Two Alive, стр. 6
Miles waited a few beats, “You shouldn’t have been cookin’ that deer in the first place. The old man woulda told you not to cook it.”
“Oh my gooodddd! The old man ain’t here!”
Miles went silent and started rocking back and forth and pulled out his phone. He started tapping it repeatedly with one hand and twiddling the fingers of his other hand. He was whispering something to himself and Antonio rolled his eyes before getting up to go calm Miles down.
“Miles, it’s ok. Chill. Just chill.” Antonio took him by the shoulders and started rubbing him. “It’s coo bruh. Just chill.”
Miles started to slow down his breathing and he put his phone back in his pocket. When he was finally calm, he went to sit at the table and Antonio joined him and even offered him some of the meat.
“It’s good though. And I ain’t started to change so it ain’t infected or nothin’.” Antonio held out the piece of meat on a fork. “And I left some of that shit out there too so them fiends probably went lookin’ for that.”
Miles took the meat on the fork. “We’re running out of food.”
“What we get from them people?”
“Three assault rifles, four pistols, one clip each for a total of a hundred and twenty bullets. Three knifes, two pairs of pants, three pairs of shoes and boots. A belt, radio, and a map to their shelter.” Miles went through a recounting of all the items that they took from the people that they ran into. Besides a jar of pickles that the brothers greedily scarfed down, those people didn’t have any food on them.
“You turned that radio off right?” Antonio took another bite of venison.
“Yeah. We need more food.”
“We got a deer right here. Eat up. This’ll last us for at least a week if we ration it right.”
“Well you ain’t doin’ that. You eatin’ all of it.” Miles hung his head, “You didn’t even pray over it.”
Antonio sucked his teeth and bowed his head for a moment. The old man had taught him better than that. When he was done, he looked up at Miles with a “you happy?” expression and went back to eating.
“We should go check out those people shelter.” Miles said.
“Nope.”
“That man said they lived in a Costco. There might be… there might be a lot of food there.”
“Don’t matter. We ain’t goin’. The old man wouldn’t and you know that.”
Miles lifted his head. “But we need food. And he’d say we should at least go check it out. We don’t have to get too close. We just gotta check it out. Maybe we can figure out a way to get in and out.”
“Don’t take stupid chances,” Antonio said, repeating something the old man would often say.
Miles hung his head again, “But… but it’s so close. The man said it was close. If it’s, if it’s… if it’s so close we have to go check it out. Know your surroundings.” Miles quoted the old man back to his brother, who let out a disgruntled moan.
“Aite, aite. Damn. You wasn’t gon let it go either.” Antonio bit into another chunk of meat, “You right though. We should go check it out.”
Miles looked at the piece of meat in his hands and against his better judgement and what the old man would say, he took a bite of the venison. It was good. As the evening turned to night and the brothers finished their meal, they went through their stock hold and counted the rations and the weapons. Antonio counted it twice like the old man said and Miles counted it three times because he was compelled to. He would no doubt go through everything a fourth time before he went to bed, just for good measure.
The cans of beans, peas, corn and diced tomatoes, sliced carrots, green beans and spaghetti and meatballs were all on their last legs. Applesauce was still in abundance but it wouldn’t be enough for long. Food was scarce but their weapons cache seemed to be growing every day. Two shotguns, five automatic rifles, eight pistols, three long range rifles, a shitload of knives and blades and boxes of ammo with a few grenades they found. At least they’d be able to protect themselves while they starved to death.
Miles went to Antonio’s room and pulled open the curtain that was his door. He regretted it when he caught Antonio masturbating by candlelight to a porno magazine. He threw a pillow at Miles while he tried to cover up.
“Miles! What the fuck?!” Antonio shouted, pulling up his boxers.
“I was gonna give you my phone to plug in.” Miles was holding out the device, grappling with whether he should go or stay, “I was, I was gonna give you my phone… and, and I was gonna… I was gonna go say goodnight to the old man before I went to bed.”
Antonio sighed and went to get the phone from Miles. He was going to yell at him but decided against it, sending his brother away. He shook his head and looked down at the broken phone in his hand. It wasn’t just the cracked screen and the scratches all over it, the phone hadn’t been working for the past four years. But Miles swore up and down he still listened to his music on it. So every night Antonio plugged it into the charger hanging out of the useless outlet in his room and pretended to power up the device for the morning. He wasn’t lighting candles to set some kind of mood for his “personal time,” this