War of the Living by Joshua Guess

Author:Joshua Guess [Guess, Joshua]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Goodreads: 23264174
Published: 2014-09-22T04:00:00+00:00

The dogs greeted them when they returned to Josh's house. Jess was nowhere to be found, but that wasn't unusual. She spent most of each day overseeing an improbable number of agricultural projects. Kell rarely saw her unless he came to the house especially early in the morning.

He wrestled with the dogs while Josh stowed his weapons and armor. It was becoming a bit of a ritual upon entering the house. Something about the doggy grins made him incapable of feeling the weight of the world. For those brief minutes, it was just him and the furballs engaging in mock battle.

Josh bustled around the house, surprising Kell with a dark brown bottle. He looked at the other man quizzically.

“It's beer,” Josh explained. “Well, okay, it's closer to bread, but my brother brews the stuff and he calls it beer, so we try to do the same. Thought you might like one. I hate the stuff, myself.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Kell said, twisting the cap off with one hand. The beer was not a fan of this treatment, foaming over immediately. Kell tried to catch the overflow, bringing the bottle to his lips as quickly as he could, but his chest took a dose of suds despite his best efforts.

Josh grinned. “Dave—my brother—calls that a baptism. I think he brews it that way on purpose, just so everyone knows you've been drinking his creation.”

He threw Kell a towel and dug out a fresh shirt, handing it to him. “Might be a little small, but it'll do. You're welcome to take a shower if you like.”

It was a mark of just how far the world had fallen that Kell needed time to process the last sentence. “Uh, what?” Kell muttered intelligently.

“A shower,” Josh repeated. “Like, alone. I wasn't offering to take one with you or anything, if that's what that look on your face is for.”

“What? No,” Kell said, thankful for the darkness of his skin as a flush climbed his face. “I'm just surprised. You have an outdoor shower? I thought most people tried to conserve water.”

Now the other man grinned. “Outdoor? Hell, no. We don't do freezing our asses off in this house, man. We have a setup on the roof. Even in winter, the sun will warm it up really well. It's all rainwater we capture here, so no one can bitch about us using up the public supply. Just hop in the tub and turn it on. Just like you used to.”

And that was how Kell McDonald took his first real shower in longer than he could remember. Maybe since the day his family died.

It.

Was.

GLORIOUS.

He kept it short, unwilling to overstep his welcome by using up the entire supply. Even so, the difference was stark. The man who stepped out of the tub was, in some minor but very real way, a different man than who had stepped in. Maybe it was reliving a boring old experience made exotic by the end of the world. It could have been the

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