by Siara Brandt
Edmina’s eyes bulged.
Bevanne’s mouth dropped open while the chip headed there paused in midair.
Ailin didn’t know what to say. Was he talking to her?
Eli stepped over to the sofa and leaned over to kiss the top of Ailin’s head. Then he plopped down on the sofa beside her, sprawling his long camouflaged legs out before him.
He flashed a smile at Ailin that accentuated his sexy dimples and said to Edmina, “I like to keep her close to me, especially now.”
Ailin apparently had lost the ability to form words as she stared at his strong profile. Was he talking about her?
He set his coffee mug on the table and the air was filled with the rich scent of freshly-brewed coffee.
“There’s coffee up on the second floor lobby if anyone wants any,” he invited amiably.
He sighed suddenly and looked as if something was weighing on his mind. He turned to Ailin, paused just the right amount of time, then lifted her chin slightly with his forefinger. She was still speechless as he looked straight into her eyes and said, “I guess there’s no reason to keep it a secret now.”
Secret? What secret? Ailin, too, waited with bated breath to know what the secret was.
“We were waiting for the right time to tell you.” Eli paused, one dark brow arching the slightest bit as he looked down into Ailin’s face. “We haven’t set a date yet. But . . . ”
He settled back on the sofa, his obvious meaning hanging in the air between them all as he took a sip of his coffee.
Ailin stared at him in stunned silence. But Eli was just as cool as he always was. He looked at Edmina and said, “I couldn’t help overhearing some of what you said. And I gotta tell you that the city is the last place you want to be right now. Ailin didn’t want to tell you because she didn’t want you to worry. But the truth is that things will be so bad in the cities that being in this godforsaken little town has probably saved your lives.”
Edmina’s gaze hardened suspiciously. “Why would you say that?”
“Because all the major cities have organized gangs and they already have weapons. When their food runs out, they’re not going to ask pretty please when they want what you have.”
Ailin watched the exchange with a kind of fascination, surprised that Edmina didn’t have an immediate comeback. But Edmina finally recovered and informed Eli, “We have police.”
“You saw police here, too,” he reminded her.
“We have better resources up north.”
“You mean in the city.”
“What about the military?” Edmina looked pointedly at Eli’s clothes. “Or has it gotten so bad that men are actually deserting?”
The insult was not lost on Ailin. Nor on Eli. But he wasn’t fazed in the least. “There’s not enough military personnel to even begin to restore order in all the cities across the country. Law-abiding citizens are going to be on their own.”
“Is that why you’re here with Ailin? To keep her safe?”
“I’m doing my best.”
He draped his arm familiarly over the back of the sofa behind Ailin. Over the rim of his cup, he looked directly into her eyes. Eyes that were now curious to see where all of this was leading.
“So just how long have you two been together?” Edmina wanted to know.
There was a smile in Eli’s eyes as he continued to hold Ailin’s gaze. “Seems like forever, doesn’t it?”
Ailin nodded. That at least was true.
“Your divorce was just finalized,” Edmina reminded Ailin. “This was rather sudden, wasn’t it?”
Ailin shifted her gaze to her sister. “You could say that. He swept me off my feet the first time I saw him.”
Eli’s low laugh was immediate. And very, very sexy.
It emboldened Ailin. Warming to the game, she laid her hand over his. What she didn’t expect was her immediate and unexpected reaction to the warmth and the strength of the fingers under hers. Touching Eli felt incredibly sensual. It set off some kind of chain reaction deep inside her. She drew a slow, deep breath.
Eli took it a step further. He readjusted their hands and twined their fingers intimately together. When he gave her a slow, wicked smile, it was all she could do to smile back. She dragged her gaze away from him and tried to distract herself. Tried to think of anything but how he was sitting so close to her that his thigh was pressed against hers. Or how his thumb just brushed against her hand in a slow, but oh-so-sensuous movement.
“You didn’t get the flu shots?” she asked Edmina and Bevanne suddenly. “I mean you said you didn’t get them yet.”
“No,” Edmina frowned, watching her sisters face closely. “What on earth does that have to do with anything? You’re not going to tell us how dangerous vaccinations are again, are you?”
Eli snorted softly under his breath. He looked straight at Edmina. “She’s asking because the vaccines just might be the reason people are turning into those things. “Look, I know this has all been hard on you, and I know everyone is under a lot of stress right now. But you gotta know Ailie at least as well as I do. She’s the kindest, most thoughtful person there is. Right?”
What else could she do? Edmina gave a half-hearted nod.
Eli gave Ailin’s hand a squeeze. “That’s part of what I love about her.”
Edmina looked like someone who had just been outmaneuvered in a game of chess.
“Hey, babe, I’m going up to the room.” Eli said as he stood up. “You, uh, won’t be too long, will you?” he asked, making his voice intentionally seductive.
Edmina glared silently while Bevanne almost choked on the chip she’d just put in her mouth.
Ailin could only silently shake her head.
Chapter 19
_______________
“They were like wolves circling for the kill. Is it always like that?”
Eli watched Ailin take her hair out of the braid. The whole mass of disheveled curls went cascading down her back.
“Yes,” she sighed. “Pretty much.”
Eli turned back to the window. Daylight was fading and the sky was deepening to a dull gunmetal blue. “You would think they would have other things on their mind,” he muttered with his back to her. “Like where their next meal is going to come from.”
If a stranger could pick up on the tension in the Atherton family dynamics the first time he saw them together, then it must be pretty bad, Ailin thought to herself. But she smiled as she stared at Eli’s broad back. What he had done for her had been very sweet.
“About what you did downstairs,” she began. “Thank you. And for everything else.”
He turned back to the room and shrugged. “I just thought I’d even the odds.”
“And now you’re stuck sharing a room with me.”
“I thought it would look better that way. You can always change- ”
“No,” she interrupted him. “This is fine. We’ve slept together before and it was no big deal.”
He didn’t comment. He stared at her with a slight frown on his face like he was thinking that over.
The room was at the back of the inn and it looked out over a long field that ended at a dense stretch of woods. There were two beds with flowered coverlets, a small table and several chairs arranged around the room. It was a big enough room that they shouldn’t get in each other’s way.
As Ailin turned to look into one of the mirrors, she raked her loose hair back from her face. Leaning forward, she grimaced at her reflection. She was a mess. There were several scratches from the woods on her face and dark circles under her eyes from lack of sleep.
Eli had brought two ice buckets full of water melted from the ice machine, so Ailin started to wash up and brush her teeth with the complementary tooth brush she had found in the room. She glanced over her shoulder at Eli who had just sat down on the bed and was massaging the back of his neck with one hand. He stopped suddenly and dropped back on the bed like a man who was completely exhausted. And he should be. She’d he
ard him get up several times during the night to patrol the perimeter around the cabin. And who knew how early he’d gotten up that morning.
As she dragged her fingers through her hair in an attempt to loosen some of the tangles, she couldn’t help conjecturing about the man. Eli McShane was a lot more complicated than she had first thought. Rafe had been right. Underneath that tough exterior, he wasn’t so bad. She had been re-thinking her first impression of him for some time now. And these past two days seemed to have had a profound effect on her own outlook on life. Her priorities seemed to be re-aligning. Maybe a zombie apocalypse had that effect on everyone. Mostly everyone.
Perhaps what surprised her the most was the unexpected flood of awareness and, if she was to be perfectly honest with herself, the downright need she had experienced when Eli had sat down on the sofa beside her downstairs. It was strange to find that she even had those kinds of feelings any more. But the reaction of her body to his hard body so close to her had been a revelation to her.
She shook her head slightly and walked over to the window. It was perfectly normal, to feel that way, she rationalized. How long had it been? Way too long. And sexual attraction happened all the time between men and women. It was no big deal. Nothing she couldn’t handle. Just because you were attracted to someone, didn’t mean you had to act on it.
She saw a car passing by on the highway, its headlights probing the faint, rising mist. People trying to escape. And head where? It was anyone’s guess. Everyone was just trying to make the best decision they could.
There was a full moon just beginning to rise through the trees beyond the field. Combining with the fog, the moonlight glowed eerily on the dark figures staggering around down below.
“You don’t think they’ll eventually get in here, do you?” Ailin asked without turning.
She saw Eli’s reflection in the window. He was still reclining on the bed with one knee bent and his hands laced behind his head. But he wasn’t sleeping yet. He turned his head and slanted her a dark look. “They want to. So that’s reason enough to be prepared for the possibility.”
That’s why Eli had made sure that everyone was in a second floor room. And that’s why he’d had everyone help put up barricades at the staircases. So that they would have a second line of defense just in case they did get in.
“You might want to get some sleep, too,” she heard him say after she turned from the window. “I know you’re exhausted. And since we’re just about out of food and water, we’ll have to make some decisions tomorrow.”
They didn’t have any choice.
Athan Clune sat with his hands gripping the steering wheel, dreading the decision he knew he had to make. He now knew what it felt like to be breathless with fear.
The black outline of the hotel, with its three two-story wings, rose up through the drifting layers of fog. It seemed miles away.
Were the kids in the back seat up to it? They would have to be, he thought grimly.
He had hoped till the very last second that they would have enough gas to make it all the way to the hotel. But here they sat surrounded by nothing but trees and fog and an open field stretching before them that had never looked so menacing.
If they reached the hotel, would they even be able to get inside? he wondered. They would break in if they had to, he decided. Josiah had the axe. And if he had to force someone to let them in, he still had his gun. If it came down to protecting his family and the people with him, he would do whatever it took. He set his jaw resolutely, opened the car door as quietly as he could and stepped outside.
No one so much as whispered as they followed him out of the car. They all knew what they had to do. The car would be a deathtrap once they were discovered.
It was a surreal landscape with the bright moonlight shining on the fog and turning it ghostly white. There were a few groups of trees between here and the hotel that might provide cover. At first. But after that? Nothing.
A terrible dread, a heaviness made his movements slow and stiff. The damp, cold fog seemed to reach deep inside him, chilling the very marrow of his bones.
The fog-blanketed woods were almost unnaturally still, but he could hear low moans and guttural growls out there and he knew that the others could hear them, too. They could wait no longer. He looked at Rietta, whose eyes held a kind of desperate appeal as she looked back at him.
She had armed herself, too. She was gripping a piece of two-by-four in both hands. It was all she had and he knew that she was terrified, but the look on her face was one of sheer determination. He knew she would fight for the kids like a cornered tiger if it came to that.
They herded the kids towards the center of the group and then without a word, they started to make their way towards the hotel.
The black line of trees in the distance was mostly hidden by drifts of low-lying fog, but the moonlight was bright enough to clearly see the dark figures staggering around in the open field.
It was the middle of the night and Eli was checking once more to make sure everything was secure downstairs. Then he checked the zombie in the pool room to make sure it hadn’t come back to life again. Who knew how many times these things could re-animate.
He went back upstairs and cracked the window open in the room to let in some fresh air. He frowned as he looked out across the field. It looked like there were more zombies out there now than there had been earlier. The loose-jointed figures looked like they were wandering around aimlessly. But something brought them here and kept them here. Something kept them on the move.
The fog was hanging in eerie layers and drifting slowly into ever-changing, deceptive shapes. Eli rubbed his hand across his beard-stubbled jaw. His hand suddenly stilled. He had to look twice to make sure he wasn’t imagining it. He blinked hard several times. There were people out there. Not zombies, but regular people. The small group had just emerged from the dark line of the forest in the distance. As he watched, they ran together toward the cover of a clump of trees.
Eli didn’t wait to see more. He grabbed up his gun and headed for the door.
Ailin sat up in her bed and asked sleepily, “Eli, where are you going?”
“There are people out there. They need help.”
And he was gone.
The fog muffled all sounds, but they could hear the wheezing breaths and the low snarls all around them. For a moment they froze as they stood in the open, feeling even more exposed and vulnerable. They were terrified, as much for the others as they were for themselves. It didn’t take long for any of them to realize that there was no need for stealth any more. Several zombies had seen them and they were already headed straight for them.
They ran through the field with reckless haste now. They snapped twigs without caution, crashed through low brush and did nothing to try and quiet their own heavy breathing. Sisha tripped over a thick clump of grass and went down hard. It took a few moments for the others to realize that she had fallen behind.
Dazed, Sisha started to pick herself up from the ground. But she went still and stared in frozen horror at the zombie that was heading right for her.
Athan knew a moment of heart-stopping fear when he turned to look back at his daughter. He knew he could not reach her in time. But the zombie got tangled in some briars which slowed it down. It continued to thrash about wildly, however, as it lunged madly towards Sisha. Muscles straining, Athan ran, reached for his daughter and lifted her to her feet. He aimed his gun just as the zombie broke free. And pulled the trigger.
There had been eight people and Eli had seen that some of them were children. He knew that they were headed for the inn. They must have seen that the place was surrounded by zombies, which told him just how desperate they were. Eli was pounding down the stairs when he heard the gunshot. But he already knew the people were in trouble. Bad trouble.
Other people came downstairs when they heard the gunshot and Eli briefly told them what was going on outside. Most people didn’t know what to do. They were unarmed. But one
man, Lochlain Sayres, the firefighter, said he had been through this before. He grabbed a piece of pipe from the storage room as a weapon and stood ready to help Eli. Another man offered to help, too.
Ailin had followed Eli downstairs. She was just in time to hear him say, “This door is our best bet. We move fast and go right through them.”
Eli turned when he saw Ailin. “This door locks automatically. Make sure someone is here to open it when we get back.”
After the three men disappeared, Ailin stood watching out the glass door. Nilah Selwyck joined her. She cupped her hands on the glass and peered anxiously out into the foggy darkness. “It’s hard to see anything out there.” Nilah murmured under her breath. “I wish we could do something to help them.
Nilah gave a little gasp. “I see them,” she said. “There. By those trees over there. Oh, there are children.”
As the two women watched, zombies would appear through the fog, and they would immediately head for either the group of people or one of the three men trying to reach them.
There was another distant gunshot. Eli’s gun went off, too. Once. Twice. Ailin could mark his progress by the orange flashes.
“They’re so far away,” Nilah breathed tensely.
One of the children fell and had to be dragged to his feet by one of the adults. Ailin saw Eli scoop the small boy up under his arm to carry him. As he turned back towards the inn, Eli’s gun fired a third time.
A few other guests were still coming downstairs. Penndle asked his wife, “What’s going on? What are you looking at out there?”
Without looking at him, Nilah briefly explained what was happening.
“Who the hell came up with that shitty plan?” Penndle wanted to know.
“They’re out there risking their lives- ” Nilah began and then clamped her mouth shut again, refusing to be distracted.
Something slammed hard against the glass door. A zombie. And another one. As they watched, yet another zombie banged on the glass. Penndle backed away from the door. Ailin and Nilah did the same when they realized they were drawing them.
