Lockey vs. the Apocalypse by Meadows, Carl (love novels in english .TXT) 📗

with his pistol, as he says that his ammo stash is limited for that and it’s too important a weapon, but after Particles’ magic powers helped us discover a new shotgun with two boxes of shells, he showed me how to use that.

Put a controller in my hand on Call of Duty, I’m the baddest stone-cold bitch that ever pulled a trigger.

The first time I fired a real shotgun, I fell over and squealed, as it felt like someone had smacked me in the tit with a hammer.

Fucking hell! Shotguns kick like a mule on PCP. This is not like the movies. Shooting is fucking hard and it’s doubly annoying that Nate makes it look so damn easy.

Anyway, I’ve got the basics, and Nate showed me how to take shit apart and clean it, as apparently that’s super important for reliability. We need some more supplies in that regard, which is partly why we’ve been hitting up every remote farmhouse we can find, as that’s likely the only places we’ll find shotgun ammo and cleaning stuff. As it turns out, the fucker was right. We’re pretty fat on shotgun goodies now, but Nate’s starting to get all twitchy about his Glock ammo. Nine-mil is a bit harder to find in rural Cheshire (like… zero chance except for police stations with AFO capability) and he says he’s okay for now, but still.

It’s starting to get a bit old now though. With Driving Miss Daisy here rolling around at fifteen miles an hour, it’s boring beyond belief. Also, being stuck in a car with a sweaty man and a dog is pretty rank. If either one of those two drops a fart in the car, I swear you’ll still be chewing on it an hour later. Just gross.

Also, I’m getting sick of squatting in bushes when I need to go potty.

Generally, I’m just sick of it. I need some interaction with people. I’m a social person, I need conversation, banter and bullshitting. Nate has the conversational desire of a brick and he’s all business, all the time.

Plus, the only sign of people I see are undead ones. Nate is only a marginally better conversationalist than the zombies, and he doesn’t try to bite my pretty face off, but surely the whole point of an apocalypse is we have to come together and rebuild? Surely?

Not for Gunny Highway here, though.

Anyway, our hand was starting to get forced as I caught Nate glancing down at the dash repeatedly yesterday.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Low fuel,” he rumbled back. He’s so economical with words, shortening his sentences to the minimal amount. You can see why he’s a pain in the ass.

“What’s our stash like?”

“Almost gone,” he said.

“Great,” I muttered. “And here we are, crawling around the arse end of nowhere. Don’t think we’re gonna find a petrol station in…” I looked out the window. “Where even the fuck are we? As far as I can tell, we’re in fucking Narnia.”

“You swear a lot,” he observed.

“Well fuck-a-doodle do, Sherlock, nothing gets past you.”

That was pretty unfair, but you have to understand, the old bastard was really getting under my skin by this time. The last thing I needed was some old soldier telling me I cursed a lot ‘for a girl’. Thankfully, those three words hadn’t been tacked on as yet, but I swear the minute he does, bad-ass soldier or not, I’m dick-punching him.

Nate said nothing to my childish response, which is just as infuriating. You know when you really feel like having it out? Like a really cathartic screaming match to blow out the dust? I was ready for one of them, but Nate never bites. He just cocks that infuriating eyebrow at you and says nothing more, making you feel like a whiny little twat. Bastard.

We trundled on in silence for a little while more, and it was starting to get dark.

“We’ll sleep in the car tonight,” Nate announced. “Can’t afford to trundle around in the night looking for a new place to stay. We’ll be alright out here.” He declared this as he pulled into a rough imitation of a lay-by and put the pickup in park.

“Seriously? In the car? With you and a pug?” I swore again, just to piss Nate off. “I’m making you a solemn promise that if you start to snore like an asthmatic ogre, I will throat-punch you.”

Nate’s mouth just quirked in the twitch of a smile, just for a moment.

We ate cold food from a can, which was about as pleasant as it sounds, and settled down for a shitty night in a pickup.

I was awoken sometime after dark. It wasn’t super late, maybe around ten, but there was an obvious change to the world outside. I shit you not, my dearest reader, I could hear fucking drums in the distance. Not war drums, like a Zulu horde was suddenly going to appear on the horizon, but really shit random drumming, like the contents of a percussion studio had been handed to a bunch of three-year olds smacked up on sugar and left unsupervised. And there was something like singing, or chanting, or some of the shittiest karaoke I’ve ever heard in my life. It carried on the quiet night air and all I could think was, “You know there’s a fucking apocalypse, right?”

Nate and I had our chairs clocked all the way back for sleep and I was about to sit up when his hand rested lightly on my arm. I glanced over at him and he just shook his head, the movement barely perceptible in the gloom, as he lifted one finger to his mouth to shut me up before I said anything dumb. Then he pointed at my window.

My arse nearly dropped clean out as I spied the silhouette of a shambling figure, not two feet from my door, shuffle blindly past. I was too afraid to even shudder in horror in case I made any kind of sound at all, then another