by Godwin, Pam
He raised a brow as if waiting for me to interrupt. “I figured out it takes all of the hundred and fifty square feet of solar panels about seven hours to generate enough power to heat twenty-five gallons. And there are lashings of batteries to store the power.”
“A ten minute shower uses twenty-five gallons of water?”
“Right ye are. To conserve, I use the propane cookers to boil water for dinner and tea.” He gestured to the scattered burners in the kitchen. The scars on his knuckles rippled with the movement.
“Where’d you learn to hit like that? Last night with the aphids and this morning on the bag?”
“Ah, now I never tell that one.” He stared at his hand and stretched his fingers as if recalling a memory.
“I’d love to hear it.” I made a dramatic scan of the room and lowered my voice. “I won’t tell anyone.”
He grinned and shook his head. “Here I sit with the last lass in the world and she wants to hear me story?”
His smile was infectious. I knew I was grinning like a fool, but couldn’t stop myself.
“Right.” He picked at a wool loop in the rug. “Then I’d like to start a’ the beginning if ye den’ mind.”
“Please.” I leaned against the bookshelf and met his steady gaze.
He bent a leg and draped an arm over it. “I was raised in Northern Ireland. The streets were uneasy. A sectarian environment. Ye know the conflict between the Catholics and Protestants?”
At my nod, he said, “Like the other boyos I grew up with, I learned how to fight and defend myself. But I wanted out. So I entered the seminary to become a religious priest. There, I committed me life to vows of poverty, obedience and chastity.”
He sighed. “I have continually fallen off the road to poverty. Matthew 19:21 says ‘If thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give to the poor.’ It sounded so easy, that’s for sure. But as a priest I lived a community life. A middle-class lifestyle with a car, a housemaid and a piped telly. I had a secure job and a salary. I wasn’t free of all worldly goods.”
He glanced around the room. “Even now, I den’ live in poverty and there’s no poor to give to. That brings me to me vow of obedience. Ye said ye spent time in the church? Do ye know this vow?”
I shrugged. “Mind your superiors, right?”
He smiled. “To be a good example of Christlikeness, obeying your superiors was a means to do so. Obedient humility.” His smile fell away. “I lived this one well till…”
His voice trailed off as he secured his unraveling dreadlocks behind his ears. “I stumbled upon a wee Irish lad getting reefed by Brit soldiers. They were ridiculing him for his accent. Made him say things…anything…then clatter him in the gub for saying it.” He rubbed the scars on one hand. “I lamped every one of those Brits out of it.”
“Serves them right.”
“Right. Bugger is…I couldn’t stop scrapping after that. I lost me head at the first sign of trouble. Then I got a reputation. I got approached by folks involved in underground boxing. They wanted to train me and put me in a ring. At the time, I thought I’d become a better boxer so I could help more lads. I learned from the best and got real good. Won a rake of fights and gave away me earnings. I’ve been milling ever since. Me superiors never knew.”
Creases furrowed his forehead. “I’m sorry. It’s not like me to rabbit on like this.”
His decency warmed me even if I couldn’t sympathize with his vows. “I’m glad you told your story.” I nudged him with my elbow, grinning. “And no doubt your pugilism saved the world’s last lass.”
He chuckled. “I think the world’s last lass was holding her own brilliantly.” He dropped his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. “That’s two of three vows failed, then. All I have left is me chastity.”
My breathing hitched.
He lifted his eyes, captured mine. “I’ve held this vow for donkey’s years. It’s been the bloody hardest of the three, yet the only one inviolate. I den’ take it lightly.”
I squirmed under his gaze. I was probably the only person left who could stand in the way of his treasured vow. I had enough things to worry about. Walk away. Don’t do this to him. I stood. “Father Molony, thank you for—”
“Who’s Annie?” He remained on the floor, staring up at me.
My heart pounded in my chest. Heat tingled my cheeks. “What?”
“Ye screamed her name in your sleep.”
I turned away. Exposing my vulnerabilities to a stranger was stupid, stupid, stupid. His clothes swished behind me. His footsteps approached.
“I usually remember my nightmares. I wake or get woken.” I faced him. “Why didn’t you wake me?”
He held his position a breath away. “Ye couldn’t be roused. These nightmares…they happen often?”
I didn’t respond.
The lines in his brow deepened. “Wha’ have ye been through?”
I shouldn’t have come there. I didn’t know him and he was too damn perceptive. I reached inside, in my chest, in my gut, and sought the tug that guided me across the Atlantic. Nothing. Just the race of my heart as his eyes dimmed to a dark jade in quiet patience.
I took a deep breath. “The nightmares come and go.”
Annie’s graceful smile tapestried my mind. And Aaron, tethered to his Booey. As horrific as their visits had been, they were my torches, my guides in the dark. “Annie was my daughter. And I had a son, Aaron. I lost them to the outbreak.”
His arms reached to embrace me, but something in my expression stopped him. Did I want his comfort? He must have read my confusion.
He rescinded his arms. “And their da?”
“I lost”—my voice cracked—“I lost my husband a year ago.”
He bent his knees so he could look in my eyes. “Ye have come a long way with such a heavy heart. And to survive the aphids—”
“Aphids are nothing to the hell our own race has put me through.”
He widened his eyes and swiped a hand over his mouth. “Last night…in the local…that’s why ye were hiding your identity. From men? From me?”
Could he hear my teeth grinding? “I’ve only encountered a handful of men who didn’t want to rape or kill me as soon as they saw me. Most are friggin’ sanctimonious. Their slurs. Their intent. You’d be amazed.”
He remained motionless, his sympathetic eyes holding me with him.
“They think I’ve lost what it was to be a human woman. I wonder if I ever had it to begin with.”
Those eyes went slits. “That’s a lat of shite, lass. Ye know that full well.”
“Doesn’t matter.” I couldn’t change what I was, whatever that was. “I need to go.” Maybe I’d feel the tug again if I kept moving.
“Where?”
I stroked the turquoise rock lying against my chest, despising the emptiness underneath it.
“That’s okay, ye den’ have to tell me. But I’m going with ye. I promise”—his pause snared my eyes with his—“I promise, ye wen’ have to fight them alone.”
“Okay.” I clamped my mouth shut, stared at my boots. Shit. That naive response had tumbled out without thought. And why did it sound so breathy? I didn’t trust his words or the tingle they produced in my womb.
I avoided his eyes and fled across the room, under the guise of gathering weapons. “Just don’t slow me down.”
A few wading steps ahead in the tunnel, Roark stopped and looked over his shoulder. “Wha’ are we doing exactly?”
Looking for Jesse. Maybe rousing my tug. “Just need a few things before I move on.”
“Right then.” He plowed forward, the hem of his coat sloshing in the shallow water. As it turned out, he had to go just to lead me out of the pipes. I lost my way after the first turn.
He approached the ladder and climbed. The pistol in his palm clanked against the rungs. I waited at the bottom until he hollered, “It’s safe.”
His outstretched hand greeted me at the top. I ignored it and climbed out. H
e grinned and damn him if I didn’t grin back.
“Bike or van?” he asked.
“You have a van?”
A wrinkle formed on his brow and he glanced at the truck.
“Oh. We’re not in Kansas anymore.”
The wrinkle grew more pronounced.
Bike or truck. The bike had speed. But maybe I’d find more ammo, warmer clothes, or…a Lakota. “Let’s take the tr…van.”
He drove us out of the neighborhood. Piles of bodies blurred by as we entered the motorway. “Got some petrol in the bed,” he said, “but we should look for more.”
I nodded, scanning the bodies for forgotten arrows. The various stages of decay glistened under the noon sun. Most just bone and tissue. Some of the fresher bodies were headless.
“Does ‘Shall not kill’ only apply to humans?” I asked.
He flicked his eyes to me, expression blank. “It’s open for interpretation.”
“Apparently,” I mumbled.
“If you’re not gonna tell me where we’re going, mind if I make a stop?”
I shrugged. “You’re driving.”
Ten minutes later, he motored along a skinny street in a small shopping district. He stopped in front of a two story building with moss covered bricks and white shutters. A weathered sign hung next to an arched door.
THREE GATES FUNERAL HOME
“You can’t be serious.”
“Can’t I?” He was out of the truck with his sword drawn before I could respond. I jumped out and followed him up the stairs.
At the door, an uncomfortable compulsion pressed inside me. I raised the carbine just as an aphid scrambled around the corner of the building, mouthparts snapping. My finger stretched for the trigger. Inhale. Exh—
He arced his sword. The aphid’s head rolled to the ground and the pressure inside me released. I lowered the barrel and looked him in the eye. “You should know I don’t like coddling.”
“Right. And ye should know, I den’ like your gun attracting more plonkers when I can kill them quietly.”
I sighed. “What are we doing here?”
“Follow me.”
He strode through the unlocked door and stopped before a stairway just beyond the vestibule. I didn’t move from the porch. He clicked on his flashlight and looked back. “Den’ trust me?”
“Nope.”
“Smart lass.”
Was he fucking with me? “Where do the stairs go?”
“Down.” He descended into the dark.
I lifted the carbine and rubbed my cheek against the stock. My muscles relaxed, inch by inch. He was good with his sword but he couldn’t stop a bullet. Could I shoot him if it came to that? Hell yes. I crept through the entrance and found him waiting a couple stairs down.
In the basement, we passed several closed doors until he stopped at one half way down. As he dialed in a combination on the padlock, I asked, “Isn’t this a mortuarium?”
“Too right.” He opened the door and waved his beam over the room.
My mouth hung open. Oh my.
Canned food and cereal, medicine and soap, clothing and blankets and beaucoup chocolate, cigarettes and other rare goodies stacked on rows of shelves and overflowed to the floor. I had combed grocery stores and homes from Missouri to England and never stumbled on a find like that.
The muscles under the back of his coat rolled as he dug something from a shelf, messed with it and raised it to his mouth.
“What are you doing?”
He turned with a lollypop stick protruding from his adorable smile.
“How did you find this place?”
“I knew a few blokes who knew a few blokes.”
“And these blokes are?”
“No longer blokes.”
I plucked the stick from his mouth and popped it my own. The first lick wasn’t fruity or sugary. It was better. The taste of a man’s mouth. I licked it again. His saliva. Another lick. His breath. I missed it. Christ, I missed Joel.
He watched me with parted lips, blinked. “We should hurry.”
What was I doing? Flirting with a priest. Wasting time in the bowels of a building with no look out. “I’m an idiot,” I muttered around the stick. “What do we need?”
He tossed me a large burlap bag and bent over a crate of whiskey on the floor. “I’m here for the Bushmills. Get what ye need. We’ll make one trip out.”
“Do you have a grocery list—” I slapped a hand over my stomach, which buzzed like a nest of bees. “Roark?”
His head shot up at my tone.
I spat out the candy, lifted the carbine. “Is there more than one way out?”
“Wha’ is it?”
“Aphids. A lot of them.”
The floorboards creaked above our heads. He drew his sword and pulled me into the hall by my arm. Then he dragged me the opposite direction we’d come.
Up ahead, he slammed his shoulder into a door and hustled me inside. A high window reflected light off the stainless steel cabinets and counters. A collapsible gurney stood in the middle of the room.
He hurled an oxygen tank at the window. The glass shattered. Then he pushed the gurney under the opening. “Hop up.”
I did, and in the next moment found myself hurtling halfway through the window and face down in frozen weeds. Ow, my fucking chest. “You didn’t have to shove me.”
“Move your arse,” he bellowed behind me. I pulled said arse through the window and backed up, carbine in high ready.
He crawled through. “They’re right behind us.”
“How many?”
“Too many. To the van.”
I tailed him down the narrow alleyway between the buildings, staying a few feet behind as vibrations wreaked havoc on my insides. I rounded the corner and smacked into his back. Dozens of aphids poured in and out of the funeral home, shuffled over the front lawn and blocked our path to the truck. Some sniffed the air. Others looked at us. Roark found my hand and tugged me back down the alleyway.
“Now what?” I pulled my hand free to raise the carbine.
He stopped and looked up. An eight-foot brick wall began where the building next to the funeral home ended. He squatted and cupped his hands. “Up ye go.”
I dropped the carbine on its sling, gripped his shoulders and lifted my boot. “What about you?”
He grinned. “Aw, ye care.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“Right behind ye, lass.” He heaved me onto the wall. I straddled it. Aphids plowed into both ends of the alley. Roark jumped. One leg landed on the wall, his other leg kept the momentum, rising up and over. Then he was straddled before me, grinning even more. “Now we leg it.”
Aphids hit the wall, climbing as we dropped to the other side. We ran between the buildings and emerged on the next street over. Our feet pounded the sidewalk as we ran past lines of commercial flats crowded on top of each other. The buzzing grew louder. The space between my shoulder blades tingled as the aphids closed the distance. But I didn’t dare look back.
He skidded in front of a building veneered with broken windows. “Here.”
We jumped through the glassless opening and ran through a lobby. In the back, a marble counter supported a sheet of glass. The glass was unscathed.
“A bank?” I panted.
He nodded as he ushered me through a steel door. “Bulletproof glass.”
I scoured the dim room behind the glass. The only door was the one we came through. Metal file cabinets and desks edged the windowless brick walls. A bank safe stood in one corner.
He wrestled with the largest cabinet. I helped him push it to block the door. Next to us, the window rattled.
We turned and backed up. Bodies slammed into the glass by the dozens. Claws struck out, spines scraping with a god-awful screech. Mouths splattered drool, smearing their latest victims’ blood on the glass. Moving as one, they crashed into the barrier over and over. The window jiggled and bowed, but didn’t fracture. My triple-tempo pulse bludgeoned my ears.
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The file cabinet rumbled and began to inch forward as the door jerked. Roark barreled into it. “Evie. Get in the vault.”
I spun in a circle. Did I miss it? “Where?”
“The corner. Go.”
Surely he didn’t mean the standalone safe that wasn’t much bigger than a gun safe. I pointed to it. “That?”
His body lurched with the moving barricade. He jumped back to the cabinet, spreading his legs to strengthen his base as he leaned. “Hurry.” His expression was panicked, the whites shining around his pupils.
I ran to it and yanked out the shelves. I was wrong. My gun safe at home was bigger. No chance was I squeezing inside, let alone both of us and our weapons. “We can fight them.”
“Like hell,” he shouted. “Houl your wheest and get your arse in there.”
A crack ripped through the glass. The door crashed from its hinges, sprawling Roark and the file cabinet across the floor. I raised the carbine and popped the bastards as they fell through. Too soon, the carbine went dry. I tugged off the sling. The carbine clattered to the floor. My cloak followed. Then I drew the pistol and backed toward the safe.
Bands of daylight streaked past the bodies writhing against the cracked glass. Blood and drool sprayed from starving mouths. Bugs overfilled the lobby, spilling onto the street and into our room.
Roark scrambled to his feet. His sword and scabbard dropped to the floor. I aimed the pistol at the aphid behind him. It stretched a pincer and clutched Roark’s shoulder. I squeezed. The bug let go, blood spouting from its jaw. Roark stumbled forward, wrapped an arm around my waist and lunged us into the safe. His hand clutched the inside handle. I sucked in a breath. He slammed the door shut.
A bang reverberated the safe’s walls. We rocked. Then we tipped. The air knocked out of me when the safe hit the floor, his body buffering my fall. We exhaled as one.
He lay under me. “Are ye well?”
“Nice plan, smart guy. At least we die in a coffin.”
“It was bolted to the wall.” His voice was grim.
“Tell me it’s not airtight.”
His chest rose under me as he dragged in a deep breath. “Ah, now that we’ll find out soon enough.”
Bang…Bang. Then the scratching began.