Assuming Room Temperature (Keep Your Crowbar Handy Book 3)

by S. P. Durnin

  “Are you in there too?” O’Connor demanded. “Is that where this is going?”

  The pretty blonde laughed. “No. I’m good, thanks. Flattered you’d think that, but I’m not one who’s into the ‘hero’ archetype. As I was saying, you’re spoiled for choice. Penny’s a little shallow, but still darned hot. Nice legs. And I’d kill to have her hair.”

  “Look. I’m sure you mean well, but I don’t do casual sex.” Jake put his face in one hand. “Allan would give me ten different kinds of shit over it, all the time. It’s just not satisfying. I’ve always held to the belief sex should be about more than just rutting, or even feeling good for a little while.”

  Gwen held up one hand. “It should, you’re right. But sometimes it’s simply a good way to decompress after nearly meeting up with the Grim Reaper too. You know that. You saw combat before all this happened, right?”

  “I’m not talking about it,” O’Connor stated harshly. “And that wasn’t even remotely the same.”

  She shrugged. “Hey, I’m not downing your views. I’m just saying: contrary to what you believe. Sometimes sex is just sex.”

  “Are you speaking from experience?” Jake demanded.

  “Yep.”

  “Good for you. Feel free to ‘boink’ anyone who manages to stay alive if you’re so inclined. I want more. I want...need...a connection. I need to know I matter to someone before getting it on like horny lemmings.” When Gwen didn’t reply, he turned his head to look at her. “What? Too cheesy? Too ‘old-fashioned’? Maybe it is, but that’s the way I am. I want a partner. An equal. Someone I trust, who can take care of herself, or me if the situation called for it. Especially now because, you know, of all the goddamn zombies.”

  “Well, why didn’t you just say you have a thing for Kat? If you remember, I thought you two were a couple when we first ran into each other.”

  “What?” O’Connor scoffed. “Have you been paying attention at all over the last couple of months? You realize she and Laurel were roommates, right? They had an apartment together for nearly two years. How low would it be to pursue something with my dead girlfriend’s best friend?”

  Gwen considered the question. “That depends. Don’t you think she’s attractive?”

  He didn’t know what to say. “Of course, I do! I think she’s gorgeous. Who wouldn’t? You’d have to be blind—”

  “Do you not want to ‘pursue something’ with her because she gets on your nerves?” There was real curiosity in her voice. “If so, I could understand. She makes George want to pull his own hair out at the roots sometimes.”

  Jake was numb. “No! I like the way her mind works. She’s a lot more intelligent than she lets on. At least, I think so. She’s also so fearless that half the time I think she’s crazy, and she has a habit of seeing how far she can push someone before they snap... But I wouldn’t change anything about her. I really like her the way she is.”

  With a small nod, Gwen stood, brushed grit off the seat of her fatigues, and raised her hands palms-up. “Then, what’s the problem?”

  She turned and strode unhurriedly towards the Post Office, leaving Jake sitting there on the curb frowning to himself.

  * * *

  Rae had nearly finished welding a generator onto the top of bus Number One.

  She’d decided to do a hot pass—a second pass that goes over the root pass, after joining two surfaces—adjusted the arc intensity, and turned the handle counterclockwise to make work forehand. It would’ve been better if she’d been able to actually fuse the generator to the roof, maybe even use adhesive before doing so to give the power plant attachment added thickness and protection, but after using so much material reinforcing the passenger areas of both buses, they were running low on filler and plate steel. This build would have to do.

  George Foster’s buxom counterpart had just shut off the gas feed, killing the arc flame, and pushed her mask up when Jake walked through into the construction bay.

  “How’s it coming?”

  Removing her visor and gloves (all on loan from Mooney) Rae placed them next to the generator and walked carefully to the bus’s rear. She knelt and—mounting the painter’s ladder she’d attached previously—climbed down, giving Jake ample opportunity to watch her bottom sway as she descended. He quickly had his eyes in and up to a safe location again before she turned to give an update on her progress.

  “Good. All that’s really left to do is re-work the meat slicers and double build the pneumatic locking mechanisms for the doors.” Rae took off her Gold Band welding jacket, confirming, that—as usual—she wore little but a sports bra underneath.

  “Okay.” Jake didn’t understand, but didn’t want to come across as clueless.

  Rae wasn’t fooled. “God, you’re utterly clueless when it comes to machinery. That means if one locking bar fails, the driver will have a backup, and those moldy things won’t be able to bust in.”

  “Okay.”

  Rae pulled off the borrowed “Truckers can go for hours” baseball cap and untwisted her hair. She’d had it up in a bun beneath the hat, so no flash (metal and oxide expelled from a joint during the welding process) would jump into her hair and turn it into an impromptu torch. The smell of burning hair turned her stomach.

  “I take it you aren’t here to discuss vehicle modification with me, so what’s on your mind?” She began using a canvas tarp to cover the tanks sitting beside the bus that fueled the arc welder.

  Jake moved to help her, unsure if he really wanted to have this conversation.

  Stop being such a puss, his back-brain told him.

  “What are your thoughts on casual sex?” He blurted.

  That earned him a surprised look. “Say again?” Rae asked.

  “Wow. This is so much more awkward than I thought it would be.” O’Connor rubbed his forehead. “I’ve been told by someone, who shall remain nameless, that—”

  “That you need an intense session of ‘hurt-me, hurt-me’ Olympic-level screwing?”

  O’Connor’s mouth opened and closed a few times as his brain attempted to process her comment. “Uh. Yeah.”

  “I agree with your nameless adviser,” Rae looked him up and down, “You’re ready to fly apart, and it’s affecting your thought process.”

  “What?” This was news to him.

  “You’ve been taking more and more dangerous chances for a while now, looking for some kind of justification for why you’re alive while other members of our party aren’t. The way you’ve gone bat-shit on a few of the mobs we’ve encountered, for instance.” Rae finished securing the tank cover as she clarified it for him. “I’d say you’ve got a textbook case of survivor’s guilt the size of the Sears Tower.”

  Jake considered that. “Don’t the rest of you feel the same way? I mean, we’ve lost friends. How are we supposed to feel?”

  “Lucky.” Rae leaned against the cover. “Lucky to be alive. Feeling like that doesn’t change the fact some of our friends are gone. It doesn’t change the fact we miss them and likely always will, but look at it this way: Would they want us to die too? Would they really want us to shut down, which could make us little more than zombies ourselves, and stop enjoying what we can in life? If you give it some thought, I’m pretty sure you come up with the answer to that question.”

  Even though it hurt, O’Connor realized she was right.

  “Now, about the solution.”

  “Hmm?” Jake shook off his reverie.

  Rae sighed. “The ‘casual’ thing? Why do you ask?”

  “Oh. Um. I just needed a second opinion.” He stuttered.

  “Right.” She grinned. “So you decide to talk with someone who’d be up for some no-strings attached stress relief?”

  That brought him up short. “What? No! I mean, I thought that you and George...?”

  “Oh, dear Lord.” Rae said, rol
ling her eyes. “Why does everyone assume that?”

  “Well, the two of you do sort of fight like an old, married couple.”

  Rae’s eyes went flat. “Consider my next question very carefully before you reply. Are you implying that I’m old?”

  Uh-oh. Jake thought. Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!

  “I’ll have you know I’m only three years older than you are.” Rae poked him in the chest with a grease covered finger, leaving a smear on his shirt. “And I got hit on all the time; before the Zombie Apocalypse I mean.”

  Jake could believe that. Rae closely resembled the actress Jill Wagner, with more in the lung department.

  “Really. You’d be surprised,” she continued. “And you know what? While I might be incredibly and intimidatingly intelligent when compared to most men, when I managed to find one who didn’t make me want to hit them over the head with a lug wrench? I’d toss caution to the wind and jump their bones till they rattled.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “Damn right.” She crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “Life’s too short, Jake. Especially now. There’s no telling if we’ll make it through tomorrow. We’re not invulnerable here. A big enough pod of those things would eventually push right on through—or just over—Langley’s barriers. That’s part of the reason we’ll need to get on the road soon, so they don’t find us. Heck, Oklahoma City is just a hundred or so miles away. Tulsa is less than fifty. Personally, I’m amazed one of the hordes hasn’t stumbled over this place already.

  One more thing to worry about. Jake mused.

  “So you think I should, what? Throw caution to the wind?”

  “Beats cold showers.” Rae’s mouth quirked up into a smile.

  O’Connor dreaded voicing his reply. It would label him either a hopeless romantic, or a total sap. “I can’t do it. I’m just not wired that way.”

  Rae shook her head. “Where were you when I was in my twenties? I’d have snapped you up in a heartbeat. You’d still be walking with a limp. Okay. The simple solution is out, so let’s move on to the more difficult one. What are you going to do about

  Kat?”

  “What the fu…? Why does everybody think she’s into me?” Jake was getting decidedly pissed. “How does a little flirting imply—to about half our damn group—that she’s serious about it in any way? For God’s sake, she flirts with everybody! Even you a couple of times, if I remember correctly.”

  “Yeah, that was a red letter day.” Rae sputtered. “People have been cracking jokes about my cup-size since middle school, so I think you took it out of context.”

  O’Connor was skeptical. “She said she’d—and I quote—’motorboat you like it was her career.’”

  Unable to contain herself, the fem-fixer laughed. “That’s because I asked her where she found all the Smurfs she wrings into her hair.”

  “And she didn’t kill you on the spot? I’m impressed. She must be mellowing.”

  “I thought her head was going to pop off like one of those old Rock-em-Sock-em Robots.” She wiped her eyes in mirth. “She really likes that shade of Manic Panic, doesn’t she?”

  “I have no idea where she gets it,” Jake admitted, “Or how she manages to come up with all the Hello Kitty stuff for that matter. I think it’s pretty cute, though.”

  Rae hit him in the chest with the back of one hand. “Then you need to tell her so. Take her advances at face value and see what comes out of it. What’s the worst that could happen?”

  “She could break my heart. I don’t know how many more times I can Super-glue it back together, Rae.” His expression became pained. “What if... What if what happened to Laurel—”

  “What if that happened to Kat, and you never took a chance with her?” Rae wasn’t one to mince words. She went straight to ‘uber-blunt’. “You’d be even more messed up than you already are. You could end up wearing adult-diapers and drooling on yourself.”

  That didn’t sound like fun to him. “So what do I do? Shit, I wish Allan was here. He’s so smooth he’ll slide out of his own coffin. Probably into a strip club.”

  “You’ll think of something.” Rae donned her flight suit and headed in direction of the Mimi. “Just don’t wait too long. You never know when a shit-storm could be coming down the pipe.”

  O’Connor watched her sway away and realized he’d just received the same advice from two, separate, female members of his group. He’d have liked to ask for a male point of view but—as he’d stated to Rae—his best friend Allan Ryker: Casanova of Free-fall, was hopefully safe and sound with the rest of their friends in Pecos, awaiting their arrival. George would be no help. At all. Leo was even more clueless than Jake himself. So much so that Elle had basically made the first move on him. And the second. And the third. Henry wouldn’t be much help either, even though the guy was a rock emotionally. His lifestyle didn’t really provide him insight into the female mind.

  Nope. Jake was entirely on his own with this one.

  “Well... shit.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  With dawn, came guard duty.

  Kat was tense. Jake hadn’t returned to the Mimi until late and when he did, had barely said a word to her. He’d begged off talking, playing cards with her, Elle, and Leo, even passed up Jameson’s—something he never did—to lock himself away in lead module. He hadn’t used his bunk. She’d checked. Kat never slept in one either, but that was simply because the tight confines always made her feel unbearably lonely. Normally, she’d roll out one of their mummy bags and sack out near the rear door.

  Jake’s still-bruised eyes were rather bloodshot when he finally stumbled from the transport (following the smell of freshly brewed coffee) and, after gulping down a mug of bean squeezings, had gone to speak with Mooney concerning something he was pretty vague about. For that reason, she didn’t know if the unruly-haired man was angry over her part in blowing up the gas station the previous day or if he was falling into his pain once more, but it worried her. Kat didn’t know if she could handle him retreating into himself again. It hurt so bad not to talk with him every day. She looked forward to making him laugh with silly, off-kilter jokes, and enjoyed the play of emotions on his face over her sometimes questionable, sometimes ridiculous—and quite intentional—lapses in judgment.

  O’Connor was still absent when her three hour shift at Langley’s eastern barricade came around, and Cho wished for time to move quickly. She never knew what kind of trouble he’d get into without female supervision, and said as much as she and Foster helped man the wall.

  “I’m just saying he doesn’t think about how his actions affect the rest of us sometimes. He does crazy stuff,” she insisted.

  George scratched behind one ear. “Ya’ mean like climbing up the outside of a railroad granary? That kind’a crazy? Or usin’ a mini-gun against a bunch a’ Nazi assholes from three stories up?”

  “That’s different. If you’ll notice, I did both of those because I was pulling his hunky-butt out of the fire. Both times.”

  Foster guffawed and puffed at his stogie as he put the butt of the Long-Arm sniper rifle in his hands against his shoulder. Sighting through the 4x optics, the aging man sent a single round almost soundlessly east along Route 28. It impacted into—and vaporized—the head of a zombie staggering north from the Tia Juana Fire Station. The headless body dropped to the pavement, and George put another tick on his side of the rail with a Sharpie

  marker.

  “That’s five to your three, China-doll. You slackin’ today or what?”

  “I’m just distracted.” Kat scanned the area beyond the wall with her binoculars. “I think I drank too much with Penny and the others night before last. I still feel a little out of it, but it was a fun time.”

  “So I’m told! Rae said you copped to playin’ for the other team once. That true?” The gray-haired soldier’s face swiveled towards
her. “I want specifics, dammit! I never heard about good stuff like that in the navy. It was always: burn down this location, strangle these shit-eatin’ pedophiles, take out those goat-raping, camel jockeys before the blow up our embassy. That kinda thing.”

  Kat gave him a sideways look. “You’re turning into a perv in your old age.”

  Foster leered at her.

  “Perv.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Now make with the saucy details.” He went back to his rifle scope.

  “Before I tell you anything, I have to know this won’t go any farther than you and me.” Kat found she actually needed to let someone in on the big secret.

  “Cross my heart an’ swear on my favorite testicle.” Foster said without looking. “And, since I’m equally fond of both my nuts, yer story is safe with me. I’m used ta’ keepin’ my mouth shut, ya’ know. You don’t last too long in my line of work unless—”

  Kat lowered the binoculars and quietly said, “It was Laurel.”

  “Holy. Shit.” Foster rocked back in his heels, eyes wide. “You ain’t serious.”

  “It was almost two years ago. Long before her and Jake ever met. And only the one time,” Kat admitted, her voice hushed. “It was a pretty weird the next morning, waking up together too. We both agreed that it was a once-only thing, after we dealt with our respective hangovers, and put it behind us. Laurel and I were much better as just friends. We’d have killed each other if we tried to turn it into something else.”

  George spoke quite sternly “Never...ever...tell anyone what you just told me. Do you understand? No-one. Jake can not find out you and Red had a thing. Even if it was just that one time.”

  “Oh, rats. I was going to run over and ask ‘Hey, did Laurel claw at your butt-cheeks during sex, too? The scratches on mine hurt for a week afterwards.’ That’ll be right after I cut my nipples off with a pair of garden snips.” Cho gave him a harsh stare. “I know you think I’m a bubble-head, but give me a little credit for fuck’s