by Kate L. Mary
Riley was right about one thing: I need a distraction.
I shove my chair away from the table and head out of the cafeteria, throwing the bat over my shoulder as I walk. I need a cigarette.
The hall is empty and quiet, but bright now that the sun is all the way over the horizon. My footsteps echo through the emptiness as I walk, heading for the principal’s office. Before Mr. Ball became addicted to human flesh, he was a chain smoker who regularly set a poor example for students by sneaking outside in between classes to smoke. His desk should be a jackpot, although I have a sneaking suspicion there are quite a few lockers in the building filled with other goodies. It actually could be worth checking out. School had started just before the outbreak, after all, so the students had a few weeks to smuggle illegal items into the building. If nothing else, we could find some snacks to tide us over when the food is gone.
The office is the last room in the hall, and of course it’s locked. I look back over my shoulder, suddenly wishing Riley had decided to follow me. The hall’s empty, though. Maybe now that I turned him down for sex he won’t be my constant shadow.
A pang of regret shoots through me and I roll my eyes. It’s stupid to be upset about something so small. I never wanted Riley acting like a puppy dog before, so why would it bother me now?
Looks like I’m on my own when it comes to breaking and entering.
I wiggle the knob and push on the door, trying to get a feel for how secure it is. The school is old—built in the fifties—and part of me thinks I might actually be able to kick the thing down. Which, of course, proves to be idiotic. I step back, then slam my foot into the door, which results in a throbbing pain moving up my heel to my ankle and does literally no damage to the door.
When I take another step back, I groan. “Nice one, Kyra.”
This time, I try to break the knob with my bat. I swing it down, slamming the aluminum into the doorknob three times in a row. On the third time it snaps off and drops to the floor, and I almost let out a whoop of triumph. This time when I push on the door, it swings open.
When I step inside the dust motes floating through the air tickle my nose. The room is stuffy and hotter than the hall thanks to the fact that it has been locked up for so long, but I was right about the cigarettes. There’s a pack right on the corner of the desk, and I find another in the top drawer along with a lighter.
I flop into the chair, which creeks under my weight and slip a cigarette between my lips and light up.
While I smoke I pull the bottom drawer open, and when a box of condoms comes into view, I nearly bust out laughing.
“Holy shit, Mr. Ball,” I say holding the box in front of me. “I hope you confiscated these from someone, because otherwise you’re coming across as a real creeper.”
I take a long drag, arching my eyebrow at the box in my hands. Magnum? There’s no way. Mr. Ball was a small man, no more than five eight and as thin as a rail. He couldn’t have been magnum anything. I tried to picture the thin, balding man I remember from my school days with privates that would make a porn star envious, but it was impossible. If I happen across his corpse out in the schoolyard, maybe leaning against the wall chewing on a finger like he would have sucked on a cigarette when he was alive, I might be very tempted to check it out—once I stab him in the brain, that is.
“I thought you said no.”
I shriek at the sound of Riley’s voice, making the cigarette drop into my lap. When I jump to my feet, swatting the burning cigarette from my dress and onto the floor, the box of condoms goes flying. It hits the floor and slides about three feet, stopping right in front of Riley who is currently leaning against the doorframe and grinning at me like he’s just witnessed the funniest thing he’s ever seen.
“Shit, Riley. Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to sneak up on people during a zombie apocalypse? You scared me to death.”
“You’re not dead,” he says matter-of-factly and he scoops the box up off the floor. “Which is good, because if you were we wouldn’t be able to use these.” He waves the box in front of my face as he crosses the room to me.
I roll my eyes as I snub the cigarette out with the toe of my shoe. “Read the box. It says magnum.”
“I guess you really were drunk that night,” Riley replies with a smirk.
My mouth goes dry and I narrow my eyes on his face, wondering if he’s lying. He just stares at me, grinning as he holds the box out like he’s daring me to try one of the condoms out on him. He has to be kidding. Don’t all guys joke about stuff like that? They do, but probably not when it can so easily be refuted. I mean, for all he knows I do remember that night and I can just scoff and tell him to dream on. Or I can call his bluff and pull his pants down right now so we can try the condom on him, laughing when it slides off his micro penis and drops to the floor.
“I could show you,” he whispers, his voice silky and smooth.
“I’m good.” My voice, despite my best efforts at keeping it even, trembles out of me.
“You don’t sound good.” Riley takes a step closer, his gaze moving down to my lips. His body is warm, but not in a suffocating way. It’s inviting. Like a hot tub on a cool evening. Like a hot towel after the shower. “I could make you feel real good.”
I swallow, and my resolve wavers. Riley must see it because he pounces, grabbing my hips and pulling me against him. His mouth slams into mine so hard it should hurt, but instead it’s hot, and the way his hands rove my body is even hotter. It’s like they remember me, remember what I like. How I feel. They run down my back and over my ass, grabbing my hips and pulling me forward until I’m flush against him. I can feel his muscles flex against my body as we kiss, and their strength takes my breath away.
Riley lifts me and deposits me on the edge of the desk where he nudges my knees apart. He steps between them, holding my gaze, then scoots me closer until I’m right up against him. Then he gyrates his hips, grinning down at me as he does it.
“Magnum.” He pronounces the word slowly, to the beat of his moving body, and my thighs quiver.
He wasn’t lying.
“Oh my God,” I say, throwing my head back as he moves.
He runs his hands down my chest, stopping to cup my breasts, and I wrap my legs around his waist so I can pull him closer.
I suddenly want to go back in time and thank Mr. Ball for having those condoms in his desk.
“What’s your answer now?” Riley says.
“I know I should say no,” I reply, barely able to get the words out as his body grinds against mine. “But you sure do know how to give a convincing argument.”
Riley grins and presses into me harder, making my thighs tremble. “I knew you’d cave. You—”
His words are cut off when someone clears their throat. Riley stops moving but doesn’t step away from me, and he glances over his shoulder just as I lift my head.
The kid I saw him talking to earlier, the one whose face is covered in acne, stands in the doorway. His face is bright red and even though he doesn’t look away, he’s shuffling his feet. At his back stands the woman in the hideous floral K-Mart dress. Her face is also red, but unlike the kid’s, the most prominent emotion radiating off her isn’t embarrassment.
“Why don’t you go back to the cafeteria, Hugh?” the woman says, her voice sickeningly sweet as her eyes flash fire in our direction.
“Shit,” Riley mutters.
He steps back, leaving my legs splayed open in a pose so brazenly vulgar that it makes the kid’s eyes nearly bug out of his head. He doesn’t move despite the fact that the prude behind him is tugging on his arm and urging him to go, and he’s staring right at me like he wishes the show had gone on.
Sorry, kid, I’m not into voyeurism.
I slam my legs together and scoot back, but don’t blush or put on the same penitent expression that Riley is wearing. I’m not ashamed. We’re both consenting adults, and this is the end of the world for God’s sake. For all we know the doors will be torn dow
n by a mob of the dead in less than an hour, and there’s no reason I shouldn’t spend my last few minutes on this earth—at least my last few minutes alive—doing something that feels good.
In fact, I think I’ll do it now.
The woman finally gets the kid to back away just as I pull a cigarette out of the pack Mr. Ball left for me. I slip it between my lips, then offer one to Riley. He shakes his head and I shrug. He’s trying his best to hold back his smile, but his eyes twinkle when he glances my way. I laugh as I light my cigarette, and the crazy woman standing in the doorway spins my way.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she snaps, her eyes blazing.
“Patty,” Riley says calmly. “This is none of your business.”
“None of my business! Hugh is a child and he walked in on you!” Her voice echoes down the hall, but unlike earlier I don’t think the echo is depressing. Just annoying. How the hell did we manage to get locked in here with a crazy person at the end of the world?
I take long drag off my cigarette while I wait for Riley to respond—there’s no way I’m getting involved in this conversation—and when I blow it out and smoke rises up in front of me, Patty’s head jerks my way.
“And you—” She takes a step forward, pointing a finger in my direction. “You’re just like the sodomites, and you know what God did to them.”
“We weren’t going to have anal sex,” I say calmly.
Riley snickers and Patty freezes, her expression suddenly so full of shock that I don’t think she can remember her own name.
“Patty,” Riley says, stepping forward with a smile on his face that would make a politician jealous. “You’re right.” I glare at him as a fill my lungs with smoke, but he winks. “We should have been more careful. But we’re adults.”
“And there are zombies roaming the fucking earth,” I mutter.
Patty’s eyes snap my way, but Riley steps between us. “We won’t let it happen again.”
“Fine.” The woman blows air out of her nose so hard that she reminds me of a bull. “But I came here for a reason. Hugh has a headache and I thought the nurse’s office may have something.”
“Oh!” I stick the cigarette between my lips and lean over the desk so I can open the top drawer. Two pill bottles roll to the front, and I pull them out, holding them up in front of me so I can read the labels. “I have Tylenol and vicodin. How bad is the headache?”
“Tylenol will do,” Patty says, her voice holding a level of calm that reminds me of the conversations my mom and I used to have about my curfew. Me whining while she barely held onto her cool.
I hold the bottle out when the other woman steps forward, smiling sweetly with the cigarette still hanging out of my mouth. “Good, because Riley and I were going to take the vicodin after we screwed on top of the desk.”
She jerks the bottle out of my hand and turns on her heel, stomping out of the room. Her footsteps are so loud that her shoes slap against the hall and echo back to us, not fading away for at least a minute.
Riley turns to me, grinning from ear to ear, and the second our eyes meet he busts out laughing. “You,” he says, coming back over to the desk. “Are something else.”
“I told you,” I say, offering him a cigarette now that Patty is gone. He takes it, just like I thought he would. “I’m the bitch.”
Chapter 3
“I was thinking it would be a good idea to go through the lockers,” I say as Riley and I walk down the hall side by side. “You know, see what we can find.”
“Not bad.” He nods as he takes a long drag on his cigarette, trying to hold in a little cough and failing miserably.
I grin up at him. “You’re not fooling me, by the way. You don’t smoke.”
“Nope, but I’m doing a lot of new things this week. Run from zombies, kill zombies, sleep in a high school so zombies don’t eat me.” He stops walking and frowns. “Odd, everything else seems to have to do with zombies.”
I laugh despite myself. If I work really hard to block out how real it all is, it’s funny. No, not just funny, hilarious. Absurd. Like Zombieland or Shaun of the Dead, only funnier.
“We wouldn’t want the zombies to get the monopoly on our time, now would we?” I grab his hand and pull him down the hall. “Let’s find another first for you.”
“What did you have in mind?” he asks as he hurries after me, his hand still in mind and the cigarette hanging out of his mouth. “Sex on the auditorium stage?”
“Nope.”
“Oh, good,” he says. “Because I’ve done that.”
I glance over my shoulder to find him grinning. “Have you?”
“Yup. Senior year during fourth period. Jenny Watkins and me snuck back there and had a quickie when we were supposed to be at a prom committee meeting.”
“I’m telling Patty,” I taunt as I duck into the room at the end of the hall.
Riley lets out a little laugh as I drop his hand. “What are you doing in here?”
“Well,” I say, grinning at him over my shoulder. “I just so happen to know that Mrs. Diggs liked a little pick me up during the day.”
He arches an eyebrow at me as I kneel down behind the desk. “Is that so? What kind?”
“Not drugs, although I bet we’d find some of that in the lockers.” I yank open the bottom drawer and pull out all the useless shit my old teacher had stuffed in it, tossing it aside. “Vodka.”
“How do you know this?” Riley crosses his arms and leans his hip against the desk.
“I paid attention.” When my fingers wrap around the bottle, a smile lights up my face, which grows even bigger when I pull it out. It’s nearly full. “Tada!”
“Shit. You weren’t joking.”
“Of course not.” I slide onto the desk and unscrew the cap, offering it to Riley. “You first.”
“I’ll be honest, I’m not really a straight vodka kind of guy,” he says, eyeing the bottle doubtfully.
“And you weren’t a kill zombies kind of guy last week, either. Things change, you have to roll with the punches or you get left out in the cold.”
He laughs at my overuse of clichés. “Excellent point.”
Riley takes a big swig, wincing when he swallows, then passes the bottle to me. I take it as he jumps up so he’s sitting next to me on the desk. His gaze moves to the window and I follow it. All it takes is the sight of one body shambling across the lawn for all the joy to be sucked away from the moment. I should have known that it is literally impossible to hold onto laughter when you’re stuck in the middle of the apocalypse.
“So this is it?” Riley’s voice is so serious that it doesn’t sound a thing like him, and I glance his way to find a tortured expression on his face. “We’re dead, right?”
“I don’t see how it can go any other way.” I take a sip that’s a lot smaller than Riley’s was, but follow it with a second and a third. Like him, I’m not much of a vodka person, but right now I’d probably be willing to drink rubbing alcohol if Jim didn’t need it for the fire.
Riley nods. “It happened so fast.”
“No it didn’t, it took weeks.” I’m still holding the bottle when I shake my head. “We were under martial law, they locked down New York and a bunch of other states up north.” I wave my hand in the air like I’m waving toward the states instead of the ceiling. “They cut off travel and froze wages and blocked highways. It was a slow, agonizing death that was over the second it started, but for some reason the government decided they were going to stretch it out for as long as they could.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Riley shakes his head. “I meant everything was normal two months ago, now it’s gone. Yes, it may have seemed slow at the time, but in the grand scheme of life, two months is nothing.”
He has a point. Watching it on the news it seemed to take forever, but now that I’m looking back it feels like it happened in the blink of an eye.
“Well,” I say, pausing to take another drink. “It isn’t over yet. We su
rvived, so odds are other people did too.”
“You think the world will be able to start over at some point? Maybe not now, but in ten years. Twenty? Thirty?”
“It will be a different world. I’ve read enough books to know that nothing good will spring up after this.”
Riley lets out a doubtful laugh. “You think some totalitarian government will take power?”
“Maybe, or maybe just a moron who will run everything into the ground again. I don’t know for sure, I just know that we are not getting out of this school alive.”
Riley’s head bobs as I swallow another mouthful of vodka. When I hold the bottle out to him, he takes it without looking my way. My head feels a little bit like it’s floating above my head, but it isn’t enough alcohol to make the pain inside me ease or help me forget the zombies, my dead family, the lost world, the hopeless future, or the fact that we are living on borrowed time.
“Should have brought those condoms with us,” I mutter.
Riley shoves his hand in his back pocket and produces a string of condoms. The foil wrappers sway in front of my face, the magnum size O in the center of them taunting me. How in the world did I forget about that?
I pull the condoms out of his hand and rip one off, tossing the rest aside. “You ever get drunk and have sex on a teacher’s desk?”
“Nope.” He gets to his feet, depositing the vodka bottle on a desk before turning to face me. “But it sounds like a damn good idea.”
“I think so too.”
This time when he kisses me, I don’t mess around. I go straight for the fly of his jeans, yanking the zipper down and sliding my hand inside. Magnum was right. Damn. Riley works on getting my thong off—thank God I’m wearing a dress—while I yank his pants down. He doesn’t bother taking them off all the way, and the second I have the condom on he slides into me.