Leah twirled the flashlight around, unamused by the man's attitude. "Unless a woman who's been looting the very place you've stumbled on informs you there aren't any infected around. At the very least, you can trust me not to be rummaging around for supplies while a zombie lurks behind a half-closed door." Pity he didn't know that she'd done that very same thing a time or two before. No one but the zombies had suffered any harm, though.
Why anyone would willingly want to continue existing in this world was beyond her comprehension. Thankful for the darkness, Leah felt her expression close over when O'Brien stated he wanted to keep on living. "I could understand wanting to stay alive to protect family, but other than that, I don't see where there's much point." Her gaze went back to the shelves. "At least you're not burdening someone else with your desire to keep on keepin' on." An exaggerated pause. "Oh, wait. My mistake; that's exactly what you're doing now."
"Why not kill the guy hoarding the drugs? If he's that damn greedy, he probably deserves it." Cynical, yes, but the Law of the Jungle mentality was commonplace anymore. It didn't happen often in the safehouses she'd visited, but she'd been on enough supply raids with various teams and had been witness to some violent acts, all in the cause for survival.
In Leah's highly valued opinion, the intranet forums were a way of communicating distress calls and the like between safehouses. It wasn't a toy. It was a waste of time, when there were more important tasks that needed attention. A hypocritical opinion, considering she used it as much as a time-waster as anyone else did. But she wasn't about to let Quarantine Guy in on that secret.
Politeness was irrelevant. Leah had never been comfortable asking for help. Raising two younger siblings, for the majority of the time by herself, basically guaranteed she only had one person to depend on. Herself. It had taken her years to get accustomed to the idea of Brandon taking on responsibilities in the Stone household, so to have a stranger offer her assistance when it hadn't been asked for? Yeah, she was a little irritated.
O'Brien looked as though he wanted to fight her on this, but Leah stood her ground. Any second now, that gun would come out, and there'd be bloodshed. Her right hand instinctively rested on the hilt of the machete strapped to her left hip, the flashlight's beam never leaving O'Brien.
When his hand didn't move draw his weapon on her, and he opted instead to heed her orders, Leah let out a long, slow, quiet breath of relief. One less threat she'd have to worry about. "Don't mention it," she muttered, tracking his movements as he headed out the door and back through the pharmacy.
As he disappeared into the darkness, Leah leaned against the door frame, making sure that he really was leaving. Before he'd made it too far past the shelving, however, the distinct, hollow moan of a zombie reached her ears, followed closely by the thump and crash of broken glass near the front of the store.
They had visitors.
"Shit," Leah whispered, stepping out of the office. The hand still resting on the machete hilt removed it from its sheath, prepared to use it the moment she got the chance. Damned if she was going to get trapped in a dark pharmacy, alone and surrounded by zombies.
But she wasn't alone, was she? Leah's eyes darted to O'Brien. "I told you, you were too fucking loud."