Dust and Kisses

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  He sat back and smiled at her. “Let me tell you how I hope things will go for the rest of the night, then you can tell me what you think.”

  Before she had a chance to reply, he started. “I would love to cook you a lemon-spiced chicken dinner, one I had planned just for me and Buddy originally. Fresh asparagus, corn, and bread as side dishes. Then, while there is still a lot of light, I’m thinking we might want to go say hello to the city’s newest visitors. If we do it together, we won’t look like a threat to them.”

  “Two against sixty,” she said, laughing. “We’re some threat.”

  “Good point. So, assuming all goes well with the visit with the bikers, we can come back here, have a late snack, maybe watch a movie. I have a few spare rooms back there that I have only used for light storage. We can set you up a bedroom, since it would seem a lot more logical for you to stay here, where it’s cooler and cleaner.”

  “And don’t forget safer,” she said. “This alarm system of yours is heaven-sent as far as I’m concerned.”

  He smiled at her. “Thanks. To be honest, it would be great to have you stay. I’ve really missed having someone to talk to like we’ve been doing today.”

  She stared at him, a slight smile easing the corner of her mouth upward.

  The silence in the room seemed to grow as they held each other’s gaze. Finally, he couldn’t stand it any longer.

  “Okay, your turn.”

  “I would love to have a chicken dinner,” she said, “if you allow me to help you cook it.”

  He nodded. “Deal.”

  She went on. “I’m scared to death about going down there to meet those people for a reason I’ll tell you over dinner. But I think you’re right, we need to. A large part of me wants to find out who they are, where they are going, and so on. I would hate myself if I didn’t before they left.”

  “Okay, that sounds—”

  She held up her hand and stopped him in mid-sentence. “I would love to come back here and watch a movie as well. But only if you have microwave popcorn.”

  He laughed and pointed to the pantry. He had boxes of the stuff, and luckily, that stuff didn’t spoil very often with time.

  “And as far as staying here for the night in a guest room, I would appreciate that as well. I’m not doing too well in this heat, and having a cool bedroom for the night would make me feel a lot more like I was home on the coast.”

  They stared at each other for a moment.

  She was smiling at him, and he could feel he was smiling as well. He really liked this woman. And the more time he spent with her, the more time he wanted to spend with her. It would have been that way, he was sure, even if the world was still out there beyond those big windows.

  Finally, he pushed his chair back and stood. “Dinner and movie it is. And a visit to the neighbors in the middle. Sounds like a normal night to me.”

  She laughed and stood to help him cook. “Wonderfully normal. Just what the doctor would have ordered if he had lived.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CAREY WENT BACK to the roof and picked some asparagus sprouts for dinner while Matt cleaned and prepared the chicken. Then she got everything ready to cook the sprouts in a light oil with a little butter-salt flavoring added. It would only take a couple of minutes once the chicken was close to done.

  Matt worked on skinning the chicken, then covering the four pieces in some sort of lemon herb sauce he had made. He slid the pan with the chicken into the oven.

  “Thirty minutes until dinner. Potatoes next.”

  She peeled a couple of potatoes and got water boiling for them while he worked on a salad. While all this, they kept talking about anything that happened to come up. Gardening, cats, books they had read. To Carey, it felt wonderful.

  She had never thought anything near normal was possible again. And as long as she didn’t look out at the dead city too closely, she could let herself pretend they were just an ordinary, very rich couple in a penthouse apartment, cooking a summer dinner for themselves.

  Right before everything was done, he sent her into the foyer near the elevator and told her to look in a closet there. Inside she found about fifty bottles of different Oregon wines, a couple of which were her favorites. She picked two whites, hoping that one would still be good after three years. Reds tended to last, but whites spoiled easily, depending on the length of time and how they were stored. So they might as well use the whites up first.

  “You know,” she said, carrying the bottles of wine back into the kitchen, “every Sunday for the past three years, no matter the weather, I’ve opened a bottle of wine.”

  “Really?” he asked, turning away from mashing the potatoes to glance at her.

  “Corkscrew?” she asked.

  He pointed to a drawer and she dug it out.

  “Why only on Sundays?”

  “It sort of marked the end of another week. And it was the only time I allowed myself to drink.”

  “Really, why?” He looked at her concerned.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, “I don’t think I have any problem with alcohol. I figured that the last thing I needed was to start drinking, and then have some really bad days and feel sorry for myself and drink even more. With an unlimited amount of wine and booze, it sure would be very simple to go down into that hole, make some stupid mistake while drunk, and end up dying alone.”

  He nodded as he filled a platter full of golden-brown chicken. She could tell he had had the same thoughts.

  “After I buried my mom and dad up in Bend, I headed to a local bar I liked when I was home on vacations from college and proceeded to try to drink the entire bar’s storeroom dry.”

  “Oh, man,” she said, trying to imagine Matt drunk. “How long did that last?”

  “I’m not exactly sure,” Matt said. “I woke up under one of the bar stools, with a nasty hangover and hungry enough to eat a house. I haven’t really had much more than a glass of wine since. As you said, too dangerous, especially when you’re living alone.”

  She was very glad to hear that story. Both of them had learned to deal with living in the remains of the world in so many logical ways. It was good to hear that he had had trouble at the start just like she had had, and that now he didn’t drink much. Both items made her like him even more than she already was, if that were possible.

  The dinner turned out to be far too much food, even for two hungry people and a cat who seemed to eat anything. During dinner, she had told him about her friend getting beaten up by the bikers, and why just the sight of them had scared her so much. He agreed that made sense, but they both agreed that they still wanted to go together to meet the visitors.

  “Okay, so how do we approach these people?” she asked as the last dish was put in the dishwasher and the counter wiped down. “I really don’t feel right going up to them unarmed like you did to me.”

  Matt smiled and shook his head as he put a couple of wrapped up pieces of chicken in the fridge. “I don’t either. I’m just glad you didn’t shoot me.”

  “I’m glad I didn’t shoot you as well,” Carey said, smiling at him.

  “I think we should just have our guns on our shoulders, and just walk up there not showing any threatening actions in any way.”

  Her stomach twisted. “It seems like we’re taking a pretty big chance. What happens if they don’t like strangers?”

  “Then let’s just hope they turn us away without shooting first,” Matt said. “I’m betting that people who have seen as much death as we have, and they have, are not really interested in seeing more.”

  She nodded. “Okay, seems like a better idea than trying to sneak up on them.”

  “Yeah, I agree there,” he said. “And with that many of them, I doubt we could.”

  “So, we’re off to visit the new neighbors. I’ve only been in the city one night and I already feel like they’re intruding. I can’t imagine how you feel about them. Or me, for that matter.”

  “Glad you’re here
,” he said. “Mixed feelings about them. I’m just happy there are people besides me still left alive.”

  “With that, you get no argument.”

  They headed out to the foyer area. Before picking up any guns, Matt opened a drawer in a small desk sitting beside the closet and pulled out a metal object. “This is a spare key to the elevator. In case we get separated for any reason, come back here.”

  He handed her the key as if it were something he did every day, then turned to his gun rack.

  She stared at the small, round key in her hand. He was really trusting her, completely, giving her access to his home and all his security. As far as he was concerned, they were together, at least for the moment. And she liked that.

  “Thank you,” she said, putting the key into her front pocket and then tapping the outside of her jeans to make sure it was securely there.

  He slung a thirty-thirty rifle over his shoulder and turned to smile at her. “You’re more than welcome. Thank you for walking into my life. Let’s just be careful now, shall we?”

  “Sounds like a good idea to me,” she said, putting her rifle over her shoulder. “How good a shot are you with that thing?”

  “Expert with the sniper rifle,” he said. “I can break a bottle on the river bank from the top of the roof here. How about you?”

  “Good enough.”

  “That’s perfect. Ready?”

  “Almost,” she said. “All right if I take a bottle of water with me? It’s going to still be hot out there.”

  “Good idea,” he said, “grab one for me.”

  When she got back into the foyer, he was standing there, holding the elevator door open for her.

  “You know, in the old days, these things would start dinging in an annoying fashion when you did that,” she said, getting on and handing him the bottle of water.

  “I know,” he said. “I hated that, so I shut off those alarms.”

  “You’re very handy to have around,” she said.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I hope to stay around.”

  She liked the sound of that a lot.

  Thirty seconds later the elevator was again locked, they were across the lobby, and out into the heat of the early evening.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  MATT REALIZED as they started up the hill on the hot sidewalk toward the Hilton Hotel that they had only guessed that was the area the bikers had gone to. Actually, considering how little of the city his cameras covered, they could be anywhere in a very large area.

  “You know, this might take us some time to find them,” Matt said.

  “I don’t think so.” She reached out and stopped him, her hand on his bare arm, her touch soft wonderful against his skin. “Listen.”

  She was right. The sound of an engine running was clear, echoing down the street from above them. Then another one started.

  “Sounds to me like they are right were we thought they might go,” she said, taking her hand off of his arm and starting up the sidewalk again.

  “It does, doesn’t it,” Matt said. He could still feel her touch against his skin, and for the moment that was all he could think about.

  “How far do your cameras and alarms stretch in this direction?”

  “Four blocks on the motion alarms,” he said, “but my cameras can see five or six more blocks than that up each street.”

  “And the Hilton is at least fifteen blocks. Good thing there’s a lot of shade this time of the day.”

  “You going to be all right?” Matt asked, worried about her. It had occurred to him when they were up on the roof that she couldn’t be used to the heat, not after spending the last three years on the coast, where a hot summer’s day reached seventy.

  “If I keep drinking the water, and we go slowly, I’ll be fine,” she said.

  They moved along in silence for the next few blocks as the hill got steeper. Carey seemed to be having some troubles with walking up the hill on what had been a busy street and sidewalk three years ago. She was getting red in the face, and breathing harder than the slight hill should cause. After she spent an extra few moments staring at one body of a woman in what looked like it might have been a blue dress, he lightly touched her arm and pulled her into a shady alcove.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Not really,” she said, trying to smile, but failing. She leaned back against the brick wall, staring upward at the sky.

  “Memories?” he asked.

  She nodded. “The three or four days after everyone died, I was still here in the city.”

  “Oh,” he said, trying to imagine how bad that had to have been. “I left fairly quickly, headed for Bend. This place must have been awful.”

  “Worse than I want to think about,” she said, clearly trying to catch her breath. “Front Street down to the Embassy Suites didn’t have this kind of traffic on it, so it didn’t bother me as much this morning.”

  “You want to go back?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “No. I’ve been dealing with death for three years, walking around bodies in stores and on streets. This just brought back those first few days of memories is all. The sidewalks in the area around the lab where I worked were this crowded that day.”

  “Makes sense this would bother you,” he said.

  He took the bottle of water she had in her hand, opened it, and handed it back. “Drink.”

  After a long, gulping drink, she seemed to be doing a little better.

  When he had approached Carey, she had come across as a tough, no-nonsense woman. As he learned more about her, he was coming to understand that she was just as afraid of this new world as he was, and had just as many issues dealing with it as he did. It didn’t make her weak. The fact that she had survived showed just how strong and powerful she was. But having some trouble made him feel even closer to her, and they were getting close enough as it was.

  “I wonder where all those folks on bikes spent that first year?” he said, trying to take her attention from the past to the present.

  “I’d like to find that out,” she said.

  She held his gaze for a moment, then smiled, this time a real smile. “Thanks. I’ll be all right.”

  “Of that I have no doubt,” he said.

  She took one more drink, put the cap back on the bottle. She pushed herself away from the wall. “Ready to go figure out who these new people are?”

  “Ready,” he said. “And I’m very glad you’re with me on this.”

  She again stared into his eyes. After a moment she reached out and touched his bare skin on his arm, sending a wonderful sensation through his body. “So am I. We seem to make a good team.”

  “That we do,” he said, taking her hand and squeezing it lightly.

  With that, they turned and kept going up the hill, walking side-by-side where they could. He liked having her beside him.

  He felt stronger when she was there.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  SOMEHOW, for the rest of the walk up the hill, she managed to keep the memories of walking around the days after everyone died in the background.

  Such a brave little girl.

  Someday, she was going to have to really get her mom’s voice out of her head. She almost laughed out loud at that thought. Fat chance of that ever happening.

  She focused on Matt, on the people they were going to meet, on staying alive and working toward some type of future. She wasn’t sure what that future might be just yet, but right now a future felt a lot more possible than it did yesterday morning.

  That thought almost made her laugh as well. Yesterday morning, her future was exploring a dead world and dying alone. Now she was in lust, maybe in love, with a man she had just met, and was about to walk into a crowd of bikers. Life after the end of the world certainly had taken a turn toward the interesting.

  And hopeful.

  Matt was giving her hope, showing her things she hadn’t thought of before, and making her focus forward instead of backward at t
hat day three years ago. She liked that about him.

  She liked everything about him so far. He even had a nice ass. Could a man get any more perfect?

  As they climbed the hill, she tried to ignore the heat as much as she could. The heat never used to bother her so much, and she knew the only way to get used to it again was to make sure she drank enough fluids. Beyond that, the only thing she could do was just not think about it.

  The sound of a motorcycle starting up echoed through the buildings as they reached the lower east side of the Hilton building. The noise sent shivers down her spine.

  Her mother’s voice came flooding back once more. Such a brave little girl.

  Shut up, Mother!

  “Sounds like it’s coming from just a block ahead,” Matt said.

  She nodded in agreement, but said nothing. She really wanted to take her rifle off her shoulder and hold it, but they had decided it would be better to just approach with the guns where they were. She wasn’t sure if that was a smart idea, or one that might get them both killed.

  He reached out and put his hand on her shoulder. “It’s going to be all right. These really aren’t bikers, like the old gangs. They’re just ordinary people traveling in the most efficient manner possible, considering the conditions of all the roads.”

  She wanted to say, “We hope.” But instead she just nodded and stayed beside him.

  They reached the front corner of the Hilton and turned north.

  She wasn’t sure what she expected to see when they found the group, but whatever her expectations had been, what greeted them was not it.

  Not even close.

  Instead of a street with skeletons and wrecked cars, the street had been completely cleared.

  Completely.

  A row of motorcycles were now parked down the middle of the pavement in a perfect row that seemed to stretch for two blocks. A couple of men on their backs were working under one that was idling.

  The street, except without parked cars, looked like it had before everyone died. Someone had cleaned all the bodies off for as far as Carey could see. And moved all the cars. She had no idea why they would do that, but they had.