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I burrow my face into the side of his neck and shake my head, gasping between sobs.
How can I remember what to do? I’ve never lost my entire family in one day before.
But Wes has.
“We say fuck ’em and survive anyway.”
“Right.” I nod, remembering his pep talk from two days ago.
“So, what do we need to survive today?”
I sniffle and lift my head. “You’re asking me?”
“Yep. In order to say fuck ’em and survive anyway, the first thing you have to do is say fuck ’em, and the second thing you have to do is figure out what you need to survive. So, figure it out. What do we need?”
“Uh …” I wipe the snot and tears from my face with my hoodie sleeve and sit up. “Food?”
“Good.” Wes’s tone is surprisingly not sarcastic. “Do we have any?”
“Um …” I look around until I spot my backpack in the opposite corner of the entryway. “Yes. And water but not much.”
“What else do we need?”
I look at the puddle inching closer to us. “A better place to sleep.”
“Okay. What else?”
My eyes drop to the torn, bloodstained spot on Wes’s sleeve. “You need to take your medicine. You need a new bandage too, but my hands aren’t clean enough to do it.”
“So, we’ll add find soap to the list.”
I nod again, surprised at how relieved I feel. Empowered almost.
“So we need supplies and shelter …” he summarizes. “What else?”
“Hmm …” I pull my eyebrows together and look around, hoping to find some clue in the dank, dusty, cobweb-covered hallway.
Wes clears his throat and taps the handle of the gun sticking out of his holster.
“My daddy’s gun?”
“Self-defense.” He smirks. “Supplies. Shelter. Self-defense. Every day, when you wake up, I want you to ask yourself what you need to survive that day, and then your job is to go find it.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Okay.” I nod once, like a soldier accepting a mission. “So today, we need soap and water and a better place to sleep.”
I like this—having a goal again. Taking direction. It feels like it did back when we were searching for the bomb shelter. When it was just me and Wes against the world. It was almost fun.
Wes smiles, but his tired green eyes don’t even crease at the corners. There’s a sadness in them that feels new. He usually looks so determined, so focused. Now he just looks … resigned.
“See?” he says, letting his fake grin fall as two miserable mossy eyes bore through me. “You got this.”
“We got this,” I correct.
“Yeah.” Wes swats me on the side of my butt and waits for me to climb off his lap. “Well, we have to take a piss, so … time to get up.”
