.

A part of me felt terrible for not being able to help, but my selfish side was grateful. I imagined that I was going to have to do many things in the future that I wouldn’t want to do, so