“Travis had the trucks made into a wall to protect us. That is why the zombies never got in,” Rosie answered.
“Thank God for that, or we wouldn’t have had anywhere to go,” Stacey said thoughtfully. “Weird how things work out.” She took another piece of cobbler. She had filled out since she’d been rescued, nearly starved to death, but still ate more than might be expected for someone so small framed.
“Plus, he is very good looking. If only I were younger,” Rosie said with a wink.
Katie smiled quickly to herself as she covered the plate with foil.
“Oh, yes!” Gretchen affirmed. “Isn’t he handsome? I remember when he moved to town and all the girls would just stare at him. I always thought he had a thing for Brenda.” Gretchen’s voice grew soft as she said, “Poor Brenda. Did they ever figure out how to get her body down?”
“I think they’re gonna use a hook to drag her off the net,” Roger answered. “No one is going to want to see her up there during the party.”
“She was always so sweet,” Gretchen sighed. “Always checking out romance novels from the library and waiting for Prince Charming to come.”
“That’s really sad,” Stacey said in a small voice.
“Yeah, when Travis came to town, she thought he was the one. She told me all about him when she was checking out her books. It’s sad how he found her body.” Gretchen shook her head.
Listening to the conversation, Katie felt sorrow for the young woman who had been so enamored with Travis. So many dreams and hopes had died during those first days.
She slipped out of the kitchen and into the construction site. It was strange to see it so empty, without all the people milling around. It barely looked like a refugee camp now. The tarp tents had all been taken down and personal possessions no longer littered the grounds. Work crews were already reorganizing the site. She hurried over to the portable building that housed Travis’s office and knocked on the door.
She smiled broadly as she realized how much she was anticipating seeing Travis. Now that she had allowed herself to embrace her feelings for him, she was actually getting butterflies in her stomach. She felt girlish and silly, but was enjoying it all the same. She hadn’t felt this way since she first met Lydia. Then, she had been so hyper, she had danced around her apartment for an hour. And when Lydia called to ask her out, she had jumped on her bed with excitement.
Now she felt that way all over again about Travis. He was as amazing a man as Lydia had been an amazing woman.
When Travis opened the door, he looked very serious, but as soon as he rested his eyes on her, a smile spread across his lips.
“Lunch?” She lifted the plate.
“Thanks,” he said, stepping back to let her enter. “I was just working on some plans to make the new entry more secure.”
“How’s it going?”
“Okay. I just get real paranoid that those things are going to get in and I start second-guessing what we’re doing,” Travis said.
Setting the plate on a desk, she turned to look at him. “I think we’re all a little paranoid about that.”
“Yeah, but after yesterday, I admit my paranoia is a little worse,” Travis said with a grimace. “I just …” He sat on the edge of the desk, his hands in his jeans pockets. “I just feel like I need to work harder at keeping us all safe.” He looked toward her. “Keeping you safe.”
Katie moved into his arms and laid her hands on the sides of his neck. His fingers were warm against her skin as he slid them under her top to rest on her waist. “Well, you’re doing a great job so far. I know a lot of us are very, very grateful to you.”
Travis looked almost sheepish. “Yeah, well …”
She stroked the curls at the nape of his neck. The stress lines around his eyes and brow faded as he smiled at her.
“I look at you and I want to save the world. I can’t help it”
“Are you sweet-talking me again?” she lightly kidded.
He chuckled. “No, no, I mean it. I’ve always had grandiose dreams.” His gaze grew more intense. “Sometimes I get lucky and they come true.”
Katie smiled tenderly and kissed him. He immediately responded and their kiss deepened as passion rose quickly between them. Katie relished the feel of his lips and tongue against hers. As his hands slid up to unfasten her bra, she drew back long enough to whisper, “What about lunch?”
“Later,” Travis whispered huskily, and kissed her again.
It was hard to resist his touch and harder to resist her own desire. She felt intoxicated with him. As their kisses grew more fevered, they struggled to free each other from their clothes. The hunger for each other was so intense, they never made it to Travis’s sofa bed or fully managed to undress.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
1.
Past, Present, Future
Jenni was annoyed. Up three stories from street level on the fire escape of the hotel, she was on sentry duty overlooking where Main Street intersected Morris Avenue. It was way too hot and windy and the chair she had dragged out to sit on wasn’t very comfortable. Slouching down in her chair, holding her rifle across her lap, and hooking her foot up on the railing, she surveyed the street as the wind blew her dark hair around her face. She wished a fucking zombie would show up so she could blow its head off. It would make her feel so much better.
When the window opened and Katie slipped out, Jenni was surprised and relieved. “Hey girlfriend!”
“Hey,” Katie answered. She kissed Jenni’s forehead, then sat down on the windowsill and studied the street. “Quiet, huh?”
“I find myself craving zombies. Isn’t that twisted?”
“It’s been a weird day,” Katie agreed.
“But lunch was good.”
“Yeah, it was, wasn’t it?” Katie grinned, but her expression was odd.
Jenni reached out and tapped her knee. “What’s up?”
“Well,” Katie started slowly, as if measuring her thoughts before making them into words. “Travis and I just had some really intense, throw-you-up-against-the-wall, earth-shattering sex.”
“All right!” Jenni held out her hand for a high five.
Katie looked at her hand and added, “Without any protection.”
“Oh, shit.” Jenni dropped her hand.
“Yeah. We both really spaced it. Completely. I’m not sure he even realizes what happened.” Katie sighed softly.
“Um … shit?”
“Yeah. Shit.” Katie ran her hands over her face. “Lesbian sex is not this complicated!”
Jenni giggled. “Nope, it’s not. I mean your girlfriend can’t knock you up. It’s not like dildos come loaded with baby-making stuff.”
Katie burst out laughing and covered her face with one hand. “Oh, gawd.”
Jenni smiled; then her expression grew as serious as her thoughts. “You okay?”
“Yeah. I am. Weirdly. I don’t really feel panicked at all. When I stopped to think, I realized that it’s not the right time of the month, but honestly, I hadn’t given pregnancy a thought. But now I guess I have to. Travis …” She smiled at the sound of his name on her lips. “Travis is like Lydia. The one you keep until death parts you. He’s in my heart now and I guess I need to think like … uh …”
“A straight woman,” Jenni offered.
“A woman who can probably have babies biologically with her mate and doesn’t have to worry about assisted reproduction and finding the proper donor.” Katie smiled, remembering her and Lydia’s discussions about making a family. They had opted not to in the end.
“You know, I have a feeling that Travis would love to have a baby with you,” Jenni said.
“Me, too. But what about you? You and Juan. Being careful? About babies and … other stuff.”
“Tubes tied,” Jenni said sadly. “Stupid Lloyd didn’t want any more kids. Of course, I had to be the one to face the knife, the bastard.”
“Oh, Jenni, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay.
I told Juan. He was real quiet for a bit, then shrugged it off. Said it was kinda cool not to have to worry about condoms since we’re both disease free. Later on, he said something about how when people do start having kids, Hillary Clinton will get her wish because it will be a village, literally, raising them. I guess he figures that somehow he’ll get in on the kid thing. I mean, if you have a kid, I’m so gonna be Auntie Jenni.”
“Oh, yeah, you will be,” Katie said with a wide grin. Her smile faded and she looked very thoughtful. “I’m madly in love with him. His body, his … smell … the way he touches me … all so different from Lydia, but I love him. I kept wanting not to love him, but I do.”
Jenni reached out and hugged her as Katie started to cry. She smoothed her blond curls back, kissed her brow, and held her close. Katie clung to her, sobbing, both happy and sad, and Jenni knew she just needed to hold her.
“Hey, lesbos,” Shane’s voice said from below. “Can you watch the fucking street instead of groping each other? We’re heading out again.”
Jenni looked down to see Shane and three other men getting into a delivery truck. They had been shuttling back and forth between the grocery store and the hotel all day, since it appeared to be a slow day in zombieville.
“Fuck off, Shane!” Jenni yelled at him.
“Save your pussy-eating for later, bitch,” Shane responded.
“Bite me, asshole!” Jenni shouted back.
“I have no trouble smacking up a dyke. Trying to be all manly up there like you have a big cock,” Shane snapped back.
“Somebody’s gotta, since you’re hung like a light switch,” Jenni retorted.
“Fuck you, bitch.”
Katie leaned over the rail next to Jenni. “You’re just jealous ’cause the girls like me, not you.”
Jenni saw such intense rage overwhelm Shane’s features that, for the first time, she felt afraid of him.
He merely pointed at them and got into the driver’s seat of the truck. It roared down the street.
“He’s one a scary fucktard,” Jenni said.
“Why doesn’t someone throw him over the wall?” Katie muttered.
They were both quiet for a while, sitting back down and staring over the streets. The wind was hot and the sky was growing overcast in the distance. Another summer thunderstorm was coming. “I wonder if the heat will make them rot faster,” Katie said after a while.
“Yeah, I wish they were like Romero’s zombies. They’d be so much easier to deal with.” Jenni wistfully sighed. “What the hell?”
A man was coming down the street on a motor scooter. Its engine was coughing and sputtering, and the exhaust was a cloud of dark smoke. He was dressed in very old jeans, a leather jacket, and a beat-up, greasy straw cowboy hat that was so badly warped, it looked like a banana sitting on his head. Even from a distance, he looked dirty and smelly.
“Who the hell is that?” Jenni stood up and tried to get a better view.
Seeing her, the man waved and steered toward them. Behind him in the distance were some shambling shapes.
Katie stood up beside Jenni and drew her pistol. “What does he think he’s doing?”
The man cruised up to just under the fire escape. “Now, I am a taxpaying citizen of not only this country, but this city and county as well, and when the mayor decides to steal my property by sending rabid CIA clones to try to tear down my fence, I have a God-given, constitutional right to defend myself. And if you think I’m going to just sit back and not complain, you have another think coming. I fully intend to speak with the police, even if they are a bunch of coke-snorting, Mafia thugs, about what Mayor Reyes has been doing, and I will have justice. I killed the clones, but I figure since they are clones, they really don’t count as a life-form, so it don’t count as murder. Besides, the mixture was bad on that batch and they had all sorts of things wrong with them … .”
The man spoke earnestly, as if he were being interviewed by a reporter on TV, his hands moving eloquently.
“Is he for real?” Jenni asked.
“I think so,” Katie answered.
“ … so even if they sit outside my house and snort up on coke so they don’t feel a damn thing, I will defend myself. A good knock to the head seems to do the trick. Now the aliens, well, they don’t die so easily … .”
Jenni was so fascinated by what the man was saying that she almost didn’t see the zombie run around the corner. But her reflexes were fast and sure and she shot a nice hole through its head and sent it sprawling.
“ … and that’s what I’m talking about. Now the damn clones are everywhere! I am going to write to the President of the United States, even if he is in league with the aliens, to let him know of the blatant abuse of taxes to fund this cloning program … .”
“You need to get the hell off the street right now!” Jenni yelled at him.
“The slow ones are closing in,” Katie pointed out. She took aim and waited for them to be in range.
“ … I have my video recorder and I will record any meeting that is associated with my complaint because I know that Peggy alters the minutes to suit her Amazonian agenda …”
“Drive around to the gate!” Jenni yelled.
“ … and even if you are in cahoots with her, I want you to know that girl’s feet stink. Once in church she came in and took off her shoes and it was the worst smell … .”
“Go around the block to the entrance!”
Beside her, Katie fired. “Get off the fucking street!”
A zombie came around the corner and Jenni lifted her weapon and fired.
“I am a citizen of this great nation and this town and you cannot bar me from a public area during regular visiting hours … .” The man whipped away down Main Street just in time, as four more zombies appeared from Morris Avenue, in pursuit of their prey. Jenni and Katie fired steadily, determined to take them out as quickly as possible.
“Just when you thought it couldn’t get weirder,” Jenni giggled.
“Well, at least you got your zombies,” Katie answered, and pulled the trigger.
2.
Open the Gate and Let the Insanity In
“Open the gate,” came the order over the walkie-talkie. “We got a survivor coming in!”
Juan rushed up the stairs and looked down from the sentry tower. Sure enough, stinky old Otis Calhoun was speeding along the street on his scooter. Right behind him, and gaining, were at least six zombies. As Juan watched, two more came running from a side street, running fast and screeching.
“Get ready! Get ready! We have zombies coming!” Juan shouted to the men on the wall. “And they ain’t the slow ones!”
The sentry beside him took aim and fired. One of the zombies, who looked like he was about to grab Calhoun, went down in a spray of blood.
Ahead of Calhoun, the gate opened easily, its mechanism running smoothly since the last round of repairs. Guards stationed above the lock were already aiming at the widening gap. Juan lifted his hand, preparing to signal the man controlling the gate.
The scooter made hacking noises; plumes of dark smoke erupted from its tailpipe. A spout of blood and brains erupted from the back of another zombie’s head and it went down soundlessly. There were at least three more zombies gaining on the old man.
“ … and now I’m being chased by clones and I hold Mayor Reyes directly responsible … ,” Crazy Calhoun shouted as he cruised toward the gates.
Juan wasn’t surprised the old guy was still alive. If anyone was paranoid enough to survive the zombie apocalypse, it was Otis Calhoun. His property had a huge fence around it with razor wire at the top. It was well known that Calhoun only ate MREs and lived in an underground bunker. Juan couldn’t imagine why Calhoun was coming into town.
The scooter coughed and sputtered into the lock and Juan signaled for the gate to be closed. The sentry fired again and more zombies went tumbling to the ground. Just as the gate was about to shut, a female zombie slipped in. She screamed and went charging
after Calhoun. Her head exploded in a gush of gore.
Calhoun turned around and looked at her sprawled body with contempt. “Obviously not cloned from quality people. They’re just insane. And where did all this come from? I do not remember hearing an agenda at city council to build a fort in the middle of town. I do not approve of my taxes going for this facility when we need to deal with the epidemic of evil clones … ,” Calhoun rattled away.
Juan crossed his arms over his chest and chuckled. Life was about to get much more interesting in the fort. Calhoun hated the city government with a passion. He came to every council meeting and sat in the back, talking away nonstop as his video camera recorded every moment of the session. He hated Peggy, because he was convinced she was hiding the city government’s deep dark secrets. There were rumors Otis Calhoun had spent a few years in a mental ward and that he was schizophrenic, but no one really knew for sure. Most of the townspeople had just regarded him as the town’s crazy old man and ignored his wild rants.
“ … and I don’t know who is going to pay for my scooter, but since it was damaged by my having to come all the way into town to file a complaint, I firmly believe it should be paid for by the mayor out of his personal funds. And I will know if it is out of his personal funds because I can attune my brain to the Internet … .”
Juan looked toward the road and saw more zombies en route. His smile faded as he realized Calhoun had led more zombies to the fort. With a sigh, he lifted the walkie-talkie.
“Peggy, Calhoun is here.”
“Yeah, I know. Feels like old times, huh?” Her voice sounded amused and weary.
Juan laughed a little. “Yeah. Strangely, yeah.”
“ … certain I did not vote on this fort being built …”
3.
Purple Dresses
Nerit walked into the large room used as the “store” of the fort. Everything salvaged from the Dollar Store and the Walmart truck was arranged in boxes and plastic bins. Every box was labeled. One long table held a row small boxes of personal hygiene products. She noticed the box with the condoms was much emptier than it had been the last time Nerit visited the storeroom. She supposed that people were finding comfort in each other. She could not blame them.
As The World Dies Trilogy Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 48