“I know what you mean.” Collecting herself, she spun away from Rhys and began pacing, gesticulating rapidly as she spoke. “Of course, if Alpha is transmissible in breast milk, we’d have to find a way to engage wet nurses from the civilian population, or keep dosing the babies with antiserum until they’re weaned. We really don’t want toddlers infected with Alpha running around. That could be tricky, though; I have no idea how we could convince anyone to do it. Maybe if we could make them immune, but with the lab and the research and Dr. Thanh gone—” Her shoulders slumped. “Goat’s milk might work if we can’t find wet nurses, but not every human infant can thrive on it. Cow’s milk is definitely not a good option. Hmm. I don’t know if it’s feasible. Certainly not with the bad blood between the Jugs and the civilians.”
“Oh.” Rhys sighed. “I guess it was just a thought.”
Her voice stopped him as he turned to go back to Darius and his bedroll. “It was a good thought, Rhys. Especially considering how Schuyler’s treated you.”
“That’s not why I did it. She’s got her reasons for the way she feels about me. I’m not trying to win her over.” He spoke over his shoulder, his head bowed. “Don’t tell her about it if it’s not going to work out, okay? I wouldn’t want to get her hopes up.”
He shuffled away, leaving Xolani pacing by the ruins. He was almost out of earshot when she called after him, “Rhys?”
“Yeah?” He glanced back at her, waiting as she shuffled her weight awkwardly from one foot to another.
“I’ve never been prouder of the fact that I argued to save your life that day at the monastery than I am right now. You’ve grown into an incredible man. I’m glad I got to see it happen.” She cleared her throat and looked away. “Now go. Get some sleep, kid.”
Zach was awake and sitting by the fire when Rhys returned to camp. Rhys glanced at the bedroll where he had been curled up with the new Jug, Nico. He lay there sleeping with a strained frown on his face, as if troubled by terrible dreams, and Zach was watching him with concern.
“You can’t sleep either?” Rhys asked, dropping to sit beside him, cross-legged.
Zach nodded slowly, shifting his troubled stare away from Nico. He offered Rhys a wan smile. “Right now I’m trying to hold desperately to my belief in God’s benevolent will. To remember that He has a purpose and a plan for everything that has happened. Some moments are easier than others. When I told Nico I didn’t care if I got infected tomorrow, I didn’t mean it almost literally. I knew an accident might happen, I just— I thought we’d have more time.”
“I wish I could have been with you in time to do something.” Despite Xolani’s reassurance, he couldn’t help but feel like he’d failed his friend. He had, locked within his blood cells, the ability to stop the progress of Bane, but it wasn’t going to do Zach a damn bit of good now.
He said nothing else about it. Dwelling on it would only make things harder for them to face.
“So, when you mentioned someone called Nico, you didn’t tell me he was a Jug. Or that the two of you—”
“We weren’t. Well, sort of. Not really.” Zach chuckled and gave Nico another glance, filled with so much unrestrained adoration that it made Rhys’s chest ache. “He’s the reason why I ultimately parted ways with my father and brother, you know.”
“Really?” Rhys stared at him, wide-eyed.
“Oh yes.” Zach huffed and shook his head. “My father had so little charity left in his soul that he would have begrudged an injured man the use of our garden shed for shelter in the middle of an ice storm. I had to pull a gun to get him to stop threatening Nico. That’s when I realized that, for the sake of my own soul, I needed to abandon the safety of numbers and strike out with a complete stranger.”
“And you two have been apart all this time?”
“Since the military government surrendered, yes.” Zach bowed his head and murmured. “I wish I had the faith to say definitively that what we’ve done here today, what ended up coming from it, was worth it, but I’m not that self-sacrificing, I guess.”
Rhys’s eyes began to burn, the pain worse still for the smoke and heat that had seared them earlier. “I don’t want to see another friend die because of the Rot, Zach,” he whispered, trying not to let his voice crack.
“You won’t need to do what you did for your friend, Gabe.”
How could Zach be so calm about it? But then, Gabe had been too, hadn’t he, right up until the very end? He’d been sure of the choice that had resulted in his death.
“God willing, even Nico won’t. I wouldn’t put him through that. Xolani’s a physician. I’ve seen doctors help people die when there was nothing else to be done. She’ll know what to do. Until then, all I need is to make the most of these final few weeks.”
Rhys wiped his face. “If you think that’ll make it easier on Nico, you’re out of your fucking mind,” he said roughly.
“Could anything make this easier on Nico?” Zach asked simply. He met Rhys’s gaze, and something bleak flickered beneath that beatific serenity.
“No, I guess not,” Rhys muttered. He recognized the anger tightening his chest. He’d felt it that day he put a bullet into Gabe’s brain too. There was a near-irresistible urge to rail at the Fates and curse the world in general for being such a fucking heartless place.
“I’ll do what I can, of course,” Zach continued, his eyes wandering back toward Nico. “Give him as many happy memories as we can make to cherish when I’m gone. I don’t think I want to be anywhere near the Clean Zone. I want to go somewhere beautiful and idyllic, and somewhere Nico will never have cause to return to again.”
Rhys smiled sadly. “I’ll talk to Joe. I bet he’ll have ideas. He . . . understands these things.”
“Lake Tahoe,” came the gruff voice from the other side of the fire. “We’re not that far southeast of Reno. Not much farther past that, up into the mountains, you got Lake Tahoe. Been there once. It’s pretty.”
“Thank you, Joe,” Zach answered sweetly and returned to staring at the fire. After a while, Rhys left him there and retreated to Darius’s warm body and solid arms.
In a hangar, they found not only the transport skimmer that had brought Rhys and Schuyler to the research facility but a carefully charged and maintained cache of spare fuel cells.
Zach listened as Joe checked the craft over and reported to Darius. “Everything is sound. It’s in good condition,” he attested. “Fuel enough for me to take you all up to Tahoe, then come back and transport the civvies who want to return to Colorado Springs. After that, I’ll head north, see if I can intercept Titus and Toby. We’ll report in to Luis and then start scouting locations for the new settlement near Portland with the civvies who don’t want to go to the Clean Zone.”
“I’ll go with you as far as Colorado Springs.” That offer came from Schuyler. “My people have probably intercepted the civilian escorts from the other companies by now and told them to redirect. They’ll be returning to the lake, looking for me. And if anyone in the Clean Zone wants someone who can testify to what went on here, well, if they ask nicely and pull their heads out of their asses long enough to listen, maybe I’ll bother telling them.”
Xolani added, “Let Perimeter Security know to spread the word that if anyone wants to leave the Clean Zone to help establish the new settlement, they’re welcome. No one has to live under the Genetic Diversity Mandate if they don’t want to.”
Darius nodded his approval. “If we don’t have enough fuel to transport them in the lightcar, we’ll send escort parties down from Lewis-McChord to guide them until it gets too late in the year to risk the mountain passes.”
It was only a matter of hours after that until they were deposited on the shores of Lake Tahoe, well away from the city itself with its empty, haunted hotels and casinos. The mountains around them were lush and the air almost cool at this altitude. Everything smelled of pine and cedar and rich, decaying undergrowth. The lake was the most enchanting shade of blue Zach had e
ver seen, like a sapphire beneath the sky. The shores were mostly rocky shallows that quickly gave way to dense forests, but there were some sandy beaches, and they made camp on one of those.
“This is perfect,” Zach murmured and slipped his hand into Nico’s. He appeared as though he wanted to protest, but he mustered a smile and squeezed back.
Zach could feel close to God here, he thought, staring up at the crystalline sky. If he had to choose a place to die, this was a good one. He could pray and feel like none of the artifice and interference of humanity kept him from being heard. Unconcerned with revenants this far from the city, they spread themselves out on the soft, damp earth at the tree line, almost far enough apart to be three separate camps. That way, Zach and Nico wouldn’t have to go far for the privacy they desired.
Thank you, Lord, for providing such a beautiful place for me to spend my final weeks.
Darius and Xolani went hunting and returned with an enormous buck that would easily keep them fed for days. Rhys got a strange look on his face when he saw it.
“Do you remember when Gina killed the moose?” he asked as they all worked on carving and spitting strips of the venison. “She was fighting a group of revenants that were after her calf,” he explained for Nico and Zach’s benefit. It was the first time Zach had ever heard him speak about his early days with the Jugs beyond what he’d been required to do to survive. It didn’t seem like an entirely unhappy memory. “She was doing all right trampling them on her own, and Darius and the rest of the squad were just trying to clean up the ones who were left. But she didn’t know we were actually trying to save her, so she charged. The way Toby yelled when she turned on us! I’d never seen anything so huge. I thought we’d never be able to eat it all, but of course it was a whole squadron of Jugs . . .”
He broke off then with a quiet laugh and returned to working with the bloody meat. His cheeks were a hot pink, though.
Darius smiled knowingly. “You’re thinkin’ ’bout the pool table in the clubhouse that same night, aren’t you, boy?”
Rhys ducked his head but nodded. “That was the night you started trying to find ways to make it all easier for me.” He slid Darius a sideways glance. “I never thanked you for that.”
Darius shrugged, but Zach thought he looked pleased.
After dinner, they bathed in the frigid waters of the lake, and as the sun set, Zach lay in Nico’s arms and listened to the almost violent sounds of Darius and Rhys’s lovemaking that carried down the shore.
“Jugs are all like this,” Nico murmured, nibbling on the shell of Zach’s ear. “Comes from the communal living. Completely shameless.”
“So in other words, you fit right in?” Zach teased, rolling to trail his hand down Nico’s body to the hard cock nudging his hip.
Nico gasped and pushed into his hand. “Philosophically, at least.” He bit his lip and let his head fall back, the front of his throat bobbing. “I spent a lot of nights fantasizing about you being the one to make the noises I was hearing.”
“I wish I had been.” Their chatter broke off for a long while because Nico’s lips were just too tempting. Zach kissed him until they were both breathless and aching for more, until the rhythm of Nico’s hips in time to Zach’s stroking had grown almost desperately urgent. Zach gentled his pace, brushing whisper-soft kisses along Nico’s throat under the line of his beard. “I want you to do something for me.”
“Hmm?”
Oh, that distracted sound was good. It told Zach that Nico was nearly out of his head with desire, far past the point of thinking too hard. He’d been afraid that the specter of Zach’s infection might have made it difficult for them to give themselves to the pleasure of being together here.
Zach reached for his pack and the small jar of sunflower seed oil Rhys had given him, and pressed it into Nico’s slack palm. “I want you to have me.”
Nico’s eyes flew open, and Zach saw the conversation they could have had flitter across his face. Xolani had confirmed that by this point, Zach’s immune system was making antibodies to the Alpha strain of the virus. There was no possibility of simultaneous exposure. Now they could indulge in the one pleasure Zach’s refusal to accept the Alpha strain had always denied them.
Grief shadowed Nico’s beloved face for a moment, but then his expression smoothed as he pushed it aside and closed his hand on the proffered jar of oil. “I want that,” he rasped, kissing Zach hard. “I want that more than anything.”
Zach smiled and rolled onto his back, pulling his knees to his chest. It was a wanton, lurid position to assume, as shameless as Nico had accused the Jugs of being, but he felt nothing even close to shame as he spread himself open and offered all his most private places up to Nico. God’s blessing was on their union, he’d always believed that, from the first time they’d pleasured each other. There was nothing to be shy or ashamed about.
He closed his eyes, and Nico explored his crevice with gentle fingertips, then opened them again when Nico paused to dig in his pants for his pocketknife. He carefully pared his fingernails before resuming his caresses. Zach gave himself over to the sensation of those featherlight touches brushing past the ring of his anus, making him tingle with pleasure and anticipation.
He’d had Nico’s fingers inside him before, but there was a rare gentleness here tonight between them, a sense of reverence, of worship. Nico knelt between Zach’s splayed legs and placed slow, sucking kisses up the underside of his shaft while he coated his fingers with oil. And then there was the counterintuitive pleasure of being stretched and filled. Slowly, so slowly, awkward and not quite comfortable until something changed and made it feel very, very right. Nico lapped the dribbling beads of fluid from the tip of Zach’s cock, then drew it in and sucked it down to his throat as the pumping of his fingers intensified.
“Oh God, Nico! Yes!” Zach panted and wriggled, seeking more pressure from Nico’s fingers. It felt too easy, now, not enough to fill him the way he wanted to be filled. More would ache, he knew that, he’d felt that, but it didn’t matter because he needed more, needed that ache, needed to be stretched until he was sure he couldn’t bear it, that it would tear him in two.
He released the back of his knees, letting his legs hook over Nico’s shoulders as he reached down and held Nico’s head still while he pumped into Nico’s mouth. A groan vibrated against the head of his cock, a growly sound that meant Nico liked what he was doing. Impaled on Nico’s fingers, he thrust into the heat and suction of Nico’s mouth, moaning, crying out for more without the slightest concern if his voice carried down the lake the way Rhys’s had.
He whimpered when Nico drew away, sliding his full lips off Zach’s cock with a teasing swirl of his tongue, and easing his fingers out of Zach.
“No . . .” he pleaded, unbearably empty, and his skin cold everywhere that Nico no longer touched him.
“I’ve got you, cariño,” Nico whispered. “Just give me a minute.”
Zach twisted to see past his hovering legs to watch Nico fill his palm with oil and slick it along his shaft with a shaking hand. It was messy and drizzly, running down Nico’s scrotum and dripping onto his thighs, but Nico didn’t seem to care. He poured more oil into his palm and coated the fingers of his other hand again. It ran in sloppy rivulets down Zach’s crevice, but then Nico pressed against his rim with three slick fingers and the heedless urgency was snuffed in an instant.
Zach went very, very still, breathless, his eyes locking with Nico’s as those fingers slowly progressed, first stretching and then burning almost beyond what Zach thought he could bear. He felt the prickling sweat of effort pop up out of his pores even though he was just lying there, trembling, waiting for the sting to ease.
“All right?” Nico whispered. Zach licked his lips and nodded, never breaking eye contact. He was panting too fast, too shallowly to answer with words. After a long moment, the burn eased and his muscles unlocked. He sighed in relief and nodded again.
“I want to make this so good for you
,” Nico said, pressing a kiss to the inside of Zach’s knee as he guided it over his shoulder, leaving oil on his skin. He cautiously drew his fingers out of Zach and raised the opposite knee over his other shoulder with that hand, while he positioned the blunt head of his cock against Zach’s entrance with the other.
“It could never be anything else,” Zach murmured, then closed his eyes and gasped when the pressure blossomed, sharp and eye watering. He went rigid again, his hands on Nico’s thighs as if he’d push him away.
Nico caressed Zach’s calf with his lips. “Relax. Push back against me. Go toward it. Don’t try to get away from it.”
The encouragement went counter to everything Zach’s senses were telling him, and with anyone but Nico, he couldn’t have obeyed. But it was Nico, and underneath the fear of more pain than he could possibly bear was the triumphant knowledge that he had Nico inside him, joined to him like they were one flesh. That massive, intruding presence was the man he’d loved for over a decade, the man he’d spent so many years away from. They were together now, in every possible sense, and so Zach drew a deep breath and used his legs on Nico’s shoulders and his hands on Nico’s thighs as leverage to pull himself toward Nico.
The fiery ache eased, something popped through his resisting muscles, and they groaned in unison as Nico slid deeper inside.
Oh, and it was good. The burn was hardly even a memory now. Everything was full in a way that should have felt wrong but instead was so very right. Especially when the electric pleasure of Nico brushing against Zach’s prostate began. He worked into Zach in small thrusts and nudges, and Zach thrust back, hurrying him along, needing Nico as deep as he could possibly go.
Zach was beyond controlling his own body, beyond doing anything but reacting. He reached for the blanket by his head with both hands because it felt right to have his hands up there, to have his upper body as splayed and open and helpless as the rest of him. Nico thrust a little harder, a little deeper as he made love to Zach’s calf with his lips and tongue. A small smile touched his mouth as he took in Zach’s position.
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