by Gillian Zane
“There’s only one person I feel I have to prove myself to,” I said honestly. She cocked her head to the side and looked at me strangely and then her eyes widened as she got my meaning. Her lips parted in a quiet little “oh” of surprise.
Her surprise made her features soften as a soft blush crossed her cheeks. I felt myself falling over the edge. I had tried to keep myself in check. I couldn’t want this woman, it would only get me in trouble. I would be left wanting, left feeling unworthy. Because I was unworthy. I was nothing compared to her. I was a coward. I was a follower.
And she was everything I wasn’t.
I couldn’t help but want her. I wanted to be a man she respected, any man would. She was amazing. She was also staring at me as if there could be something there. Something she saw in me. Something that might be worthy.
I could only claim temporary insanity. I was lost in that look. Lost in those blue eyes.
I leaned down and kissed her. Her lips tasted like strawberries from the homemade chapstick I watched her put on ten minutes ago. I had to make it worth it, because I knew it wouldn’t last. I knew she would smarten up and see me for what I was. So I put everything behind my kiss.
At first she let me; she might have kissed me back. For one-second her lips parted and she breathed me in. I melted under her soft lips and nearly came undone when with one tug she pulled on my lips with her mouth, opening under my exploration. Then she stiffened as if she suddenly realized what was happening.
I should have seen it coming. I should be grateful she pulled her punch at the last minute. Her fist connected with my cheek. Pulled punch, or not it still hurt like a bitch. I saw stars as I dropped to my knees in front her, a supplicant to her. I had a taste of Hannah Klink. Only one taste. Now, I wanted more.
THIRTY-SEVEN | Prove It
“Don’t ever do that again,” I hissed, standing over the ballsy son of a bitch. He was on his knees in front of me, he looked dazed. It couldn’t be from my punch, I hadn’t hit him that hard. It dropped him to his knees, but I think it was more because he didn’t expect it.
He probably expected me to be all giggly and ready and willing. He was a pretty man, if you liked that type of thing. If you liked brown bedroom eyes, and full lips that always seemed to be smirking. If you liked strong bodies covered in colorful tattoos of odd things that you wanted to explore. But that wasn’t for me. His beard had itched and his lips were too soft. I had hated it.
Liar.
He was a good kisser. Or maybe it was because I hadn’t been kissed in over a year. I had forgotten what it felt like. I had certainly forgotten what an orgasm felt like. Couldn’t even masturbate with the way I had been living. Guys couldn’t give a shit about that sort of thing, for themselves. Go in the bathroom and pump one out. Girls couldn’t do that. If a girl got caught masturbating– it was like an open invitation to the men around her. I hated double standards.
So, that was why my lips still burned. Why they tingled from the attention. Double standards.
That was the reason I wanted to run my hands through his hair and pull him to his feet and back to my lips. Double standards.
It was only because I was starved for attention.
No other explanation made sense. He was everything I didn’t like in a man. He was messy. It was obvious he had some serious shit he was dealing with. Stuff that made him do things that made him a bad guy. He was a bad buy. I didn’t like messy, bad guys.
He got to his feet and I resisted the urge to help him up. He didn’t say anything, only stared at me again with that intense sad look.
Messy or not, I felt that tug in my gut. It really pissed me off.
“I’m not some easy conquest. This isn’t a game, Rebel. I hope you understand that if you continue to push I’ll have no choice but to push back. And you won’t like my way.”
“I know this isn’t a game, Hannah, and please call me Reid,” he said and dropped his eyes. I didn’t get him. I saw strength in him, I saw a predator in his eyes. But at times like this, he looked like another victim. I didn’t know which was the real Reid. Was he hiding the predator, waiting for his prey to come to him? Or was he truly just another messed up victim of a world gone wrong?
There was no way I could know, unless I let him in. Unless I let him prove himself. And it might turn out that he proved himself to be the wolf, but what if he didn’t? What if this wasn’t an act? What then?
I didn’t even want to think about that. I almost wanted the wolf. That way, I wouldn’t have an issue being the hunter.
“I’ll make it right,” he whispered as if my thoughts were plainly written on my face. “If only so you don’t look at me with suspicion anymore.” Then he hitched his pack onto his back and walked around me.
I had a feeling this man was going to prove himself in more ways than one. And for the life of me I couldn’t figure out if I was excited or scared by this. And why that even mattered.
I was the last to get to the truck. Murphey was in the driver’s seat waiting, and Pratt had taken bitch. Typical. I looked at Rebel– Reid who was waiting for me by the door and he couldn’t meet my eye. It was an annoying habit. I was used to be being stared down.
I got in the back and he followed. Let the adventure begin.
It was never ending in this shithole of a life. I thought it was bad when I was deployed. But at least there you had everything provided for you. Need a gun? Requisition one. Need a vehicle to take you somewhere, all you have to do is go get one. Most of the time the meals were hot, unless you were off base, then you had your MREs. Sure, I was being shot at, could be blown up at any moment, but at least there was something bigger to it. Not this constant unknown.
The truck was big, with oversized tires that you needed in the city now. Gaping holes stood out in the street, some had trees growing out of them. Soon this area would be nothing more than dirt roads.
Canal Boulevard, one of the largest streets in Lakeview, named because it was once a canal, was holding up the best and that wasn’t saying much. The neutral grounds, the areas called a median everywhere else, were overgrown. The once pretty expanse of grass, peppered with Oleander and Crepe Myrtles were now covered with weeds and fast growing trees were pushing out from the tall grass. I only spotted the spiky leaves of the large Oleander bushes every now and again.
When we got further down Canal, the neutral grounds turned into pools of stagnant water, reflecting the name of the street now more than ever. Before Z hit, the neutral grounds were allowed to settle and sink into the ground because no matter how many times they filled it in, it would collapse. Finally, the city let it settle naturally, put in pretty flowers and dubbed it the “sunken gardens.”
It hadn’t rained in a while, but before winter hit we had some nasty weather roll through. The water still hadn’t drained. With the pumps not working, I wondered if establishing in Lakeview was a good idea. It was filled in swamp, the land forced to comply with human settlers. The water was dying to reclaim the area and without the technology to keep it bay, it was almost inevitable that at some point Lakeview would be sucked back into Lake Pontchartrain and with it Poche’s fancy new base.
Another reason to get back to our base, even though we were probably no better. There were no meteorologists to warn us about hurricanes in the Gulf. We wouldn’t have a few days to shutter our windows and put the ax in the attic. One day we would look outside and see a black sky, the wind would pick up and the world would get calm. The calm only felt before a bad storm. And we would have a few hours, tops.
Inevitable.
If it wasn’t a fucking zombie, it would be a storm. If it wasn’t a storm, it would be another biker gang, or some other group of asshats looking to dominate. I pushed away words that bubbled through my brain like black stains, itching to take root.
Why bother?
“Earth to Baby,” Murphey’s voice cut through my morose thoughts. Pratt was looking at me questionably.
“Yeah, what?” I s
aid sounding annoyed to cover up being out of it.
“Where should we get on the interstate?” Murphey asked.
“Pontchartrain Boulevard, it’s a straight shot, you have to cut through the neighborhood. A few blocks up, make a right.” I pointed toward a cross street that was coming up.
The houses that lined Canal Boulevard were huge mansions built in the 30s and 40s. It was hard to tell where to turn, so I sat forward in my seat, leaning over the console to direct Murphey. She wasn’t a local. I should have been the one driving.
We got to the street, it was just a random side street that looked like all of them, but it was the only one that crossed through and got you onto the back streets of Lakeview. The neighborhood was pretty straightforward, a big rectangle with streets that ran in straight lines. But, since a lot of the main streets used to be canals, only filled in as the neighborhood grew, it was hard to get across them. There were only a few areas you could get through when you were going west or east. It was where there had been bridges and houses hadn’t been built.
The side streets were crumbling, badly. The truck rose and fell as if we were on an amusement park ride. Murphey hit a hole hidden in the high grass and the vehicle lurched and slammed roughly to the side.
“Shit,” she cursed and revved the engine, forcing the big truck over the rough patch.
“We should have turned on Harrison,” Pratt said under his breath.
The truck slammed back down when Murphey managed to get over a hump but we groaned when there was an audible explosion as the tire busted. We hadn’t made it ten minutes and our mission was already derailed by a flat tire.
“I know how to change a flat,” Pratt declared eagerly and jumped out of the truck.
“Congratulations,” I said sarcastically. “Hold on, though, did you even fucking check our surroundings?” I cursed, pulling out my Bowie knife and getting out of the truck with him.
Pratt had gone to the back of the truck and was fiddling with the bed, looking for the spare.
“Of course I checked my surroundings,” he scowled at me.
If I was a sadist, this would have been funny. But I wasn’t, so I didn’t laugh when the zombie shambled up to us and Pratt turned around and screamed like a girl. I rushed past him to take down the single zombie.
He screamed like a fucking girl was a total insult to females everywhere. Was Poche trying to sabotage this mission by sending this idiot?
It wasn’t a low girl scream either, it was loud and more zombies would be drawn to us from the noise. Sure enough, as I dropped the lone Z, Rebel got out of the truck, followed closely by Murphey. They had drawn their blades as a group of Z rounded the corner and headed directly for us.
There were about ten of them. Manageable.
Until the second group came from behind us. And Pratt drew his gun, instead of a blade.
Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Four shots. He fired four shots and only took down one Z. Rebel had already dropped three and they lay at his feet while he went after the rest. Murphey was just as productive.
“Put your gun away, you fucking idiot,” I yelled and I saw his gun waver. “Put it up! Get out your knife! Now, soldier!” I screamed and he followed orders.
But the damage was done. We tightened up, back to back, hacking at the ever growing horde. As we dropped one, two shambled down the street.
I had forgotten the smell. It had only been a week since my last zombie interaction, but my mind had erased all trace of their wonderful scent. That dead but not quite dead smell. It was a mix of rotting flesh and body odor, mixed with the faint smell of excrement. It was the worst thing I’d ever been exposed to. Give me a dead, rotting, corpse any day.
You get into the mode of killing them. They aren’t like killing humans. You don’t see emotion, or pain on their faces when you take them out. They continue to stare blankly. Even an animal reacts to pain. These walking corpses keep coming until you take out the head. Then they collapse on the ground, whatever unholy infection that kept the body moving, eradicated.
They shuffled forward, the clothes were tattered on some, others looked fresh as if they had recently turned. There were small ones in this group. The kids were the worst, but easy for me to put down. I didn’t have to reach up and stab, or pull a corpse down to my height for a takedown. It was one quick pull, stab and then down it went. I didn’t look at its little teddy bear tee. I stepped over it and grabbed for the next one.
Pratt’s gun went off again and if I was holding, I would have shot him myself.
How was he still alive in this fucking world?
Douchebags like Pratt were killed off long ago, their stupidity their demise. When Z hit, Darwinism ruled. He must have hid behind the others. Poche probably didn’t know how incompetent he was. Pratt had been there in the room, so he had asked him to join us.
I finally came up for air, as the dead fell away from me, taken out by my mad skills. I looked at Pratt, he had two on him. I strode over and yanked one of them off him and stuck my knife right through the eye. I went to grab for the other one, but something dragged me back. I tried to twist around, but there was another one at my feet. It gripped my leg, trying to pull me to its mouth.
Pratt hadn’t killed some of them, only injured them so they couldn’t stand. How he had done that, I had no clue. But now I was paying for his incompetence. I couldn’t break away from the one that had my leg and now there was a nasty zombie arm around me and I could hear the growl of the fucker near my ear. Which was exposed. It was a great place for it to bite me and end my life forever. My body exploded with flight reflexes as adrenaline flooded my system. If I didn’t know how to control it, I would have started to panic.
I pushed hard away from it and tried to pull my body from its grip, but it was a strong fucker and I couldn’t get leverage because I was trying to avoid the one by my leg. I had thick pants on and boots, but I wasn’t taking any chances.
Well, this might be it, Hannah.
I ignored my traitorous mind and gave one big tug. My body flew away from the Zs and I landed hard in the crumbling street.
I scrambled back and looked up, it was Rebel. He had yanked the one off me and it was put down in seconds. He strode over to the one on the concrete and stabbed it neatly through the head. Two more strides and his hand was out and pulling me up. No words, he walked over to Pratt and took out the one that had him.
He was a machine. It was fascinating.
I looked around for more Z to kill. They were continuing to pour into our area. I was completely out of breath.
“We have to make a run for it,” Rebel shouted.
He was right. We had to get the hell out of here.
“Left, make a left and run for the 610,” I screamed and took off, dragging Pratt behind me. Rebel ran ahead of me. But I didn’t see Murphey.
I heard the pounding of boots and looked over my shoulder. She was following behind, gripping her shoulder but running fast. The dead were close behind her.
THIRTY-EIGHT | Down Goes Pratt
That guy, Pratt, had really screwed us over. I hadn’t gone for a jog in over a year, so my lungs were screaming in protest after only two blocks. I raced through an overgrown playground and slowed down enough to look over my shoulder. Hannah was right behind me, followed by Murphey and then Pratt. He looked winded, and Murphey was bleeding from her shoulder.
I didn’t want to think about what that meant. A high fence loomed in front of us. It was the sound barrier for the interstate. The nearby entrance ramp led to a series of turns that would take you into the suburb of Metairie or downtown New Orleans and the area we were trying to avoid.
