Bread!

[dog_eat_dog]

WHO: Tess and youuuu.
WHERE: A grocery store in Heropa.
WHEN: Afternoon.
WHAT: Getting a little bit emotional about fresh bread.
WARNINGS: None yet.

A few days after arriving in Heropa, on her first run for groceries, Tess finds herself utterly lost in thought in the bakery section. Everything feels off.

She can remember herself last doing this some twenty years ago, when she was complaining about it, wondering why she had to help get groceries when she could just help her parents unload them once they got home. Did her mom and dad really need her running across the store to get this and that just to make the trip faster? So what if going with them meant she could maybe pick out a few things her parents wouldn’t get otherwise? She had a part-time job. She could buy whatever snacks she wanted.

That was a long time ago.

Now, Tess is just standing in front of the bread racks in a sort of fascination. There’s baguettes and ciabatta and pumpernickel, and a half-dozen different flavors of bagel, and cheese sticks and croissants and all those things. Tess can’t even fathom turning down an opportunity to get groceries, now. It’s something like pornography, now, where she can just stand there in front of the shelves like some slack-jawed idiot, getting strange looks from people who just want to get to the sesame-seed buns but can’t as long as she’s in the way.

She feels like a fucking idiot for wanting to cry. It takes every ounce of her being not to grab things by the armload and run, run, run with them. Jesus christ, she can still taste bread from the Quarantine Zone in her mouth if she thinks about it, with that awful heaviness and coarse texture, and that sour aftertaste. Good bread was expensive for the military to produce, and not hearty or filling enough to bother with in any significant quantity at that. Even with her relatively "comfortable" lifestyle in the Quarantine Zone, Tess hadn’t tasted good, fresh bread in decades.

Tess allows herself to reach, to touch –– she puts her hands against the waxed paper bag to feel that the bread inside is still warm, as it’d only come out of the oven hours ago. That does get her eyes a little misty, and her heartbeat picks up.

Jesus christ, it’s stupid to be so sentimental about bread, but these people don’t know what they’re missing.

Have at, fine people of Heropa –– there’s a woman getting emotional in the bakery section.

Comments

[112ounces]

Carl placed his fruit and bread and gum on the belt, watching it move in fascination. Customers who are checking out their groceries are staring at Carl again, a few even whispering, obviously looking at his gun and holster. Even the cashier is looking at him from the side of her eyes.

The stares is starting to make him a little nervous.

"I wish. Any electricity we had we kept for lights and radios."

But wait, something she said made him pause. It doesn't quite add up.

"What do you mean? As in, you hadn't seen television when walkers showed up?"

But that makes no sense. It's been over two years since that happen.

[dog_eat_dog]

Tess sighs, and she feels a headache coming on –– something about handling food, a kid and all the survivor's trauma at once, and the fact that she's still not used to the bright electric lighting in every goddamn building. The constant beeping of the cash machine doesn't help, either. The eyes on Carl don't bother her so much, but the eyes on her feel exposing. Does she look like a shitty adult for having a kid with a gun with her? Who knows.

She leans against the cash counter and fixes him a look.

"Where do you think I grew up, with in the fucking Amish? Of course I had," she replies. "Have you ever seen television?"

[112ounces]

Carl just stares at her blankly.

"Of course I had. I was twelve when it all fell apart . . . " He trailed off, a thought lacing through his brain like a bullet. He looks vaguely horrified, looking out over the distance. "It was two years ago."

The cashier was done with checking out the food and obviously listening to the conversation while waiting on Tess.

"Oh my god, you are from the future."

It is so crazy but the woman said it happened twenty years ago. What else could it be?

The cashier obviously think so, with the sidelong glances to the floor in concern to nobody in particular.

[dog_eat_dog]

Oh.

Oh.

It's not that Tess hasn't put together that she's either from some future time or else stuck in limbo or something –– that's her current theory, even if a week ago she wouldn't have believed in either of those things. Now, though, she'll take any answer she can get.

It's that the notion of being alone in this is terrifying, the kind of terrifying that makes her want to vomit. Her whole existence is like some kind of cautionary tale.

"Yeah," she says, somewhat distantly. She ignores Carl for a moment to pay, and she's surprised to find her fingers trembling somewhat at she fishes through the Hello Kitty wallet she has in her purse. She pays, but it's without looking the cashier in the eye.

She starts bagging their things, far too rushed than she needs to be.

"So what?" Tess says, hard. "Just be glad you got out of there now."

[112ounces]

Carl looks a little crushed, thinking back to what Tess said about the military, how it changed over eighteen years. Eighteen. Carl would have turned thirty-two, his dad past his fifties, and Judith, had she lived, would have been fourteen.

Carl never realized how much hope he has stashed away, deep within his heart, that humanity might thrive. It will take an uphill climb, and Carl or Dad might not live to see it, but there's somebody out there who knows how to make people return to towns and rebuild skyscrapers and fly helicopters.

Humanity has fallen, and there's no way for it to climb back up to its feet. All it can do is crawl and outpace its own death.

"Yeah, at least I'm out."

So why does he feel like he's still trapped? He wonders idly as he picks up a bag.

God, he needs to eat soon. To distract himself, if nothing else.

[dog_eat_dog]

Tess shoves the last bit of food in a plastic bag and then, satisfied that Carl's already thought to pull his own weight, she turns to go with the second bag in hand. She heads for the door without so much as a "thank you" to the cashier.

"My place isn't far. We're walking it, because you don't want to see my driving," she says. It's a shitty attempt at humor, but there it is.

[112ounces]

Carl, on the other hand, do remembers his manners on a good day, so he merely smiles and mutters a "thank you", even though the cashier is trying his best not to notice either Carl or Tess. He follows her, observing how the doors slide out before them.

Carl noticed the humor and played along. "I haven't even attempted to learn how to drive. All the cars are given to the scouts." Mainly grown-ups. No one wanted to teach a kid how to drive with walkers about, and bandits too.

[dog_eat_dog]

"Isn't fourteen a little young, anyway?" Not that it matters, really, because few people can get their hands on cars in the QZ anyway.

The weather outside is nice, considering she's used to snow in Boston starting around November. Once they're out of the building entirely, she glances at Carl.

"Do you know how to use that gun?" she asks.

[112ounces]

"Fourteen is too young for a lot of things nowadays." Too young to kill, too young to take care for a near-dying father, but just old enough to assume responsibility. He looks down at his Berretta.

"Yeah. It's the only gun I use. I just stick with pistols. Easier to carry around for me." Carl knows his limitations, even though he constantly pushes them, if unsuccessfully. It makes him wished he had a machete, so make kills quieter.

[dog_eat_dog]

"Well, you'd better get used to carrying it concealed if you're going to keep it on you here," she says. She has her own, of course, tucked in the back waistband of her pants, and it's well-hidden under her shirt. "You're going to get in worlds of shit if someone cares to call the cops on a twelve year old for open carrying... and I'm not about to take responsibility for you."

[112ounces]

Welp. He should of thought of that before he's gone to the store. Sometimes it doesn't pay to get out of bed. He peers around, trying to spot the familiar black and white cars.

"I totally forgot about that." So stupid to forget it too; his dad is a cop and knows a little thing or two about the police life. "I guess buying bullets is a no go for me too?"

There has to be a black market around. That's how the black market supposed to work, right? To navigate around the red tape and restrictions.

[dog_eat_dog]

Tess actually laughs.

"Kid... you won't get bullets in this place in a million years."

She would know, as one of the biggest players in Boston's black market.

"If you were a few years older I'd think you could maybe slip a stranger some money to get bullets for you, but you've still got baby fat in those cheeks, and a boy-band haircut," she says. "You're screwed."

[112ounces]

Carl gives Tess a scowl. She didn't have to put it that way, geez. And he doesn't have a boy-band haircut. It's perfectly messy and oily, like a teenager who haven't been closed to a bath would look like. He noticed other people, some too busy to notice Tess and Carl, but some children were gawking at his unkept appearance . . . and his gun. He looks at them the corner of their eye, and the moment their line of sight obscured by a bunch of parked SUVs, he pulled his pistol out of his holster, stuffing it in the back of the waistband, covering it with the tail end of his shirt. It only half works - there's still an obvious bulge.

While trying to keep his stride and holding his bag of groceries, he begins to unlatch the leg holster on his leg, undoing the belt. He looks ridiculous, walking as though he has a gimp in his leg but he managed, stuffing the holster into the bag. "I never thought I would feel less comfortable in a normal city than I did before the dead started walking," he grumbled.