by Laila Blake
Aaron shivered at the touch, and the ache low in his belly doubled. For some reason, the whole thing suddenly struck him as incredibly sad, and he smiled a little against her fingers.
“I don’t know that we should,” he said, even as he felt incredibly stupid for saying it.
“Probably not.” she whispered back, face falling a little but her tone of voice was still warm, flirting, wanting. “But then we also shouldn't be kissing... or touching.”
“I know.” The insight didn't deplete the heat of the moment, though, the softness of her body draped over his legs, the way her skin felt under his fingers. “We should stop, then.”
“But it feels good,” she whispered, shaking her head once. “And stopping feels bad.” And in saying it, somehow it seemed like a tremendous epiphany. So simple and yet so compelling—she didn’t want to do any of those things that made her feel bad anymore. She wanted to find old wine, and get drunk and fall into bed with Aaron and forget the drudgery of their life, if just for a moment.
“Yeah.” His hand was still there at her waist, where the blanket was all but a memory, nearly pooled on the floor, and her thigh was pressed close to his cock, covered by the threadbare towel.
“But how’s that gonna end up?” he had to ask.
Emily looked at him for a long moment, realizing how this was a reasonable question. It was one she would have asked herself, and once again she was more aware of the absence inside of her. The darkness.
She shrugged. “There is no future, is there? We could die tomorrow, or we’ll live on and you get us somewhere. And then we starve some other winter. Or we get infected or we kill ourselves. There is no future. Only now. One moment and the next... is there?”
“Hell of a way to look at it.” There wasn’t much difference between them, not anymore, when, a couple years back, there would have been a stark one. War was everything now, not just something vague and far away and captured in the memories of a select few.
Again, she shrugged only vaguely aware that she was trying to hurt him back, trying to take something from him like he was taking this from her, this one moment of not feeling dead inside. She leaned against his chest, rested her face against the crook of his neck.
“I’m sorry...” she whispered.
“Don’t apologize,” he replied, petting the spot behind her ear again with his fingertips. “It is what it is. I can’t really argue that point.”
“Sometimes... I feel like I’m poisonous,” she whispered, shaking her head. “You will say no but... you were smiling before. There is no future with me. And you will leave us somewhere and keep on helping people because you are a person who still has one.”
Aaron licked his lips, considered, fell silent again. “You make a lot of assumptions about me, don’t you?” he asked, finally.
“Doesn’t everybody?” she asked, raising her brows. His cock was still close, so achingly close but it seemed to have lost the power to override everything else. “Tell me where I’m wrong?”
“Two seconds ago you proclaimed no future, but now we’re down to just you with no future. How’s that work? Where do I have one and you don't?”
She opened her eyes and pulled away to look at him. For a moment her face was utterly pure, as though astonished that he didn’t know.
“Because... because you are asking for one. Because you are gonna build one.”
“So are you. What else are you doing all of this for, so Song has something to live for, to grow up in? You don’t think that’s a future?”
Emily’s face grew tired and sad and she cupped Aaron’s cheeks in her hands. She leaned in and kissed him, not deeply, just her lips on his with an aching sense of tenderness. She didn't want him to understand the difference, and she loved that he got angry on her behalf, but he didn’t understand, couldn’t understand. And wasn’t that exactly what he believed about talking about one’s problems?
“Emily,” he sighed, fingers tightening behind her ear but not aggressively increasing his hold on her.
She was small and soft and sad, and there were times she seemed just as distant and remote as she had that first day in the store room at that gas station, pointing an empty, shaking gun at him.
Her fingers brushed against his cheek but she didn’t utter the apology on her lips.
“You don’t know everything,” he said, in the absence of her voice, in the void of the drip-drop of the water still leaking from the disused tap. “And certainly not everything about me.”
“Tell me then,” she commanded, though softly, pressing her finger to the point of his chin, the skin going white under the slight pressure.
He breathed out. “You think I’m untouched, don’t you?” When her expression registered confusion, he continued: “You got all that mess inside ya, and you think that I don’t. That you’re making me rotten in some way by being near me. You think I’m, like, I dunno, pure.”
Emily opened her mouth to protest, and found she couldn’t. She closed it, lips pursing, a clear surrender.
Aaron nodded. “You think I’m a soldier, you think I’m married to duty and honor. You think I got nothing in me but Southern manners and an army heart.” He gave her a mostly-humorless smile before she could even formulate a response. “I ain’t perfect, Emily.”
“It’s not about being perfect or not perfect, or pure or not pure, Aaron.” The words slipped through her lips without conviction, without a way to explain the difference; maybe he was right after all. “Tell me how I’m wrong,” she demanded, softly, a breath, jaw clicking into place.
“Don’t think I’m totally unlike you,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “I left home too. You think you’re the only one who thinks she doesn’t fit?”
She touched his teacup ear, the still wet hair brushing along the top. “Why didn’t you fit?”
Direct was simple, and it was not. His smile was small and a little pained. “Told you I was runnin’ away.”
“Did you kill someone?” It was teasing, mostly, and she finally sank back against him, sure he’d talk in circles, never answer her. She thought she might tell him everything, all of it, but he couldn’t manage the same.
“Naw,” he said, and she could feel more than hear his voice rumble in his chest. “Liked someone. A lot. And it didn’t work, wouldn’t work, couldn’t work. Like at all. And I was afraid. So I left.”
She listened, and she didn’t stir, almost lulled by his words. “That’s when you joined the army.”
“Kind of. Helped. Gave me an out.” He touched her cheek.
“What was her name?” she asked, after another moment, sleepy and lulled, warm and willing.
Aaron didn’t respond for a long moment. “Ain’t important.”
That made her twist and lift her head to look up at him. “Lost my virginity to a guy named Eckhardt,” she said, raising her eyebrows.
He chuckled, taken aback. “Um, lost mine to a girl named Annabeth?”
She pressed her hand to his chest. “But that’s not the one you couldn’t be with?”
In the candlelight, he looked pained, bright red, tense on a level she’d not seen before. She was about to take it back, with everything else, when he finally spoke again.
“It was a guy.”
She nodded, and for a moment found herself oddly unsurprised. She touched his cheek and sighed, feeling the weight of that secret in the tone of his voice, the darkness behind his eyes.
His smile was tight. “I left and I ain’t been back. People run, Emily. People hide out. You think you’re broken. Everyone else thinks they are, too.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Are we there yet?”
It was a question that Aaron had been dreading, yet expecting, for some hundred miles now. The little boy was generally pretty good-natured about the travelling, but it was beginning to wear on him, all of them, and he was just young enough to be honest about it.
“Not really,” Aaron replied, after a moment to let himself breat
he; he was not the type to lose his temper, particularly with children, and particularly with the children of the girl with whom he had some kind of nebulous relationship. Still, it was hard to stay patient in the confines of the van, day after day, and with absolutely no answer to the common childhood question.
“When will we get there?” Song asked, hanging over the front seat to look between the two adults.
“When we do,” Aaron said, finally, cringing at his own vagueness.
Song groaned. “I bet you don’t even know where we’re going,” he proclaimed, flopping back onto his seat with a thump, feet propped by the window.
“Song!” Emily snapped and immediately regretted it.
She looked over at Aaron with her eyebrows raised. She mouthed something that looked like “I’m sorry,” but Aaron could tell that she was curious, too, that she was just a few years too old to ask herself. He didn’t have the answer anyway—just south. South would be a safer place, he reasoned, better weather and more food for Emily and Song.
After a moment, Emily raised herself up on her knees and looked over the seat at Song. “Do you want to play a game?”
“No.” He was glaring at the ceiling, tangled in blankets.
“Sing a song?”
“No.”
Aaron chuckled without a lot of humor.
“We’re getting near a city,” he remarked; it was more observation than real knowledge—most signs had come down in the first winter, but the closer one drove to a city, the more congested the roads became with debris and rot, the more sagging buildings began appearing and, of course, the more zombies started lurching out of the woodwork. He’d counted four in the last hour, but they were all slow-moving and far enough off he had not mentioned them.
Emily licked her lips as she sat down. “You think...” She paused, voice terribly polite and British in a way it wasn’t when she was comfortable. She was toying with the hem of her shirt; it was fraying badly. “We could maybe look for some clothes? If it’s safe enough.”
“Of course,” he replied, quite automatically, maybe too quickly.
“It’s just a matter of keepin’ an eye out, that’s all.” She smiled and so did he, and, after another moment, she reached over and squeezed his arm with one small hand before pulling it back to her lap.
Emily felt on edge—Song was loud and while she could bear it, when he behaved this way to her, it cut right through her when he treated Aaron badly: Aaron who had saved their lives, still was saving them. And then there were the creatures outside and the whiff of their smell every once in awhile. She rubbed her face and tried to avoid looking out the window.
“You know Aaron’s not doing this to us to be mean, right?” she asked him a little pointedly. “He’s helping us... otherwise we’d still be walking all day. Remember how that sucked?”
“It’s okay,” Aaron interjected softly, but Song was sitting up and curling into a ball against the window to look outside with just as much pointed enthusiasm.
There were rotted car parts littering the sides of the highway as it opened up on some suburbs, and steering was a bit more difficult, a bit more treacherous, even in the face of a sulking little boy. They came upon a strip mall in a rather short amount of time; urban sprawl, Aaron figured. The lot was mostly empty but for trash and cars that had never made it home, and he steered close to some of the busted-out windows and doors of the shops that had resided there.
“That kinda place work?” he asked, pointing out a standard mall anchor, what was a big box store back in the day.
“You think there’s still anything in there?” she asked somewhat pointlessly. It was always a matter of going to see but, ever since leaving New York, Emily had tried to stay as far away from actual cities as possible. Neither Sullivan nor she had ever been mall frequenters, but after having Song, it had become necessary from time to time. Now, it was not so much a temple of consumerism but just a place with far too many doors and hidden corners.
“I can do a sweep and see,” he suggested, flashing her a smile; there was a sort of smug satisfaction that was already rooting in his demeanor at the thought of having achieved a request so soon, and he parked up against the walk, sliding his handgun into his holster and hopping out of the van to survey the parking lot.
Emily never stopped him when he did this, but she also never got used to it. Getting separated brought to mind Sullivan, losing people and zombies crowding in on a fallen body. She took a deep breath, fingering the hand-axe between their seats and watched him walk towards the abandoned building.
There was no evidence of anything, really, and Aaron waved at her before creeping into the store. He was careful, and quiet—it wasn’t really his forte, that hadn’t been what he did on duty, but he was trained, and smart, and kept to the walls and behind displays before he confirmed the store was empty, and still contained undamaged goods.
He swept up some sweaters, and jeans that looked tiny and, thus, small enough for her, and threw them over his shoulder to take back to the van. Pushing the big door open, he dumped them next to Song, who had quickly forgotten his pouting and leaned over to look at them.
“You can look through those, I saw some jackets I want to grab,” Aaron said.
She scrambled over the seat into the back, careful not to hurt herself with the axe she was still clinging to. She opened her mouth, momentarily wishing she could go and he’d stay with Song but then she knew he’d never let her and she scooted down to look at the clothes, smiling at him—a few weeks ago she might have argued, but after their last encounter, she was unsure of herself around him, or what right she had to speak up. The clothes looked new. They didn’t smell it but they looked it, and that was pretty damn good.
“Is there stuff for kids?” she asked, and then licked her lips, “and underwear? You know I should go in right?” It was uttered carefully, teasingly. But she was not that good an actress.
His smile was nonchalant. “Just tell me your size,” he suggested, rocking back on his heels.
Emily chuckled, and poked out her tongue. She looked down at her chest and sighed. “I used to be a B-cup, but bloody hell...” She shook her head tragically and had to giggle apologetically at Song who was making a face.
“Just new knickers would be awesome. And leggings and sports bras... comfortable stuff?”
He saluted her. “Will do,” he said, shoving the dangling arms of the sweaters up onto the floor of the van. Emily was still smiling; he looked so pleased with himself when he could do something for them that her heart went out to him. She smiled at his big ears, just peeking out from under his handsome new haircut, but just as she bent down to have a closer look at the sizes, something caught her eye. And it was moving.
“Aaron! Behind you!” she called, panic reverberating in her voice, hands wildly fumbling for her axe as she shoved Song behind her.
“Shit!” Aaron threw himself on the ground just out of the creature’s reach and scrambled several feet before rolling to his back to grapple with his gun. He managed to fire off one shot, slowing the zombie, just enough for him to jump to his feet and throw the big van door closed with Emily and Song inside, just as she had been about to jump out.
“No, NO!” Emily shouted, her whole body rigid. She heard another shot but she couldn’t risk waiting. She pulled the door open again—and screamed. The rotting, vile face was a mere few feet from her face. She couldn’t see Aaron but the zombie seemed momentarily confused, staring at her for a fraction of a second before it turned on her. She raised the axe by pure instinct and the hatred that welled up inside her. It was stretching its arms out and she hacked at the hands, then at the neck until she felt it sever from the rest of its body.
Everything exploded in a vile smell and finally, she saw Aaron. He had jumped up from the ground to the right. They stared at each other; Emily wanted to throw up but when she raised the back of her hand to her mouth, she saw that it, too, was bespeckled with brown slime.
“Are you
okay?” she asked quickly and when it seemed that he was, she added, more loudly: “Why did you do that?!”
He gave her a shaky smile, and it took him another moment to tuck his gun back in and answer her.
“Just... to keep you safe?” He didn’t quite look at her, now scanning the length of the strip mall, edging closer to the van to reach for the rifle, hands trembling a little.
“You could have died,” she pressed. She, too, was shaking, her fingers were clenched so tightly around her axe it didn’t seem she would be able to let go, not ever. Finally her eyes started to water and she grew more aware of her body and her surroundings.
“Are you okay, Duck?” she breathed, turning around to Song who was staring at her wide-eyed. He nodded, and, after a moment, reached up for her, just as he had as a baby, as he still did when scared.
“Wait, Ducky, I’m full of stuff,” Emily cautioned Song and then after a moment’s hesitation, simply swiped her sweater off her head and used it to rub any remaining specks off her hands and face. In her light tee, she pulled Song to her chest and finally turned around again.
Aaron had the rifle in his hands and was staring down the line of broken shops intensely. It didn’t feel right to assume only one zombie, but nothing else was rattling out, and the body as his feet was stinking and oozing onto his boots.
“Are you okay?” she asked again. She had expected him to return to the front seat, that they would leave as soon as possible, but he was still standing there. In a flash, she saw Sullivan again, him and his insistence that they had to go on without him.
“Aaron?” This time her voice was trembling, barely forming words.
“I’m okay.” He finally looked back at her, and then down at his shoes, shaking off the gore as best he could. “I... yeah, I’m okay.” He licked at his lips and locked the safety on the rifle once more before shoving it back into the van and going to close the door. He paused, though, hand on the handle.
“Thanks.”
Song had his face buried against her shoulder, and she was about the same height as him, standing in the doorway of the van.