Love Starts With Z

by Tera Shanley

  “Hello,” Colten said, waving his hand in Kaegan’s face.

  Irritated, he swatted it away and ducked a low hanging branch. The end of the world had been bad for the humans, but for nature it was a triumph. Animals had made a comeback as their natural habitat ate at city ruins. Packs of dogs ran wild; boars had pushed their way into the mountains in giant groups; and he’d even seen a tiger once, probably the offspring of ones escaped from zoos or personal, rare animal collections. Deads were the biggest danger, but they weren’t the only risk out in these woods.

  A musky smell permeated the woods, and grunts filled the evening air. They were running out of daylight and fast, and no way did they want to be stuck out here longer than they had to.

  A great crashing barreled through the woods, and Kaegan tensed. “Get back,” he shouted, gripping his machete. The last thing he needed was a teammate in the path of his swing.

  Big. The tusked beast was so large, the giant ferns and brush shook in his wake as he bore down on them.

  This was going to hurt.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “SOREN,” KAEGAN WHISPERED, shaking her shoulder gently.

  She opened her eyes and didn’t recognize where she was for a moment. Moonlight streamed through the window, illuminating Adrianna’s arm hanging down from the mattress above her.

  “I must’ve fallen asleep,” she breathed, pushing herself off the floor and locking her elbows behind her. That was strange. She felt as if she’d been asleep for a long time, but that wasn’t usual for her.

  Ben and Colten shuffled in and collapsed on the floor. They looked exhausted, and Colten smelled like blood.

  Kaegan leaned over her, his hand brushing her hip as he jerked his head toward the stairs. “Eat and then you can go back to sleep.”

  The deep blue light illuminated one side of his face and made his eyes look brighter. A strand of hair fell forward, and she brushed it behind his ear with a grateful smile. He was tired, and still, he’d gone into the night to hunt for her. People like her just didn’t get this lucky.

  The palm of his hand was rough against hers as he helped her up, and she followed him down to the first floor. He favored his injured leg more than he had earlier, and when he turned toward a crackling fire in the fireplace, he grunted.

  Pulling him to a stop, she probed his ribs and he winced. “What happened?”

  “Rough hunt. Probably just a couple of cracked ribs. It doesn’t feel so bad.”

  Unthinking, she lifted his shirt and exposed bruised flesh over his rib cage. “Can you breathe all right?”

  “No punctured lung here. I’m breathing fine.”

  From where she stood, she could tell each inhalation pained him, but he wasn’t gasping for air. She ran light fingertips over his flesh, hands adjusting to the shape of each rib, and Kaegan stiffened, then shivered under her touch.

  The look in his eyes was nothing short of ravenous. Gripping her hand in a move so fast it startled her, he leaned forward. The shimmer of the flames glowed across his skin in waves. “Until you are comfortable enough to take your muzzle off, until you are comfortable enough with me, I’m not pushing you for intimacy.”

  His words stung. It wasn’t discomfort with him that made her wear the damned thing. “Did you not hear Mark’s rather loud tale of my murders?”

  “Murder is premeditated, and I doubt you meant to kill that kid. You were just a child.”

  Pressing her shoulders back, she lifted her chin. If he was going to set ultimatums, then she could too. “I’m not fooling around with you without the muzzle on.” Cocking an eyebrow in victory at the blank expression that took his face, she turned to the slabs of meat that sat atop a plastic bag near the fire.

  Hesitating for only a moment, she unsnapped the mask and sank her teeth into a rather large boar’s shoulder. Stifling a groan at the relief of food hitting her taste buds, she ate quietly as he watched her. She couldn’t imagine what she looked like in his eyes, eating raw like that, but he’d have to get used to it eventually. Her entire team would, because she sure as pig pebbles wasn’t going to hide what she was anymore.

  With a knife, Kaegan cut thin slivers of ham and slid them onto a spit carved from the woodpile. His skin glowed as he sat next to the fire and cooked his meal. Except for an occasional spark throwing a pop from the fire, the room was quiet. Moments like these were rare, meant to be savored and tucked away to remember later when things looked bleak. His lips puckered slightly as he blew steam from the meat. What she wouldn’t give to be able to touch her lips to his, to lose herself in his touch and forget everything that had ever happened.

  Unable to eat more, she washed her face with canteen water and settled against the wall while he ate. Between bites, he said, “I dated a girl once who was addicted to pickled beets.”

  “Beets?”

  “Yeah, those little red vegetables? She ate them at every meal. They smelled terrible.”

  “Hmm, still not as weird as eating raw meat, I’d guess.” Imagining another girl touching Kaegan brought something ugly and dark to the surface, and she turned away so he wouldn’t see her jealousy. She suddenly wished she had an ex-boyfriend story to punish him for making her feel this way.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t like hearing about other girls,” she blurted. Angry at her mouth, she muzzled it, clicking the contraption into place.

  Kaegan set the empty skewer down and wiped his hands on a cloth. Slowly, as if he were hunting her, he stood and pulled her up with him. “If you want to know me,” he said, tilting her head back, “you’ll know all of me. Girlfriends, friends, family, I won’t keep my life from you, Soren. You shouldn’t be jealous of others or angry with my past.” He laced his fingers around her knuckles and drew her hand upward until it rubbed the length of his hard erection through his pants. His voice dipped to a whisper as he said, “No one has ever affected me like you do.” His other hand gripped the back of her neck, daring her to pull away. “Take the muzzle off.”

  Nothing sounded better in that moment than giving in to him, but the memories dredged up from Mark’s tale of her downfall were too fresh. She wasn’t scared of much, but his loss to her bad decision wasn’t acceptable.

  “Guist packed a vaccine in my pack,” she breathed.

  Searching her face, his eyes went cold, serious. “That’s not a solution for us.”

  “Why not?” She didn’t understand his reservations. All he had to do was take the vaccine and they could be together.

  Releasing her, he frowned. “It just isn’t, Soren. And it doesn’t matter how close we get to each other—it won’t change. Just…just know I’m doing this for us, okay?”

  Turning, he kicked his bag against a wall and lay down with his back to her. Stunned, she stood watching him until his breathing became less ragged and angry. He’d explained this more than once, and what did she do? She kept pushing him on something he didn’t want to do. She didn’t know his reasons, but whatever they were, they were important to him.

  The stairs beckoned her, an escape from the discomfort of his anger, but she couldn’t go back to sleep like this. Clenching her fists against the fear of rejection, she lay down behind him, closed her eyes, then ran her palm under his arm until she rested her hand on his taut abdomen.

  Kaegan went still beneath her touch, stiffening until he was a stone statue under her hands. With a sigh, he relaxed and placed a big, warm hand over hers, as if to keep her from pulling away.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered onto the back of his neck. “I won’t mention it again.”

  He stroked her hand gently, slowing as he relaxed into sleep, and miraculously, against the safety of his body, she fell under the deep folds of slumber too.

  Kaegan’s movement woke her. He jerked his arm, now wrapped tightly around her, as if he were dreaming. He frowned in his sleep, and she gripped his bicep. His eyes flew open, wide and furious, and for seconds, he just stared at her as if he’d never seen
her before. Little by little, the tension seeped from his body, and the stony muscles under her hand relaxed.

  “Bad dream?” she whispered.

  Gray dawn light stretched through the cracks in the boarded up window and lit the devastated expression on his face. “Yeah,” he said, soft voice trembling slightly.

  His unshaven jaw was deliciously rough as she ran her palm over the sharp planes of his face. “Whatever it was, it’s not real.”

  His gaze drifted somewhere above her. “It felt real.”

  “What was it about?”

  “My mom. Losing my mom. We weren’t in a colony when it happened, so I wandered around alone for a few days before I was able to find help.”

  “Oh my gosh. Kaegan.” What else could she say? A ten-year-old boy had walked Dead infested woods all alone, mourning the person he loved the most. He must have been terrified. She tried to imagine what she would do if Mom had died outside of colony, and swallowed the heartache. It was too hard to even think about, and Kaegan had lived it. From the faraway look in his soft gray eyes, he was still reliving it.

  “It’s over now. It was a long time ago.” His lips pressed against her forehead but the sound of his voice still held phantoms of a past more painful than she’d even thought existed for him.

  “Hey,” she said, desperate to ease the pain of his memories. “You know how I know you like me?”

  His arm tightened around her waist, and his leg came to rest between hers. “How?”

  “Because you hug me in your sleep.” It was impossible to pretend during sleep, but in the middle of the night, he’d rolled over and scooped her up like it was the most natural thing in the world.

  A deep chuckle bubbled up from his throat, and she gave a little sigh of relief that the spell his mother’s loss had cast had been broken. “Maybe I’m just a cuddler.”

  “No. I’ve watched you sleep next to Colten before, and you two can’t seem to get far enough away from each other.”

  “This is wrong,” Mark said from behind her.

  Tilting her face up, she squinted as Mark’s tall frame blocked the wisps of sunrise.

  “There’s nothing wrong with me sleeping beside him,” she said, confused.

  “Not you, Dead. He’s wrong for encouraging this. It’s instinct for you to find a healthy host, unvaccinated and easy. You are doing exactly as your disease intends. I can’t fault you with doing what you are programmed to do. But you,” he said, glaring at Kaegan. “You should know better than to play house with a fucking Dead.”

  “I don’t know how I feel about this,” Colten said from the doorway. “Ripping into Soren is my gig. What you’re saying doesn’t sound right. If she wanted to eat Kaegan, she could’ve done it ten times over.”

  “Oh, she’s a patient hunter,” Mark said. “She waited years before she killed Drew. Sat in our classes like she was one of us. Watching us. Picking her victims.”

  Rage moved her, rocketed her up until she stood face to face with Mark. “Drew, your best friend, was an evil little shit who tried to kill me. Kill me! It was a choice between his life or mine, and I was the better monster. Your memories of Drew have blurred over time. He taunted me every day, pushed me, goaded me in front of the class, and I wasn’t the only one. He was a bully like you are now. Drew wasn’t some innocent little human who I ate for giggles, Mark. He was a murderous little weasel who sat on my chest and choked me nearly to death with a smile on his face.”

  Mark’s snake-like eyes filled with fury, and red crept up his neck, flushing his cheeks. He shook, but she didn’t care.

  “I’m not even sorry for him. I was defending myself. My guilt is over the people he took with him. Their loss is on me. His loss is on him.”

  “Bitch,” he yelled, grabbing her hair and yanking her neck backward.

  The cold barrel of his gun jammed into her jaw, but the deafening crack of a weapon being cocked wasn’t his. It was Kaegan’s, and at that moment, it rested against the throbbing vein in Mark’s temple.

  “If you pull that trigger,” Kaegan breathed in a terrifyingly calm voice, “I won’t shoot you. I’ll make sure you’re bit, and then I’ll rip your limbs from you, one by one, and feed them to the Deads. I’ll watch you turn and leave you to flop around on your fucking torso until you starve to death. Put. The gun. Down.”

  Mark’s smile was nothing short of twisted as he lowered his weapon and held it up in surrender. His eyes never left hers. “He won’t always be around to protect you, Soren.”

  Colten lowered a Beretta she hadn’t even noticed him draw, and Adrianna cursed softly under her breath. “Mark, I went out on a limb to bring you with us, and you’ve made me regret that decision in record time.”

  “Seriously? Are you all blinded by her? For what? What possible advantage could you have for championing her? You’re all as worthless as the Dead you’ve put on a pedestal.” He spat on the floor at Soren’s feet and shouldered his backpack, then shoved the front door open and disappeared.

  Lauren clung to the stair railing, her doe eyes wide. Frantically, she scribbled something on her chalkboard.

  You shouldn’t have done that.

  “Done what?” Soren asked.

  Taunted him.

  The door creaked in the breeze where Mark had escaped, and Soren bit her lip behind the muzzle.

  “Cheer up, Soren,” Colten said, clapping her on the back so hard she pitched forward. “His bark is probably worse than his bite.”

  From the bleak expression on Lauren’s face, she knew that Colten was utterly wrong.

  “You okay?” Kaegan asked. His gaze, like hers, was riveted on the door, but he wrapped his arm around the back of her neck and pulled her close. His heart hammered away, though from his calm demeanor, she’d never have been able to tell he’d been spooked. His gun rested on her shoulder, and she inhaled deeply. She’d never had a gun shoved at her before. Not that she wasn’t threatened regularly, but guns had become rarer over the years, survivors choosing blades instead. Knives never ran out of ammo, after all.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Maybe Lauren’s right.”

  “Maybe.” He dipped his head until his lips brushed her ear. “But I have to admit I liked watching you tear into him like that.”

  “We should get going if we’re going to reach La Junta in two days,” Adrianna said. “If we time it right, we should hit it by nightfall on Wednesday, but we can’t afford to fiddle-fart around.”

  Breakfast was a quiet affair. When stomachs were filled and an extra leg of meat was packed away in plastic to temper the smell, they set out.

  Mark leaned against the corner of the museum with a scowl on his face. No one spoke to him, and he followed some distance behind them, but who cared? Lauren was the only one who seemed concerned, and even so, not enough to fall back and hike beside him.

  The city was a maze of rubble, matted with human trash from years before, and everywhere, trees and plants poked up through the earth. In another fifty years, the buildings here wouldn’t even be standing. Maybe they’d be swallowed up completely.

  The smell of animal wafted to her on the breeze, and she paused, wiping a hand across the back of her neck to warm the chill that had settled there. But when she turned, nothing seemed amiss.

  “Deads?” Adrianna asked.

  “No, just my imagination.”

  “All that sleep you got last night messed you up,” she said with a smirk.

  “It must’ve.”

  The city seemed unnaturally empty of Deads, so they avoided the woods and traveled with wary eyes scanning their surroundings. By the third hour of hiking through city streets, the only corpses they’d seen were the ones that had starved to death sometime since the last freeze. Shrunken bodies peppered the streets, and bone piles dotted dilapidated doorways. Everything smelled like Deads, so she couldn’t pinpoint the danger she felt. Still, the feeling of being followed haunted her, and she turned for probably the tenth time in an hour. Nothing. Just Mark, follo
wing up the rear and offering a dirty look for her troubles. Maybe having him at her back was what left her unsettled, and she shook her head to ward off the cold.

  As she turned a corner, her attention on a piece of plastic draped across a downed light pole that was flapping loudly in the wind, a clawed hand reached out and brushed her cheek. She jerked back. Groans grew louder as a swarm of Deads rattled a chain link fence they seemed to be trapped behind. There had to be twenty bodies or so, and the more that flung themselves against the fence, the more the metal pole that held it upright leaned.

  “Let’s go,” Kaegan said, and she followed them at a jog. Could they take on twenty? Maybe, but not without a risk of injury and loss. Best to pick their battles, and this was not it.

  When she turned back, the fence was bending dangerously forward. She pushed her legs harder to keep up with the others.

  A lone Dead stumbled in a circle down one of the side streets and took chase when she spotted them. Adrianna peeled from the group and pressed her forearm on the Dead’s chest before thrusting a knife through the top of the corpse’s head. It dropped like a sack of stones.

  “This way,” Adrianna said when she caught up.

  Ahead of them was a pileup of old, rusted cars, so they ran down a thin alley and hit a park on the other side. The playset still stood with a single swing clinging to its position by one chain. A filthy baby doll lay under it, and its open eyes seemed to track them as they bolted across the clearing.

  This way, the wind seemed to whisper.

  The deeper they fled into the park, the denser the brush became, thicker and thicker until it was a prison, and the only way to escape was to go back the direction they came. Kaegan and Colten chopped at the vines with their machetes until a thin path, the width of a deer trail, was made. Everywhere, the sweet rotting scent of Deads clung to the air, unescapable, and so thick, it seemed to settle on Soren’s skin.