LovewithaChanceofZombies Read online

  She brushed her teeth and showered quickly, throwing on a tank top and boxer shorts to rejoin Nye in what she automatically thought of as the living room. He was on the couch, feet resting on the table, one hand cocked behind his head while the other held a remote control.

  “They thought of everything,” Lena said softly, and Nye craned his neck to watch as she approached the couch and sat down, not too close to him. Giving him space if he wanted it.

  “It’s pretty sweet,” he agreed. He pitched the remote onto the table in a gentle lob and it clattered a little as it landed. “I should’ve been more of a diva, I could have been living the high life down here in the basement all along, I guess. Do you want to know what I realized while you were in the shower?”

  Lena nodded, then giggled nervously as Nye turned her by the hand, tugging until she was sitting in his lap.

  “I realized,” he said, reaching up to run his fingers through her hair and pivoting her head to face him, “that I was spending way too much time looking at a bunch of slides I’ve seen eight million times before, looking for a cure I’m never going to find, when I could be focusing on at least leaving some kind of mark on the world. Maybe the only kind I can make now. So for the time I have left, I think we should spend less time messing around in the lab and more time messing around in here. How do you feel about that?”

  Lena’s heart thumped so hard she thought it must be audible to Nye. “Are you talking about a baby?”

  Nye tightened his grip on her hair, so Lena couldn’t look away if she’d wanted to. His eyes looked almost emerald, an unearthly green, and she felt as if he were seeing straight through her skin to her bones.

  “I’m saying,” he explained, “that I want to get you pregnant. I don’t have a lot of time to do it, but I think it’s worth a try. It’s a hell of a lot more likely than my finding a cure in the next three weeks.”

  “It could be as many as five,” she said automatically. Not that five more weeks was enough. Lena was beginning to suspect that no amount of time would be enough with Nye. But she would take as much time as she could get.

  “It could be as few as two. We have no way to know that. It could be another ten years, and we both know I still wouldn’t find anything. But I’d like to know that at least a little part of me will live on in the genetic code of the human race.”

  “That’s…not all that romantic,” Lena hinted. She was already here, willing to sleep with him in the name of pleasure. If he wanted to go this route instead, demand this emotional involvement, he was going to have to do at least a little bit of work.

  “I jerked off into a cup for the team already,” Nye told her. “I know in theory they have my sperm and will attempt to impregnate as many volunteers as possible with it. That wasn’t very romantic, I’ll be the first to admit.”

  He let go of her hair. Lena missed the contact but was appeased when he shifted her to straddle his lap instead, then brought both his hands up to frame her face and direct her gaze toward his again. Lena felt him growing hard and couldn’t resist working her hips closer to press against him. Nye’s control was admirable; he didn’t bat an eye, though his cock twitched and swelled even more at the stimulation.

  “This is different though,” he continued. “This is making love to a specific person. To you. With the specific intention of trying to make a baby with you. I’d like to die knowing that a remarkable woman was possibly carrying my baby. I’d also like to do everything I can think of one last time, with the hottest girl I’ve ever met. There, is that better?”

  Lena opened her mouth to say something snappy, but only a pleading little whimper came out. Nye looked smug and pulled her down for a kiss, claiming her mouth in no uncertain terms. He let her go after a minute, only to stand her up between his knees and pull her clothes off in a few quick, efficient moves.

  Accustomed to fast, often furtive encounters, Lena was self-conscious about standing nude in a well-lit room, being scrutinized from head to toe by an eager hunk with a piercing gaze. Apprehension quickly turned to anticipation, however, as Lucas made it clear with his words and his hands how much he liked everything he saw.

  “Turn around,” he told her, guiding her hips until she faced away from him. “Oh yeah. Your ass looks so good, even in those army pants. But naked? It’s goddamned intoxicating; there should be some sort of regulation.” He squeezed both sides appreciatively, pressing kisses across the fleshy mounds and licking along the seam between cheek and thigh. Lena gasped as his fingers parted her, slipping along her pussy in a grazing tease.

  “Already wet. I like that,” Nye murmured, coaxing her back around to face him and giving her a sexy smile when she met his eyes. “Put your foot up here so I can see all of you.” He patted the cushion next to his thigh, and Lena obediently propped her foot up, though she blushed all over again at the lewd exposure.

  Lucas made it worth her while. He started with fingertips, tracing long, faint lines from inside her knees up to the tops of her inner thighs. When he stopped just short of her sex, Lena groaned. Nye chuckled in an evil, self-satisfied way, tickling his way around the most interesting spots.

  “You want my mouth, don’t you?”

  Lena grabbed his hair with one hand, trying not to let him take control of the situation again. She knew it was too late already though. It had been too late when he’d kissed her that first time, and a hidden part of her soul craved the guidance. There were recent rumors of a colony where the women were kept as sex slaves to the men, and despite her stated revulsion at the idea, Lena had succumbed to more than one erotic dream about such an arrangement. It was a blessed relief, being told what to do, not bearing the responsibility. At least for a little while.

  “You know I’m going to make you ask for it, Lena,” Nye told her. He pressed his thumbs in the hollows at the tops of her thighs, pulling there to stimulate her pussy without touching it. “I might even make you beg.”

  She shivered as his breath whispered over her skin, adding to her torture. “Please, Lucas.”

  “I’m not convinced you really want this.”

  “Why do I have to say it when you already know what I want? You’re just being mean.”

  His grin was as wicked as it was delightful. “I love hearing you say it though. Knowing you don’t want to is the best part. Getting you to the point where you’ll ask me anyway, because you want it…that…much.” He punctuated his speech with featherlight brushes of his lips over the crisp curls in front of him, and Lena whimpered with growing need.

  She knew he was right, that she would give in, and she couldn’t think why it was such a turn-on. She didn’t want to think, anyway, just feel.

  Time to give in.

  “I want your mouth on me,” she breathed. He pressed a useless kiss on the inside of her thigh, and her fingers tightened in his thick hair. “On my clit,” she amended, and gasped as he finally obliged.

  Lena would have liked a bit more self-control, but Nye seemed to have pulled it right out of her with one greedy pass of his tongue.

  “You taste fucking amazing,” he mumbled.

  Lena replied, “Oh my god, use your hand too!”

  She didn’t last very long at all.

  Lucas, ever sensitive to her needs, held her up as she shook through her climax, then provided a convenient landing spot for her limp body by freeing his erection from his soft drawstring pants. Lena sank onto him, clutching his shoulders and whispering his name as he filled her, delicious and slow, and she savored each inch until they were pressed together as tightly as two people could be. She let her head fall to Lucas’ shoulder. It felt like coming home.

  She would have moved then, but he held her there so long she grew concerned.

  “Lucas?” She lifted her head and looked at his face. His eyes were closed, the dark fringe of his lashes still against his pale cheeks. He wasn’t smiling exactly, but he somehow looked ecstatic nonetheless.

  “Close your eyes,” he whispered, “and ju
st feel for a minute.”

  Grumpy at being thrown off her stride, not expecting this shift in mood, Lena sighed softly before she complied.

  “What am I feeling?” she asked, feeling silly. She didn’t know him well enough to know if this was just something he did. Every guy she’d ever been with had tricks, routines. Maybe the sensitive-guy feeling thing was just Lucas’ second-fuck routine.

  She knew she shouldn’t think about how many women he’d done this with. It should be enough that she would be the last. Maybe if she’d earned the position fair and square, she’d be easier in her mind about it.

  “Everything. That’s what I’m feeling. I just want to remember everything about this exact moment. The way I can still smell you and taste you on my lips. The way it feels to be inside you, so hot and good. How your stomach feels, moving against mine every time you take a breath. I can hear you breathing too.” He bent her back a little, lowered his head and tilted it, pressing his ear to her chest. “And I can hear your heart. It’s probably beating a little slower now than it was a few seconds ago, and you’re sitting there thinking, ‘What the hell is wrong with this guy?’ If I opened my eyes I’d probably see you looking at me like I’m nuts.”

  He didn’t sound too worried about that. Lena thought if he opened his eyes right now, he would see her looking at him like a lovesick fool. That wasn’t a role she felt comfortable accepting just yet, so she pushed the notion down.

  “All the senses, huh? Sight’s a sense too, you know. Don’t you want to engrave the picture in your memory? Or is it just that with your eyes closed you can imagine all the ones who got away?” She chuckled and squeezed her inner muscles on him, feeling smug at the hiss her move elicited.

  “No,” he clarified. “My eyes are closed because when I open them I see you, and I’m torn. I want it to last forever, but you’re so amazing I know I won’t last five minutes.”

  He opened his eyes anyway and looked at her, putting his hands on her cheeks. Lena lifted hers too, automatically, because she could feel herself blushing and her first instinct was to hide that. She didn’t want to give that much away.

  Her fingers met his thumbs brushing over her cheekbones. Too late. He’d gotten there first, and she was revealed.

  Lucas stared at her as if she actually was amazing. To her surprise, she felt amazing.

  “I see you, Lena,” he whispered. “This is the picture I’m engraving in my memory.”

  She nodded as if he’d asked consent. After a hushed moment, he wrapped his arms around her again, clinging tightly, and they finally moved together in ancient instinct. When he came, a hoarse cry marking his orgasm, Lena felt his release like a heartbeat inside her body, hot and sweet and deep.

  Chapter Six

  Lena tried not to count the days, but there was a calendar on the wall in the lab and she couldn’t help checking it every time she walked in. Lucas spent some time working every day, but with none of the focus of those first few days she’d stayed with him. She would have felt guilty about distracting him if she’d thought he really had a chance at a last-minute miracle cure. As it was, when she allowed herself to think about it at all, she felt honored to be his final distraction.

  They had sex everywhere, all the time, like randy teenagers. Every day she got closer to thinking of it as making love.

  No good would have come of saying those words, so they didn’t. That could only make it worse, the inevitable heartbreak when he died. It was tough enough as it was.

  Once, after they’d exhausted each other and lay in a contented, jumbled heap on the bed, Lucas whispered, “I wish I’d known you. I liked you before, you know. We’d met a few times.”

  She laughed, charmed at the notion that Lucas would think she needed reminding of this. “I remember.”

  “You seemed like someone… I thought about asking you out. But I didn’t because you seemed like someone I could really fall for. I didn’t want that complication, those expectations. It all sounded like such a responsibility. Now I wish I had asked.”

  Lena twined her fingers with his, squeezing gently. “Good thing you got around to it in the nick of time, at least.” She kept her voice light and was glad for the darkness that hid her expression. “I liked you before too.”

  Not nearly as much as she liked him now though. That part was even harder, in a way. The sex was fantastic, heroic indeed. But Lena already knew the laughs were what she’d really miss, and the talks. And seeing him. And sleeping next to him. And knowing he liked her back. He was somebody she could have wanted to spend her life with, but she’d found him too late. She could still want it, of course, but only with the knowledge that she couldn’t have it.

  Twenty-one to forty-two days—that was the known incubation period for the virus. Four to five weeks was the most common range. Lena pictured the calendar in the lab as if she had crossed the days off, and she saw red X marks mounting. Nine days, ten, eleven, marking off the precious time they’d spent together. The image stayed in her mind always, haunting her dreams.

  On the twelfth day of Lucas’ confinement, Watson visited them in the lab.

  “There’s been another attack,” the admiral said after the obligatory greetings. “Out at the big farm. In the northwest corner again.”

  “The hemp?” Lucas was intrigued enough to actually leave his stool. “That’s what, the third time?”

  “Fourth,” Watson corrected. “A few strays came at it three days ago, but they were picked off. They came just after dawn.”

  “After? They must have been starving,” Lena said.

  “Or just really tempted,” Nye countered. “There’s something about that location, or about the hemp. Admiral, I’d like to take a look, maybe collect some samples. Can you get me out there this afternoon?”

  An awkward pause followed as everybody recalled that Nye was in quarantine.

  “A disguise, maybe?” suggested Lena. “We can throw some fatigues, a hat and some sunglasses on him, drive all the way to the corner where the attack happened, and he can scope it out and take samples before anybody notices he isn’t just a guard.”

  “I’d like to get some fresh air,” Nye added wistfully.

  That seemed to be the deciding factor for Watson, who perhaps recalled that in the regular quarantine, the “patients” got to spend time outside every day. “We can make it work,” he said with obvious reluctance, “but you stay in the back of the van until I give you the all-clear, and you’ll have five minutes out there at the most. If anybody spots you, you’ll have to go into quarantine like anybody else, and the lab time will be through. I’ll leave it up to you, whether you want to take the risk.”

  * * * * *

  They were in the van within half an hour, bumping along the rough road to the farm. Lena kept checking her weapon, uncomfortable with the knowledge that she hadn’t fired it in close to two weeks. It felt slightly unfamiliar in her hands, and that was unsettling.

  The ride was uneventful, and the farm was peaceful under the midday sun. From the rear window Lena spotted a few isolated workers, but the farthest fields were quiet as the grave. The northwest corner was deserted, nothing to see but rows of slender plants that formed a wall of green higher than Watson’s head when he stepped out of the van to scan for prying eyes.

  A few seconds went by, Lena and Lucas waiting while the van ticked and creaked, settling around them. The knock on the back door made them both jump, and they shared a sheepish grin as Lucas leaned to turn the handle.

  The farm was even quieter, in its way, than the lab. Lena followed Nye, who strode purposefully toward the fence that stood about thirty feet past the last row of hemp plants. She could see the repair, a tangle of barbed wire coiled in a lethal spiral between two posts that looked new. The wood was still bright, unweathered, and the whole section stood out clearly between the adjacent lines of horizontally strung razor wire.

  “They’ll be fortifying the whole thing tomorrow,” Watson said from behind them. “Fo
r now, they’ve just stuck in whatever they could find.”

  “The forest must be a quarter mile from here,” Lucas said, lifting a hand to his forehead as he gazed toward the distant tree line. Zombies liked forests, with their indigenous snacks and soft soil for digging into at night. “They came all this way when the sun was already rising?”

  “So the guards said,” Watson confirmed. “Lucky their patrol took them past here when it did, or things could’ve gone a lot worse. They’ve increased the frequency of the patrols along here, but that may not cut it.”

  Lena had slung her rifle to her back while she walked, but she gripped it automatically as she looked out at the trees. “This doesn’t make sense, sir.”

  Watson tilted his head, ready to hear. Lena pointed at the fence line and then off to the woods. “The sun had risen when the stragglers got this far, and the report said the patrol arrived on the scene and stopped the zombies when they were already crashing the fence. But look how far it is to the trees. It must have been nearing dawn when they left the cover and started this way, and they just won’t do that if they don’t have a reason. They’re slow and sleepy by that time, and the sunrise would’ve stopped them if they weren’t highly motivated. There’s food in the woods. Maybe not their favorite, but they weren’t likely starving. So if the patrol guys weren’t visible, what was the motivation?”

  “Which direction was the wind blowing?” Nye asked. “Is there a weather recorder here?”

  It was an agricultural station. Watson was sure there was a weather recorder, so he returned to the van to radio while Lucas and Lena walked back more slowly to the line of hemp stalks. Lucas took out a pocketknife and started scraping samples from the closest stalk, plucking a leaf here and there.

  “Move over,” Lena said after watching a few seconds of that. Pulling out her boot knife, she sawed straight through the fibrous stalk about halfway up then presented the three-foot section to Lucas like a giant green nightmare of a bouquet.