by Emma Shortt
Luke lost his grip on the weapon.
The zombie lifted him then, so that his feet dangled above the floor and Luke head butted air just as he felt teeth graze his neck. Luke dropped an elbow on its shoulder but the move did nothing but anger the huge zombie and it squeezed harder. Bright spots of light appeared in front of his vision and Luke roared.
It couldn’t fucking end like this! Not when he’d just found someone!
He struggled and thrashed, desperate to get free. The female zombies…Jackson…she was going to die and it would all be his fault…
The arm loosened its grip. Suddenly Luke was free, stumbling to right himself. Blood rushed to his brain and the room spun. He coughed and turned just in time to see Jackson severing the massive zombie’s head. Her machete was wicked sharp and went through in one go. Like a knife sliding through butter. It didn’t meet any resistance at all. Blood and pus exploded out and she jumped back before it hit her.
He could not believe what he was seeing. “Jackson?”
She smiled a grim sort of smile and pulled his ax out of the dead zombie’s chest. She wiped it on the zombie’s “Dave’s Auto” sweater and chucked it across. He almost fumbled the pass and scowled.
“Stuck in the clavicle,” Jackson stated. “Next time wrench upward, not outward. It’ll slice through the lungs if your blade is sharp enough.”
He gaped, his gaze following the rolling zombie head. It came to a stop next to a sausage-shaped flotation device. “Upward?”
She nodded as if this should have been obvious and dunked her own blade in the rancid pool water. “Yeah, upward. God, I fucking hate zombie pus. Where the hell does it come from? There always seems to be way too much. How does it all fit in their bodies? If I could find out the source of the pus, I’d die a happy woman. One of life’s little mysteries solved.”
He gaped at her again. “I—”
She shook her head. “Whatever. I suppose we have more important things to be thinking about right now.”
“But… how did you do that?” Luke finally asked. “You’re not even out of breath.”
She pulled her blade out of the water and gave it a little shake. Their gazes met. Luke’s stomach flipped.
“I am a little.”
“You’re not. And you killed them all.”
She shrugged. “The second one almost took a chunk out of me. I got lucky. She slipped on a splatter of blood at the exact right moment. The other one tried to grab me, but she was missing a hand thanks to you.”
“But—” Luke stepped back, because the pool of blood was growing, the male zombie’s joined by the blood of the other two. Their decapitated corpses were leaking a whole lot of the stuff, but then that was understandable. One was missing both arms and her head, the other a head and leg.
Luke swallowed unsteadily and looked from Jackson to the undead, now dead, and then back again. She was so tiny, so delicate-looking, but clearly he’d been bang on the money. Appearances were deceptive. Christ. “Luck or not, that was unbelievable.”
“It’s done, Luke. Forget it,” she said, picking her pack up and shrugging it on. “We should get out of here before any more arrive. And I need some pants. I’m fucking freezing.”
“I have clothes at my place,” he said. “We could go straight there.”
She nodded slowly and stepped back from the rapidly growing puddle of blood and gore. “That’s the worst pickup line I’ve ever heard, but right now it’ll do.”
And Luke almost fell in love there and then.
Chapter Eight
They made it to Luke’s place without incident and before long he sat her down with a cup of thin noodle soup. Jackson would have liked to say she took her time and enjoyed the novelty of eating a nonrat-based meal, but that would be a lie. It took maybe a minute before she drank it all. Luke filled it back up.
It was only when that too was empty that Jackson became aware of the fact that she sat on a strange man’s chair in her panties and a jacket. The panties were also a little big and may well have been gaping a bit around the gusset. She shifted, suddenly uncomfortable in a weird way, placed her cup on the table, and shot Luke a glance. He stood in the kitchen area, leaning against the counter, arms crossed.
“Have you had enough? There’s more if you want it.” His tone was gentle, at odds with the look in his eyes, which seemed like he was trying to figure something out. Maybe how she’d managed to take down the zombies? Jackson hadn’t missed the shock stamped across his features when he’d looked around the pool room.
She fiddled with the handle of her mug and tried to remember the fight but, as always, it was just a blur. A fuzzy memory her brain was already locking away.
“Jackson?” Luke prompted, still with that same look in his eyes. She could practically hear the question his eyes were asking. “How the fuck did you take down those zombies?”
But she wasn’t sure what to say. Despite two years of doing it, she couldn’t explain it, couldn’t really explain how she was still alive. It just happened. They attacked, she responded, and so far it had worked.
“I’ve had enough, thanks, Luke.”
He smiled and Jackson’s heart gave an odd little thud. She had a nasty feeling it was going to do that every time Luke flashed that grin of his. It was all so unexpected! Sitting with another live person who wasn’t Tye, doing something as normal as eating soup, confused her. She crossed her legs and fiddled with the spoon again.
“You said something about clothes?”
He nodded and strode over to the large hamper by the fridge. He grabbed an oversize T-shirt, black, and a pair of sweats, also black. “These’ll be a bit big but the sweats have a cord you can tighten, and you can roll up the legs. What color socks would you like?”
“I don’t really mind.”
“Here.” He added a pair of bright green socks to the pile in his arms and passed them to her. “I’m sorry there aren’t any girl clothes. I guess the people who set this place up weren’t expecting any female company. Makes sense. I looked around the mansion up there a while back, and all the pictures were of some guy. No women in any of the shots.”
The clothes smelled good, like lavender, and were soft to the touch. Jackson ran a finger across the bright green socks, marveling at the prospect of wearing clean material next to her skin.
“There are sweaters too if you want one.”
“No, these are fine for the moment. It’s really warm in here, and I have my jacket. Do you mind?” Jackson twirled her finger and Luke looked puzzled before he got her meaning and swiftly turned his back to her.
“Sorry.”
She stood up, her muscles aching, and grimaced as a whiff of something that smelled suspiciously like old sweat hit her. Hardly a surprise. The small amount of room in her backpack was tightly rationed and deodorant was not high on her list of priorities. Still, Jackson suddenly wished that she was properly clean, especially in light of the fact that Luke didn’t smell bad at all. As she’d sat next to him in the pool room her nose had tickled with the smell of what she thought was Old Spice. In fact the whole place reeked of the stuff—not in a bad way though. It was oddly comforting.
She shifted and took another surreptitious sniff. Why do you care if Luke thinks you smell bad? Haven’t you got more important things to think about? She scowled, unable or maybe just plain unwilling, to answer those questions.
“If you want to wash up first, I have hot water. Not that you need to,” Luke added hastily. “But you know…”
He trailed off and excitement shot through Jackson. She paused at the waistband of her panties. “Hot water? Are you serious?”
“Yeah, there’s probably some girlie shower gel too,” he added. “I collected a load from Wal-Mmart a few months ago, and I grabbed whatever was left. I’ve been sticking to the man-gel so there should be a load of the feminine shit left.”
“You realize you just became my hero?”
Luke turned back around and gave an
over-exaggerated sigh. “Women tell me that all the time.”
“Uh-huh, the many, many that are left.”
He shrugged again and shot her a teasing grin. This time the weird little heart thud was completely expected.
“You got me there,” he said. “Come on. I’ll show you where the shower is.”
Jackson followed him across the room, the prospect of removing the zombie gore, not to mention the stench of weeks-old sweat, dispelling some of the weird feeling. Because she was still a little weirded out. She could admit that. Maybe it was because of the exhaustion that was licking at the edges of her brain, the fact that she still had to find Tye, or maybe, that same sly voice whispered, because of the look in Luke’s eyes when he looks at you. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was but it made her edgy. Not in a bad way. Luke seemed to be on the up-and-up and a genuinely nice guy. But in a woman-meets-smoking-hot-man-eeek-eeek sort of way. Ridiculous really—they’d just fought for their lives. Hell, she was always fighting for her life. It had gotten to the point where she barely remembered not having to do so. Things like super fit men and what she’d like to do with them ranked lower on the priority list than keeping clean.
Luke led her out to the hall, oblivious to her racing thoughts. It was a long corridor with several other doors shooting off it. Jackson held the lavender clothes away from her body, reluctant to stink them up, as she looked around with interest.
“Food, weapons, extra bedroom, bathroom.”
He pointed to each shut door as they passed and Jackson nodded, beyond impressed. She’d heard about such places, of course. Bunkers set up by people who had a touch of the paranoids, but she’d never been able to find one. “How did you find this place?”
“I was making a run for it about a year and a half ago,” Luke replied. “Had a pack after me. Five of them, all female. Anyway, I headed for the park, thinking I could reach the condos there. I was exhausted and about one stumble away from being eaten.”
“Been there.”
He nodded. “Exactly, so you know how it goes.”
“What’s the food situation like here?” Jackson asked.
“Nothing much. Same as everywhere else, I guess. In the first few weeks the remaining survivors, including me, cleaned out the stores. I was shocked to see soda still in that vending machine—I should go back and grab the rest.” He pushed open the bathroom door. “So yeah, I think the last bits and pieces disappeared completely by the six-month mark. It’s not like the country you know, where food can be grown. We’re in the Chicago suburbs. Not only is the zombie population huge, plenty of people lived here, but the food situation is shit. There is what there is, and it’s nearly all gone.”
“There’s always rats,” Jackson quipped.
“Sweetheart, I’d rather eat a zombie.”
“Hey, don’t knock ’em. Tye cooked me up rats on a regular basis. He tried to pass them off as dog or cat at first. I only realized when I saw one of the traps he’d set up. I suspect he used other things as well. Bugs and such—whatever. Protein is protein, right?”
Tye. Her chest tightened and she shivered. She’d need to head back out there soon. As soon as she was clean, and rested for just a few minutes, she would have to go looking for him. Just as he would for her if the situation was reversed.
Luke looked her up and down, nodding slowly as he did so. “Must be why you’re so tiny.”
Her chest tightened some more, in an entirely different way, because Luke’s words in no way suggested her skinny bod was a bad thing. “Yep. I’ve lost a fair bit of weight since the zombies arrived,” she said. “Silly to think it was something I used to worry about.”
“What did you do,” Luke asked. “Before all this started?”
Jackson frowned. She didn’t really like to talk about that sort of thing, but Luke might think it odd if she didn’t answer him, and there was no need for him to know how just strange she was—not yet at least. “I waited tables in a New York bar, my hometown, and studied at Macy’s for a month or so before it hit.”
“What the hell did you study at a department store?”
“Cooking courses. They offered special courses there, so I thought, why the hell not? I was never any great shakes at school and couldn’t afford college, anyway. I had planned to get a job in a restaurant or something instead of waiting tables.” An image of roast lamb with all the trimmings filled her mind and Jackson sighed. Roast lamb had been pre-waking dead. It was roast rat now, at best. “Such things aren’t important now and I interrupted,” she continued, “you were making a run for it and…”
Luke grinned and leaned against the door. “I spotted this place. The gates were locked tight but I noticed the gap in the hedge. You can only see it from a certain angle, so I headed straight in. I’m not sure what made me follow it around instead of heading for the house.” He shrugged. “The shed was right there, and I thought I could hide inside for a little bit. It was less obvious than the house. Then I noticed the trapdoor and it didn’t take me long to find the keys. You saw the locks when we came in?”
Jackson nodded.
“I opened it up and went down. It was a risk. It might have just been a cellar and then I’d have been well and truly trapped, but I didn’t have much choice.”
“Sometimes we have to do that,” Jackson said, remembering all the crazy risks she had taken over the past two years.
He nodded. “That we do, and it worked. Whoever built this place was paranoid in the extreme. I don’t know if you noticed but it’s not a direct path from the trapdoor to the bunker. Some of the forks go nowhere, and one doubles back in a loop. It baffles me how they managed to build it without anyone noticing.”
Jackson thought about the long, steeply inclined pathway and tried to visualize above ground. “Maybe it was part of the original structure and they just improved it? It’s a house up there right? A big one?”
“Practically a mansion. God knows how much it would have cost back in the day. This much land in this spot?” He pointed to the final door in the corridor. “That one goes straight into a small tunnel. There’s another trapdoor at the top of the ladder. It leads to part of the basement area in the house. The zombies don’t know about either exits, but they know I’m down here. They must have smelled me in the building—I went to check it out about a month ago. Stupid curiosity. So once they get tired of chasing other people, or whatever else it is they do, they come here and pound on the ceiling in the main room. It’s directly underneath the gym.”
Jackson shivered at the idea of the waking dead knowing exactly where they were. “The ceiling and walls are metal?”
“They are,” Luke confirmed. “Place is like a giant underground panic room. The generator has enough fuel to keep it going for many more months and the water is funneled straight down from a water butt, which I assume is on the roof of the house. Pure rainwater as well. All I had to do was read the instruction pack someone had thoughtfully provided and turn it all on.”
“It’s perfect.”
“It saved my life. Literally. I was reaching the end of my food stores and having trouble finding safe places to sleep. I don’t know where I’d be without this place. Which is why I’m still here.” He pointed out the shower and a timer on the counter. “It’ll run for one minute before it goes freezing cold. I strongly suggest you make the most of that minute. You’ll find gels and shit in the cabinet. I’ll make some more food for when you get done.”
Jackson reached out and grabbed Luke’s hand. She wasn’t quite sure why she did but it felt like the right thing to do. His palm was calloused. The skin was rough beneath her fingertips and it made her spirits rise. The hand of a man who knew the meaning of real work.
Just like her.
“Thanks for this, Luke,” she said, her fingertips tingling. “I really appreciate it.”
He smiled that smoking-hot smile of his and opened the cabinet. “Strawberry shower gel good for you?”
Chapter N
ine
There was a woman in his bathroom. A kick-ass, naked woman, with the most perfect green eyes he’d ever seen. Luke grinned and picked up the Old Spice. He was running low, would need to grab some more before the week was out. Not from the pharmacy though, last time he’d been there they’d almost trapped him. It’d have to be one of the convenience stores—though which he wasn’t sure. He’d cleaned so many out.
His grin became a frown as he looked at the bottle, wondering as he did so if the scent still worked to deter them, because clearly the stuff Jackson had sprayed on the rec-center door hadn’t. Maybe it was too old, the chemicals in it degraded. Luke’s frown deepened as he picked up a washcloth and thought it through.
He rubbed the cloth over the back of his neck, the whiskey on it stinging a little. He was pretty sure the zombie’s teeth hadn’t grazed the skin—the sting was probably because of his open pores—but still, better safe than sorry. A quick swipe over his shoulder too and it was all good.
Jackson had wiggled her little nose when they’d come into the main room and he suspected she was reacting to the mingled smells of Old Spice, whiskey, and man. Yeah, the place could use a woman’s touch. He wondered if she’d be willing to hang around, machete in hand.
Damn, but she could fight. He shook his head and stashed the whiskey and washcloth in the cupboard. He still couldn’t get over her total bad-assness where the dead were concerned. It was no wonder she’d managed to survive for so long. He wondered if the guy, Tye, had taught her or if she was naturally tough. He preferred the second idea, more because the idea of this Tye, whoever he was, had him gritting his teeth. Which was ridiculous, the man was probably dead. Luke had heard him roar as the zombies approached and there was no question they’d have eaten him before he turned—even assuming he would. With their food sources so low the zombies didn’t hesitate like they had in the old days.
