Page 10 of Dealing With Drak

His responding grin hits me right in the heart.

3

Anna

The next morning, I actually sleep in. I’m not sure if it’s the relief of finally getting what’s been weighing on my mind off my chest, or if it’s because Drak and I stayed up plotting for far too long. Either way, I’m glad. I haven’t had a restful sleep in a few weeks, and this one was nice, even if it was unexpected.

When I get downstairs, the house is actually empty for once, allowing me to gather myself and shove some fruit into my mouth before heading outside. Drak’s bright-ass white ponytail is the first thing I see, bobbing along as he tries to tend to the garden with Terum.

The leader of the Aprixians has been helping Brooke with the plants ever since Stevie packed up and ditched this planet with her mate. She handled all the food growing before, but luckily with the help of Terum, Brooke has been enjoying the new task. I’m grateful for it because I want fuck all to do with that godforsaken garden and what it represents.

Even though it’s fed us for months now, I can’t stand the sight of it. I recognize it’s one of the many things that aided in the sorority’s collective survival, but most of why we continue to breathe has been due to pure luck and circumstance. It’s unbelievable the amount of things that aligned perfectly for us, actually. Location, resources, skill set differences… it all added to our mutual benefit over time.

Because of remodeling being done to Greek Row two years ago, our temporary sorority house was now in the most remote area owned by our University. This strategic placement was our biggest advantage from the start of the apocalypse.

None of us were pleased with the house switch at the time. No sorority wants to be planted a thirty-minute drive away from campus, surrounded by trees and sat in the middle of a mountain. Not to mention the house itself was ancient and dusty with hardly a lick of potential. But the basement was a secret gold mine. We hated it when we moved in, finding it to be one big, messy pit of storm survival supplies and dust. Obviously, everything proved to be useful when the world went to shit.

Not to mention the fact that we’ve had running water this entire time because of the solar-powered spring the University’s engineering program created as an experiment. In the beginning, we used it as sparingly as possible since we knew the solar panels wouldn’t last forever. But now, with the aliens here, we’re less careful. Why conserve water and resources when they have a solution for fucking everything, I guess?

Whatever.

Our best asset, and the luckiest, was the canned food drive we’d held only three days before the first outbreak. With only six of us living in the house at the time of the breakout, we estimated about a year and a half of non-perishable food. We knew we needed to be prepared for longer. Hence, the garden.

Since it’s almost November now, they’re really just harvesting what they can until the last of the remaining warmth is swept away by winter. We have plenty of canned food, even more now that the aliens have fetched some each time they leave, but fresh is best. It’s very easy to get bored with mushy canned food when it’s all you have to eat. Canned food is better than no food, though.

The food situation is one of the Aprixians’ biggest selling points for moving us with them to their planet. They have an abundance of human-safe food, and their atmosphere is perfectly livable. I have a sickening feeling that Cayte, Brooke, and Megan will be ready to pack their bags and head off as soon as snow starts to fall. I can’t even blame them, but I refuse to consider leaving Earth until I know if my brothers are alive. I couldn’t give a fuck about Dad, but Caleb and Landon? I want them to be alive.

My relationship with Landon has always been complicated. He’s more like Dad than he is like me and Caleb, but Landon would have never left me behind. When the breakout first happened nearly a year ago and they showed up here with rooted-up plants from the farm garden, guns, and miscellaneous supplies, I was relieved.

I thought, here’s my dad coming to save the day. Surely, they’d move in and help keep us safe, right? Wrong. They’d given that responsibility to me and fucked off to go zombie hunting. I knew Caleb felt sick about it. He looked like he wanted to stay and never return to the mess surrounding the sorority. He just couldn’t fight Dad on it, and he probably paid the price for it.

I should have demanded he stay, pretended I was too scared to be without him, but I know Caleb would be mortified. Dad would assume I was doing it for him, and that humiliation would be more sickening than the zombies.

Our father wasn’t a horrible man, but he always was a bit ignorant.

To him, I was a frailer version of them all because I was a girl. Not in the protective and caring way the Aprixians seem to worship women, but in the demeaning way that made me feel worthless and small. He didn’t care about race, religion, or creed like some of the other homesteaders around our area growing up. He figured if you were a good person, none of that mattered to him. But he always looked at me like I was less, whether he realized it or not.

“An-nana,” Drak calls out, having seen me before I could walk all the way by. He notes the gun at my hip and the gifted knife right by its side. “Do you wish to hunt?”

“I’m just walking the perimeter,” I yell back.

It’s no use trying to brush him off. His interest is already peaked, and he’s running over to me before I can tell him not to.

“I will come with you,” he declares, a goofy grin on his face as he glides up to my side. He’s shirtless, again, but the Aprixians usually are. None of them developed a love for shirts like Rem has, and I think most of that was due to the way Sarah would drool at him in cropped tops.

The Aprixians do have pants that they always wear—thank God. The big guys don an alien combination of slacks and denim. Whatever fabric they’re made out of, they seem durable.

“Do you have a gun?” I ask, arching a brow.

He scoffs like the question is ridiculous. Leaning down, he holds eye contact as he pulls a small blaster from the side of his boot. It’s small for a blaster but still a bit bigger than a typical handgun. The thing holds a shit ton of power too.

“I always have a blaster,” he replies happily.

“Then I suppose you can come,” I sigh, starting to walk toward the far fence.

“I am pleased that you have invited me.”

“I didn—” Oh, what the hell. “Whatever.”

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