AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Before this is over, I’ll wager you’ll eat worse things than dog food.”
Tears stung Carly’s eyes. “Stop it.”
He nodded. “Okay. I’m sorry.”
They walked in silence back to Carly’s apartment building. “I’ll take that.” She tugged at the bag of dog food. “Thank you.”
“You sure you won’t let me carry it up for you?”
The thought was alarming. “No, uh, that’s not, um, necessary. I’ll get it.”
He transferred the bag to her, and she staggered slightly under its weight. She tried to fish her keys out of her pocket, mentally kicking herself for not doing so before he handed her the fifty-pound bag. He watched with an expression of slight amusement as she struggled and juggled and tried to keep her tote from slipping off her shoulder.
“Need some help?”
“I’ve got it.” She managed to work a hand into her pocket and then promptly dropped the keys. He bent to pick them up, and she panicked. He had the keys to her apartment now!
But all he did was unlock the lobby door and hold them out to her. She snatched them from his hand and darted inside, where she felt safe. He stood on the other side of the glass door and watched as she charged up the stairs as quickly as she could.
Carly was exhausted and out of breath by the time she reached the third floor hallway. She set down the bag of food with a grunt and dropped the tote beside it. She braced herself on the doorframe for a moment to rest. She used to use the Stairmaster at the gym. She shouldn’t be so tired, but then again, she hadn’t been eating much these days and that could explain why she felt so weak. She grimaced at the bag of dog food. She wasn’t that desperate yet.
Carly unlocked her apartment door and dragged the bag inside instead of lifting it. Sam danced around her in circles. He was obviously praising her skills as a hunter. She tore open the top and scooped out a bowl of it. She had learned from her dog-training book that owners were supposed to give dogs the same food all the time in order to avoid upsetting their stomachs, but Sam seemed to be thriving on his varied diet.
She put all the cans away, except for a can of ravioli she opened and consumed on the spot. Both she and Sam finished eating at about the same time, and they settled into their spots on the sofa together. Carly stroked Sam’s fur absently, thinking about Justin, the Biker Guy. He’d had her at his mercy in the store after he’d hit Merle, but he hadn’t tried to hurt her. Instead, he’d offered to carry her groceries.
It made her nervous because she wanted to trust him. Her father had warned her about that before he got sick. He’d said there would be bad people out there who would pretend to be nice so that she would let her guard down. He’d warned her to always be cautious, always be vigilant, and to trust no one. She was on her own, just her and Sam. That thought made her feel small and lonely, made her want to hide in her little apartment, where she felt safe from the huge world outside. But that safety was an illusion. The door to the lobby was glass; it would only take one rock to break down that barrier. And her apartment door was made of thin metal over a foam core—meant for insulation and sound-dampening, not for security. One well-placed kick and it would fail.
She hugged Sam and wondered—not for the first time—if she should move somewhere else. But where? The thought of leaving her home and everything familiar was terrifying. She wanted to be home when the world returned to normal. She just wasn’t sure how long she was going to have to wait for that, or how she would survive in the meantime.
Justin, the Biker Guy, was still there when Carly looked out her window in the morning. She surprised herself by feeling strangely relieved. How odd that he had become something stable in her world.
He was cooking something. He had set up some kind of tripod over the fire, and hanging from it was a strange, small, circular, flat surface with arms at the sides joined over the top. He was using it as a frying pan. He looked up and waved at her. She ducked behind the curtains.
Carly took Sam down to the interior courtyard using the back stairs. He bounded out the door and sniffed around, looking for the exact spot while she watched the windows around them, growing more nervous by the moment, as she always did. She felt like a rabbit in the middle of a football field. No place to hide.
“Hurry up,” Carly said to Sam, but he was intent on locating today’s precise deposit location, using criteria only dogs knew. After he finally finished, Carly cleaned up after him and dropped the plastic sack into the overflowing trash can. Back inside, where it’s safe. Sam followed at her heels. Like his namesake, he was always cheerful and exuberant. His tongue lolled out of the side of his mouth as he bounded around beside her.
Carly filled his bowl with dog food again, but something strange happened when she went to fill his water bowl. Nothing came out of the faucet when she turned the taps. There was a strange clunking and sputtering sound, but no water.
She tried the bathroom taps with the same results. Nothing. Carly felt her heart sink. She knew nothing about plumbing, so fixing it was impossible, and she had no idea what she was going to do. She could get bottled water from the store to drink, but that wouldn’t help when it came to hygiene and flushing her toilet.
Carly considered her options for a moment and then went over to the window. She unlocked the top and slid it open. It would only open partway, as a safety feature, but it was large enough for her to stick her head out.
Justin looked up from his cooking and waved to her. “Hi, Marly!” he called.
“Carly.” She corrected him automatically. “Um, Justin... Do you know anything about plumbing?”
“Sure.”
“My water doesn’t work.”
Justin stood, wrapped the handle of the skillet-thing in a cloth, lifted it off the fire, and set it aside. He walked over to stand beneath Carly’s window, craning his neck back to look up at her. “What do you mean, it doesn’t work?”
“I turned on the tap and nothing came out, and it made weird clunking noises.”
“The noises are from air in the pipes.”
“Oh.” That couldn’t be good. “How do I get it out?”
