America's Sunset: A Post Apocalyptic Fight for Survival Read Online Free PDF Page B

Eyes wide open, that were connected to a brain that decided it didn’t matter. If that’s the way things were going to end, then so be it. If the zombie horde, or the starving neighbors horde, showed up at their door tomorrow morning armed with pitchforks and toxic venom in their saliva, then so be it. Bring ’em on and let the chips land where they lay.
    “I love you very much too,” Jake said. “Can’t you see that you’re the reason why I do the stuff that I do. The thought of you or our kids falling prey to those horrors is more than I can stand. It’s what keeps me awake at night. I know it's old fashioned to say so, but I’m your protector. That’s my job. I’m the man here, and I’m your husband. It’s in my DNA. It makes me happy, and it’s what I want to do.”
    Maggie smiled, and brushed away a single tear as she hugged Jake. “I know dear, I understand why it’s important to you, and I love you for it. But, maybe, just maybe you’d sleep better at night if you were on a cruise ship in the middle of the Caribbean, thousands of miles away from your hunger-crazed zombie neighbors?”
    Jake chuckled, as he shook his head in disagreement.

 
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 6 ~ Harish
    Harish didn’t mind cleaning public bathrooms; at least it was a job. Not something that everyone had these days. The work was really quite peaceful, given that none of his other colleagues seemed interested in the task. The fact that he was willing to do the work spared them from having to get their hands dirty. He put on the long, thick rubber gloves before getting started. The washrooms were his favorite part of the job. He didn’t have to deal with the public, and there was no one to make disparaging remarks about his ethnicity.
    He moved from urinal to urinal, spraying each with disinfectant and wiping them down with the long-handled brush he pulled from the pail of watered-down bleach. If the little blue deodorant pucks in each had melted or were too small, he replaced them with new ones. He’d suggested to his manager that if he just moved all the small pucks to the urinal furthest from the door they would last longer. It seemed to get the least use. His manager told him to keep doing things the way he’d been instructed, and to stop thinking so much. It occurred to Harish that it was hard not to think doing a job like this. Thinking was what he did all the time. Thinking about a better place to live mostly. He’d held this job for a month now, which was almost a record for him.
    It looked like things might be finally turning around. Nothing to get too excited about, given that he still lived in the basement of an old house in the Greenspoint neighborhood of Houston, Texas, an area that even the crack dealers avoided. It simply wasn’t worth the risk on their investment. Having been unemployed for two months prior to this job had him worried. He hadn’t been able to even pay his rent, and he realized that the only reason he wasn’t out on the streets was that his landlord hadn’t been around for a while. That wasn’t too strange in and of itself, but it was strange that the power and water were still on. The last time his landlord disappeared for this long, the utilities got shut off. Given his financial situation, it was a blessing this time as long as the utilities stayed on.
    Harish finished the last of the urinals, then moved towards the stalls. He liked to do the sinks first, then the urinals, then the stalls. He figured that way he’d get adjusted to the smell of the place before moving on to the worst of it all. Not that the smell was ever that bad in here. He’d certainly been in worse places. That last foster home he lived in before turning eighteen and moving out on his own came to mind.
    Today though, the washroom had a slightly rotten smell to the place. Kind of like the alley behind the butcher he used to pass by on the way to high school. Not an alley you wanted to walk down on one of those