45 minutes later.
“I'm just saying,” Teddy groused, kicking a rock down the street in front of him. “The girl is clearly unbalanced.”
“True,” I said. “But, I'm feeling we're all a little unbalanced right now. I mean, if this all is real, I'm having a real hard time with it. If it's not real, and is some kind of delusion or a dream—which it seems way too long to be a dream—then I'm pretty sure I’ve got gross emotional and mental problems.”
“Dreams can be any length,” Teddy said from beside me. “Super short jump-scares, or massive epics spanning years. And sometimes we don't even remember how long we were in the dream.”
I stopped, turned (since I couldn't turn my head) and glared at him. “Thanks, that's not helpful at all.”
Teddy grinned, and then kept on walking.
***
Teddy and I got to grind on a series of weird-ass looking mole things, with sharp, sharp horns affixed to their foreheads. They were pretty fast, and had inordinately large teeth. But luckily, they were relatively easy to kill. Teddy killed three with his arrows. I ended up head-butting one into the great hereafter, and then used my frying pan to exterminate two more.
Everything happened kind of fast, so we only found out that they were actual mole rats when we looked at them with our stats boxes.
They weren't worth much, experience wise, but we did get about 15 points each one. We would definitely have to keep an eye out for them next time we went grinding.
We were just turning onto Melbourne Avenue when Teddy suddenly stopped, and I kind of ran into his leg. I tried to look up, but had to settle for swiveling my eyes upward. And I could still barely make out his face. Teddy had this expression, kind of sad, but kind of happy. And then his eyes started to light up. I stepped around him, and got to look at what he was looking at.
There was a black truck sitting in front of a house. The front door was open, and a man and a woman was walking out. They had something wrapped up in a large black trash bag kind of thing, and they were carrying it between them, each having hold of an end.
Teddy took a breath, opening his mouth as if he was about to speak, but then he ducked down, grabbed hold of me, and then pulled me behind some bushes.
“What's wrong?” I asked, whispering. He held his finger up for me to hush. I heard a muffled thud, and then two car doors swing open and closed. The truck started, engine revving, and then barreled away.
“Who was that?” I asked.
“Someone I… someone I used to know. And her husband.”
“Well, that's great. So why did we hide from them?”
“Because I saw their stats boxes, and they were… they were both ghouls.”
I could almost feel my brows knit together as I thought about that. “Ghouls? Like those monsters that live in cemeteries and eat dead bodies?”
“Yeah, and they had a dead body with them.”
What? “You mean, what they were carrying, wrapped up in that–”
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
“Yeah!” he snapped. “That was a dead body.”
Oh shit.
***
We walked on for a while in complete silence. I didn't know what to say. I wanted to know…
Gah! I'm just going to ask.
“So, what were their names?”
I could see him tense, his lips turning into a flat line.
“And how do you know them?” Boy, I’m just full of questions, ain’t I?”
His jaw tensed, and after a few beats I was pretty sure he wasn’t going to answer. But then he took a big breath and said, “She's Celia Hobbs. She's a… counselor… at New Beginnings.”
I stopped in my tracks for a moment, trying to remember why I knew that place. But then I hurried to catch up again.
“New Beginnings? Isn't that a… a mental health facility?”
He was never committed there. I mean, he hadn't been absent from school long enough to be committed there.
Had he?
“I was an outpatient. It wasn't for anything serious.”
But he hadn't told me. Teddy told me everything. Like I told him everything.
That thought felt very deja vu in my head. Yeah, we had just talked about how Teddy and his Wood talked about everything. But, they really didn't talk about everything.
Oh, crap on toast, this was giving me a headache. And I don’t even have a brain anymore… I think.
“What were you going to her about?” Okay, that felt wrong and awkward the second it popped out of my mouth.
“I don't want to talk about it,” he said.
I nodded. “Okay.” We started to walk again, heading back toward the pizzeria.
“You know,” I said to him, “you can always talk to me about… whatever’s bothering you. You know, anything.”
He didn't stop walking. For a few seconds I didn't think he was going to reply, but then he did. His voice was tense, and it cracked some. I knew Teddy's voice cracked when he was angry or upset.
“I know. Just not about this, okay?”
“Okay,” I said, dropping it. The last thing I wanted to do was upset him more.
Just seeing those two had really upset him.
***
As soon as we got back to the pizzeria, Teddy gathered some clothes from his inventory and headed over to Ellie's house to take a shower. I couldn't stop thinking about that couple, Celia and Calvin Hobbs. That they were now monsters now—ghouls—but the woman had been very important to Teddy. And I still wanted to know why?
I wanted to ask one of the gang, Wood or Ellie. But I had a feeling neither one of them would tell me anything. Heck, maybe they didn't even know that Teddy had been going to counseling.
I don't know what made me more nervous, that something had bothered him so much he needed to go to therapy, or that we had never even known or suspected that something was wrong.
And now he was under way more stress. Hello, it’s the end of the freaking world! So many dying, including his mom and dad.
In frustration, I tapped my head against the wall a couple times. I did it gently, not because I might hurt myself, which I kind of doubted, but because I didn't want to damage the wall.
That did absolutely nothing.
Okay, time to pull my big-boy panties on and act like a friend. Teddy had had a problem, one serious enough that he went to talk to somebody about it. That was none of my business. Whatever it was about, it was and still is none of my business. And he didn't want to talk to me about it. He probably didn't want to talk to anybody about it. At least, not to anyone he knew.
But to a stranger?
A stranger with a degree and experience in helping people with their problems. One who is a freaking flesh eating monster now.
I shook that off.
I'd already told him that he could talk to me about anything, so if he wanted to talk to me, or needed to talk to me about whatever it was, he knew I was here. That was as far as I could go. I just needed to be here in case sometime in the future he needed to talk.
I wondered if, sometime in the future, we would have to put the Hobbs on a no-kill list for monsters. After all, the couple hadn't killed the bodies that they were dragging out of that house, right? They were just ghouls, so they ate dead bodies. And ever since the end of the world, we probably had a hell of a lot of dead bodies on our hands.
My mind suddenly took me somewhere I didn't want to go. Back to Pine Bluff Avenue, to my mom's crushed car, to her hand hanging out the window.
The Hobbs were not getting their hands of my mom's body.
***
I know I didn't want to see what my mom looked like inside the car. And I knew if I got her out of it, I would not be able to lift her up enough to put her into my storage. The most I could do was drag what was left somewhere and bury it. Maybe.
My heart hurt just thinking about it.
But, I think if I get underneath the car far enough, at just the right point, and then just use my arms and legs to push it up, maybe…
And that’s what I was currently doing, having slid under what was left of my mom’s car. Pushing out with my wee arms and legs I did my best to act like a mini power hoist. Like a car jack, but just in the middle. My strength had leveled up quite a bit from my grinding, a respectable 6, so I was hoping that I'd be strong enough to do this. Putting my heightened strength together with my hard-as-hell gnome body, and I was hoping I’d be able to pull this off.