Two Alive, стр. 84
The boy relented and took out his earphones before giving her the phone. Castle had to move his bulky legs and adjust the seat for more room when Julia reached over and opened the glove compartment. She pulled out a bunch of cords and laughed before a small ah-ha and she plugged a cord into Miles’ phone.
“What’chu doin’?” Miles asked, watching the woman plug in the cord before starting the van.
“Well if your phone is just dead… maybe we can charge it.” Julia pushed the on button on the phone and the device came to life with a blinking battery on the screen.
Miles gasped, “Oh wow!”
“Hmmh. The networks have been down for ages now.” Manson pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Charging his phone will be pointless. It’s not like he could use it to call anyone.”
“Ms. Francine had music on her phone though!” Miles licked his lips looking at the phone in Julia’s hand. “She had a thousand songs! She had a thousand songs and I listened to them all!”
“Ms. Francine? Was she someone else who survived with you and the old man?” Julia placed the phone in Miles’ hand when the battery was at five percent, still plugged in.
Miles pressed and held the power button on the phone and the device came to life. His eyes lit up just as the Samsung logo appeared on the screen. Then the phone was back on and Miles punched in the security code. He was absolutely giddy.
“Miles… who’s Ms. Francine?” Julia asked in a whisper.
Miles scrolled through the phone and went to the music player. There he double-tapped the screen and looked up at Julia in the front seat. “She was a nice lady. Yeah, she was really nice, and she went to my school and was a teacher there. But she didn’t make it. Everybody dies. Except us.”
As the music started to play from the once silent phone, Miles got even more excited. He started rocking hard, back and forth as Fat Joe, All the Way Up started to play. Miles bobbed his head and put his thumbs up, showing them to everyone in the car. Torrez returned the gesture but others in the van just ignored the thirteen-year-old boy.
Chapter 8
Antonio walked with a newfound confidence that already boosted his natural swagger. A fresh haircut and new threads can do that to a nineteen-year-old kid who never owned a pair of Jordans in his life. But now he was rocking the shoes with the outfit to match. Antonio felt like a big shot, making his way through the store with Lincoln and Brandon as his escorts. People were watching him from the aisles, gawking at him, and he gave them a show; strutting with his head held high. He was also doing his own gawking and looking around at the abundance of everything they had still on display in the store.
“Man, ya’ll got everything up in here. I see why everybody wanna stay.” Antonio said.
“Yeah, the store is packed with everything,” Brandon laughed. “But all that stuff don’t mean shit when it has an expiration date. We had a lot more in the beginning, but a lot of food and other stuff just got used up.”
“Yeah, but y’all still got hella stuff up on them shelves.” Antonio looked back at Brandon, trailing behind him. “Plus, you still got bottled waters and granola bars and shit.”
“We froze a lot of stuff.” Lincoln chuckled. “But we couldn’t store everything and some stuff just went bad over time. Sucks too. We had lots of food in the beginning. Now we just got pasta and granola bars and yogurt.”
“And hella freezer food. Like, how many times can you eat hash browns for breakfast lunch and dinner?” Brandon laughed and Lincoln joined him.
“Breakfast, lunch and dinner. Damn, me and Miles mostly only eat lunch to conserve food. Y’all got it good up in here.” Antonio was grinning as he looked around but the older men stopped laughing. “I heard y’all be watching movies too. Where y’all be doing that?”
Brandon’s face went from sour to excited and he snickered with a cough, “Oh you heard about that? Ha ha!”
“There’s a huge eighty-inch screen TV in the electronics. We use it on special nights, special occasions.” Lincoln’s eyes were huge with delight.
“Aw man! That’s crazy! Can we go see it?!” Antonio had never seen a television so big in his life. “Is it really eighty-inches?”
“Yeah!” Brandon started veering off to the right and Antonio followed, “C’mon! You wanna see it? C’mon!”
Lincoln was hesitant at first but went along after them. People scattered and disappeared behind stacks of Clorox bleach where they had hung sheets for doors. Men were standing at the entrances to where families tucked away behind pallets of Tide washing detergent. The people who lived in the store watched Antonio cautiously from their hideaways and tents running along the aisle. They were disappointing to Antonio though. He had hoped someone would’ve said something about how fresh he was looking and compliment him on his fade.
But they were all decked out in freshly washed clothes or t-shirts straight from the rack. When there was an abundance of clothes from all the name brands, of course everyone in the store took advantage of their pickings. It made Antonio think about the two other outfits he had to wear back at the treehouse. They weren’t name brand. Hell, if they were, the brands had long since worn off. The old man just found what he could when they needed it. Johnathan never got Antonio any Jordans, but he always got him shoes.
Antonio shook his head and thought of the old man’s words. Don’t be greedy. These people had