Desolation ✔️

Chapter 14: Clarity

I blow on my coffee and take another sip before setting it on the floor beside me. The radio sits on my opposite side, almost between Ash and I. "Yeah, well marijuana counts as a drug, in case you didn't know."

"I don't use marijuana."

"Huh, that's funny, cuz I felt like I was getting contact-high just by standing in your doorway."

He shakes his head and leans back on an arm. "My buddies come—came—over to smoke it all the time. Didn't matter if anyone else thought I smoked it, either. When I really think about it, I know I wouldn't have been kicked off the team."

I tilt my head and examine his expression closely. His eyes are trained on the small candle sitting on the floor between us. "What makes you say that? You're just oh-so elite and better than all the others cuz you've got those...ocean-blue eyes? Automatically entitled to everything..."

His smile disappears and he shakes his head slowly. "Nah. Remember what you asked me last night? In the truck?"

"I asked you lots of things. Can you be more specific?"

"You asked if I was too young to be on the SWAT Team."

"Oh yeah. You are, aren't you? But you're on the team anyway..." I pause so he can fill in the blank.

"Yeah, my dad sort of...made arrangements with people, paperwork, circumstances...to get me on the team."

The flame dies down from the candle, casting more shadows on his olive-toned skin. A weighted silence fills every room and nook and cranny of his house. "Really? Why?"

"He wanted something more for me, I guess. Consistency, maybe. Who knows? But I didn't have any plans after high school, so I figured...why not? I went to a military high school, not a cheesy drama-filled, friendship-based high school. That decision was partially based off my mom's death. Considering I was the boy in the family, my dad said I had to toughen up. So I did." He takes a sip of water and stares at the bottle. "I joined the police academy after graduating, once I turned eighteen. I had some experience, but I couldn't have gotten on board without my dad."

"How'd he do it?" I ask quietly. "You know, get you on the SWAT team?"

"Because," he says, setting his bottled water down and locking eyes with me, "my dad was the police chief."

The kitchen falls silent. Everything starts makes a little more sense...the pieces click; an entire picture within the puzzle starts to take shape. Ash's dad was the police chief... The chief, who manages the SWAT team. The one who calls all the shots and assigns everyone their tasks...tasks like bombing certain neighborhoods. But if Ash's only experience is military school, how could his dad even think of entrusting him with leading SWAT officers in the midst of a crisis?

"I shot my first gun when I was seven," Ash continues, staring out into the darkness plaguing the rest of the house. "But I didn't start shooting purposefully until I was thirteen. My dad taught me. He wanted me and my sister to be prepared for anything."

My mind wanders to my own dad and how he only wanted to take care of my mom and I. He always just wanted the best for us, no matter where we were going, what we were doing. He always knew what needed to be done, too. Especially when it came to survival and his final moments. My last memory of him will always be of the hoard he and my mom were caught up in. My dad was the one who fell. My mom was still standing as the zombies surrounded my dad and bit him over and over and over again. He died first. He died trying to save us. If only we had stayed in the house. His grand escape plan only ended in his fall, the explosion, their deaths...and me and Carter, standing alone on the street. Only now...it's just me.