“Better than out on the road, that’s for sure,” James said.
“Yeah,” she said, but the tone in her voice and the faraway look in her eyes gave him pause. “Do you ever miss it?”
“Miss what? My life before all this?”
“No, being out on the road. Not knowing what might happen or when.”
“Yes,” James said, “and no. It’s hard to explain. It’s almost like I’m used to being out there, constantly on edge.”
On the road, he had to always be ready for anything, and it was as exhausting as it was exhilarating. In here, on the other hand, he felt safe, and somehow that put him more on edge. He was expecting things to go wrong at any second, knowing the good times wouldn’t last. Whether it was tonight, tomorrow, or in a week, something was bound to happen and this whole town would go up in flames.
“I’m glad it’s not just me,” Alexis said. “I almost had myself convinced I was crazy.”
“No, it’s hard to let your guard down after all you’ve been through.”
Alexis shivered. “I still have nightmares about that night. If you guys hadn’t shown up…”
James nodded. He could only imagine the feeling of hopelessness she must’ve felt then and again a few days later to get captured by someone even worse. She’d been through more than he had, and even he had nightmares. She had a rare inner strength to have gone through all that and still continue on. Most people would end up like Margaret, who hadn’t spoken in days. She barely ate and barely slept. Something in Margaret’s mind had broken back when they’d been taken by the Reclaimers, and he didn’t think she’d ever recover.
“That’s all in the past now,” James said. “We’ve survived, somehow.”
“We’ve been blessed,” Alexis said.
“Blessed?”
“God’s been protecting us,” Alexis stated matter-of-factly.
“I didn’t know you were a Christian.”
“I grew up one and just recently found my faith again.”
James smiled. “Well, good for you.”
“What do you believe, James Andderson?”
“I believe Jesus died for my sins and I’ve been called to live my life to the fullest, following the path He sets before me.”
“And how do you think all of this fits into that?”
James took a few moments to try and figure out how to put it into words. “I honestly don’t have any idea. I just take it all on faith and move on with my life, trying the best I can. If I think too much about it, I just come up with doubts.”
Alexis nodded. “It’s hard to reconcile all we’ve been through. The important part is that we got through it and survived. That has to count for something.”
She didn’t say anything about the ones who hadn’t survived, but he knew it was on both their minds. Why should they survive all this when others hadn’t? People always died—good people, people who deserved to live. It was just the way of the world. That hadn’t changed. It was just the scale on which it was happening that gave him pause.
“What about the people you’ve killed?” Alexis asked.
Even though he could hear something in her voice that told him she wasn’t accusing him, the question still felt like a blow to his gut. He stopped, and she looked back at him, a deep pain in her eyes. It seemed like she wasn’t asking a simple question and that more hinged on his answer than just what he thought. People’s faces flashed through the back of his mind—people he’d killed. He didn’t know how many that was and couldn’t even count them if he wanted to.
They’d given him no choice; he knew that. If he wanted to save those he loved, help strangers, and protect his own life, he’d had to do it. And he’d done it without hesitation, but the more he killed, the easier it became. Now that they weren’t busy focusing on survival, the questions and doubts nagged at his mind. Had he really had to kill them? Was it wrong that he had? He’d spilled blood, and he knew it wouldn’t be the last.
Alexis watched him as he stood there, trying to sort through his thoughts and feelings. “I’m sorry,” she said, turning from him. “I just… don’t understand how she could’ve done what she did.”
“You mean Ana?” James said, walking up to her.
His feelings were a whirlwind of chaos. He’d been excited about how well the date was going earlier, but now all this? Between his episode and these questions they couldn’t possibly answer, the night was taking a turn for the worse, and he knew he couldn’t stop it. She needed to be able to work through all this, just like he did.
“Yeah,” Alexis said. “How could she do it? Ana said it was to save us—to save me—but I don’t want to live with that. I feel like it’s my fault they’re dead.”
Tears were brimming in her eyes again.
“It’s not your fault,” James said. “Ana made the choice, and whether it was right or wrong, it was hers to make, and it created an opportunity for you to escape. She probably saw it as sacrificing a few to save the rest. That’s how I would’ve looked at it.”
“Would you have done it?”
Her eyes pleaded with him. He almost responded immediately and instinctively, but he stopped and really thought about it instead. Would he have killed Mila and Evan to save Alexis? Connor? Olive? He knew the answer, no matter how hard it was to admit.
“Yes,” James said, knowing it wasn’t the answer she wanted.
She turned and started walking the way they’d been going. James followed her as the sun began to set before them.
They arrived at the end of the street to the bench James had borrowed from someone’s backyard earlier. Alexis stopped, but he walked up and sat down on it, and she joined him shortly after. Despite the high fence in front of them, they had a decent view of the sunset through the top six feet of the double-layer chain link. The bottom four feet was a solid block that made it possible for the guards to take cover if they were being shot at.
The sun painted the sky in hues of orange and pink as the temperature started to drop. Alexis moved closer to him and he reached over, putting his arm around her as she rested her head on his shoulder. It almost shocked him how forward he was being with her. He should’ve been more nervous, but he wasn’t, and he wouldn’t let himself be. Their dinner had been perfect, and he felt like he’d known her for a long time already. They continued to watch as the sun slowly disappeared behind the horizon and the light faded. They sat on the bench, enjoying each other’s company.
“I don’t like what she did,” Alexis began, “but maybe she didn’t have a choice. Not really. It still hurts though. She was the closest thing I had to a friend in all this, and when she did that I saw a part of her I hadn’t seen before. It scared me. That wasn’t the Ana I knew. I think that’s what shocked me the most.”
“It’s hard sometimes,” James said, “to know what we’re all capable of until the time comes for us to step up. Look at Chloe. I never would’ve guessed that she could kill Bryce. I know she didn’t want to do it, but she did, and saved our lives in the process. If she hadn’t acted, there might not have been another opportunity and we would’ve been in one of those graves the next morning.”
“It’s just hard to think about making that choice. Would I be able to do it to save the ones I love? Or would I do nothing and inadvertently be the cause of their death and have to live with the knowledge that I could’ve saved them if only I’d acted.”
“You can’t do that to yourself. You can’t wonder what you would’ve done in that situation. We have to move on, leave the past in the past and look to the future.”
“Saying that for yourself as well?”
James chuckled. “Yeah, I think I’m the one who needs to hear that the most.”
He looked down at her as her head rested on his shoulder, and it was as clear as day to him. His heart had found a home. This was it—what he’d been waiting all those years for. He knew this was the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. The revelation sh
ould’ve shocked him, but deep down he’d already known. He wasn’t sure when he’d first realized. Had it been when he’d seen her helping the survivors from Burns over a week ago, dropping zombies with style, or earlier while having dinner? But it didn’t matter; the fact was, he wanted to marry this woman in his arms.
His parents had known early on that they wanted to get married and they’d accomplished that in under a year. It wasn’t that uncommon. Not that he was going to ask her now. He needed to see how she felt, and there were other things to worry about. He pushed the thoughts aside and came back to the present. This moment was too good to miss out on.
She glanced up at him and he smiled.
“You’re so beautiful,” James said as he gazed down at her.
Her eyes were so tender and her lips so inviting. He shocked himself by leaning down, his lips meeting hers.
11
Prey
Max sat in a copse of cultivated trees, whittling on a stick. This one was turning out to be a simple spiral design, like someone would hang in their window. Next to him, lying on the ground and aiming a large-caliber rifle with high-powered scope, was Zeke. He was watching the fenced-in city of Coutts as the sun set behind them. A spotting scope was set up in front of Max, but he wasn’t bothered with looking through it. Zeke would watch for them, so he carved on a stick. Finishing the spiral design, he tossed it to the side. One of the curls was uneven so it wasn’t worth keeping. He picked up a larger stick and began to work on it.
“Will you quit that?” Zeke said in his heavy Russian accent. Even after weeks of being around the man, Max still had trouble understanding him sometimes. This wasn’t one of those times.
“Nope,” Max said in his deep voice.
Max outweighed the man by a hundred pounds and stood over eight inches taller, but there was no doubt in Max’s mind that he couldn’t take him. Zeke was a killer, a trained assassin, from what he’d overheard, and someone who’d adapted to this lifestyle long before the world went to hell. Max thought back to before all this. After his second stint in the pen for breaking and entering, he’d finally got out and cleaned up. He’d even gotten a legitimate job at a UPS warehouse, and things had begun to look up.
Then came the day when he’d gone in to work and beaten his boss to death with a fire extinguisher.
He’d run from the scene, not knowing his boss had actually been infected. All he knew was that the man had attacked him and he fought back. Then he ran. He wasn’t going back to jail. It was good that he’d already decided to leave Casper, because it got bad there quickly.
“I see movement,” Zeke said. Max didn’t even look up. “False alarm, just another guard on rotation.”
Zeke had been calling out that kind of stuff all evening, like Max would know what that meant or even care. He’d never been in the military or anything like that. Hell, the only time he’d used a gun before was holding up a gas station. He hadn’t even known how to shoot it. That had changed quickly after he met Jezz. He’d found a nice group around Sheridan, decent people who were just trying to survive, and after a few days on his own he’d been happy to join. Then she’d come in, looking all wild-eyed. The next day their leader and half of the guards were gone, all stabbed to death. She’d walked into the common room and commanded the rest of them to follow her or die.
Instantly, a few of the ones Max didn’t like—the types he used to run with—joined her, leaving the others with little choice. He’d joined her, too, and it’d saved him. The ones who hesitated a moment longer were gunned down by her new goons on her orders. Then she instructed them about what it meant to “reclaim” someone’s soul, and how to send it back to the earth—a fancy way to say “kill them.” Now here he was, one of her top men. How had things gotten this out of control? He’d just wanted to survive, which he was doing, but at what cost?
Shaking his head, he looked down at what his hands had been working on while his mind wandered. His mind did that sometimes, but he hated when it went to his past. It made him feel like he shouldn’t be doing what he was doing, but it was too late for that now. There was nothing else for him but to survive.
An intricate eagle totem sat in his hands. How long had his mind been wandering?
“I see movement behind the fence,” Zeke said.
Max pocketed the totem. It was a good one. When he got back, he’d see if Jezz liked it. She hadn’t liked any of the rest, but maybe this one…
“It’s a couple. They just sat down on a bench,” Zeke said, glancing at him out of the corner of his eye. “Get your big ass up to that scope!”
The dangerous growl in his voice had Max moving without thought. He had to survive this. Scooting up to look through the spotting scope, he adjusted the focus so he could see.
“Where?” Max asked, eyeing the fence.
“Where the fence dips in towards town, right at the 90.”
Max looked back through the scope, moving it to the right and then to the left, realizing he was going the wrong way. All of this tactical, sitting-around stuff was the worst. He just wanted to be back at their new base sitting on a couch, maybe taking a quick nap. They’d been up since early that morning, getting here and moving into position. A nap would be nice. Maybe a soda, too. It was always nice when they got a soda or a candy bar. Since they’d recruited more Reclaimers after the last had been wiped out, they’d had to start rationing food again. Jezz would kill him if she realized he was sneaking a Twix every once in a while. Well maybe not kill. He was one of her favorites, after all, but she would teach him a lesson.
“Have you found them yet, you imbecile?” Zeke asked.
Max flinched at Zeke’s tone, continuing to scan the scope to the right. There was the dip in the fence and… there! Just past the corner were two people on a bench. Judging by how close they were sitting, they looked like they were a couple. It was hard to tell through the fence if he recognized them, but… Yes, that was her—Alexis. Jezz had taken a liking to her. Not like she had to Ana though.
“That’s her,” Max said. “One of them.”
“Perfect,” Zeke said, making some adjustments on his scope.
Max didn’t know the first thing about a high-powered scope like that with all those knobs, but he’d seen enough movies to know that it could shoot a long way. Zeke seemed to know what he was doing, and Max didn’t doubt it. How far away were they? Half a mile?
“How far are we?” Max asked.
“One thousand and fifty-eight yards,” Zeke said, taking his hand away from the scope and cupping the stock with it.
That was an oddly specific distance, but he guessed that at that distance, every foot mattered. Zeke looked comfortable, almost like he could take a nap right there. Max wished he could be like that—comfortable out here, leaning against one of the tree trunks. Glancing into the scope again, he noticed the couple on the bench was kissing now. A pang went through his heart and he wished that could be him. He’d always wanted to have a family, but the women he’d been with had never lasted long and he couldn’t figure out why. Did Zeke really have to kill these two now? Was that what they were even there for?
“You’re not going to kill them, are you?” Max asked.
“Of course not,” Zeke said. “At this distance, the bullet would disintegrate when it hit the metal fence. We’re just here to confirm it’s them.”
“We’ve done that, so can we go?” Max asked, just wanting to get back to his warm bed.
“No. To properly hunt your prey, you need to know your prey,” Zeke said in a cold voice that made Max shiver. This man was almost as bad as Jezz sometimes—almost.
12
The Kiss
The whole world fell away when their lips touched. It was just him and her, and nothing else existed or mattered. The kiss lasted only a few moments, but it felt both like an eternity and the blink of an eye all at once. Their lips parted and his smile was so wide that it hurt his face. She giggled.
&
nbsp; “That good?” Alexis asked.
“Wow,” James said. It was all he could say. His mind was fuzzy, and if she hadn’t been holding onto him, he swore he would’ve floated into the darkening sky. “Wow.”
“Boys,” she said with another giggle.
The rest of the evening passed in a blur of happy feelings, their earlier conversation long forgotten. Nothing could compare to the euphoria he felt. When it was dark, he walked Alexis back to her house. They talked some along the way but nothing deep or painful; they both wanted the night to end on a high note. Outside her door, she stopped and they shared another short kiss.
“I could get used to that,” James said when their lips parted.
“Me too,” Alexis said, the porch light making her eyes glitter.
“I hope I didn’t ruin the date with my episode and all that,” James said. “I didn’t mean to walk away, I just…”
“No, you didn’t ruin it. In fact, that made it better. It was authentic, and in that one moment I was able to get to know you better than our whole conversation before it. Tonight was perfect. Thank you.”
“No, thank you,” James said with a wink.
“You’re such a dork.”
He smiled. “Goodnight, Alexis.”
“Goodnight, James.”
He watched her as she opened the door and went inside. She stole one last glance at him as the door closed. Standing paralyzed for a few moments, he began to practically skip back towards his place. Actually, he did start jogging for a few steps before his side began to ache and he stopped. Both of his wounds had been healing well now that they had proper medical care and he’d been taking it easy for a week. They did still bother him, however—mainly his side. It’d closed up but was still tender.
Arriving at their place in record time, he noticed again that all the lights were off. They must still be up at the saloon. Why not go celebrate tonight? It was only ten so James walked to the saloon.
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