Love at the End of Days

by Tera Shanley

  “So I asked Laney to use her blood to bring my wife back before I killed her so I could say good-bye.”

  “Wait, what do you mean about the blood? Laney has powers?”

  “No, not magical powers. It’s chemistry. Whatever makes her immune improved her sense of smell to be aware of Deads, and when they bite her, they die their final death. And when they taste her blood, their mind comes back, like that little piece of her kills the infection in their brain and gives them human thoughts again. I’d seen her do it to her brother the night before, and even though I saw how that ripped her up to see him like that, I asked her to do it again for me anyway.” He turned his head and gave her the saddest look. “Who’s the real monster now?”

  “Sean—”

  “It’s okay. I know my faults, and I’m working on them. So, I bullied her into doing it. I was there, restraining Aria as her groans of hunger gave way to groans of pain. Her body was three years decayed, and I’d pushed to put her mind back into a corpse. When she came to, she was so frightened and kept looking around like she couldn’t understand what was happening, even after I’d explained. She kept saying how badly it hurt, and she begged me to kill her. It was an instantaneous regret. I should’ve put her down years ago, and I’d let her exist in this horrible life. She asked if she’d eaten people, and I couldn’t bring myself to lie. I just sat there, beside the shell of my wife, wondering why I hadn’t been able to love her enough to do the right thing. I told her about Adrianna and how special she is, but I don’t think she could hear me anymore.” Sean drew his knee up to his chest and dangled his other leg over the edge of the bed. His back was to her and his shoulders lifted with a long sigh. “When I put the gun to her temple, she whispered, ‘Move on from this, Sean. Live.’ And then I pulled the trigger.”

  She sat up and brushed his arms with hers. She was so close, his warmth radiated through her sweater. “Is that all in the dream?”

  “No. The dream is just the conversation. Sometimes it’s the real one, word for word, and sometimes it’s one I’ve made up where she says the most awful things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like I’m a terrible father. I was a terrible husband. I don’t deserve anyone to protect. She wished she’d never laid eyes on me. On and on and on it goes, and I can’t escape it. And then the shot echoes through my bones and the dream is over.”

  “Sean,” she said as she placed her hands on either side of his face and let him see the seriousness in her eyes. “You are a wonderful father. You deserve someone to protect, and Aria loved you. You gave her a life even after the outbreak, and I know she never regretted that. And you probably didn’t suck as a husband.”

  A grin cracked his face. “Probably didn’t, huh?”

  “Well I’m an honest kind of soul, and I’ve never seen you as a husband to anyone, so I can’t say for sure.”

  His eyes dropped to her lips, and the smile faded from his face, only to linger on the edges as he leaned in. Powerless under the hand that slid around her waist and gripped her shirt, she waited, frozen and panicked until the moment his lips touched hers.

  Okay, it was just a kiss. She’d kissed a dozen people, and some of them she hadn’t even liked. None of them were like this though. Sean’s mouth moved against hers, gently asking for more from her, and when he pulled her closer and closed the space on the bed between them, a little helpless sound escaped her throat. He pulled her hand until it rested on his neck and then reached to cup the back of her head. The pad of his thumb made tiny trails of fire as it rubbed a path down her cheek, and her body responded by matching that heat in her middle.

  It wasn’t until his tongue brushed the inside of her lips that she lost it. She opened for him, begging for more, and she squeezed her eyes shut tightly as she rode the wave of being wanted by a man. How could anything in this messed up world feel so good?

  “Daddy! I can’t reach the cups!” Aria called from the other room.

  Vanessa jumped like she’d been shot and flipped over the side of the bed in an escape attempt. Sean sat with his arms still held out toward her, and his laughter filled the small room when she peeked her head over the edge of the mattress.

  “I don’t think she saw you,” he said in a teasing tone.

  She stumbled up and brushed off her jeans. “Well, that’s because I was so lightning fast.”

  The smile on his face was breathtaking. “Come here,” he said, holding his hand out.

  “‘Coming here’ is definitely a bad idea,” she hissed. “We are in the friend-zone, remember?”

  “Scout’s honor, I won’t kiss you.” Standing, he pulled her into his chest and hugged her. Into her ear, he said, “Thank you for listening to my dream. I feel better than I thought I would. It’s nice to share that burden with someone else for a change.”

  She wrapped her arms around the strength of his back and absorbed the blanket of complete safety she hadn’t known since the outbreak. Until this moment, she hadn’t known such a feeling had existed in the world anymore.

  “Stay for breakfast with me and Adrianna.”

  “Is that something friends do?”

  “I don’t want to hear any more of this friends crap. No more rules to our friendship. We’ll make our own from here on out, okay?”

  Some niggling voice in her head wanted her to fight, but she couldn’t quite remember the reasoning behind that small instinct to flee. Not when Sean was holding her so close and sharing his warmth with her in such a delicious way. “Okay, but the second you call me Laney again, our friendship is terminated, murdered, kaput—”

  “I won’t.”

  “I made breakfast!” Adrianna announced from the doorway.

  This time Vanessa didn’t jerk away like she’d been caught snogging a forbidden eighth-grade crush under the bleachers. Instead she smiled at Adrianna and asked if she could stay and eat with them, to which the little girl adamantly agreed.

  Chapter Sixteen

  THAT MORNING HAD STARTED as the worst ever, thanks to the dream, but as Sean sat there laughing at the breakfast table with Vanessa and Adrianna, something had shifted in his soul. He could be good for a woman as long as he kept making strides to improve what he knew needed work. And Vanessa was strong. Much too strong to allow him to bowl her over. No less woman would be able to handle him.

  Her long, blond hair was down and shone in the morning sunlight that drifted through the kitchen window. Her full lips parted often in a ready smile, and the warmth in the blue-green depths of her eyes had his body physically responding nearly every time she graced him with a glance. He’d been wrong to compare her to Laney. They only thing they had in common was their strength of character. He’d been a fool to miss it. She had a smart mouth that bordered on crass, and she terrified him with talk of going on more supply runs, but she’d help him grow where Aria hadn’t been able to. He hadn’t been ready then, but now? Vanessa made him want to be a better man for her.

  She was a guard now, and as much as it scared him that she’d be in more danger than the average civilian, he’d seen her in action. She was deadly, ruthless, and capable. He’d have to learn to let go of his protective instincts so she could be happy with her career. With her life. With him.

  “So, were you just passing through, or did you hear me screaming all the way from your cabin down the mountain?” he asked as he pinched another piece of flaky pastry off and took a bite.

  “Oh, I forgot. I actually came here for a reason.” Her cheeks turned the most attractive shade of pink as she blushed. “You totally don’t have to go, and I would understand if you have plans already, it’s just—well.”

  What had flustered her so much? She never hesitated in what she said. Granted it was usually insults she flung into the world, but the people on the receiving end of those usually deserved it, more or less. “What is it?”

  “I wanted to invite you and Adrianna to the ceremony.” The words tumbled from her mouth like a boulder down a mountain. />
  Inhaling slowly so he wouldn’t yell his answer right away and scare her off, he smiled. “Ade, do you want to go to Vanessa’s graduation today, and then eat dinner with her?”

  “Uh huh,” his daughter said with a big head nod and solemn, slow-blinking eyes.

  “We accept.”

  “You do?” Vanessa asked. “I mean, you do. Good.”

  Static crackled over the radio, and he frowned at the thing flung carelessly onto the hand carved coffee table in the living room. “Hang on. Let me see what’s going on.”

  “—ean?—an? Sean?” Mel asked. Her voice was laced with panic or fear, or maybe both. Never since he’d known her had she ever sounded scared.

  Button jammed, he said, “Mel, I’m here. What’s wrong?”

  “—aney.” Crackle, crackle crackle.

  “Mel, I can’t hear you. Press the button hard and slow down.”

  “Laney’s had the baby.”

  “What? It’s way too early.”

  “Sean, are you around your weapons?”

  “I’m still at home, so yeah.”

  “Bring them. Bring them all to Dr. Mackey’s, and get there now.”

  Vanessa had gathered Adrianna into her arms and said, “I’ll take care of her.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes! Just go!”

  He bolted for his closet and threw it open. Behind a hidden panel was a small armory. Two handguns in holsters and an AK slung over his shoulder and he was running for the door. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he called as he flew down the porch stairs. What could have Mel so worried that she’d asked him to come weaponized inside the colony gates? The baby wouldn’t have survived at seven months gestation. It wasn’t like the old days where there were equipped Neonatal Intensive Care Units just waiting for a baby to save. Times were different now. Only the strongest under the best circumstances survived.

  He pushed himself harder, faster down the trail until his feet barely touched the ground. The angry wind whipped his face as he raced it, as if it were telling him to go back home, back to Vanessa’s easy smile, where it was warm.

  Dr. Mackey’s office came into view much sooner than it should have. Hordes of people were gathered around the small log building, and their angry voices carried up the mountain. Shoving his way through the throngs, weaving in and out of the maze of angry bodies, he bullied his way until he reached the porch. “Hey. Hey!” he yelled before putting two fingers in his mouth and blowing an ear piercing whistle. “What’s going on?”

  “The baby is a monstrosity!” cried a woman. “It cannot be allowed to live.”

  “It’s all right!” a man yelled. “Sean’s here. He’ll take care of it in a minute flat, and nobody’ll have to worry about it anymore.”

  What the hell was going on? “I want everyone settled down while we figure out what is happening, okay? I promise we’ll fix whatever is amiss. Please, just stay out here while I check on what’s going on in there.”

  When he opened the cabin door, he came face to face with the barrel of a gun. Mitchell’s gun. “Sean, I know you, and you’re good people. You have this sense of honor, and a need to protect your people, but you don’t have to protect them from us.”

  Sean shoved the gun away from his face and dodged around Mitchell’s stiff figure to the room where Laney lay exhausted and pale. “You okay?”

  She gasped a sob. “Sean, they’re going to kill us.”

  “No one is going to kill you. I won’t let them.” He sunk onto the edge of the bed and squeezed her hand. Her cheeks were pale and splotched from crying, and her lips trembled as her eyes filled. “Did the baby live?”

  “Mmhmm, but something’s different about her. Dr. Mackey wants to run tests on her to see the extent of the problem, but Davey Cummings came in here to get his hand stitched up and saw the baby when Doc was bathing her, and he told everyone in the whole colony.”

  None of what she was saying made any sense at all. Carefully, he pulled the blanket aside from the bundle she held. He kept his face completely still and emotionless as he looked at the little creature.

  Laney hadn’t had a baby. She’d had a Dead.

  The child’s skin was so pale it was translucent, and a network of veins could be seen under her skin. Her nose and lips favored Laney, but her eyes favored no human. They were so light blue they were almost white. Her pupils dilated strangely when she looked at him, like she was much more developed cognitively than a normal infant. And her hair? She had a full head of platinum blond, silken tresses atop her tiny head, colorless to match her eyes. The child was striking and beautiful in an otherworldly kind of way, but she was part Dead, and no one could deny that.

  “Doc, how’d this happen?” he asked the solemn man in the corner of the room.

  Dr. Mackey adjusted his baseball cap and pushed his glasses further up his nose. “The best guess I have is that Laney’s immunity passed to the child. But she still has the virus in her blood. It’s been there all along, and when the baby was developing, a war was going on in there between the immunity and the virus. Both won, I think. She’s a hybrid. Likely the first and only of her kind.”

  “Can she spread the disease?” Sean asked, pulling the blanket back to her chin again.

  “Don’t know. We’d have to do extensive tests to answer any of these questions, and those tests take time. The crowd outside won’t give us that time. They see the child as a Dead inside the colony gates.”

  “Laney, has she eaten yet?”

  She nodded, on the verge of tears.

  “Tell me, what does she eat?”

  “Milk. She nurses. Hasn’t spit up even once, not even when we burped her. The milk satisfies her. Sean,” she pleaded, grasping his sleeve. “I love her. She’s our child, and they’ll have to get through me to get her.”

  “Me too,” Mitchell said with such an eerie calm, his words couldn’t be anything but truth. “She’s not some monster. She’s our daughter, just a baby with a birthday and a name.”

  “What’s her name?” Sean asked.

  “Soren. Soren Mitchell,” Laney said with a proud smile.

  “It’s beautiful. Perfectly suited to her.”

  “Sean,” Laney said. “Think if Adrianna had been born this way. What mountains you would’ve moved to save her. Soren deserves to live. She’s human, too.”

  He knew exactly what he would’ve done if anyone had come after his baby for any reason. He’d have burned them all and spat on their smoldering ashes. The child had to be given a chance at life—a chance at proving the human side of her was in control.

  “I need to talk to the masses before they light this place up with us all in it. Mitchell, it’s probably best if you’re there too.” He squeezed Laney’s trembling hand once more. “We won’t let them past the door. You and Soren are safe.”

  Waiting around wasn’t going to work for Vanessa. It wasn’t her style and probably never would be. With a firm tug of Adrianna’s jacket zipper, she steered the girl toward the door and shut it behind them.

  “I brought an apple to share,” Adrianna announced, holding out the red, and slightly bruised, delicious offering in her mittened hands.

  Oh, it had been so long since she’d bitten into the sweet skin of an apple. “Where did you get it?”

  “Daddy helps people in the colony, and they give him treats to pay him. Mr. Forester gave him three shiny apples for helping him rebuild his cabin when a tree branch fell on it. I’ve been saving this last one.”

  “Tell you what, how about you eat as much as your little belly wants, and I’ll eat what you can’t finish? And I’ll carry you down the trail so you can eat it on the way, and I don’t have to worry about you choking. Sound good?”

  “Can you do it piggy-back style?”

  “Sure. Hop on.” She bent down and loaded Adrianna up like a pack mule carrying a squirmy pile of boulders.

  Adrianna was light for her age. She remembered when Nelson was this age, and
he’d been a solid young boy, with the benefit of all the food he could want. Were all children destined to be petite from here on?

  The child munched happily on her treat as Vanessa hauled her down the hill toward the medical cabin.

  “Whoa,” she murmured as the growing number of seemingly angry residents were piling around the porch and vying for the best view.

  “What’s going on?” she asked the first person who wasn’t busy grumbling or yelling their complaints. Martha Baynard chewed on her lip with a worried set to her delicate eyebrows.

  “They’re going to kill a baby. And everyone’s so riled up no one will listen to reason.”

  “What?” Her stomach dropped to the floor, and she set Adrianna down to pull her in close.

  “Shh,” Martha said, pointing to the opening door of the medical office.

  Sean stepped out, followed by Mitchell.

  Both men looked somber, but it was Mitchell who held her attention. His dark hair had never been out of place, but there in the morning light, he looked downright disheveled. The grim set of his mouth was completely at odds with his chronically happy demeanor. Oh, this was bad.

  “Listen up,” Sean barked. “The child is as you say, but more than that, she’s human too. Her name is Soren, and she takes milk from the breast, not blood or steak—milk, like any other babe. She hasn’t been sick on it even once.”

  “She’s an abomination!” yelled a man, seconded by another.

  “She’s a product of Laney’s immunity, that’s all. Developmentally, she looks just like any other infant.”

  “That’s a lie!” yelled Davey Cummings. “I saw the little devil with my own eyes. She looks just like a Dead!”

  “No she doesn’t!” barked Mitchell. “Her coloring is pale, and her eyes are lightened, but her skin is warm and alive. She’s human!”

  “Dead!” screamed a red-faced Davey. “You know the rules well as everyone else. No Deads in colony gates, no exceptions. That monster has to be put down before she bites someone and compromises the whole damned place. She’ll be the death of every last one of us!”