by Lilly Black
"That's not part of the deal," she said sullenly.
"Then I'll wait until it is."
"God, you make me feel guilty!"
"You should feel guilty," he teased, but Olivia wasn't laughing, her expression showing him just how terrible she felt about their situation. He didn't want her to feel that way because he understood where she was coming from, and as much of a disservice as it was to himself, he was compelled to assuage her guilt. He pulled her to him, resting her head on his chest as he stroked her hair. "It's okay. You're in a difficult position, and I don't mean to pressure you."
"You're too good to me," she sighed.
He was too good to her, and she didn't feel like she had been good enough to him or to Reid. She believed the right thing to do would have been to kick him out so he could find someone else and be happy while she mourned her husband properly, but that was because she didn't understand that he was already happy. She was everything he had ever wanted, and though each minute of their lives seemed so much more significant since the world ended, they had really only known each other about six weeks. Alek didn't see anything wrong with waiting six weeks, or even longer, for a relationship to grow intimate. Of course, it would have been a lot easier if she wasn't sleeping by his side every night. But he wouldn't have changed that either.
"You have nothing to feel guilty about, baby," he breathed, and he almost kissed her atop the head before he realized what he was doing and stopped himself, nuzzling his cheek against her silken hair instead. To Olivia, it all felt so good and so right, she could feel her resistance beginning to drain away, and it made her hate herself so much more.
Liana's Journal
Day 40
Aiden came home from work pissed off at Olivia. He'd been frustrated with her for a while, and I understood it because I wanted to do things differently around here after the whole Jimbo/Jobe disaster. I just didn't want to talk about it tonight because I was hoping to bring up BDSM with him again, but that wasn't going to happen while he was worried about the future of our community.
Olivia and Aiden were always going to butt heads on these issues. The funny thing is they're a lot alike politically. They both want to protect everyone while giving them as much freedom as possible in this new reality. In the pre-apocalypse world, they both had very progressive leanings, though I had no idea there were any progressives as armed as Olivia, but now that society has drastically changed, their ideals are so much more divergent than I would have ever expected.
We all agree we need to grow our community. There's safety in numbers, and I want to train a militia because once all the dust settles, there are going to be the modern equivalent of warlords that we are going to have to defend ourselves against. Olivia doesn't necessarily disagree with that, but before we can dedicate any members of our group to any one task, we have to have enough members to man all of the posts along the wall, to patrol the lower rings, and to scavenge the things she insists that we need.
I can even agree with that, and so does Aiden. The thing they can't agree on is how to increase our numbers. Aiden and I think that unless someone is obviously unfit, we should take whoever we can get. That's what we do in the military, and most of them come out as good soldiers. It's the ones who don't that Olivia worries about. She's afraid that anyone we kick out is going to come back with a force and try to take this place from us, but that's just crazy. If someone is out there on their own before we find them, how are they suddenly going to be capable of putting together an army and coming after us?
She says they might go out and join another group, tell that group about everything we have up here, and then that group will come to take it. By the time someone could accomplish that, if we keep taking people in, I'll have my own army to defend us, but that's not good enough for Olivia. Though she's willing to do things my way, it's only on the condition that nobody gets out alive - her words - and she literally means that the only way out of the Deadfall is with a bullet to the head.
When Aiden found out that's what she was planning to do with Jobe if everyone voted to exile him, he was furious. Behind her back, he calls this place the Hotel California, and he calls her Countess Báthory. I didn't really think of her that way, but after the conversation he had with her today, I'm having a hard time not seeing his point. Apparently, she actually intends to take Ravi's suggestion after Jobe was murdered - to crucify some corpses to make it look like they were executed, then hang signs around their necks so anyone approaching the compound will know that we take punishment seriously here. She wants to put out a murderer and a rapist, which I can almost get behind, but he said she also wants one to say traitor.
Traitor.
That's the one that scares me.
It sounds kind of crazy, and it makes me wonder if Olivia's starting to get paranoid. I asked Aiden what he thought we should do, and thankfully he just wants to keep an eye on her for now. Meanwhile, he pointed out that if I train an army, they'll be loyal to me. That thought scares me even more. I know he's not planning a coup; he just wants to have options if we get to a point that Olivia has to be brought under control. I get that, but thinking ahead to who the army will follow seems uncomfortably devious.
I'm so torn, and all I really want is peace between them. But if I have to choose, I'll choose Aiden. I'd do anything for him. I just wish he felt the same way. He says he does, but it seems that every time he comes home to find me freshly showered and waiting to talk about our relationship, he has something more global on his mind. I'm starting to wonder if it's deliberate. Maybe there is no good time to bring up BDSM with him again, and if that's the case, suddenly any time is a good time, right?
I'll let it slide tonight, but this is the last time.
Day 45
The day of the mission to the solar farm had come, and Dani woke early, nervous and upset. She didn't want Jax to go, and it wasn't because she was worried about him cheating on her this time. There were not going to be too many options as far as that was concerned since Liana was the only woman going. Though the women of the Deadfall were just as capable as the men when it came to defense, this trip was mostly about lifting and carrying. They were going to disassemble and move an entire solar farm, and though the individual panels were not particularly heavy, there were a lot of them. And based on their surveillance of the farm, there were also a lot of corpses "guarding" them.
The plan was to go in and take the dead out without firing a shot so they didn't attract others, and they expected it to be fairly easy, which did not explain the feeling of impending dread that overwhelmed Dani. She tried once more to convince Liana to leave Jax behind, but all it did was succeed in making her feel like an asshole.
"If you're so afraid that something bad is going to happen, don't you think it's fucked up to try to get your man out of the mission without worrying about the twenty other people involved?" Liana demanded, shutting Dani up in one, well-crafted sentence. She was right, and when called out for it, Dani was unable to rationalize her selfishness. She just couldn't help it. She finally had someone who loved her, and she was terrified of losing him.
She went to talk to Olivia instead. Olivia always made her feel better because Olivia tended to give her a free pass. Dani was the beauty queen, and Olivia never really expected her to break a nail even though Olivia herself would get down and dig in the dirt with a freshly painted French manicure...if they still had such things. Now all they had were press-ons, and Dani had taken all of the kits from the Right Way truck as her personal inventory. Today she was wearing rhinestone tips, which she was biting at as she tried to convince Olivia to help her keep Jax home.
"Would you stop worrying?" Olivia urged her as she sat in the lodge with a group that was sharpening the blades and loading the guns for the mission.
"I can't help myself," Dani lamented. "Every time he goes out there, it kills me just a little."
"Well, this should make you happy," Olivia said as she picked up a pair of headphones with Rena'
s comm system wired to them. She had used a variation on the cell phone system inside the compound. Each member had a headset and a wristwatch, and the entire team could communicate on an open channel or individually.
It wasn't a perfect system. It had a range of less than five hundred feet and required a Wi-Fi router hooked to batteries, but Rena was still pretty proud of her accomplishment. She had barely slept since she came up with the idea, working day and night and cannibalizing parts of various electronics until she had managed to get a set ready for each member of today's mission. This morning, once she gave everyone a tutorial and made sure they were working properly, she was going to crash.
"So, you see," Olivia said to Dani," Jax is going to be in constant communication with the entire team. They'll all have each others' backs. He'll be fine."
"And besides," June added as she sat down at the table to help. "He can't be killed. You sold your soul for that one."
Olivia gave her a dirty look and sucked in a breath to speak, but June beat her to the punch.
"I know. Shut the fuck up, June," she said as she rolled her eyes, but what really surprised her friends was the fact that she didn't censor the curse word.
"Are you okay?" Dani asked.
"I'm better than okay," June said. "I've made some decisions. I think I'm going to try things your way for a while."
"What does that mean?" Olivia asked.
"I think she might be looking for a boyfriend," Dani suggested.
"Not a boyfriend," June said. "Just a... What's it called? A friend with benefits?"
"I'm sorry, what?" Olivia was having trouble processing it. She had not been privy to June's sessions with Dani since the intervention, so this seemed surreal to her, and she was waiting for the punch line.
"You heard me right. I've spent too much of my life not knowing what it was like to enjoy anything, so I'm going to try to...you know...have an orgasm with somebody."
"So you're just looking for a guy who will come in and get you off with no strings?" Olivia asked skeptically.
"No strings," June said, "but I want someone experienced who can teach me things."
Then she noticed Ravi staring at her from the next table. As their eyes met, a smirk spread across his face, and she was almost certain he had overhead the conversation.
"What's the matter?" Dani asked.
"I think that nosy perv was listening," she said, indicating Ravi with a nod of her head.
"Have you ever seen him without a shirt?" Olivia whispered. "He has a really nice body."
"Fuck, yeah, he does. I saw him take it off when he was working on the wall one day," Dani added. "Maybe you should hit that, June."
She gave him a quick glance, trying to envision what lay beneath his clothes, but although she had to admit that there was something sexy about Ravi, she wasn't in any position to live out a Mrs. Robinson fantasy. And besides, she had other plans.
"He's not exactly what I had in mind," she said, but what she meant was Ravi wasn't exactly who she had in mind. She already knew who she wanted that no strings orgasm to happen with, and if events continued on their current trajectory, she felt like she stood a reasonably good chance at getting her way.
Still, she stole a peek at Ravi's ass as he walked out of the lodge carrying a load of rifles for today's mission, and just feeling free to think in those terms gave her an unexpected rush of excitement.
Lined up along the road between the lodge and the front gate, the caravan made up of several flatbed trucks and electric cars was ready to go. Liana, Aiden, Alek, and Jax were driving solo, leaving space in their cars for potential new members or to carry existing members back home in case they were to lose a vehicle. Liana and Olivia tried to prepare for every possibility, and between the two of them, they felt like they had done well. The cars and the cabs of the trucks were like fortresses on wheels with weapons systems and protective armor, and they had plenty of extra fire power.
Liana's car was in the lead with the others bringing up the rear, and Jax's was second to the last with Alek behind him. As Dani stood by the trunk, holding him possessively while she kissed him goodbye, Alek looked on, wrestling with his frustration. He knew Olivia wanted to be there with him doing the same, but he also knew that she couldn't. She hadn't even kissed him in private yet, so there was no way she was going to do it with the entire community gathered in the yard. But the sentiment was there.
She looked up at him with worry in her eyes as she kept a reasonable distance and whispered, "Come home to me."
Give me something to come home to, he sniped at her inside his head. It was getting really hard to be the good guy, but he forced a smile and promised to see her again soon. Then with a quick, platonic hug, she hurried away as he got in the driver's seat.
The gates opened, and though the caravan started to move, Alek was stuck waiting for Dani and Jax to let go of each other.
"Come on, motherfucker!" Alek yelled out his window as he tapped the horn. "Let's go!"
Jax flashed his sexy grin, the women on the porch swooned, then he flipped Alek off as he pulled away from Dani and swaggered to the car door. As she walked backward toward the lodge, he rolled down the passenger side window and blew her a kiss, winking at the other women and making them giggle, and Alek entered his number into the cellular watch on his wrist, Jax put on his headphones and answered.
"Why does the beginning of every mission with you feel like a scene out of Bye, Bye Birdie?" Alek complained.
"I don't know what the fuck that is, but I'm sure you're a dick for saying it," Jax fired back.
"Uh-huh, we're going to be fifteen minutes behind the rest of the group, but I'm the dick," Alek said, and they both laughed.
They might not have been fifteen minutes behind, but the caravan had already turned left onto the main road and disappeared from sight by the time Jax's car reached the lower gate. Alek hit the remote in his car to close it behind them, and they pulled out onto the blacktop, hitting the "gas" hard in the two, compact cars that had been modified to plow through zombies and painted to blend in with the fall scenery around them. The painting was one of Rey's jobs. He used to tag underpasses and interstate bridges, and now he was using his artistic talents to contribute rather than deface. He was good too. Once Jax's car picked up speed and got a few hundred feet ahead of Alek in the curves on Route 20, it was hard to spot through the naked trees lining both sides of the road.
"What's the matter, old man? Can't keep up?" Jax taunted on the comm system, and he responded by pressing the peddle to the floor.
"You're older than I am, bitch," Alek balked as he caught up to him. Then he honked his horn. "Is that as fast as you can go, grandpa?"
"Not even close," Jax said as he slammed his foot down. The car bolted forward with Alek right on his heels, and they were moving so fast now, they could finally see the caravan ahead. Then Alek's car started pulling hard to one side, and he couldn't control it. He slammed on the brakes and skidded off the road.
"What's the matter, man?" Jax asked as he looked back.
"I think I got a flat."
"Hold on. I'll turn around and help you."
"Nah, don't worry about me," Alek said. "I'll change it and catch up to you guys. I know where I'm going."
"You sure?" Jax asked, uncomfortable leaving him alone, but they weren't so far from the Deadfall that Alek couldn't make it back if something went wrong.
"Yeah. They don't need to take on that herd at the farm two men short," he said as he got out of the car and looked at the tire. It was completely flat.
"I'll let the general know you're running late. Hope she doesn't court marshal you," Jax joked, and Alek laughed, signing off and removing his headset as he knelt down to look more closely at the tire to see what caused it. There was a broken piece of aluminum sticking out of it, but he didn't realize that it looked like the shaft of an arrow until he went to the trunk to pull out the spare and another one just like it whizzed by his head. He quickly duck
ed, pulling his gun out of the holster and moving toward the other side of the car.
But he wasn't quick enough.
Two more arrows came at him, one missing him entirely, the other striking him in the head. He felt it piercing through his skin as it knocked him over the edge of the hill where his car was parked. Everything went black as his body rolled downward, scraping over rocks and stumps and crashing into trees, careening toward the bottom until he landed in a cold, narrow creek, his blood mingling with the fresh, clean water.
At the top of the hill, three men looked down on him, one whose crossbow was still aimed at Alek as he lay immobile in the water.
"He's fucking dead, you moron," the leader said. "Don't waste another arrow." He punched the younger, smaller man in his arm, and he lowered his weapon.
"Jesus, Monroe," he said, rubbing his arm.
"Quit your whining and get the tire changed, Davey boy, or I'll give you another one. Oz, you grab the jack," he ordered as he looked around on the ground. "Did you see where he dropped his gun?"
"Yeah," Oz said, looking over the hill and trying to avoid seeing Alek's body as he stood at the trunk unscrewing the nut that held the jack in place. "It's about half way down that hill."
"Fuck a duck," Monroe said.
"It don't make no difference," Dave said. "Look at the fire power in the backseat."
"Well, happy fucking birthday to me!" Monroe shouted as he opened the passenger side door and pulled out Alek's guns. There were two hand guns with silencers, an AR-15, and five boxes of bullets. These weapons were higher caliber than the guns they had in their backpacks, guns they didn't use on Alek because they didn't want to be heard.
While the other two changed the tire, Monroe made sure they were all loaded, then he slung the AR over his shoulder and filled his pockets with bullets. He pulled a blanket out of the emergency kit in the trunk, leaving it open, and when the car was ready, he gave a gun and bullets to each of his companions.