Page 8 of Zinnia and the Zombie (Alien Abduction #26)
CHAPTER EIGHT
E mpty streets stretched before Jaxx, paved with golden stone that once reflected the light of three suns.
Vacant towers rose into a cloudless sky, their elegant spires unblemished by time yet devoid of life.
He walked through the heart of Zathixia, the silence pressing down on him like a physical weight.
Where were the voices? The laughter of children playing in the fountains of the Central Plaza? The calls of merchants in the Grand Market? The melodic conversations that would drift from the open windows of dwellings?
He moved past the Temple of Ancestral Memory, its massive doors standing open as they always had, inviting all to enter and commune with those who had passed beyond. But no priests stood in attendance, no worshippers knelt in reverence.
The emptiness felt wrong. Obscene. This was a city built for hundreds of thousands, yet he walked alone. Where was everyone?
Gone. The realization threatened to bring him to his knees. A civilization that had spanned multiple systems, reduced to a single survivor walking through the ghost of its greatest achievement.
He woke with his heart pounding, the taste of loss sharp in his mouth.
Darkness surrounded him, and for a disorienting moment, he thought he’d slipped back into stasis. Then his vision adjusted, the darkness resolving into varying shades of shadow and form. He was sitting upright against a stone wall, in the small shelter amongst the ruins.
And Zinnia was in his arms.
She had shifted in her sleep, half draped across his lap. Her head rested against his chest, one hand splayed over his heart, and her breath came in soft, regular puffs against his skin.
The lingering sorrow from his dream was rapidly eclipsed by awareness—acute, overwhelming awareness—of her body against his.
The heat of her. The scent of her skin, like the rare blossoms that had once grown in the royal gardens of his homeworld.
The rhythm of her breathing, which somehow matched the beating of his own heart.
It was… intoxicating. Intoxicating and arousing.
His cock, still hidden behind its protective covering, began to harden.
He’d never experienced anything like this sudden, powerful response to another being.
A hot surge of arousal streaked through his body, startling in its intensity.
His skin warmed, the golden hue brightening perceptibly in the darkness.
His need to protect her battled with his growing need to claim her.
Claim her? No. It was not his place to claim her, not when he didn’t have a way to care for her or offer her the future she deserved. He should move away. Put distance between them. This reaction was inappropriate, possibly dangerous. He should?—
A small whimper escaped her lips, her body tensing against his. Her fingers clutched at his chest, nails scraping lightly against his skin as she made another distressed sound. He automatically drew her closer, one hand moving to cradle the back of her head.
“You’re safe,” he murmured. “I’m here.”
Her breathing changed, and he realized she was awake. Yet she didn’t pull away, remaining nestled against him as if it were the most natural thing in the universe.
“Bad dream?” he asked softly.
She nodded against his chest. “You too?”
“Yes.” He didn’t elaborate, still haunted by the crushing weight of silence, the knowledge of being the last of his kind. Was that true, or just part of the dream?
Outside their shelter, the night was alive with sounds—the distant calls of nocturnal creatures, the rustling of vegetation in a gentle breeze, the quiet creaks and groans of a city slowly crumbling back into the ground. Yet somehow it felt peaceful instead of threatening.
“I just realized,” she said finally, her voice soft in the darkness, “you know so much about me, from all my rambling while you were… frozen. But I don’t know anything about you other than your name.”
He considered this. It was true—she had shared so much of her life with him, unaware that he could hear every word.
He knew of her childhood in a small town, her mother’s early death, the kindness of the couple who had taken her in, her work with flowers.
He knew her fears and hopes, her small triumphs and quiet sorrows.
And she knew nothing of him beyond what she had witnessed since his awakening.
“What would you like to know?” he asked.
She shifted slightly, sitting up straighter though she remained within the circle of his arm. “Everything. You said you were Zathix?”
“Yes,” he said, the word carrying a weight of history and pride. “We are—were—a warrior race.
“Were?” She caught the past tense immediately, and his throat tightened as the memory of his dream rushed over him again.
“I… do not know if others survive. My memories are incomplete.”
“Because of the stasis?”
“Perhaps. The stasis is a cellular adaptation unique to my species. We can transform our bodies into an impenetrable shell, suspending all biological processes. In this state, we can survive indefinitely without food, water, or oxygen.”
“Like a living statue,” she murmured. “Is it voluntary?”
“To a degree, although if we are gravely injured it happens automatically. But it has consequences. Extended periods in stasis can fragment memory, particularly of events immediately preceding the transformation. And when we emerge, we are temporarily weakened but unable to return to that state.”
“That’s why you didn’t turn back into a statue on the ship?”
“Correct.”
She studied his face thoughtfully. “How long were you in stasis before I found you?”
“I am… uncertain. Time passes differently in that state. Subjectively, it could have been days or millennia.”
“And objectively?”
“Based on the technology of the ship we escaped from, and comparing it to what I remember…” He calculated quickly. “Perhaps one hundred cycles.”
“How long is a cycle?”
“The length of one trip of my planet around our sun.”
Her eyes widened. “You’ve been asleep for a hundred years?”
“In stasis,” he corrected. “Biologically I am approaching my fourth decade.”
“So much must have happened while you were in stasis.”
“Yes. I was aware of some of it, but…” The gaps in his memory were vast, disorienting chasms.
“What’s the last thing you do remember? Before waking up on that ship with me?”
The question triggered a cascade of fragmented images—a ship’s corridor bathed in emergency lighting, the faces of his crew as they fought, blood spattered across a bulkhead.
“An ambush,” he said hoarsely. “My ship was attacked without warning. We fought, but we were outnumbered. The attack was too well coordinated, too precise. They knew exactly where to strike, how to disable our defenses.”
Her hand found his in the darkness, her fingers small but strong as they twined with his own, and he gratefully let her touch anchor him to the present.
“I was the ship’s commander. I was supposed to keep them safe, but I failed. I saw them die, one by one.”
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
“In the final moments, as the last of my crew fell, I was severely injured and my body initiated stasis. The last thing I remember is a blade slicing into my neck, and then… darkness. There were times when I was aware of my surroundings, but never enough to break free. Until your voice reached me.”
The weight of the past pressed down on him—the lives lost, the duty unfulfilled, the overwhelming reality of his survival when all others had perished. What right did he have to live when they had died?
“It wasn’t your fault,” she said, as if reading his thoughts. “You couldn’t have known about the ambush.”
“A commander is responsible for his crew. Their deaths are my burden to bear.”
“No,” she said firmly. “Listen to me, Jaxx. I don’t know anything about combat, but I do know something about surviving when others don’t.”
She shifted to look up at him, though in the darkness she probably couldn’t see his expression as clearly as he could see hers.
“When my mother died, I felt guilty for being alive. Like I should have been able to save her somehow. I thought I didn’t deserve the chances I got afterward—the Jensens taking me in, the shop, everything. ”
Her hand tightened on his. “But that’s not how life works. Sometimes we survive when others don’t, and there’s no rhyme or reason to it. The only thing we can do is live well enough to honor those who are gone.”
Live well enough to honor those who are gone. It was not so different from the Zathix warrior’s code: Honor the fallen by continuing the fight.
“Thank you,” he said quietly. “You honor me with your wisdom.”
Her cheeks darkened in the moonlight, but she shook her head. “I’m not wise. I just had to figure some things out the hard way.” She paused. “Thank you for telling me. I know it can’t be easy to talk about.”
“It is… easier, with you.”
The admission surprised him as much as it seemed to surprise her. Her breath caught, a small involuntary sound in the darkness, and then she leaned forward, and pressed her lips to his.
The kiss was gentle, almost tentative—a gesture of comfort, perhaps—but heat surged through him, his skin brightening with golden light that illuminated the small space around them.
His senses heightened to an almost painful degree—the softness of her lips, the warmth of her breath, the thundering of his own heart.
For a moment he remained frozen, stunned by the intensity of his response, but then he groaned and deepened the kiss, his hand threading through her hair as an almost uncontrollable blaze of need consumed him.