by Kat Parrish
We spent the rest of the day running through drills. Mac had pulled his car into the garage—I wondered if Dad’s car was still parked on some Burbank side street—and he hauled out bag after bag of tactical gear, including weapons ranging from high-tech crossbows to aluminum baseball bats.
We ate the rest of the leftovers from the night before and Mac and I sat on the porch and watch Kaz sink ball after ball through the basketball hoop attached to the garage door.
I was beyond exhausted.
Beside me, Mac was silent, almost zoned out but I could tell that was just a façade. The energy coming off him was almost visible.
“What happens if all the Mindless are wiped out?”
“Humanity stays the dominant species on the planet.”
Mac’s voice was flat. “I mean to you, and the other Z soldiers?” Something in his posture softened, though he still didn’t turn to look at me directly.
“For us it’ll be just like anyone dealing with a life-threatening illness. It’s like…having HIV. You treat it and you go on with your life, but you know one day it’ll explode into full-blown AIDS. That’s what we’ll live with.”
He fell silent and I didn’t ask him any more questions.
Kaz kept shooting baskets.
How’d your sister get a name like Kaz anyway?” Mac asked, finally looking up as we switched to a neutral topic.
“Her mother called her Katie. But when Sarah died, Kaz decided she wanted a new name so she took her initials—K. A. Z. for Katherine Anne Zelnick—and invented Kaz. I think it suits her.”
“Rose O’Reilly Zelnick,” he said. “You never wanted to be Roz?”
I shook my head. “Roz always sounded like a girl who beat up boys,” I said. “I was already taller than everyone in my class and …
Not pretty.
…a tomboy and kids are mean, so I preferred Rose.”
“It suits you,” he said. “Something beautiful protected by thorns.”
A feeling I’d locked deep inside me since splitting from David broke loose at those words. If someone else had said them, they might have sounded cheesy, but even in the short time I’d known Mac, I knew that he was someone who was careful with his words.
“Do you remember anything about your former life?”
“Little things,” he said. “I know I liked corndogs and hated itchy wool sweaters.”
“And The Matrix,” I said. “You loved that movie.”
“I did,” he said.
“Do you remember any people from your past? Family? Friends?”
Girlfriend? Wife?
“I don’t think so,” he said. “I’d remember love.”
The moment stretched between us and he didn’t break eye contact. I impulsively reached out for his hand and he let me take it.
His skin was warm.
“You still have your fingerprints,” I said as I examined his rough hand, rubbing my thumb across the lines in his palm. “Have you tried to find out who you are?”
“Yes, but my prints have been wiped from the system.”
“Your fingerprints,” I said, “but maybe not your footprints.” I sat up, excited. “That’s how we identified Ian Sydney,” I said.
“We sent his to a lab in Tokyo that uses them to track patients with dementia and identify victims of natural disasters.”
“It’s worth a try,” he said cautiously. “Assuming there’s still a lab in Tokyo to send the prints to.”
I didn’t want to think about that. I looked at Mac for a long moment, as if committing his face to memory. “I would remember love,” he had said. Maybe it was time for him to make some new memories.
“Come with me,” I said.
I pulled him from the lawn chair he was sitting in and led him back into the house.
Behind us, Kaz was still shooting baskets.
Chapter Ten
They might have wiped Mac’s mind, but it was clear he hadn’t forgotten the important things. We practically stumbled through the doorway to my old bedroom in our haste to get to each other, and as soon as I’d closed the door behind us, he pushed me back against it, kissing my neck, my cheek, my eyes, my mouth.
I opened my mouth to him and twined my arms around his neck to pull him close.
Closer.
He spread his right hand over my left breast, cupping it gently, then bent to kiss me through the fabric of my tank top.
I let go of him to pull the top over my head to bare myself to his exploration. He bent and kissed my breasts and his lips were even warmer than his hands. I tugged at his t-shirt and he went rigid for a moment, and not in the right places.
“It’s okay,” I said, pulling the fabric away from his taut stomach.
He hesitated for what felt like minutes, looking into my eyes.
So much pain in those blue yes.
“Help me,” I said, and he leaned away from me and pulled the shirt over his head.
His torso was a map of scars but the first one I saw was the fading Y-shaped zipper.
From the autopsy, I realized.
There was also a dinner-plate sized dip between his shoulder and his breastbone. It had healed over, though the flesh was still sort of pink and shiny.
“Exit wound,” he said. “It doesn’t look as bad from the back.”
His tone was light, but I knew my reaction was important to him.
We all have scars Mac. You just can’t see mine.
I stood on my tiptoes, looked up at him, and kissed the circle of skin.
He closed his eyes briefly and for a moment I thought I’d hurt him.
And then he opened his eyes.
“Rose,” he said.
“Please,” I said and to my amazement, he dropped to his knees and reached for the waistband of the ratty sweat shorts I was wearing and slipped his hand inside.
I shivered as he touched me, and then as he kissed my inner lips and let his tongue flick over the sensitive nub of my clit, I leaned back against the door to keep my balance.
Oh God.
I tangled my hands in Mac’s dark hair, holding on for dear life as if the vibrations building in my core were the precursors of some fleshquake that would shatter me into molecules if I didn’t hold on.
David had been a selfish lover, unwilling to pleasure me in this way.
And then all thoughts of David vanished as the warrior at my feet brought me to cli Mac with just his mouth.
I convulsed, a shudder so complete for a moment I lost my breath.
We moved to the narrow bed I’d left unmade that morning. I kicked out of my shorts and the panties beneath it so that I was naked as my body hit the sheets.
My skin was so sensitive at that point, I could feel the weave of the threads in the sheets against my back.
Mac climbed on the bed, still wearing his jeans, the rough denim rubbing up against me, the friction almost painful.
I reached for his zipper, but his hands were already there, freeing himself.
Of course, he would go commando.
I reached for him as his cock sprang loose from its confinement, already erect, already eager.
Mac started to shimmy out of his pants, but I was already tugging at him.
“Wait,” he said.
“Leave them on,” I said. “I can’t wait.” I ran my hands up the silky length of his shaft and felt it swell.
A paradox, I thought, that he can be so hard and yet so soft at the same time.
But somehow his jeans were off, kicked to the floor as he balanced himself on the narrow bed and pushed deep into me.
I was ready for him, so ready but as he began thrusting in and out I wanted him deeper. I wrapped my legs around him, locking him inside as I matched his rhythm.
I could feel the scars on his back too—the entry wound he’d mentioned, plus other little dimples in his skin. I could feel the ridges of tissue that divided his flesh like hedgerows in a field.
I thought, he has a warrior’s soul.
&n
bsp; And my next thought was that I’d been looking for a warrior my whole life.
Life is strange.
I tightened my hold on Mac. It was like riding lightning.
I could feel the tension building.
His breathing sped up, turned into grunts. I was making noises too, sounds of pure animal pleasure.
A part of my mind reminded me that this was Kaz’s room too and that she could return any moment, but then the rolling tsunami of my orgasm overwhelmed all other thought.
Mac gave one last thrust as he climaxed.
He pulled out of me and rolled over into the tiny sliver of space between me and the wall. He looked…content. Thank God for the implant, I thought. Getting pregnant in the middle of the zombie apocalypse would be highly inconvenient.
I leaned over and kissed him, tasting myself on his lips.
And then I started to cry. All the sadness I’d been carrying around for the last two days just came flooding out of me.
Another man might have made a joke, said something like, “Hey, was it really that bad?” but Mac seemed to know what had prompted the tears.
He drew me against him and whispered sweet words to me and stroked my face with his rough but tender hand.
Kaz was in the kitchen when we finally emerged.
We’d shared a shower, which would have been a lot more fun if the shower stall in the tiny bathroom off the bedroom hadn’t been the size of a phone booth.
Mac had left his shirt off. He was right, the entry wound on his back wasn’t nearly as gnarly as the exit wound.
“Have a nice nap?” she asked with a smirk.
Sisters.
Chapter Eleven
Within three days, there were reports of the Mindless invading neighborhoods in the East Valley. Mac said we weren’t ready yet to face any of them yet, so the drills and the practices continued. In between, he spent a lot of time on the phone, coordinating with the other leaders of his army. He left at night for secret rendezvous. He came back looking grim and didn’t want to talk about why. I didn’t press him on it.
Our father’s body had disappeared from the St. Joseph morgue, but Emmet had been cremated and honored with a small memorial ceremony held protected by a whole squadron of off-duty cops. Safety in numbers was the new mantra. Private security operatives were in such demand they were recruiting out of state.
The funeral home had given me Emmet’s ashes because there was no one else to claim them, which made me sadder than I already was. Kaz bought an old silver trophy cup from Etsy and we poured Emmet into it and put him on a bookshelf in Dad’s living room. Both Kaz and I had abandoned our apartments. Neither of us wanted to live alone. Lyle had finally showed up alive but when he asked her when she was coming home, she’d told him she was home. He didn’t argue. I had lots of feelings about that, but I did not share them with Kaz. I still didn’t know if David was dead or alive.
Meanwhile, people were adapting to the new normal. Mechanics began advertising specials on retro-fitting vehicles for “urban survival.” Someone invented an app to track the zombies in neighborhoods. It didn’t look like Mac would find any shortage of volunteers for his civilian militia.
At night we would hear screams and see fires in the distance. By day we could see Mindless individuals roaming the sidewalks.
Mac put together a sniper’s nest in our dad’s old bedroom on the second floor, but he told us he didn’t want to call attention to our hiding place by picking off the zombies one by one.
“We won’t be able to move the bodies and after a while, they’ll attract unwanted attention.
We were prepared for a siege. Except for one thing. We ran out of cat food.
We fed Dori all the canned chicken and salmon we found in the house, but our father wasn’t a fan of fish, so there wasn’t much.
And Dori turned out to be a picky eater, refusing tidbits from our plates.
“What kind of a pet turns down roast chicken?” Mac asked.
“You were probably a dog guy,” I said. “Dogs will eat anything.”
“Dori’s always been an indoor cat,” Kaz said. “We can’t just throw her out to fend for herself.”
“No one’s throwing Dori out,” I said, although the improvised cat box we’d set up in the downstairs bathroom was starting to smell really nasty, even with the window open.
“There’s been looting at all the grocery stores,” Mac said. “I’m not sure how much cat food you’re going to find.”
“What about that little boutique-y place in Studio City?” I asked Kaz. “The one by the phone store and the Coffee Bean and the bank?”
Her eyes lit up.
“Yes,” she said.
“It’s a little out-of-the-way place,” I said. “They might still have some cat food.”
“Text me the address,” Mac said.
“Thank you, Mac,” Kaz said, and threw her arms around him in a hug.
Mac looked at me over the top of her head. He looked bemused.
“Thank you, Mac,” I said.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Text me when you get there,” I said.
He nodded.
Mac wasn’t big on long goodbyes.
While Mac was gone, Kaz and I practiced some moves he had showed us with a set of tactical batons he had in his trunk. I’d had training with it, but Kaz picked it up pretty fast. We didn’t have any protective gear and it was a hot and surprisingly humid day, so we soon had bruises all over our bare skin.
It felt good to be doing something other than worrying.
Because I was worrying. It felt like Mac had been gone a long time.
“Let’s take a break,” Kaz said finally.
“It’s been too long,” I said. “I’m worried.”
“Worry is a misuse of imagination,” Kaz said, quoting something Sarah used to say.
I flopped down on the grass and Kaz collapsed beside me gracefully.
“Do you think that cloud looks like a sideways ice cream cone?” she asked, pointing to a stray cloud floating overhead.
“Very much,” I said. We’d played this game with our father on lazy Saturday afternoons as he listened to baseball games on the radio and worked his way through a six-pack. It was all very 50s, but it was kind of fun. We were protective of our father and made life miserable for any woman he brought back to the house. Kaz and I would tag team her so bad she’d be out of there before dessert was even served, remembering a sudden early appointment or feigning a sudden-onset stomach ache.
The only one who’d seen through our antics had been a real estate agent who’d initially approached him about selling the house, even though it wasn’t on the market.
Sylvia was smart and funny and really liked dad but, in the end, she told me as she packed up her stuff in the soccer mom van she used for business, “He’s just too sad for me.”
I hadn’t cried yet for my dad, but that memory devastated me.
“Are you crying?” Kaz said.
I shook my head. “I can’t believe we’re orphans,” I said.
What I wanted to say was, It isn’t fair. None of it was fair. Not my mother. Not Sarah. Not Emmet. Not dad. Not all the people who had died or were dying even as we lazed around on the lawn and pretended to see pictures in the clouds.
“I’m not sure how long this pity party might have lasted if a couple of the Mindless hadn’t slithered over the wall at just that moment.
Kaz saw them first.
“Rose,” she whispered, my name coming out in a hiss.
I saw her face and I knew.
There were three of them, but I could hear more on the other side of the wall.
We had the tactical baton we’d been working with, Kaz’s basketball and that ridiculous sword.
“Start moving toward the front door,” I said, watching the three zombie soldiers, who were just standing there, evaluating the situation.
All three had blood dripping from their hands but there was
intelligence in their eyes as they calculated their odds. Three trained men against two women. The one who seemed to be the leader smiled. He liked their chances.
“Start moving toward the front door,” I said to Kaz. I wanted to see how the intruders would react.
“I’m not leaving you,” she said.
“You need to get the guns. They’ll have to go through me to get to you, which means you have the best chance.”
She stood up slowly and then sauntered nonchalantly toward the front door. I locked eyes with the leader. He was getting ready to make a move. I would have to take him out first.
I stood up, a tactical baton in my left hand because I’d trained with it on both hands back at the academy. I had Kaz’s sword in my right.
I planted my feet a shoulder’s width apart.
The leader stood still as the other two zombies began to put some space between them.
Pincer maneuver. All those hours of watching the History Channel might just come in handy after all.
I knew if either of the others got behind me, it was game over.
Game over.
I really should have spent more time playing Fallout and less time watching the History Channel.
I began backing toward the front door myself, praying I wouldn’t trip over anything.
Then behind me I heard the door open.
“On your six,” Kaz said, sounding totally bad-ass.
“I’ve got the one on the left,” I said. “You go for the one on the right.”
“What about the guy in the middle.”
“He’s going to take both of us.”
I didn’t do an “on three” because right then the guy on my left charged me.
I swung the baton right at his face and it hit with a bone-smashing crack.
He was down but not out.
“Gun,” I yelled, and Kaz handed me my service weapon.
Just like target practice, I told myself and squeezed the trigger.
I had to stop myself from emptying the whole clip into the zombie because I didn’t know what kind of firepower Kaz has brought from the house.