Page 11

Noa

The car barely had enough gas to get us to Choctaw Beach, but the fifteen-minute ride saved us probably close to five hours of walking. Looking at how gingerly Linda places one foot in front of the other, just two hours later, really makes me appreciate the little luck we had with it.

I nudge my brother with an elbow. “Let’s call it a day,” I tell him.

His eyebrows shoot up, and I tilt my chin at my girlfriend. Then I have to resist doing a happy dance at catching myself referring to her as my girlfriend. That would be totally undignified, not to mention my feet hurt too.

Axel rolls his eyes (probably because of my mothering Linda and not from reading my thoughts), but doesn’t complain that it’s only mid-afternoon and that there’s still plenty of daylight.

“I guess that’s fine,” he says. “We’re probably better off sleeping around the Bayou and not in Niceville anyway. ”

Looking around, I see a state park on one side and assisted living accommodations on the other. “Gators or the elderly?” I ask, making Axel laugh.

Linda stops daydreaming and blinks up at us sleepily. “Are we taking a break?” she asks, a hopeful note in her sweet voice.

I tug on her drooping ponytail. “Wanna see if any of the showers in these buildings work?”

A flush spreads from her cheeks, looking a bit sharper than a week ago, and down to her breasts. Hmm. I’m going to need to make sure she gets enough food. I don’t want any of her curves to be a casualty of the apocalypse.

“By the way,” I begin, running the palm of my hand over her back. “Since you’re my girlfriend now, it’s only natural that we share a bed from now on.”

Linda was in the process of adorably looking each way before crossing the road, like it’s rush-hour traffic. When my words sink in, she whips her head to me, her eyes bugged out.

“G–girlfriend?” she stammers.

“Mmm,” I hum, nodding. “Got a problem with that, beautiful?”

“I… You want me to be your girlfriend?”

Her voice sounds so small, and my hand on her lower back clenches in anger, bunching up the fabric of her top. I want the names of every person who’s made her feel less than perfect, so I can put a hex on them.

I unclench my jaw, worried she’ll think I’m angry at her. “There’s nothing I want more than for you to be my girlfriend, Linda. Except for maybe my wife,” I whisper.

My brother makes gagging sounds, which I ignore, because Linda’s blinking at me with what could almost be heart-eyes.

For a moment, I’m worried she’s only going along with me because I’m the first person who’s been decent to her in a relationship, but I quickly shoo the thoughts away. I will make her fall in love with me.

Letting the subject drop and giving her the chance to come to terms with it, I wrap my arm around her shoulder and guide her the rest of the way across the road in silence.

There are a few cars still in the parking lot of the closest building, though they all have their fuel hatches open.

Glass crunches under our feet as we walk up to the entrance.

While the building itself is untouched, it looks like windows have shattered from either nearby explosions or the vibrations coming off the alien ships.

“Think the residents made it out?” Linda asks, clearly worried about the retired people who moved here to enjoy the warm climate.

“I don’t see any corpses yet,” Axel replies. “We’ll see how many we find inside.” Linda looks at him in dismay and I sigh. My brother has zero tact. Not seeing any issues with what he said, he enters the building through a smashed glass panel.

“Come on, sweetie,” I encourage my girl with a hand on her back.

I want to cover her behind just in case any looters are still here or have made this their base.

She carefully squeezes through the opening and I follow after.

While entering the building proved easy, the apartments themselves are a different story.

“Who locks their place when they’re running for their lives?” Axel grumbles when we hit the tenth sturdy locked door.

I look at the electronic lock. “It’s probably automatic. And maybe they thought they’d be back soon. Or hoped.”

“Can’t you just break in?” Linda asks, curiosity on her face.

I exchange a look with my brother. “It’ll make a lot of noise,” I say.

“Worth the risk?” he asks, slapping the baseball bat he kept against the palm of his hand.

I look out the window, miraculously unbroken, at the door, and finally at an exhausted-looking Linda. “Go for it,” I decide.

There’s a click behind us. “Don’t!” a male voice says immediately after.

I turn around to be greeted by a shotgun.

I’m getting mighty tired of having those aimed at me.

Moreover, I’m really fucking not feeling having one aimed at my girl.

This time, the gun is in the hands of a wide-eyed older man.

A woman, probably his wife, cowers behind him, peeking over his shaking shoulder.

We raise our hands in unison and I see Linda’s gun isn’t in hers.

“We don’t want any trouble,” I tell the couple. “We were just looking for somewhere to rest before heading to Eglin like the radio said.”

The man and woman exchange glances. The woman’s lower lip trembles before she opens her mouth to speak. “Do you have any food?”

“Harriet!” the man admonishes. “They could be hooligans. Look at all the tattoos on those two. Some are probably gang signs.”

Axel scoffs. “We’re not in a gang.” He tilts his head at Linda. “ Does she look like a killer?”

I start coughing, drawing the couple’s gaze. “Sorry,” I say. “We’ve been walking in the sun, my throat’s dry.”

“Oh, put the gun down, Jack,” Harriet says. “They’re nice young people, I can tell.”

Her husband glares at her. “A few minutes ago, you were saying they could be here to sacrifice us to the aliens.”

A blush shows easily through Harriet’s thinning skin. “Well, that was before.”

“Yeah, before you wanted their food,” Jack grumbles, but puts the shotgun down nonetheless.

I breathe a sigh of relief and lower my hands.

“Well, come inside before those zombies show up,” Jack says, then turns his back on us like we’re no threat at all.

“Wait, did you say zombies?” Linda squeaks.

Harriet blinks at us. “You don’t know?”

“Know what?” Axel growls.

The couple exchanges another look, communicating without words.

“You really ought to come inside, dears,” Harriet says.

***

Harriet and Jack stayed behind when everyone else went to the Air Force base because ‘they came here to die in peace and they will doggone die in peace’.

They’ve been rationing their food and going through the other apartments when the power was on – their neighbors entrusted them with the keys before they left – and when they weren’t afraid of fucking zombies .

Turns out the guy who attacked us in Freeport wasn’t a tweaker. The aliens are somehow making humans lose all their common sense, attacking the same sex and aggressively trying to procreate with the opposite one. As if penises didn’t skeeve me out already, they’re now weaponized by aliens.

“Do you know why our people are bombing cities?” Linda asks, her voice hushed. Jack steeples his fingers, his elbows resting atop their dining table .

“My guess is because they’re being overrun by these… things.” He shakes his head. “I don’t know if zombies is the right word or how they’re infected, or even if it’s an infection or something else. All I know is that it’s happening and it spreads.”

“I can’t believe we could have been bitten by fucking zombies,” Axel says, scratching at the beard growth on his chin.

“Language, young man,” Harriet complains.

“Sorry, ma’am.” Axel sounds chagrined and I can’t help but smile. We never had a grandmother figure in our lives and a part of me wishes we had met Harriet when Axel was still a teen.

As if reading my mind, Harriet speaks up again, timidly. “You know, there’s plenty of room in this building. We could give you a key. You could bring us food.”

Her husband snorts and pats her delicate hand. “And when the aliens come, they’ll die here with us,” he chastises. “They ought to be in the base where they can do some good for this world.”

Harriet shrugs her shoulder in an it-was-worth-the-try way and I smile at the sly cat. She’d make a great grifter.

“We’ll come back and check on you after I try to reach my parents in California,” Linda says, surprising me. I figured she’d never want to leave the safety of the base’s walls once we got there.

The couple gives her that smile that people give the best-behaved children and I suppress the urge to roll my eyes. I wonder what they’d think if they knew I plan on teaching the sweet blonde how to suck on my clit under this very roof tonight?

I cover my mouth with my hand to hide my grin. I have almost three years’ worth of fantasies to make a reality and I’m not wasting any opportunities.