Two Alive, стр. 5
“I don’t have to do anything. You’d be in the same shit if I wasn’t even out here… then what would you do.”
Antonio turned and started to jog away with the boy cursing him as he left. Antonio didn’t look back. In fact, he had already forgotten about the boy. Whether he lived or died, wasn’t Antonio’s responsibility.
***
Miles was sitting in the perch of the treehouse that he, the old man and Antonio built two years ago. Someone had already constructed the playhouse long before the world went to shit, but the old man had them add to it and reinforce it. It was a perfect hideaway. High in the trees, hidden behind branches and shrubbery, the treehouse had three medium-size rooms that provided plenty of space for the three of them. They used steel and aluminum sheets that they bolted around the house and covered the whole thing with mud and dirt to give it an earthy look and to better hide the structure. There was a ladder nailed into the tree used to scale the eighteen-foot sentinel, but the old man had them tear it down and instead used a pulley system to get up and down.
Then a nest was built and used for a look out, where Miles was sitting now. He was watching the sun fade on the horizon and keeping watch over Antonio, who was cooking his deer over a spit, forty meters away.
Miles rocked back and forth in his perch, with Kendrick Lamar’s Humble playing in his head. He liked the song but it was a nervous rocking that kept him moving in the tree as he watched the smoke wafting in the distance. He was hoping Antonio hurried up, especially after all the ruckus they had earlier. The old man never let them cook anything right next to the treehouse for fear of someone seeing the smoke and finding the place. But when Miles said he wasn’t going to wait with Antonio while he cooked his deer, he went up into the tree and chose to keep watch instead and had been uneasy since he got in his nest. Never separate if you can avoid it, the old man would say. Miles felt bad leaving Antonio, but also wasn’t going to wait for that deer to cook.
A whistle came from below and Miles opened his eyes, unaware he had even closed them. When he looked down he saw Antonio there, holding what looked like a platter of cut meats. “Send down the elevator,” he called and Miles immediately shushed him.
The small boy went to work, climbing back inside the house and unknotting the cord that kept the “elevator” pulled up and under the treehouse. Without his armor on, Miles was a skinny little guy with long limbs. He put on his gloves and lowered the swing down slowly until Antonio was able to get inside. Looking down through a small hole, Miles watched him climb aboard and started the difficult task of pulling his brother back up to the top.
“You gotta pull too!” Miles called out as he fought with the rope and pulled with all his might. The lift was raising two feet at a time.
Antonio laughed, “You got it Miles! Strong arm that shit! Ha haah!”
“You gotta help! C’moooonn!” Miles complained, struggling to grip the rope he was pulling. There was another rope in the cart with Antonio but he was holding his platter and not helping to lift himself up. “You too heavy!” Miles said.
Antonio continued that annoying, obnoxious laugh that Miles felt was too loud and boisterous. “Aite, aite. Did you even untie the counterweight?”
Miles paused and looked behind him at the rope to a large boulder hanging on the opposite side of the treehouse. He always forgot to free up that rope which helped with pulling up the carriage and made it almost effortless. He wrapped his cord around the hook and went to free the boulder. When it was loose, the rock fell and the elevator shot up almost all the way to the top when the giant stone hit the ground below. Antonio nearly lost his platter from the lifts sudden swift climb. He was close enough now to pull himself up and came climbing through the bottom opening to the main room of the treehouse. He sat his platter down on the front table and went to help his brother pull the lifts cord and tying it back up.
Antonio continued laughing, “Man, you always forget--”
Miles shushed him and put up his hand calling for quiet. The two brothers stood motionless as they started to hear the faint sounds of feet pounding the ground below. They carefully moved to the windows and saw half a dozen infected runners, sprinting under the treehouse and moving quickly through the woods.
“Damn!” Antonio whispered, “Hella strikers down there!”
Strikers, sprinters, fiends. They were the type of infected that moved twice as fast as the average lurker that moved in slow motion almost like the movie zombies. Fiends were fast and if you weren’t faster, then you’d end up dead in a heartbeat. Especially if there was a hive of them.
“Damn,” Antonio backed away from the window and went to the table to eat his deer meat.
“You got lucky. If you messed around down there any longer they woulda got you,” Miles whispered, trying to keep his voice down.
“Well, it’s a good thing I got back up here in time.” Antonio bit into a big chuck of meat.
“And you was hella loud too.”
“Well they didn’t get me, so it’s nothin’.”
“It’s cuz you was cookin’ that deer. They probably smelled it and was comin’ to get you.”
Antonio hit the table with his hand and let