LovewithaChanceofZombies (3 page)

“You know what would be really sexy?” Nye asked, squeezing
her hands as if they were walking in the park. “Next time we should take our
boots off.”

They both looked down at their feet, still firmly and safely
clad in socks and sturdy laced-up boots. Like cowboys in the Old West, folks
now tended to keep their boots on whenever possible, just in case.

Lena bit her lip and shook her head. “Let’s not go crazy,
Nye. I never said I was okay with
casual
sex.”

It took him a few seconds to process it and start laughing.
Lena held her straight face for about twice that long before bursting out in
howls. They finished the laugh in a kiss, still giggling and snickering, until
Nye’s hands were caught up in Lena’s hair and her nails were scraping a slow
set of lines down his back.

“Next time,” he insisted, “no boots
and
we find a
bed. But this time, I’m fucking you right on this table.”

Not giving her time to think, he picked Lena up and settled
her on the table again, stepping between her knees to spread them. Lena was
geared up already, but the sight of Nye palming his cock, stroking himself even
harder, made her pussy tingle and grow slick with anticipation. When he brought
the tip of his cock to her opening, teasing the sensitive skin, Lena gasped and
spread her legs even wider.

She braced her hands behind her and arched her back, pleased
when Nye hummed in appreciation and raised his free hand to one of her breasts.

“Hard or soft?” he asked, teasing her nipple with his thumb.

Lena moaned. “Hard,” she said, before she could think to
temper her answer.

Nye liked the answer he got, apparently, because he smiled
as he pinched the tight little knot of flesh hard enough to make Lena whimper,
even as she squirmed against his teasing erection. “Good. I like hard too.”

Then he proved it, bringing his cock flush against Lena’s
pussy and grabbing her thighs for leverage as he plunged into her.

After the first few nearly brutal thrusts, however, Nye
slowed his pace and brought his thumb to her clit. Lena thought he would stroke
her, bring her off. She waited eagerly for the sensation and was disappointed
when his thumb didn’t move. She made a noise, trying to express her need
without whining for it.

“Do you want me to touch you here, Lena?”

“Y-yeah,” she panted.

Please please please!

The rat bastard pulled his hand away. “Gonna have to ask for
it then.”

“Oh, fuck you, Nye!”

He just chuckled and gave her a few more firm thrusts, until
Lena was working her hips against him again. Then he said, “Lucas.”

“What? Oh…”

“Call me Lucas,” he clarified.

“Fuck you, Lucas,” Lena corrected herself.

“If you don’t ask for it, you’ll just have to do it
yourself.”

Before she could move her hand, though, he pinned both of
hers to the table, his superior weight and leverage enough to combat her token
struggle to free them. Lena didn’t want to be free. She wanted to be touched,
and she liked the unexpected twist of Nye’s apparent control fetish. Lena
canted her hips, trying to get more stimulation against her clit, and Nye just
smirked at her.

“Ask me nicely,” he suggested.

“Please touch me,” Lena capitulated.

His hands stayed clamped over hers, his hips pumping slowly.
“Nicer than that. Be specific. Use nouns.”

“Lucas, god dammit! Okay, please touch my clit, make me
come.
Please?
”

That must have been nice enough, because he finally brought
his hand between them and started stroking. She’d been close for so long,
hanging there at the edge, that a few strokes were all she needed. A bone-deep
shudder rippled through Lena’s body as the orgasm started to take her over, and
she heard Nye cry out as she squeezed his cock tighter. They came together,
flesh slapping flesh, all clutching fingers and primal breathing, and Lena
thought she might have grayed out just a little near the end.

It was good, so much better than she’d anticipated, and it
had been far too long since the last time.

And after a few weeks, no matter how good it was, it would
end, because Lucas Nye would be dead.

Chapter Four

The trouble with giving in to impulse in the middle of the
day in the lab was that it left them nowhere to go afterward. Standing naked in
a medical research laboratory becomes many times less sexy and more awkward
after the sexual edge is off.

Lucas cleared his throat and rubbed his hands on Lena’s
thighs a few times after he slipped out of her. The caress was affectionate and
friendly but hardly sensual. She didn’t try to hang on to him when he pulled
away and bent to grab his pants off the floor.

“Um,” he said after his khakis were back on.

Lena retrieved her underwear and tank top, pulling those on
first for some cover. She turned away to find her fatigue pants.

“Um,” Lucas attempted again.

“It’s okay. It wasn’t a date, Nye. You don’t have to see me
home. I’ll just go back to my corner with my gun, and you can get back
to…whatever it was you were doing before we did that.”

She didn’t hear him until he was right behind her, his hands
gripping her shoulders. “Lucas,” he reminded her.

Lena felt a strange prickling behind her eyes, a taut
fullness in her throat. “I thought you just meant I should call you that while
we were doing it.”

“No. I didn’t just mean then.” He pressed a kiss to the top
of her head then slid his hands down her arms, clasping hers briefly before
letting them go. “May I see you to your chair, at least?”

He offered his arm, like a dream date in an old movie. She
had seen enough of them to know what to do, and she couldn’t help but smile through
the odd glimmer in her eyes as she wrapped her hand around his forearm.

“I had a lovely time,” she told him, once she was back in
her chair with her gun slung over her lap. “Thank you.”

“Me too. Are you doing anything tonight?” A smile played
around his lips, and Lena found it infectious.

“No,” she replied, “it just so happens I’m free this
evening.”

“Pick you up after work?”

“I can hardly wait.”

He kissed her cheek before he returned to his microscope,
and Lena felt the tingling brush of his lips, the light burn from his razor
stubble, long after it should have faded. She knew her edge was slipping but
she really couldn’t bring herself to care. This assignment was a vacation in a
way, which Watson must have also known. It hadn’t occurred to Lena that she
needed one—people no longer took vacations, as such—but she had. She could feel
years of tension easing from her shoulders after just a few days spent in a
secure environment.

It would be a few weeks at the soonest before Nye posed any
threat, and even then the main danger from him would probably not be physical
violence. Without the constant danger she was used to in the field, and with
food being brought down to the lab for them three times a day, Lena’s mind was
finally able to turn to subjects other than survival and her next meal.

She didn’t like it much. Thinking more clearly about the
situation was really not helpful, as there was little to like in such thoughts.
The present was brutal and the future was bleak—to the extent there was a
future at all.

“What do you think will happen?” she asked Nye as that
afternoon wore on. “To people, I mean, in the long run. Will we die out?”

He looked up from his work and shrugged. “Technically
speaking, genetically speaking, there are still enough uninfected to perpetuate
the species. As near as we can tell, there are at least a few hundred thousand
people left in the various colonies around the world. Probably a few more that
aren’t in radio contact. If the uninfected manage to outlast the zombies and
find a way to prevent reinfection, it’s feasible we could make a comeback.
Those are big ifs, though.”

“Here’s what I don’t get. Where are the zombies still coming
from? I mean, we kill them all the time, and so do the other colonies. They
don’t seem to live past a few years and when they breed, the babies don’t last
long. So why do we still have them?”

“That’s easy,” Nye said. “People are stupid. Think about
this—what if your dad’s little compound had survived the initial wave and was
still hanging on out there in the boondocks, huddling behind razor wire? A
couple dozen people with probably not enough women to go around, and supplies
are scarce, how do you suppose that would work out?”

Lena thought about it, trying to picture the belligerent,
xenophobic, incurious lot she’d grown up with lingering on beyond all odds.
“People would get kicked out. They’d use that punishment as a threat, and
eventually they’d follow through on it,” she speculated. “They’d lose more on
patrols and foraging than we do, because their groups would be smaller, and
they wouldn’t have the discipline we do. Also, I think…”

“What?”

“No, I shouldn’t say it. It’s mean.”

“I won’t tell,” he said cheerfully. “Go on, be mean. What
the hell, it’s the apocalypse.”

She chuckled. “Okay, good point. Besides, if the religious
types had it right, the fact we’re all still here means we’re probably screwed
anyway, right? I think some of the guys I grew up with—the women, too, for that
matter—would just get killed because of dumb stuff. That happens here too, of course.
There’s always plenty of stupid to go around. We all have our moments. But I
think you’d have guys going out without enough ammo and getting lost that way,
because they thought they’d be safe in the daylight. Or getting bit and not
telling, and spreading it around. Even after years, they’d still think it
couldn’t really happen to them. Or maybe they’d just infect the others for
spite. And sometimes it would get caught in time to prevent it spreading too
far, but sometimes not.”

“And when it’s not,” Nye finished, “they all end up turned.
Within a few months they’re out in the woods past our fence or somewhere
similar, hoping for a snack to wander out.”

Lena nodded. She could see it, the slow dwindling of those
loner colonies, the accidents and stubbornness that would prove fatal. Their
margin of error would be narrower with so many fewer people to start with. It
had even happened to a few of the larger colonies, where the people knew better
and were militantly on guard against it. All it took was one person who
couldn’t face the truth or lacked the strength to sacrifice himself. One group
had lost nearly a quarter of its citizens before an outbreak was contained, and
another smaller colony had been wiped out completely, only a handful of
survivors making their way to another enclave to tell the grisly tale.

“There are only so many of those groups out there, though,”
she countered. “Eventually they’ll all be turned if they’re going to turn, and
then they’ll run out of food, right? They aren’t eating enough of us to
survive, and they don’t seem to eat each other. So shouldn’t they have starved
to death by now?”

“Not necessarily. There are animals they eat out there. Even
some plants. There’s a corner of the big farm they keep attacking where we
think they’re after the hemp plants.”

Lena snickered. Everybody knew the hemp was a vital crop,
providing fibers for rope and clothing in addition to many other uses. It had
been one of the colony’s wiser decisions to start growing it. Still, one could
hardly overlook the other benefits it offered, even if the variety they grew at
the farm was barely palatable for recreational use. “If I were a zombie, I’d
want to get high too, I bet.”

She had wandered closer as they spoke, and now Lena looked
over Nye’s shoulder at the slide he’d just placed on the microscope.

“What are you working on, anyway?”

“Miracle vaccine,” he said promptly. “Last-minute cure
that’s been staring us all in the face this whole time. Fairy dust. Proof that
unicorns exist.”

She rested her hands on his shoulders and squeezed gently,
noting they were knotted with tension. For Nye, of course, this wasn’t like a
vacation at all.

“I meant what’s on the slides? You’ve been looking at them
and making notes for days.”

“Ah. Well, this one is the AX-1 virus. You want to see it?
Here, take a look.”

Lena stepped up to the microscope and peered through the
eyepiece, taking a moment to adjust the focus. Then she saw it, an image she
hadn’t seen in a decade, though it had certainly been all over the news for
months before then.

“Looks like bullets,” she noted. The comparison hadn’t
really occurred to her before.

“Now look at this.”

Lucas slid the zombie virus slide into a different position,
made some other changes, and the image blurred a moment then re-sharpened. Lena
was staring at two slides now, a side-by-side comparison.

“Am I supposed to see something?” she asked after several
seconds of peering at the magnified blobs. “It looks the same as the first
one.”

“Look more closely,” Nye said, and turned a dial on the microscope’s
side.

Lena pressed her eyes back to the scope and blinked,
adjusting the focus again until the image sharpened. He had increased the
magnification.

“It still looks— Oh, wait. Okay, these are maybe a little
smaller, and the squiggly stuff in the middle of the bullets is more…more
squiggly?”

“The structure of the protein is a bit more compact. It’s
rabies, by the way, that second slide.”

“You’re shitting me.” Lena stared at the slides, stunned by
the comparison. “They look so much alike. Isn’t there a rabies vaccine? It
almost seems like—”

“Tried it. It was one of the first things they tried,
actually, the same techniques used for rabies vaccines.” Lucas nudged her out
of the way again, seeming proprietary about his microscope and unwilling to give
it up for too long. “First the newer recombinant form, which uses another virus
as a delivery method. Then the old-fashioned way, which used infected nerve
tissues that had been dried to weaken the virus. Neither of them worked. Or
rather, they shortened the duration of the active stage of the virus in the
test subjects, but the end result… It wasn’t helpful.”

Something in Lena instinctively recoiled at the way he said
it, and she knew she would likely regret it, but she felt compelled to ask.

“Wasn’t helpful, how?”

Nye hesitated. “I shouldn’t have mentioned it. You really
don’t want to know.”

“Now you have to tell me. Nothing could be worse than not
knowing.”

“Are you sure about that?” he challenged. “Tell me, what
would be the worst thing? As a professional, out there in the wilderness trying
to kill these things, what is your worst nightmare about them?”

Lena’s stomach clenched. But she had asked, and pushed, and
deserved whatever answer she got as a result. “That they get smarter,” she said
at last. “Cunning. That they can delay gratification and really start hunting
us, working together, instead of just charging as soon as they get the scent. I
have nightmares like that.”

Just about every night.
Other nights, she dreamed
that the spread of the virus became airborne and the attacking zombies sneezed
them all to death.

“Then you’ll be relieved to know those test subjects were
all terminated.”

“Jesus. Did you actually see any of them?”

Nye nodded, swallowing hard. “That’s all classified, by the
way. Or at the time it was. Nobody to enforce that now, of course. Unless you
want to give somebody the screaming night terrors, though, best keep it to
yourself.”

“Predator zombies,” she murmured. “I’ll have the screaming
night terrors, for sure.”

“I’ll protect you,” Nye offered with a sultry smile. He
swiveled on his stool to face her, putting a hand on her waist as if it
belonged there.

“I can’t stay with you all night,” she reminded him, but she
allowed the caress. “I have to lock you in there, remember?”

“Tough to forget.”

His jaw clenched, marring his expression. It made him look
hard and a little dangerous, and Lena shivered at the sight. Hard and dangerous
were what she liked, what she was used to, but the bitterness that followed
from him tugged at her heart.

“I’m not going to run. I know what the stakes are, Lena.
You’re not even going to have to shoot me, you know. I’ve already got a pair of
syringes in a case in my room, ready to go as soon as the symptoms kick in.
That little cocktail will be much less painful than a bullet. Less cleanup for
everyone too.”

“Hey,” she soothed, “it’s okay. Nobody thinks you’re going
to try anything, Nye. Watson just doesn’t want people to panic. I’m protecting
you
more than I’m protecting them. Watson trusts you enough to let you stay when
anybody else would be out the gate. If I didn’t trust you too, I wouldn’t have
let you screw me.”

He flinched at that, his lips tightening to a fine line.
After a moment, he loosened his grip on her waist, rubbing his fingers over the
spot he’d been clenching. Lena hadn’t even noticed it until he let go, but now
she wondered if there would be a set of finger-shaped bruises there by
tomorrow.

“Do you want to know a secret?” he asked. “It’s about being
a hero.”

“Sure.” She resumed the gentle, stroking pressure on his
shoulders, rolling her hands over the knots. Nye bent forward, relaxing just a
little into the touch. His hair fell in front of his eyes, hiding them from
Lena.

“It sucks balls,” he said, and she couldn’t help laughing, a
sharp, too-loud sound in the nearly silent lab.

“That’s inspirational. Should we put that on your monument?
They’re talking about a statue, you know. I don’t know if anybody still knows
how to carve one though.”

Nye shook his head, eyes still downcast. “See, that’s what I
mean. Statue? Holy shit. Do you have any idea what it’s like to have to live up
to that kind of stuff? I know I have to set a good example, act like I’m okay
with taking one for the team. I’m not remotely okay with
any
of this,
Lena. I don’t want to die. I’m not even sick. The bite barely broke the skin,
it’s already mostly healed.”