Lukas was such a sore loser. She knew it, and the kid wasn't as dumb as he made out. He hadn't made it obvious, but every now and then he would miss a shot or accidentally knock the wrong ball, gifting Lukas extra shots or points, and Lukas had willingly taken them, deriding the boy for his ineptness.
If she'd told him that the kid was making a fool out of him, letting him win, it would have been she that felt his wrath, and so she had remained silent, drinking herself into oblivion and wishing, on a daily basis, for it all to end, one way or the other.
They'd had weed; what was left of Lukas's dead buddies' secret stash, which they had managed to procure for nothing once they were all dead or missing. It hadn't lasted long, down there, and it hadn't done anything to ease the paranoia they were all feeling about what was going on outside. The drugs had intensified everything, and Abi wasn't disappointed in the slightest once they were all smoked out.
But staring out at the passing trees, feeling marginally woozy from the vodka, she could think of nothing better to enhance her current mood than a nice, fat joint.
In the back seat, the kid slept. She could hear him snoring; it was as if somebody had shoved a micro-pig in the fucking car when they weren't looking. It was amazing that he couldn't muster a solitary word, but he could grunt with the best of them when he was unconscious.
Lukas lit a cigarette and handed it to her, before taking the bottle from between her legs and unscrewing it with his teeth.
She smoked, and tried to remember just what it had been like before . . . before everything had rotted and crumbled around them.
It hadn't been much better; of that she was certain. Her life had been a string of silly mistakes, coiled up, tangled, and she had been responsible for all of them. Kicked out by her parents at fourteen for stealing from them, prostituting herself by fifteen to any Tom, Dick, or Harry that had a green bill and a pack of smokes, addicted to crystal meth by sixteen – her face had taken a turn for the worse after that, but she managed to get clean before it was irreversible – and then, along came Lukas. She'd loved him from the moment she met him. He wasn't nice, he wasn't the ideal boyfriend – but who was? – and he certainly wouldn't have met with her parents' approval, not that she gave a flying fuck since they had pretty much written themselves out of her life once and for all.
Lukas . . . the man on a mission, the guy with one solitary purpose in life . . .
To have fun.
It didn't matter what anyone else thought; if what he did pissed people off, he did it more. He antagonised the shit out of anybody stupid enough to cross him – or her – and she liked that.
Even when he started hitting her – as if, once the honeymoon period was over, he felt more comfortable in doing so – she blamed herself. He wouldn't hurt her if she didn't deserve it; he wouldn't dream of harming her if her mouth hadn't run away from her, or she'd looked at him incorrectly. She would make a mistake occasionally, and Lukas would show her the error of her ways so that she wouldn't make the same mistake again.
She loved him for it.
He'd offered to pay her parents a visit, show them that they had made a huge mistake, teach them a few things about how to look after another human being.
And she'd told him no.
She knew what he was capable of, even then. As much as she despised her mother and father for the way in which they had disposed of her, she didn't want them hurt, not the way Lukas wanted to hurt them.
But it was nice, knowing that he would be willing to do that for her. He told her that any time she changed her mind, just say the word and he'd sort it, and she believed him.
On the day of the outbreak, she'd tried to call her parents, to check they were okay, and Lukas had stumbled into the room, drunk on whiskey – which seemed to be the best way to deal with all the mad shit happening outside the window. He'd snatched the phone out of her hand and beaten her with it, not stopping until she was crawling away on all fours, her head spraying crimson blood like a geyser.
She knew why he did it; she knew that he'd taken care of her, earned enough money through dealing to prevent her going back on the street. He'd done all that, and simply expected a bit of respect in return, not for her to go running back to mommy and daddy at the first sign of trouble.
It didn't matter. Even as she was taking the beating, the phone clattering at her temple bringing bright stars to the space between her eyelids, she could hear the call ringing out.
They were already dead. She'd spoken her last with them.
After the infection spread, Lukas had taken her on a kill-spree. The things they had gunned down were no longer human; it wouldn't be classified as murder . . . or manslaughter, not that there were any active courts to convict them.
The law had fallen by the wayside, and they had found themselves with way too much time on their hands, more bullets than they could ever use, and a whole new species to fucking eradicate.
It was the stuff Lukas's dreams were made of.
'You sleeping?'
Abi turned to find Lukas staring towards her. He swigged from the vodka-bottle, grimaced as the booze hit his stomach, and returned it to the space between her slightly-parted legs.
'I wish,' she said. 'I was just thinking how fucking awesome it would be to have a bag of weed, or some coke right about now.'
Lukas nodded. 'That would be something, baby-girl.'
She loved it when he called her that. A shiver, beginning at the nape of her neck, worked its way down her body, terminating somewhere near her uterus. She squirmed in her seat as a sudden, unexpected heat filled her up.
The cigarette between her fingers had all but burned away. Ash had fallen from the tip, scattered across her skirt. She flicked what remained of the butt out of the window and asked for another one.
Lukas lit it, handed it to her, and said, 'Quiet out there today. Think those fucking things might be dying out, or something. We passed a couple a mile back, but they were just wanderers, must've got away from the pack.' He sighed, as if the low population on this particular stretch of road was a bad thing.
'Don't think they've reached this far from the city yet.' Abi knew there would be small pockets of infected out in the sticks, but it was the major population they were more concerned about, and those huge hordes were behind them, shambling through what remained of the urban areas.
What they had discovered at the house that morning was shocking because of the rural surroundings. You expected something like that in the city, not out in suburbia where people ought to know better.
The woman that Lukas had fucked and killed had been unsullied by the virus, or he wouldn't have touched her. She had been a lot of fun, too, and put up quite a fight – which only served to make her demise more enjoyable.
But it wasn't the woman, or what they did to her, that continued to bother Abi. That she could deal with; they had done it a lot since the outbreak, and she was acclimated to it as if it was second-nature.
No, it was the creature the woman had been keeping in the cellar which plagued Abi. An old woman – they guessed it was the woman's mother, though it had been difficult to tell its age by the amount of decay and gore enveloping it – was chained down there, shackled to heating pipes. Its wrists were torn and tattered as a result of such intense struggling and chafing. On a tray, within distance of the creature, was a fine china bowl (oh, not any old tat would be good enough for this particular creature) and it had been filled with flesh and bone.
It hadn't been human flesh, though. The woman had been feeding the thing animals, creatures she had managed to capture from the garden or the surrounding woods. There were feathers scattered throughout the cellar, and tiny beaks attached to shrivelled heads. Lukas had held up the half-devoured remains of a muskrat and gagged, jokingly.
Abi couldn't believe that the woman had been trying to keep that thing alive down there, beneath the house she lived in. It was absurd. She felt they had done her something of a favour by putting her – and her p
et zombie – out of their misery.
And so what? Lukas fucked the woman. He fucked a lot of women, but he didn't love them, or whisper into their ear while he did it. They were just meat to him, the same way the birds and muskrats were meat to the cellar-zombie. She didn't like to watch while he did it, though; despite knowing it was just a game, she couldn't help feeling a pang of jealousy at the sight of him working away at another girl.
Abi had had the pleasure of dispatching the cellar-thing while Lukas took care of the woman upstairs. She'd taken great joy in killing the creature. In fact, as the grotesque noises from Lukas's latest escapade drifted down the cellar steps, Abi had made the thing suffer exponentially more, though the creature didn't know the difference.
When she had finished, she'd rushed back upstairs to find Lukas climbing off the woman's motionless body, and that had been when the dog attacked, chasing them out through the back and down the trail . . .
'How about a bit of loving over here?'
Abi started. Lukas, in the seat beside her, had unzipped his jeans. His cock stood straight up, as if he'd been reminiscing about the exact same thing she had.
She smiled. 'You're insatiable.'
'I just love you so much, baby-girl.' He gestured down to his erect length, and placed his head back on the rest, aware that she wouldn't say no to him.
She wouldn't dare.
And she didn't.
He felt the warm, welcoming mouth shroud him and gasped. Closing his eyes, just for a moment, he relished the sensation of her lips around his shaft. When he opened his eyes, there was nothing he could do about the approaching car. He pulled the steering-wheel across, lost his footing on the pedals, and the braced himself for impact. The scream he was working up to never left his throat, and his cock didn't leave Abi's until they were flipping over and over, a never-ending sequence of sky, ground, sky, ground, sky . . .
*
Shane looked down at the fuel-gauge once again. He was trying to work out just how many miles they would cover before reverting to walking, and also trying to work up to telling the rest of the group that they would be lucky if they made it beyond Brookhaven.
They were on a quarter tank, which was enough for now.
In the back, Marla and River were discussing make-up, for some unknown reason. River was intrigued by eye-liner and rouge, and Marla was only happy to tell her which shades worked best with which.
It was . . . normal. A regular conversation, something that none of them had experienced for a long time. Perhaps it was the safety that the car offered them; they were protected so long as they kept moving, and the palpable relief had settled everyone down into a semblance of familiarity.
Shane listened over the monotonous drone of the Camry's engine as Marla described browns and greens, purples and beiges, and River ate it all up. It was funny because nobody, least of all Shane, had her pegged as a “get dolled up and pretty” kinda gal.
And maybe she wasn't. Maybe she was trying to do what was expected of normal girls, so as not to lose touch with who or what she truly was, or would have been if the lurkers hadn't come.
Terry was thumbing through his bible; Shane didn't like to interrupt him when he was so engrossed in the book, though he sometimes liked to watch as Terry read, his lips moving silently along with whatever passage he was working on. His silvery beard was twitching now, which made Shane smile.
'River wants to know whether you've ever worn make-up,' Marla said, which sent both the girls in the back into hysterics.
'Never,' Shane said across his shoulder. 'I once had my face painted at a kid's party . . . ' he paused, for it had been Megan's third birthday to which he referred; the memory hitting him like a brick to the face. Then he said, 'I was a giraffe, but I don't think that counts as make-up.'
'Sounds like it to me,' River said. 'Were you wearing a dress?'
Shane shook his head. 'Despite what you may have heard,' he told her, keeping his eyes on the road ahead, 'not all giraffes wear dresses.'
River laughed. 'No, silly, not giraffes. I meant when you . . . never mind.'
Shane had outsmarted an eight year-old, and it felt good. She was sassy, and he had finally retorted and rendered her speechless. Ah, the way the tables had turned . . .
'Shane's the kind of guy that only puts make-up on when the bathroom door's locked,' Marla said. 'Isn't that right, Shane?'
'Oh, sure. Why not? I prance around in a satin nightgown and sing Abba songs at the same time.'
River exploded with laughter, and then asked who Abba were.
It was things like that – the littlest things – which made her so wonderful to be around. It was impossible to believe they had only know her for a short period of time. To Shane, and certainly to Terry – who worshipped her – and Marla – who seemed to be mothering her in the only way she knew how – it was as if she had been there all along.
'Abba are a Swedish band . . . sorry, were a Swedish band.' Shane struggled, strangely, to comprehend that Agnetha, Benny, Björn, and Anni-Frid were most likely dead, or worse. An image leapt into his head of the group, wandering around in their glittery garb, snarling and dribbling that tarry goo everywhere. Abba as lurkers was not a comforting thought.
'Like Aqua?' River asked.
'Who?' Shane had no idea.
'Aqua are . . . were from that part of the world. Barbie Girl? Remember.' She began to sing a little excerpt from whatever song she was referring to; to Shane it sounded godawful. 'Sounds to me like your band ripped off Aqua.'
Marla giggled. 'Yeah, Shane. Your band totally ripped off our band.' She was really starting to enjoy herself.
'Apart from the fact that Abba formed in the seventies, and your band, Aquafresh, or whatever they're called, are new enough for you to remember them, River, I think it's clear to see who ripped off who.'
Holy shit, he was on a roll. Bettered her twice in less than five minutes. Victory had never felt so good.
'Whatever,' River said, a little perturbed. 'I'll bet your band were nowhere near as big as Aqua. Barbie Girl was at number one for ages.'
Shane didn't even need to run through Abba's hits, or how long they had resided at the top of the charts. And, other than being able to recall the specifics, he couldn't be bothered.
'You're probably right,' Shane ceded. 'I can't even remember one song by my band.'
River grinned exposing a mouthful of tiny, pearl-white teeth. 'You won't beat me at music. I had loads of CDs. Did you know the Spice Girls?'
Oh, now we're getting into it, Shane thought. He would humour her anyway, because it maintained the relief within the car, and that could only be a good thing.
'Oh, I think I've heard of them,' Shane said, sardonically. If River picked up on his sarcasm, she didn't show it.
'Yeah. Well, I had every CD they ever released. Used to drive my mom crazy with it, yet she always got me the newest album for Christmas or my birthday, so I don't think she hated them as much as she made out.'
'While we're talking about music,' Marla said, changing the subject by keeping it the same, 'I don't suppose there are any CDs in the glove-compartment. I haven't heard music since . . . well, since forever. Might be nice.'
Shane hadn't thought to check the glove-box, but that was where he had once kept his music, when he had possessed a car of his own. He had assumed the rest of the group wanted silence after the morning they had endured, but now that the seed was planted, Shane was in agreement.
Music would be nice.
Terry, who had spent the last five minutes silently smiling at the hilarity of the ensuing conversation, closed his bible and pulled the glove-box handle.
He reached in and pulled out a service-manual for the Camry. He doubted they would be using the car long enough to need it servicing, so discarded it rapidly between his feet and continued to rummage. The sound of plastic clicking together was a good sign, and when he retracted his hand the next time it was clutching a handful of CD cases.
'What is there?' River excitedly asked, sticking her head between the front seats.
'I'll bet there's no Aqua,' Shane said. 'Or Spice Girls.'
'We have . . . ' Terry said, flicking through the CDs. ' . . . Ravi Shankar?' He shrugged, put that one to the back. 'We also have somebody called Chet Baker, one from a band called Herbie Hancock's Headhunters, and . . . ooh, this one looks good,' the sarcasm in his voice suggested it wasn't going to be good in the slightest, 'Mahavishnu Orchestra.'
Silence.
'Great,' River said after a moment. 'We get the only car on the lot belonging to a Geography teacher.'
'Hang on,' Shane said, snatching the last CD from Terry's hand. He looked down at the cover, which portrayed the band playing on front of a red, lightning-filled sky. It was garish, to say the least. 'This is the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Oh, River, you haven't heard anything until you've heard this.' He was, of course, playing her, but in the back seat she brightened a little. Whether she believed him or not, it didn't matter.
They were going to listen to some music . . .
Shane flipped open the CD case and unclipped the disc. He was about to insert it into the player on the dash when it slipped between his fingers and rolled across his leg, landing down by his right foot.
'Shit,' he muttered. He reached down, keeping the wheel steady with his left hand and his jaw.
Couldn't . . . quite . . . reach . . . it.
He switched hands, the wheel slipped through his fingers slightly, and as he plucked the CD up from the footwell he huffed.
'LOOK OUT!' someone screamed from the back. Shane didn't know whether it was Marla, or River, but the car about to hit them was travelling fast enough to kill them all so it didn't really matter.
The Dead Series (Book 3): Dead Line Page 8