Grace Lost (19 page)

Out of breath, he half
moaned.  “God, Zoe, you drive me wild.”  He tugged my panties down
and put my outer leg over his shoulder and kissed my private area, his tongue
entering me warmly.  I arched my back, the sensation being full of
pleasure and causing my loins to tingle in anticipation of more to come. 
He took as much of me into his mouth as he could, his arms running up my
shirt.  I groaned in response, which made him suck harder on my sensitive
parts.  I cried out in pleasure, lost in the moment.  Boggs climbed
off of me and lifted me off the couch.  He climbed the stairs cradling me
in his arms.  Once at the top of the steps I shifted and wrapped my bare
legs around him.  We bumped into the hallway wall together causing a
thump
. 
Neither of us seemed to care.

He carried me across the threshold
to our room and sat on the bed with me still in his arms, and we kissed each
other with passion.  I could feel his erection pushing against me, and
responded by wrapping my legs around him more tightly as he pulled my shirt off
of me.  He lifted me up onto him and adjusted me until he found his way
inside me. The pain this time was less than that morning, but I still found
myself gasping at the initial twinge.  He began thrusting deeply and I
responded eagerly.  I clung to him, my nails digging into the skin of his
back. We were both fighting to breathe, lost in the new pleasure we had found
from each other’s bodies.  He took one of my breasts into his mouth and
tenderly sucked.  His teeth lightly bit my nipple, sending ripples of
pleasure down my body.  I dug my nails into his back again, causing him to
thrust even deeper, probing my insides with his erect penis.  In a wave of
ecstasy we reached a crescendo together, falling backwards onto the bed, where
we held each other tightly.

Just before we fell asleep, I
whispered to him. 
“Boggs?”

“Ya Zoe?”
He asked sleepily.

“Our clothes are downstairs.”

“Ya they are.”

“Shouldn’t we get them?”

“Why?”

“What if Gus and Emilie see them?
They’ll know…”

Boggs chuckled.

“What’s so funny?” I asked
quietly.

“Zoe, I’m sure they just heard
us.”

I didn’t say another word,
horrified.  We clung to each other, our bodies intertwined on top of the
covers. 

I listened to Boggs’ breathing
until it became slow and even, indicating he was asleep.  I gently placed
my hand on his chest and felt it rise and fall.  “Life,” I whispered to no
one in particular.  

I woke feeling cold, stiff, and
tired.  I could hear Boggs breathing next to me.  We were both still
naked.  The small candle on the vanity had long since burnt itself out and
the room was completely dark.  I felt silly doing so, but I felt my wrist
to make sure I had a pulse.  Convinced I was still alive, I rolled out of
bed and stood.  I felt my way along the edge of the mattress to the headboard,
and reached up in search of the drapes covering the small window.  My hand
met plywood where the window should be, and I remembered that the glass had
been shattered when Boggs had shot through it to save Gus from the zombie in
the yard.  

“Zoe?”  Boggs mumbled from
the bed.  “What’s wrong?”   I heard him stretch.

“I woke up cold,” I said
softly. 

“Come back to bed?” he
whispered.  “Please?”  I heard him shuffle in the bed. 

“It’s so dark in here,” I said.

“C’mon, Zo, come warm up.”

I felt my way back along the
bed.  Boggs had pulled the covers down for me.  I climbed in and
snuggled up next to him, enjoying his warmth.  He pulled the covers over
us both. 

“Boggs?”
  I asked in the quiet of the room.

“Hmm?”
 
he
said sleepily.

“Have you thought about trying to
find your parents?”  I felt him tense.  We hadn’t talked about people
dear to us yet.  “Sorry Boggs, I didn’t mean to upset you.” 

He breathed deeply and I felt his
body start to relax.  “It’s ok, Zoe.  I guess we have to talk about
stuff like that sooner or later.”   He ran his fingers through my
hair.  “I can only hope they’re ok, but I know chances are slim. 
Maybe one day we can look for them, but Arizona might as well be the far side
of the moon right now.”

“Wouldn’t it be nice if we got
better rules?” I asked.

 “What do you mean?”

“Zombie rules.
  In so many movies and books they either can’t come
out in daylight or are slow.  Stuff like that.”

I felt Boggs laugh silently before
he spoke.  “Ya Zoe, better zombie rules would be awesome.”  He turned
on his side and kissed me on my nose.

We heard a knock on the
door.  

“Ya?”
  Boggs called out.

Gus answered.  “You guys
ready for the day?  It’s just starting to get light outside and we need to
burn those bastards.”

I groaned, not wanting to get out
of the bed that was just starting to feel warm again. 

“Be right there, Gus,” called
Boggs.

I heard Emilie giggling from the
hallway.

Boggs kissed me on the forehead,
then the neck, and then my bare breast.  “I have to go help, Zo.  Do
you want to stay here?”

I shook my head no, and then
realized it was too dark for him to see the gesture.  “No, I want to be
with all of you.  I can help.”

“Ok.”  He moved to my other
breast, and sucked on it longingly.  I felt desire stirring inside of me
and wished Gus wasn’t outside the door.  I wished we didn’t need to get up
and go outside.

There was another knock on the
door.  “C’mon, up and at-em,” said Gus.  Boggs groaned against me,
and then climbed out of bed.  He stumbled to the vanity and I could hear
him searching blindly though one of the drawers.  After a moment his
lighter cast the room in a dim glow and he lit a fresh candle.  It wasn’t
much to see by, but I pulled the covers up to my neck and clutched them to my
chest.  I smiled, seeing that Boggs was physically excited and ready for
the morning.  I watched him dress in a pair of old jeans from the
armoire.  Whoever had lived here was bigger than him, so the jeans were
baggy. 

“Wearing someone else’s underwear
is kind of gross,” he said.

“At least they’re clean,” I
said.  “At least you can hope they are.”

 “Ok, Zoe, get
yourself
up and dressed.”  He paused in thought. 
“That way I can undress you later.”  He grinned at me.

I smiled back at him.

“I’ll meet you downstairs,” he
said.

“’Kay.”

He pulled a t-shirt on and left
the room, closing the door behind him.

I stretched under the covers,
dreading getting up and being cold again.  It felt like winter was trying
to arrive early.  I found some pink tights in the armoire and slid them on
over a pair of men’s underpants.  I still had my bra with me, so put that
on next and then used another of the overly large button up shirts that I was
becoming accustomed to.  I finished the odd ensemble by pulling a pair of
men’s white socks on over the tights.  They came nearly to my knees. 
I knew the outfit wasn’t fashionable but hoped it would at least keep me
warm.  I blew the candle out and left the room, wondering why a pair of
pink tights was in a men’s wardrobe. 
Creepy.

I stopped by the bathroom to tend
to morning business.  It was lighter than the bedroom since there was a
small un-boarded window and the sun was rising.  I wasn’t ready to look at
my hip again, afraid of what I might find.  The pain was less today and I
hoped that was a good sign.  I looked in the mirror and was glad I still
looked like me, even if I thought I wasn’t much to look at.

“Zoe?”  I heard Emilie call
up to me from downstairs.

I walked back into the hall. 
“I’m coming!”

I walked quickly down the stairs
to join the others. 

“Morning,” said Emilie with a
smile.

Boggs chuckled.  “I like the
outfit, Zo.”

I curtseyed slightly and said, “
why
, thank you.”

The fireplace had been turned back
on and the main level of the cabin was warmer than upstairs.  Gus cleared
his throat.  “We need to get the bonfire going outside.  I don’t want
to risk smoke being seeing all day long.  We can do that then grab a snack
for breakfast.  Zoe, I hate to ask, but is your head clear this morning?”

I looked at him, not
understanding.

“I mean, do you…you know…
sense
…anything?”
he clarified.

My face grew warm.  I shook
my head ‘no.’

“Ok.  Then here’s the
plan.  Boggs and I piled the bodies up in front of the house last
night.  The area’s pretty open, so there shouldn’t be too high a risk of
the fire spreading.  There’s a bottle of camp stove fuel in the shed, so
we’ll use that to ignite it.  We’ll need to add some materials though to
keep it burning.  There’s lots of scrap wood near the shed, but we’ll need
some paper too.  I’ll grab the trash from last night’s supper.  Y’all
ready?”

“Ya,” said Boggs.

“Ok, let’s not waste daylight,”
said Gus.

Boggs nodded.  “Let’s do it.”

The two men climbed out the window
in the kitchen first, followed by myself and Emilie.  Being the second one
out, Boggs had handed both firearms and the sack of trash out to Gus. 
Once outside, the stench from the corpses was unusually sickly sweet, making me
gag.  It wasn’t the normal smell of death.   I covered my mouth
and nose with the sleeve of my shirt.  I looked around and saw the others
had done similarly.  We walked toward the pile of dead bodies, but kept
our distance.  Gus left the group to go to the shed and after a couple of
minutes emerged with a can of fuel.  Boggs stepped toward the pile and
tucked paper bowls and garbage into a crevice formed by two of the
corpses.  Gus walked up to the starter materials and splashed fuel on
them, then circled the pile to douse the bodies themselves.   Boggs
walked to the pile of wood next to the shed and carried several pieces of odds
and ends back with him.

“Ok, kids, step back,” said Gus
trying not to choke from the smell of the dead.

We all obliged, taking several
steps backward.  Gus took a pack of matches from his pocket, struck one,
and flicked it at the pile.  His aim was true, and the flame ignited the
fuel and quickly traveled and lit the paper plates on fire.  Smoke began
to rise and before long the heat from the blaze caused us to back away even
farther.  Boggs wrapped an arm around me.  The smell of burning flesh
and hair soon caught my senses.  It was too much to bear.

“I need to go in,” I moaned.

“Probably best we all do,” said
Gus.  “I’ll come back out later to…uh…stoke them and add wood scraps.”

I was on the verge of vomiting, so
ran to the window and crawled back inside in hopes of escaping the smell. 
Emilie was soon behind me.

“God that was nasty,” she
proclaimed. “Zoe, you ok?  You look pale.”

I nodded.  “I’m ok. 
The smell.
  It just made me feel sick.”

“I guess none of us is used to
burning human bodies,” she sighed. 

“Let’s talk about something else?”
I asked.

“Sure, ok,” she said.  “I
slept with Gus last night.”

My attention now grabbed, I looked
up.  She giggled, obviously getting the reaction she had hoped for out of
me.  “We didn’t
do
anything,” she added.  “We just slept
together to stay warm.  He’s actually quite a gentleman.”

“He seems really protective of us
all,” I said, not really knowing what else to say.

“We were falling asleep and heard a
loud thump in the hall.”

I looked at her and she was
grinning.

“Ya…we heard that too.”  My
face felt hot.

“C’mon, Zoe, let’s go clean up the
living room.”

She walked ahead of me.  I
saw the clothes Boggs and I had shed and started picking them up.  I was
too embarrassed to look at Emilie. 

“Hmm,” she said.  I heard her
crunching on something in her mouth.  “We left the chips out but they’re
still ok. 
Just a little stale.”
 

She crumpled the bag closed and
took it and the vodka bottle back to the kitchen.  I took the opportunity
to grab the rest of our loose clothes and ran up the stairs with them.  I
heard her giggling from downstairs.

I tossed the articles of clothing
into a corner of our room and ran back downstairs.  The guys had just
climbed back in from outside and Gus was asking Emilie what was so funny.

“Nothing,” she said.

“The fire’s going nicely now,”
said Boggs.  “We need to think about moving the car closer to the cabin.”

Gus interrupted.  “There’s a
bit of an incline from there to here, so it may be tricky since we’ll be
pushing it.  I want it closer but for now we may need to just carry
supplies back to the cabin.  There’s a wheelbarrow in the shed we can
use.  We should also take pillow cases to haul smaller stuff.”