Two Alive, стр. 41
Antonio did a quick stretch and Miles joined him. They stretched their arms above their heads, then reached down to touch their toes. Then they spread their legs a part and leaned as far as they could to the left then the right. When they finished, the brothers pushed the bed back into the couch, the mattress folding away, and opened up the office for more space to continue their workout. They did twenty up-downs, running in place before dropping to the floor, then pushing back up and back to their feet. Then they got down and did three kinds of push-ups, twenty reps each. They did wide push-ups, diamond push-ups and military style like the old man taught them.
Then the brothers got up and did twenty squats on their own before doing another set, now weighted when they switched between climbing on each other’s back. Antonio blew through his squats, Miles not adding much weight to his already heavier figure. Miles struggled to complete his set and Antonio, as per usual, didn’t make it easy for him. The full set of ten deep squats took at least fifteen minutes and when he was done, Miles fell against the couch and Antonio laughed at him.
“Spider-Man, Spider-Man! Does whatever a spider can!” Antonio laughed and pushed Miles up before standing up himself. “Good job. You could probably carry me for a mile if you had to.”
Miles got up and flexed, trying to intimidate his older brother. Antonio flexed back, showing off the solid bicep of his right arm. The two boys were fit and the exercises the old man taught them were meant to keep them that way. He wanted them strong enough to carry themselves and strong enough to carry each other if they needed to. After all the horseplay was done, the brothers got down on the floor to do one hundred sit-ups each. They’d race each other to see who could finish them first but Antonio always managed to get through his faster.
Whether he did the full hundred or not, Miles could never tell, but he did notice that every time Antonio reached seventy or eighty, he’d skip numbers. Miles was sure he heard Antonio say seventy-two then seventy-nine. Then eighty-one turned to eighty-four, then to eighty-eight.
Miles called out his cheating multiple times now and in the past, but eventually he would just let it go to keep track of his own count. He’d often get to fifty and lose count or start counting backwards or even say the same number as his brother. It usually meant Miles would do more than a hundred sit-ups.
“One hundred.” Miles finished and laid out on the floor exhausted.
“You hella slow.” Antonio was standing over his brother with a cocky grin. He turned to go grab their water bottles on the office table a few feet away. They were nearly empty after two days staying at this store. But the boys were rationing fairly well.
The first morning at Costco, the brothers watched from the office as Major Carver almost physically fought Ben when he tried to give the boys a whole case of water bottles. The two men eventually settled on a bottle a day but neither seemed pleased by that decision. But it didn’t matter. Antonio and Miles only wanted their bottles from their backpacks. The brothers only trusted their own supplies.
They also learned some crucial information in Ben’s kind gesture. If the store didn’t have rations to spare, then they shouldn’t have water to spare either. Food was precious after the world went to shit, but water was priceless. People gave up food before they gave up water. Water was liquid gold. If they had cases to spare for kids they didn’t even know, Miles and Antonio were sure they must’ve had gallons.
Antonio handed Miles his bottle, “You good?”
“Yeah.” Miles took a swig of his water, only enough to fill a quarter of his mouth.
“Aite, this time we gon just wait until that major nigga leave the--”
“Antonio!” Miles stood up and got in his brother’s face, “Watch your mouth!”
“Aite, aite, my bad. We wait ‘til that major guy leaves the room outside and bust this door open and run into the store. We can run down one of the aisles and hide then find a way out and get back to the hideaway. And we can take whatever we find in the store and leave.”
Miles had his lip poked out, still upset with Antonio about using the n-word. But he slowly started to back down and consider his brother’s plan. “We don’t know what the store looks like. We don’t know what’s in there. We don’t know what’s in there. We don’t even know if there’s a way out that way.”
“So.”
Miles rolled his eyes, “Oh my goooddd. How we gon get out if we can’t find a way out? How we gon get out?”
“We’ll just find a way. It’s gotta be a way out other than the doors in the back. Otherwise they fucked.” Antonio went to the office door and tried listening through the wood frame. “We gotta get the fuck outta here!”
On the other side of the door, Antonio could only hear Nadine’s creaking chair and muffled whispers. Even though the relentless howls of creatures screaming from outside the building could be heard almost with ease, Antonio couldn’t hear what was being said in the security room. The first day Antonio was able to hear damn near everything because they would talk so loud.
Someone would say something about the hive outside still being there and someone else would ask what they should do. Someone else would bring up the two brothers in the office and Carver, always Carver, would close the subject