by Emma Shortt
Maybe it would have been easier if she’d hooked up with someone a little less attractive? But then she’d done that with Tye, hadn’t she, and though she hadn’t had to deal with the sit-on-his-lap-and-get-flustered situation, because she’d never seen him in that way, it still hurt to lose him, just as it would hurt if she lost Luke.
Lost chances and all that.
“There’s another garage a mile down there,” Luke said. “Might be some food there. One can hope at least.”
“We’ve got loads of stuff.” Jackson gestured as Luke grabbed the two gas cans and placed them in the back of the car with the rest of their gear. “Way more than I’ve had since the world ended.”
Luke shook his head. “We don’t have enough food. Maybe a few days, at most.”
A few days worth? She almost laughed. She and Tye had lived day to day, hour to hour sometimes. “Yeah but we’ve got a car! Look on the bright side, I say. I can’t believe we can actually drive. Do you realize that’ll take months, years, off the journey? If I’d had someone to drive with me, and a working car, I’d have been there last year.”
“It’ll make things easier for sure as long as we can keep it fueled.” He paused his packing and gave her the eye. It was that same look he’d given her in the bunker. Like he was trying to work something out and Jackson wondered what it meant.
“It’ll be good for you too, Jackson,” he said. “You’ve had to walk for too long. I’ll be happy to drive you around.”
Despite the eye contact and the loveliness of his words, Jackson bristled slightly. There it was again. “Are you assuming you’re driving because you’re the guy?”
He nodded slowly and grinned widely. “Of course I am. You know how it goes. The man always drives.”
Jackson stroked down Mandy’s hilt and narrowed her eyes. “If I thought you meant that, you’d be getting better acquainted with Mandy here.”
“Anytime, sweetheart.”
“And, I won’t actually mention that I can’t drive.”
He walked around the car and opened the passenger door for her. His gesture was chivalrous and playful and it took a moment for Jackson to take it in. How strange that in the world of the dead there was still a man who remembered such things, who could make her feel…a little bit weird over it.
“You can’t drive?”
Jackson shrugged. “Nope, never had the money to learn or to own a car. It didn’t matter before, especially in New York City. But after, well, I tried in the early days when cars were still running. A couple of crashes later I decided it might be better to walk. I didn’t trust myself not to fuck up and get hurt, and then the zombies would find me and eat me, so, yup, feel free to take the wheel.”
“I’m gonna have to teach you then,” Luke said. “What if something happens to me? You need to be able to get yourself south.”
“Maybe,” she said, touched by his offer, feeling guilty even that she’d bristled at his words in the first place. “But I’d prefer we keep you in one piece instead.”
Luke waited until she settled into her seat. “Okay. One piece it is. Time to get moving?”
Seat belt on she nodded. “Hell, yeah.”
Chapter Fifteen
Three days later Jackson and Luke sat in an abandoned house, slightly musty blankets from the linen closet around their shoulders for warmth, the bedroom door—sluiced in Tye’s bottle of Davidoff’s Cool Water—barred against any waking dead that might come sniffing. It was likely the scent wouldn’t work, not after what they’d seen, but they’d done it anyway, just in case. Their escape route was secure and they were taking a moment to regroup.
The last of the day’s weak sunlight was filtering in through the windows, leaving Luke to scowl at what that light illuminated: a tin of Spam. The scowl was not just for the Spam, though he hated the stuff, it was for the conversation he knew they had to have.
One that was going to be painful.
He shifted under his blanket as he considered the best way to approach it. Only maybe there was no best way? Perhaps he was just going to have to be blunt. He shifted a little more as he played the last few days back in his mind. They’d driven the whole area—using a fair bit of gas in the process—and waited around the point of the interstate for three long days. Checking and checking. Only Tye was nowhere to be seen. There was nothing at all to suggest he had come this way, and they could wait no longer.
It was becoming too dangerous.
“Jackson,” he began.
She looked up and shot him a smile. “You’re not eating your Spam.”
“I’m not a fan,” he said.
She shrugged. “It’s edible. That’s all that counts. Unless you want to risk the big malls, we’ve got no choice but to eat stuff that’s a bit gross. Personally, I have no problem with it. I think we ate it when I was young. Did you know that it dates back to the Second World War? It was used as a meat substitute as part of rationing in England.”
His stomach rumbled. “I’d risk the malls about fucking now.”
“I wouldn’t let you.”
Luke frowned as he looked into the small can of smushed meat Jackson had opened. The canned mushroom soup they’d eaten yesterday had been bad enough, but this was the tipping point. He too had eaten it when he was younger and had hated whenever his mom had placed it on his plate.
He shook his head as Jackson attacked her can, scooping the meat up and munching it down. Once again, as he had over the last couple of days, he was reminded of how easy he’d had it in comparison to her. Over the last year and a half he’d been safe in his bunker with access to clean water and decent food, while Jackson had eaten whatever the hell she could get. And even before then he’d been lucky, hell if he thought about it, luck had been on his side since the beginning. He’d always found food before the hunger got too much. Never had an issue finding drinking water or a place to bed down. Maybe it was because he’d stayed in an area he was familiar with?
It was the little things that brought it home to him. The way she started looking for somewhere safe to park the car as soon as the sun got low in the sky. The way she didn’t even think to complain when it had rained, just shrugged and suggested they slow down. To her things were pretty good right now. He got that. They had transportation, with enough gas for quite a few days, and somewhere safe to sleep in the car. She probably still thought they were going to find her friend.
He sighed. She was tough and resilient and it almost shamed him at times that he wasn’t more so, in comparison to her. Oh, he’d done his part so far, he knew that. Just yesterday, prior to the mushroom soup hitting his stomach with a ninja kick, he’d taken down three waking dead, leaving just one for Jackson. The admiration he’d seen in her eyes had warmed him as he kept watch, though his grumbling stomach had kind of negated the happy feelings a little.
He’d found them enough gas for the journey south, too, and up till now he’d provided decent food—mushroom soup aside. Yep, he was looking after her…although if he was totally honest with himself, he got the feeling she didn’t need him to. Hell, she could look after herself without so much as a blink and he knew that. Didn’t stop him from wanting to, though.
“Zombies like the enclosed spaces in there,” she said after a moment around a mouthful of Spam. “I didn’t know that in the early days. Got trapped in one, Dawn of the Dead style, and I vowed—never again. Now particularly is not the time to risk it. Not now they’re so smart.”
He could see the sense in that and nodded to her. “I get that, Jack, but we are going to need more food. We have what? Five or six cans left and a few granola bars?”
“All the more reason for you to eat your Spam.”
He growled but scooped a forkful in, swallowing it quickly before the taste could register.
“If it gets to the point where we can’t find any cans or whatnot, we have one other option.”
He swallowed some more, shuddering slightly. “And that is?”
“Rat.”<
br />
Luke winced, the Spam suddenly becoming far more appealing. But then he remembered that Tye had caught rats for her, hadn’t he? He vaguely recalled Jackson saying so. Would they taste worse than Spam? Could anything taste worse than Spam? And was now really the right time to bring up the Tye issue?
“You want to eat rat?” he asked.
She rolled her eyes and pulled a face at him. “No. I freaking hate them. They’re all stringy and it gives me the heebs to think about the things they’ve been eating before we eat them, but,” she paused and shrugged, “it comes down to putting calories in our system so we’re strong enough for whatever we need to do.”
“You’re right,” he said slowly. “We can’t fight zombies on an empty stomach. It’s surprising isn’t it, how much beheading one takes out of you.”
“Less than it used to,” she said.
“Because we’re fitter. Our muscles more developed.”
“Yup. Still need those calories though.”
He nodded. If rat was all there was, then so be it, he’d suck it up. Because, and though it pained him to admit it, he did not want Jackson thinking he was less able to do what was needed than she was, or than Tye had been.
Tye. Why did he feel slightly threatened by the other man? It was ridiculous, really. The guy was obviously dead, and besides Jackson had told him there was nothing between them but friendship and he’d seen the truth of that in her eyes. He was sure he had. He was also pretty sure he’d seen something else too. A whisper of the same thing he didn’t doubt she saw reflected in his eyes.
Attraction.
The interest he felt for her was not one-sided. Insane maybe, in today’s world but still. They’d snuggled up the last couple of nights—for warmth she said—but Luke had caught a look, a stray touch here and there, and was sure there was more to it than that. What he was going to do about it he didn’t know. They were in built-up areas. Nowhere seemed safe enough for them to do the sort of things he found himself fantasizing about. It’d be just his luck to have his pants around his ankles when the zombies found them. It’d be laughable if it wasn’t so fucked-up.
Luke was also aware that they’d known each other for only a handful of days and he didn’t want to come across as some sort of jerk taking advantage of the nearest woman—not that Jackson was a take-advantage-of kinda girl, but still.
Food was the priority right now, not getting laid, and he wanted to make sure Jackson ate enough. Where these caveman urges to look after her came from, he couldn’t say, especially in light of her bad-assness, but he felt an overwhelming need to feed her and keep her safe. Ridiculous considering she was the toughest woman he’d ever met. It was also odd for him, because there were two competing drives going on. He’d worked that out as he waited by the pumps at the stick and spit for her to return. His was to make her comfortable and safe and hers was to keep being the tough little cookie he knew her to be. Her drive didn’t lessen his, only increased it, and he found himself wondering exactly how that was likely to play out.
“I’d love some steak,” Jackson said wistfully.
“No chance of steak but I can’t believe we’re driving a route other survivors have picked clean” he said, frustrated by the lack of available supplies. “Jesus Christ, there aren’t that many of them. You’d have thought there’d be canned vegetables left or something. No one likes them. They’re always mushed up.”
“There’s nothing anywhere these days,” Jackson said. “So the steak really is just a wild fantasy. I read once, ages ago, in a news article, I think, that there was only enough food in the country to last a month. We’ve had more than two years, so all things considered, it’s not too bad. And at least there are still rats and wild things growing. We’d be in the shit otherwise. Plus, I imagine the farther south we get, the more things we’ll find to pick. I lucked out once on an entire greenhouse full of squash and zucchini. They gave me a churning belly but I eventually ate them all. And there was the time I found the orchard…”
Luke nodded for her to continue and ate the last of his can while she listed all the freebie food she’d found. The aftertaste of the Spam was hideous and he took a long swig of his water to wash it down. Yesterday it had rained for three hours straight so liquid was not a problem, though he’d damn well kill for a cup of coffee.
“So things aren’t yet as bad as they seem,” Jackson finished.
“Okay. Well if worst comes to worst, rat it is.”
She smiled and gripped Mandy to her—yeah she’d named her machete, he’d laughed when she told him, but realized mere moments later why. With realization had come a nasty feeling in his gut. She’d named her weapon because it was the only real thing she had—the only thing she’d relied on for so long.
“How are you gonna catch one?” she asked, playing along. “I can in a pinch, though it always takes me ages.”
“I’ll use the Spam.”
She nudged his empty can and smiled. “They probably hate it too. It’s not my favorite food but I’ll eat anything these days.”
“I am going to find you food,” Luke said, eyeing her skinny frame. She was so petite and he knew she was constantly hungry. Her food disappeared the moment it made it into her hands. The protective urge rose up again and he gritted his teeth. The urge to look after her, to keep her safe, to fill her with food. “We haven’t checked out the shops around here yet and there’s no better time than now. Give me one hour. Wait here, okay.”
He imagined finding a stash of good stuff, Jackson’s eyes lighting up with pleasure, reaching out to hug him…Jesus Christ he was pathetic! His friends, were they still alive, would say he had it bad, and they would not be wrong.
“You’re not going alone.”
He started from his fantasy and righted the Spam tin. “What? Damn right I am. It’s gonna be dark soon. You’ll be safer here.”
“Not going to happen.”
“Jackson—”
She shook her head. “Didn’t we discuss this at the garage?”
“We did, and you said back then, correct me if I am wrong, that it made sense to split up when necessary.”
“That was different. That was a few yards. I’m not losing you, Luke,” she said and he halted his next words when he saw the look in her eye.
There it was again, the glimmer of interest, the same thing he felt, surely? What the hell was he going to do about it? In this world, this totally fucked-up world, what could he do?
“You’re not here to look after me, Luke,” she said after a moment. “You need to get over that right here, right now. I’m not some weak female that you have to coddle and protect. Nothing pisses me off more than you taking that attitude. I can look after myself. We’re each other’s backup and we go together. That’s the way it is now. We look out for one another and we stick together when we need to and do things separately when we don’t, but there’s no leaving the other behind because of some macho bullshit.”
Together. The word spread through him and his heart gave a strange little thump that felt almost like heartburn. He had a nasty suspicion he knew exactly what it meant.
“Jack—”
“As equals,” she added. “Equal risks, equal responsibility. That’s the way we roll, or we don’t roll at all. And it is time to roll it, isn’t it?” She paused. “I know you’ve been thinking it and you haven’t wanted to say, but it’s time we moved on.”
“And Tye?” he asked, relief hitting that he hadn’t been the one to bring the issue up.
“He’s probably taken a different route is all,” she said. “It’ll take him longer to get to Laredo, but he will eventually. Maybe we’ll even find him on the way?”
“Maybe,” he agreed, because if that was what Jackson wanted to believe, who was he to say otherwise?
“So we’ll go,” she added. “And you’ll leave the macho bullshit here.”
Macho bullshit…was it really even that? He paused and wondered for a moment how he’d be reacting if Jackson
was Jack—another man rather than a woman. It jolted him slightly when he realized that he would be treating her, him, very differently. And not just the weird heart stuttering and hard-ons. Luke swallowed some more water and took a deep breath. He would have to suppress the urge to take charge and protect. He got that. To stop treating her as he would have the women in his life before the zombies came. Fuck, it was going to be difficult. Jackson was a woman, a beautiful, sassy woman, but one all the same, and bad-ass aside it was his natural male instinct to protect her. His mom had brought him up to look after the women in his life and end of the world or not, suppressing those urges would be hard. Yet, he would try. What else could he do?
“Together,” he said on the exhale. “We’ll go together.”
She shot him a dazzling smile then—and it was every bit as spectacular as he’d imagined it would be. It flickered across her face, making the green in her eyes glimmer and her soft skin beg to be stroked. Understanding dawned with that smile and Luke gritted his teeth to stop from giving a little cheer, or worse, leaning across and planting a kiss right on those curved lips.
He wanted Jackson and he was fairly fucking certain that she wanted him. Sooner or later something would happen between them because it would have to. Equals, neither one jumping first, but together. At some point, certainly not today, probably not even tomorrow, but maybe in a few days or even a few weeks, they would both jump, and fucked-up world or not, what would happen, would happen.
And so he reached out his hand, and she took it, and that was the way they went.
Chapter Sixteen
In places the interstate was impassable, so they had no choice but to try other roads. Those roads were either ridiculously deserted or very messed up. It all depended really on which they took and also how many had taken those same routes before. Not just now, as in the last of the survivors, but before, when there were still thousands—millions—of people all trying to get away.
After two years it was almost impossible for Jackson to imagine that. Both because of the barriers she’d erected and also because the thought of that many people now seemed almost fantastical. Like something out of a dream, or a forgotten story she’d once read a long time ago. To envisage a great surge of people, all of them desperately trying to find a way out of the madness was akin to envisaging a world without the dead—and that was just ridiculous. She knew that there would have been moms and dads and little children. Old people and babies. All of them with jobs and friends and hobbies. Every one of them would have had a story, little tidbits and anecdotes and interesting facts. All of that consumed by the desperate desire to get away.