EXTINCTION EVENT | CARL GRIMES

t h i r t e e n ↣ pester

I place the metal bowl onto the floor next to where I left the can of peas. I already know my next move because I remember seeing a bookshelf in the room I've been staying in. I lightly kick the door open with my foot, sending it into the wall.

I lazily grab the thickest books off of the shelf and throw them through the open door, into the hallway.

"Carl?" I hear from right outside the bedroom door. "Is everything okay?" Megan's voice quietly echoes through the hallway as she sighs.

"Yeah," I breathe out. I know she was asking in a less general sense, but I decide to pretend to not know what she's really asking. "I'm just finding stuff to burn in the fire." I briefly squeeze my eyes shut at my word choice.

Soon after our exchange, I send a few more books flying out the door and into the hall. I hear her quietly gasp after I throw the first one.

"Sorry." I project my voice so that she can hear me from where she's standing. That's weird. I never apologize to the girl, no matter what I do or say to her. It's one of our unspoken things.

"It's okay, Carl." She sighs from the hallway.

I grab the last thick book off of the bookshelf and keep it in my hand instead of throwing it. Walking out into the hall, I see the girl sitting on her blanket. Fake fruit is scattered on the floor behind her and books with bent pages and damaged covers lay next to the metal bowl in front of her. The mess: courtesy of myself.

She sits with her knees bent as she reads the contents of the vanilla folder she took from the corrections office back at the prison grounds. Maybe she'll find out something useful.

I kneel down on the floor and grab a book with a dark green hard cover. Some words—in latin or something—are engraved in gold writing on the front. I shake my head before opening the book and ripping a few pages out. I try to keep the noise to a minimum so that the girl can focus on whatever she's reading.

As quietly as I can, I crumple page after page from this book and toss them into the metal bowl. Once I'm about a fourth of the way into the pages of the book, I place it down and reach for the can of peas.

The can is pretty far out of my reach, being closer to Megan's feet a little further down the hall. I look up toward her face and her eyebrows furrow in concentration as she reads through the folder that's resting on her legs. I notice she takes a second to flip a page. I cough under my breath to hopefully get the girl's attention.

Her eyes lift from the paper and she looks to me. I motion at the can of peas and she leans over the folder to see what I'm looking at. Once her eyes land on the can of peas, she doesn't hesitate to grab it with her hand and move it closer to me.

Weird. Usually the girl would make a remark, maybe even telling me to do it myself. Or she would do it, but not before rolling her eyes. But she just went back to reading the papers in the folder. I shake my head and look down to the can.

I grab the can in my hand and get my knife from my holster with the other. I stab the can of peas, making a considerable amount of noise. As I cut open the rim of the can's lid, I try to be cautious of the noise I'm making.

Looking up from the can, I try to make sure I'm not disturbing the girl ahead of me. To my surprise, she looks to be done reading about whatever was in that folder.