Earths Survivors The Zombie Killers: Origins
Page 14
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The stars were hard diamond chips in the sky as they lay close together in the grass. Billy sat up and lit a cigarette. His heart was a slowing hammer in his chest. He rolled his own cigarettes, everybody did it seemed. There was still plenty of tobacco just lying around behind glass doors and in locked cabinets. Funny how stress made you pick up the poisons again. Gamblers did it, alcoholics did it. Smokers too, he guessed. He wondered briefly how many people had quit smoking, to live, only to be killed by what had happened, or the dead, or circumstances from all the fall out. He laughed lightly.
“What,” Beth asked.
“I was thinking millions of people quit this shit to live... They're all dead and here we are.”
“Yeah, well, irony was never lost on the arts... Better give me one of those too,” she said.
“This is bad shit, you know. It'll kill you deader than a cockroach.” Billy told her. Cockroaches had not fared well in the rising of the dead and so it was joke among them if something wasn't doing well. The dead ate cockroaches like they were popcorn. Bad time to be a cockroach.
“Damn, well I hadn't intended to live forever, cowboy. Now give me one of them damn things,” Beth told him.
Billy passed her his own and then lit himself another.
“My, God. There is nothing that feels like that,” Beth said as she drew the smoke into her lungs.
“Reason it gets you,” Billy agreed. “Hey... I guess we should at least decide to stay or go,” he laughed a little.
She looked up at him. “I hate to make decisions.”
“Me too... We have to get moving, I think,” Billy said.
“Yeah... But not now. Let's let things settle out a little more. Did you notice how things weren't quite as bad the later half of our traveling?”
“Yeah... How long... People ask me every day.”
“I don't know... It's like the feelings along the way... It says stay, when it says go, we'll go. I know how that might sound. I wouldn't say it like that to anyone else but you, but I really feel, inside I feel, that we should stay put right now,” Beth said.
Billy nodded, “Then we will.”
“Hey,” she waited until Billy looked at her. “Whore or good girl?”
Billy felt his eyes tear up fast. “Dammit, Beth, never a whore, never.”
She curled into him. “That was my fear... What was yours?”
“What do you mean?” Billy asked.
“What was yours all those nights when I looked at you and I could see you wanted me and if you just asked one more time I would have said yes. Why didn't you?”
He stared at her for a moment. “I didn't know that. You said no, I took that as no. I didn't want to mess up this thing we have. This friendship we have. I have never had that with any woman, ever... I didn't want to lose that.” He looked at her for a second longer. “Still don't want to.”
A single tear slipped across her cheek.
“I didn't mean to make you cry, Beth,” Billy told her in a near whisper.
“Stupid,” She told him. “It's for a good reason.” She buried her face in his chest. “You are not the one, Billy Jingo, but I love you and I don't know if I can ever feel that for another man or not, not that deep. Whatever it is I don't want to lose it either.”
“You won't,” Billy told her.
She looped one arm across his chest and pulled herself closer. “Better not.”
He pulled her close with one arm and took a deep drag of his cigarette with his free hand. The stars continued their slow journey across the blackness. He felt her breathing change a few moments later and he held her as she slept.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Wendell (Dell) Sweet wrote his first fiction at age seventeen. He drove taxi and worked as a carpenter for most of his life. He began working on the internet in 1989 primarily in HTML, graphics and website optimizations. He spent time on the streets as a drug addicted teen as well as time in prison. He was Honorably discharged from the service in 1974.
He is a musician who writes his own music as well as lyrics. He is an artist accomplished in graphite, pen, and digital media. He has written more than twenty books for the Earth's Survivors series, many of which are unpublished, the Dreamer's Worlds series, Zero Zero, Billy Jingo, Hurricane, Addiction, The Zombie Plagues series and several dozen short stories.
All music, lyrics, artwork or additional written materials attributed to characters in this novel, unless otherwise noted, are Copyright © 2016 Wendell Sweet.