Micah’s hand moved from around my shoulders to my back where he began rubbing soothing motions over it. “He has to meticulously clean every piece of the game after too.”
“Also something Mom and I bonded over,” Calix retorted before taking his turn. “Things were definitely a lot simpler before the apocalypse though.”
“Simpler?” Nathan snorted, grabbing the dice and rolling them after Calix finished moving his piece on the board. “Nah. I think it’s simpler now. Back then, we had to pay bills and go to work. Now, we’re just living.”
“No. We’resurviving,”Calix corrected him. “We don’t look forward to much except not dying now.”
“I don’t know. I look forward to seeing all of you now. It’s not that bad.” Micah shrugged.
“So many people lost their lives the first month or two when the virus spread because they lost their prescription meds,” Calix stated as he collected money from Nathan.
“Sally’s best friend was diabetic. She’d had a stash of insulin, but it ran out quick, and she didn’t make it longer than three months with us,” Nathan added with a frown.
“The government collapsed faster than most of us had expected it to,” Calix added with a shiver. “Ihateuncertainty, and the CDC was supposed to be the thing we could rely on to keep things under control with the virus, but they failed.”
“That damn virus,” Nathan grumbled, cursing under his breath as Calix landed on a new property to buy. “It should’ve never been possible. The shit we’re seeing nowisn’tpossible. It’s like Hell on Earth.”
“The virus never made any logical sense to start with.” Calix’s eyes darkened as he grabbed the property title. “Transmission through a bite or infected saliva into an open wound makes sense enough, but the way the zombies know how to spread it is what gets me.”
“And once bitten, there’s no cure.” Micah shifted next to me before pulling me against his chest to wrap his arms comfortably around me. “The outbreak happened fast, but the internet hung in there for seven months, the news maybe a week, and nothing about a cure was even discussed.”
“We know so little about the virus,” I murmured, a chill zipping down my spine as I snuggled against Micah.
“All we know is it’s twenty-four hours after the bite for death, and reanimation is twenty to thirty seconds after death,” Calix said, looking pale as they took a break from the game.
“Gotta destroy the brain to kill it, just like the video games,” Nathan added with a groan that mimicked the ones outside.
“And light the bodies on fire if we’re around them for longer than a few hours.” Calix adjusted his mask with wince. “Unlikethe media representation of zombies, the real ones don’t eat anything. They bite to infect and move on. I don’t know which one is worse, honestly.”
“These ones,” Micah answered without a beat. “More infected numbers are never a good thing.”
“Can’t argue there.”
“Scientists couldn’t figure it out.” I shook my head with a frown. “I’m convinced it’s more supernatural than anything else at this point.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Micah grunted.
“Corpses walking around still after three years?” Nathan flattened his hands behind him on the floor and glanced back. “I’m sold with it being something science can’t understand.”
“I don’t like it no matter what the origin is,” Calix grumbled, rubbing his arms. “I’ll get started on dinner. Nathan, can you clean the board and pieces?”
Nathan shot him a grin and nodded before grabbing a purple spray bottle and cloth out of a plastic bin under the end table beside him. He sprayed the cloth and wiped everything carefully before putting it back in the box.
“What did you do before all this, killer?” Nathan asked as he got to his feet and set the board game on the end table before sinking down on the sofa beside me.
“I was a student in my last year of my agriculture degree to help with the farm.” Nathan’s leg rested against mine, and I found myself pushing my leg into his for the warmth. “Jay wanted me to get a business degree so I could work at his parents’ firm, but I didn’t like the city much. The only reason I’d been there in the first place was because of college.”
“Sounds like you did what you wanted.” Micah rubbed his beard. “That’s good.”
“I enjoyed it even with Jay’s constant nagging about it.” Memories of Jay trying to convince me to work at the firmflooded my brain. “He and Daisy had that in common though. She took business with him and ended up with a work study at his parents’ firm. I assumed that was why they’d been getting closer that last year.”
“He’s an idiot.” Nathan scrunched his face in disgust. “You’re amazing.”
“You don’t even know me that well.” My lips curved into an amused smile.
“I know enough.” He shrugged, landing a warm hand on my leg. “And what I know is amazing.”
“Can’t argue there,” Micah murmured next to my ear.
