Dust and Kisses

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  “Amazing,” she said.

  “Thanks,” he said, smiling. “I’d be glad to show it to you, right after breakfast. I make a great omelet, honest. And I would love to have someone to talk to while I’m cooking after all these years.”

  She stared at him for a moment. She had come back into town with the hope of finding someone else still alive. Now she had, and she didn’t know what to do. She hadn’t expected this, she hadn’t expected anyone, let alone a great-looking guy who could raise chickens and claimed he could cook.

  She had to keep her guard up, stay alert, watch herself.

  And if he turned out to be as nice as he seemed, then she would cross that bridge when it was proven to her. But that was going to take some time.

  She was about to agree to go with him for breakfast, like a bad pick-up at closing time in a bar, when her voice in her head screamed at her.

  What was she thinking?

  She took a deep breath and stared into his eyes. She couldn’t just go up into a strange man’s penthouse apartment and have breakfast. She wouldn’t have done that back when the world was still alive.

  Why was she thinking of doing that now? Had three years of being along, taking baths with mechanical toys, made her that desperate?

  The answer was yes.

  But that didn’t matter. The danger was too great.

  “I think I’d better wait on that,” she said.

  The look of disappointment on his face was clear to her, but he nodded. “I understand. I wouldn’t trust anyone in these circumstances either. Especially someone I just met. Sorry, don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “It was a nice offer,” she said. “Maybe I’ll take a rain check.”

  He indicated the beautiful, cloudless sky above them, and then with a smile said, “I hope you don’t decide to wait until it actually rains.”

  “We’ll see,” she said, smiling back.

  “So where are you thinking of staying?” he asked. “You are staying for at least the night, aren’t you?”

  She nodded. She could trust him enough to tell him that, since he had cameras and more than likely could follow her anyway. “Marriott,” she said. “It seemed a logical place to set up a camp and look around.”

  “Water’s all drained out of the building system,” he said, shaking his head. “But the last time I was in the Embassy Suites it seemed to have water. Nicer place, too.”

  She nodded. The Embassy Suites was the old Multnomah Hotel that had been remodeled years back into large suites. She had been inside it only once, and had been impressed.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll try there then.”

  “There’s a decent hardware store about two blocks west of there that might have some portable generators,” he said. “I’ll be glad to help you get set up if you like.”

  They stood there, in the street, staring at each other, letting his question hover in the warm air. She really didn’t want to take her gaze off of this man, yet she knew she had to move, give herself time to think, make sure she was safe.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I might take you up on that. But first I just sort of want to look around. Haven’t been here in three years.”

  He nodded. “You know where I live if you need anything,” he said, pointing around and up at the Baxter building. “Just go into the lobby and I’ll know you’re there.”

  With that he smiled; clearly embarrassed he had told her that piece of information about his security system.

  “How about we meet for lunch tomorrow?” she said, not wanting to have any chance slip past that she would get to talk to this man again. Of course, if she stayed in town, he was the only man or person she could talk to.

  “Name the time, name the place,” he said, his eyes not hiding the fact that he liked her idea. “I’ll bring a picnic basket full of fried chicken.”

  She laughed at that, wondering just how wonderful fried chicken was going to taste after three years of eating mostly fish.

  “How about outside the used and rare room in Powells Bookstore? Have you been up there?”

  “I have,” he said. “That sounds perfect. Big windows, tables and chairs. I’ll even bring a tablecloth and plates.”

  “Twelve noon?” she asked.

  “Twelve noon it is,” he said. “Right now my watch says it’s just after ten in the morning.”

  “So does mine,” she said, glancing at the watch she’d been wearing for years. She couldn’t remember the last time she had actually looked at it for any reason other than to check how long it would be until the sun went down.

  “Tomorrow then,” he said. “I’m looking forward to it. And my offer stands, if you need help, just come to the lobby of the Baxter building.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “I really appreciate that.”

  He turned and went back the way he had come, stepping into the shadows of the building and disappearing.

  Had she just imagined all that?

  Did she really have a date tomorrow?

  She looked around at the dead city, the wrecked cars, the skeletons in the driver’s seats, and just shook her head.

  Post-apocalyptic dating. How much stranger could things get?

  CHAPTER SIX

  MATT COULD NEVER have imagined, when he crawled out of bed that morning to shut off the stupid alarm, that he would feel so much like a high school kid again.

  He walked down the sidewalk, heading back toward the Baxter building, trying not to whistle. Not once, since the world ended, had he felt so good, so light, so positive about any future. Not only had she told him she knew what had happened to everyone, but she had agreed to see him again.

  And it had been her idea on how to meet.

  He hadn’t been this excited, and this scared, for a long, long time.

  Back when he was a junior in high school, he had wanted to ask one of the cheerleaders, Betty Rees, to the fall formal. It had taken all of his courage, and some pushing by his best friend, Dave, to finally approach her.

  Matt was, as they liked to be called around school, one of the “ghosts.” He never really did much in sports, so he wasn’t a jock, and his grades were just okay, so he wasn’t a brain. And he didn’t hang out with any of the known groups such as the science geeks, the band, the skateboarders, or the druggers. He was a ghost, just there, going to school, not really noticed.

  Why he had ever thought Betty would say yes to him was beyond imagining now. At least she hadn’t laughed at him when he asked.

  Then she had done the unthinkable and said, “I’d love to.”

  It had taken him a moment to realize she had said yes, then for the next three weeks he had worried and fretted about it, especially when she stopped and talked to him in the halls, something she had very seldom done before.

  The dance, what he remembered of it, had been fun. Terrifying and fun. She had even kissed him goodnight, since he didn’t have the courage back then to kiss her.

  That night had made them friends, and they had remained that way right up to the day everyone was killed. Just friends, nothing more, which had been fine with him. She was always a cheerleader in his mind, and very scary.

  Now this woman, Carey, had said she wanted to have lunch with him. Just talking to her had made him as nervous as talking to Betty in the hallway, and not because she was carrying a rifle.

  Well, maybe a little because she was carrying a rifle.

  But mostly because she was a good-looking woman that he was attracted to, in a world where most of the people had died. In this situation, doing the right thing and not making her mad was another level of stakes all-together.

  Risking getting shot had been worth talking to her. And even though she had turned down his stupid idea for breakfast, she had asked to see him again.

  They had a date.

  Noon tomorrow.

  Lunch.

  Now it felt like he was right back in high school, getting ready for the big dance with Betty.

  He un
locked his security precautions in the Baxter building lobby, and used the elevator to get back to his apartment, even though most times he took the stairs because twenty-two flights of stairs gave him some good exercise. This morning he was in too good of a mood to climb stairs.

  Even though his stomach was grumbling from lack of breakfast, he headed for the security room, grabbing a breakfast bar along the way. His battery-powered camera network around the city was pretty extensive. He wanted to make sure that if Carey got into trouble anywhere the cameras could see, he would know about it.

  Or if she was out of range, at least have an idea where she had gone last.

  Plus, he just wanted to see her again. He had to admit that. He wanted to know if she was real, as nice, as friendly as she seemed.

  When he left this morning, he had turned off the security alarms, but left on the recording devices for the cameras. On his big board a big bunch of red lights showed where movement had happened.

  The area in front of his building, of course, meaning it had recorded him going and coming. And the light on the area where he and Carey had talked was also blinking.

  And three other lights in the areas Carey would have gone through in heading toward the Embassy Suites.

  He brought up the last section, just in time to see her look both directions along the street, and then go inside the old hotel.

  Just the glimpse of her sent his heart racing and his stomach twisting. How could one woman do that to him?

  He sat, staring for a moment at the door she had disappeared through. Finally, he said out loud as his stomach grumbled. “Come on, you can’t just sit here all afternoon and watch for her.”

  He reset the alarms and headed for the kitchen. He needed some breakfast. He didn’t need to watch for her. His motion sensors would tell him if she left.

  Suddenly, he felt guilty spying on her, like he was some sort of peeping tom. He shook that thought off. He could be excused wanting to watch a beautiful woman, wanting to make sure she stayed safe.

  Especially since she was one of the last beautiful women left alive in the world.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CAREY MOVED EASILY along Front Street, staying close to the river, her rifle in her hands. The sweat from her hands made the rifle feel slick, but she wasn’t shouldering it until she got to a place she felt safe. And out here, in the open, next to the river, she didn’t feel safe.

  On each side street she passed that led up into the big buildings of the downtown area, she watched for Matt, expecting him to be pacing her.

  He wasn’t.

  No movement, no sign of him at all.

  Or of anyone else.

  It took her six blocks of glancing over her shoulder and staring up each street to make sure he wasn’t following. Part of her wanted him to, part of her was afraid he would. She was having trouble believing he was what he said he was, yet she had no reason to doubt him. He didn’t let off that “danger” signal that she got from some men.

  Her mother had told her to learn to trust that danger signal. And a couple times, trusting it had gotten her out of bad places back when she was in college.

  Matt felt safe. Good point number one. He was interesting and funny, and incredibly good-looking, in that rugged way.

  Good points two, three, and four.

  His eyes were full of life, his smile made her smile just thinking of it, and his voice was deep and full enough that she wanted to just spend time listening to him talk.

  She had lost count of his good points.

  She had felt when meeting him just like she felt back in college, not knowing what to say, or what to do when having to talk to a strange man. Clearly, living on her own, and surviving the end of the world, hadn’t given her any more confidence in that area. Actually, considering he was the first person she had actually talked to in three years, she had done all right.

  What had amazed her was that he had taken such a risk in just meeting her. She doubted she would have stepped out of the shadows, unarmed, to meet someone she didn’t know who had just wandered into her area. Yet he had done that, to make her feel safer. The man named Matt either had amazing courage, or amazing stupidity. From the light in his eyes, she would bet on the courage.

  Meeting him tomorrow for lunch was just about as crazy on her part. But since he had taken a risk that she would shoot him on sight, she would take a risk having lunch with him.

  She had moved on past the Marriott Hotel without stopping, making her way along the river toward the Burnside Bridge. From there, she knew how to find the Embassy Suites Matt had suggested.

  She forced herself to keep her attention on where she was going, what was happening around her, instead of thinking about him. It was hard, but in these times, a daydream could get her killed.

  The city was as dead, as silent as it had felt coming in. Only the birds and the warm wind broke the stillness. It seemed that Matt had been telling her the truth, that she really was the only one besides him in this area. She could see no evidence of anything, or anyone else. No worn trails, no looted stores, nothing but a dead city, frozen in time from a morning three years ago.

  It took her a good fifteen minutes after her meeting with Matt, but she finally found the old Multnomah Hotel that had been remodeled into the Embassy Suites a decade before. The front of the old hotel faced a fairly empty side street, with a parking garage on the corner. A limo was pulled up out front, the driver still behind the wheel.

  The doorman had slumped over a cart full of luggage, and his body had somehow stayed there through the winter storms.

  With a quick look in both directions along the street, she decided to go in.

  The front door stuck for a moment, then let her into a musty-smelling entrance area that contained five skeletons in different locations around the fairly small space. She went slowly up the two stairs and into the high-ceilinged main lobby area.

  The carpet was a rich-looking red, and the artificial plants gave the room a feeling of luxury, even though it was coated with a layer of grayish dust.

  The footprints in front of her on the carpet were clear. One of the sets of prints must have been Matt’s, since he admitted being in here. Another set, bigger and with a wider stance, was from some time back, before Matt had come in.

  There was no sign that anyone else had been in the building, at least through this entrance, at any time in the recent past.

  She relaxed a little and slung her rifle over her shoulder, then dug out a flashlight and a water bottle. The room was cooler than outside, making her realize just how much she had been sweating. The light from the front windows was enough in the main room, but if she were going to head down a hallway, or climb stairs, she would need her flashlight.

  She stood, looking around, studying the skeletons that slumped in the waiting area near what must have been their luggage. She could still remember waiting like that for a ride, or a bellman, or for someone to join her from a room. Who knew why these people had been waiting, but they still waited, now forever.

  She finished a long drink and put the water bottle back in her backpack, then looked around at the exits. When finding rooms to stay at night on the trip from the coast to Portland, she had made sure she stayed on the main floor. She had figured that was safer. But now, here in this building, it might be safer for her to see what was on the upper floors before deciding. As long as she had two or three good ways out, she would be fine.

  She went over to the front desk and crawled up on it, looking along the counter behind the desk for some sort of master key. With the power off, the door key-card systems in these big hotels reverted to a type of punch key that was always kept close by. It took her a minute, but she found it, then slid off the front desk and headed for the back.

  She followed what she thought was Matt’s tracks in the dust on the carpet to a stairwell, and then inside, she clicked on the flashlight. It seemed to be open all the way up, with no problems.

  She used a chair to block
open the door into the staircase at the bottom, just in case the door locked behind her. The last thing she needed was to get trapped in a staircase with no one left alive to find her.

  Then she realized that wasn’t the case. Matt knew where she was going. That thought both eased her fear a little, and worried her. She had spent three years doing just fine on her own. She didn’t want to start making mistakes now, thinking she had a person backing her up. She didn’t even really know him yet, and certainly didn’t trust him.

  She followed the tracks in the dust on the staircase all the way to the top floor, seven floors up. She tried to move slowly, carefully, to not kick up any more of the layer of dust than she needed to. The air in the stairwell was stuffy enough without adding swirling dust to it.

  At the top, the old footprints went out into a hallway through an unlocked door. The narrow corridor was lit only by the windows on either end, but was bright enough for her to turn off her flashlight.

  The footprints went to a window and vanished.

  She followed them, then looked out the window. Beyond was a metal fire escape that led both up and down. It looked like Matt had forced the window open, then closed it behind himself after he went through.

  The fire escape ladder led down to the top of the building beside the old hotel. This wasn’t a way to the ground directly, but it was a good escape. So she had the staircase she had come up, the fire escape through the window. What other ways were there off this floor?

  She opened a door labeled no admittance and shined her flashlight into the dark area. Service elevator, but no staircase.

  She went back to the elevator and stair area and looked down another side hall. There was another exit sign there, clearly leading to another staircase. She liked that. Three ways down.