by James, Jill
“Strip me.”
So slowly it seemed the fabric wasn’t moving at all, he pulled her panties down her thighs. He kissed every inch as it appeared. His warm lips and hot mouth on her bare skin sent all the blood in her body to the apex of her thighs. Her fingers tingled as she grabbed onto his shoulders.
She wanted him this second but the game was too much fun. She felt like a goddess, a sexual goddess. Lifting her leg, she placed it over Teddy’s shoulder and brought herself closer to his face. His hands cupped her butt and pulled her closer still.
“Whatever you desire,” he whispered against her thighs.
Her fingers slid down her stomach and tangled in her curls. “Kiss me. Here. Make love to me with your mouth.”
“Whatever you desire,” he whispered just before he did exactly as he was ordered.
Chapter Fifteen
Teddy pushed up from kneeling in front of the tiny grave. The wildflowers he’d planted a couple of weeks ago were putting forth flowers. The tiny white buds covered the little bush. A few torrential rain falls had done wonders for the scraggly plant. A scuffle behind him had him yanking the knife from the sheath on his belt and whipping around. The constancy of the humming repel sound made him relaxed and off-guard.
Beth Evans skidded to a stop in front of him, with Miranda a few steps behind. Although the young girl had seemed to recover from her loss of a baby, Ran had been keeping close tabs on her.
“You shouldn’t be out here, Miss Beth.” His gaze looked her over quickly. “Hell, you don’t even have a gun or a knife.”
His gaze shot to Ran and he raised an eyebrow.
“I’m sorry, Teddy. I thought she might like a walk or something. I have my weapons. I would have protected her.”
“I know you would, Ran,” he said. He did know the young woman was every bit as good as a skilled man with her gun and her knife. “But maybe Miss Beth shouldn’t be here yet.”
Her green eyes filled with tears and her hands clutched at her dress fabric. “I should have been here before now. It’s my fault he’s dead.”
He released a big sigh. Whatever fanaticism she’d had for the ways of Bennett and his church seemed to have died with her baby. She’d woken up mourning the child and wanting her family and friends around her. Her long brown hair flowed down her back uncovered and she was back to treating young Jed as a potential husband. Still, something in her eyes looked broken, like shattered china that could never be put back into one piece. She’d lost that young girl sparkle she’d had.
“The baby was a boy, wasn’t it?” Her soft-spoken question pierced his conscience. He hadn’t looked when he’d buried the bundle, and he hadn’t wanted to. Only Michelle and the doctor knew anything for sure. If this little girl wanted it to be a boy, a boy it would be.
“I’m pretty sure that’s what Michelle said,” he said, with a tiny twinge for the lie he told.
“You planted flowers,” she whispered with a sweet, heartbreaking smile. She rushed forward and hugged Teddy.
He patted her back and let her tears wet his shirt. Maybe they should have brought her out here before now. Might have helped her. Or given closure like all the self-help books used to preach.
Ran coughed. “I’ll wait over here by the road.”
The young woman trod over the dirt clods and stood guard on the asphalt. He sighed again. Another broken woman, although she’d pulled herself together and come out of the fire, stronger than before. No telling yet whether Beth would be stronger or fall apart at the next catastrophe. Only time would tell.
She moved away and fell to her knees at the graveside. “Can you fix it?”
A shiver went up his spine, just like his momma said, like someone walked on your grave. Had Beth lost it totally? Would she be a danger to others, or just herself?
“Miss Beth, what do you want me to fix?” Don’t let her say the child. Can’t nobody fix that.
“The cross. He should have a name, shouldn’t he? Even if he didn’t live, he should have a name of his own.”
“Yes, he should,” Teddy agreed, grabbing the cross and handing it to Beth. She started untwining the ribbons and set them on her dress as he got more pieces of wood and quickly nailed them together.
He brought the finished cross and a thick nail they’d been using for scratching out the names on the wood. She took it and stared at the old cross.
“I should keep the Evans-Cruz. Nick would have liked that.” Tears covered her cheeks but a smile lit up her face. “His father was Diego. It means James in English and my dad is Jim, I mean James, too.”
She nodded and Teddy scratched James Evans-Cruz on the battered wood. Beth twined the ribbons back on and he pounded it into the ground above the small grave.
“If we find some paint, I’ll come back and paint his name,” she said, her voice stronger.
“That would look very nice, Miss Beth.”
***
Michelle stood at the gate with her hands wrapped around the metal bars. Teddy and Beth knelt by the graves in their growing burial ground. The row with Beth’s baby already held two more gravesites; one was a young man who’d gotten gangrene after an injury and the other was his mother who couldn’t go on without him. They’d heard her moans in the motor home she occupied and gone in and made her dead dead.
She brought herself back to the present as tears flooded her eyes watching Teddy make what she assumed was a new cross to Beth’s wishes. Her mind turned away from any thoughts of what the girl had birthed and they had buried. She hoped this would end the sad chapter in the young girl’s life. Jed was a wonderful man who adored Beth and would do anything for her. Her ears caught the sound of shooting practice from the other side of the walls. The radio operator had taken to learning guns and the crossbow in an effort to prove he could protect Beth. From the smiles she’d seen between them, it wasn’t a wasted effort either.
A gust of wind from the north carried the unmistakable scent of rot and decay. It couldn’t be a horde, the sound was working, she could tell with the constant hum in her head. Her next thought was of the deaf skinbag not so long ago.
The stench came and went with the breeze. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted her. An undead female in running shorts and what was left of a sports bra. The earbuds she wore explained it. Although the batteries on whatever device she’d been using were probably long dead, just having them in the ears was enough to hinder the repel signal.
She went to yell to Miranda, but the girl had moved away, toward Teddy and Beth. Their backs were to her and she couldn’t yell without alerting the skinbag who was oblivious of them at the moment. Maybe it would just shamble along.
Please. Please. Please.
Prayers seemed to go unanswered these days, as the thing must have seen the group in the cemetery, or caught their scent. Her steps sped up, but no moans sounded to let the group know they weren’t alone. Michelle looked around and found no one. It took a split-second to realize it was only up to her.
She rushed to push the button to open the gate and ran out of the opening. Miranda looked up and began to pull her gun, but Michelle was faster.
The pistol bucked in her hand, the skinbag fell to the ground with a hole in its head, and the echo rang in her ears. She shoved the weapon in the holster and whipped around to make sure they were safe.
All of a sudden, what she’d done sank in. She was outside the gate, in the middle of the road. She’d opened the gate and run out without thinking. Her teeth chattered until she clenched them together and breathed deeply. She’d done it. She’d willingly exited the yard. She wasn’t going to wimp out now.
Walking toward the cemetery, she met the others by the fallen body. Teddy turned her over with a push of his boot and Michelle saw in an instant why the thing hadn’t alerted them with the trademark moans they all used. Her windpipe was gone, hell; most of her throat was gone. She wasn’t sure how the skinbag’s head had stayed on.
“Why don’t you girls get so
me men so we can take care of this?”
“Girls? You have got to be kidding me?” Michelle put her hands on her hips.
“Really?” Ran added. “I’ll go get some gasoline so we can burn this mess.” The young woman turned away and stomped across to the gate.
Beth looked from Teddy to Michelle and swallowed loudly. “I’m going to go see if Jed will give me some gun practice so I can shoot like Ran and Michelle.”
When Beth turned and left, silence fell over them. Teddy wore that look that men have perfected when they have no clue.
“In case you failed to notice it, and I’m sure you did, high-and-mighty King of Pittsburg, I ran out that gate to save you. I shot that thing to save your ass and all I get is ‘you girls.’ This is not the Church of fucking Fruitful Harvest and you are not that bastard Bennett.”
“Ah, Michelle, ma belle. Don’t be that way,” he crooned as he reached to hug her.
She pulled back and his arms fell away.
“You said you’d be right back.”
“I was right here, you could see me though the gate.”
“You promised you’d be right back and then you died,” she yelled, the tears flooding her eyes and running hot down her face.
He spread his arms. “I’m not dead. What are you yelling about?”
“You died and then you came back. Just like you promised,” she whimpered, wrapping her body in her arms, rocking back and forth as reaction set in. “Just like you promised.”
“I am not your husband, Michelle. I’m not Mitch.”
She glared up at him and he stepped back. “No, you’re right. You’re not. He came back like he promised and I killed him.”
***
Teddy stretched out his arm, but Michelle had already turned and walked away across the road and through the gate. It slid closed and locked with a loud clang that carried across to him, like the slam of a prison door, except he was on the outside.
He couldn’t help smiling a little. She had rushed out the gate. Rushed out to save him. Damn it! He wasn’t her husband Mitch. He would never have gone to work and not been there to protect his woman. Family had to come first. His dad taught him that. Among so many other things.
The opening clatter of the gate cut into his thoughts, but when he looked up it was Ran with a wheelbarrow and a gas can. She pushed it over and they got the skinbag into the barrow and he led the way to the side field where they were burning bodies so they were downwind. Ran followed with the can and her endless ramblings. At any other time he loved listening to the girl who could go off on twenty tangents at one time. Now, she grated on his last nerve as she droned on about his failings as a man.
“Everyone knows you don’t call us girls anymore. Like, duh.”
“Now you sound like Cody. That boy is rubbing off on you.”
“Don’t call him a boy. He is all man, if you know what I mean.”
Teddy found himself blushing. “I do know what you mean and I don’t want to. What is it you kids say, TMI?”
“It’s so lame when old people try to sound hip.” She did the L sign on her forehead with her fingers.
“You’re like forty, Teddy. Z days are going to be like the old times, when people died young. It’s already happening. We’re going to die of colds, and accidents, and heart conditions we can’t treat anymore.”
That sobered him up quickly. Ran was right. In the ZA he might be an elder. He shook that thought away. Hell, no. Maybe decades from now the live expectancy might be way young again, but he still had a pre-Z mind and body. Flexing his biceps, he dumped the zomb’ out of the barrow and yanked the gas can away from Ran.
He poured the fluid over the former female, the fumes rising in the still air. Setting down the can, he lighted a match, tossed it, and stepped back.
“I never get used to the smell,” Ran said, grabbing her bandana and tying it across her mouth and nose.
He followed suit. “Me either, Ran. Me either.”
“The ZA sucks.”
He couldn’t agree more. He glanced sideways at the figure up on the wall. Her blue shirt like a bright painted spot on the gray cinderblock expanse. Her glance slid over him.
“Yes, it sucks.”
Chapter Sixteen
Rule #9 Don’t ruin relationships for no reason. In the ZA, someone has to have your back and you have to have theirs. At all times.
The man trudged up the sidewalk, his gait shambling and stumbling. The once-pristine uniform caked with blood and gore. She raised the gun to shoot and the uniform changed to jeans and a T-shirt, Mitch’s face changed into Teddy’s. Her finger tightened on the trigger and she pulled. The man fell to the ground, not breathing, not moving.
Michelle jerked up out of sleep. Her heart pounded in her chest, the whoosh of blood thumped in her ears. She pushed her sweat-drenched hair off her face. The darkness of the room hid the shadows in the corners. Every creak of metal was the scrape of bone on steel.
Steady footsteps thumped by overhead as the watch stood guard on the scaffolding. Whispered comments and a muffled laugh carried on the still, hot air. Summer had come early to the East Bay. Michelle kicked the tangled sheet away from her legs and swatted at a buzzing mosquito.
“Great,” she mumbled. “I’ll die of West Nile virus instead of the Z virus.” A slap killed the bug against her arm. She wiped it away and swiped her hand across her shirt. With a sigh, she turned her back on her bed. She wouldn’t be sleeping the rest of the night. Maybe she could trade watch shifts with someone and start her day now.
In minutes, she was dressed and checking the watch schedule on the door of the solar battery room. She trotted over to Jim Evans’ trailer and caught the man before he finished coming down his stairs. He patted her on the shoulder and smiled as he turned back to get a few more hours of sleep before the next watch change.
“I’ll be taking Jim’s place tonight,” she informed Ran and Cody once she climbed the stairs. They nodded and headed off to their trailer and sleep as Edward Gonsalves showed up and took a spot at the wall as well.
“Do you want us to say hi to Teddy for you?” Ran added over her shoulder as they started down the stairs.
“No, that’s okay. Don’t bother him,” she said, wishing her tears weren’t so close to falling.
The girl ran down the rest of the stairs and caught up to her boyfriend. Even as they moved away, Michelle still caught Miranda’s words.
“Some people make it so hard.”
She turned away and walked to the wall. Her gaze swept the field and beyond. A full Moon gilded the trees and bushes with a silver edge. A stark reminder that the Moon and the Earth didn’t care what happened to the puny humans depending on them for everything. The sun came up; the sun went down, day after day, no matter what they all did. A moan wafted over the still air. No matter if they were living or undead.
Raising the rifle to her shoulder, she scanned the area with the night-vision scope. The full Moon blazed enough light for day, albeit in a greenish tint. Was she making it hard? For herself and Teddy? Was it too much to ask for some stability in this crazy world? She just wanted to feel safe. For people to be reliable, dependable, and stable. To not be constantly reminded they could go off to work and not come back alive.
She swung her weapon to the south and eyed the skinbags standing and swaying by the red line on the road. Why didn’t they all just fall apart? She didn’t know how long it took to decompose in a grave, but it had been over a year and still the undead walked and moved across the Earth. The latest news broadcast on the radio said they’d made some headway and reclaimed part of the capital, but Sacramento might as well be the Moon anymore. It wasn’t an hour and a half ride in a car anymore and probably wouldn’t be again for years. Travel would be like pioneers on the Oregon Trail, not knowing if everyone would survive the trip west.
The hours of her watch duty passed as she covered her area and then traded places with the men on the south wall. A twinge of guilt fluttered
through her at the thought of Lila and her daughter at the mercy of the church and Bennett, but she couldn’t find an ounce of regret for the absence of Juan Morales. The man had no friends of those who remained at the RV yard. The watch was peaceful and uneventful without the drama the man had seemed to cause wherever he was.
She was back at her favorite section of south-east wall as the sun began to tint the sky a pale pink and the nighttime shadows died. The camp stirred and sounds carried as people came out of trailers and motor homes to start their day. The boys of Rogue Vantage whistled and waved at her and she turned to face them.
“I’ll see you at breakfast,” she yelled down. “Make sure you wash up first.”
“Oh, Mom,” echoed from four different voices.
A scream pierced the peaceful morning. She whipped around. A woman stood by the well with the cover off. A bucket lay in a bloody puddle by her feet, and her hands covered her mouth as she tried and failed to not vomit. As the woman, she thought her name was Maggie, turned to the side; Michelle sighted her rifle on the bucket. Her stomach heaved as she saw what had to be an arm and a hand lying in the puddle. A zomb’ had fallen in their only source of water.
Straddling the wall, she turned back to yell again to the boys. “Get Jack and Paul. A skinbag is in the well.”
She gripped the rifle and jumped down to the dusty field, landing in a cloud of dirt. In a few long strides she was at Maggie’s side. “Are you okay?”
Michelle spun, but no one and nothing was in the field with them. She put the strap on her shoulder and gave the woman a hand. The padlock sat on the dry grass and the lid was half on the opening.
“Did you unlock it this morning?”
“No,” Maggie mumbled, shaking her head. “The lock was broke and on the ground. I thought someone did it last night and didn’t have time to replace it yet.”
