Alive (The Crave)

by Martin, Megan D.

“No, Reno, just let me make it up to you. I had nothing to do with what Laney did. You have to believe me! I would never hurt you.” He had to hear the truth in her words. She had been taught by her parents the way of a woman and how she bowed down only to the man in her life and to God. Olive had followed this regime to a T her whole life. When Reno came along, she had been sure that he was that man for her.

  “Did I give you permission to speak, Olive?”

  “No sir, but you must understand—” He held a hand up, and she shut her mouth, not wishing to anger him further.

  Rose said nothing behind her, save for a few stifled whimpers that Olive was sure only she could hear.

  “I will find new women, a new path. I thought I would walk my path with the three of you, but Laney’s deceit changed everything.” His voice became louder. “I can do so much fucking better! Do you hear me?” He uncrossed his arms and leaned forward. The jenks beneath his feet went crazy, desperately trying to claw their way free and nearly unsettling him.

  Reno and the jenks were several feet away, but Olive could feel the hostility in his gaze it seemed to burrow into her skin and rip her apart from the inside out. Tears sprung into her eyes and she realized what he was going to do. He was going to let the jenks have them.

  “No, Reno, please!” He stepped off of the infected beings and Olive watched through bleary eyes as they tried to stand up, but neither of them could. Reno must have chopped their legs off. This would slow them down, but not stop them. “Don’t do this!” She sobbed as tears poured down her cheeks and snot dripped from her nose. “You said we were going to be together forever! You said!”

  He bent down and picked up the food pack and his personal bag before stepping over the closest jenk and bending down in front of her face. His eyes looked black in the darkness and his long hair was wild around his shoulders. “Olive, baby.” He put his hand on her cheek. “Nothing is forever.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Eve’s body jerked when she reached the end of the chain that bound her, preventing her from moving any further away from Gage. The few feet she had, wasn’t far enough. She needed to get away from him, away from the words that had left his tongue while he was orgasming into her mouth. The experience had been mind-blowing and better than she ever imagined. The moans that erupted from his body while his rock hard cock was in her mouth had nearly made her come without even touching herself.

  Who would have thought something like that would have been so erotic? And when he shot his climax into her mouth, his whole body shook in pleasure…and it was because of her. Eve reveled in the feeling, but it didn’t last long. The words he spoke just as she swallowed the last of him down her throat changed everything… “I love you.”

  If his eyes had been closed or his head thrown back, it would have been different. He could have been thinking of anyone…but that wasn’t the case. His eyes were open, looking straight into hers, boring a path straight to her heart and ripping her wide open for the world to see. Part of her reveled in the fact that he knew it was her bringing him this pleasure and not thinking of some bitch from the past, like Sally McCallister. But the L word, that was just...wrong. In a different time, she would have died a thousand deaths to hear him speak those words to her, but not now. Not anymore.

  “What’s wrong, Eve? I told you, you should have stopped. I knew you wouldn’t like it in your mouth.” His eyes were still sparkling with lust and surprisingly keen, searching her face for answers. He doesn’t know. The fact that he didn’t realize what he’d just said both hurt and relieved Eve. A sick part of her wanted him to love her, but only because she had loved him silently for so long back in high school—it would only be right for him to suffer now. That was her only reason for wanting him to love her. Really. The other part of her was thankful that he didn’t know. She didn’t want to talk about feelings when it came to him. They were all wadded up in a tangled mess somewhere inside of her chest.

  “Eve?” A look of worry flitted across his gorgeous face.

  She realized she was still slowly trying to crawl backward, though she wasn’t getting anywhere on account of the chain around her bare ankle. She stopped her movements immediately.

  “You okay?”

  The creak of the barn door opening changed the track of her thoughts, and the appearance of white blond hair and a tiny physique had Eve hoping for the impossible.

  The sound of a lock clicking open made her heart beat a million miles per second. Maybe she brought our stuff! The large wooden door swung open revealing Landry. She was as petite as Eve thought she would be. She wore a light pink night gown that was tattered and stained in the front. The color of the material only made her pale skin appear even paler. In spite of the strangeness of her white skin, white hair, and white teeth, she was a very pretty girl which only irked Eve more.

  “Landry, you came back.” The appreciation in Gage’s voice had her snapping her head around to look at him. He was wearing his infamous lazy smile. She noticed that he had put his dick away. His pants were zipped up as if their rendezvous had never happened.

  “Y’all didn’t eat?” Landry furrowed her brow as she bent for the tray.

  Eve didn’t miss the way the girl’s hand trembled. She opened her mouth to tell her there was no way she was going to eat a jenk, but Gage beat her to the punch.

  “We weren’t hungry.”

  Eve blasted him with a look of shock he didn’t seem to notice, he was so focused on the Lurker.

  “You sure? Y’all really aren’t hungry? You’ve been here over half a day, it’s four in the mornin’.” She looked perplexed.

  “Listen—” Eve spoke up, but Gage gave her a sharp look and cut her off. Further unsettling her.

  “Yes, but thank you. I know last time you had to rush out of here, but did you have the chance to think about what we asked of you?” The way his words dripped with flirtation made Eve want to hurl.

  “Yes, I brought the key to the chains and I can lead you out…but you have to listen to me.”

  Eve kept her mouth shut as Landry unlocked the chains that bound them and led them from their prison. She didn’t take them out of the door she came in, but out of one farther down that neither of them could see from their chained position. It became obvious, once they stepped outside, that this door led out to the back of barn the only thing in front of them was pasture and a tree-line not too far away.

  Eve glanced back at the building that had held them prisoner. It looked just like any regular barn you’d see. It appeared to have been an extremely nice one in the before, though now the building could have used some work. If someone came across it, there would be no way of knowing that it held prisoners and jenks on the inside as some sort of sick feeding ground.

  “What about our friends? What happened to them?” Eve asked.

  “Friends?”

  “Yes, a man and his daughter.” A surge of guilt flooded Eve.

  “A child?” Confusion laced Landry’s voice.

  “Oh my gosh, yes! Why would we say there was a child if there wasn’t?” Eve’s patience was running thin. Her back felt too light, her hand twitched at the knowledge that she couldn’t just grab her Craftsman and threaten the girl like she wanted too.

  Landry took a step back and covered her mouth with a quivering hand.

  “It’s okay, Landry. She is just scared for our friends.” Gage placed a reassuring hand on the girl’s shoulder and Eve had the sudden impulse to snatch it off. “We both are. Do you know where they are? Could you set them free like you did us?”

  Landry shook her head. “We don’t have any other prisoners besides the two of you.”

  The memory of Estelle’s bloated body flashed through Eve’s mind as a wave of sickness made her gut clench.

  “Y’all two were the only one’s brought in yesterday.”

  The sickness was replaced with a hope Eve hadn’t dreamed she would feel.

  “We haven’t had a child come through in ages. Trust me. T
here ain’t no other humans held prisoner.”

  So somehow Joseph and Maddie had avoided the Lurkers. She hoped that they had made it to Eden safely.

  “But, I can’t stay no longer. Y’all need to go, and quick. If you head through this pasture and into those trees in a couple of miles it will take you to Pontoon road.”

  “Yes, Pontoon road. I know where that is.” Gage nodded his head.

  “Don’t go back to Tim Pistol.” She pointed over her shoulder at the barn. Eve couldn’t see around it, but she assumed that’s where the house was and the driveway that would lead back to Tim Pistol. “My family runs that road especially this southern end of it. It’s how they found y’all.”

  “Is there any way we can get our stuff?” Eve tried to sound nonchalant about it and failed.

  Landry shook her head vehemently. “No, all a y’alls stuff is in the house and the whole family is in there.”

  “That’s fine. We will make do without it.”

  Eve shot Gage a look. “We don’t even have shoes...or anything else.”

  “We’re fine.” He turned away from her. “Thank you, Landry. We owe you one. Do you want to come with us?”

  Eve couldn’t believe her ears. What the hell is going on? First, he wants to go running across the countryside with no shoes, no weapons, and no food. Then he wanted to add another mouth to feed into their little club? A Lurker at that. Absolutely not.

  “No, I can’t and I really have to go.” She ran a shaky hand over her neck and turned to leave. She looked over her shoulder after she’d taken a few steps. “Bye. Be safe.” Her thick country accent made the words twang in a way that even Eve found to be nice, and utterly annoying.

  “All right, let’s go.” Gage grabbed Eve’s hand and started walking, but she didn’t. He turned back around. “What’s wrong?” She could barely see him in the waning moonlight.

  “I’m not leaving without my pack.”

  “Seriously, Eve?” Gage had hoped she would have pushed this idea out of her head, but apparently he was wrong about her again. She wasn’t a person to let things go, which shouldn’t have surprised him considering their past.

  “Yes, Gage. I’m going to get it and that’s final.” She jerked her hand out of his and started walking back toward the barn.

  “You’re really being serious?” He fell into step behind her.

  “As a heart attack.” She didn’t look at him.

  “This is suicide, Eve. Even Landry seemed afraid and they are her own family. We are just prisoners they were going to kill anyways.”

  She stopped and turned toward him so quickly that he almost walked past her. “Oooh, so maybe you should go help Landry. The poor Southern Belle, what ever will she do? Trapped here with her family eating the dead carcasses of infected humans. Hmm?” Eve feigned a fake southern accent. She turned and started walking again.

  “Wait a second.” A light bulb went off in Gage’s head. “You’re jealous.” He almost laughed when he spoke the word. It didn’t seem possible, but it was there. Eve was jealous of the attention he gave the girl earlier. “Listen, Eve. I only flirted with her to help us get what we wanted.” He was shocked at how quickly Landry went along with it.

  Eve stopped walking again and this time he did pass her and had to stop and back track to where she was standing. He couldn’t see her all that well in the moonlight, but he could tell she was furious.

  “Always using girls to get what you want, isn’t that right?”

  Her words cut him like a knife and he looked away, biting his tongue to keep from yelling at her and giving away their escape. “Why do you even want that money? And don’t even try to deny that that’s not what you want. I’ve seen the way you act about it. It’s like your child for the way you treat it.”

  “That’s none of your business. Now, I’m going to get my stuff, Gage. You don’t have to come with me. You can head toward Pontoon road. Or you can come get Hilda. It’s up to you.”

  He couldn’t deny that he wanted his crossbow back, but he didn’t want to die for it. Though it looked like he didn’t have a choice. Eve had promised to stick with him until they reached Eden, and he would damned if he didn’t do the same for her. He couldn’t just leave her there.

  “Fucking fine. Let’s get this over with.”

  She nodded her head and they made their way around the barn, though the sight that greeted Gage’s eyes had him sucking in a breath of shock. The barn they were next to, sat up on a hill that over looked a home of average size, maybe three bedrooms at the most, but that wasn’t what shocked him. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen a home that had electric lights burning bright through its windows. And this place was illuminated like a Christmas tree. Every window had a light. There was even a porch light, shining bright like a beacon. If he hadn’t known, he would have thought the quaint brick house was a dream, but he knew inside laid a nightmare.

  “Wow,” Eve whispered next to him. Even though he was pissed at her for wanting to do this, his body still responded to the breathlessness in her voice, making his cock twitch. She moved forward, staying low to the ground. He followed, putting his body next to hers as they moved through the tall grass. He was thankful, that along with their electricity, these Lurkers hadn’t fixed up their lawn mower.

  The closer they got to the house, the less dream-like it appeared. The illumination of the porch light revealed piles upon piles of what looked like trash off to the side of the house. Old junk stacked on top of each other that had been rained on and no doubt, melted together in the summer heat. The stench coming from the direction of the house was gag worthy, and worse than the smells of a gurgh any day.

  Once right up on the house, they went to the closest window and crawled on their hands and knees. Eve halted next to him, her hand covering her mouth. He looked at her questioningly. She closed her eyes and pointed to next to her. A severed hand laid on the ground less than a foot away. Though the hand wasn’t what freaked her out. Gurgh body parts were better off severed. But this hand hadn’t belonged to a gurgh. That much was obvious, from the complexion to the crusted blood dried on the side. Gurgh blood was black as night and even when it dried it still had a syrupy look about it. Whoever this hand belonged to, the human had lost it recently.

  Eve recovered quickly and moved forward. He wanted to jerk her away from the window and make her leave, but he didn’t want to risk the chance of making any noise. He almost failed at that measure when he peered through the cracked glass. The well-lit room on the other side was like something out of a horror film. The walls that had surely been white originally, were stained with an oil like substance that was splattered everywhere. Gurgh blood. But that’s not what alarmed him. It was the hooks that hung from the ceiling and the eviscerated body of Estelle that hung from one of them, the hook impaled in her head.

  There were shelves in the room, but they didn’t hold trophies or toys or anything you would think to see in an average sized bedroom, which is what he was assuming this was, based on the smaller size of it.

  Some of the shelves held skulls that had been scrubbed clean. Some of them were painted in a decorative fashion, with words he couldn’t read painted on the sides. Other shelves held mason jars that were filled with murky liquid and what appeared to be some sort of extracted body parts floating in the slimy concoction.

  A small table held an array of oily tools that were clearly used inside the torture chamber. Torture chamber. As soon as he thought the words he knew he was wrong. This wasn’t a torture chamber, it was the slaughter house, where they started preparing their food.

  Gage tore his gaze away from the sight of the room and shared a look of terror with Eve. The door to the room opened, drawing his attention back. Gage automatically recognized Willard, the shorter and younger of the two men who had come to the barn earlier. The man looked back and forth nervously, as if he wasn’t supposed to be in there.

  “I had to come one last time before you were just b
ones, baby.” He took a step forward and ran his hand down her slimy gaping carcass. “I’m gonna miss you ol’ girl. You’ve been my favorite.” His hand dropped to his fly.

  Eve gasped in horror next to him. Gage wanted to look away. More than anything that was what he wanted, but it was like a car crash in the before. You didn’t want to see the horror in front of you, but damn if you couldn’t stop yourself from staring.

  Estelle’s body was mostly gone, but that didn’t stop Willard. He released his dick and jerked the rotting corpse toward him. Gage tore his gaze away as bile rose in his throat. He gripped Eve’s hand and pulled her away from the window, before the new sounds of what was going on in the room could meet his ears.

  He hoped the look in his eyes conveyed how much he was against this. She looked at him and shook her head, clearly still wanting to try and rescue their stuff.

  “No,” he whispered against her ear.

  “Yes!” Resolution burned bright in her eyes. She started to scuttle toward the next window, but never made it. The voice that rang out behind them was clear as day.

  “Hey! What are y’all doing out here?”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The Before

  In her nightmares, Eve came back to school and nothing had changed. Gage was still hanging all over Sally, he still didn’t sit next to her AP Physics, and he acted as though she didn’t exist. That was a nightmare though, and it wasn’t real.

  When she went back to school on Friday, her lips still tingling from Gage’s kiss the day before, the first thing she saw was Sally McCallister. She stood in her normal clique of girls in the center of the lunchroom, only she wasn’t smiling and waving like she was some sort of princess. No, today she was crying. And she wasn’t fanning her face, having some sort of simple cry that made her large almond shaped eyes look like jewels. She was wailing. Her face a dark shade of red and her eyes screwed into two slits.

  Most of the lunchroom was still taking part in their usual chatter before school began, which made Eve wonder how long she had been standing their crying. Everyone must have already gotten the full story somewhere else.