"Maybe we should just let her keep sleeping." Shachi shrugged, glancing up at the spare bedroom where the woman in question still resided. They hadn't heard any noise so far, and assumed her to still be resting. Those sleeping pills must have been rather effective on her.
Law sighed, leaning back against the couch with crossed legs. "We can't just wait around all day for her." He reasoned, somewhat frustrated with how things had turned out. "I don't want to waste any more daylight. We still need to search the grocery store further down the street."
While he honestly believed that they should let her sleep some more, recalling just how exhausted she had seemed when he'd found her in the other house, his sense of responsibility was stronger. They weren't in an ideal spot food-wise, and he'd rather have an excess than not enough.
"What if one of us stayed behind to watch the house? That way we wouldn't be leaving her alone, but two people could probably scavenge the place by themselves." Was Penguin's suggestion, drinking a few sips from one of their bottles of water.
"I don't like the thought of separating for any reason."
"This town didn't appear to be highly populated, so there shouldn't be too many of them out there." Shachi continued, gesturing to the front door. "Two of us could easily take the grocery store I bet."
"We can decide between us who stays with Lexi." Penguin smiled, thinking that this plan would work just fine.
Unsurprisingly Shachi and Penguin, always the chivalrous bunch, weren't too happy with disturbing the brunette from her sleep. A fact their leader wasn't too keen on realizing. Already the woman was causing problems for him and she wasn't even awake. How worse it could be if she were awake he didn't want to find out. Law's eyes narrowed a fraction
"You do realize that we can't fully trust her, right?" He asked suddenly, glancing between them both suspiciously. Law didn't mince words, or skirt around an issue, especially with the situations they often found themselves in nowadays. Shachi and Penguin looked away, unable to meet his eyes.
"I've told you this before. Just because someone feeds you or does you a favor once doesn't mean they're your friend." Feeling his irritation grow, the man shook his head in exasperation. "We've only ever met her three times, which were all highly coincidental by the way. What makes you think she's so trustworthy in that short a timeframe?"
His two friends shared a glance. Law had always known they were impressionable, but never to this extent. What the hell had gotten into them? He waited for an answer in silence. Both men before him looked thoroughly chastised, good. Hopefully they'd learn from this and be more cautious in the future.
"I don't really know how to explain it but…" Penguin started hesitantly, glancing up at their leader, "there's just something about her that makes you trust her. Don't you think?"
Without any other word of explanation, Shachi shrugged and nodded in agreement, and Law sighed harshly. It was all so frustrating, he thought. Way too much to be thinking about so early in the morning. Rubbing at his forehead, he grinned mirthlessly.
"Somehow, I have to agree…as much as I don't want to."
It was true. As much as it didn't make sense, and really shouldn't have made sense, something about Lexi just brought your guard down, made you want to trust her and bring her closer. A disarming smile, blind faith in the goodness everyone else seemed to miss. Added to that was her innate ability to survive, seeing as she was still alive and kicking.
All in all, he'd term her as manipulative. And those were extremely dangerous people indeed. Yet, he couldn't bring himself to blame his friends for walking straight into her hands, regardless.
Even as alarm bells rang in his head whenever she was near, warning him that she was an unpredictable factor in their survival, the other part of him didn't want to believe it. For the life of him he couldn't stop it. Trying to rationalize that only led him to believe that it was some lingering gratitude for her saving Penguin's life, indirectly of course. But without the medication he surely wouldn't have lasted much longer.
Her kindness had to account for something, or so she may have hoped they believed. Law wasn't that convinced, seeing as handing out all of her supplies to anyone that needed help nowadays was likely to kill her eventually. Unless she had some other devious tricks that he had yet to discover, there's no logical way she could have survived this long by herself.
After a moment, he realized all three of them had drifted away in their thoughts, and abruptly stood from his seat on the floor. The movement brought the other two from their reveries, their eyes following as Law started towards the stairs going up.
"What are you doing?" Shachi asked, the both of them standing as well.
"Waking her up. We've wasted enough time sitting here, and she's had plenty of rest for the time being." He responded, not caring how much noise he made as he ascended the stairs. Reaching the door, he knocked hard on the wood several times. "Lexi?" He called, sparing only a few seconds before he opened the door.
Stopping mid-step, he closed his eyes and sighed again, leaning against the dresser beside him. Eyeing the perfectly-made bed, empty room, missing woman and cracked open window, he could put two and two together fairly easily. There was a piece of paper attached to the window pane, held in place by a small piece of tape. Walking over, he detached it from where she'd stuck it and read the message written.
Take these, as payment for the sleep. Stay safe. ;)
-Lexi
He grinned, recognizing his own words to her so long ago. Looking down, he noticed a small brown bag on the sill. It was cinched at the top, and when he opened it, he found a couple sticks of assorted fireworks, and a few firecrackers. No lighter, though. He assumed she'd kept that. Though they had one of their own.
He could hear the thump of Shachi's and Penguin's footsteps coming up the stairs, and a moment later they peeked into the room.
"Is Lexi-" Penguin started, noticing the lack of a female. "Where is she?"
Shachi's eyes widened. "Don't tell me. Did-"
"Yes." He answered, knowing what his question would be. He held up the note. "She left a note as goodbye." Eyeing it himself, he noticed more writing on the back, and brought it closer to his face to read it.
P.S. I sort of need the food, so you understand if I hit the grocery store first, right? Don't worry, I'll be sure to leave you guys plenty.
Law frowned, fingers clenching around the piece of paper. Growling at the back of his throat, he turned and hurriedly left the room, leaving two very confused men behind him. "Get your things together. We're leaving."
Lexi supposed she should feel worse about just leaving without them knowing, but she really wasn't prepared for seeing them again after the emotional wreck she'd been the night before. Thinking back to her moment of waterworks at the other house, right in front of Law, it was embarrassing.
It wasn't like they particularly liked her, if their discussion downstairs was anything to go by. Maybe they didn't realize their voices tended to carry, and she could hear every word. Most notable was Law's adamant refusal to trust her, and his companions' hesitation to outright distrust her. Hmm, how interesting.
But once they started talking about the grocery store, her thoughts returned to her own supplies which had fallen dangerously low. If they got to the place first, they might take all that was left. Just this once, she'd be selfish and take what she needed. Thanking God above that they'd thought to bring her her bag the night before, she'd packed up quietly and got ready to leave.
She hadn't felt right just taking some of their food and water, crashing at their place, then ditching them without a thank you. So, giving up some of the fireworks she'd found before and finally writing a note as an afterthought, grinning as she mimicked Law's own message, she placed them by the window before she'd left.
There hadn't been many zombies in the area, most of them having been in the residential streets surrounding the main street, quite opposite from the big cities, and found that after a few forceful shoves, the backdoor had opened without too much trouble.
The floor was slick with blood, and she took care to step over the bodies of the zombies she'd killed, trying to keep her shoes clean this time. The town must have fallen rather fast to the infection and left few survivors, because it didn't seem like the store had been ransacked at all, or only partially. Perhaps someone had survived during the beginning of the apocalypse, but for so many supplies to be left behind, whoever they were must have died.
Broken open cans and broken glass littered the floor, maybe from animals or the initial panic of the outbreak, but other than that there was still plenty of food and water to choose from. Not as much as she'd wanted to see, but more than enough to hold her off for several days at least.
Too bad that meant that some of the meat that had been left since the beginning was still here, rotting away as the year plus it had been there stunk up the place something fierce. The bandana across her face didn't do much either to mask the smell.
There was a small section of clothes and other necessities that weren't food, and Lexi wandered over to see what she could find. There were a few racks of men and women's clothes still hung up, and then some school supplies sections. Smiling, she spotted a backpack in perfect condition, never having been sold. Reaching up, she pulled it from the rack and inspected it. The inside was much more spacious than her smaller bag, which was beginning to fray on the straps, in danger of snapping any day. There were more pockets too.
Zipping open her pack, she dumped the contents into the newer bag, relieved to see that it could hold more supplies than her previous one, and she returned to the aisles of food to grab more.
Once she'd taken her capacity, she paused, grinning as a thought came to her. Grabbing the remaining cans of food that were still good, she lined them all up on the closest aisle to the door, just as the store would have if it had still been in operation. Angling them neatly for display, she made sure that there was nothing else that they could benefit from, before zipping up her pack again and returning the way she'd come.
One glance outside showed that only a few other zombies had trickled closer, making her escape into the surrounding countryside so much easier than she'd expected. One last look behind her made her grin, spotting the flash of people running and dodging around buildings a few streets down. Satisfied that she was too far away for them to spot or go after, she disappeared behind the hill and kept her heading North.
As soon as Law and the other stepped into the grocery store, weapons drawn just in case of stray zombies, he just knew that Lexi had already been and gone. The handful of zombie corpses bleeding onto the floor around them indicated that someone had cleared out the place recently, and a few bloody shoe prints just her size dotted the floor.
"Wow, she really did a number." Penguin mentioned, nudging one of the bodies left behind. "She's better with a weapon than I expected her to be."
"What?" Shachi proclaimed, putting away his gun when it became clear there was no other threat inside the building. "She's survived this long by herself. I already knew she was a badass. Obviously."
"Oh, sure. You always knew, real convincing coming after we actually see what she can do." His friend continued, unimpressed. Knowing that they were about to spiral into yet another argument, Law sighed loudly and sheathed his sword.
"That's enough." Thankfully they listened, and Law approached the aisle where a pile of food was neatly organized and stacked. He raised a brow, surprised at the low number of cans and bottles of water. Perhaps there hadn't been much here after all, or Lexi had simply taken a lot more. Either way, it was a decent haul, and he started bagging the items left behind.
"Think we'll see Lexi again?" Penguin started again, seemingly unable to branch away from the subject of the woman in particular.
"I hope so, she's got cool stories to tell. And she's a badass, like I said." Shachi helped Law gather the food and water, while Penguin searched around for more stuff.
"What do you think, Law?" Penguin glanced at their leader, who'd remained quiet pretty much since discovering Lexi had left.
Shaking his head slowly, Law finished putting the last of the food items into his pack, testing the weight as he swung it onto his back. It wasn't cumbersome, but a reassuring heft that eased some of his peace of mind. At least they wouldn't go hungry for awhile.
"I'm sure with out luck, we'll cross paths yet again, however fortunate we'll be to do so." He said cryptically, not willing to voice out loud that he certainly hoped so. Turning back to the door they'd come through, and satisfied that there was nothing left to scavenge, he lead them all back outside and towards the house they'd decided to stay in.
Law glanced North, almost expecting to see the woman waving goodbye or walking away, but there was nothing and he looked away quickly, feeling ridiculous.
ns 18.68.41.174da2
