Shattered World (Broken World Book 2) (18 page)

“What’s wrong?” he whispers, kissing my face gently. Like every other time he’s gentle with me, it makes me think of when I was sick and he took care of me. It makes me feel loved.

“I just couldn’t stop thinking about Victor’s wife. How devastated he was. How I would feel if it was you…” I bite my bottom lip because I can’t say anything else. It’s too difficult to talk about.

Axl doesn’t respond. He pulls me close and covers my mouth with his, draping his damp body over mine. Slowly, he eases away my pain, moving down my body with his touch and kisses. Caressing every inch of my skin until all the hurt has faded to the far reaches of my mind and all I can think about is Axl and this moment. And how much I love him.

I want to tell him, but I’m so afraid of how he’ll react. I’ve never had another human being tell me they loved me. Never felt with any certainty that I loved someone else until I had Emily. But this is different. So explosively and amazingly different than anything I’ve ever felt before.

“Vivian,” he whispers as his lips trail up my jaw and to my ear. “Would you do somethin’ for me, if I asked?”

“What?” I gasp. I can’t promise him until I know what it is, because I have a sneaking suspicion it has to do with me going on this run to Vegas.

“Stay here,” he says, confirming what I already thought. “Don’t go on the run.”

He kisses his way down my body, between my breasts and to my stomach, then to my inner thigh. I tremble. He’s taking advantage of me, asking me when I’m weak.

I let out a moan as his tongue teases me. “You know I can’t do that.” It takes every ounce of willpower I have to get those words out.

He looks up at me, his eyes pleading. “I don’t wanna see you in danger.”

“And I don’t want you to be in danger. But this world is dangerous now, and that’s just the way it is.” He frowns, and I reach down, putting my hand on his cheek. “We’ll be okay. Just like before.”

His eyes grow dark. He crawls back up the bed, lying down beside me. His hand caresses my cheek, and he bites his lip. “I ain’t sure if I could do that—” He swallows, and it takes him a few seconds to get the words out. “I understood. When I realized Victor kept his wife because he loved ‘er too much to let ‘er go. I understood.”

My heart leaps. He’s telling me he loves me without telling me. It’s a big step for him. I know it is because he and I are the same. My eyes fill with tears, and the words bubble up inside me, just dying to come out. But I can’t force them. No matter how hard I want to say it, no matter how true I know they are, I can’t make the words come out. It’s too scary.

Instead, I pull him to me and kiss him again. He presses himself closer to me, and his body feels hot and muscular against my skin. I wrap my legs around his waist and cry out when he pushes inside.

“We’ll be okay,” I whisper.

He buries his face between my breasts, and his lips are warm against my skin. “Stay.”

His body moves faster, and I squeeze my eyes shut. I dig my nails into his back and cry out. I can’t speak. I can’t do anything but gasp.

“Please,” he says.

“I can’t,” I finally manage to get out. “I can’t let you go without me.”

Axl grunts and his mouth covers mine. He moves faster and faster until everything fades away and all that’s left this in this whole world is just the two of us.

20

IN THE MORNING, AN ODD SENSE of déjà vu comes over me. We’re all congregated in the common area, some of us getting ready to head to Vegas while others come to see us off. It feels like we were just here, and the ball of dread in my stomach isn’t any less intense this time around. How can we be doing this again already?

When Victor shows up, he’s showered and dressed in clean clothes. He looks and smells a million times better, and his expression is serene, like he’s a little more at peace than he was when we left him yesterday. Maybe that means he’ll pull through for us. That taking him on this run won’t be a total mistake.

One can only hope.

Axl told me that Winston and Nathan dragged his wife’s body out of the shelter last night after everyone else had gone to sleep. They buried her on the surface. Somewhere behind the building, probably close to wherever they buried James and the pilot. Axl said they all agreed to keep the incident quiet. It’s for the best.

I can’t disagree.

To my annoyance, Darla is here to say goodbye as well. As if any of us want to see her stupid face before we head off. Okay, maybe Angus does. Well, not her face exactly. Darla is draped all over him, and he can’t keep his hands off her. It’s obscene. They obviously had a fun night together. It doesn’t surprise me, but it still makes my already uneasy stomach lurch.

My eyes meet hers and everything inside me twists painfully. No matter how hard I try to keep my emotions off my face, I can’t. My mouth scrunches up into an expression that I’m sure has to resemble the brothers’ whenever they purse their lips.

She must take my expression of disgust to mean something else, because she pulls away from Angus and actually comes over to me. “You scared, Vivian?”

It’s the first time she’s said my name since she got here. I flinch at the sound of it rolling off her tongue. It takes me back, but the feeling isn’t pleasant. I can’t make myself answer her. It doesn’t seem to matter, though. She’s one of those people who loves to hear the sound of her own voice.

“I wanted to go, but Angus told me to stay here where it’s safe. He’s such a sweetie. I’ve dated a lot of assholes in my life, so believe me, I know the difference. It’s just so strange how I had to wait until the whole world ended to finally find a nice one.” She rolls her eyes so far back that all I can see are the whites.

I cringe again. I had an almost identical thought about Axl just a couple of days ago. Why do she and I have to be so similar? Why can’t I look at her and pretend that I don’t have the same dimple or that her eyes aren’t the same color as mine? It makes my stomach churn like the waters of a rocky river.

She blabbers on, talking about falling in love and how often she’s done it and how wrong it always was. The more she talks, the sicker I feel. It’s torture, listening to her talk about love so casually when it’s clear she has no idea what love really is.

“Okay, everybody. We gotta head out,” Axl calls out.

Darla abruptly stops talking. An emotion I don’t quite recognize goes through her eyes, and she looks away from me, down toward the floor. “You be careful out there, you hear?”

She won’t look me in the eye, and her cheeks turn red. It hits me hard in the gut. Like a freight train. She knows.

“Were you ever going to tell me?” I ask before I can stop myself.

She looks up, but she doesn’t seem ashamed. “Didn’t need to. Was clear you knew.”

“But you didn’t have the decency to at least talk to me about it after what you did? After everything you put me through?”

She rolls her eyes and looks away. “So dramatic, just like your father.”

Tears sting at the back of my eyes, and this time I’m the one who looks away. If I have to look at her a second longer, I’m pretty sure I’ll throw up.  “You’re a bitch.”

A sob shakes my body, but I manage to keep it down. When I look up, my eyes meet Hadley’s. Of course she saw and heard it all. I was stupid to think I could keep it quiet.

“What did I do to you that was so bad? I left you with your dad. It ain’t like I ran off and left you alone.”

I turn toward Darla with eyes as big as golf balls, and before I can stop them, tears fall down my cheeks. I hate her. I’ve hated her for so long, but right here, right now, I hate her even more. It has nothing to do with her leaving me or my father beating me, or the fact that she doesn’t love me. I hate her because she’s the reason I couldn’t tell Axl I loved him last night. I wanted to, so badly. But I was too afraid to say the words.

“I have to go,” I say, turning away from her.

I wipe the tears from my cheeks and do my best to pull myself together as I head up the stairs with everyone else. Hadley puts her arm around my shoulder and gives me a half hug. I have no doubt she heard the conversation, but she doesn’t ask any questions. And I don’t tell her. I can’t. Not now, maybe not ever. Darla was supposed to be a part of my past. If only I could have kept her that way.

Axl stops outside the control room and catches my eye. He gives me a concerned look, but I shake my head. We don’t need to focus on my drama right now. If it were up to me, we’d just ignore it forever. We need to concentrate on the undead walking around. To make sure we don’t get ourselves killed.

Al sits at the desk in the control room since there is no more James. Jhett is with him, and Al stops in the middle of explaining how things work so he can turn our way. I guess he’s showing Jhett the ropes.

“Looks like there’s about ten of them up there,” Al says, swiveling around in his chair to greet us. He has a big smile on his face. He must be happy to be back in his element around electrical equipment. Even if it is just monitoring the undead outside our shelter.

Angus is going with us, so Winston will throw the flare today. Trey and Anne will back him up.

“Let’s head out,” Winston says tensely.

He leads the way to the surface with the rest of us following behind. For some reason, the tension in my stomach lessens the higher we go. We aren’t headed to Vegas straight off, so that definitely helps me breathe a little easier. Boulder City will be crawling with them too, but it will be nothing like the numbers we saw in Vegas. Even going into Vegas doesn’t concern me as much this time. We know enough to avoid the Strip, and I’m confident we’ll be able to find everything we need at the medical supply warehouse or the urgent care clinic. Axl and I came within a second of death on the last trip and managed to make it out alive. What could go wrong this time?

The six of us going on the run head toward the Nissan. Angus climbs in the driver’s seat, and Hadley gets in the front next to him. Axl and I take the middle, leaving the back row for Victor and Brad.

Brad hasn’t spoken a word since he arrived in the common area this morning. He’s pretty pissed about going. He’s definitely the “sit back and let others take the risks” type of person, so I know he never would have volunteered for this if we’d left it up to him.

“Everybody buckle up,” Angus growls as he pulls the car around and gets ready to head through the gate.

Winston tosses the flare over the fence before jogging to the gate. Unlike last time, most of the undead don’t take the bait. Three stumble after the flare, but the rest follow Winston. Anne and Trey are at his side, and they jab as many of the undead through the holes in the fence as they can. They have their guns as backup, but since we’re trying to conserve our ammo, they aren’t using them right off.

“Bastards are gettin’ smarter,” Axl hisses.

My shoulders tense, and I shake my head. Even though I know he’s right, I can’t believe it’s possible. They’re dead. They don’t have the ability to think or feel. How can they be getting smarter?

“This is gonna be rough,” Angus says through clenched teeth. “Hang on.”

Winston swings the gate open. The second it’s wide enough to drive through, Angus hits the gas. He speeds past Winston, taking out two of the undead in the process. The tires thump over the rotting bodies, and we bounce in our seats.

I twist around and watch the shelter fade in the distance just like before. It’s hard to tell because Angus is driving so fast, but it looks like one or two got inside the fence. I tense up and grab Axl’s arm.

“Can you see? Did they get them?”

He looks through the back window as well. “Looks like they got ‘em all.”

“I hope everyone is okay,” I say as we both turn around to face the front.

“Should be more worried about our asses than theirs,” Brad mutters from the back.

I’m already irritated, so I have the overwhelming urge to tell him to shut up.

Axl beats me to it, though. “Shut the hell up.” He turns away from the prick in the back and puts his arm around me. “You okay?”

I nod and try not to let the tears build behind my eyes. It’s impossible, though. I’ve never cried this much in my life. Something about the world as we know it ending and the dead coming back has turned me into a blubbering idiot.

“She knew,” I whisper. “This whole time she knew who I was and didn’t say anything. She doesn’t care. Just like I thought.”

He squeezes my shoulder and kisses me on the temple.

“Hey now, we don’t need none of that,” Angus says. There’s teasing in his voice, but when my eyes meet his in the rearview mirror, they’re hard. “Ain’t fair to the rest of us.”

“Seems like you had a pretty good time last night,” I say bitterly. I shouldn’t be angry at him. He doesn’t know Darla is my mom. But I am. I feel like he’s betrayed me in some way. Maybe it has more to do with the things he said to Axl than him sleeping with my mother.

He chuckles and shakes his head. “That woman’s wild, let me tell ya. I was pretty pissed off when I found out you two swiped all my condoms. Lucky for you, she can’t have no kids, otherwise I woulda been bangin’ on your door in the middle of the night to get me some.”

I sit up straight. No way she lied to him, right? “You mean she had her tubes tied?” Makes sense after me. It would be the only way to be sure she’d never have another obligation to look after.

He shakes his head. “Nope. She said she couldn’t ever have no kids, that she was born sterile.”

I roll my eyes and look at Axl. Should I tell Angus the truth? It’s just like her to make up a lie that’s so easily refutable. Axl shrugs and shakes his head. He’s leaving it up to me. Great.

“Don’t trust her,” I tell Angus. But that’s all I can get out. I just can’t go into the whole thing. Not here. Not like this.

Hadley looks back at me, and her green eyes quietly study mine. She keeps her mouth shut, though. I don’t know what she’s thinking or if she knows about Darla being my mom, but she obviously knows now that we have some kind of history between us. I can tell by the way she’s looking at me that she thinks I need to be honest with Angus. But I just can’t, so I look away.

Angus scoffs. “Why would she lie ‘bout somethin’ like that?”

“Some people just lie.”

He shakes his head, but doesn’t say anything else. My gaze meets his in the rearview mirror again. His lips purse and he narrows his eyes. Angus isn’t as smart as Axl, but he isn’t a total moron. I’m not sure if he’ll be able to figure it out, though.

***

The drive to Boulder City is as silent as the outside world.

In the back, Victor stares through the window wordlessly. On the surface, he looks better. He’s clean and his hair is combed. But a shower can’t wash away the depression. He’s struggling. Anyone can see that. Maybe he can pick himself up some antidepressants while we’re out.

Brad sleeps. Or he pretends to sleep, anyway. His head rests against the window with his ratty hat pulled down low, but I don’t think he’s really out. He just doesn’t want to talk to any of us.

We aren’t able to avoid Vegas completely. The interstate we take to Boulder City gives us a great view of the hordes of zombies—the word is getting easier to think—that have taken over Vegas. It’s unreal, and the sight of it makes everything inside me feel heavy like my organs are filled with lead. If only there was some way to avoid going there. But there isn’t. We need to get medical supplies.

Then again… “Maybe we can check out a hospital or something in Boulder City,” I say as we stare out over the masses. “See if it’s any less overrun.”

“It has to be better than that,” Hadley says.

Her eyes are huge and full of terror. I feel for her. She was terrified to come. Maybe I should have encouraged her more to stay behind. There’s no reason for her to risk herself like this when other people could have done it. She’s determined, though. I doubt it would have worked.

“We’ll check it out,” Angus says. “But we got no idea where any of that shit is. Don’t wanna be drivin’ all over the city lookin’ for it.”

I sit back. He’s right. We have everything mapped out in Vegas already. To drive around aimlessly in Boulder City doesn’t make sense, not when we already have to drive back through Vegas anyway.

“Maybe Brad knows where one is,” Hadley says.

I glance over my shoulder at Brad. His eyes are still shut, but his mouth twitches slightly like he’s listening. Asshole. I turn back around.

“I don’t think he’s going to be much help. He seems more like the look-out-for-yourself type of person,” I say, not caring whether or not he can hear me. Actually, I hope he
does
hear me.