Death Incarnate

by Tamara Rose Blodgett

  I nod.

  “Ya should've told me.”

  I shake my head. Too embarrassing.

  He cups my face, unshed tears making his eyes shine.

  “I don't deserve ya.”

  I nod. “Yeah.”

  He plants his forehead against mine as he presses the tip of himself inside me.

  Swinging me down on the bed, he makes it missionary position.

  Being a virgin made that whole on-the-thighs thing impossible.

  He's right. It hurts when he moves through my barrier, but it's wonderful too.

  With gentle thrusts, he finally reaches the end of me.

  “Fuck, baby—it's like I'm fifteen. Not gonna last here.”

  I move a little, and he hisses, his fingertips clenching around my shoulders.

  “Nope, no moving of your sweet parts. Jonesy can't take that torture.”

  A small laugh escapes, and Jonesy's return smile is strained.

  He cups my face, freezing the movements of his body as he looks deeply into my eyes. “Why?”

  “Didn't feel right,” I answer lamely.

  Jonesy dips his head in a nod. “You know I'm in love with you, right?”

  Tears slip out my eyes and run into my hair.

  I nod. “Yeah.”

  “Don't you leave me, Soph.”

  “You've already declared your love. I think I might believe you.”

  He pushes deep inside me, and I clench around him, bearing down on his girth, and his head tips back, the tendons of his neck stretching. He pushes up with his arms, his muscles flexing, and he grits his teeth.

  “Gotta make you go,” he says fiercely.

  “What?” I begin to ask, then his finger is between us, working my clit.

  Hard.

  He begins pumping into me with a really slow precise, deep rocking.

  The burning ache melts into a building sensation I'm familiar with.

  I start panting, whipping my head back and forth on the narrow mattress.

  “That's it, baby. Come for me,” he whispers against my temple.

  Then I do, bursting over that golden edge within me and shattering it.

  A throbbing warmth begins to fill me, and my pulsing milks him as Jonesy goes deep with a final thrust.

  Delicious warmth releases inside of me, and he groans as I sigh, throwing my head back and lying limp beneath him as our bodies remain tightly married together.

  He gathers me close, withdrawing from me as he pulls me in against the curve of his muscular body.

  Jonesy's large hand presses against my wild hair and tucks it under the side of his face, so that our faces press together. “Sleep now, sweet girl.”

  “What are you going to do?” I ask, my voice already sinking into sleep with the rest of me.

  “Watch ya.”

  I fall asleep in his arms with the feel of his lips at my temple.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Ron

  Jagged chunks of sunlight wake me up.

  A big hot piece of it is lands right on top of my eyeball, and I groan, turning over, and promptly fall out of the cot I was sleeping in.

  My head raps the floor hard before bouncing up once and whacking again.

  Shit.

  The door flings open, and I cover my crotch with my hands.

  “Hey man,” the black guy says. “You doing a bit of self-grope? Kinda bad timing with all the shit going down, yʼknow.” His eyebrows jerk to his hairline.

  I blink, head throbbing and frown. Is he for real?

  “No, I-I didn't know who was coming in, and I'm sitting here in my skivvies.”

  He smirks. “My name's Jonesy.”

  That's right, I keep forgetting and remembering. A last name for a first name. Another weird thing about this earth. I give a small shake of my head, and pain knifes through my skull exactly where I bludgeoned myself.

  I wince, touching the tender spot, as I answer, “Okay, well, it's easier for all of you to remember me because I'm just the one guy. But I have to remember all of you.”

  He scratches his chest and adjusts his balls. “Yeah. Okay. Anyways, Mac says soup's on.”

  Soup's on?

  He must see my confusion. “Food, man—can't ya smell it?

  The instant he mentions it, I do. I don't know what flavor of delicious is cooking, but I must have some.

  I stand, feel dizzy, and slap the wall with a palm to steady myself, shaking out the cobwebs that are making my brain fuzzy.

  “Hey man, you okay?”

  I nod. “Yeah, feel like crap.” I rub my eyes and run my hand along my jaw, feeling two days’ worth of stubble. I took a shower last night like everyone else, but there wasn't a razor to be seen for kilometers.

  “Yeah, that blinking shit rearranges the parts.” He adjusts his nuts again.

  I give a pointed look at his crotch. “I wouldn't keep talking about other people's groping.”

  He grunts, chuckling. “Like to make sure the equipment's in order.”

  Hmmm.

  “Jonesy,” a feminine voice says at his shoulder.

  He does a half-turn, wrapping an arm around the beautiful woman who shares his darker skin tone, though hers is more coffee with cream than his expresso. “Hey, babe.” He kisses her temple, sweeping a golden chocolate curl behind her ear.

  A soft blush tints her cheeks.

  I narrow my eyes at the pair, wishing for a pair of denims with a fierce pang.

  Instead, I stand there in front of a woman I don't know in my underwear. Great.

  “What's going on?” she asks.

  He kisses her nose then turns to me with an almost embarrassed look.

  Sophie avoids looking at my lack of dress.

  Get the feeling this guy isn't embarrassed much and wonder why he is.

  “Telling him the grub's ready.”

  “Oh.”

  She scoots out from under his arm, still wearing pajamas. I notice she's got a really nice ass just as Jonesy turns back to face me.

  I try to clear my expression, but I know I've been caught when he glares at me.

  “Don't be looking at my woman.”

  That's right, women are a hot commodity here.

  I throw my hands up. “She's gorgeous. Got eyeballs in my head, man. Don't take offense.” She would be top-shelf on my earth. That skin... and those eyes.

  “Keep your tongue in your mouth.”

  He pivots and walks away.

  God. That was close. Small beads of sweat pop on my forehead.

  I don't need any of the males of this group getting it in their heads that I'm a problem.

  Because I was becoming expendable on my earth. And they might decide I'm expendable here. Right now.

  My stomach lets out a roar of protest.

  I'm one of those guys who has to eat my body weight each day to function.

  Like a six-feet-tall locust.

  I pull on clothes and beat it downstairs before all the food is gone.

  *

  Tara

  I drag the third piece of bacon off the two platters of four pounds’ worth and rip a chunk off.

  Taking small bites, I savor the great taste, trying to keep my focus in the middle of all these strangers, except for one, I remind myself.

  Even Mitchell feels like a stranger.

  Mainly because I saw him die.

  But here he sits, looking just like my brother, though, somehow, slightly older.

  He catches me looking and his lips catch in an uncertain smile.

  I smile back.

  Didn't sleep very well last night except for... a couple of hours. Nightmares of zombies crawling out of the ground and Timmy’s death played out over and over again.

  My sheets where soaked when I woke up, and my fingers ached from clutching them.

  What I haven't told anyone was that creep who tried to rape me had already done stuff to me.

  No, his penis hadn't entered my vagina.

  But there's oth
er things a man can do to a woman against her will that are pretty awful.

  His face is the first thing to surface when I close my eyes... and when I open them.

  And whenever the image of his face floats there, I can't breathe. I feel like an elephant just parked its ass on my chest.

  I want to talk to someone, get some of the horror out, but I don't know anyone here. Hell, I'm not even on my own earth.

  My chin dips, and tears cause my vision to shimmer. For the first time since elementary school, I want my mom.

  So I sit here, smiling at my brother while I'm still terrified inside. I know that fucker who hurt me is dead.

  But why do I feel like he can still get me?

  I take a sip of orange juice and try to shake my disquiet away. “Fresh squeezed?” I say, just to make my mouth work.

  The old guy—Mac, I think—replies, “Yup. Hate that fake stuff.”

  Clyde of the manners nods in agreement. “Bobbi squeezes every Sunday.” Whoever that is.

  Caleb—I finally caught on to everyone's names—claps him on the shoulder. “We can keep you whole until Bobbi can get here.”

  Mac's face arranges itself into a classic frown. “Not a good move, Caleb. Probably going to get tailed.”

  “Let them try.” Pax shoves off a wall with a foot. His longish hair is freshly washed, and a T-shirt that is obviously not his is stretched across his muscular body like a second skin.

  I lower my eyes, face heating. I can't face Pax after what we've done. How I feel. How many bad things he managed to erase with his touch.

  Jade shakes her black hair behind a shoulder in a semi-shrug, placing a knee on the bench seating. “Honey, let's not get combative before we need to.” She reaches for a biscuit, sweeping a chunk of hair behind her back again.

  “What time is it?” Tiff asks, clearly bored.

  “That's right,” Jonesy says, grabbing another handful of bacon, “you didn't get the disc.”

  Disc?

  “Hell no,” Tiff huffs. “I'll do what Hart does, grab a wristwatch if I need to know. Or use the housepulse.”

  “So old-fashioned.” Deegan laughs then sees me glance at her, and the happy sound dies away.

  “Hate the implants,” Tiff mutters.

  Implants for what?

  I should have made good use of my time sharing the same room as Deegan, plying her with questions about this new world of the future. But Deegan and I didn't talk. And when she returned in the wee hours, I feigned sleeping, listening to her settle into the top bunk until sleep finally took me.

  Even, deep breathing was the only sound that filled the tomb-like space as Deegan slept and I fought my own bid for unconsciousness.

  Never been raped. Never had her brothers die in front of her. Has a zombie bodyguard and an adoring alive family.

  Yeah, I'd sleep awesome too if that was my life.

  But it's not.

  My eyes wander to Pax again.

  He gives me a small smile—his try at testing the waters, I guess—and I quickly look away, slightly embarrassed. I don't know how to act. It occurs to me that he probably doesn't, either.

  I wipe my damp palms off on my jeans.

  One of the girls washed my jeans for me so when I got up this morning, they were clean.

  I scowl, digging in my memory for the name of the gal who helped. Sophie. I scan the room and find her. After studying her for a moment, I decide she looks different today... happy. She looks happy. Think she got together with the black dude—Jonesy.

  My first pleased flutter in two days takes up residence in my chest.

  They look great together.

  Might be the way he touches her and looks at her or the way she looks back shyly, as though they share a secret.

  As though they can't believe their luck.

  I stare at my empty plate, feeling guilt for stuffing my belly. I don't deserve to eat, or survive. My brothers didn't survive.

  I shouldn't have felt pleasure last night while my brother's one day in the ground.

  Heat begins to build in my head, and all that good food sort of does a sluggish churning flop. I cover my stomach with a hand.

  “Hey.”

  I jerk my head up like I've been caught, as if someone can read my thoughts.

  Maybe they can. A tough swallow convulses my throat.

  It's Tiff. She's got her small hands stuffed in the deep pockets of her jeans. Dark-blond hair is pulled back into a tight, no-nosense ponytail.

  Wiping my hands off on my napkin, I reply with forced casualness, “Hi.” I can't do the smile I should, but I manage a neutral expression.

  She rocks back on her heels. “Want to help with some shit?”

  “Some shit?” My eyebrows pop.

  She cracks a crooked grin. “Clean up outside?”

  I gaze out the sliding glass window and see nothing to do, but I'm pleased by the distraction from the dark, festering memories.

  I stand up. “Ah, sure.”

  Scanning the table for dirty dishes that need clearing and washing, I see Mac is washing them in the sink, and Jade is helping. And Sophie is beside her, while Jonesy hovers a few feet away.

  I take my plate to the sink and Mac swipes it out of my grasp without a word, plunging the ceramic disc into hot, sudsy water.

  “Come on.” Tiff sweeps her shoulder forward without unlocking her buried hands from the confines of her pockets and moves out through the open door into the early-morning daylight.

  Passing through the threshold, I suck in a grateful breath. The tension that's been singing between my shoulder blades lessens.

  In the light of day, without that experience of being teleported from one earth to another riding me, I take in the place with a slow, roving gaze for the first time.

  An expansive lawn begins right off the deck and rolls to a lake, where gentle waves lap against a concrete bulkhead. The sun glints off the water as they cup and fold, undulating toward the sandy shore.

  A long L-shaped dock stands beside a boat launch, and at its end is an ugly, aqua-colored slide, faded white in spots by age and sun exposure.

  Tiff walks out to the dock. I don't see what needs to be done, but I follow silently. Don't think she's going to zap me, she's not a zombie, and though she's certainly rough around the edges, Tiff seems to be straight forward.

  I steal another look at her. Real straight forward.

  I open my mouth to ask what's what—beginning to get the feeling something's up.

  “I'm a drunk,” she admits in a matter-of-fact voice.

  I stop walking.

  Tiff half-turns, and the sun shines on her hair. Some trick of the light causes the strands to look almost blond.

  I close my gaping mouth and offer up a nervous shrug.

  “I don't know what to say to that.”

  “Well, it's a long story, but—ya wanna hear it or what?”

  I'm not sure. “Yes,” I say.

  Maybe I can help someone and get my mind off my own grief. I'll take five minutes without thinking about my brothers or that man.

  With a tiny nod, she continues walking onto the dock.

  I gulp and follow her. When we get to the end, Tiff stares out across the lake, talking to it. I feel like an audience to her words.

  She had lots of brothers. A nice family. Tiffany Weller was the only girl.

  Lots of babysitting, which she liked and was natural at.

  A few things she says about her younger brothers hits me hard, making me think of Timmy.

  Tiff's not a corpse raiser but has a sensitivity to dead stuff. They call it AftD (Affinity for the Dead) here. She loved a boy named John Terran. Really smart, wealthy family.

  Not in her league.

  I find him a few yards away in this time, laughing and talking with other guys his age.

  I snap my head back to her when she says the words: “I was attacked.”

  Tiff Weller locks her pure hazel eyes with mine and begins telling me what ha
ppened.

  The event chokes me, and a numbness descends on my limbs—my brain.

  The similarities are terribly obvious.

  Tears cloud my vision. I can't see. I spin when she tells me what her attacker was doing to her when she woke up.

  No. No. No!

  She woke up screaming.

  I run then, away from her words. The truth. The sameness.

  Tiff is fast for a forty-something woman—and strong.

  She catches up to me, spinning me around, gripping my shoulders. Her stare bores holes into my head. “Ya know what the shrink told me that I finally fucking believed?”

  I whip my head back and forth. “No,” I whisper through a different kind of grief.

  “That it wasn't my fault. I knew how to fight. I was—I am—a tough broad that just spent the last twenty years of my life in the bottom of a bottle.”

  I hiccup, grabbing for my throat.

  “Help!” I say in a half-scream. Can't breathe.

  She hugs me.

  I still can't breathe.

  “How did you know?” I manage to gasp against her neck.

  “Just did.”

  Then the men are running in our direction, and my vision starts to swallow itself.

  Pax swims into my line of tunneling sight. “Give her to me.”

  Oh God. I need him—but I don't know how.

  “It's not what you think, Pax. Ya can't fix this.”

  “Gonna try.”

  I shove Tiff away, clawing breaths out of my unresponsive esophagus, and stagger around like a drunk.

  Pax grabs me.

  Our eyes connect, and he brings his face against the side of mine, his huge hand runs down my spine, my body fitting the cup of his much larger one like it was meant to be there, triggering memories of the night before.

  He instantly calms me. “It's okay,” he says quietly. “We're here.”

  Tears stream. “It's not.” But I want to believe him so bad, it hurts. Still, I trust him.

  Pax pulls away, so close our noses are nearly touching, and says the first thing I start to believe.

  “It will be.”

  My exhale is the first of the sobs, and this guy holds me through it all. His arms are hard. They're also tender and solid.

  For the first time in over a day, I'm not deeply afraid.

  Maybe, just maybe, with his help, I'll heal.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN