Ashley Drake, Zombie Hunter

by Dana Fredsti

  I arched against him, wanting more than his hands and fingers, as talented as they might be. I didn't say “Take me now,” at least not out loud, but my body had to be screaming it.

  “Do you want this?” Gabriel whispered, nipping at my earlobe, hot breath fanning the clichéd yet very real flames of desire.

  I nodded, growling deep in my throat as he pressed a finger against my most sensitive spot. He withdrew his hand, hooking those clever fingers in my waistband as he lifted me up with his other hand and pulled my yoga pants and underwear down and off my legs and feet. They joined the growing pile of clothes on the floor.

  I reached down greedily to unbutton his jeans and started to shimmy them off his hips when he suddenly groaned, and not with desire. “Shit!”

  “What?”

  “I don't have anything with me.”

  I put my hand against his substantial erection. “Looks like you have plenty to me.”

  It was his turn to growl and press himself against my hand. Then he stopped and said, “I mean, protection.”

  I couldn't help it, I laughed. “Gabriel. We are in a college bathroom in an extremely liberal part of Northern California. That is so not a problem.” I pointed to my right where a vending machine for condoms snuggled up next to one for Tampax.

  Gabriel looked where I was pointing and gave one of his rare shouts of laughter. “Thank God we're not in Utah.” Pulling his pants back up, he went over to the condom machine and reached in his pants pockets. “Damn. You got any change?”

  I shook my head. “Sorry. Spent it all at Bigfoot's Revenge.”

  Gabriel gave the machine a hard thwack with the side of his fist. The little metal door creaked open and several foil wrapped condoms dropped to the floor. Gabriel scooped one up and ripped the foil open. “We can owe them.” Then he flipped the lock on the bathroom door, slid out of his jeans, kicking them to the floor, and came back over to me.

  I watched as he approached, admiring his physique, especially his nicely muscled chest and arms, and those strong thighs and calves. And everything else in between and beyond. He was built like a classical Greek male statue rather than a gym junkie. Gabriel was someone who really worked rather than just worked out. I stared at him like someone who's been on Slim-Fast confronted with a pizza. He stared at me just as hungrily.

  We didn't waste any time. We couldn't indulge in a long, languorous session of lovemaking or hours of hot-monkey love. We both knew we had to get back to the briefing, that a zombie swarm was headed our way, and that we might be dead in the next forty-eight hours.

  But the moment Gabriel slid his length inside of me and we began rocking our hips together, the world went away for a while and none of it mattered. Everything was centered around the heat and warmth of our bodies, the sensations building in me as my warmth pulsed around his hardness sliding in and out of me. I wrapped my legs around his hips, the sink cold against my butt. We kissed frantically as our lust for one another grew, his mouth trailing from my lips to my ear where he nibbled on the lobe, moving down to my neck. A brief vision of Jake's bloody mouth flashed into my head, and I forced it away with a visceral effort. Fuck you, bad memories. Get out of my sex life.

  I reveled in the feeling of Gabriel's teeth gently scraping against the skin. My hips began to rock faster as I felt things begin to heat up, the first flickers of orgasm starting to pulse in all the right places, spreading through my body in waves of liquid heat.

  My muscles tightened around Gabriel, who groaned with pleasure as the pace of his thrusts increased in speed and power. The words ‘harder, faster’ came to mind, followed by “pussycat, kill, kill” and I started laughing even as I came in a great quivering wave of pleasure. Gabriel's orgasm followed almost immediately. He buried his face in my neck and said my name as he came, the shudders that racked his body sending more ripples through my loins along with another, smaller orgasm. Two for the price of one.

  Then Gabriel's hands cupped my face and he stared at me, those gorgeous eyes of his so close to mine I could see flecks of gold in the denim blue irises. Sweat sheened his brow and chiseled cheeks, and strands of minted gold hair lay damp on his forehead. He looked good enough to eat. And yeah, I know that thought was just so wrong under the circumstances, but he really did.

  For a moment we just looked at each other, both catching our breath as the last ripples of orgasm left our bodies.

  He cocked an eyebrow, still breathing just a little heavily, and asked, “Why did you laugh?”

  I told him, figuring he might as well know how my brain worked if we were going to have any future together. If we had any future at all.

  Gabriel had a bemused smile on his face, and I hurriedly added, “I know I'm weird, but—”

  Gabriel shook his head. “You're perfect,” he whispered, kissing my eyes, my forehead, my lips. “Not too weird, not too fat, not too skinny.”

  “Not too hot, not too cold?”

  I felt him smile against my lips before he replied, “Definitely not too cold.” He kissed me again, then looked at me. “Ashley…” He stared at me so seriously it almost made me laugh. Luckily I didn't. “You know what I could become. You've seen it. Are you sure about…” He paused.

  “About us? About this? About the fact I want you so badly that I just made love to you in the women's bathroom?” I nodded. “Yes. I'm sure. Just … just promise me you'll trust me next time.”

  “Next time…?”

  I shrugged. “Next time you have some horrible secret that you think you shouldn't tell me. Tell me. I can handle your condition … I mean, I'm some sort of mutant too, right? But I can't handle you not trusting me enough to tell me.”

  “Fair enough.”

  He kissed me one more time, then reluctantly slid out of me. I let him go just as reluctantly, but we had serious business to attend to and I'm sure everyone was already wondering what we'd gotten up to during our absence.

  Doing a quick cleanup, we both hurriedly dressed. I splashed water on my face again and checked for any obvious signs of our lovemaking.

  “You gave me a hickey,” I said, looking at the bite marks between my neck and shoulder.

  He pulled my thermal up a little higher and hid it. “No one will notice.”

  I gave a little laugh. “Besides, Nathan already thinks you're my boyfriend.” I unlocked the bathroom door and reached for the handle, but Gabriel grabbed my wrist and turned me around to face him.

  “Am I?”

  “Are you what?”

  “Am I your boyfriend?” He cocked his head to one side, an oddly vulnerable gesture for him.

  “Do you want to be?”

  Gabriel smiled. “Yeah, I think I do.”

  I leaned in and kissed him softly on the lips. “Works for me.”

  We walked down the hall hand in hand, unclasping our fingers only when we reached Room 217. I took a deep breath and went inside, Gabriel close behind. Was I embarrassed? Sure. No one likes to lose it in front of friends and colleagues. But as Nathan pointed out, now was not the time for high school shit so I'd suck it up and act like an adult.

  Nathan had joined Simone, Paxton, and Gentry at the table in the front of the room. Guess he'd been promoted to one of the alpha dogs.

  Simone smiled when we walked in. “Good, you two are back. We have a swarm headed our way with arrival estimated in approximately twelve hours, if that. Nathan.” Her tone became oddly formal. “If you'd be so kind.”

  Nathan nodded. “We have around eighty trained soldiers, fifty non-coms, and an additional thirty or so survivors who may or may not have any useful combat experience. Doesn't sound like a lot when you think about what's going to be coming at us.”

  Sure didn't, I thought, sitting back in the front row next to Lil. She reached out and squeezed my hand.

  ““You ever see a movie called Zulu?” Nathan didn't wait for a reply, even though Tony's hand shot up immediately. “Less than a hundred and fifty British soldiers held off between two or t
hree thousand Zulu warriors at a place called Rourke's Drift by erecting barricades of wagons and sacks of grain, then employing a classic military tactic: Stand fast, firing in ranks. Three lines.” Nathan got to his feet and started pacing enthusiastically. “First rank fires, drops down. Second rank steps up while first rank reloads. Third rank fires while second rank reloads. Oh yeah, and these Zulus, who happened to be some of the fiercest warriors in the world, were charging the Brits at a dead run, with shield, spears, and even some rifles of their own. But at the end of the day it was the English who walked away from that fight.”

  Wow. I had to give Nathan points for motivational speechifying. I almost expected something along the lines of, “They can take our brains, but they'll never take our freedom!”

  He looked at us intently. “So, how does that apply to us? We've got less than a hundred soldiers and a few thousand zombies. But the zombies don't have weapons and will be coming at us a lot slower than the Zulus, and with none of the strategy. So we'll be applying the ranks with a few other tricks up our sleeves.”

  “Yeah,” said Tony. “But did you see Zulu Dawn? Took place in some funky place called Islandwana, where the soldiers are, like, totally obliterated by the Zulus.”

  Nathan looked at him. “A, I hate movie buffs. B, that was the prequel. C, it's Isandlwana. And D, keep that to yourself. We're taking our chops from the winners, not the losers.”

  Tony sat back, chastened.

  Nathan looked around the room. “Anyone else with movie trivia to share? No? Good. So let's discuss the rest of our assets.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Silly String?”

  I held up a can, one of half a dozen in Nathan’s duffel bags. “Silly String is part of our assets?”

  Kai grabbed it from me and gave a little whoop. “Sweet! This stuff is awesome!”

  Kai and I were out with the rest of the Wild Cards by the barricade running the length of the main parking lot.

  I hadn’t seen Gabriel since we’d parted ways in front of my room, but I still carried a warm glow in my heart and certain parts of my anatomy. He was out with Nathan and the rest of the soldiers setting up lines on the far side of the barricade. They’d set up a couple of makeshift wooden ramps on either side so people could go back and forth with relative ease. The ramps could be set on fire or otherwise dismantled if the zoms got close enough to use them.

  The fog lay heavily in the air again, thick and moist and cold. Thank you, Cosmic FX designer, for the perfect day to battle hordes of zombies. What’s wrong with a little cheerful sunshine?

  Fog laced the trees and buildings and the air smelled of eucalyptus, the sea salt breeze from the ocean … and something else, a faintly rotten taint wafting in on tendrils of mist.

  Did I hear the moans of the damned or was it my imagination? Either way, the swarm was on its way and soon enough the smell of putrefied flesh would fill our nostrils.

  I did a quick glance downwards. Yup, I’d remembered the nose plugs this time. Not like we’d notice one lone zombie sneaking up on us amidst the hundreds marching … or lurching up on Big Red.

  I still wondered what the story was with Nathan and Simone, and why Colonel Paxton seemed content to have Nathan take the lead in what was his operation, but explanations would have to wait. We had a job to do.

  Our job? To go through the stuff we’d lugged from Nathan’s and divvying it up amongst ourselves, the soldiers and those civilians willing and able to fight. We had little canvas knapsack/backpacks piled up, each one waiting to be stuffed like a deadly Christmas stocking packed by G.I. Joe Santa.

  Nathan’s stuff included the flamethrower, assorted firearms and ammo, a bag full of darts, projectile weapons, and what Nathan said were little radios transmitters. And Silly String.

  “Why didn’t you mention the Silly String in the first place?” Tony slapped a hand against his forehead. “Now if we only had a wheel barrow and a holocaust cloak…”

  Kai grinned. “There should be something here about killing my father and preparing to die, right?”

  “Gah!” I couldn’t stand it any more. “I swear, you two are going to be quoting movies when you die, aren’t you?”

  “Yup.” Tony picked up a can of Silly String and put it in his bag. “And if I get taken down by zombies, you can bet I’ll be saying ‘choke on it” all the way down their throats.”

  I restrained the urge to shove a can of Silly String down his throat and tell him to choke on it. Instead I turned back to Kai. “What, may I ask, is so awesome about Silly String?”

  “They use Silly String in Iraq to find trip wires,” Kai replied. “Spray some of this shit, it catches on one of the invisible wires and there you go.”

  “Great,” I said. “But zombies don’t set trip wires.”

  “It’s also highly flammable.” Kai put a can in his knapsack. “Light a match near this shit and you’ve got zombie barbecue.”

  “Seriously?” Lil poked her head up from behind a bench where she sat behind loading ammo into clips for the firearms.

  Kai nodded. “Yup. Couple of kids at a party found out the hard way.”

  “Put the Silly String away, children,” said Gentry, walking up behind us. “I’ve got this.” He brandished the flamethrower nozzle, the tanks strapped to his back.

  “Good. Silly String is just … silly.” With that editorial comment, Lil went back to loading the clips. I smiled, happy to see her interacting with the rest of us even a little bit. Mack’s loss desolated her and I’m not sure how much of last night’s discussion penetrated her grief.

  We’d stayed up late into the night figuring out how we were going to face what could be up to several thousand zombies against less than a hundred trained combatants along with whatever civilians and non-coms had any firearms or practical experience that make them an asset instead of a liability on the battlefield. There were around two hundred of those, including medics and civilians who’d been taking advantage of the training over the last week. Others, about twenty, had the fortitude to fight even if it meant wielding blunt objects. They’d be the next line of defense.

  Then there were the survivors who still hadn’t come to grips with the fact the dead had returned to life and were trying to eat them. They could barely function on a day-to-day basis, let alone fight against something they refused to accept was real. They’d stay in the secure lower floors of DBP while the rest of us fought. If we lost, well, they’d be thankfully unaware up to the moment the military dropped a tactical nuke in the middle of the quarantine zone. Which meant they were depending on those of us who could fight to make sure this didn’t happen. Thanks to Nathan and his toys, we might have a chance.

  For instance, the darts—tiny little things with fins made of plastic explosive called déjà vu’s—were loaded into special projectile weapons, kind of like modified paintball guns. The darts also could (and would) be packed into what Nathan described as a “claymore dispersal platform,” which would send multiple darts shooting out in a specifically aimed arc, but that was someone else’s job. Like I wanted to mess with bombs.

  Each dart had a little RIFD chip in it, like the tags they used in retail stores to prevent shoplifting. Both used radio signals to activate the chip, but whereas the tags just set off an alarm when within range of the transmitter, these little darts exploded. Pretty cool, huh?

  The downside is the signal wouldn’t work unless the transmitter was within ten yards. Some would be mounted on the razor wire slinky to take care of zoms that made it past our other defenses, but otherwise the transmitters had to be carried onto the battlefield. Pretty much a suicide mission for anyone not immune to the zombie virus, all that hot blood and goo splattering around. So if it came to that, the Wild Cards would be the one carrying the transmitters out into the swarm. Fun times, right? Especially since we were two Cards short in our deck.

  The remaining soldiers, Alpha, Beta, and assorted personnel, were in position by the barricades, watching for
the swarm. The majority of defenders were at the main barricade stretching across the back end of the outdoor athletic fields and the parking lots. Those were the most vulnerable areas, long stretches without any buildings to create an extra barrier. The main road into Big Red ran right up into the parking lots, a nice easy walk for man and zombie alike.

  The rest of the campus had much better protection between the barricades, a lot more buildings, and the fields strewn thick with blackberry bushes and a few paths, like the one where I’d nearly been eaten. We had sharpshooters up in strategic places to take care of any zombies that might come in from those areas, although we expected most of the swarm to head up from the direction of Redwood Grove.

  A golf cart pulled up, driven by Simone with Jamie as passenger. Both wore combat gear. Jamie smiled at me as they stepped out of the cart and I gave a little wave. She’d been friendly ever since Lil and I had brought home Binkey and Doodle. Maybe she’d noticed the chemistry between Gabriel and me or just decided I wasn’t a rival for Simone’s affections. Honestly, I doubt Simone went that way at all, especially after observing her reaction to Nathan. But maybe Jamie liked the whole unattainable-love dynamic. Whatever, I was just glad to have one less enemy.

  Tony checked Jamie out with an appreciative eye. “You look good in Rambo gear.”

  She eyed him back with a noticeable lack of appreciation and turned away without deigning to reply. I doubted Tony noticed. He was too busy checking out her butt in tight camo pants.

  Simone took a look at what we were all doing, picking up one of the full knapsacks and inspecting it. “Almost done, then? Good. Jamie and I will help hand them out. We’ll each need one too.”

  “You’re fighting with us?” I didn’t bother hiding my surprise. “Colonel Paxton agreed to this?”