A Wilderness Within

by Emma Castle

  “I fought men overseas, all afraid of what change would bring. Groups of men who believed that different beliefs halfway across the world spelled doom for their own religion. I fought governments who believed women were property and should have no control over their own lives. I’ve seen corruption take root like rot in the trunks of ancient trees and how it spreads through the ranks of soldiers until no man is left untouched. All of them have one thing in common. They will destroy what threatens them, what is out of their control or beyond their understanding. A quickly spreading illness turns us against each other rather than unites us. So…” He met her gaze again. “Men burn things to ash rather than stand together. It’s one of our greatest failings.”

  He could feel the weight of the Glock where it rested at his lower back tucked into his jeans. The sweater was loose, and he covered it from Caroline’s view, but he felt the weight of it all the same.

  “I wish…” She pressed a palm against the wide window, still looking over the yard below. “I wish the world didn’t have to burn.” She curled her fingers into slight claws against the glass. “I just want to find my family. I just want to go home.”

  Lincoln nearly told her that her family was likely dead, had to be. But then he considered, if she was immune, maybe her parents or siblings were too. A slim chance, for sure, but still a chance.

  “Where is your family?” he asked after a moment. They probably had to leave here soon, and he preferred to have a destination in mind ahead of time.

  “Missouri. Joplin,” she said and looked his way again. Her eyes burned with sudden hope. “Will…will you help me get there?”

  Right now he would follow her to the ends of the earth. But telling her that would only scare the shit out of her.

  “Look I know we didn’t get off to the best start, you kidnapping and drugging me”

  “And you literally stabbing me in the back.” He almost chuckled, but he didn’t want her to think he thought it was funny. He did not want Caroline thinking it was okay to run around stabbing him with whatever was at hand because she thought he was tough enough to handle it.

  “Please, Lincoln. Help me find my family, and I’ll…” She paused, and he hung on that word, wondering just what she would offer him. She ducked her head, face flushing red, and he couldn’t resist tilting her head up with his hand under her chin.

  “I…I’ll give you what you want.”

  “And what is that?” he asked, his gaze fixed on her lips. She looked so sexy and sweet, with plush soft pink lips, dark lashes fanning down as she tried to hide those lovely eyes from him.

  “Me—you said you wanted me.” She was now staring at his mouth, and a bolt of arousal shot straight south to his groin, and he nearly moaned. She knew just how to test his control.

  “You would give yourself to me?” he asked, his voice low and rough even though he knew he wouldn’t let her do it. He wasn’t a barbarian, no matter how good it would feel to strip her bare and pin her down on the bed and take her until they both were too exhausted to move. But it didn’t stop him from seeing how far she’d try to go before he stopped her from offering herself to him.

  “Y-yes.”

  He stroked the pad of his thumb over her bottom lip. “Prove it. Kiss me like you want me,” he said in a gruff whisper. One kiss was all he would take from her. Just one, one that would likely haunt him with its fiery sweetness until he died. He wanted her more than his next breath, but he wasn’t going to take her when she wasn’t truly willing.

  Caroline’s eyes flashed with a fury that made Lincoln want to laugh in delight. She was a fighter, and that was good. Only fighters would survive in this brave new world.

  She reached up and gripped the collar of his sweater and jerked him down to her. Their lips met in an explosion of fire.

  Fucking Christ.

  6

  @CDC: We urge you not to panic. Hydra-1 outbreaks have been reported only in India and China. Until we learn more about its ability to infect humans, there is no need to fear. The White House is working closely with foreign governments to install measures to control the spread of the virus. There will be checkpoints on roads and warnings issued to travelers in affected areas. Aid workers will be present to help diagnose people who believe they may be infected with Hydra-1. If you show any of these symptoms below and are currently in India or China near the affected areas, please visit the camps set up by the WHO and the CDC.

  —Centers for Disease Control Twitter Feed

  November 26th, 2019

  * * *

  Damn, he tastes good.

  Caroline wanted to hate Lincoln, but she couldn’t. The second she grabbed him and pulled his head down to hers, she was lost. He’d been right about the chemistry—it had been there from the moment she’d gotten her first real look at him the morning after he’d taken her from the grocery store. He was the kind of guy she had fantasized about her entire life, and now it seemed the universe had dropped him right in her path to make of it what she would. She wanted to kiss him, felt insane for suggesting it, but she did truly want to taste him, to feel something, anything, after so much cold and darkness.

  The haze of his kiss, the way their mouths moved together, the way his beard tickled her skin… made her feel alive in a way she’d never been, even before the world had crumbled to dust around her. His large hands gripped her by the waist, lifted her up and carried her to the wall, pressing her against it, making her feel wonderfully small trapped in his arms. These last few months she’d felt so dead inside, and now all she felt was him…and her own body coming alive beneath his kiss and his touch.

  She was on fire. Her skin burned with desire, and she wrapped her legs around his narrow hips and clung to his shoulders, feeling his muscles move beneath his sweater like shifting tectonic plates. He was hard everywhere, except for his mouth. He knew how to kiss, conquering her lips in a sensual, playful way. She couldn’t catch her breath, and she didn’t want to.

  The world spun wildly around her as she parted her lips to his exploring tongue. He thrust inside her, playful and dominating, showing her an all too tempting glimpse of what it would be like for him to take her. She arched her back as a lusty warmth stole through her, muddying her thoughts. But she didn’t care, not while he was kissing her like this.

  How long had it been since she had been kissed? Forever, it seemed. She had broken up with Jackson, her boyfriend, a month before Hydra-1 struck. Months…months since she had felt any intimacy with another person. But Jackson had never kissed her like this. She and Lincoln were strangers, two animals desperate to survive. Now she understood what he had meant, damn him. She did want him because her instincts told her she needed him, needed him to survive. She was drawn to him because he was a survivor. The thought horrified and fascinated her. What if this dark, intense man was one of the last men on earth? What did that mean?

  He threaded a hand through her hair at the nape of her neck, tugging lightly so she tilted her head back. He trailed kisses on the exposed column of her throat until she whimpered beneath him. She could feel the hard press of his arousal against her, and he rocked into her, faintly, as though restraining his desire to fuck her right there against the wall. The image made her burn even hotter, but she struggled for control.

  “Lincoln…” She gasped his name, and suddenly he was moving, setting her back down on shaky legs.

  She touched her bruised lips and panted hard as he turned away from her, drawing in a slow breath. She couldn’t deny the warring emotions within her. Relief that he’d let her go, that she had a minute to think over what she’d just foolishly promised, and how disappointed she was that he’d stopped. Caroline couldn’t tie herself to a man. Not now, not like this. She needed to focus on her family, not her hormones.

  His jaw clenched as he gazed out the tall windows, his hands on his hips in a pose of restraint and power.

  “I’ll help you find your family, but you’re not a commodity to offer in trade. I told you, yo
u’ll want me in time, of your own free will. Just basic biology. Till then…” He walked toward the door to the basement and left her alone, confused and trembling with interrupted desire.

  When the afterglow of that kiss finally receded, she was able to focus on his promise to help her. They were going home.

  Mom, Dad, her sister, her niece, and her sister’s husband. Joy surged through her, chasing away the lingering shadows that the previous night had left behind. They wouldn’t stay here, where men burned things just to feel better. They would move south, they would find her family, and she would feel safe again, wouldn’t she? She had to. She wasn’t going to think about anything else except the plan. Find her family, and then she’d figure out the next step from there.

  The muffled flutter of wings and an excited clucking from the basement told her Lincoln was checking on the chickens. She walked over to the open basement door, peering down into the darkened stairwell and listening to him speak to the birds. He was sweet-talking them, telling them what lovely ladies they were to lay such big eggs for him. Caroline’s lips twitched in a smile. She hadn’t expected that from him. Lincoln was a fascinating blend of intensity and serenity. She had never met anyone like him before. She likely never would again, come to think of it.

  She gazed out through the wide windows in the nook, studying the winding streets in the distance and the hundreds of homes. What had this place been like before the virus? Had people sat out on their decks, grilling steaks and sipping beers while they talked about the future of the University of Nebraska’s Husker football team? What would become of this neighborhood now?

  What happened to a world where people vanished almost overnight? She remembered seeing an article once about places in certain cities that suffered from urban decay, and she’d clicked through a slideshow of photos showing abandoned train stations, empty shopping malls, crumbling opera halls. Each picture had held a quiet, melancholy majesty.

  Beauty within decay and emptiness. Beauty within sorrow of an ended age. Perhaps someday a new species would take over, and it would marvel a thousand years from now at the crumbling superdomes and national monuments the way humans had done when they’d set foot in the ruins of castles in Scotland or the skeletal remains of the Roman Colosseum.

  With a shake, she pulled her focus away from the windows and tried to busy herself with other tasks. It was so easy now to lose a sense of time and drift away in dark thoughts.

  She put away their dishes after washing them, then sat down at the table and rolled her ankle around. It still hurt a little and was stiff, so she’d been massaging it a little every few hours. If they left tomorrow, she would be able to travel, just so long as she didn’t have to sprint.

  Lincoln stayed down in the basement for a long time. It was eerie being alone upstairs, so she carefully came down the winding carpeted basement steps. To her surprise, the walk-out basement which opened up to the backyard was homey. A small bar was at one end and a family room with a TV, and a gas fireplace was opposite the bar. Next to the back door were two dog kennels stuffed with hay. Two red-and-brown chickens clucked contentedly as they sat in the kennels.

  “Dog kennels?” she asked Lincoln.

  He shrugged. “It’s the only thing I could find.”

  Lincoln leaned against the pool table, his back to her as he watched the wintry landscape of the backyard and the creek beyond. She couldn’t help but admire his strong body, the way he seemed to fill the room with this quiet, brooding presence. He had a predatory and animal intensity, yet she’d seen flickers of compassion in him. He wanted her to think he was a solid wall, impenetrable, impassive, unyielding, but he wasn’t made of stone.

  There was something about him, a melancholy perfection, a tortured beauty to him that warned her he had seen and caused pain to others in this world and that those actions still haunted him. He wanted her to think he didn’t believe that there was still good in the world, but deep down, he had to have hope or else he never would have helped her. He would have taken her, used her and left her to die. Instead, he’d helped her, and he hadn’t taken advantage even when she’d offered.

  He remembers what it was like, how good people can be when we work together. I won’t ever give up, and I won’t let him either. She made the silent vow to herself.

  Caroline joined him by the pool table and watched the clouds slowly circle in cold patterns above the leafless trees. Without the buzz of cell phones and the constant noise and bustle of her old life, time had slowed to a trickle. It had only been a few months since this nightmare began, but it felt like she had been on the run for decades. Those first panicked and frightening moments in the airport seemed like a lifetime ago. The woman she had been then was gone. Dead. A ghost. Now she was the woman who had spent a week helping others in her apartment complex find food, shelter, and medical supplies. She was the woman who’d lifted people over the Chicago barricades to help them escape. She was hardened but not broken. She was steel but not unbending.

  “What do you miss most about the way things were?” she asked as she slid closer to him. Their shoulders touched, and she could feel the heat of his body from that single point of contact. He didn’t pull away, and her heart gave a hopeful, stuttering staccato of beats.

  “I miss knowing where I belong,” he replied, his voice a little gruff. She studied his bearded face, wishing she could hear his thoughts.

  “Where you belong?”

  “Before the contagion, I knew what my job was, what my purpose in life was. I knew where to go and what to do. I had my unit. Horowitz, Phillips, Holt, Finch, Norton. They were my men, my friends. My family.” His voice roughened as he spoke.

  “What happened to them?” She reached over and covered his hand closest to her with her own, but he still didn’t look at her. The brown of his eyes was lit by the overcast winter sky, and the color was softer, darker, like the wood of trees in an ancient forest.

  “Horowitz and Finch were with me here in Omaha. We stayed in a bunker. Philips, Holt, and Norton were sent to assist in escorting key government personnel to safe locations.”

  “Safe locations? Like the bunker you were in?” She’d heard rumors over the years that there was a bunker in Omaha for the president if the United States was ever invaded.

  “Yeah.”

  She hesitated, thinking of the American flag pin. “Were…you with President Whitaker in the bunker?”

  For a long second he didn’t reply, but a tic worked in his jaw. At last he said, “Yes. Whitaker died only two weeks in. One of us had carried the virus into the bunker, but we didn’t know it until it was too late. It killed everyone…except me.”

  “Oh my God,” she whispered, only too able to imagine the horror he must have endured. She could see he wasn’t going to talk about it anymore. Not right now. But after a moment he looked her way.

  “What do you miss about…before?” he finally asked, his voice softer, but still gruff.

  She took her time in answering. There were hundreds of things she missed—hot showers, warm beds, pizza delivery, even her email. But there was one thing she missed more than anything.

  “People. The feeling of knowing that our world was full of people. I swear some days I could almost feel the collective creative energy as they worked, played, laughed, and cried, as they lived, you know? I don’t think it occurred to me until recently just what Hydra-1 has taken from us. It killed blindly, without thought, without discrimination. It took our dreamers, musicians, artists, engineers, lawyers, doctors, farmers… The virus stole our future as well as our past.” She had to wait for a moment before she continued. “Who is left among us now to create a life for those born after us? We have nothing left…nothing. This can’t be the end, can it? We can find a way to rebuild, can’t we? I mean…we have to…right?” The bleakness of the world seemed to close in on her then, crushing the last bit of her hope. She shut her eyes, choking down an agonizing sob as it knifed the inside of her throat.

  Lincol
n’s arms wrapped around her, holding her tight, absorbing the trembling of her body as she cried. It felt good to let it go with someone around, to expel the negative surge of energy that was trying to drown her and to know that someone was there for her. Lincoln held her through it all and rocked her in his arms. In that moment, she started to realize how lucky she was he’d found her. Underneath all that cynicism was someone who cared. He was like her own personal sun, one that burned through the gloom of this dark world.

  Sniffling, she pulled back to look up into his fierce face and saw a deep need there. Not one of lust, but one of the heart. A need to no longer be alone.

  “It isn’t true,” he said softly, his rich voice rumbling.

  “What isn’t?” she asked.

  “That we don’t have anything left. As long as there are two of us, two who can remember the world before, we won’t let it die. When I saw you that first time, you reminded me that this isn’t the end. I was trained to fight until my last breath, and I forgot that, until I saw you. But now…now I’m fighting not just for my country—I’m fighting for the world.” When he said this, she couldn’t help but feel he’d almost said he was fighting for her too, and she shivered and leaned close to him again, burying her face against his chest.

  “We are fighting for the world,” she said and smiled when he chuckled. “You’re not the only hero out there.”

  “No, I’m certainly not. You’re the one who believes, the one with hope. I’m believing in you.”

  They stayed like that for a moment longer, sharing the warmth and comfort that only such an embrace could give before she turned her thoughts toward finding her family.

  “When do we leave for Missouri?”

  “The day after tomorrow,” Lincoln replied. “We need supplies. More maps, food, water, and gas.”