Page 99 of Hollow Valley

“So you don’t pay Anoona in grinleaf?”I asked.

He shook his head.“Nah.She’s never really liked that.”

“Good, because I meant what I said before.I don’t want that shit in my life at all.I don’t want you using it or selling it to people, either.”

“Only when medically necessary, I know,” he said before giving me a quick kiss on the temple.

Jordy unlocked the door to our modest but comfortable rustic room.The centerpiece was a queen size bed tucked neatly against one wall on top of a bearskin rug.

As I glanced over at the window, the view stopped me in my tracks.The breathtaking canal shimmered half-a-kilometer out from us, with water the most amazing shade of clear teal deepening into near black.A few ships were docked at the harbor farther down, their masts swaying gently in the breeze.

“How much does this view cost us?”I asked.

Jordy came up behind me and looped his arms around my waist.“Whatever it will be, I promise it’s worth it.”He kissed my neck, and I leaned back into him.

“I know we need to rest up before we do anything,” I said.

“Yes,restup.”He kissed my cheek, and one of his hands cupped my breast over my shirt.

“But where is the Cold Shore outpost?”I asked.

“Right off the harbor.”

“So can I go there tomorrow?”

“I don’t see why not.”He stopped kissing me and rested his chin on the top of my head.“What is your goal with them, anyway?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you never really told me what you hoped to gain.”

“Cold Shore is helping to find a cure, and I want to help them,” I replied as vaguely as I could.

Jordy didn’t know about my immunity, and that’s how I planned to keep it.In my experience, it was best if only people who absolutely needed to know found out about it.And right now, Jordy did not need to know.

“Yeah, but how?”he asked.“Lots of people want to help them.What are you planning to do?”

“I don’t know.”I put my hands over his arms and sunk back into him, swaying, and hoping to distract him.“I mean, they need people if they want to rebuild civilization.I … I just assumed I’d take the ARK, and they’d find a place for me.”

“But that doesn’t really sound like something you’d enjoy.What is Ripley going to do while you’re scrubbing toilets and getting blood samples from zombies?”he asked.

He was raising questions that I didn’t have the answers to, and that made me want to tense up or push him off.But that would only make things worse.I didn’t want to fight, and I didn’t want him to worry.

“I don’t know,” I tried to deflect.“I haven’t got it all figured out.I just knew that I wasn’t helping anyone where I was, and I’d be able to figure it out if I got around people who knew what they were doing.”

“What makes you think that the people at Cold Shore know what they’re doing better than anyone else?”

“Because someone has to know.”I turned around to face him, his arms still twined around my waist, and I put my hands on his chest as I looked into his eyes, imploring him to understand.“Someone has to… I refuse to believe that after all the trials and tribulations that humanity has been through in recent years, that the best of us are somehow gone.That those of us still here haven’t been forged in fire and proven that we are capable of handling any challenge that comes our way.”

“So that’s it then?”His eyes studied mine as he brushed a lock of dark hair off my face.“Your endgame is based almost entirely on optimism and survival-of-the-fittest?

“No.My endgame is based simply on the fact that I am still here.”I took his hand and pressed it to my chest, above where my heart pounded despite so many efforts to the contrary – by me, by nature, by zombies, by mad scientists.“And as long as I am here, I want to try to make the world better.And if I can’t do that, then at the very least, I don’t want to make it worse.”

“We’re both in the same boat, then.”Jordy kissed my forehead.“Why don’t we rest up, and we can figure out how to save the world tomorrow?”

60

Remy