Epilogue

Epilogue 2.15

---Crawford---

     "Let's play a game," says Mya, in that low, whispery sort of voice that gives me a healthy dose of ASMR. The four of us sit in a circle, like nice little kindergartners, passing around the bag of potato chips I won from Em. Up on stage in front of the sea of empty seats, I realize this is the closest I'll ever get to being a rock star.

     "A game?" Gisela gawks at Mya incredulously. That's a funny word. Incredulously. Makes everything sound all sophisticated. Jun yawns, incredulously. I scratch my beard, incredulously.

     "Yeppers."

     "A game sounds nice," Jun mutters, staring up at the balcony seats. I can hear a pterodactyl screech every now and then.

     I uncross my legs, which ache like I just ran a marathon. Even at our brisk pace, we only made it to the outer rim of the city before the pterodactyls took to the skies and we were forced to duck into this abandoned opera house to take cover for the night. Who knows if we're even going the right way? Gisela claims she's still tracking Jewel, but I haven't seen anything that suggests we're not just wandering around blindly.

     Gisela rolls her eyes: a perfectly executed eye-roll, I might add. Notice the advanced papillary—I mean pupillary—technique. Slip of the tongue. She's not my type anyway. Don't make me scoff incredulously.

     "Crawford?" Mya nudges me.

     "Huh?"

     "Are you in?"

     "Incredulously," I mutter, nodding like a zombie bobble-head.

     "So," she says in her soothing British accent, "it's called 'The Most Disturbing Thing I've Ever Seen.' If you can't guess already from the name, we each say what's the most disturbing thing we've ever seen. Whoever has the most disturbing story wins. Or loses, depending how you look at it."

     We all stare at her... some-other-adverb-that-I-haven't-used-to-death-ly. My kind of game usually involves complex item builds and hardcore mouse-clicking, but I guess this beats being pterodactyl chow. I've always hated people who feed birds. It's not like our avian acquaintances ever pay us back or anything, those beaky bastards.

     "Your enthusiasm is overwhelming," says Mya, twirling a strand of her hair. "All right, I'll start. So back during the zombie apocalypse there was this girl, right? Theresa. Well Theresa was more than a little bonkers. She, uh... had a thing for the zombies, yeah? She used to get up close and whisper to them instead of killing them. Sometimes she even claimed they whispered back. Someone always had to rush in and brain the zombie before she went and got herself bit."

     "That is pretty messed up," says Gisela, twirling her pistols.

     "What? Oh, that's just the preamble. So anyway, one day we catch her snogging a zombie. At this point, our leader, Rainer, locks her up in the bunker. About a week later, she manages to escape. We find her out in a parking lot, without any clothes on, with a zombie chewing her face off." She pauses. "I reckon that's not what she'd meant for it to eat."

     Gisela bursts into laughter. I wouldn't have thought her capable of it. I wipe the sweat from my brow. Mya didn't even blush telling that story. Who knew she had that side to her? I gulp.

     "Speaking of cannibalism," Gisela begins. "Wow. I never expected to say that. Anyway, back where I come from, we had these weasels that people kept as pets. They were nice and all, except that if you croaked, they'd eat you."