Dust and Kisses

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  Off to the right were some private rooms, more than likely his bedroom and the bathroom he had indicated. She was going to have to use it shortly, and wash her face as well.

  She stared at the big, gray cat as it stared back at her. She missed her cats more than she wanted to admit. She just hoped they were still there waiting for her when she got back.

  “Okay, I won’t try to pet you yet,” she said to the big cat on the couch. With one last look at the public area of the beautiful apartment, she took two more deviled eggs, one for her, one for Matt, and headed toward the room he had vanished into.

  What she found there surprised her even more. Inside what once must have been a large study with one wall of glass was an entire room of computers, recording devices, and monitors. On one interior wall was a map of the entire Portland area, with blinking red lights in different places.

  Matt was in a large, high-backed chair, staring at a big screen.

  “What are they doing?” she asked.

  He started, as if he had forgotten she was even there, then without turning around pointed at the screen. “They are just getting to the I-5 junction.”

  “These are heavenly,” she said, passing Matt one of the eggs, then taking a bite out of the other one.

  “Thanks,” he said, putting the entire egg in his mouth. “Old family recipe.”

  She turned and stared out the window. From this height, she could see the opposite side of the river where I-84 ended into I-5. Coming in on I-84 you had to either pick north or south on I-5. The city of Portland was a beautiful sight from that intersection, its tall buildings tucked along the river and against the hills beyond.

  “Are these windows reflective?” she asked as she saw something move.

  “Perfectly,” he said. “But when the sun starts going down, if they are still around, we’re going to have to go dark in the main areas.” He pointed to the top of the big window. “No drapes.”

  “Never needed them before, I bet.”

  “Whoever owned this place didn’t seem to think they needed them back when there were people around.” He went back to watching the bikers on the screen.

  From what she could tell from the images on the screen, he had a camera on something high, directly in the middle of the intersection. There were a couple of car wrecks clogging both directions, but not enough to stop a motorcycle from getting past. She had to admit it made sense to travel on motorcycles. She had considered one for the trip over here, but just couldn’t come to make herself learn how to ride one without help.

  The bikers looked dirty, which meant nothing in the current world of ruin. It was almost impossible to avoid the dust and dirt that covered everything. She was covered in it as well, and more than likely looked almost as dirty, and that was just from a fast walk across town.

  Most of the men had long beards, many of them had their hair pulled back in pony tails. All of them had rifles in their saddlebags and a few carried pistols on their hips.

  She could see a few women as well on bikes, which encouraged her. Maybe this was just a group exploring, looking for more survivors, and it was just her old thinking of biker gangs being dangerous that had spooked her. But even if they were friendly, it was a heck of a lot better to be safe and find out first what they were doing.

  Matt had been right. This apartment with all his security precautions, felt very, very safe.

  And cool. She hadn’t needed air-conditioning on the coast. She didn’t know how much she missed it here.

  “Twenty-three of them,” Matt said, nodding as the last one passed under his camera. He tapped his keyboard and the image on the big screen switched to showing the bikers slowly moving south on I-5.

  She watched Matt stare at the screen for a moment, admiring his strong shoulders and brown hair. She just hoped this guy was as safe as she felt he was. There was nothing in his apartment that looked odd besides this room. Nothing felt dangerous, nothing set off her warning bells, and that worried her too. No man was perfect. Not even Paine.

  “This room is really something,” she said. “I’m impressed.”

  Matt smiled up at her. “Free supplies, lots of spare time, knowledge of electronics, and enough paranoia to fill a small lake will get you a room like this.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You think those guys saw your lights last night? Or mine?” She didn’t tell him that she had gone up to the roof of her building at one point and just stared up at his lights coming from this place. He was right, his place did look like a beacon from a distance.

  Matt shrugged. “I doubt it. If they came all the way in on I-84 from the east, then more than likely they camped last night up at Multnomah Falls in the Columbia Gorge. There’s food in the lodge there, enough beds for a group this size, and good drinking water. And that would put them in here just about this time, if they started early.”

  “Makes sense,” she said. “I hope you’re right.”

  “So do I,” he said.

  He glanced around. Suddenly, he must have realized she was standing and he was sitting. He jumped up. “Let me get you a chair.”

  She held her hand up. “I’ll get it. You keep watching.”

  He smiled at her and nodded. “Kitchen table has a few chairs. Usually I take one and Buddy takes the other.”

  “Buddy’s the cat’s name?”

  “Yeah, took me six months to get him to trust me,” Matt said, dropping back into the big chair. “There were still a few roving packs of feral cats in the city when I came back two years ago. They’ve all mostly disappeared now. No food. I bet you really miss your cats. I’d miss Buddy if I had to leave him for any time.”

  “Yeah, I now understand that feeling.”

  She went back out into the living area of the big apartment and toward the dining table, stopping near the cat. “Well, Buddy, are you going to let me pet you?”

  “Careful,” Matt called out from the room behind her. “He’s got claws.”

  She laughed. Both her cats had claws that she tried to keep trimmed just enough to keep the points from becoming razor-sharp, but not enough to make the cats defenseless.

  Buddy sort of stared at her, clearly not sure what to do. She eased out her hand and he leaned forward and sniffed it. Then he turned his head indicating that she should scratch his ears.

  She did as the cat instructed, taking her time and giving his ears a good rubbing. When she finally stopped, Buddy looked up at her and then stood, purring.

  “You’re just a big softy,” she said, scratching his back and then his ears again.

  “Now that’s something I wouldn’t have believed possible,” Matt said from the doorway.

  Buddy heard his voice and jumped down from the couch, walking toward Matt as if what had just happened went on every day.

  “I’m a cat person,” she said, smiling at Matt’s stunned look before she turned to get the chair. She didn’t want to tell him how much simply petting Buddy had done to make her feel better.

  By the time she got the chair back into the computer room, along with the plate of deviled eggs, Matt was again in front of the big screen, watching the bikers move south on I-5, heading for the bridge over the river.

  Buddy was on his lap, purring as Matt petted him with one hand.

  There was just something about that scene that made her relax just a little more. Sitting there, petting a cat and staring at a monitor seemed so normal for him.

  And right now, she really missed normal, needed normal, wanted normal more than anything else she had ever desired.

  She sat there, staring at Matt and Buddy as outside, the gang of bikers worked their way closer.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “DAMN IT,” Matt said, staring at the big screen in his security room. “They’re coming into town.”

  Carey felt her stomach twist into a knot. She was sitting beside, and slightly behind, Matt, with a clear view of the monitor. She watched as the lead two mot
orcycles, without even a second of hesitation, left I-5 on the I-405 ramp. The two moved slowly around a large pile-up of cars, then accelerated through a clear stretch of highway.

  Blinking red lights on Matt’s big board started to flash as the two lead bikers went quickly through two of his motion detector areas. Matt had to jump two cameras ahead to get to a view that allowed him to see the lead bikers on the monitor.

  Carey watched, stunned at seeing this many other people alive, and this close, as the motorcycles passed the exit to Beaverton that would have taken them away from the city. They got off at the Chambers Street exit, working their way slowly past a pile-up at the top.

  “They seem to all know exactly where they are going,” Matt said, shaking his head as he switched the monitor back to the interchange, then to a camera along the way, then back to the two lead bikes.

  “It sure looks that way,” Carey said.

  “The group is spread out for a mile. They must have the night’s camp sight planned out ahead. That kind of planning would make sense, considering how many of them there are.”

  “They are also in contact with each other,” Carey said, pointing at the screen. “See the headsets with the microphones?”

  “You’re right,” Matt said. “At least one in every small bunch has one on. This is a very organized group.”

  Carey wasn’t sure if that was a good thing, or a bad thing. After being so alone for three years, it was surprising how dangerous other people felt to her.

  Her mother’s voice echoed again in her head. Such a brave little girl. Carey ignored it. There was a difference between being brave and being stupid, sometimes a fine line difference, but still a difference. And being worried about these new arrivals, maybe even afraid of them, wasn’t a bad thing.

  “How many cameras do you have in the city itself?” Carey asked.

  “Not that many, actually,” Matt said. “Most everything I have is on the main ways in. I planned to put up more, but after the first year, there didn’t seem to be much of a priority. And I had to go over to one of the stores in Beaverton to get more equipment.” He shrugged and smiled at her. “Never really got around to it.”

  “I’m amazed you have this many,” she said. “You climbed a lot of light poles.”

  He laughed. “It’s easy, once you have the right equipment and get the hang of it. I was trained for it in the security job.”

  Carey couldn’t imagine climbing a pole like that, especially with the knowledge that if she fell, there would be no one to help her, no hospital to go to, no ambulance to take her. Over the last three years, thoughts like that had kept her out of many dangerous situations.

  The two lead bikers were out of any camera range. Carey wasn’t sure why having them in the city worried her so much. She just kept repeating to herself that bikers were just normal people who ride motorcycles. And if you had to travel in this age of clogged roads, bikes were the best way. In fact, maybe the only way to go any real distance. But still, the fact that there were so many of them scared her.

  Carey looked at the big board of lights on the city map. “Are we going to know when they get near this building?”

  “We will,” Matt said, smiling at her. “I have at least two dozen cameras around this building covering the streets in all directions for five blocks.”

  “Let’s just hope they’re nice people,” Carey said.

  “More than likely they are,” Matt said, pointing at the screen showing a group of five getting off the freeway on the Chambers Street exit. “The license plates on most of those bikes are Nevada. A couple are Arizona, and I think I saw one Utah plate.”

  “Nevada makes sense,” she said, nodding, thinking about the military establishments there. “A lot of people in Nevada might have survived.”

  Matt turned slowly to look at her. “How do you know that? You said yesterday that you knew what caused all this. How? And what was it?”

  She laughed. “Just like you and all the security stuff, I had a past as well. Tell you what, after we find out where the group out there is going, I’ll tell you over that picnic you offered me.”

  He looked at her, then smiled. “Deal.”

  She could have just sat there and stared into his eyes for the next ten minutes, but instead she said, “Would you mind if I use your bathroom to get cleaned up?”

  “Not at all. It’s down the hallway on the left, extra clean towels on the shelf in there. And be careful, the hot water in the shower is really hot.”

  “You have hot water? I haven’t had a hot shower since I left the coast. I think I have found heaven.”

  He laughed again. “I don’t know about heaven, but this place does have air-conditioning, hot water, and a washer and dryer if you want to wash a few clothes. They’re just off the bathroom.”

  She again looked into his eyes. “Thank you, Matt, for the hospitality, and the concern for my safety.”

  “You are welcome,” he said. “It’s going to be nice to have someone to talk to over lunch. Besides Buddy here, that is. It’s been a long three years.”

  “For me too,” she said.

  With that, she got up and headed to get her backpack. She would take him up on his offer to wash some clothes. Washing what she had at this point made more sense than going out looking for new clothes, considering that outside the building, the streets of Portland had people in it again.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  MATT WATCHED CAREY leave the room, then went back to scratching Buddy’s ears and staring at the bikers as they moved through the wreck at the Chambers Street exit and went somewhere into downtown Portland. After ten more minutes, the last one went by and there was nothing left to see.

  So far none of the bikers in the city had entered an area of town that he had motion sensors and cameras. So until they did, he was going to have to wait.

  He set the loud alarm that had woken him up yesterday morning when Carey entered town. If any of the bikers went into an area where he had a camera and a motion sensor, the alarm would tell him.

  He stood, easing Buddy to the floor. “Come on, old guy,” Matt said to his cat. “Nothing more we can do here at the moment. We have a guest to finish cooking for.” He picked up the plate full of the remaining deviled eggs, popped one into his mouth, and headed for the kitchen.

  As he went through the living room, he could hear the faint sounds of the shower running. He couldn’t believe that a beautiful woman was in his shower. Maybe he was still in bed and dreaming. Maybe the world really hadn’t ended, and he hadn’t spent the last three years alone.

  Didn’t he wish.

  He stopped for a moment and listened. The shower sounds were real.

  Carey really was in there.

  And now he needed to fix her something to eat. Until she had mentioned the picnic, and brought him the deviled eggs he had made, he had been too busy to realize just how hungry he had become. It wasn’t often he skipped meals, and his morning exercise routine. Of course, cleaning up the corner of Powells had been some decent exercise. Oh, well, maybe they could use that space another time, for another picnic.

  Buddy followed him into the open kitchen area. “I missed your breakfast too, didn’t I?”

  Buddy banged against his leg and then walked over and sat down at his empty cat bowl.

  “All right, you first,” Matt said, laughing. He grabbed the half-used bag of cat food from the shelf and fed Buddy quickly.

  Then he moved the chicken to the dining room table, along with the eggs and rolls, putting the picnic basket on the floor by the window.

  Then he started a pot of water boiling for the corn, added a little butter-flavored powder and some salt to the water, then started to peel the ears of corn.

  “That was wonderful,” Carey said.

  She came out of the hallway from the bathroom carrying her backpack in one hand. “Thank you. I hope you don’t mind that I’ve taken you up on washing some clothes.”

  Her long brown hair was s
till damp and hanging over her shoulders. Her face had a red glow to it, as if she had scrubbed it more than once. She had on the same blouse and jeans, and except for the pistol tucked in her belt, she looked more like a college student than a survivor who was still alive three years after the world had ended.

  Matt took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to get his heart to calm down. She was better looking than he had even thought yesterday morning. Stunning was a better way of putting it.

  She dropped her backpack near his gun rack, then took the pistol out of her belt and laid it on top of the pack. Clearly, she was starting to trust him a little more.

  She turned and came back toward him. “You’re sure on the washing? Water isn’t an issue here?”

  “No problem at all,” he said. “I have filters keeping the water clean in the tank on the roof, and it’s good to run more than I use every so often to help the process.”

  She laughed. “I wouldn’t even have good water if I hadn’t run a pipe down from a house above where I live. It had a natural well, and I somehow manage to keep the pump going and the long pipes not leaking too much.”

  Matt nodded. “Pumps can be a problem. I’ve had to replace two so far that pump water from the main gravity-fed lines under the street to the roof. Took me days to do each one.”

  “Amazing,” she said, shaking her head. “Elevator, air-conditioning, water pumps. I could never keep a place like this going.”

  He smiled at her nice compliment, then held up an ear of fresh corn. “Corn on the cob with your fried chicken?”

  Her face lit up like a kid’s on Christmas morning. “Oh, god, that sounds wonderful. What can I do to help?”

  He glanced around at the kitchen he was used to being in alone, then pointed at the table. “Just sit there and tell me what you used to do before the world ended. And how you know what caused this mess.”