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Green
section.
     
                I
fixed my hair back into its updo, wondering if I should just hack it off. As I
was contemplating that, I heard a slip of sound that startled me into dropping
the flashlight. It clattered loudly onto the floor, and I nearly screamed with
surprise because it was really loud. The light rested on a set of shoes that
came to a stop near me. A set of shoes that belonged to a moving body, to
someone that shushed me. I nearly turned to run away like some startled
animal when he picked up the flashlight to show himself to me. It was another
shift worker, someone I’d seen occasionally as we switched picking sections.
     
                “Sorry, sorry ,” he whispered, nearly blinding himself to show me he wasn’t a
creature. His voice didn’t match the guys I’d heard earlier, and as my heart
rate returned to normal, he gave a goofy sort of smile. He looked bloody and
gross, and I wondered where he’d hid to survive. If there was more like him.
“Hey, it’s okay. You scared me, too.”
     
                “ I scared you?” I repeated, nearly hissing it. I snatched the flashlight away from
him, kept it centered on his chest. Damn it, he was taller than me, but not
exactly girl-protection material. He was scrawny, slight, with a cutesy face
rather than a mannish one. I still would have to depend on myself to survive.
Damn it.
     
                “Are
you with…you with Jeff and them?” he then asked, looking cautious about it.
     
                I
blinked because I didn’t know who Jeff was, and I shook my head. He looked
immediately relieved. “Who’s that?” I asked, keeping my voice at a whisper.
     
                “Teal
badge. Worked at the docks. He’s got people with him. He and these other guys
were killing off the infected.”
     
                I
stared at him, at the nervous dart of his eyes. He kept blinking hard, like the
light hurt him. So I shifted it to his mid-section. “You were here…all this
time?”
     
                He
pointed off to the side, then crossed his arms loosely without saying anything.
He looked me up and down while I tried to figure out what the gesture meant.
The tense expression he’d been wearing slowly turned to something of amusement,
relief. But also judgmental, like he was trying to figure out whether or not I
knew how to do anything.
     
                As
I started to relax, I remembered more about this guy. Me and another picker had
realized weeks earlier that this one looked like that guy from ‘Inception’
– the one that had his hair slicked back and had the awesome spinning
hall scene. I felt inwardly disappointed that he wasn’t the sort of man I was
looking for – he lacked muscles. A sense of commanding presence. He
looked like the sort that hid when men raised their voices in a bar, or shied
away from bloody MMA matches. I almost groaned and hoped he wasn’t going to be
an ally of sorts.
     
                I
didn’t feel the need to make myself look pretty and wiped at my nose to make
sure I wasn’t snotty, still. Then realized how utterly shallow I was at
a time like this.
     
                “I
hid over there,” I gestured at the 1 st section, “then found this
stuff in Red. Do you know about outside?”
     
                He
shook his head immediately. “You can’t go outside. There’s more out there.”
     
                “Like
what? Aliens ?” I asked sardonically.
     
                He
looked at me with a forceful nod and serious expression. When he looked like
that, he really looked like that guy. What was his name? Argh, I never paid
much attention to him when Tom Hardy’s more dashing Eames was around.    
     
                “Really
tall, really big. See, we made it outside when the infected came in, but when
we saw them – some of us came back in,” he