I took summer classes. This is why this is so late coming.
I rather like this chapter. I hope you do, too.
Thanks for all the reviews, guys. But telling me 'MOAR' doesn't make me write any faster.
Just an FYI!
Getting to the fire tower on foot took them an hour and a half. By that time they could hear the distant sound of an approaching hoard of zombies. At one time, Columbus was sure the sound would have caused him to lose control not only of his bowels but anything like rationale. He would have run for the hills, tail between his shit-covered ass and not thought twice about it. But today he was a different person.
A person who took one look at the old, rickety fire tower and intended to climb to the top of it. A person who had a woman beside his side whom he loved, though not in the way he would have ever of imagined, and felt the need to fiercely protect her more than himself. It was exhilarating and terrifying and magnificent. It made him want to cry.
"Are you crying?" Wichita asked as soon as she slowed to a stop beside him. Her eyes narrowed on his face as Columbus hastily shook his head. "Sure, well. We're going to need to climb this thing."
"I noticed," he remarked with the air of one who's dignity had not only been threatened but shot and left to die. She smirked at him. He pointed at the ladder. She rolled her eyes. "What? Ladders are perfectly respectable ways to climb up towers."
"That wasn't it at all," she sighed but didn't clarify and instead began climbing the ladder. "Do you have a plan beyond just shooting zombies until we run out of ammo?"
"Yes!" he called up to her. Well, it was to her but with his view it felt mostly like it was to her ass. "There are some nice propane tanks we can shoot."
"Finally you're making sense."
Getting to the top of the tower took them a good twenty minutes and when they did reach the top, out of breath and a little sore, they were twenty stories in the air. Vertigo attacked Columbus' stomach with a vengeance and he gagged. The landscape around them did a dizzying merry-go-round spin of green trees and too blue sky before he could focus again. Wichita was giving him a worried look.
"I'm good," he coughed and waved her off. She shrugged, which suited him just fine, and picked up her rifle. "I think I see them already."
He stared out into the landscape in front of them. There was luckily enough clearings for them to pick off a good majority of the zombies before they had to resort to any measures like blowing up propane tanks. Most of the zombies were milling around anyway, lost without any clue as to where their prey may be hiding in the vast forests of Yellowstone. Columbus believed the zombies hadn't thought their whole plan through very well.
And with that ridiculous thought in mind, he actually knew they'd be able to make it through this alive.
Four hours, twelve protein bars and six bottles of water later it was about time for them to enlist the aid of propane tanks. "We'll take out a good chunk of what is left," Columbus said, pointing at the furthest of the two massive propane tanks (this one attached to one of the larger forest ranger buildings). "And then pick off whatever's left in the morning." Wichita seemed to consider this, eyes darting back from the clumps of remaining zombies to the propane tank.
"What about this one?" She asked, gesturing to the nearest one with the barrel of her rifle. Columbus didn't trust that one as much, fearing the fire would spread too close to them and hinder their escape.
"Worst case scenario," he answered and she nodded. "Let's do this?" He got another nod. "Alright, I'll distract them, you take the propane tank."
Columbus shifted up onto his knees setting his rifle back into place and slotting his shoulder against the butt of the rifle. The feeling of it was so natural now, it was almost second nature. He leaned into the sight and eyed the ranger building. Vaguely, in his mind, he heard Smoky the Bear berate him for the inevitable forest fire he was about to inspire. Columbus flipped Smoky the finger and pulled the trigger. He missed on the first shot but got the windows easily from there on out. The zombies began to crowd around the house at the commotion, before their nasty heads swiveled their way.
"Now-!"
"Yeah, yeah I fucking see them-," Wichita snapped and whatever else she added to her sentence was lost in the crack of her rifle. The propane tank exploded in a smoldering blaze that took out sixty zombies and fourteen pine trees. Columbus considered it a bullet well wasted.
He sat back on his heels grinned at Wichita. She turned around and slid down the wall with long suffering sigh the belied her own face splitting grin.
"Us: 53, Zombies: 10," Columbus announced and she laughed, head thunking back against the old wood of the tower. Her grin faded, though.
"I figured it out, you know," Wichita said with a sigh. He looked up to find her picking at a tear in her jeans face almost contrite, confusion marring his brow. It took him a moment but when the realization finally hit he sucked in a sudden, stuttery breath. She smiled and it was almost sad and it made Columbus' heart ache. "I kind of knew it all along but...I don't know, the stupid part of me thought maybe we still had a," she took a deep breath and let the word out harsh, "chance."
Columbus wasn't sure what to say mostly because there was a million things crowding forward in his head at once that all needed to be spoken. At the same time he knew that Wichita knew all these things in some degree and that some of them hurt her just as much as they hurt him. His silence, though, was just as unwelcome and she meets his eyes with a colour blue ready to burst ablaze with fiery anger.
Instead of saying anything he pitched forward off his heels and onto his knees, feeling the soft aging wood giving slightly under the twin pressure points. When their lips met, it was soft and chapped and she tasted earthy and real-nothing like Tallahassee. The break is mutual, accompanied with matching sighs that turn into muffled laughter. Wichita's eyes burn despite his efforts, but at least it's with mirth.
"Okay, so it is like kissing the brother I never had," she admitted with an exaggerated eye roll that forced another chuckle from Columbus. "So if you're my 'brother.'" she made a face, "then what does that make Tallahassee?"
"The uncle?"
Her expression turned into one of obvious disgust. "Are you kidding me?"He blinked. "What?"
"He's our uncle?" she leveled him with a cutting look.
Columbus pulled his own face and shrugged. "Not like our actual uncle but that weird guy who always hangs around enough to call uncle." Her expression does not get any more agreeable but in fact turns even more sardonic.
"That's disgusting-"
"Is it because we're-"
"No, god no," she huffed with a halfhearted scowl. "It's just weird you'd even consider fucking someone you'd call uncle."
Columbus laughed, startled and relieved. He had imagined this conversation so many times before and never once did they have an outcome like this. Never had they been so awkward either but it was necessary, somehow, this awkwardness. He knew in a weird backward way that the awkwardness they had to suffer now would turn into, later, something mutual and comfortable.
"Okay, then he's just my-" the word boyfriend stuck on the tip of his tongue and Wichita's eyebrows went up high on her forehead. He found himself unable to finish that sentence, the whole ideal seeming so contrite to him.
"I understand," she said, her hand warm on his thigh. "It's not...exactly the same anymore."
He nodded his head and couldn't help the shrug, something that so long ago had been a constant defense mechanism. Twilight had come and the sun began to set in the distance. He wondered if Tallahassee and Little Rock had actually made it away safely. He considered whether praying it were true would help. Columbus dismissed the idea immediately because if they hadn't already, praying now was too late anyway. He startled at the sharp snap of fingers in front of his nose.
"Hey, space-case," Wichita drawled dry and so completely normal it made relief flood cool through Columbus' veins. "It's getting dark and I am cold so come over here and share you skinny ass body heat."
It was going to be a long night.
To be continued...