onto his friend’s shoulders. “You never open the door. Never ,” he said with a stern face. “I don’t care who it is—family, friends, anyone. You don’t open that door.”
Christine’s mouth fell open as she stared at Zack.
“I’ve been telling her this all week,” Liam said, looking at Christine as if Zack was proper validation for his theory of survival.
The blood rushed to her face and burned her cheeks a hot red. She clenched her jaw shut, her teeth applying so much pressure on each other that they hurt. She ground them together in an attempt to gain control of herself again.
Liam and Zack looked at her in silence. Zack had a spreading smile that took over his face, while Liam’s gaze fell to the floor. He’d really messed up this time. It wasn’t his idea to have Zack come over like he did. He hadn’t even know if Zack was still alive. It was his policy to assume everyone was dead so there’d be no disappointment when he learned the truth. But he certainly shouldn’t have agreed with Zack like he did. He should have been as outraged as Christine clearly was. He knew he would get the full force of her wrath even though Zack was the one who pulled the stupid prank.
“You were faking ?” Christine hissed through her teeth.
Zack couldn’t help it as he broke out into laughter. “You should have seen your faces,” he said. “It was—”
Christine punched him so hard that he couldn’t finish his sentence. His dark, wooly beard did nothing to soften the blow. He looked at her hand to see if she was wearing brass knuckles as she shook it wildly through the air. Groans and curses escaped his lips as he rubbed his already swelling jaw.
“God dammit,” he said, bent over. “It was a joke. A test!”
“Well, it wasn’t fucking funny!” Christine yelled at him as she breezed by him. She shut herself in the bedroom again.
Zack straightened himself up and moved his jaw in a slow, circular motion. Liam wanted to smile. Somehow he’d avoided the blame. Instead he simply shrugged his shoulders when Zack eyed him.
“It was barking mad what you just did, scaring her like that,” Liam said loud enough for Christine to hear through the wall. “Life’s been hard enough without us having to think these things are at our doorstep.”
“Kind of the reason I came by, actually,” Zack said as he gave his jaw one last massage before he moved on from the incident. “I think we should do a sweep of the building to see who’s still alive and we should ‘clear out’ the infected ones.” He used air quotes, but the meaning was obvious.
Liam nodded his head. Why hadn’t he thought of it? He had been completely obsessed with cutting themselves off from everything that he didn’t even stop to think that the apartment would be safer if it were free of the infection all together. He didn’t allow himself to think of how they would go about it. His upper lip sweat as he drummed his fingers over his thin lips. He wiped it away with a quick flick. “Ok. Good. Yeah. Let’s clean this place up a bit. Make it safe again.”
Zack’s adrenaline rushed. He clapped his hands together and hopped in place. “Yes! Let’s do this!”
Liam’s eyebrows pulled together as he held his hands out in front of him. “Woah. We can’t charge out of here without a plan.”
Zack stared at him unblinkingly as he rubbed his hands together and shifted his weight between his feet. He leaned forward slightly, as if he were literally hanging on Liam’s next words.
“We’ll think on it and meet back here in the morning, weapons in hand. Got it?”
Zack nodded as a joker grin took over his face, his eyes wrinkled until they were almost completely shut. “Good idea. OK, I’m going to get out of here before Rocky comes out here again. I’ll see you tomorrow at eight.” He opened the door, looked both ways, and then ran next door to his own apartment.
Liam shook his head and chuckled. Zack was insane, but it was
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