Until We End (3 page)

He sat coiled in the passenger seat, holding my pistol in his lap with his rifle sitting at his feet.

“What's your name?” he asked. This close, his eyes gleamed tawny in the sunlight. Like milk chocolate with caramel.

He wanted to play nice while he held my gun? Yeah, right. I stayed silent.

“Oh come on,” he said. “We're obviously going to be spending some time together. Why not have something to call each other?”

I could think of
several
things to call him. Very colorful things.

“My name's Brooks,” he said, readjusting my gun.

“Cora,” I said, turning my eyes back to the road.

“Nice to meet you,” he said, flashing that killer white-on-bronze smile again.

I scoffed, glancing pointedly at what he held in his lap. “Then why don't you put the gun away? Or at least try not to point it my direction. It's bad for my heart.” The strain felt like it was seriously killing me. I couldn't loosen my fingers from their stranglehold grip on the steering wheel; my knuckles had gone bone-white from tension.

He studied me for another moment before sliding the pistol back in its holster. My death grip on the steering wheel loosened, the blood rushing back to my fingertips, and I released the breath that I'd been holding since I saw him.

“Thank you,” I said through stiff lips.

As the countryside sped past, one field after another, I thought again about my options. I didn't have many. Brooks had all the firepower. I couldn't outmuscle or outrun him, not by a long shot. The only thing I could do was get my own firepower back.

I let my fingers slide slowly down the steering wheel and stretched my legs along the floorboard, a small sigh escaping my lips. His eyes flashed over to me and lingered for just a heartbeat too long.

“You know,” I said, keeping my voice light, “you're the first person I've seen in nine months.”

“You live alone?”

Dangerous question. It set screaming red alarm bells off in my head. But I'd walked right into it. “Yes,” I lied. “This is the first time I've left home since the virus hit.”

“And why's that?”

“Haven't needed to,” I said. “W— uh, I — have a greenhouse in my backyard to grow all my food. But the drought's been horrible. I had to go to the springs for water.”

“That's too bad,” he said. His lips curved into a smaller version of the cocky grin I'd seen earlier.

“Yeah. The greenhouse is all that's keeping me alive,” I said, looking at him with big blue doe eyes and biting my lip. His gaze caught on my mouth before making its way slowly down my body. My heart accelerated and my palms went slick with sweat.

“And the fuel?”

“It's been in this old truck for as long as I can remember.” Another lie. I had a hundred airtight barrels of gasoline buried in the storage container under my backyard.

He cocked his head with a smile that made the blood rush to my cheeks. I turned back to stare at the road, sure I'd blown it. I had never, ever tried to play a damsel in distress before. Never flirted. And what did I even look like? When was the last time I'd brushed my hair?

“Then consider this an escort,” he said. “It's dangerous out there now. Driving through the city with a working vehicle and fifteen gallons of fresh water would be like walking through the ghetto wearing an Armani suit and a Rolex. Though I will take one jug of water. As payment.”

Payment, my ass. I didn't plan on letting him get within a mile of my house. If he knew where we lived, that meant he could come back. And I had no doubt that he would, once he saw the greenhouse.

“That seems fair,” I turned to him with a glittering smile. Fake, fake, fake. It made my cheeks hurt from its fakeness, but I knew it was pretty. I always made sure to ration enough water so Coby and I could brush our teeth. Tooth decay wouldn't stop for the apocalypse, after all.

Once we'd passed the city limits, I told Brooks that I needed to pull over to look at a map.

“I'm so sorry,” I said. “I have a terrible sense of direction.” I leaned across him to open the glove compartment, half-lying in his lap. “I just know I put them in here somewhere...”

Leaning over a little further, I braced my hand on his thigh and tossed my hair over my shoulder.

The muscle of his leg was rock-hard under my hand, and for a second, I doubted myself. But I pushed those doubts and all my insecurities aside and forced myself to look back at him. When our gazes locked, my heart kicked into overdrive. His eyes looked more orange than brown, the yellow sunbursts in the center of his irises burning into me from just inches away. My mouth went dry.

I moved forward slowly, giving him time to push me away, not even daring to breathe, and brushed my lips butterfly-light against his.

A low, guttural growl was the only warning that I had. He grabbed me by the shoulders and pushed me across the bench seat, pressing my back against the driver's door and pinning my arms between us. His mouth was on my neck and his hands tangled in my hair — I knew he was the type to grab a girl by the hair — as he molded his body to mine.

I fought for concentration as his weight crushed the breath from my lungs, but when he nipped at the groove where my collarbone met my neck, I saw stars. The horrible truth: he was intoxicating. The sudden overwhelming presence of him, his scent in my nostrils, his skin pressed against mine
everywhere,
made me dizzy.

My body demanded that I respond, and the thin leash of control that I still had was diminishing quickly. I rose to meet him before I could stop myself, pressing against his muscled frame, desperate to be closer, to be under his skin.

I pulled my arms free and slid my hands over his stomach and chest. He moaned in response and ground his hips into mine, nearly destroying any coherent thought I had left. I dug my nails into his shoulders and pulled myself up to a more stable position. Then I threaded one of my legs between his and tightened my grip, gaining leverage.

He rocked into me again and when he pulled back I twisted, using his momentum to flip him under me and grabbing the pistol he'd forgotten in its holster.

His eyes were large, black and heated as he looked at me, pupils dilated. Animal magnetism. That was the only way I knew how to explain it. There was something in Brooks' skin, his scent — musky pine — some pheromone in his kiss that made me want to throw the gun away and lose myself in him, even though I couldn't, I had to shoot him, and I wanted him so bad I was shaking.

I brought the gun up and pointed it squarely between his eyes, my finger trembling on the trigger.

And then he started to laugh.

When he spoke, his voice was husky. “Are you gonna shoot me, Cora?”

I froze, suddenly realizing that my gun was too light. I jerked the muzzle to the right and squeezed the trigger. Nothing.

“Where's the ammo?” My voice was strangled, heartbeat racing, hands barely steady enough to hold the gun up.

“At the bottom of the spring, I guess,” he said. My mind flashed to him crouching at the edge pool. He dropped the damn cartridge in the water! Anger and embarrassment burned in my chest. I shrieked my frustration, punching him in the chest, the stomach, anything I could reach.

To his credit, he let me hit him for a while.

Then he said, “Are you finished?” and snatched my wrists, holding them both in one hand with laughable, infuriating ease. I just stared at him. Lips swollen and flushed, eyes dark and glassy, he looked as comfortable and confident as a king sitting on a throne. I hated him with everything in me at that moment.

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. He sat up and shifted me off of him, then settled back in the passenger seat with his rifle in hand.

I sat up straight and decided to cling to what little scraps of pride I could hobble together, despite my flaming face and flaming... other parts. Forcing myself to stare at the road — and only the road — I pulled the truck back onto the road.

Driving through Savannah wasn't easier the second time.

Grief for the city welled from my belly as we passed through the skeleton-bare squares of the downtown district. Southern Belles had paced those cobblestone sidewalks for almost three hundred years. Now weeds sprung from every crack in the cobblestones and the wrought-iron fencing that framed them was covered in rust. The iconic live oaks that towered like steeples over the rooftops had turned a sickly gray, Spanish moss lacing through their branches and sapping their sunlight.

I wanted to speed through the city, but couldn't make myself press the accelerator any harder. It felt like disturbing a grave. And I still didn't know what to do about Brooks.

When we came to the intersection of Oglethorpe and Broad, I slammed on the brakes and jumped out of the truck, Brooks forgotten. The ground tilted under my feet as the blood drained from my head.

I stared at the street corner where I'd seen the body of a little girl in a pink dress.

“Impossible,” I whispered. Brooks had followed right behind me. He cocked his rifle.

We were the only ones in the street. The hills of bodies were gone.

“Get back in the truck,” he said. “
Now,
Cora.”

I turned to face him, flinging my hand out to point at the empty street corner. It barely registered that his rifle was in my face. “Where are they?” I demanded.

“Where are who?”

“The bodies!” I cried. “Where did they go?”

Brooks' face went from hostile to blank in a second. “Where they always go. To incineration.”

“Who took them?”

“The military. Get in the truck. We need to move.”

I didn't need telling twice. What he said confirmed my worst fears. Dad warned us about what the government would turn into post-TEOTWAWKI: martial law. Shoot first, ask questions never. I hadn't thought there was any government left, but if Brooks was right and there were soldiers patrolling the streets —

Coby.

We got back in and I stomped on the accelerator, desperate to get home and make sure he was safe. I'd figure out what to do with Brooks once we got there. I raced through the city and made it to my neighborhood in record time.

The house on the corner used to belong to Mr. Bigley. It was a white wooden affair in the Antebellum style with stately Grecian columns lining a sprawling front porch. Mr. Bigley would have been very sorry to see the state of his house as it was: the front door swung open on its hinges, a red “X” spray-painted on its face, the paint so fresh it dripped down the wood.

My heart felt like it stopped. Then it kick-started and I jammed the gas to the floorboard, clutching the steering wheel with both hands. The truck's old engine roared in protest and I could hear Brooks shouting my name from what sounded like far away, but I didn't care. My attention was fixed on each house that zoomed past and what I saw chilled me to the bone. They all had identical red “X's” painted on their doors.

I brought the truck skidding to a halt in front of my house, jumped out and raced across the lawn, then froze when I saw it — a red “X”, twin to the others, graffitied on its dark wood. I gripped the splintered doorframe and peered inside, nausea roiling in my stomach.

My dad's old Amish desk lay overturned, blocking the entrance. I stepped over it and felt the crunch of shattered wood beneath my boot. A bowl of knickknacks had been tossed to the floor — a handful of pennies, some marbles, a big brown button. The couch was flipped on its side, its cushions torn. Feathers and cotton stuffing littered the floor, filling the air with dust.

I stopped breathing. Ran into the bedroom. The mattress had been thrown against the wall, the frame bare. Coby's pallet was empty. He wasn't in the kitchen, either. I raced into the backyard and shrieked his name, my voice so shrill from fear that my keening calls sounded more animal than human.

The inside of my throat ripped like I'd swallowed a shard of glass as I screeched his name. I fell to my hands and knees. My body felt hollow. I knew I must be screaming — the cries rubbed my throat raw like sandpaper — but I couldn't feel anything else.

There was only the knowledge that I'd left my brother alone. And now he was gone.

Coby's birthday was in one week, on July 30th. I'd been determined to make him a chocolate cake with fudgy chocolate icing. It was all planned out. I'd dip into the store of sweets that Dad made us save for barter and take some cocoa and sugar. Coby didn't even know we had twenty pounds of sugar buried in the backyard — if he did, he'd be begging for cookies constantly. I knew the exact proportions of how much flour, eggs and goat's milk I'd need to bake Coby a birthday cake. He would eat all of the icing, and I'd eat all the cake.

If I ever saw him again. I shivered despite the heat, a frozen lake of grief crawling from my belly to my throat. Choking me.

“Cora!” The sound of my name shocked me out of my stupor. I looked up to see Brooks standing over me. “We have to get out of here.” He bent down to grab me by the shoulders, but I jerked away.

“
Don't touch me
,” I hissed and stumbled backward, falling on my butt.

“How long have you been gone?” Brooks asked, his voice low as if trying to soothe me, hands held up in a supplicating gesture.

“I don't know. A couple hours? Maybe longer.”

“Then the military was just here,” Brooks said, his voice gaining new urgency. “Listen to me. It's not safe. We have to get out of here.” He stood up, paused, and then offered me a hand. A wide palm with thick callouses. Strong fingers crowned by blunt nails. I reached out and grasped it.

He pulled me to my feet and started moving towards the back door, but I couldn't stand the thought walking through the house again, seeing the destruction, and not seeing Coby. I yanked my hand away, doubling over with my arms clutching my stomach, as the pain of his loss crashed through me again.