by COE 3. 1. 0
“I don’t think they would run out of fresh meat.”
“Fresh being the operative word.”
She thought of the green eyes of the lead wolf, and she shivered. The wolf had been so knowing, so human.
It was saying to her: “I know where you are. It’s only a matter time when I come to collect.”
14
Every day, for three hours, she worked with Oliver this way. Lunges. Squats. Body pump. Barbells. Weights. Kettle bells. Bench presses. Curls. Crunches.
When they ran out of food in the penthouse, they raided the next one.
Rummaging through the neighbor penthouse, Oliver found a study in which the owner kept guns behind a glass cabinet.
“Felicity,” he called to her. “Come here.”
She came and found him taking out a rifle from the cabinet.
“We’re going to need these,” he said. “We need to be able to get them from long range.”
“I don’t know how to shoot anything,” she said.
“We’re going to need target practice.” His blue eyes roamed down her body. She felt a tingle as he did so. No one ever did the elevator eye thing with her before. Well, maybe they did, but only to have a laugh. “You look good.”
“Your definition of good is having a BMI of less than 25,” she retorted. Come on, come on, don’t blush!
“You’re getting there.”
“Sorry to disappoint you for not getting there faster, but I’d have you know that in Papua New Guinea, I would have been considered a raving beauty.”
He grinned. “You’re not half bad outside Papua New Guinea.”
“Why, thank you. And you actually now look better with your hair growing out.”
It was. She had always thought he looked good with his buzz cut, but he now even looked better.
He actually colored a little, and then he recovered pretty quickly.
“If we are going to do target practice, we’re going to need more bullets,” he said.
“And draw out half the still living population in the city?”
“I think the city’s more dead than alive.”
She smirked. “Gun shots will still draw out the walking dead anyway. Only they aren’t walking. They’re taking one hundred meter dashes at you.”
“You got a better idea?”
*
They were on the roof of the apartment building.
“OK, this will come in handy when someone is rushing at you,” he said. “The fast mutants have no game plan. They will just rush you and try to tear at any part of you they can get.”
He planted his feet firmly on the floor.
“Now rush me,” he said.
“What?”
“Rush me.”
She squinted at him dubiously. “So you can flip me over?”
“It’ll be good.”
“For you maybe, not so much for me.”
“I’ll let you flip me next. Come on, our lives may depend on it.”
She sighed, knowing he was right.
“What do you want me to do again?” she said, stalling for time.
He grinned. “You’re not getting out of this, Marks. Come on. Give me all you’ve got.”
She rushed at him, her hand swinging. He caught her at the last minute and turned her body around in a bear crush.
“Ooof!” she cried.
His arms were very tight around her body, wrapping and pinioning her arms.
“Good,” he said. “Now I’m going to teach you to do just that.”
“OK.” She was relieved when he let her go, although it was very nice to feel his hard body against hers. “How did you learn this?”
“Aikido lessons since I was a kid. My whole family went. Now what did you say killed the mutants again?”
“A slash to the jugular.”
“We’ll be having knives. And guns. If we don’t get them the first time with bullets . . . we do this with our knives.” He mimicked the slashing of her throat with the side of his hand.
Her pulse was accelerating despite knowing this was make-belief.
“You ready for this?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Now you do it to me.”
It took her a few tries before she could grasp the fundamentals of rotating a hurtling body and using its momentum for its own gain.
“You’re getting it,” he said admiringly. “You’re fast. When I tried to teach Marla, she was all over the place.”
“Who’s Marla?”
“An ex-girlfriend.”
Right. Why did she even have to ask?
They practiced in this manner for two hours. At the end of it, she felt exhausted.
“You’re going to ache all over,” he promised her, “the way you ached when you lifted weights and ran on the treadmill for the first time. But you’re going to get stronger and better as you go along.”
He was right.
So every day, she got sweaty and all physical with him. Not that she was thinking of him that way. But sometimes, there was no other way to think of Oliver. He was larger than life – so in your face and so absolutely gorgeous in his tank tops and sweatpants that he literally took her breath away. She loved watching him work out – the way his well-muscled arms tensed and strained, making the engorged veins on them stand out. Sometimes, she wished he would just take off his tee when he worked out so that she could see his chest and abs.
Or maybe it was because it was the end of the world and he was the only living man she had seen for yonks.
Yeah. That had to be it.
Still, she could barely contain the contractions between her thighs. They were getting worse.
Maybe it was time to revisit her bucket list.
*
Felicity stared at the Size 12 silver gown again. The one belonging to Mrs. Maurier. The one she couldn’t fit in about a month ago.
Did she dare try it now? She had lost a lot of weight since, and she never felt stronger or fitter. But it didn’t mean she could squeeze into a Size 12.
She looked at herself in the mirror. Her face had changed from its rounded shape to something more angular and heart-shaped. She actually had a chin now! Her eyes looked enormous in her face, and her waist had certainly gotten much smaller. Her mother had always thought her pretty – and the thought of her mother sent an arrow into her chest – but mothers were superbly biased.
If anything, her curves were much more enhanced. She still was far from being model thin, but her breasts and hips now were exaggerated, and she looked kind of sexy, if she might say so herself. Her slimmer waist emphasized that.
She stepped into the dress. She couldn’t zip it up completely, of course, but she almost did. The zipper couldn’t zip up beyond the small of her back, but it was progress! Major progress.
“One more month and you’ll be able to wear that dress,” said a voice behind her.
She froze. Oliver’s reflection was in the mirror and he was standing at the doorway.
She swiveled and grabbed her sweatshirt to cover herself. “Don’t you ever knock?”
“Sorry.” He rapped three times at the door. “Want me to help?”
“Help what?”
“Zip you up.”
“It won’t zip up, so save yourself the bother.” She found her cheeks heating up. “Now if you’d excuse me, I have to change.”
But he still lingered. It was as though he had something to say. If she wasn’t so embarrassed, she would actually be more compassionate.
Oliver, is there something you want to tell me?
His jaw twitched. He said, “OK, sorry for bothering.”
He closed the door behind him.
She stared at herself in the mirror, knowing the moment had passed.
*
It was well into their second month of incarceration together when she woke up to the otherworldly sound.
She sat up in bed.
It came again. A piercing howl into the night, no doubt attracti
ng all sorts of attention from the fast mutants. But it was very clear what it was.
A wolf howl.
She thought of the wolf pack rescuing her. The lead wolf with its penetrating green eyes.
They were back.
Or maybe they never left, and they were just biding their time until food ran out.
15
It was about ten o’ clock at night when the power went off. Felicity and Oliver were in the lounge, reading, when suddenly, they were in darkness. The moonlight shone through the wall-to-ceiling glass windows.
“What’s happening?” Felicity said. She was nervous. Did the fast mutants cut the power supply? Could they do that?
Oliver went to the windows and looked out. “Felicity, come see.”
She went and stood beside him, looking out into the city nightscape. The lights in this entire section of the city were out.
“I think the power grid is failing. It can only go on so long without maintenance,” he said.
“So what do we do?” she said.
“You mean besides finding candles?”
“We’re safe here,” she insisted. “We have a good vantage point of the city and the mutants only came up here once. Maybe they sort of mark out which places they have scoped and they won’t come back here anymore.”
“But it does mean walking down fourteen floors each time we need to make a run. And not having hot water. Or having heating for when it gets cold.”
He had a point, she had to admit.
He said, “We need to find a new sanctuary first. Make sure it’s secure and all that. I’m not convinced this city’s the best place to be in. Maybe we need to look farther afield. Go out to the country.”
“The roads are choked with cars, or haven’t you noticed?”
“And that’s why we should pick out a couple of good hiking shoes. Because we’re going to walk.”
*
To be honest, Felicity didn’t think it was that good an idea to venture far from their apartment. But she knew they couldn’t be confined to one place the whole time.
“Besides, we’re ready.” Oliver cocked his pistol, laden with bullets. “One for me and one for you.”
“You have two more in your pockets,” she observed.
“Better safe than sorry. You ready?”
She didn’t have much stuff to begin with in the first place. And whatever they couldn’t bring along with them, they had to forage.
“I’m ready,” she said, more bravely than she felt.
“Then let’s go.”
*
It was the first time she had been out since the night of the hospital. It was amazing to understand how confined they had been. She nervously pointed her gun around when they exited the main doors.
“Careful where you point that thing,” Oliver cautioned.
“You got a game plan, mister? And I feel a lot safer pointing this thing, as you put it.”
“Wait.” He placed his hand on her arm and pointed. With his finger.
She looked where he was pointing at. It was a gleaming motorcycle which had fallen by the wayside. Its rider was nowhere to be seen.
Oliver said, “Can you ride pillion?”
*
It was difficult getting out of the city, but Oliver did a great job out of it. Felicity sat behind him on the magnificent Kawasaki, clinging to him for dear life. This has to be a wet dream, she thought. I’m riding on a superbike with a bad boy biker.
The bike managed to navigate the places a car could not. It weaved through stalled traffic. Felicity tried to ignore the countless cars on the freeways out of the city and the rotting corpses in and out of them.
There were fast mutants on the freeways, feasting on bodies. They looked up as the Kawasaki roared to the countryside. Some of them gave chase, but the motorbike was too fast. Still, every time that happened, Felicity’s heart pounded within her chest and she gripped the gun inside her jacket.
The air was much colder than when all this had started. Winter was coming.
“Where are we heading?” she asked Oliver, though it was difficult to talk above all that roaring noise.
“We’ll know it when we see it.”
They stopped to refuel at an abandoned petrol station whose owner was long dead behind the counter. No fast mutants were around. They replenished their supplies with frozen pizza and bottled water from the vending machine, whose glass had been broken. Then they were off again, deep into the countryside where the houses were sparse and the air crisp and still fresh, not imbued with the smell of rotting corpses.
Finally, they came to a sign which said: LAKE VERDANT.
The Kawasaki purred towards a vista of trees and shimmering blue water, reflecting the peaceful sky. It stopped at the edge of a small lake fringed by houses and forest.
Oliver killed the engine.
“Now this is what I’m talking about,” he said.
16
They walked into one of the houses with an excellent lake view. Aside from one rotting corpse outside on the lawn, the charming double-storied cottage with the white picket fence was empty. But the interior of the cottage was just as charming as its mauve and green exterior, and Felicity felt right at home.
More importantly, the lakeside was still powered by electricity.
“If we can clean this place up,” Oliver declared, “we can hide out here for a while.”
“Do you think it’s too . . . exposed?”
“No. We can rig the fence and put up warning signals all around. It just takes a bit of work, but we’d be secure. But meanwhile – ” He looked longingly at the lake. “Fancy taking a dip?”
The weather here was far cooler than the city, and but the autumn day was warm enough.
She hesitated. She rarely swam because she looked like a ham in a bathing suit. Not that she didn’t know how to swim. She did as a kid.
Oliver read her mind. “You’d look great in a two-piece. Why don’t you let your hair down and take a chance once in a while? It’s the end of the world, and I’m betting somewhere in your bucket list, there’s skinny dipping involved.”
“I’m not skinny dipping with you!”
He laughed. “Fine. Then go find yourself something to wear.”
She went upstairs to the master bedroom. From the photos in the house, she reckoned that whoever lived here were a middle-class suburban young family of two – a newly married couple. She knew that because the photos in the living room were mostly of their wedding, dated exactly one year ago. There were no baby cots or toys in the house, thank goodness under the circumstances.
She rifled through the closets, which were not ostentatious at all compared to the walk-in in the penthouse, and was briefly disappointed that she had not brought the silver gown. Still, she found a yellow string bikini which she could wear.
She put it on, studying herself critically in the mirror. Her curves were actually very pronounced, and she could almost say she was sexy. Well, sexy in a pleasingly plump way which was sure to excite some and not others.
She found herself thinking about Oliver. About how hard his body felt underneath his jacket when she was riding on the Kawasaki behind him. About how she had subconsciously circled her arms tightly around his waist. Yeah, sure – she didn’t want to fall off the bike. But he was also nice and warm to hold, and she remembered how marvelous his abs were when she had looked after him when he was ill.
No, I didn’t cop a feel!
Well, I did have to sponge him off because he was burning up, but that’s not the same as copping a feel!
She wrapped herself up in a dressing gown, took two towels and went downstairs. She halted as she passed the corpse on the lawn. Was that the young husband? The corpse had clearly been a man.
“Felicity!” called Oliver. “Don’t look at it. Come in! The water’s warm!”
She turned from the corpse to gaze at the lake. Oliver was floating about twenty feet away from the lakeshore. She remembered his earlier
threat about skinny dipping and blushed. Was he naked? In an end of the world scenario, should they care how they appeared to each other?
The situation was so incongruous. They were surrounded by corpses – on the grounds of almost every house and certainly inside the houses – but Oliver was telling her to stuff it. Fuck everything. You don’t know how long you’re going to live, so live in the moment.
Even as she processed it, her heart and soul felt lighter than they had in weeks. In fact, she felt like a cloud as she walked down to the lakeshore on its pretty flower bordered lane and the pretty wooden pier which was now empty of boats.
She dropped the towels and the bathing robe onto the soft ground. And then she stepped into the water, feeling the strong breeze caress her face and toss back her dark hair which grown long and untamed. Oliver was right. The water was sinfully warm. Warmer than it had a right to be for autumn. It was as though the gods were beckoning them to enjoy these final days before . . . well, they couldn’t enjoy anything anymore.
Oliver stood in the water. His chest glistened wetly in the light. He was preternaturally beautiful, like a god himself.
“It’s not deep,” he urged her. “Come on in. You look great.”
He was smiling, and his voice was appreciative, even though she couldn’t see his expression from where she was as the sun was in her eyes. Which meant he could see her very clearly.
I don’t care anymore.
Slowly, without allowing herself to stop and think too much about this, she untied her bikini top from the back. Then she let it drop into the water. Her breasts were heavy on her chest and her nipples puckered in the wind.
Oliver stilled. He didn’t say anything.
She didn’t stop there. Guided by a surety which wasn’t entirely out of her own volition, she peeled off her bikini bottom.
There. She was naked. And she was going to skinny dip. Cross that off her bucket list.
She waded into the water and immersed herself. He swam slowly towards her. She felt buoyant and joyous as she swam towards his bobbing head. He was smiling. Was there anyone from the houses watching them? Did she care anymore?
