Justice

by Gillian Zane

  I had helped Grace make the soaps once and it was enough for me, but I enjoyed watching the process. She had this strange combination of watered down ashes and animal fat that she would “cook” and then combine at different times. For scents, she would boil in certain herbs she collected. I preferred the lavender bars. It grows like a weed at our compound so it’s plentiful.

  Rebel was already in the shower and he opened the door to let me in, taking the soap from my hand and sniffing it.

  “I love this smell,” he smiled and began to lather me with the soap.

  “So do I,” I said, sighing as he meticulously cleaned me from bottom to top. He might have paid special attention to a few areas, but I wasn’t complaining.

  When he was done, I took the soap and returned the favor. I also paid special attention to some parts which wonderfully came to attention in my hand. Before long, I had him moaning and thrusting his hips against my hand as I slowly stroked him. I watched his face as I brought him fully erect in my palm.

  The floor was cold, but I didn’t mind as I got to my knees in front of him. I licked out and tasted the head of his dick and the salty pre-come that leaked from the end. He grabbed for my head and held me tight as I sucked him into my mouth.

  “Damn,” he cursed as I began to suck harder along his length. I swirled my tongue around the tip as I pulled back and began to stroke him with my hand and lick the head.

  I took him deep again and again. He lost his balance, and had to brace himself on the back of the shower as I aggressively took him deeper into my throat.

  He held on tight to my head and pumped into my mouth. I let him control the pace, I took it and let him fuck my mouth.

  Suddenly he went stiff and I thought he might come, I was ready, but he pulled out quickly. He yanked me to my feet and spun me around. His hands pushed me up onto the tiny ledge of the shower. With one quick motion he entered me, quick and hard. He pressed me hard against the back wall of the shower and plunged into me repeatedly.

  Holy. Shit.

  I held on for dear life as he took me with a vigor I have never experienced before during sex. Never before had I felt this way. I was a mess of conflicted emotions and sensations by the time my orgasm overtook me. I scratched his back with my fingernails, unaware of what I was doing as he roared my name and emptied inside of me.

  He broke me into pieces. I didn’t think there was anything that could put me back together again–except maybe more Rebel.

  FORTY-NINE | You and Me

  Somehow we ended up on the floor of the shower. She sat curled in my lap. We were caught in an endless kiss that I didn’t want to break, but the shower was sputtering. We had used up all the water in the reserves.

  I grabbed a towel from the rack outside the shower door, and wrapped it around her. I dried her off as she stared up at me with those big blue eyes. She was soft looking right now, so content. I couldn’t rectify this Hannah with the tough soldier, but they were one in the same. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. While I enjoyed this pliable and sexual side of her, the soldier was who I had first been fascinated with. The one whose smile never met her eyes.

  As if on cue, she smiled at me, her eyes soft, her skin flushed from the hot water. I wanted to pull her to me, put her in my pocket, and hide her away. I wanted this moment to last forever. I wanted to get down on my knees and beg her to stay with me in this tiny apartment. We could scavenge for food half the time, the other half we could spend in bed.

  But I didn’t say that. We had responsibilities. Or she did, at least. I was along for the ride. I had been along for the ride since I laid eyes on her.

  With a sickening feeling I pulled the clothes from the dryer and handed them to her. I grabbed my own and began to dress in the warm clothes. It couldn’t have lasted for forever. I knew this, but I couldn’t help but feel a little apprehensive about leaving this place.

  “The batteries should be downstairs somewhere. They probably have them stored in an inventory area. I’m hoping they also have a truck available that we can load up. Once we get those in place, we can drive out of here.”

  “Drive out of here,” she repeated my words.

  “We have to go back. We have to let them know you’re okay, and--”

  “And Murphey and Pratt aren’t.” She gritted her teeth and took a deep breath.

  “I would stay here with you. I would try my damnedest to make it work– to survive, you and me.” I took her face in my hands and looked down at her. Her eyes had gone hard, but they softened with my words.

  “Just you and me,” she whispered as she kissed me gently.

  I pressed her against the countertop, my fingers trailing lightly down her side. The smell of freshly washed clothes in my nose, a smell I hadn’t experienced in a long time. I felt her fingers at my waistband. Her cold fingers brushed across my bare stomach and with a willpower that would make superman jealous, I broke away from the kiss and rearranged my dick so it wouldn’t be so obvious what I really wanted to do.

  “As much as I want to, as much as I want to march you back to that bed, bend you over and – damn.” I ran my hand over my face and got back on track. “We have to go back.”

  “I know,” she said, but looked away as she said it. “It’s just that once we go back, I’m, well, I’m the grunt and you’re the…”

  “Biker,” I finished for her.

  FIFTY | Really Good Sex Just Isn't Enough

  The search for the solar shit was rather anti-climactic. With the bullshit we went through to get here, I almost expected to have some near death experience in the halls of this solar company’s plant, but it was eerily deserted.

  We slammed the hilts of our blades into the walls of the metal building to attract attention, in case there were any dedicated worker zombies hanging about. Nothing. It was quiet. We wandered up and down the building hallways until we found the storage area. Everything was neat and in place. We even found the service trucks parked in aisles near the back bay of the warehouse. Some were even loaded, as if waiting to go on a job. We chose an empty one and tried to start it up, but the engine didn’t even sputter. It had been sitting there too long. They were odd looking trucks and a few had cords coming from them.

  “They’re electric,” I said as Rebel tried to start the next one to no avail. The big start button should have clued us in, but our minds were elsewhere.

  “The warehouse should be run on solar, like the apartment. I don’t know why they aren’t holding their charges.” He followed the cords to a bank of batteries and bent over them. “Oh, they’re not plugged into an inverter. It looks like they charged up the batteries, drained them and then switched them out.” He unplugged one of the cables and plugged it into another set of batteries.

  “Check the last one, it should have a light to indicate it’s charging,” he said.

  I walked to the last vehicle in the line and sure enough, there was an indicator that it was charging.

  “Yeah, like a cell phone,” I laughed. I missed my smartphone.

  “Will probably take about six hours to charge, that’s plenty of time to find the parts.”

  “But not to get out of here before dark,” I pointed out.

  “I guess we’ll have to spend the night here,” he smirked.

  “Shame,” I responded with a grin.

  We decided it was a good idea to take two of the vehicles and the battery banks that were used to charge them. We couldn’t siphon gas forever. These vehicles would be an asset. We should return and take all of them, but right now we would take as much as we could.

  We filled each truck with batteries and a few panels, but not much. We didn’t want to take up precious room in these small vehicles. Most of the panels we would be able to get from off the houses in Lakeview. This was all about the batteries and the inverters which were meant for off-grid set-ups.

  When the last battery was placed in the back of the truck, I closed the door and looked at Rebel who was fiddling with t
he batter bank.

  “It’s charged. This must be some powerful stuff.” It had only been three hours. We still had two hours of daylight.

  I looked toward the stairs and then at him regretfully. He shrugged.

  “I think we should get back. We’ve already been gone too long.”

  “What’s one more night?” I said but I knew it wasn’t right.

  “We’ll have more nights, just not here,” he said but I didn’t believe him. He looked away, anywhere but at me. He knew it too. He was lying. When we got back, everything would be different.

  I wanted to grab him, shake him, punch him, something to get him to fight for this. Was he giving up so easily? Was he ready to go back and just roll over? His usual MO?

  He had forced me to believe in him, to accept him. And now he was ready to wash his hands of everything. His life. His freedom.

  “We can stay! We don’t have to go back. we can take one of these trucks and get the fuck out of this city. We don’t have to stay here. We can go anywhere. Make our own life,” I argued.

  “No, we can’t.” His voice was stern.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you? Why are you so scared to go out on your own? We can do this!” I hit him in the chest and he grabbed my hand.

  “And what? You give up everything you and your people have put together? For what? Me? A guy you just met? You don’t even know my last name, Hannah. I sure as hell don’t know yours. You’d do that? And for what? Because we had good sex?”

  His words cut like a knife, which was what he intended. I wasn’t dumb. He was scared. He didn’t think he could make it on his own, even if he did have someone like me at his side. It was the reason he had hidden behind the gang, even before Z hit. Whatever, I didn’t know his last name, but I had him pegged. Reid, Rebel, whatever the hell he wanted to go by, was scared. He was scared of letting people down. He was scared he wasn’t good enough. And at this moment in time, he was right.

  “My last name is Klink, by the way, which I did tell you. And yeah, it was really good sex, not good enough for you to stop being a fucking martyr though. C’mon, asshole, let’s get you back so you can pay for your sins.” I didn’t stop and wait for him. I unplugged the first truck and loaded up the battery bank into the passenger seat. I saw he was done with his so I went to the garage doors and got them open.

  Two Zs wandering in the street turned our way and began shuffling in our direction. I let Rebel pull out and then I got in my truck, pulling it forward and through the doors. The Zs were close, but I had enough time to get out and close the doors behind me. Then I got behind the wheel and flattened the two of them as I tore after Rebel.

  FIFTY-ONE | Home Sweet Home

  My thoughts plagued me the entire way back to the base. I was always in my head way too much and the shit I told Hannah messed me up. I didn’t need her throwing her life away for me. She had already lost so much. I shouldn’t be the reason she isolated herself from the rest of her friends.

  My mind flashed to the other day, back in Lakeview. Hannah with her friends. I had watched her with Alexis. I had watched as she interacted with the two big guys that ran their base, Zach and Blake. They were more than just her friends. That group was a tight unit, like family. I couldn’t pull her away from that for my selfish wants. Because of the bad decisions I had made. I had to face my sins, as she had called them.

  The trucks were quiet. They called no attention to us as we weaved down the crumbling streets of the fading city. I maneuvered through the back streets until I made it onto Canal Street. Once a bustling area of commerce and tourism, the street was a mess of detritus and the large houses stood dark and brooding behind their overgrown lawns.

  I passed a red street car that used to be a common sight on this street. The old tracks had been refurbished and reinstalled so the people of New Orleans had more public transportation. What was once thought to be outdated was cherished and brought back after Katrina, and now it was forgotten again. The red paint, so vibrant only a year ago, was now faded, the windows broken, splatters of what might be blood peppered the sides.

  It was tragic and yet fitting.

  Canal Street led us back to the “Cities of the Dead” and the end of the street car line, where Lakeview began. I pulled around the curve, keeping an eye on Hannah’s progress behind me. So far, so good.

  We were about to turn on Canal Boulevard, only a few miles from the base when I remembered at the last minute that this way was blocked, it had to be. If the interstate drop was underwater, the dip under the train tracks on Canal Boulevard would be under water too. I motioned out the window for Hannah to follow me into City Park. It was the long way around, but a less populated area so it might work out better.

  I pulled onto the quiet road that ran parallel to City Park. It was once one of the largest urban parks in North America, now it was on its way to being a forest. The great oaks that lined the street had been a pleasure for me, before the end of the world. Now, they looked ominous. Their reaching branches hid the dead and other menaces behind their thick trunks.

  The park was overgrown, small trees jockeyed for sunlight, on the way to turning this stretch of land back into what it once was before people. The vegetation had overtaken the road in some spots, forcing me to drive onto the shoulder. As we passed the main area of the park and the large stadium that hugged the interstate and cut through the park, the number of dead roaming aimlessly along the side of the road increased.

  The theory was they liked to go west. Most packs we’ve run into were heading west. They would be stopped here. The Orlean Avenue Canal ran from Lake Pontchartrain to the train tracks that cut through Lakeview. It was a large drainage canal surrounded by high levee protection walls. With the spillway gates now closed, there was only one way to go west, go around. It seemed to be too much for the dead, they wandered aimlessly in circles, confused. They would speed up as we passed, and start to follow us, but would trip in the high grass and weeds and get sucked into the boggy ground.

  The ponds and smaller canals that lined the park were all over-flowing, turning this area into a swampy mess. It had once been a well-maintained stable which led into a golf course, now it was returning to the old ways. Marshland.

  At the last spillway gate, I slowed and let Hannah pull to the side of me. There were two stern looking soldiers where there had once been two of my brothers. Hannah got out of her vehicle with her hands in front of her.

  “Hannah Klink. We left with Murphey and Pratt a few days ago. You can verify us with Poche if you need to,” she said as calm as I had ever seen her. Their guns were pointed at her, frowns on their faces.

  “I recognize you, you’re with Miller and James’s group, come on through. Where’s Murphey?” the solder asked at the last minute and Hannah’s features tightened. She shook her head and the soldiers dropped theirs to look at their boots. Nothing more needed to be said.

  The one closest to us wrapped his hand around a rope tied to one of the plastic blocks and pulled it to the side. Hannah returned to her truck and the soldiers waved us through.

  We rolled up to the base moments later. A tall brunette was waiting for us in the back parking lot. She had her hands gripped together nervously, but her face lit up when she saw the vehicles. It was Alexis. I sat in the driver’s seat as Alexis yanked Hannah out of the truck and pulled her into a hug.

  I felt like such a voyeur, but I couldn’t look away. I watched as Hannah tentatively wrapped her arms around her friend and then the telltale shaking of her shoulders started. It must have surprised Alexis because she looked down with surprise at her friend, but she held on tight.

  “How did they die?” I was startled by Poche at my window. He leaned in and took a look at the stacks of equipment behind me. “They radioed in from the gate. I tell ya, I didn’t expect this shit. Murphey was one of my best.”