by Emma Shortt
“I’m looking forward to just sitting still for a couple of minutes.” Jackson sighed. “It feels like it’s been days.”
“Yeah, for me too.” He put his gun in his left hand as he removed the girder that kept the shed door propped tightly shut. “Can you manage some more food?”
“Do dead people wake back up?”
He laughed and opened the door, happiness, totally ridiculous happiness, spiking through him.
“We can—Fuck!” Luke pushed the door shut as fast as he possibly could, his heart hammering in his chest, adrenaline zipping through him at light speed. The happiness of only a second ago gone, replaced with pure, crystal-clear panic.
“What—”
“Run,” he roared, and of course Jackson did without so much as a word.
The pounding started mere seconds later, and then the awful sound of wood breaking. Luke raced across the lawn, sweat dripping down his spine.
“The hedge!” he shouted. “Get back to the fucking hedge.”
She raced with him, both of them pumping their arms to get traction. Please God, let us make it, he prayed. Because a myriad of death groans were filling the air now, he heard them like a deafening roar, and if they didn’t get to that gap, they were trapped, as good as dead.
“Move,” she shouted and Luke saw the gap in the brush before they barreled through the space that mere moments ago had felt like a safe haven. His muscles clenched and though he didn’t want to turn, Luke knew he had to. The last thing he saw as they sprinted across the street was the sight of an enraged face with far too much intelligence sparking in its eyes.
The dead Lily.
Chapter Thirteen
“That’ll be fine,” Luke said, slumping down, eyes closed, against the wall.
“It’s more than fine, we’re well hidden, well protected,” Jackson told him, easing her grip on Mandy’s abused hilt. “You did well bringing us here. We’re safe for tonight, Luke. Just, let’s just worry later, okay?”
They were in the office of one of his friend’s garages. A dead, or possibly zombified friend obviously. The room was big enough to allow them space to fight, but small enough that it was cut off from the main building. It also had two exits, both of which were now blocked with filing cabinets. For a quick, run, flee, find shelter excursion, Jackson was feeling pretty pleased.
Luke so obviously wasn’t.
Slowly she bent down, joining him on the floor, and reached out to run a hand across his head only to pull back at the last minute. He looked exhausted and…haunted. She didn’t even know how to start comforting him.
He shook his head and said the words they were both thinking. “I can’t believe she found the trapdoor.”
“I know.”
“If we hadn’t gone to look for Tye, she might have found a way into the bunker. They all might have. We’d have been trapped.”
“I know.”
“Jesus Christ, Jack. It’s completely compromised…” He shook his head and trailed off.
“Do you need to talk about this, Luke?” Jackson asked. “To talk it through? It might make you feel better. I know in the beginning there were a fair few times I wanted to talk to someone when something awful had happened. When I was so scared and so worried and every noise, every slight movement made me jump out of my skin.”
“But not now?”
“Not now, what?”
“You said in the beginning.”
“Oh, well yeah, but there was never anyone there to talk to so I got out of the habit.” She paused. “Well, no that’s not true. I had Tye, and Jayne at times, but for the main I’ve been on my own. It gets a bit pointless talking when there’s no one there to answer, you know?”
“I guess,” Luke said. “But we have each other to talk to now.”
Jackson nodded, sort of touched by that comment, even as her head was mentally shaking. Fact was, habits usually got replaced with another habit. Like a smoker who switched to sunflower seeds or an alcoholic who started to run marathons. Her habit of talking her feelings through had long since been replaced with the habit of bottling all the bad stuff into one horrid little place in her mind. It was just her way of dealing. It happened, she locked it away, and tried not to think of it again. Of course, Jackson wasn’t stupid. She knew that eventually it’d all come tumbling out. That she’d have to think about things, talk about them. She planned to put it off until she had no choice, but clearly Luke’s try-and-keep-sane strategy was different. It would be good for him to talk about things.
The irony wasn’t lost on her. Good for him but not for her. Her brain jabbed and admonished but she ignored it. Whatever.
“Now they know where the entrance is, they’ll get through the trapdoor eventually,” Luke said after a moment. “Even if we sneak through the house and get back into the bunker through the basement, it’s not safe anymore.”
“This is my fault,” Jackson said, guilt prodding her. “If you hadn’t come out to help us, you’d be fine.”
He laughed but there was no humor in it and he didn’t open his eyes. “She’d have smelled me there regardless, whether it was today, tomorrow, or next week. It has to be the Old Spice, like with the Lynx. The scent doesn’t cover our tracks anymore. This is far from your fault.”
“You’re sure?”
“Of course I am. None of this is anyone’s fault. Just bad fucking luck.”
“The zombies are getting smarter,” Jackson said after as moment. “Maybe smart enough to realize the smell that puts them off is where the food is hiding?”
“Maybe.”
“Perhaps the virus is mutating?” she suggested, remembering a movie she’d watched long ago. “A different strain or something.”
“Or maybe the brain is fighting it?”
She shrugged. “We have no way to know.”
“We never do,” Luke said, his eyes still closed. “You know, I thought the bunker’d be safe forever. Hell, I slept in there when they were pounding on the ceiling. Smug I guess, in the knowledge that they couldn’t get in. How wrong was I?”
Jackson wrapped her arms around her knees. “We can’t go back there again.”
“No, we can’t. All those weapons, the food, the supplies…all useless now.”
“We’ll find other stuff,” she reassured him.
“It’s like the beginning all over again. I remember when—”
“There’s no point thinking about what we’ve lost,” she interrupted quickly, thinking that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea for him to be talking about it after all. Not if they were going down the early-days road again. Jackson hated remembering or discussing those times—with Tye she’d steered well clear of it. “Serious, Luke,” she said. “You’ll only make yourself depressed. It’s gone, all gone. We have to move forward.”
“I’ve been there for so long is all. It was the last fucking thing I had left.”
Guilt squirmed in her gut and Jackson shifted. Maybe she was being selfish; maybe spending so much time alone had left her that way? It was easier for her after all. She knew it was. The bunker had felt safe for maybe a half hour, if that. As soon as Luke had told her about the lock-turning, finger-poking dead guy that fleeting feeling of safety had gone. But Luke had lived there for well over a year by the sound of it. It was home to him. Giving that up was not going to be easy. Hadn’t they already lost so much?
“I know. I’m sorry, Luke,” she said softly.
“We have nothing, Jackson,” he said. “No supplies beyond those in the packs, and the few I have stashed.”
“We have the clothes on our backs don’t we? Full bellies for the moment, not to mention we’re both clean. We’re safe. We’ll do the only thing we can do, scavenge as we go.”
“I’d forgotten what it was like, before I found the bunker, I mean,” he sighed, dropping his head into his hands. “Living on whatever I could find, looking for somewhere to bed down every night. I remember when I stumbled on the gun shop. Jesus Christ, I near
ly wept. That’s all gone now.”
“I know, Luke. I know.”
There was nothing she could say to make it better. Literally nothing. Luke was grieving and she knew a thing or two about that. She knew too, in that moment, that Luke had not yet managed to get to the place she had. Maybe because the bunker had shielded him from the necessity. But it was the place that you had to get to in order to stop jumping out of your skin at every creak or whisper. When you were in that place, when you lived it, you shook off such things as soon as they happened. The body was simply not capable of working properly under a continual feeling of despair or of supplying a constant stream of adrenaline. The only way to exist in the world of the dead was to accept something when it happened.
Accept and deal.
“I’m gonna change, Luke,” she said. “These sweats keep rolling down my hips. I thought they were gonna fall completely when we ran. Could you imagine? Me running as fast as possible with my pants around my ankles?
He laughed, just as she’d wanted him to. “It might even have made the zombies pause.”
She pulled off her backpack and took out the clothes inside. “In shock, perhaps? Do you want this extra sweater?”
“No. You use it as a blanket.”
“You’ll freeze.”
“I just need to sleep. I’m so fucking tired I don’t care if a horde of them comes through the door.”
Not even bothering to ask him to close his eyes, what with them already being shut, Jackson stripped out of the baggy clothes and slithered into the new ones, pink socks and all. Like in the pool room, dizziness assailed her when she bent down. She needed sleep too.
Once she was dressed, with the bright green socks folded in her pack, she sat back down next to Luke and draped the heavy sweater across their torsos, followed by the sweatpants across their legs. “Warmth is warmth,” she said.
“Yeah.”
He sounded so depressed, and it was so freaking cold. Jackson sighed and wiggled her toes, encouraging the blood flow. She’d been colder of course. She’d always been more something, and that thought tended to put things into perspective.
“You know once I was trapped in this little town, somewhere on the outskirts of Pennsylvania,” she said slowly, toes still wiggling. “Though it might have been Ohio—did I mention geography is not my strong point?”
“You did.”
“Well the zombies were holed up at the only clear way out of the place. I’m guessing the residents had tried to run and it was just a mess. I lost days trying to scout another route out, but there wasn’t one.”
He lifted his head, distracted, just as she’d wanted him to be, even though he kept his eyes firmly shut. “What did you do?”
“There was at least one pack of them, and the space was so tight I knew if they got me, I’d be a goner. There was only one option, and I still can’t believe it worked. Basically I walked the river bed, weighed down by stones, a plastic tube for my air.”
“Fucking hell…”
“I was so lucky it was a thin river, not too deep either. When I got to the other side I rolled myself in mud and had to creep up the bank so they didn’t spot me. I’m sure I looked like I’d stepped out of a horror movie.”
“That is pretty damn amazing, Jackson.”
“It was pretty cool,” she said shooting him a smile. And it was, though she hadn’t thought much about it at the time, beyond being ridiculously grateful she’d made it out and pumping herself full of antibiotics to combat the ear infections, but several days later she’d just sat in shock. Almost unable to believe she’d done it. It was one of so many weird plans that really shouldn’t have worked but somehow did. So many that she’d never have believed herself capable of just a couple of years ago.
“It takes on a new view now, though,” she said, almost to herself.
“In what way?”
She shrugged. “I can’t help but wonder if they were waiting purposefully. To catch anyone trying to leave town. If they knew somehow that that was the only way out.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Luke said shifting his position a little. “They just found an impenetrable bunker, so if you tell me you spotted some on the moon I’d believe you.”
The shift gave her a little room to sink into him. The spot right where their bodies touched was wonderfully warm and Jackson leaned in a little farther.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I’m cold.”
“You and me both.”
“Not to be a pervert…” She paused for a moment before she said the next words, knowing in some way that they were going to set a sort of precedent between her and Luke but knowing too, that right now he needed it as much as she did, the warmth between them already was proof of that. “We’d be warmer if we cuddled up.”
Finally, Luke snapped his eyes open and looked at her. He was so tired; she could see the heaviness in his eyes and the strain around his mouth. Her own eyes pulled, almost in sympathy. She’d be getting out the toothpicks soon.
“Serious?” he asked.
“Yeah. Put your arm around me and I’ll drape my legs over you. Our body heat will help keep us warm.”
“That won’t work,” he said and Jackson felt her heart drop. Embarrassment clawed its way down her spine and she wanted to squirm. Did he think she was coming on to him? Crossing some sort of line? She wanted to say something smart-assed to cover her blunder, but before she could mull over what the hell to say Luke slid an arm under her thighs and lifted her onto his lap—in one smooth move. “This is much better.”
Jackson almost smiled, relief settling across her, and laid Mandy across her thighs. Warmth spread along the parts that were touching and she sighed. “Yep, much. Now sleep. I’ll wake you in a few hours.”
“You need sleep too.”
“And I’m going to, but like I said I only sleep for a few hours at a time. We’ll be fine here,” she added. “Those filing cabinets’ll make a hell of a noise if they try and get in. We’ll have more than enough time to wake up and deal with the situation.” Batman and Robin to the rescue.
Luke nodded, closed his eyes, and pulled her a little closer. She’d known he was big. That he was tall and wonderfully muscular. But being swept up all Gone with the Wind style and deposited on his lap brought it home in a way she hadn’t considered before. She stroked a finger along Mandy’s hilt, wondering at how quickly things could change in such a short space of time. Only yesterday she’d been sitting with Tye in an abandoned warehouse eating old sardines and huddling under a blanket that had smelled like mold.
And now? She looked up at Luke, the last of the day’s light shadowing him. A smattering of stubble was already decorating his jaw and his hair was wonderfully tousled. The hotness could not be denied. More than that though, his actions and his words cheered her in an odd sort of way. That he already trusted her enough to put his life in her hands and that the precedent they’d set felt okay for them both.
Another stroke along Mandy and she dragged her gaze from Luke and swept the room instead. All was well and that left her thoughts free to dwell on other matters. She missed Tye. That one was a given, and her heart clenched as she thought of him. Assuming the best-case scenario, he’d be making his way to the interstate about now, or maybe resting up in a house somewhere. He was probably worried about her, wondering where she was…and for the first time it occurred to Jackson that Tye had not come looking for her.
She must have spent well over an hour in the pool room, both before and after meeting Luke. And she had gone looking for him, hadn’t she, so why hadn’t he come looking for her? The answer sprung into her mind and Jackson gritted her teeth to deny it. She wasn’t ready to accept it yet.
She wished instead that she were warmer, but being cold was part of life for her now, there was nothing to be done about that but shift and settle in against Luke. Which she did and felt her stomach clench as he tightened his hold. Fact of the matter was, worries and problems aside, th
e feel of Luke’s huge arms around her waist was very distracting, extremely comforting, and disturbingly exciting.
Priorities, she told herself, but all of a sudden they seemed to shift. Possibilities filled her, sparking anticipation that helped her bruised heart heal just a little, and she knew without a doubt that she had to convince him to come south with her.
There was nothing else for it now.
…
When Luke awoke he woke to the smell of strawberries. For a moment he was reminded of another time. Back in the days when the dead stayed dead. Back when the world still functioned and the only worries he’d had were balancing the garage’s books or making himself presentable for a date. His mom had grown strawberries on the little porch outside her house. The baskets would overflow in the summer, the smell intense in the muggy air and he’d pick one or two before walking through the door to see his folks—dead now of course, properly dead. He hadn’t been able to get to them before they had been eaten.
The scent filled his nostrils now, not exact of course, the faint chemical ring to it jarring, but despite that, and having two sleepy legs and a numbly cold ass, he inhaled a satisfied breath.
“How long have I been asleep?”
“A while,” Jackson whispered. “About nine hours according to the clock.”
He let out a groan, opened his eyes to complete darkness, and shifted position. He was massively uncomfortable and the fact he’d slept for so long shocked him slightly—because clearly it was night. “You should have woken me.”
“It’s fine.”
He shifted again as soon as he became aware of his hard-on. Fuck. “You need to sleep too,” he said, more to fill the silence than anything else. She had to be aware of it, didn’t she? It was clearly obvious, no doubt prodding her through his pants. It couldn’t be helped though, even as embarrassment flooded him. The end of the world did not mean the end of a man’s natural urges—or a woman’s for that matter. How long had it been since he’d awoken with a firm ass on his lap? Not to mention two luscious legs draped over his side and a distinctly female scent surrounding him? It could only be more perfect if they had been sitting in his bunker, sans zombies. Well, no, being in the pre-dead world, in his old house would be the epitome of perfection, but that was like asking for a return trip to the Moon.