“We make sure we hide real well,” I tell her. “And we avoid any signs of life. No towns, no cities, and we only break away from the rules when we absolutely have to. If we stick to rural communities, we’re more likely to survive.”
She looks at me with a blank face that I can read immediately. She’s thinking it over. It’s one of the few moments where she gets a glimpse into the reality that I am not a helpless, haphazard wandering around the wasteland blindly. I do know what I’m doing and I don’t need her to protect me. “That’s some plan you got,” she says with a shrug. “We’ll see how it works out.”
I watch the sway of her hips as she makes her way to the door and unties the rope. I feel like I’m objectifying her, probably because I am. To be honest, I can’t help it. I watch her step out of the parlor and turn around. I can see her face in the window, but I know that she can only see my silhouette, if she can see anything at all. She looks at me with her dark eyes and I can tell that there are unspoken words hidden behind those closed lips. I try to remind myself that I’m not the only person adjusting to this new system of having someone else in my life.
I watch her crossing the street and see her look back a couple of times, stopping and looking at the door. I’m afraid that she might come back and I haven’t got the slightest idea what to say to her. I’m tired of waiting. I have to get to Florida, with or without her.
When she has gone, I slowly push myself up and walk toward one of the mirrors, looking at the man who stares back at me, not sure who it is anymore. My face is a dark shade of tan that is blistered and dry from my journey. My dark brown hair has grown in long, tangled locks over my head, hiding most of my face. I’ve never had hair this long. I stare at it and immediately start picturing Robinson Crusoe. My facial hair has grown longer than I’ve ever had it and as I stare at my reflection, I can no longer stand it. I open the drawer where Lindsay had shown me a pair of scissors and quickly pull them out. I grab a chunk of my hair between the blades and cut it, letting it fall from my fingers and head. It lands on the counter and I stare at it for a moment. Looking back into my eyes within the mirror, I reach up, selecting another lock and cut it. Then I slice off another and continue. Lock after lock, I continue until I look into the mirror and see a chaotic specimen of this new world. My hair is shorter, uneven, and I don’t give a damn.
Next I go to work on my beard, cutting it shorter and shorter until it’s just a field of hair again. This I know how to do, slowly trimming it a little here and a little there. I’ve been using scissors to trim my facial hair since I decided I liked a short beard back in college. When I am done, I feel like I’m looking at an entirely different man in the mirror. This one is someone who doesn’t look so worn by the elements. Sure, I look battered and bruised by everything, but I look like I have a grip on something, maybe life, maybe survival. Something.
I’ve read every magazine inside this parlor. There are plenty here with girls covered in tattoos, sporting darker, slutty lingerie while they showcased their ink. I never found an appeal in getting tattoos or a piercing. I’m not big into self-mutilation or the art behind all of it. I just never got it. I don’t hate it, but I definitely don’t love it. It’s just sort of a thing that exists in the world with me and I acknowledge it. Other than looking at scantily clad girls, there’s nothing in the magazines for me and they quickly wear out their allure. Every time I look at the girls, I see Lindsay and I toss them aside. I’m going stir crazy.
I walk across the parlor to the back where we have my water supply, her single bottle, and the last few cans of food that we have in our possession. We’ve eaten like kings lately and I don’t regret a thing. I’ve learned that eating what we have while we have it is the only way to ensure that I will ever get it inside of me. Grabbing the prescription painkillers that Lindsay gave me, I take another. I try to take them routinely or the pain gets too overwhelming. I look at her pack and try to decide whether it’s worth rummaging through. Her loot sack is never full of anything, but her actual pack is stuffed to near bursting proportions. Part of me wants to grab it and dump everything on the floor where I can meticulously scour each and every item inside with a detective-like curiosity.
But I decide against it. I’m not like her and I don’t want to start. Instead I pull out my maps and spread them out on the counters and start looking them over. I have a long way to go and I’m not nearly as far as I wanted to be. With my Jeep, I was supposed to be in Florida by now. Right now, I’m nowhere near there. In fact, the more I look at the maps, the more anxious I feel myself getting. I need to put distance between here and myself. I need to start heading south.
I look out the window and debate going now. She’ll catch up with me. She tracked me from Bellbrook, she can track me now. I decide to start packing. I grab the sanitizer, the disinfectant, the gauze, the bottle of antibiotics, the wraps, and painkillers she had shown me. All of it was sitting out on the counter and I grab it, examining each before packing it into my bag. There was no more time to waste here. I needed to move. By the time I have gathered everything up, I decide that it’s probably best to wait until dawn. There is no sense getting out there now and walking the wasteland half exhausted in the heat of the evening.
Dropping my pack, I slump down against the front of the parlor, right next to the door, with the machete lying across my lap. I dream of the girls for the majority of the time. I dream of Florida and the warm, ocean air. In my dream, there are still long grasses and palm trees when I’m walking toward the beach house. I can see the watchman with his rifle perched atop the stairs. When I am walking the world of dreams, I still have my arm. I don’t look at it. I don’t marvel at it. It has always been there. It has never left me.
Before the dream can go too far, I realize that I’m not alone. Turning, I see that Lindsay is there. I see her and at first I don’t comprehend why she is there with me. Deciding that she must have caught up with me, I turn and look at the beach house. The stairs, the watchman, and the beach house are all gone, vanished. The ocean has evaporated. I look around and I realize that I’m in the middle of the wasteland still. Turning, I see Lindsay standing without her pack or her army jacket. She’s standing in her jeans and tank top. She’s looking at me with those dark eyes of hers and I feel something terribly wrong. She reaches for her tank top and I shout for her to stop.
My eyes rip open at the sound of the parlor door opening and I can feel myself panting. My fingers cling to the machete and I turn to see Lindsay standing on the threshold with wide eyes, looking at me with a confused expression. “You planning on killing me, honey?” she asks before smiling.
“Sorry,” I say as she closes the door and instinctively starts to wrap the rope around the handles, locking it shut. She smiles at me and winks.
“I get nightmares too,” she says.
I feel like I’m blushing and try to get rid of my embarrassment. When she’s done with the door, she grabs her loot sack and heads into the parlor where the island counters are waiting for her. I watch her rummaging through her pack, searching for something while I pull myself to my feet. By the time I’m standing, she’s ripped off her quiver and set it next to her bow. As she shrugs off her jacket, I look at her bare shoulders and the soft skin of her back and find myself glaring at her. When she turns around, she’s hiding something behind her back and smiling like a child at Christmas.
“What’s going on?” I ask suspiciously
“I’ve got a present for you,” she giggles.
“Oh God.” I take a step back and feel the wall against my shoulder blades.
Before I can say anything more, she produces something that takes a moment for me to recognize. It’s a tangle of black leather straps and buckles, but what really distinguishes it is the enormous pink cock that’s wobbling out of the mess. I look at the jiggling penis and then look at her eyes as she beams with such pride.
“No thanks,” I say bashfully to her. “I’ve already got one.”
Sh
e laughs. It’s the first time I’ve heard her laugh, ever, but as her body shakes with laughter, so too does the penis and it makes me nervous. She reaches up with her free hand and wraps her fingers delicately around the silicone cock and holds it gently, reverently. That is, until she rips it off the way a farmer might wring a chicken’s head off. I watch with horror as she rips the enormous dildo right out of the harness and my empathizing penis begins to ache beneath my pants in horror. God, I wonder if some asshole with a hard on ever crossed her and she had to do that in real life. It only takes a few seconds for me to realize that I never want her hands near my dick. She really might be able to rip it off.
“Give me a minute,” she says with a smile still on her face, tossing the silicone cock away. I watch it flop and roll across the floor until it stayed there, lifeless. I swallow hard. After a second of hesitation, Lindsay walks over and picks it up, looking from the cock to me. “I might get lonely,” she winks and takes it with her. I’m not sure what she meant by that, but it makes me feel dirty, and aroused.
I watch her as she works, dumping out a pile of tools and instruments that make her look like a feminist Frankenstein working on her abomination. Part of me doesn’t want to see what it is she’s making, especially when she giggles and grabs a tactical knife and mutters things to herself. After what seems like an hour, she announces that she’s complete, proudly turning around and showing me a strap on that no longer has a dildo, but instead has a knife.
“Please don’t rape me,” I say, not sure what I’m supposed to be proud of.
“I might,” she grins, “but not with this.”
I need a shower.
She approaches me with her Frankenstein creation and I wonder if I need my machete in my hand. When she standing right in front of me, holding the instrument with both hands, she looks at my stump. “Hold up your arm,” she says. “Or what’s left of it.”
“Cold,” I growl.
She shrugs. To my utter surprise, what follows is a painful series of straps being tightened up my arm until the harness is securely and stably fitted to my stump, and a knife is protruding where my wrist and hand used to be. I take a moment when she steps back to slowly wave the knife around and stare at its stability. It holds well. I’m surprised that she did this herself. A monstrosity built out of leather, rope, and string; the design is nearly flawless. In fact, I can’t see a thing wrong with it.
“This is incredible,” I say with a smile on my face.
“Don’t sound so surprised,” Lindsay snaps.
I ignore her and look at the knife blade and then to her. “Thank you, Lindsay,” I say to her with all sincerity. I almost feel bad about all the things I said and thought about her earlier. She’s a good person and I can’t deny that. She looks at me with a soft, sweet smile on her lips and nods.
“Don’t mention it,” she says bashfully. “I just can’t have a one-armed guy leading me across the country with no way of defending himself.”
Chapter Six
I wake up with my arms wrapped around Lindsay. I’m not sure what happened, but all I remember about the night before was her attaching a dildo abomination to my arm and then we got drunk off of a bottle of whiskey she’d found and some bourbon. My arm is wrapped around her and I feel her tightly pressed up against me, her warmth radiating onto me and I realize that her legs are wrapped around my right leg, holding me close. Her head is nestled on my shoulder and I listen to her breathe for a moment while I sit there, trying to make sure that nothing happened. My memory is still pretty sharp, but my mouth is dry. I didn’t get too drunk. Jesus, I can’t remember the last time I had a drink. I was a writer, once upon a time. I should be able to hold my liquor.
When she begins to stir, I act like I’m just waking up. She yawns and looks at me as I pretend to just begin to wake up. I think that she is getting more beautiful every day. That, or I’m just getting less and less critical of her. Beauty is such a subjective, blind thing that I’m fairly certain that I’m just getting used to her and appreciating her more. She stretches and her back arches, shoving her rather large breasts toward me. I resist the urge to shoot my arm out around her and pull her close, holding her fit body against mine, relishing the sensation of holding an attractive woman. I want to grab her and press my mouth to her warm lips, tasting what that luminous smile has to offer.
But I don’t.
Instead, I pull away as she gets up and stretches. “Morning,” she says to me as I walk toward the window. It’s before dawn, but it’s not that far off. I wanted to be on the road by now, but I realize that’s not happening. I hear her moving up behind me, her soft, careful footsteps. Her presence is felt, something that’s nearly tangible in the air, like an electric surge. God, I think human interaction was always like this. I just got too damn used to it. I look toward the horizon to the east where the sky is full of blues and slowly being infected by yellows. “Beautiful still,” she says softly.
“Yep,” I answer shortly. I look over to her. Her gaze lingers outside the window for a moment before she looks at me and smiles. “You ready to go?” I ask her.
“Almost,” she answers. “I need to change.”
“Serious?” I watch her walk toward her loot sack.
“As cancer,” she answers, scooping up her bag and heading toward the piercing booth.
She wants me. I watch her and I wonder how can anyone send so many signals like that and not want me? I think about the way she gently touches me. There is a softness in her touch, but there’s also a bold inquisition with every time she touches me. She’s testing me, pressing farther and farther down the line when her hand makes contact with me. It’s in the way she looks at me, the way her smile brightens when she’s talking to me and how she’ll laugh at even the slightest joke, whether it’s funny or not. Then there was her curled up next to me this morning or the time she had thrown me back inside the parlor and was lying on top of me. These were all signals that I have picked up over our brief time together and I don’t think that I’m insane for reading them.
Am I reading too much into them, though? I watch her slip out of her boots and I wonder if maybe she is like that. I’ve seen the girls sitting in my class who work at the college bars and clubs, the girls who have all the right assets. They’ve got the big breasts, the great figures, and the personalities that know how to charm men out of their wallets and into their tips. There is a certain personality that people can always put on, men or women, that can just be social. Often it’s mistaken for flirting, but I’m not sure where that line is anymore. The last time I flirted with a woman was when Tiffany was still around. God, I flirted with her all the time, but I haven’t actually tried with anyone since then. Sure, women would sometimes think I was flirting, but I was just being nice. Maybe that was all Lindsay was doing. Maybe she was just a flirtatious and kind sort of girl. Maybe she was friendly or social.
Are there any more social people in the world? That’s a question that sticks with me. There can’t possibly be people out there in the world who are just friendly, talkative, or social. That sort of a personality is a weakness that will get you killed within hours of running into another group of people. People can’t just be friendly when the world is overrun with mindless and hunting cannibals. When those few survivors that still exist are willing to kill you for a can of peas, you can’t be cutesy and social. She has to want something from me, or at least find me attractive.
But if she’s not coming onto me, then I’m in serious trouble, because I can’t tell the difference anymore. I am a ship at sea with no compass and no stars. I don’t want to do something that I’m going to regret, or live in constant torment if she isn’t interested in me. I look over at her feet beneath the curtain and fight the urge to just go pull back the curtain and settle this once and for all.
Suddenly I’m picturing the girls, and I remember that she’s only twenty four. Twenty four years old? I’m almost old enough to be her father. Hell, the girls are nearly her age
. I’m not in any position to be something that she’s interested in. I’m also missing an arm and on a mission to find my two girls that will definitely have questions about her if I show up in Florida with Lindsay around my arm rather than at my side. I look at her feet and the feather tattoo on her ankle and wonder what I’m doing thinking about this. This is high school shit.
When I used to grade papers, I would stay up late into the night after the girls had gone to bed or when they were out with friends. I used to always be haunted by the silence of a house and could never truly stand the quiet. It made me restless and quickly deteriorated my nerves. It was cruel that I now live in a world that is nothing but isolation and silence. But, back in the day of puppies and rainbows, when green was still the dominant color on the planet, I used to grade papers while having the TV on in the background. I rented movies and would watch them while I worked, just to help me pass the time. Usually, it was more of a distraction if the movie was actually good. But I remember this one truly terrible movie that was popular one Halloween, and it sticks out to me right now.
It was about a family man who works on Wall Street and ends up getting his wife pregnant and the two of them give birth to a beautiful baby boy and live happily ever after. At least, they do until they both have to go back to work at their high paying jobs. I think the wife was a lawyer or something, whatever it was, she couldn’t be home to watch the baby, so the two of them end up hiring a babysitter to take care of the little cutie while they dedicated more time to their occupations than to their family.
Of course, the babysitter is way too freaking hot for the wife to feel comfortable about her and the husband being home alone, and immediately suspects that the husband likes the babysitter. This is only exacerbated by the fact that the babysitter wants to sex the husband to death and ends up killing a myriad of people in the process of trying to get him into the sack with her. She’s absolutely bat shit crazy and ends up getting thrown out of a four story window in the end. Honestly, it was a terrible movie, but there was something about it that kept making it pop into my mind.
LEFT ALIVE (Zombie series Box Set): Books 1-6 of the Post-apocalyptic zombie action and adventure series Page 22
