Theo is working out, which is no surprise, since he’salwaysworking out these days. He pushes the bar up and away from his chest, a small grunt escaping him as his arms straighten and he sets the bar in its holder.
“You shouldn’t be doing that without a spotter,” Madix says with a frown.
“It’s a light load. I can handle it,” Theo replies, taking a breather.
His pants have ridden up his calves from his position on the bench press, and the metal of his prosthetic leg is just visible. Like he can feel my eyes on it, he quickly sits up and pulls the hem of his sweat pants down. Theo always says he’s accepted it, but his actions just confirmed how self-conscious he still is. It’s been almost two years, and he still doesn’t like anyone to look at it.
I’m pretty sure his insecurity is the source of his obsession with working out. I mean, we’ve always trained, but Theo eats, sleeps, and breathes gym life now. Like he’s trying to make the rest of him as perfect as it can be in order to overcompensate for the loss of his leg. He’s always pushing himself, even though he probably pushes his body past its limits sometimes. Madix and I keep our judgement to ourselves, though, because there’s no point in calling him on his shit when he’ll just turn around and call us on ours. We’re all just trying to cope and find a new normal. For now, that means we all keep our mouths shut and let each other try to deal.
Theo swipes an arm across his forehead and runs a hand through his sweaty brown hair. Theo is half-black and half-white. His tawny skin and piercing green eyes have women lining up to try and stake a claim, but since his injury, he’s stopped taking advantage of the physical gifts he’s been blessed with. He’s not as big as Madix, but the guy is ripped. It’s not surprising, since he works out all of the time.
He grabs the remote from the coffee table to turn down the music pounding from the stereo, and then his steady, jade gaze returns to me. “You good, man?”
“I’m good,” I say, walking to the table and pulling out our food from the bags while Madix grabs the beers.
Theo washes his hands in the kitchen sink and then dunks his entire sweaty head underneath, making water drip all over the floor and counter.
Madix glares at him. “Dude. What the fuck? I just cleaned the kitchen.”
Theo rolls his eyes and then goes to grab the shirt that he’d left draped over the back of the couch. “You’vealwaysjust cleaned the kitchen,” he reminds him as he pulls his shirt on, his brown hair dripping water onto the shoulders.
Madix grumbles something about us being slobby fuckheads, but then sits down at the table and digs into his dinner. The three of us eat in relative silence, aside from the music still playing and the sound of Puddles gnawing on her kibble. This is how it’s been every night since we moved here. Just the three of us, shooting the shit and trying to acclimate back into some semblance of a life. It hasn’t been easy, and we piss each other off sometimes, but we also understand each other.
One mission gone wrong. One explosion, and life as we knew it was over. Theo lost his left leg just below the knee. Madix’s right eardrum was damaged, and he had to recover from burns on his back and legs. My brain took a good rattling, which caused it to swell and left me with some vision issues, and then there are the flashbacks I have to deal with. But even with our injuries, at least we made it out alive. Others hadn’t been so lucky. We’re bonded and broken in ways that only we can understand. It sucks, but at the same time, it connects us in a way we all need.
This, living together and running the gun range, it’s been the only thing that we’ve been able to handle. It’s peaceful here, but I always worry that we’re all too fucked up to ever really move past what happened. It wouldn’t surprise me if in fifty years, the three of us are still here, at this table, drinking beers and eating diner food. No wives, no kids, nobody to really miss us when we’re gone. The thought is fucking depressing, but that’s life these days.
3
Madix
Someone pounds on my bedroom door, and I groan into the mattress and cover my head with a pillow. “Fuck off!”
The booming of a fist on the hollow door of my bedroom bombards me again, and I grab for my phone and curse at the time. It’s only ten in the morning, which means I’ve only managed to get about three hours of sleep. The constant ringing in my ear was loud as shit last night, and I couldn’t tune it out like I normally do in order to sleep. I shouldn’t have to wake up today because it’s not my day to open the shop, so whoever is banging on my door better have a good fucking excuse.
My door vibrates in the frame as one of the guys bangs on it again, and I throw off my blankets. “Alright, I’m coming! What the fuck?”
I swipe my pants off the floor and slip into them as I tear the door open. But one look at Theo’s face sends adrenaline and worry spiking through me.
“We have a situation,” he tells me and then pivots and walks away.
I follow him, tying the drawstring on my pants and freeze when I make it out to the living room to find Brant. He should be at the shop right now. My muscles knot with tension as I take in Puddles sitting on Brant’s feet, her body pressed against him and her full attention on his face. The way she’s acting immediately raises a red flag. Puddles is Brant’s service dog, so she helps him cope with his PTSD, and I can tell that she’s definitely picking up on a shit ton of anxiety from him right now. His hands are shaking slightly, and when he catches me looking, he shoves them into Puddles’s short fur.
“What’s wrong?”
“Brant opened the shop today as usual, but what fuckingwasn’tusual, was that practically the whole town was there waiting for him so they could buy every gun and bullet we have in the shop.”
My eyebrows shoot up in surprise but I stay quiet, knowing Theo will get to the point.
“Everyone was cleaning us out and going on about the Handshake Plague,” Brant explains, taking off his glasses to rub a hand down his face.
“What is that? This influenza shit?” I ask.
Theo nods, making his brown hair fall partially into his eyes. “They just reported that the vaccines failed. The last report from the CDC says the mortality rate jumped to eighty-five percent.”
I feel the blood drain from my face. “What?”
Theo casts a quick look at Brant before going on. “It’s bad, dude. Cell towers are down,” he says, indicating the phone on the coffee table. “Can’t make any calls. We also can’t get any national radio stations, only local, so who the fuck knows what that means? Either the powers that be are trying to stifle panic and information from spreading, or somehow, shit’s worse than we thought, and everything is shutting down because of what’s going on.”
