Love at the End of Days

by Tera Shanley

  “Steven! Where are sign-ups?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  She was damn near skipping by the time they tracked down the sign-up sheet. Two senior guards had already scratched their names on it, but she and Steven were the first new recruits.

  “Is it first come first serve?”

  “Nah, Mel picks. She’ll probably talk to Finn about it, and they’ll decide who goes based on who would work best together.”

  Her heart slipped from her throat back into her chest cavity. Chances were she wouldn’t be picked. Still, there was hope, and she wasn’t above begging Finn and Mel to give her an out from her own personal hell. She was running from a possible awkward meeting with some dude she’d barely dated by charging headfirst into a horde of Deads. Questionable logic, yes, but she’d get field experience, speed up graduation, escape Brewster’s soul singeing PTs, and she’d finally, finally get a freaking crack at one of the monsters that had scared the old Vanessa right out of her.

  Vanessa Summers, she scrawled across the yellowed paper with a grin.

  Chapter Three

  WHERE WAS FINN? It wasn’t as if the man was an easy miss. He was arguably a giant and roughly the width of the broadside of a barn. Superior genetics had been gifted to the man. He’d been created to be an apocalypse survivor.

  Sean checked his watch. He’d spent way too much time looking for his second-in-command, and dinner was creeping up on him. “Tate,” he hailed, as one of the guards on duty walked past him in the bustling colony center. “Give me your walkie.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He handed it over, and Sean jammed the speaker. “Anyone seen Finn lately?”

  Static.

  “He was headed for the showers last I saw him, but that was over an hour ago,” came a reply.

  “I think he picked up a shift at the garden gates after he finished with the new recruits,” came a second.

  “Appreciate it.” He handed the radio back to Tate and jogged for the trail that led to the back gate of colony.

  The garden gates were usually protected by two senior guards, and today was no exception. They saluted as Sean opened the gates and scanned the woods outside the barbed-wire fence. Now that the main fence was finally completed, the next task would be to erect a fortress around the pathway that led to the separate gardens outside colony. As it stood, the ground was too cold and hard to dig proper post holes, so that chore would have to hold until spring. For now, all that stood between Deads combing the woods for a meal and Sean’s flesh was a three-foot-tall fence, embellished with bells and electrified for good measure. It wouldn’t stop the monsters hunting them, but it would slow them down. Sometimes that extra few seconds was the difference between life and death.

  He’d touched an electric fence once on a dare, back before the outbreak, when he’d had endless summers to spend with his friends back in Montana. Felt like getting kicked in the back by a horse with hellfire-shod, dagger hooves. The memory had him clenching his arms a little closer to his sides as he jogged for the next set of looming gates. Towering pines had been used to erect them, and he called out when he reached the other side.

  Finn tugged it open and grinned. “Hey, boss.”

  “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

  “Not everywhere.”

  The heavy doors closed behind him with a thud. “Everywhere but here. You got a minute?”

  Finn’s dark eyebrows lowered, and he nodded his head at the other guard. “You got this for a minute?”

  The guard saluted Sean and took his position while Sean and Finn wandered toward a trio of hay bales the garden workers used as bench seats when they took their lunches.

  Sean didn’t much feel like sitting, but Finn plopped down on the biggest one like he hadn’t a care in the world. “Look, I wanted to know about one of your new recruits.”

  “Boris will come along once he loses the weight. He’ll need a little more time than the rest, but he’ll be good in a pinch.”

  “No, not Boris. A woman on your team. Vanessa.”

  Finn’s face went comically blank. Not a muscle twitched, and Sean waved a hand in front of his unblinking eyes. When a flicker of life returned, he said, “Sean, Vanessa couldn’t be less your type if she tried.”

  “And how do you know what my type is?”

  “I knew Aria, remember? She was the sweetest woman on the planet. You had your thing with Laney last year, and I thought you’d rip each other’s throats out, you were that mismatched. Vanessa is a ball-buster. You won’t have a shot in hell at compromising with that woman.” He leaned forward and rubbed his face. “I don’t know what’s been going on with you, and you don’t seem inclined to share, so I don’t ask out of respect for our longstanding working relationship. But I know you. I’ve guarded you and your family for years, and I know when something is up. You and Aria—that was right, you two were a good match. Vanessa couldn’t be further from her, do you get what I’m saying?”

  Sean slumped into the hay bale beside Finn’s. “Aria was my perfect match. Before the outbreak. I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m not the same person I was four years ago. I liked my boring desk job and my benefits. I liked Aria seeming happy with me taking care of her. But I screwed up. Instead of giving her weapons to fight what was happening, I coddled her, sheltered her. It was her inability to defend herself that got her killed, and that falls on me. I just couldn’t see that until Laney came along and set me straight. I need a partner who will fight beside me. One I don’t have to obsess over whether they’re tucked away safe somewhere when things get gritty.”

  Finn shook his head slowly. “I get where you’re coming from, man. I do. But you’re looking in the wrong place on this one. Vanessa ain’t it. She’s not good for anyone but the fighter next to her right now, and you have Adrianna to worry about.”

  Sean opened his mouth to argue, but the pulling of the gate stopped him. Vanessa ran through with the frantic pace of the hunted and didn’t stop until she came to a clearing some distance off from them. “Shut it, shut it, shut it,” she chanted as the guard pushed the gates back together again.

  Heaving breath, she made a scared noise in the back of her throat and looked around with wide, panicked eyes. Over and over she wiped the palms of her hands on her cargo pants. What could’ve frightened the woman that much?

  “Are there Deads out there?” Finn asked as he reached for his rifle.

  “N-No,” she stammered, her throat moving as she swallowed.

  “Then why the hell did you blast through those gates like the engine of a crazy-train?”

  “Sorry,” she squeaked as her frightened gaze collided with Sean’s.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Of course I’m okay,” she snapped.

  He held his hands up in surrender as she marched toward them.

  Angry little fists blasted onto her hips as she glared at near eye-level with Finn. “I need to talk to you. Alone, if you don’t mind.”

  “If it’s about your feminine problems, I told you before, I don’t want to hear about it. Anything else you can say in front of your commanding officer.” Finn gestured languidly to Sean.

  Even from there he could see her hands shaking as she fought to keep them on her hips. Something had spooked her and bad, though the glare she was bestowing upon him made it really hard to give in to his protective instincts. She might actually give him a fist to the face if he tried to help. Curiosity piqued, he cocked his head and stayed right at the safe distance he was.

  “Fine,” she grumbled ungraciously. “Mel posted sign-ups for a supply run.”

  “And?”

  Her hands flopped to her sides, and in a much more reasonable tone, she said, “And I want in.”

  Two beats of thick silence passed before Finn asked, “Why?”

  “I want the field experience. And it’ll help me to graduate.”

  “Okay,” he drawled. “Now, care to share the real reason?”
/>   “What are you talking about?”

  “You running in here like a bat out of hell kind of screams desperation, Summers. Now, every one of those recruits, except maybe Boris, will be signing up for that supply run for the same reasons you just listed, but you came flying in here like a cannon and asked me a favor. I’m not telling you yes or no until you tell me what I’m getting myself into.”

  For several tense moments she stared, a myriad of emotions playing across her face. Seething anger, resignation, fear, and anger again. Finally, she said, “Forget it,” and spun for the gate. Without a glance back she barked for the guard to open up and left.

  Before she was out of the gate though, she pulled her Glock and held it ready. The woman was a mystery. If she was so scared of Deads, why was she in guard training? And why on this tainted earth would she ever want to sign up for a supply run?

  “What do you think?” he asked Finn.

  “Hell no.”

  “But it’s not because she’s a girl, right?”

  “What? No! Gender has nothing to do with this. Laney put all those misconceptions to rest long ago. And Vanessa’s fierce. But she’s green, and she’s definitely hiding something. I can’t risk putting a team with her when her reasons for being there are some super-secret mystery, which will no doubt reveal itself at the worst possible time when we’re out in the field and surrounded by Deads.”

  “What’s she like in training?”

  “Intense, which is great, but it’s the I need to graduate or else my life is over kind of intensity, you know? She’s mouthy but good. Scary good, and her knife-throwing skills put the rest of the new recruits to shame, but she’s a liability until she wrestles whatever demon she’s fighting right now. This supply run is too soon for her. I’ll see what Mel thinks, but it’s a no for me.”

  Sean rubbed the two-day scruff on his face and frowned at the gate where Vanessa had disappeared. “I think with the right team, the supply run might be exactly what she needs to get over whatever is ailing her. If she fails, she fails, no graduation, and she can move on.”

  “No, it’s not if she fails, she fails. If she fails, she dies, or worse, takes her own team down with her and has to live with that kind of poison. It’s not like starting her out on patrol, Sean. We’d be okaying her to spend a week outside the gates with Deads who haven’t found a meal in a while.”

  “You’ll take the Terminator. That truck is made to protect. You’ll be careful where you make camp and teach her how to keep a wary eye until it comes natural. This could be her test. The one that makes or breaks her. She knows what’s at stake. If she thinks she’s ready, maybe she is.”

  “You think she’s ready after her mini panic attack just walking to the gardens? You know she used to run the gardens, right? She walked it every day, and now she breaks out in hives over it.”

  “I don’t think that determines how she’ll do in the field. That could work itself out with one Dead encounter. One Dead kill. You just don’t know until you give her a shot.”

  “Seaaan,” Finn groaned, rubbing his hands through his cropped hair.

  “I’m not trying to piss you off, man. It’s up to you and Mel. I’m just offering advice.” He clapped him on the back and stood. “Now, get back to work, you lazy sod. The gardens aren’t going to protect themselves, you know.”

  Sean, that dick, staring at her with that dumb smirk on his face while Finn ran her down. Now she was going to be stuck in make-out town where the featured stars were Laney and Mitchell. Gag her with a jump rope.

  “Vanessa!” Eloise called from a table to the right.

  She veered toward her with a dinner tray in hand before realizing Laney was sitting with her. Quick as a whip, she did an about-face for an empty table in the corner. Nope. She wasn’t ready to play nice quite yet.

  “Why are you sitting alone?” Nelson asked, sliding into the bench seat beside her.

  “I don’t feel like playing Chatty Cathy over dinner tonight, that’s all.”

  His golden brown hair shone in the evening light of the illuminated mess hall as he searched the room. “Ooooooh, Laney’s back, huh? I’m sure Eloise has enough room in her heart for both of you.”

  “Shut up.”

  She slid a glance to the mess line. Sean stood there talking with his daughter as he stacked a double portion of food onto his tray. What was it about men who were good with children that made them so attractive? He wore a tight fitting gray shirt over forest green cargo pants. Even from where she sat in the corner, the outlines of his flexed triceps as he moved were obvious. He was tall, six-foot maybe, with a body that said he was disciplined with PT and patrols. His short, summer-kissed chestnut hair only enhanced the impossible blue of his eyes.

  As he started to turn, she went back to eating and avoided direct eye contact. He’d been at Dead Run River an entire year, and he hadn’t crossed her path much in that time. Their schedules and duties were different, and she’d rarely seen him eat in the mess hall. And admittedly, on his part, he’d barely noticed her at all. So why was he everywhere her eyes landed today? She bit back a growl and spooned another heap of beef stew into her maw. The entire day had been one disappointing experiment in annoying.

  “Hey,” Mitchell said from above her. She tried to keep the panic from her face. “Can I sit down?” he asked.

  “I’d rather you not.”

  The bench screeched across the wooden floorboards as he pulled it out and sat anyway.

  “Your wifey is going to be pissed when she sees you talking to me.”

  “Laney’s not like that. I just wanted to apologize for everything that happened when I left. You came to tell me your feelings, and I was short with you. I just didn’t want to lead you on, and I had no plans on coming back.”

  “Nyaah, stop talking. I really don’t want to have this discussion. Whatever you need from me, you have it. I forgive you. I absolve you from any further guilt. Just please, please don’t talk about it anymore. It doesn’t make anything better. It’s just embarrassing.”

  His dark eyes swirled with worry or guilt, or maybe both. “No hard feelings?”

  “Nope.”

  “Liar.”

  She shrugged. What was the point in arguing? “Now move along, Mitchell. You’re harshing my dinner, and I have important things to discuss with Nelson that don’t involve you.”

  “What things?” Nelson whispered as Mitchell made his way back to Laney’s table.

  “I signed up for a supply run, but I won’t get it. Finn already said no. Just wanted to give you a heads up.”

  “Why would you do that? Do you have a death wish? Look, I was okay when you said you needed to do guard training, but that was because I thought you’d be on patrol inside the colony gates, not gallivanting out in the forest playing pew-pew-bang-bang with a horde of hungry Deads.” He leaned back and crossed his arms, a sure sign of stubbornness if she’d ever seen one. “I’m glad you didn’t get it.”

  “Don’t say that. I really wanted to go.”

  “I want you to live. You’re being selfish with this. You’re all I have left, and you’re flinging yourself into danger like you couldn’t care less whether you live or die. Cut it out.”

  A guard stood on one of the tables in the front of the room. “Jackson, Keeter, Carpenter, and Summers—if you’re in here, Mel needs to see you at guard headquarters right away.”

  Vanessa frowned. What had she done now? If that old boot Brewster had turned her in again for her creative way with words, she swore she’d spit in his coffee first chance she got.

  “You want the rest of my stew?”

  Nelson answered by sliding her bowl in front of himself and going to work on the half-eaten meal.

  “See you tomorrow,” she muttered and stepped over the bench.

  Steven and the other two guards were nowhere to be seen, so she took the trail illuminated by solar lights that would lead her to headquarters alone. Such a feeling of doom filled her. Maybe she w
as being cut from the program already. Maybe she should’ve put more effort into respecting her commanding officers.

  Dawdling, putting off the inevitable, she meandered through the quiet woods until she came to the lantern-lit cabin that served as the meeting place for PT in the mornings. Steven paced the porch and fixed her with a relieved smile when she stumbled around a giant evergreen. “Mel wanted me to wait for you. Come on. Jackson and Keeter already have their orders.”

  “Orders?” She followed Steven into the dimly lit room and sat in a chair in front of the sprawling desk where Mel sat.

  Mel was a good leader for Dead Run River. She was patient but firm, and the colony had flourished under her. She also had an excellent poker face. There was no acknowledgment of them for a full three minutes as Mel’s pen scratched across a piece of paper. Vanessa’s palms began to sweat, and more than once, she tugged at the collar of her shirt that seemed to be growing tighter by the moment.

  “Almost all of our new recruits signed up for the supply run,” the striking woman began. “But we only have two spots open for them because of the risk. Any more, and there isn’t enough experience among the team. Are you both sure you want to do this as your first mission?”

  “Yes!” Steven all but yelped.

  “Wait, you’re saying I’m one of the picks for the supply run?” Vanessa asked.

  “Does that surprise you?”

  “Yes and no. No, because I know I’m ready. Yes, because Finn didn’t agree when I talked to him earlier today.”

  Mel nodded and leaned forward over the desk. “He had some valid arguments, but you’ve got a champion in your corner. Someone who agrees with you that you are up for the challenge. I’ve listened to both sides of the argument and am willing to give you a try if this is what you really want. There will be contingencies though. If you prove you aren’t up to snuff during this mission, you will be let go from the program with no chance of graduation. You will start work immediately in the gardens in your previous position. That’s if you survive. However, if you prove yourself an asset, you’ll graduate as soon as you get back. It’ll be up to your commanding officers to decide, so my suggestion is that you play nice with them. Become part of the team. Be of use to your colony.”