The fear was immeasurable. They ran faster than they ever imagined they could, never letting up for a second, until Nancy’s throat burned like hot coals and her heart was threatening to throw in the towel for good. When she began to slow, Ken tightened his grip on her wrist and dragged her. When she began to stumble and fall he hauled her up onto his back and kept moving. In a corner of her exhausted and frightened mind she couldn’t help but wonder where his energy was coming from.
Night fell as they wove through the trees. Ken hiked Nancy up every so often to make sure she didn’t fall. Eventually he slowed, his breath ragged, and without warning a large root seemed to leap from the Earth and wrapped around his foot. With a yelp, he was thrown to the ground. Nancy went flying off his back and into a large, sharp bush. They both groaned and cursed. Now that he’d been stopped, Ken couldn’t seem to find the will to get up and keep moving.
Nancy crawled from the bushes. The dozens of tiny cuts all over her meant nothing. She made her way on hands and knees to where Ken lay in the dirt and leaves.
“I’m...sorry...” he sputtered. He couldn’t seem to take in enough air to speak. “Can’t...go...on...”
“It’s okay,” she assured him. Her words did nothing to convince him, if the pain and misery etched on his face was to be believed. “We’ll wait here and rest for a little while.”
They didn’t have to voice what they were both thinking. The zombies would catch up eventually. They didn’t tire, they had no reason to stop, and their prey was on foot. Plus, now that they were out in the open, the demon child could find them much more easily and lead her hoard right to them. Regardless of how tired Nancy and Ken might be, they really couldn’t afford to rest.
Nancy helped Ken into a sitting position and backed him up against the trunk of a large tree. She snuggled down next to him. It was only early fall, but the evening winds were chilly and would only get colder throughout the night. Ken put his arm around Nancy and sighed out his aches and fatigue. Nancy sniffled to herself and prayed to whomever might listen that Greg had gotten away with the baby.
Eventually Ken drifted off, having expended every ounce of his energy. Nancy took his hand in hers and tried her very hardest to stay awake. She needed to watch over him, protect him like he had done for her. She held out longer than some people would have, but eventually the sweet allure of sleep seduced her and she found herself dozing off into a restless slumber.
She woke with a start, the tiny fragments of a dream flitting away as she remembered where she was and what was happening. She could hear them. It didn’t sound like there were many yet, but at least a few of them had caught up.
Nancy turned to Ken and shook him hard. He woke slowly. There was drowsiness etched around his eyes. He looked at her as though he’d never seen her before in his life. “Huh?” he asked. Nancy shook him harder, desperate to get him awake and moving. “Up!” she hissed. “Up now! They’re coming! We fell asleep! They could be on us any second!”
For a few torturous moments it didn’t seem that Ken was understanding the words coming out of her mouth, but then, suddenly, his eyes went wide and his body stiffened. His ears pricked up at the moaning and cracking of twigs and leaves beneath dead feet. He scrambled to get up and almost fell flat on his face. Nancy quickly grabbed his arm, threw it over her shoulders, and forced herself to move. It wasn’t an easy task; she was extremely tired herself, and Ken was much heavier than she was. Several times she found herself tipping precariously. She almost went head-over-heels over several roots that she couldn’t quite seem to lift her feet high enough to avoid. When she stumbled and rammed her shoulder into a tree Ken spoke again.
“Nancy, thank you,” he said sadly. “But I think you should leave me. Run as fast as you can.”
Nancy’s head ached from the variety of emotions that stirred within her. With all the strength she could muster she slammed Ken’s body up against the tree she had run into, took half a step back, and grabbed him on either side of his face. His eyes were wide. Nancy stared into them with a hard, frustrated look on her face. She squeezed her fingers into his jawbone and clenched her teeth. “I am not leaving you behind.” She emphasized each word with a stubborn anger that couldn’t be argued with. “We are going together or we are not going at all. If you even think about trying to throw yourself to the wolves I swear I will plunk myself down next to you and we’ll be eaten together. Do you understand me?”
Ken gave a minuscule nod. That wasn’t good enough for Nancy, so she squeezed his face even harder. “Do. You. Understand. Me?”
This time Ken nodded enthusiastically, and when Nancy threw his arm over her shoulders again he put every ounce of willpower that was left in him into moving along beside her.
The groaning only seemed to be getting closer, no matter how fast they tried to move. Despite what she’d told Ken, Nancy was beginning to think that maybe laying down and dying was simply the only course of action left to them. Surely at this point it was inevitable? They couldn’t keep moving for long in this state.
“Look!” Ken whispered suddenly. There was excitement in his voice. In her depressed stupor Nancy was barely able to lift her head to see where he was pointing, but when she did her eyes lit up. It was an old cabin, probably someone’s hunting retreat, and it looked abandoned. It was almost entirely made of brick, except for the roof and a wooden enclosure off to one side that protected a pile of firewood from the rain. It wasn’t a stronghold by any means, but it had a nice, solid-looking door and thick, dark curtains on the windows. They hobbled up to it excitedly.
“We don’t want to smash the lock if we don’t have to,” Nancy was murmuring to herself.
“Here,” Ken told her with a grin. He waved a small, silver key that he’d pulled down from the shade of the light next to the door. Nancy grabbed it, shoved it in the lock, and held her breath as it turned. The door clicked open. The sound was like a choir of angels bursting into a glorious rendition of Hallelujah. They rushed inside, shut the door, and pushed the first thing they saw (an old, cushy armchair) in front of it before collapsing to the floor. They passed out with their arms around each other.
Nancy had terrible nightmares. They weren’t like the ones she’d been having for the past weeks. In those dreams she had been somehow calm, as though she was watching the world fall apart from somewhere afar and untouched. These new nightmares were terrifying. They came one after another, an anthology of death and destruction. In one of them she was running through the woods again, but she tripped and was overtaken by the zombies while Ken’s voice accused her of dooming them. In another she watched, mute and helpless, as a wall of zombies converged on Greg and Sarah. Greg screamed and protected the sobbing baby with his body, but the zombies tore him apart and carried Sarah off as though she was some kind of morbid trophy of their conquest. In the last nightmare Nancy watched from some strange, high vantage point while Ken stood in a circle of zombies, desperately trying to shoot them all off with a rifle. She tried to scream to him as the zombies moved ever closer, but he couldn’t hear her and she couldn’t get to him. She watched as he was torn limb from limb.
She woke from the third nightmare screaming, only to have a hand quickly clapped against her mouth. She opened her teary eyes and looked - with no lack of relief - at Ken. He had a finger to his lips, telling her to be quiet. She nodded. He released her face. She took a deep, calming breath of air.
She looked around the cabin. It was day again, she gathered from the tiny streaks of light sneaking in through the edges of the curtains. The cabin was mostly furnished with an older generation of living room furniture, an old, possibly homemade kitchen table, and what appeared to be a double-sized bed with a colorful quilt in the back room. There was a gun rack on the far wall that housed five older-style hunting rifles, one of which had been removed and was now laying on the kitchen table next to a large box of ammunition. Ken had been busy while Nancy was asleep.
“What’s going on?” she whispered.
Ken answered by pointing at the kitchen window, where a slow-moving but very foreboding shadow was wandering by. “They’ve been walking past the house,” he said very quietly. “I don’t know if they know we’re in here or not, but they haven’t tried to get in so I’m thinking not. They just keep wandering through the woods as though they think we’re nearby but can’t quite figure out where we went.”
Nancy nodded, calm under the circumstances, but she was shivering on the inside.
Ken tiptoed to the kitchen area, grabbed the rifle and a box of granola bars from the kitchen counter and motioned for Nancy to follow him. He lead her into the bathroom, where there was no window, and gently closed the door. He laid the rifle across the sink before tearing open a granola bar and handing it to Nancy. She devoured it without hesitation. With a spark of pain she wondered if Greg had gotten a chance to feed Sarah yet, or if... No. She shook her head in defiance to keep herself from thinking about it.
“When did you wake up?” she asked Ken.
He shook his head a little. “Barely an hour ago,” he replied. “I scouted around and found some ammo for the guns and that was about it. I was actually just about to move you to the bed when you woke.” His face changed a little then. “What were you dreaming about?” he asked.
Nancy’s eyes fell down to the dusty cushion floor. It had an absolutely hideous orange floral design. “Nightmare,” she said. Ken didn’t press the matter.
Between the two of them the entire box of granola bars was soon gone. Ken took his new rifle and made a quick trip to the kitchen for a couple of glasses, which he returned with and filled at the bathroom sink. The water wasn’t the freshest, but it was cool and helped them swallow the last of their makeshift meal. They sat in silence for a few minutes afterward.
“Thank you,” Ken eventually said. His eyes diverted toward the toilet paper holder. “For, you know, dragging me here.”
Nancy found her mouth inexplicably twitching into a smile. “No problem,” she assured him. “I’m sure you would have done the same for me.”
Ken’s head whipped around as though he’d been waiting for that exact response. “Of course!” he said a little too loudly. His head lowered again, and Nancy found he reminded her of a sad puppy. “All I want is to keep you safe.”
The bar back at home and the countless nights they’d shared company seemed like a thousand miles and a hundred years away. Nancy found that here, in this small bathroom, she was really looking at Ken for the first time. Without a word she stood, moved over to him, and placed her hands on his face, forcing him to look at her. “And why is that?” she pressed, her face still and serious.
Ken didn’t hesitate. It seemed that he’d been dying to say the words for some time. “Because I love you.”
It was what she’d wanted to hear, though in hindsight she thought that the exact words wouldn’t have really mattered. She straddled Ken’s legs, set herself down on his lap, and kissed him gently, savoring the taste of his lips. When she began to pull away she found instead that he was pulling her closer. She allowed it. His kiss was more fierce, passionate, and intense. It was just as sweet.
A moment later they were in the bedroom. Nancy had no idea how they’d arrived there, but it didn’t matter. Ken had blocked the single window with an ugly painting of an old fishing vessel and closed the door so that they were in darkness. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, but from her vantage point on the bed Nancy could see Ken’s muscular outline as he pulled the shirt from his body and leaned toward her. He placed his hands on the bed on either side of her body and bowed down low to kiss her neck, her collarbone, her chest. Not wanting to stop for even a second, she adjusted enough to raise her arms and tear off her top, discarding it to the rough hardwood floor.
A short time ago they’d both been beyond exhaustion, hunger, thirst, and fear. For the moment all that was forgotten. Nancy could feel Ken’s hot breath as his lips moved down her stomach. Ken could feel every twitch and pulse of her body beneath his hands and lips. Nancy longed to moan, but bit her lip instead. She reached out with her foot and gave a little tug at the waist of Ken’s pants. He obeyed her silent command immediately. Nancy wriggled out of her jeans while his hands were busy, and in a rush of hormones she reached for Ken’s hair to pull his head to hers. Their hands were everywhere, their bodies warming with each passing second, and for just a little while there was no apocalypse, no blood-thirsty predators outside, and there was nothing else in the world except for him and her.
Chapter Fifteen
Nancy woke because she was chilly. Her mind was still half asleep as she reached blindly for a blanket and instead found the soft skin of a muscular arm. The unexpected touch made her jump before she realized whose arm it was. She opened her eyes and propped herself up to look at the gently sleeping form of her lover in the bed beside her. He was snoring, just a little. Before she knew it she was giggling like a lovestruck school girl. The knitted quilt was just barely covering Ken’s bare body, which made Nancy’s skin flush with the memory of the previous night. At that she realized why she was so cold; she wasn’t wearing a strip of clothing. For a moment she considered getting dressed, but while watching Ken sleep she opted to pull the quilt up around them both and snuggle into his body instead. She wanted to savor every second with him that she could before reality inevitably crashed back down upon them.
As they lay there, him sleeping soundly, her enjoying the feel of his skin, she thought about everything. Her world had changed beyond recognition, and not just because of the obvious. Before the zombies came she had been all alone in her one bedroom apartment. The only family member she’d ever known had been gone for several years, and her only real friend had almost nothing in common with her. She’d had a very simple life: go to work, save money, try to figure out what she was going to do with the rest of her life.
It was all so different now. She could barely remember a time when getting into a decent school program was the most important thing to her. It was a pipe dream now, a faded memory of different times. Everything she’d known was gone; her apartment left behind, her one close friend dead, all of her neighbors and people she’d come to know on a daily basis gone in a way she couldn’t even stand to think about. She’d found she could be strong for the right reasons - to protect her honorary brother and adopted daughter - but fear was still a constant part of her life that was not likely to ever really go away. These situations weren’t getting any easier to deal with. She just kept forcing herself through them.
Ken stirred. Nancy looked at him, but he hadn’t quite woken just yet. She smiled and stroked the stubble on his chin with the tips of her fingers. Comparatively, this was a small change to her life, but it felt like a big one. Regardless of all that had happened around her - all the pain, misery, fear, and frustration - one night had changed her view of the world in a very significant way. On one hand it was such an amazing high to have found love - and she truly believed that this was love - under such crazy circumstances. On the other hand, she found herself even more terrified than before. Here was yet another thing that she was scared to lose. Could they really protect each other in this brave new world? Eventually something would happen to one of them. Whether it came down to sacrificing herself for him, or being forced to watch as he was taken away from her, Nancy didn’t know if she would be able to handle it. Again, she found herself thinking of Greg and Sarah and wondering with a heavy heart whether they were okay and if she would ever get to see them again.
“You look sad,” Ken whispered. “I guess I’m not as good as I thought I was.”
Nancy pushed her thoughts away and forced herself to smile. “Nonsense,” she told him. She pressed her naked body closer to his. “I’ve never felt anything so amazing in all my life.”
“Careful,” Ken admonished. “You’ll give me a big head.” He was struggling not to grin.
Unable to resist, Nancy peeked under the covers and then looked back at Ken with a smirk. �
��Too late,” she said.
He laughed, rolled to his side, and gave Nancy a soft kiss. “Have I mentioned lately that you are unbelievably beautiful?” he asked.
Nancy stuck out her tongue. “Not that I recall,” she told him. “But then, I’d know you were lying because we’ve been running from zombies for weeks and I’ve had an average of about one shower every nine days.”
Ken chuckled. “You could go get one now,” he suggested. “It might make you feel better.”
Nancy wrapped her arms around his torso and pulled him tight. “This makes me feel better,” she insisted. “I don’t ever want to leave your side.”
He smiled and humored her for a while, but eventually he had to point out that her plan wasn’t reasonable. “I think that maybe we should get moving again soon,” he suggested.
She was so surprised that she found herself gaping at him. “But they’re still out there!” she hissed.
Ken nodded. “And they’re probably not going to go away any time soon,” he pointed out. “And there’s not much food here. We’ll be lucky to ration it for a day or two and after that we’re just sitting here, getting weaker and weaker. In the meantime if that demon bitch realizes that we’re in here they’ll start busting their way in and we won’t have any way to run.”
Nancy couldn’t argue with his logic, though the idea of running out there again filled her with dread. They’d been so lucky to find this shelter, but the next time...
“What do you suggest?” she asked, miserable and resigned.
He propped himself up on one elbow and stroked her arm. It had a calming effect, though not quite calming enough. “Those rifles in the other room?” he said. “We’ve got a lot of ammo for them. Whoever owns this place must have been hunting god-damn bear or something because he’s got enough ammo to run his own army. I realize that there’s only just the two of us, but there’s enough firepower here that I think we can make a good go of it by climbing out onto the roof, taking out everyone we can see, and then making a run for it with as much ammo as we can reasonably carry.”
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