by A. R. Wise
I handed the long-stemmed glass over to her and said, “Aren’t we supposed to use shot glasses?”
“These’ll work,” she said as she filled the glass to the top.
“Whoa,” I laughed as I watched the whiskey slosh over the rim. “That’s too much. What happened to us not getting too drunk?”
She shrugged and rolled her eyes. “Too late. Don’t be a party pooper.”
“I’m not,” I said like a wounded child succumbing to the taunts of a friend.
“I bet I can finish mine first,” she said as she poured herself a glass.
“Wait!” I shouted out louder than I’d meant to. “We’re supposed to be toasting Stubs.”
“Oh yeah, that’s right,” she said. “I forgot.”
We raised our glasses and carefully touched them, trying not to spill the whiskey that Annie had filled to bursting. “To Stubs, who could stink up a room worse than any human I’ve ever met.”
“I’ll drink to that,” said Annie. She kept her eyes on me as we both slowly brought our glasses to our lips, trying not to spill. She started slow, but then tipped the glass back as she swallowed the whiskey with startling speed. I couldn’t keep up.
“Ha! I beat you.” She pointed and laughed as I struggled to finish. When I tried to lower my glass while it was still half-full, she exclaimed that I couldn’t give up, and pushed at the bottom of my glass to force me to drink more. I nearly choked as I tried not to laugh, but finally managed to swallow the last of the burning liquid.
“There you go,” she said as I winced from the drink. “How’s that feel?”
“Hot,” I said as I pat my chest. I could feel the alcohol burning its way into my stomach.
“You drunk yet?”
I laughed, and then nodded. “Getting there.”
“Want another?”
I quickly refused the offer. “No way. Are you crazy? You’re going to make me puke my guts up.”
“We don’t want that,” said Annie as she put the top back on the bottle of whiskey and pushed it to the side. Then she spoke louder, with a sudden expulsion as if she’d been waiting all night to say something, “Hey.”
“Yes?” I asked after she didn’t follow her word with any question or statement.
“I just…” she was looked down as she struggled to find the words. “I’m sorry. I know I’ve already said it, and I know you’re going to say it wasn’t my fault and all that. But I just need you to hear it again, from the heart, so you know I really, really mean it.” She was clearly drunk.
“Sorry for what?” I asked.
“For losing Stubs.”
I shook my head and said, “No, it wasn’t your fault.”
“I had him,” she said as she looked down at her hands. “He was right there in my hands, and he was just stolen. I tried to grab him, but he was gone so fast.”
I scooted over to sit beside Annie, and put my arm around her. I pulled her close and said, “Stop it. It wasn’t your fault.”
“But it was my fault. It was.”
“Annie, look at me.” I put my finger under her chin and brought her face up so that I could look into her sparkling blue eyes. A curl of her red hair fell down, and I swiped it back up. She smiled, and then bit at her bottom lip. I was going to tell her again that I didn’t blame her for what happened to Stubs, but instead I leaned forward and kissed her.
Our first kiss was gentle and timid, and I retreated nearly as soon as our lips touched. I felt ashamed for it, and certain that I’d misread the situation. She proved me wrong by refusing to let me back away. She pulled me closer, and kissed me passionately, forcing me to anchor my hand on the floor as she pushed herself onto me.
“Wow,” I said when she started to kiss at my neck. “Okay. Wait, wait.” I pushed gently at her, but she forced my hand away and guided me to the floor so that she could crawl over me. “Wait.”
“What?”
“We’re…” I was flustered and nervous, my heart pounding in my chest as she straddled me. “Should we? I mean, we’re drunk. I don’t want you to think I’m taking advantage of you.”
She laughed as she sat atop me. “Who says I’m the one getting taken advantage of?” she asked before sliding her hands up under my shirt.
We tore off our clothes as if they were on fire, and spent the next few hours exploring each other in a variety of ways. It was as if both of us considered this a challenge to prove our fortitude over the other, and every time it seemed that we were winding down we would begin again. Eventually we made our way to the bedroom, and spent plenty of time there, squirming beneath the sheets and enjoying each other in every way we could imagine.
Our skin was sticky with sweat when I peeled myself away, panting and exhausted, and laid down beside her. She was similarly tired, and was still breathing heavy when she asked, “You all used up?”
I laughed and then nodded. “I think so.”
She put her fist in the air and said, “I win.”
“What? You could go again?”
Annie smirked and said, “Sure.”
“Seriously?” I asked, astonished. I was certain that she was at least as tired as I was.
“It’s okay if you can’t handle me.” She enjoyed taunting me.
“We’ll see about that.” I mounted her again, not even bothering to clean off what I’d left on her stomach moments earlier. She squealed and pushed at my sweaty chest, but I dove back over her and started all over again in our game of endurance.
It was after that round of love-making that we were both finally convinced it was time to concede. Annie was the one that noticed the dim light coming in through the window, and said, “It’s morning.”
I glanced out the window and gave a laugh that turned to a sigh. “Wow. I guess we’d better try and get some sleep.”
She stood, her nude body glistening with sweat, and wiped herself with the edge of an extra blanket that we’d thrown to the floor long ago. Then she crawled back onto the bed and leaned down close to me, her head propped up on both of her hands, a wide smile on her face. “Thank you,” she said before kissing my forehead. “That was beyond incredible. Maybe next time you can keep up with me.”
I chuckled and shook my head as she crawled back under the sheets and pressed her nude body up against me. We fell asleep that way, both of us exhausted and drained.
I woke up once during our sleep, and the bright sunshine was pouring in from the window, warming me as Annie still laid with her head on my chest. Her red hair took on a golden hue, enlivened by the sunlight. I kissed the top of her head, and stroked the small of her back with my fingertips. She groaned and squirmed, and then snuggled closer to me. I thought that I would stay awake, but I didn’t want to get out of bed just yet. I was enjoying her too much, and I closed my eyes as the warmth of the sun and her skin lulled me back to sleep.
Somehow or another, we’d managed to find heaven together here in the midst of hell.
23 – Homesick
Annie Conrad
I felt like shit when I finally woke up. My stomach was turning in ten different directions, and the marathon sex I’d been all too eager to enjoy the night before had left me sore from the waist down.
“Hungry?” asked Ben, sounding far more chipper than seemed fair.
I mumbled a sort of response, “Huh?”
“Are you hungry?”
Food was the last thing I needed. I rubbed my eyes and looked at him as he stood in the doorway, fully dressed and looking well rested. “No. Thirsty.” My one word sentences would have to suffice.
“I’ll get you some water.”
I wanted to ask for an aspirin too, but he was gone before I had the chance. We had some pain killers tucked away in the Jeep somewhere, and there wasn’t much I wouldn’t do to get my hands on them at that moment.
The sheets felt sticky, and I peeled them off of me with a grimace. The room spun, and I decided that I’d have to deal with the gross sheets for a little while longe
r. I heard Ben’s feet thumping on the stairs as he came back up and I pulled the crusty sheet back over my breasts, feeling shy again now that my alcohol-inspired inhibition had faded. He knocked before coming in, which I found sweetly gallant.
“Here you go,” he said as he handed me a bottle of water. Then he held out his other hand and said, “I thought you could use some aspirin.”
“Oh my god,” I said as I accepted them like the gift they were. “You’re a life saver.”
“I’ve got some breakfast, or lunch, downstairs if you feel like eating anything.”
“No promises,” I said before popping the aspirin and swigging the water before the bitter taste of the old pills hit me.
Ben left me alone, and I wallowed in my misery for what felt like hours, but was probably not more than twenty minutes. I finally forced myself out of bed, my head thudding as if my brain had decided to break its way out with a sledgehammer, and started to search the room for my clothes. That’s when I remembered that I’d taken them off downstairs, and I suddenly faced the embarrassing task of wandering the house in search of them.
I reached out to grab a blanket to wrap myself with and found fresh clothes folded and set on the corner of the bed, yet another perfect gift from Ben. I let out an audible sigh of appreciation like a little girl catching sight of a puppy. He’d also placed a bucket on the floor, filled with an inch of water and a sponge for me to clean off with.
Ben was waiting downstairs for me, relaxing on the couch reading a book as a hot cup of tea steamed on the table beside him. He heard me coming and set the book down. “How you feeling?”
“Sore and sick.”
“I know the feeling. I was pretty green when I got up too. Feel up to eating something?”
I grimaced and shook my head as I made my way over to the couch. “Not just yet. Give me an hour, or ten.”
He snickered and then dog-eared his book. “We should probably get out on the road soon.”
“I’m ready whenever, as long as you drive.”
“Deal. I already packed everything up. We’re good to go whenever you’re ready.”
I looked around at our little temporary home with a sense of loss. “I’m going to miss this place. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that way about one of the places I camped at before.”
“I marked the location on Billy’s map. It’s always good to know where the safe spots are at.”
I got up off the couch and knocked over the bottle of champagne we’d emptied the night before. I picked it up and showed it to Ben with a wry grin. “This did a number on us.”
He agreed with a smile and a raised brow. “I put the whiskey in the Jeep. Want me to save that bottle too?”
“No, that’s silly,” I said as I walked to the kitchen and opened the top of the recycle box. It was ludicrous to worry about cleaning up after ourselves by tossing the bottle in the right bin, but I knew how meticulously clean Andrea had kept her house, and it felt like I was honoring her by not leaving the bottle laying on the floor. The bin was half-full already, and I smiled when I saw an empty box of devil’s food cookies in the mess. I dropped the bottle of champagne in and looked around at the kitchen one last time, appreciating its quaint perfection. I turned back to Ben and said, “Let’s head out.”
We’d wasted the majority of the day already, but Harrison’s water tower wasn’t far. The trip was almost uneventful, except for a pack of stray Greys that had blocked our path at one point. Ben had avoided an altercation by driving the Jeep through a park, causing us to jostle and laugh as the vehicle bounced over the numerous hills.
“That’s got to be it,” said Ben as he leaned forward and pointed out to the right.
I’d been looking at the map in my lap, keeping us on the right path, and I glanced up to see the ballooning steel structure that rose above the neighborhood. We weren’t far from Hanger, but I’d never known that anyone lived here. It seemed foolish that people would’ve stayed here instead of going to the settlement that wasn’t more than an hour’s walk away.
We navigated the roads that led us to the tower, but we stopped long before reaching it. The streets were littered with Grey corpses, their wounds fresh enough that their black, wet blood still twinkled in the light.
Heavy tire treads had smeared the blood across the pavement of the street, and Ben pulled to the side. “This is bad,” he said as he checked his pistol.
I agreed, but tried to be positive, “Maybe Harry’s friends did this.”
“Doubt it.”
“What do you think happened?”
He looked out at the tracks on the road, and the body of the Grey that had been split in half by whatever vehicle had run him over. The Grey’s upper half had managed to crawl away several yards before finally giving up. Despite rumors, there were other ways to kill a Grey than simply smashing up their brains. While they often survived horrific injuries, they still needed their body to be somewhat intact to carry on. However, it could take weeks for them to finally die, and I could see the eyelids of the creature in the road twitching as it struggled to look at us.
Ben studied the scene, and then rolled down his window. He turned off the Jeep so that we could hear what was going on outside, but it was nearly silent. The only persistent noise was the shallow, wet breathing of the creature that had been split in half on the road.
“Stay here,” said Ben as he got out of the Jeep. I was angry for a moment because I assumed he was treating me different now that we’d slept together, as if that gave him permission to suddenly turn into my stalwart guardian. However, I calmed down quickly and understood that he just wanted to have someone in the Jeep, ready to start it, should anything unforeseen happen. I watched as he walked over to the Grey that was gasping for air on the pavement.
He took out a make-shift weapon that the Rollers sometimes carried for silencing Greys. It was a piece of rebar that had one end sharpened and the other wrapped in tape to provide a handle. It was a simple but effective tool that helped prevent the Rollers from losing handy weapons inside of a Grey’s head. We called them ‘Bleeders’ after a weapon that Arthur fancied, and they were cheap and easy enough to make that losing one wasn’t a big deal.
Ben plunged the sharpened point of the rebar tool into the Grey, causing its head to slap down and its mouth to gape as black fluid oozed out over its broken teeth. With a quick pull, the rebar was free, and Ben cleaned it off on a kitchen towel that he’d taken from Wes and Andrea’s home. The spiraling groove in the rebar helped to make it easier to pull the weapon out of a Grey’s head, and if it got stuck the bearer could simply turn it like a screw to get it out, but the drawback was that those same grooves could often get blood stuck in them, and the owner would go around for days not knowing what stunk.
Once the breather was silenced, we listened to the sounds of the neighborhood and quickly understood that we were being hunted. The homes near the water tower were clicking and tapping, and the crunch of debris beneath stumbling feet revealed our predators. The Greys don’t often moan and cry as much as their Popper counterparts, but when they catch sight of food they will do their best to give a guttural yell. As of yet, I hadn’t heard that tell-tale sound, but just the clamor of clumsy hunters. The Greys had probably been attracted here when the vehicles that left their bloody tracks on the road showed up, and then tried to chase them through the neighborhood until they lost interest. Now they were doubling back, having heard us headed out to the same spot they’d just left.
“No more than a day old,” said Ben as he came over to his side of the Jeep and spoke to me through the open window. “Looks like at least two or three vehicles came through here and then headed back out that way.” He pointed the bleeder out in the direction that the Grey on the road had been faced when it crawled away from its lower half.
“Military?”
He nodded and said, “Yeah, by the looks of it. Wide tires, deep treads. Heavy enough to split that Grey clear in two. I’d guess a troop transp
ort vehicle.”
“Should we still head up to the tower?”
Ben opened the door and got in as he said, “Might as well. I doubt they’re coming back. We’ll have to hurry before the horde they stirred up makes its way out to us.”
He started the Jeep and we turned onto the dirt path that wound through a thicket of dead trees and up the hill that the tower sat upon. We parked beneath, but it was already evident that this was a lost cause.
The ground at the base of the tower was dented and torn by the wheels of several vehicles that had parked here. I glanced up at the curved sides of the massive tower and saw streaks of glinting steel on the otherwise dull metal. I pointed up at them and said, “Bullets. Looks like they were shooting up at the tower.”
“But trying not to hit it directly,” said Ben, taking note of how there were only a scant few actual bullet holes in the underside of the structure but plenty of the gouges along the edges. “Warning shots.”
“So they knew someone was hiding up there,” I said as we walked over to the ladder that was attached to one of the seven outer posts. The rungs were dented, and caked with mud, denoting extensive use. The people that had lived here had gone up and down these stairs a thousand times, causing the metal to warp from the overuse.
“Here, look,” said Ben as he walked past the ladder and towards the center spire that started fat, then thinned on the way up before spanning out again, like the gesticulated shape of a woman. There was a door on the bottom, hewn from the steel that had obviously not been a part of the original design. The edges were sharp, and instead of a handle there was just a rope pulled through a hole and knotted on both ends to prevent it from being tugged all the way out. The hinges looked stolen from a home’s door and pounded into the side here.
Ben pulled the makeshift door open to reveal a hollow tube within wide enough for two or three people to stand in. There were ropes hanging down, attached to a large plastic crate. Ben pulled at the rope, causing a pulley high above to squeak.