He hadn’t been with her for even half a day before he’d tried to paw at her, wanting to have sex. She’d told him no, but he wouldn’t stop. She hadn’t thought twice about yanking her Craftsman from her back and gutting him there on the side of a road right outside of Tyler, Texas.
“I can handle myself.”
“Oh, yeah? And what happens the next time you decide to mentally check out? I won’t be there to save you.”
The words were like a slap in the face. “You don’t fucking know me, Gage. I don’t need—”
“Don’t need what? Saving?” His handsome face took on a mocking look. “Clearly you do.”
“But—”
“And you’re right Eve. I don’t know you at all. I have no fucking clue where the old you went, but you’re probably the only person still alive from my old life and I plan to keep it that way, whether you like it or not.” He wielded his words with power, his gray eyes focusing in on her like she was a slide under a microscope. She noticed how his nose was slightly crooked, probably from being broken at some point, but it did nothing to diminish his handsomeness. Why am I noticing this now?
Part of her knew why. She just didn’t want to acknowledge the fact that he was right, partially at least. The feeling of being familiar with someone was the most refreshing thing in the world, but reality was that no one was the same. It didn’t matter who you thought you knew, everyone changed, infected or not.
“I want you to promise me something.”
“Promise?” She nearly choked on the word as she remembered the last time he said it to her. “I promise, Eve. I promise.” The renewed memory tore a hole in her chest and she tried to push away from him, her earlier arousal doused like an unsuspecting flame. He wouldn’t budge, sturdier than the wall her at her back.
“I want you to stay with me until we get to Eden. I want to make sure you get there, like you said…maybe Olive is there. You don’t want to fuck yourself over because you wanted to go all GI Jane and end up captured and eaten alive.”
Olive. The name was enough. Instantly she knew that she would go with him. Her sister never loved her. Eve was certain that she hated her. She didn’t blame Olive for buying into all of the horrible things that their parents said about Eve. How could she know that it wasn’t the truth? That all of their occult-like religious beliefs were just over the top and out of control? Olive couldn’t. And that’s why Eve had to find her. Blood was blood and she wouldn’t abandon her to this fucked up world. She just knew that Olive would come back here. She had to…if she didn’t, well then Eve didn’t know even want to think about where she would go from there.
“Fine. For Olive,” she bit out and stared up into the lush dark skin of his face.
His brow furrowed, as if he didn’t like her answer. “Promise?”
She nodded her head.
“Say it, Eve.”
Her gaze dropped to his lips. “I promise.” The words escaped as if of their own volition.
Just yesterday she’d thought he was going to kiss her with those full lips. The only lips she had ever kissed in her life. She licked her own in anticipation. He was only inches away, his body still pressed firmly against hers.
Just a little bit closer.
Gage stepped back startling her. She sucked in a breath, staring at him. He looked away, ran a hand over his head, and sighed.
“Let’s get this over with.” He jerked a knife from the inside of his boot and yanked open the door to the Sunder General Store.
Gage sucked in a breath as he entered the rancid smelling store. He hoped it would help calm his rioting nerves. It didn’t. He swung his head left and right, evaluating his surroundings. Anything of good substance was gone. Most of the shelves that used to hold chips or packaged items were turned over and empty. Two rotting corpses lay near the checkout counter to his left. Both had been dead a good while from the looks of them.
He couldn’t even be sure of the sex of one of them, the body was so rotted. The other was clearly a woman. Both had a head wound. A clear signification that they were gurghs that were killed by a human who came in to loot. He didn’t focus on them long, but let his eyes sweep the place, hoping something remained in there that wasn’t already double dead.
His conversation outside with Eve had been frustrating as hell. The fact that she planned to just ditch him, ate at his insides. The Eve he knew never would have done such a thing. She had been kind and thoughtful, shy, not someone who would ever hurt another soul. But now… He’d seen that look in her eyes and heard the inflection in her voice. This new Eve was different, and amongst the other skills she’d acquired, she hadn’t perfected lying.
To never see her again? The thought had his fists clenching as he glanced over his shoulder to see her follow in behind him. Her eyes darted back and forth taking in the surroundings. She held her pry bar in a tight grip. The weapon she nearly gutted me with. He shook his head. Eve Wicker expert in some new sort of weaponry? If someone would have told him that years ago he would have laughed. Now he almost felt afraid. He had no doubt she would use it on him if she needed to, without looking back.
“Looks empty to me. I told you everything would be gone. Looting is a thing of the past.”
“Looting is never of the past. There is always something to loot.” He approached the old refrigerator on the back wall. He stared at the rotted contents of long expired eggs, milk, and cheese. He couldn’t decide what made the place worse, the decaying corpses which smelled like rotting bleach or the stock full fridge of dairy products. No way in hell was he opening that clear door.
“Oooh yum. Just what I wanted. Stuff that expired almost half a decade ago.”
He rolled his eyes and looked at Eve, who’d come to stand next to him. Again he was floored by the beauty of her choppy, short blond hair and the mischievous glint in her blue-green eyes. “What can I say? I always treat my women to breakfast in bed.” The words slipped out of his mouth before he could think about them. He was a flirt, came by it honestly. He’d meant them as a joke, probably would have said something similar to a woman he didn’t have a past with, but now he was dying to know how she would respond.
Eve looked up at him, a small smile passing over her lips before her face hardened with a look of hatred. “I would prefer to not be inserted into the group of ‘your women’.” She backed away and moved across the store. She stepped over the desiccated bodies to the cash register and shoved her pry bar back into the space between her back and pack.
“Oh, and why not? You’re one of them, aren’t you? At least, you used to be.” He followed her, and leaned over the red, dust-covered counter.
“I don’t even know if I really even count what we did, so I don’t think you should claim it either.”
Gage didn’t successfully hide his shocked expression as he sucked in a breath. “You don’t count what we did? You sure about that? You seemed to count it at the time.”
She jiggled the old electric drawer. “That’s what you call counting it? Wow, guess you never got any better at fucking, huh?” She didn’t even look up at him as she jimmied with the register.
He stood there totally perplexed. No one had ever complained about his talent in the sack before. Not to mention hearing her say the word “fuck” practically blew his mind.
“You didn’t have any complaints at the time—hey, what are you doing?” He watched in awe as reached inside her bra and jerked out a switchblade. With the flick of her wrist, she clicked the blade into place and shoved it into the keyhole at the front of the drawer. She wiggled it around, shimmying her sexy body.
He watched in awe as she bit down on her lip, her blond brows furrowed in concentration. His cock hardened painfully in his pants, pressing at the zippered seam until he thought it would burst through the worn fabric. Her perky breasts jiggled through the threadbare cloth of her sports bra.
“Dammit,” she said as the drawer slid open.
“What?” He leaned over, her curse pu
lling him from his trance.
“It’s empty.”
“You wanted the money?” He couldn’t keep the confusion out of his voice.
“Duh.”
“Why? It’s not like you can use it anywhere.”
Eve slammed the drawer shut with a zinging noise. “So?”
“So, why do you want it?” He tried to keep the agitated edge out of his voice and failed.
“That’s none of your business.” She turned away from the register and hopped back over the dead bodies. “You done? Cause I’m ready to go. It smells awful in here.”
Gage couldn’t help but gape at her.
“What?” She asked after several heartbeats and Gage remembered to close his mouth. He couldn’t help but feel completely dumbfounded by her.
“Let’s check the back and then we can head out.” He turned away from Eve and headed to the door at the back. His hand barely rested on the knob when she spoke behind him.
“Just so you know, I did complain ‘at the time’ you took my virginity all those years ago.” He glanced over his shoulder, meeting her cold stare. “I cried, remember? I’ve never regretted something so much in my life…and considering the shit I’ve done now…that’s saying something.”
Chapter Five
The Before
Eve stood in the lunch line, her hands clasped around the sides of a red tray, waiting to pay the cashier when someone approached her.
“Hey weirdo, whatcha doin?”
Eve frowned at the girl before her, completely taken aback that she was speaking to her at all. Sally McCallister was a senior and one of the most popular girls in school. She had been homecoming queen the last three years. The first and only girl to win freshman, sophomore, and junior year. It wasn’t a long shot to say Sally was expecting to win this year as well.
“What?”
Sally had never spoken to her in her life. “Just wanted to come over and see what you were doing.”
Eve’s eyes widened as confusion swamped her. Why is she talking to me? People usually paid attention to her for the first week or so of school, then everyone became bored and ignored her, as if she didn’t even exist.
Most of the time Eve hated it. Or at least, she thought that she did, until this school year. Gage’s presence next to her in AP Physics had changed everything. He never said much. Most days he didn’t say anything, but he continued to sit there, even when he didn’t have to.
She wasn’t the only one who noticed this. Others did too, and that was when she decided that being the weird girl was something to appreciate. With Gage’s continuous presence came the unwanted accompaniment of others. People noticed and pointed at her, long after they should have moved on to something else.
“Next!”
Eve jumped at the sound of the old cashier’s voice. She quickly paid the lady.
“What are you doing in ten seconds?”
Eve turned her head and locked gazes with Sally. The other girl’s brown hair curled around her face in perfect ringlets.
“Uh, what?”
“Oh, never mind, see ya!” Sally started to back away.
Eve turned around to head to her table, shrugging off the weird conversation when she stumbled over something. She tried to keep her balance but failed since her hands were full. She went sprawling forward, her tray slammed against the ground, and her face landed right in the middle of her spaghetti.
Dead silence reigned in the lunchroom, before everyone erupted in laughter. Mortified, Eve glanced up to see Allison, one of the girls from her Physics class, slinking away from her and Eve immediately knew what had caused her to stumble.
Kids had been mean to her before, but this was different. No one had ever gone out of their way to embarrass her in front of the whole lunchroom. Tears threatened to spill over her eyelids. For a moment, Eve considered just laying her head back into the middle of her spaghetti and crying like a baby.
She didn’t though, because her gaze found another out of the crowd of people still waiting in line. Gray eyes that stood out in contrast to dark caramel skin. She should have been mortified that he saw her like this, lying in her lunch with her stringy blond hair covered in spaghetti. She should have looked away and let the tears fall, and perhaps even die of embarrassment. But she didn’t.
It wasn’t his gray eyes, or that she knew there were black flecks speckled throughout his light colored irises. It was the emotions that flickered there. He didn’t move, though, unlike his friends, he didn’t laugh either. His hands were clutched at his sides, and his jaw clamped tight, as if clenching his teeth. He looked angry, vicious even.
Eve found the strength to stand and pick up her tray. The laughter had died down, but everyone was still watching her, no doubt wondering what she would do. She handed the tray to the lunch lady, who gaped at her with bulging eyes and made her way out of the lunchroom. She ran a hand over her face, no doubt smearing the tomato sauce and making it worse. She stared down at her stained shirt, which looked like she had fallen victim to some vicious stabbing. In the bathroom, she scrubbed her face, and tried to clean her shirt, all the while fighting back the tears that threatened to spill over.
After deciding her shirt was hopeless, she headed to the office, knowing they would have an extra shirt for her to wear. Just as her fingers touched the golden door handle, Eve realized what this would mean for her once she got home. Dread settled in the bottom of her stomach like a brick. She wished she could escape. Just run away and hide forever. From school, from family. From life in general. A hole in mountain would be better. She was sure of it.
Chapter Six
“Is that it up there?” Gage glanced at Eve. They were walking down the country gravel road that led to her home. Only three miles separated it from the old general store. They’d made the trip in tense silence. Not even the discovery of the three cans of green beans in the back room changed the mood. He hadn’t missed the excited look on her face as she held them, but once her eyes turned on him, she was back to the look of hatred. He was sure that his own face reciprocated a look equally as loathsome.
“Yes.” She looked sick to her stomach and Gage couldn’t blame her. The remnants of her trailer home wasn’t much more than a pile of charred ash with unidentifiable items scattered all over the over-grown property. That was the only thing that was the same about the place. Her parents had never used a lawn mower, at least not that he knew of. The grass surrounding their house had always been waist high. Kids in school said the Wicker parents kept it that way so they could hide venomous snakes in the grass. Anyone who trespassed would be bitten and drug inside to be used as a human sacrifice on some alter they had contrived.
Gage had believed those stories at one point in time.
“It looks the same. Except now there’s less smoke.” Eve laughed shakily next to him.
He looked away from the rubble to stare at her. He wanted to reach out and touch her, but knew she would only shake him off and probably say something uncharacteristically nasty to him about being a bad lay or just hating his guts in general.
Gage was actually happy when he noticed five gurghs coming at them from the direction they’d just came from. Two of them were the same ones that had been following them all day. The other three had straggled along at some point.
“I’m gonna go take care of these.” Eve barely nodded her head and he turned from her, giving her privacy with the remnants of her home. This was exactly why he didn’t want to go by his house. He didn’t want to suffer through the suffocating feeling of emotion that would trigger from being there. Yet you want to go to Jacksondale. A place that held many memories for him as well. He couldn’t explain it though, something was pulling him there. He had to see it. He hadn’t been there since the infection had changed everything.
He came up on the group of the undead. His cowboy boots crunched on the gravel road. Four of them were old—in terms of how long they had been a gurgh—they were all men with crusty gray flesh and sunken e
yes. One of them didn’t even have eyes. Someone was murdered. Over time, he’d come to pay more attention to gurghs that he killed. He could tell the ones who had been left for dead and then bitten. Those ones always had tell-tale signs of some sort of tragic mishap, like this one, missing both eyes with everything else intact on his face.
Well intact as it could be considering…
He ran his hand over his sweat-slicked brow, pulled the crossbow from his back, and nocked an arrow, sending it flying into the eyeless-one’s forehead. The gurgh collapsed on his back, not even twitching. That was the thing about the undead—destroy their brain and they were done for. He finished the other three off in quick precession. Nocking the wooden arrows and sending them flying directly to their target. He’d become so good at it that he could do it in his sleep, though he hadn’t had the nerve to try it out.
The last gurgh was a child, he realized, rather than a short man like he assumed before. He couldn’t have been older than eight years old considering his small stature and tattered and bloody Sponge Bob shirt. He seemed to be a relatively young gurgh. The black blood that seeped from his mouth dripped onto the ground as he shuffled forward, a tell-tale sign of the recently turned. A huge bubbling bite mark decorated his neck. One of the undead had bitten him, but there were no other wounds. Something had stopped the gurgh from feasting on the rest of him. He would have been missing limbs if they hadn’t. Very rarely did one get away with just a bite without outside intervention.
Gage looked at the boy’s arms and was able to tell who saved him. The stains weren’t dark enough to be the black blood that came from a gurgh. Human blood covered his arms. Whoever saved him from being devoured hadn’t had the heart to kill him and they had paid for it with their life. He released the arrow that embedded itself deep in the boy’s brain.
He jerked the protruding weapon from the craniums of the dead, seeing if they were reusable. He approached the boy last. Through the gray pallor and severe features Gage noticed freckles on the boy’s face just before he put his boot on the head and jerked the arrow free. The end was bent. It wasn’t reusable. He dropped it on the gravel road.
Alive (The Crave) Page 4
