Authors: Tracey Ward
“Yeah, it’d be safer. And warmer. They have covers on them. If we crawl up inside them we’ll be hidden, there will be a gap of water between us and any infected that get in and under the cover our body heat would be trapped. You wouldn’t have to shiver all night.”
“How long should I stay in here, anyway?”
He shrugs, still looking up at the boat and planning.
“Till you don’t feel like it anymore.”
I scowl at him. “You’re a terrible doctor.”
“Yeah.”
He’s not even listening.
Finally I grab his attention enough to get him to help me out of the water. As he’s taking the dripping, cold life vest from me and I’m bundling into a towel, we hear the sound of engines on the water. We both pause, standing motionless, and listening. The rhythmic whine tells me everything I need to know.
“Jet skis.” I whisper. “Two of them.”
“The truckers.” Jordan mutters, still staring at nothing. His eyes are unfocused as he listens. “They’re far off, I think. Maybe they’re patrolling?”
“No.” I say with a smile. “They’re playing.”
“How do you know that?”
“Listen to them. The engines rev up high then… there it is. You hear the change? They’re turning around, sharply. The engine cuts out for a second as they release the throttle a bit then gun it again.” I frown. “They’re doing it at almost the exact same time, that’s weird.”
“Maybe they’re racing?”
“Maybe. I’m looking out the window.” I say, and hobble over on my stiff, cold feet to the small window facing out on the water.
It’s growing dark outside and Jordan was adamant about staying away from the windows in the daylight, just in case. He gives me a pass now though, and we both peer out, our noses on the glass.
We watch as the two jet skis race away from each other then turn sharply. They pause for just a moment and then rush at each other. For a second I think the idiots are playing chicken, but then I see the long foam sticks, the kind of thing they used on American Gladiators back in the day to knock each other off the pillars.
“They’re jousting.” Jordan says, and I swear I hear jealousy in his voice.
The two men rush at each other at what sounds like top speed, and when they collide, one is sent flying off his mount and into the water. The engine cuts as his cord is pulled free and the winner stands up on his ride and shouts, holding his foam lance high over his head.
I shiver and head back to the center of the room to continue drying off and getting back into my clothes while Jordan watches them set up and go again. This goes on for the better part of an hour, and when it’s finally over it’s fully dark outside.
“They’re docking at that house. Almost all the lights in that place must be on. They certainly aren’t hiding the fact that they’re there.”
I yawn and rub my tired eyes. “With fifty zombies outside, what’s the point?”
“True. Tired?”
“Extremely.” I admit reluctantly. I already feel like a load with my gimp leg that I swore up and down had healed, now I’m tired as soon as the sun goes down.
“You ready to climb up?” he asks, gesturing toward the boat.
“As I’ll ever be.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll help you.”
The boat’s not terribly high up, just high enough to keep the hull out of the water with a little extra clearance, but with my tired, shivering body and my sore leg, it looks like a mountain. Jordan pulls a plastic chair around for me to step up on and then he holds my waist, steadying me as I push aside the cover and attempt to hoist myself inside. My arms are shaky and tired from shivering for the last hour and I start to slip, but he gives my ass a firm shove and I topple gracelessly inside. He tosses a couple of towels in to use as blankets and then easily hoists himself in, swinging his legs over instead of entering with his face as I did. We lay life vests and seat cushions down in the center of the boat, and when I lie down on the lumpy makeshift bed, I can’t stop shivering.
Jordan pulls the cover closed and lies beside me, his back to me as we did in the storeroom aisle. He must feel my shivering though, because after a few minutes he silently turns
over, presses his chest to my back and wraps his arms loosely around me. He lays his face on my hair and presses his chin to my shoulder, his warm breath wafting across my bare neck. I pay close attention to the rhythm of his breath on my skin, and I don’t know how long it takes, but eventually the shivering subsides and I drift off to sleep.
When I wake up the following morning, I know immediately, even before I’ve opened my eyes, that we shifted during the night. I fell asleep with his front on my back, his body heat chasing the chills away, and this morning my front is pressed firmly to his. I can feel an arm draped across my hip and another one tucked under my head. Our legs are intertwined, one on top of the other, and I am acutely aware of his thigh pressed up high between my legs. When I finally open my eyes, I see one of my hands pressed against his chest and when I do an inventory of my limbs, I find the other hand on his back, my arm draped across his waist much as his is across my hip.
“Um.”
I’m not really sure where I’m going with that, but I feel like this one utterance fully encompasses my confusion. Don’t get me wrong; waking up in the arms of a good looking guy is not such a bad thing. The rise and fall of his chest under my palm, the weight of his arm on my body and the pressure of his chin on the top of my head as it cocoons me against him are all the single greatest feelings I’ve experienced in a long time. Even before the end of the world. So no, it’s not a bad thing to be here like this with him. It is, however, a very confusing thing.
“Shhh.” he hushes me. “It’s still early. I heard them on the jet skis and they’re actually patrolling this time. Can’t go outside.” He yawns and his chest presses against me as it fills with air. “May as well go back to sleep.”
“No more jousting?” I ask, and my voice sounds falsely jovial, even to me.
“Not this morning.”
“What was the final score?”
I’m stalling, trying to think of a polite way to get out of this embrace we’ve twisted ourselves into. I don’t want to push away too quickly as though I’m freaked out. I’m worried he’ll think I’m assuming he’s taking advantage and I know he’s not. When I think about it, he’s exactly where he was when we fell asleep. I’m the one who rolled over and mounted him. I move to pull back slowly, taking my arm off him and curling it into myself. When I go to pull away completely, though, he grumbles and tightens his arm over me.
“Where are you going? You’re warm.” His mouth is against my hair now and his warm breath tickling through the strands to my scalp makes me shiver slightly. “See,” he mumbles. “You’ll be cold if you leave.”
“I’m not cold.” I whisper, and roll myself out of his embrace. He’s right, though, the distance immediately makes me cold.
“Liar.” he smirks as he watches me wrap my arms around myself.
“Do you have to know everything?” I ask, my voice slightly acidic.
He raises a questioning eyebrow at me. “When did you get mean in the mornings?”
“I’m always mean in the mornings.”
“You never are. I’ve woken up with you every morning for over a week now and you never have been.”
“You don’t know everything!” I repeat, and I don’t know exactly what my problem is, but I’m yelling now.
Jordan frowns and looks at me hard. “First of all, lower your damn voice. Second, what’s your deal?”
“It’s not the pills.” I blurt out, and again, I have no idea why. “I know that’s what you’re thinking, but it’s not. Sometimes I’m just in a bad mood.”
“I wasn’t thinking that, actually.” he says in that annoyingly calm voice he gets in the face of emotions. “But since you brought it up, it makes me wonder if that’s what
you
are thinking.”
I groan and rub my hands over my face roughly. “Don’t do that shit. You sound like my therapist. Don’t analyze me.”
“I wouldn’t even know where to begin to do that.”
I drop my hands and glare at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that I don’t know what the issue is. You’ve never told me, not really. So how would I even start to pick it apart?”
“Why would you want to pick it apart?”
“I don’t.”
“Then what are we talking about?” I ask, exasperated and desperately trying to keep my voice low.
He grins slightly. “I have no idea. You picked the fight with me. I assumed you knew why.”
I roll my head away from him and stare up at the soft, yellow glow of the sunlight through the beige boat cover. The small windows in the boathouse allow in very little light, but what light is making it through is giving our cocoon a lovely glow and I feel myself begin to calm. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, not entirely, but whatever it is boils down to one very obvious thing; fear. I’m afraid of the world outside this honey colored glow, I’m afraid of the world at the end of my pills and I’m afraid of the warmth and strength of the man lying beside me. He’s the greatest friend I’ve ever had, though in truth, I haven’t really had that many. But he’s real and kind and calm, and he means the world to me… plus a little more. And that
more
has me freaked out. My other fears could so easily take that simple, smiling
more
and tear it to shreds. Or eat its brains.
“I do know.” I mutter grudgingly.
“You want to tell me what it is? What we’re fighting about?”
“No.” I reply firmly, but I roll my head back over to look at him, making sure my voice is softer. “But I don’t want to fight about it anymore either.”
“Alright, we won’t fight. But tell me one thing.”
“What?”
“Did I win?” he asks with a smile.
I think of the first night we met when we argued about the living or dead status of the zombies and the sexist shoes and the men ignoring my bathrooms.
I smile. “Don’t you always?”
***
“How’s the leg?” Jordan asks as we prepare to disembark the boat.
He swings his legs over easily and leaps down onto the dock with athletic grace, and I’m reminded of his bat. He still keeps it strapped across his chest in a holster he and Taylor designed, but when we were on the street, he had his bow in his hands. I haven’t seen him swing the bat since we arrived at the settlement and I sort of miss it in a weird way.
I jump down from the boat the same way he does and luckily he’s standing there waiting for me, otherwise I would toppled backwards into the water. When my weight lands on my bad leg, it lights up in flames and all of the strength leaches out of it. A small, pathetic cry escapes my lips as the pain radiates out and I’m more embarrassed by that cry than by the way I got the injury. Jordan reaches out and snags my elbows in his hands, holding me up and pulling me away from the water.
“That good, huh?” he grunts as he swings me around to the plastic chair I used to climb up on last night.
I collapse into the chair and curse, stretching the leg out. This sucks. First I wake up and act like an emo bitch at him and now I’m too jacked up to even stand on my own.
“Jordan, you need to go. Those truckers are close and dangerous, there’s a huge hive out there just waiting to sniff us out. You need to run and I don’t want to hold you back.”
“Don’t start this shit, Ali.” His voice is legitimately angry and I look up to see the annoyance on his face. It’s foreign on him, these livid emotions, and I’m taken aback by his tone. “You got a pass on the weirdness this morning, but I’m not dealing with this too. You got me?”
I seriously feel like I just got spanked. I look up at him, dumbfounded, but I shut my mouth and nod my head quickly, effectively pulling it together.
“Got it.” I say, my voice sure and strong.
“Good. Now let’s go. I’ve gotta find us a car or rickshaw, hell, even a baby stroller would work.”
“How are we getting past them?” I ask, taking a shot at standing and ignoring the comment about a stroller. I’m not sitting in a friggin’ stroller. I can’t put much weight on the leg, but I can hobble about on my own. If I need to run, though, I’m dead. With this leg as it is, I’m not much faster than an infected.
“Well,” he says throwing his pack on his back and strapping mine to his front. “Ideally, we’d steal a boat and float across the lake, find our boat still hidden at the shore and head off down the river happily.”
“Like Huckleberry Finn and Jim.”
“Like that, yeah, but with fewer N-bombs.”
“I promise nothing.”
His eyes meet mine and he grins. “I thought I was the racist.”
“You’re also a terrible influence.”
“It’s a miracle you put up with me.”
I shrug. “You have a few redeeming qualities.”
“Such as?” he asks as he steps beside me and gently takes hold of my upper arm, helping to support my weight on my bad side.
“Can’t think of any right now.” I lie. “I’ll let you know if any occur to me.”
When we get outside we hug the building, being careful not to expose ourselves to the view of the mansion across the lake. Jordan pokes his head around and makes a quick check of the water, ensuring the patrols aren’t running in our neighborhood at the moment. When the coast is declared clear, we make a break for the trees in the yard next door. It’s quite a distance away but we’re provided the best coverage from the boathouse and the sprint is on flat ground instead of up the slope of the hill, which my leg appreciates greatly. Jordan steers us up the side of the house then to the right, toward a huge building that looks like a house, but I imagine is a garage. He tries the door, finds it locked and takes a deep breath. Just when I’m going to suggest going in through a window, he rears back and kicks at the knob hard. The door swings open and I hear him whistle in relief.
He smiles nervously over his shoulder at me. “I was worried there’d be an alarm.”
I can’t imagine putting an alarm system on a garage. Not until I step inside this one, then I’m wondering why they
don’t
have one. Of course there’s a shiny red Corvette sitting right beside the door because, honestly, what’s a mid-life crisis without one? In the next slot of the three available, there’s a gleaming black H2 Hummer, the car that screams “My wife says size doesn’t matter!”. In the third slot, though, is the redemption of the entire garage. Parked at the end, peeking out at me like a mysterious, sly devil at the end of the bar, is a pumpkin orange Yenko Camaro.
“Whoa.” I say as I hobble over to it and reverently run my hand over its shiny hood.
“Is that a Camaro?” Jordan asks absently as he searches for keys.
“It’s more than a Camaro. It is the granddaddy of all Camaros. It has 423 horsepower, only 50 or so of them made. It’s not one of the originals, but it’s still a beast.”
Jordan pauses and I look over at him hopefully.
He frowns and shakes his head. “No keys, can’t take it. Also, terrible idea. With that much horsepower, I doubt she’s quiet.”
“No one would ever catch us, though.”
He chuckles and points above my head. “Sorry, Ali, but that’s our ride.”
I look up and flinch. Hanging above me is a cruiser bike. One of those models with the big, wide handle bars and a basket on the front.
“Am I sitting in the basket? Like E.T.?”
“Nope. You’re riding toddler style.”
I frown and glance at him to find him pulling something out of a corner of the massive garage. My heart sinks and I shake my head.
“I am not riding in that.”
He wheels out a bike trailer. A powder pink one with a pair of safety harnesses meant to strap your infants in.
“No way.” I say. “I’ll walk, I’ll be fine. I’m not getting in that.”
“We don’t have a choice.”
What he means is
I
don’t have a choice.
His shirt pulls up as he reaches up to bring the bike down, and I can see his stomach and the faint outline of his hip bones just above his belted jeans. Suddenly I’m doing the math on how much pride I’ll have left if I agree to sit in this glorified stroller and let him pull me about town like an invalid. Probably not enough to ever wrap myself around him like a vine on a tree again and that’s a sad prospect.
He takes a few minutes figuring out how to attach the trailer to the bike then leads it and me out the door. I grumble about a weight limit on the trailer and he asks how much I weigh so I shut the hell up and end that conversation. I feel like he did that on purpose because he’s smart, something that is both incredibly attractive and intensely annoying. I find a lot of things about Jordan attractive because there’s genuinely a lot to like about the guy. Luckily, though, there are plenty of things that send me from zero to pissed in no seconds flat, and I feel like that evens things out, putting me in a good place where I can appreciate him but I’m not stuck in blind lust.
Except when I’m asleep, apparently.
When we reach the road, Jordan looks at me expectantly, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. He’s laughing at me. Great. I take a deep breath, swallow my pride and sit down in the thing, feeling instantly foolish. Jordan doesn’t say a word though, and he mounts the bike to start peddling. We head away from the swarm and the trucker’s mansion, swinging wide around the north side of the lake. It’s not ideal because it will take a lot longer and land us a little upriver of where we left our boat, but it’s our only option. If we took the south side of the lake, we’d have to swing wide there as well to avoid the swarm and it would take just as long and probably be far more dangerous. No, this way we get to leisurely enjoy a sun soaked morning bike ride around the crystal clear lake.