by Lilly Black
Dani echoed his words, then added, "Right now and forever," before she launched herself at him. They attacked each other so feverishly, they ended up on the dining room floor, tearing away clothes, getting just enough of themselves exposed to make the connection they sought. But once he was inside her, lying atop his beautiful bride on the hardwood, he no longer wanted to just fuck her. He slowed everything down and stared into her eyes as he withdrew inch by inch before thrusting into her at the same pace. He kissed her gently, savoring every subtle nuance of her soft lips and wet mouth as his cock did the same. It was something neither of them had ever experienced or desired before, but it was the only thing they desired in the moment.
Exploring each other as if it was the first time, they made love slowly, the only goal to be as connected as possible, and near the end, Dani clung to the precipice as she felt Jax reaching his peak inside her until as one they fell, spiraling out of control into a deep abyss of lust and love and unimaginable pleasures. Finally, they landed where they began, wrapped in a winding embrace on the floor of their cabin - sated, spent, and so lost in a state of bliss, it no longer mattered that they lived in a world of corpses and death, at least for the moment.
"Come on, Alek. We're both adults. You can sleep in the bed with me," Amina said as she watched him stretching his legs on the couch in her room, trying to determine just how uncomfortable it was going to be for his 6' 3" frame.
"Are you sure?" he asked, always the gentleman.
"The people we love are fucking each other as we speak. I think we should at least cuddle," she took a jab at their situation, but neither laughed because the joke landed more like a knife to the heart.
Wearing a pair of flannel pajama bottoms, he laid down on the king sized bed on the right, which was where he always slept in Olivia's room, and Amina got in on the left and turned off her lamp. Then when she slid close to him, he held out his arm, and she quickly got comfortable with her head on his chest. She closed her eyes and tried to pretend he was Reid, but that hurt too much. Reid was cheating on her right now. He didn't deserve to be in her fantasies, and besides, Alek was incredibly hot in his own right. His body felt so good beneath her, his muscles hard, his skin smooth and warm, and she thought maybe this would not have to be such a bad thing. Or at least she could make the best of it.
Alek had been on her radar since well before the apocalypse. She had loved to watch his show, and more than once, she had pictured herself in the love scenes with him. But things were different then because she had never experienced the deep kind of love she felt for Reid. Now the idea of casual sex had little appeal. The idea of getting even with Reid for fucking his wife, however, was positively irresistible, and whether she really wanted to do what she intended to do with Alek or not, he would never know the difference. She was still an actor and a damn good one at that.
Ready to punish Reid, she looked up at Alek's beautiful face in the pale light shining through the room's only window, and with a seductive grin, she brushed her hand down the side of his cheek. He didn't resist, so she moved in to kiss him, softly at first, and when he mirrored her enthusiasm, she took it further, sliding her tongue between his lips. Alek let her. He was so hopelessly in love with Olivia, Aphrodite herself could not have turned his heart, but Amina seemed so lost without Reid, he decided if she needed to kiss him to make herself feel better, there was no reason not to indulge her. Then she tried to slip her hand inside his pajama pants.
"Whoa," he said. "Can we slow down?"
"Why should we?" she asked, unfazed by his rejection because in that moment Alek was just a warm, well-built body to her. "Reid is cheating on me right now, and Olivia is cheating on you. We may as well return the favor."
Alek smiled a sad smile as he shook his head. He was no happier about the situation than she was, but he refused to look at it in those terms.
"Technically, Amina..." he began, taking the hand that was reaching for his dick and bringing it to his lips. He kissed her knuckles, then held it against his chest. "...the cheating happens when they're with us. They were married for fifteen years before we came along."
"But it doesn't feel that way. When I met him, she wasn't real to me, you know?"
"I know," he commiserated. "I was sure her husband was gone forever, so he wasn't real to me either. Then to make matters worse, it took Olivia weeks to accept it, and when she was finally ready to be with me, he came back from the dead the next day."
"So, the first time you two had sex was..."
"...the night before you and Reid showed up," he admitted. "Even after she was convinced that he was dead, she felt guilty for moving on, so we waited. How long was it before you and Reid were together?"
"We had sex the first night it all started," she said, and it instantly made Alek angry, not for himself but for Olivia. She had been hyperconscious of the feelings of a man she believed wasn't even alive to feel anything, and Reid was fucking around the first chance he got?
"So, he really cheated on her that fast?" Alek demanded, and Amina was taken aback by the venom in his voice.
"It wasn't like that," she protested. "And he wasn't cheating on her. Trust me; she was right there with him. He even called out her name during the finale."
"Ouch," he said, gritting his teeth.
"No, it wasn't like that either. It was..." she began, then she paused and took a deep breath before telling him a terrifying story she dreaded reliving. "It was the last night of our lives..."
Day 0
At the bottom of the hill from his mother's neighborhood, Reid had planned to get on interstate 64 and head toward 77 South, figuring once they got out of Charleston, he and Amina could get to his compound in the mountains, but when he came to the ramp, it was blocked by a pile up of cars, the drivers and passengers running after each other like rabid animals. Reid just kept moving, going down to MacCorkle Avenue where he turned right, hoping to use the Oakwood Road entrance to get on the 64, and as Amina searched the internet on his phone for more information about the outbreak, he pulled the satellite phone out of the inner pocket of his coat to call his wife. She didn't answer, but he had no reason to believe there was anything wrong. She was probably just having fun with her friends in Pittsburgh.
"I can't get a hold of anyone either," Amina said, "but I'm seeing some crazy shit online. Some reports are saying these people are...dead."
"What?" he asked, incredulous, but when she began to explain, she was cut short as he slammed on the brakes so hard the car skidded sideways to avoid hitting the truck in front of them as it crashed into a minivan going the wrong way. Both vehicles ended up blocking the road, forcing Reid to turn onto the Patrick Street Bridge.
"Fuck!" he shouted.
"What's the matter?"
"This is going to take us farther away from the interstate," he said.
"That might be a good thing. It looks like we wouldn't have been able to get through downtown anyway. The I-64 bridge is gridlocked," Amina said, looking at the traffic reports on his phone.
"Can you check to see what 77 looks like going through Charleston?" he asked. "Maybe we can head out route 21 toward Sissonville and meet up with it there."
Amina typed the new search into the phone, but as they crested the Patrick Street Bridge, Reid began to lose hope. The entire way ahead was a rat maze of abandoned cars and small hordes of the infected, or zombies as the internet was claiming.
"Oh, God!" Amina cried. "What are we going to do?"
"I'm going to do whatever it takes to get us through this," he assured her, and as Amina felt her anxiety start to wane just from hearing the confidence in his voice, she realized this man had become her hero. He appeared out of nowhere, saved her from Kenny the Kidnapper, and now he had made it his mission to protect her in this worst-case-scenario world. Though she may not have given him much thought if they had met under normal circumstances because he was at least ten years older, she was suddenly acutely aware of how attractive he was. His eyes
were a pale, mesmerizing green, his body was clearly well-built beneath those cold weather clothes, and his light brown hair was overdue for a trim, which made him even sexier to the younger woman.
It may not have been the right time for it, but focusing on Reid kept her from spiraling into a catatonic state of terror as he drove like a madman to get them safely through the obstacle course ahead. He cut across the parking lot where Charlie Woo's used to be to go around a jackknifed tractor trailer that was blocking the main road, then using sidewalks, curbs, and oncoming lanes, he managed to get them all the way past the intersection at 5th Avenue where the street became a one way, and for the next three blocks, it looked like the worst was behind them. There was no other traffic as they climbed the hill to Washington Street where they needed to make a left to get to Route 21, but as Reid started into the turn, a car with no headlights came flying toward them, crashing into them and causing them to spin back down the hill.
At the bottom, they slammed into a light pole on Horns Avenue.
"Are you okay?" Reid asked. His chest was a little sore where his airbag had deployed, but he was otherwise unhurt.
"I think so," Amina said. "What do we do now?"
He didn't know, but as the scared, younger woman looked to him to make everything okay, he knew he had to think of something. With the airbags out and no key, he couldn't get the car started again, and as he surveyed his surroundings, he could see a group of the dead coming toward them from a couple hundred yards away. He also saw an SUV sitting in the parking lot of a department store. He popped the trunk.
"Stay here and keep the doors locked," he told Amina, then he got out and grabbed the crowbar from the trunk of the town car, ran across the road, and broke the small, triangular window on the back driver side door to get inside the SUV. The alarm went off, luring the approaching dead away from Amina as Reid got in the driver's seat and pulled out his pocket knife, stripping the wires to get the car started. By the time he had it running with the alarm disabled, the dead were upon him, and he made circles in the parking lot to shake them off of the car. He sped over and picked up Amina, but they couldn't go in the direction they needed because about two dozen zombies now stood between them and their intended route, drawn by the car alarm. He started down Horns Avenue in the wrong direction, planning to use the parking lot next to the hardware store to connect to Washington Street. Unfortunately, someone had the same idea from the opposite side, and they had crashed into the parked cars, blocking the way.
"Goddamnit!" Reid roared as he threw the SUV in reverse, but in his rearview, he could see the herd coming for them. There was no way the vehicle had enough power to plow through that many bodies.
"Oh, God!" Amina cried in terror.
"We've got to get out of this car," he said. "If we're in here when they get to us, we're dead."
Amina nodded. She knew he was right, but the thought of opening that door was so horrifying, if she had a gun, she could have easily put it in her mouth and pulled the trigger because she believed that no matter what they chose to do, they were going to die.
"Alright," he said. "Let's go." He threw open his door and quickly ran around to her side, helping her out. With her wrist in one hand and the crowbar in the other, he made a run for the hardware store, and as he led her toward the employee entrance on the side, he silently begged fate to let him find the door unlocked. But it wasn't.
"Hit it!" Amina shouted. "Hit the knob with the crowbar until it falls off!"
"If I do that, they'll be able to get in, too," he protested, but when he looked and saw how close the horde was, he realized they could worry about that once they were inside and started beating the knob with all his strength until it gave way. Luckily, it opened inward, and they immediately began looking for something heavy to push against it to hold it closed. Unfortunately, the door led to a storage room without any large pieces of furniture. There were just rows of tall, wire racks, and the best they could do was turn them over sideways, lodging them between the door and the facing wall. Without the inventory, the racks were very light, and as the number of dead outside grew, the door began to open a fraction of an inch more with each passing minute.
"We can't stay here," Reid said, but when they left the storage room for the main store, it was even worse. The large, plate glass window across the front was busted out, and the dead were wandering around the aisles. When they noticed Reid and Amina, they immediately rushed toward them, forcing them to take the nearest escape route, a staircase that led up to an office built on a platform with just a single door and two windows - one to the outside and the other a two way mirror overlooking the store below.
As they stared down at the aisles, they could see all of the dead meandering in the direction of those who were already bottlenecked at the top of the stairs, beating on the locked metal door that was the only thing separating Reid and Amina from a fate that seemed inevitable.
"Well, we're fucked," she said as she slid down the wall to sit against it. She was beyond scared at this point. Now she was trying to figure out the most painless way to kill herself so she didn't suffer the same end as those she'd seen on the street and the internet. Reid, on the other hand, had not yet given up hope. He had a wife and a daughter at home, and thinking about not being there to protect them was more than he could bear. He tried calling Olivia again. He got no answer, and though it worried him, he had to believe that it just meant that she was out having a good time with her friends completely unaware that Charleston was overrun with crazed cannibals who may or may not also be corpses. Next he tried his sister, then Savannah, and finally he got an answer. She had been contentedly watching a movie as if nothing was happening, and after debating whether or not to tell his daughter what was going on in Charleston, he remembered why they built their home in a sparsely-populated, rural area on a gated mountaintop. Even if this plague had reached Summers County, Savannah would be safe, and there was no need to scare her just yet. Still, she got the impression that something wasn't quite right with him from the seriousness in his tone when he told her he loved her before they said goodbye, but it didn't really hit her until later when she spoke with her mother, who, unlike her father, chose to scare the hell out of their daughter for her own safety.
"How many kids do you have?" Amina asked Reid when he hung up.
"Just the one. Well, and a rather large cat who thinks I gave birth to her," he said with a soft laugh as he sat down beside her, and they talked quietly for about half an hour before they realized that the dead outside the door seemed to have lost interest in them. The banging had stopped, and as Reid put his ear to the door to check for groans, Amina looked out the window into the store to find that they were back down on the floor wandering the aisles again. Reid started to feel hopeful.
"If we're quiet, we may be able to slip downstairs at some point soon," he suggested.
"Oh, God, no," Amina protested, terrified at the prospect. "There has to be another way."
Reid looked through the window to the outside. Directly below them was a fenced in area with a corrugated tin roof over part of it. They might have been able to jump to it from where they were without getting hurt, but the sound it would make when they hit the tin would draw the attention of every corpse in the area and he already counted more than fifty in the parking lot where they had abandoned the SUV.
"Maybe if we had some rope," he said, and they began to look around the office. They didn't find anything they could use to climb down, but Amina did discover a half eaten box of crackers and a pair of running shoes in her size. She set the shoes on the desk and held up the crackers.
"I found dinner," she said with an awkward laugh.
"Is there any more food?" he asked. "With the water cooler over there, maybe we could survive up here until the government gets a handle on this."
"Reid, I don't think the government is going to get a handle on this," she said, then she showed him a video she had found online of the nation's capitol compl
etely overrun. "If they can't protect D.C., no one's coming to save us here in West Virginia. We're on our own."
Though he accepted that she was probably right, he was unwilling to despair. The dead weren't on the staircase anymore, which meant that the time could come when they weren't in the store at all. And it was a hardware store! If they could get downstairs, there would be an endless supply of items that could be used as weapons.
Then his satellite phone started ringing.
He had set it down when they were going through the drawers, and one of them had accidentally covered it up on a desk across the room. By the time he found it, the caller had hung up, but thirty seconds of loud ringing was all the dead needed to have their attention drawn back to the office at the top of the stairs. He could hear them clumsily plodding upward outside the door as he returned the call to Olivia. When she answered, he spoke softly and quickly.
"I can't talk right now. It isn't safe. I'm trying to get back home, but there's been some sort of outbreak here. I'll call you when I can. I love you."
He hung up and turned off his ringer, then he and Amina watched through the window as every one of the corpses headed toward the staircase. Outside the door, the chorus of groaning and banging reprised, and the noise lured even more through the broken plate glass at the front of the store. From inside the office, it sounded as if the door might give way, so they pushed a desk in front of it, and the noise riled up the already excited dead. For over an hour Reid and Amina waited for them to lose interest like last time, but it didn't happen. Eventually, the point came where neither of them could keep their hopelessness at bay any longer, both convinced they were doomed.
Tears began to stream down Amina's cheeks, and as Reid gently brushed them away with his thumbs, he became keenly aware of the evidence of Kenny's violence on her beautiful face. If he had realized the prick had struck her at the time, he would have beaten him for it, but it had been too dark to see the subtle discoloration that preceded the bruises.
