by Eve Langlais
Chapter 6
The Present
As I fell, I had time enough only to think, Fuck me, this is going to hurt. It might only be the second floor, but the impact would break something for sure.
At least I didn’t see the ground coming at me, just the sun finally peeking from behind clouds. Taunting fucker.
At the last second, I closed my eyes. I hit something, but it wasn’t hard ground. The object grunted and staggered but didn’t drop my body.
Caught, by what? Oh shit. Shit. Shit!
I tensed and opened my eyelids, ready to scream, only to blink. It was a someone who’d managed to catch me, a male judging by his square face and stubbled jaw. He wore a knit hat over his hair and a lopsided grin.
“Hey. Nice of you to drop in.” In a deep timbre, my rescuer cracked a lame joke.
He’d also saved me.
Did I say thank you? Nope. All I managed was to squeak, “Hey.”
Yup. Hottest thing ever happened to me and suddenly I’m Miss Shy Girl.
“You okay?” he asked as he set me on my feet.
No. I wanted a do-over. A chance to offer him a sultry hello and thanks before bestowing a kiss on him.
Too forward?
Didn’t really care. I’d been a long time without human contact. This guy didn’t just represent the cake, his hunkiness was like the extra icing on top.
But did he appear overcome by my cuteness?
Nope. Then again, I wore a mask…wait a second. He didn’t?
I stared at his bare mouth and uncovered nose. His lips moved. I could see them. Why didn’t he wear any protective face gear? Didn’t he fear the spores?
He started moving past me, and I finally started listening to him speak. “We should go. The sun won’t stay out for long.”
Despite me not replying, he gripped my hand tight and tugged us into a run. Thank God one of us hadn’t been addled enough to lose their survival instinct. I snapped out of my head and paid attention to the space around me.
He was right about the sun not sticking around. Clouds already scuttled to cover it. Would the gray light be enough to keep the monster inside?
My feet slapped pavement as I sprinted, and my breath huffed. On a positive note, I actually managed to keep pace with him. Gone was the flabby girl who did yoga twice a month and thought herself fit. Now I had abs. Biceps. Triceps. All the ‘eps because with nothing to do but hide and read, I kept in shape.
My savior appeared to know where he wanted to go, turning a few times until we reached a tall building, the windows on the main floor boarded over. The signs above, while dirty, boasted a coffee shop and a pharmacy. What I wouldn’t give for a latte with a dusting of cinnamon on top.
He was more interested in the shattered front doors between the stores. We entered a tight lobby, full of shadows.
To my surprise, he pulled something out and shook it. He had a flashlight just like mine. It created a soft glowing light.
I glanced over my shoulder. Had we been followed by the monster? Picked up by a new threat? I wasn’t sure where we were other than far from my home.
The dude in the hat walked toward a door, saying nothing at all. Should I leave or follow the guy in the long duster? Could he get any sexier?
He held open the door to the stairs, only then meeting my gaze. He arched a brow noticing I hadn’t moved. “Coming?”
That kind of depended on him.
“I don’t know you,” was what I replied, though.
“You know enough to realize I am not the type to let you die needlessly.”
“You could be the type to kidnap women for torture.” Yup, that came out of my mouth. Accused him of being a sociopath.
He laughed, showing off beautiful teeth, all the better for nibbling me with. “What if instead I’m just a nice guy who happened to save a beautiful woman?”
“Okay, now you’re putting it on thick,” I grumbled, cheeks hot but secretly pleased. I headed for him. “You should have stopped at nice guy,” I added as I drew even.
“I doubt you’ll think I’m nice in a few minutes. How do you feel about stairs?”
Seven flights later, huffing and puffing, I hated them with a passion, especially since hot dude appeared unruffled. I, on the other hand, leaned on the wall and tried to not die.
“It’s not much farther,” he remarked.
“Ha,.” I croaked.
“It occurs to me, I haven’t introduced myself. Xavion.”
He would have a sexy name. Me? “Cecilia.” And I swear, if he starting singing the Simon and Garfunkel song that made my mother name me, I would hit him, cute or not! Growing up, I’d heard the many versions of “Cecilia” at every major event in my life. Hearing it now might make me snap.
“Cecilia.” He mulled over my name, rolling it off his tongue and lips like a fine wine.
“And you’re Xavion what?” He’d not mentioned a last name.
He smiled again. “Just Xavion. The one and only in the world. Just like you are the very last and first Cecilia.”
Because I like embarrassing myself, I blurted out, “Xavion and Cecilia, the new Adam and Eve.”
Chapter 7
The Past
The president didn’t get sick right away. Or if he did, he hid it from everyone. No one noticed, at first, that the group that met the aliens disappeared from public view. Everyone focused on the ET’s in our midst.
The aliens were given an abandoned embassy in the nation’s capital. Diplomatic ties with that particular country had been severed a while back due to election meddling in 2020, and not by the two superpowers always in the news.
The aliens moved in, and the president had the embassy heavily guarded. No protesting was tolerated and got shut down before it started.
The media screamed about the constitution. The president told them to fuck off and not start a galactic war.
America actually approved.
The spaceship was cordoned off; however, scientists were given access by the visitors. It didn’t run any mechanics or physics that made any sense to humanity but would revolutionize the world. Or so I heard on the internet.
I was glued to every single broadcast involving the aliens. What did they eat? Some weird paste stuff that they grew on their ship. Heavy on the protein apparently. They kept a day and night schedule. Spoke in clicks that were already being learned by an AI system for real-time communication.
The world spent those first few weeks in a celebration, which might be why the news took us all by surprise.
It was an alien who died first.
We didn’t know that though. The world might be watching the live, twenty-four-hour footage of the embassy, but we saw little from the outside, only what the government released.
When we finally did find out, it was to discover the spiders weren’t faring well. The body of the first dead one was brought back to the ship and a new person on board took their place. The next body was given to human scientists, because, by the end of week three since their arrival, the president appeared to be ill and two of those there for the landing had died. It led to all those at the first meeting being taken into custody for observation.
The aliens were put under strict quarantine and the ship under a military watch with orders to fire if they saw anything hinky.
Illegal drone footage—achieved by launching dozens at a time in the hopes of getting one good video—began to emerge showing the embassy courtyard with the spiders spending more time outside. Basking in the sun. Each day looking weaker and duller, their carapaces turning an ashy gray.
The president died. The vice president took over even as he appeared sick. The illness was spreading.
Hospitals soon became overrun with the sick. Morgues couldn’t handle all the bodies. The survival rate proved small, and of those who beat the plague, reports came out of strange violent behavior.
They called the airborne illness Arachvid-1. It would seem despite all the evidence to the contrary, a
liens and humans were incompatible. Their very existence poisoned the air and made us sick.
Which led to the murder of the remaining aliens and the scuttling of their ship. Not that I cared, by that point. I’d locked myself in. Barricaded my door. Hoarded my food even as I wanted to eat all of it.
I watched the broadcasts and videos of the world dying. Arachcvid-1 had a ninety-five percent fatality. But those who survived were changed.
People tried to protect themselves from it. We pulled out our COVID-19 masks from the 2020 pandemic.
It didn’t stop the spread. Even more died as riots rocked the streets and despair killed those who thought suicide would be kinder.
Had I any drugs I might have been tempted to chug them.
Instead, I hid inside my safe cave, watching my food pile dwindle, glued to the internet until the day I lost the signal. I didn’t dare venture forth even as my supplies dwindled.
I feared what happened outside.
Two weeks into my self-isolation, the almost constant sirens stopped. The days and weeks following, I’d hear engines outside and the occasional screams.
A thump at my door had me muffling my whimpers with a fist in my mouth. I wanted to wake up from the nightmare. Instead, I ran out of food.
Hunger forced me out of my comfort zone.
I layered on my gear. Mask, face shield, hat over my ears, jacket, pants, all taped around the cuffs. I waddled out, made it to the lobby level, and looked out onto the results of a civil apocalypse. Burned wrecks. Garbage in the streets. And a body lying splayed on the sidewalk.
Oh God, a dead body.
I went flying up the stairs, panting and sobbing behind my mask, snotting up so badly, I yanked it free. My tears made it impossible to see as I headed up the third flight of stairs to my floor.
As I stepped through the door for my landing, a hand went over my mouth, calloused and painful. Another hand grabbed me and shoved me face first against the wall.
A low voice muttered, “Pretty pussy. Pretty pussy. Scream for me.”
Terrifying, especially since he grinded against me. I knew what he planned.
Would I let him do it? Maybe if I didn’t fight, he wouldn’t hurt me?
Like fuck. I found my lady balls and stomped his foot. He yelled and then gasped as threw my elbow back and slammed his diaphragm. Thank God I’d taken a few self-defense lessons. When I whirled, I swung my satchel while screaming nonstop.
I’m pretty sure that my unhinged behavior, and not my feeble blows, sent my assailant running.
Shaken, I went to my apartment and did not to creep out again until I ran out of everything edible—spices, salt, even the vinegar was gone before I dared. In one hand I had a kitchen knife. And as for my throat? I tried not to swallow my courage.
Chapter 8
The Present
“How much further?” I asked as we passed a landing with a giant nine painted on a door.
“Just one more set,” Xavion said.
“I thought you weren’t trying to kill me,” I huffed, slowly trudging up the next step.
“I’m not.”
“Doesn’t seem that way,” I grumbled.
“Trust me.”
Trust a stranger I’d just met? Who saved my life?
Why not? It wasn’t as if I had other plans. He was also the first non-crazy person I’d seen in a while.
Here was to hoping he didn’t plan to have me for dinner later. As in slice me and dice me. I’d met a cannibal once. A cute one, who had sex with me for a month before he tried to make me into a meal.
Needless to say, we broke up when I killed him.
“We needed to go this high to find a level untouched by the scavengers,” he stated, holding open the door for the tenth floor.
Which was something I knew from my own excursions. People went for the easy marks first. I was guilty of the same. As supplies grew sparse, I learned to be more fit. Just not fit enough to do that many floors so fast.
“Have you been living here long?” I asked, wondering if it was safe now to remove my own mask. Xavion didn’t seem bothered.
“A few weeks. I moved once I’ve cleared an area.”
“Cleared it of what?”
“Monsters.”
Pretty sure he didn’t refer to the first type of monster I ever met, the wannabe rapist. “Do you mean mutants?” I asked to clarify.
Remember how some humans survived the virus but changed? I might have forgotten to mention they didn’t turn into zombies but some freaky, mutant version of a person and a spider.
Hideous, as you can imagine. Mandibles poking from human lips. Eyes multi-faceted. Fingers fused.
And gooey.
“Mutants. Monsters. Same thing.”
“You hunt them on purpose?” The very idea seemed…nuts. “You have a death wish?”
His lips twitched. “More like the less there are, the safer it becomes for everyone.”
“Have you met other people?” In some of my fantasies I stumbled across a trove of human survivors. They’d have figured out how to restart society. To make flour and bread and how to grow things without killing them.
“Yes.”
“And?” His one syllable answer didn’t satisfy.
“And most of them were a lot less trusting than you.”
A dig about me being dumb? I couldn’t tell, and he had turned from me to enter a door he’d just opened. No lock. Then again, what was the point if he wasn’t home?
Entering, I was struck by how normal the place looked. Tile floor from the entrance leading into the kitchen. A breakfast bar overlooking a large open living room space and, at the far end, a bank of windows overlooking the city.
“You don’t cover your windows!” I exclaimed. He had kept the flashlight shaken and illuminated our whole trip up.
“I’m usually out hunting the monsters at night. Besides, they hunt more by sound than sight or even scent.”
I had to ask. “Why don’t you wear a mask outside?”
“Why do you bother?” he countered.
“The plague—”
“Has already infected you. Everyone on the planet got it.”
I shook my head. “Did not. Obviously, or we wouldn’t be talking.” I almost rolled my eyes.
“Oh, you got it all right. A mask can’t stop it. Nothing can. It’s in the air. It’s on our skin. In the water we drink.”
“I think I’d have noticed if I’d gotten sick. I’m neither dead or one of those things.” My lip curled.
“There is a third outcome.”
My brain, which had wondered about it before, had my lips saying, “Immunity.”
Chapter 9
Past to present.
I knew from the news reports just how deadly the virus could be. I’d seen it when the internet still worked. But I had hoped that those of us who managed to stay alive would be better than the movies. Better than the books about the apocalypse.
Surely, we wouldn’t become a world of Mad Maxes.
I was so wrong.
There was something ironic about the fact that, of the few who survived, the lucky ones just had to be the sort who didn’t mind meting out violence. Why wasn’t it ever the kind and gentle souls who survived the apocalypse and restarted society?
Because goodness doesn’t have the cold lack of empathy to survive.
I learned after my first assault that being nice hurt. I also learned Lady Macbeth was right. The bloody spots never came out.
I killed. The survivors I encountered left me no choice. Given my lack of skill, it was often bloody, noisy, and messy since I always cried, snotted, and puked.
Having lady balls didn’t mean I lacked a heart.
Things could have been different for those I had to murder. They just needed to respect the fact I had a right to safety and liberty. History likes to repeat itself, and women always did get the brunt.
There was a spot of good news though. The most depraved didn’t live long past
the first and second year. The problem with being an asshole to everyone? At one point, someone got tired of it.
Like the guy who called himself El Raido. He captured me and Katia. When I saw what he did to her, I had already readied myself for my turn. He never suspected, and the pen jabbed him in the neck before he flung me off.
I hit the floor so hard I bit my tongue bloody. El Raido staggered, hand to the pen. No blood.
That didn’t start spraying until he yanked out the pen holding it in.
I looked like that girl in the movie after the bucket of blood dumped on her. I emerged, and his thugs thought I was a monster.
Good if it meant they left me alone.
As the worst despots in the city died and their henchmen drifted off to other neighborhoods, the people I ran into tended to be more decent—even the cannibal until that final fatal act.
I made a few friends the first few years of the apocalypse. Some only casually. Fitting in somewhere wasn’t easy. It turned out that sometimes I preferred being alone. Especially when the group didn’t divide things equally. The leader? He didn’t go out. He stayed inside with his two concubines and expected us to bring him back the goods.
For what? Why should I scrounge for people who meant nothing to me?
Sharing wasn’t something anyone did well anymore making Xavion’s decision to take me to his lair a big deal. I noticed that while nothing was locked on the way in, he did secure his apartment door, even wedged a chair under the handle. Once he’d reassured himself we were safe, he offered me a sealed bottle of water.
Clean. Water.
It had to be a dream. It was also a distraction. “You didn’t answer my question. Are we immune to the plague?”
“I am.”
I put my hand to my face shield. “Meaning you don’t know for sure about me.”
“You must be immune too. Masks don’t do shit.”
“What makes you think I’m not a mutant?”
He grinned. “If you are, then you’re the sexiest one thus far.”
