The rooms back here are… odd.
Oddly placed.
The kitchen is small, compared to the size of the waiting room, the ceiling is lower, and I decide it must be some sort of extension.
I shift the torch to the open door on my right, and the light catches on the porcelain curve of a toilet seat.
Not a full bathroom.
Just a toilet and a sink.
I spare the careless extension a moment’s look of annoyance—
Then Samick heads for the back door, leathers glistening over slinking muscles. He grabs the edge of a solid kitchen table then drags it over to block the door.
That’s not to keep fae out.
That table is light enough for him to fling through the whole building. Any fae could get through that as easily as a mist of feathers.
“Are there people around here?” I ask.
Because Samick must be barricading against any humans that might be lurking around in the dark.
And I don’t quite believe what he told me.
Sure, maybe he does need more sleep. Maybe Arwyn does, too.
But it’s not their own safety they are worried about. Mika is out cold from that poison or the medication Arwyn gave her, or both.
I suspect Samick is more concerned about the collateral damage if survivors do notice our arrival and take a shot at us. I’m collateral. Like to the prison guy with his shotgun.
“Possibly,” he says. “Possibly not.”
Samick moves through the kitchen. He stalks like a predator, like it’s not just in his nature, but in his bones to be one.
He starts tearing cabinet doors off their hinges.
The blood of his fellow warriors stains his leathers, the mute patches that don’t glisten in my torchlight. And that blood is dried on his fingers now, caked under his nails.
As though he didn’t just slaughter some of his own people, like it doesn’t bother him at all, he just starts boarding up the windows with the cabinet doors.
A pang hits my stomach—then it grumbles, again.
In the Before, it would have embarrassed me. A loud, rumbling stomach.
Now, it’s just a part of life. I’m not at all fazed by it.
Samick has heard my hunger so many times now, he doesn’t even look over at me. He just says, “I did not lead you to this room for you to observe me. Eat.”
My face crumples.
Eat, yes, I want to do that.
Scavenge and cook, not so much.
Something no one warned me about with the apocalypse is that ‘end of the day’ exhaustion in life. Like, when I get home after a long day, and just the thought of putting together a meal is hell. That is amplified in the apocalypse. So much worse now than ever. And there’s no fucking takeaway or food delivery or even microwaves.
I have to cook.
