LEFT ALIVE (Zombie series Box Set): Books 1-6 of the Post-apocalyptic zombie action and adventure series (24 page)

“Give me a minute,” she says with a smile still on her face, tossing the silicone cock away. I watch it flop and roll across the floor until it stayed there, lifeless. I swallow hard. After a second of hesitation, Lindsay walks over and picks it up, looking from the cock to me. “I might get lonely,” she winks and takes it with her. I’m not sure what she meant by that, but it makes me feel dirty, and aroused.

I watch her as she works, dumping out a pile of tools and instruments that make her look like a feminist Frankenstein working on her abomination. Part of me doesn’t want to see what it is she’s making, especially when she giggles and grabs a tactical knife and mutters things to herself. After what seems like an hour, she announces that she’s complete, proudly turning around and showing me a strap on that no longer has a dildo, but instead has a knife.

“Please don’t rape me,” I say, not sure what I’m supposed to be proud of.

“I might,” she grins, “but not with this.”

I need a shower.

She approaches me with her Frankenstein creation and I wonder if I need my machete in my hand. When she standing right in front of me, holding the instrument with both hands, she looks at my stump. “Hold up your arm,” she says. “Or what’s left of it.”

“Cold,” I growl.

She shrugs. To my utter surprise, what follows is a painful series of straps being tightened up my arm until the harness is securely and stably fitted to my stump, and a knife is protruding where my wrist and hand used to be. I take a moment when she steps back to slowly wave the knife around and stare at its stability. It holds well. I’m surprised that she did this herself. A monstrosity built out of leather, rope, and string; the design is nearly flawless. In fact, I can’t see a thing wrong with it.

“This is incredible,” I say with a smile on my face.

“Don’t sound so surprised,” Lindsay snaps.

I ignore her and look at the knife blade and then to her. “Thank you, Lindsay,” I say to her with all sincerity. I almost feel bad about all the things I said and thought about her earlier. She’s a good person and I can’t deny that. She looks at me with a soft, sweet smile on her lips and nods.

“Don’t mention it,” she says bashfully. “I just can’t have a one-armed guy leading me across the country with no way of defending himself.”

I wake up with my arms wrapped around Lindsay. I’m not sure what happened, but all I remember about the night before was her attaching a dildo abomination to my arm and then we got drunk off of a bottle of whiskey she’d found and some bourbon. My arm is wrapped around her and I feel her tightly pressed up against me, her warmth radiating onto me and I realize that her legs are wrapped around my right leg, holding me close. Her head is nestled on my shoulder and I listen to her breathe for a moment while I sit there, trying to make sure that nothing happened. My memory is still pretty sharp, but my mouth is dry. I didn’t get too drunk. Jesus, I can’t remember the last time I had a drink. I was a writer, once upon a time. I should be able to hold my liquor.

When she begins to stir, I act like I’m just waking up. She yawns and looks at me as I pretend to just begin to wake up. I think that she is getting more beautiful every day. That, or I’m just getting less and less critical of her. Beauty is such a subjective, blind thing that I’m fairly certain that I’m just getting used to her and appreciating her more. She stretches and her back arches, shoving her rather large breasts toward me. I resist the urge to shoot my arm out around her and pull her close, holding her fit body against mine, relishing the sensation of holding an attractive woman. I want to grab her and press my mouth to her warm lips, tasting what that luminous smile has to offer.

But I don’t.

Instead, I pull away as she gets up and stretches. “Morning,” she says to me as I walk toward the window. It’s before dawn, but it’s not that far off. I wanted to be on the road by now, but I realize that’s not happening. I hear her moving up behind me, her soft, careful footsteps. Her presence is felt, something that’s nearly tangible in the air, like an electric surge. God, I think human interaction was always like this. I just got too damn used to it. I look toward the horizon to the east where the sky is full of blues and slowly being infected by yellows. “Beautiful still,” she says softly.

“Yep,” I answer shortly. I look over to her. Her gaze lingers outside the window for a moment before she looks at me and smiles. “You ready to go?” I ask her.

“Almost,” she answers. “I need to change.”

“Serious?” I watch her walk toward her loot sack.

“As cancer,” she answers, scooping up her bag and heading toward the piercing booth.

She wants me. I watch her and I wonder how can anyone send so many signals like that and not want me? I think about the way she gently touches me. There is a softness in her touch, but there’s also a bold inquisition with every time she touches me. She’s testing me, pressing farther and farther down the line when her hand makes contact with me. It’s in the way she looks at me, the way her smile brightens when she’s talking to me and how she’ll laugh at even the slightest joke, whether it’s funny or not. Then there was her curled up next to me this morning or the time she had thrown me back inside the parlor and was lying on top of me. These were all signals that I have picked up over our brief time together and I don’t think that I’m insane for reading them.

Am I reading too much into them, though? I watch her slip out of her boots and I wonder if maybe she is like that. I’ve seen the girls sitting in my class who work at the college bars and clubs, the girls who have all the right assets. They’ve got the big breasts, the great figures, and the personalities that know how to charm men out of their wallets and into their tips. There is a certain personality that people can always put on, men or women, that can just be social. Often it’s mistaken for flirting, but I’m not sure where that line is anymore. The last time I flirted with a woman was when Tiffany was still around. God, I flirted with her all the time, but I haven’t actually tried with anyone since then. Sure, women would sometimes think I was flirting, but I was just being nice. Maybe that was all Lindsay was doing. Maybe she was just a flirtatious and kind sort of girl. Maybe she was friendly or social.

Are there any more social people in the world? That’s a question that sticks with me. There can’t possibly be people out there in the world who are just friendly, talkative, or social. That sort of a personality is a weakness that will get you killed within hours of running into another group of people. People can’t just be friendly when the world is overrun with mindless
and
hunting cannibals. When those few survivors that still exist are willing to kill you for a can of peas, you can’t be cutesy and social. She has to want something from me, or at least find me attractive.

But if she’s not coming onto me, then I’m in serious trouble, because I can’t tell the difference anymore. I am a ship at sea with no compass and no stars. I don’t want to do something that I’m going to regret, or live in constant torment if she isn’t interested in me. I look over at her feet beneath the curtain and fight the urge to just go pull back the curtain and settle this once and for all.

Suddenly I’m picturing the girls, and I remember that she’s only twenty four. Twenty four years old? I’m almost old enough to be her father. Hell, the girls are nearly her age. I’m not in any position to be something that she’s interested in. I’m also missing an arm and on a mission to find my two girls that will definitely have questions about her if I show up in Florida with Lindsay around my arm rather than at my side. I look at her feet and the feather tattoo on her ankle and wonder what I’m doing thinking about this. This is high school shit.

When I used to grade papers, I would stay up late into the night after the girls had gone to bed or when they were out with friends. I used to always be haunted by the silence of a house and could never truly stand the quiet. It made me restless and quickly deteriorated my nerves. It was cruel that I now live in a world that is nothing but isolation and silence. But, back in the day of puppies and rainbows, when green was still the dominant color on the planet, I used to grade papers while having the TV on in the background. I rented movies and would watch them while I worked, just to help me pass the time. Usually, it was more of a distraction if the movie was actually good. But I remember this one truly terrible movie that was popular one Halloween, and it sticks out to me right now.

It was about a family man who works on Wall Street and ends up getting his wife pregnant and the two of them give birth to a beautiful baby boy and live happily ever after. At least, they do until they both have to go back to work at their high paying jobs. I think the wife was a lawyer or something, whatever it was, she couldn’t be home to watch the baby, so the two of them end up hiring a babysitter to take care of the little cutie while they dedicated more time to their occupations than to their family.

Of course, the babysitter is way too freaking hot for the wife to feel comfortable about her and the husband being home alone, and immediately suspects that the husband likes the babysitter. This is only exacerbated by the fact that the babysitter wants to sex the husband to death and ends up killing a myriad of people in the process of trying to get him into the sack with her. She’s absolutely bat shit crazy and ends up getting thrown out of a four story window in the end. Honestly, it was a terrible movie, but there was something about it that kept making it pop into my mind.

As I look at Lindsay’s feet, I can’t help but think of her as the babysitter. I think she’s crazy. First of all, why the hell was she following me? More and more, I can’t find the explanation that she was looking for a man with a purpose as a viable answer. She had to have seen me and thought that I was a hot guy worth traveling with. There’s no way she’s looking for some worthy crusade. Sorry, but this isn’t the fucking Carolingian era and I am not some fucking King Arthur for her to follow off into the sunset. There was a moment where I truly wanted to believe it, but it just doesn’t hold up anymore. Whenever I try to leave, she’s always intent on going with me or keeping me around just one more time.

The whole saving my life twice thing, I chalk that up to her simply being a genuinely good person. You can be a good person and still be a complete and utter psychopath. Right?

I’m not sure what to think. I think that she likes messing with me. I think she enjoys putting me in these awkward little jams where I’m left to squirm and over-think myself into an early grave. I think I like her, but the truth is, I’m not sure if that’s the smartest move for me to make.

After all, I can’t help but think of Jason and his fiancée. They were two wonderful, beautiful people hoping to make a genuine difference in a world full of harsh, cruel people and just a single misunderstanding left Jason dead in a pool of his own misunderstood blood and his gorgeous fiancée with her brains in the wrong spot. They were so in love with each other that one couldn’t survive in this world without the other. Sure, I don’t think that his fiancée stood a chance if she had survived and not gone with me, but the point remains. She was so overcome with the sorrow of losing Jason that she lost sight of what Jason’s dream was. That beautiful blonde was the only person in the world who knew exactly what it was Jason was trying to do to save our planet, and she would rather die than continue on. I would have helped her. I would have done it out of guilt and obligation, but she didn’t stick around and see that. She wanted to be with him and I can’t blame her for that. After all, I get suicide.

The only thing that I can honestly think of affording to be intimate with or dependent upon are my girls. There is a dangerous road ahead of me and a lot of distance to travel that is laden with horrors and nightmares that I had never dreamt of seeing, but they’re out there and they’re more than willing to rip me or whoever they find apart and eat them. So when I think about the capacity with which I might be able to find myself involved with Lindsay, I’m not entirely sure that it’s worth it. Lindsay has proven herself to be resourceful and skilled time and time again, but on the other hand, she has proven to also be reckless, careless, and emotional. I can’t count on Lindsay staying alive long enough to keep me stable if I get intimate with her. No just in a sexual way either, but in a full scale relationship.

I have needs and I have no doubt that she does too, but it’s too dangerous. It’s too dangerous because between here and Gainesville, Florida, Lindsay could be ripped apart by a mob of killers and I will be left in the position of Jason’s fiancée. I will be left broken, hurting and wondering what the hell happened and what the world still has left in it when the answer is glaringly obvious, but I’m too distraught to see it. This world has taken a lot of things from me, and my capacity for building new relationships is definitely one of them.

There is no doubt in my mind that Lindsay will come with me south as far as she wants to or as far as destiny will let her, but that’s the extent of the involvement I can have with her. When Lindsay inevitably dies, I will not cry and I will not feel torn up or betrayed by the powers that be. My own suffering and sorrows will be on my head and they will be the fault of none other than myself if I get too involved with her. That’s the cold hard reality of this. Everything from this point out is going to be laced with the truth of this new world that I live in. Anyone can die at any time and I have to be okay with that. I have to be willing to accept it.

I look back to the piercing booth in time to see her tossing out a handful of clothes. The curtain is pulled back just far enough for me to see her. Not aware of how open the curtain is, she goes back to sorting through her new clothes. I can’t help but stare. She has to know how open the curtain is. I can see
everything
. My eyes trace the length of her legs, hungrily taking in the tan, perfect legs. They’re flawless, strong legs that I follow all the way up to her immaculately sculpted ass. It looks like the kind of ass that belongs in a museum for future humans to study the form of women of this day and age. I look at it for what must be days. I can’t help but stare at it. I am mesmerized as she works, slowly freeing my eyes to look up. The small of her back and then her strong, bare back, my mind screaming for her to turn around, but I’m too terrified to move or look away. This might be the last woman I ever get to see naked and I’m not giving up this opportunity. This is the chance in my life that will most likely never come back.

As I watch her, I realize something. I’m not going to get serious with her. I am not going to make her my soul mate, and I’m going to spend the rest of my miserable life with her as I walk across America in search of my daughters. No. She’s going to be a traveling buddy and nothing more. But I have to admit something right in this moment as I look at her shoulders and look back down her ass and legs, praying that she would turn around or bend over. If I’m ever brought to that line and she’s standing there, begging for me to cross it, to step over that threshold and to take her, I’m going to have her. I’m going to make love to her for as long as I can. I want her and my primal, savage needs will have their way, one way or another.

She turns and sees me looking at her. I expect her to gasp and to pull the curtain shut in embarrassment and shame, but instead that smile reappears on her face. As if the powers that be once more heard my prayer, she slowly turns and I see the fullness of her left breast. I see the tantalizing breast and I fight against my compulsion to rush over there and to grab it. I look at her nipple that’s the size of a half dollar and want to run my thumb over it. It’s already standing alert and I can barely help myself. She winks at me as she slowly pulls the curtain shut and I am once more left in the silence and the darkness of the parlor, waiting for her.

I don’t think much in that time. The picture of her naked is frozen in my mind as I sit there on the counter with my pack ready to go. I close my eyes and fight to get control of myself. She’s a distraction at this point and I know that I’m going to fuck her. I know that I’m going to try—that is, if she doesn’t try first. When I open my eyes, she’s pulling back the curtain and is ready to go.