Slowly We Rot (19 page)

          He twisted his head
around and watched in admiration—and not a little shock—as she went right at
the nearest zombie, which had closed within six feet of him.  She deftly dodged
the dead thing’s grasping hands, moving with surprising agility as she punched
the big blade into its temple.  The zombie went rigid immediately and dropped
right to the ground when she pulled it out.  Two more dead things were visible
through the trees another dozen feet or so away.  More were undoubtedly right
behind them.

          Noah’s head shifted and
he finally spotted the rifle.  Its muzzle was just visible, poking out beneath
the clump of greenery.  He snatched it out and groaned as he tried again to get
to his feet.  This time he managed to get all the way upright, but he wobbled
precariously and feared he would take another tumble.  But then he felt Linda
at his side, firmly gripping him by an arm to hold him steady.

          “Can you walk?”

          Noah twisted his head
around for another look back at the pursuing dead things, which were now less
than ten feet away.  “I think so, now that I’ve got my feet under me.”

          “Good.  Let’s go.”

          They started moving,
Linda maintaining her grip on his arm.  Noah didn’t mind.  He needed the help
and was thankful the ankle hadn’t snapped.  If that had happened, he would have
died in these woods today.

          The pain became more
bearable after the first several steps.  That was the good news.  The bad was
that Noah had no clue where they should be going.  He tried to remember details
from the map, but the stress of the moment was making it all fuzzy in his
head.  Also, his decision to play zombie target practice back there on the pathway
had caused them to lose sight of Nick and Aubrey.  For all he knew, they could
be headed in a different direction entirely.

          “Nick!  Aubrey!”

          His voice rang out in
the wilderness, loud and resonant.  Linda took up the call in the next instant,
sucking in a big breath and pushing her lungs to the limit.  The pained look on
her face made it clear how much the effort was costing her.  An image of the old
man whacking away at her ribcage with the hammer popped into Noah’s head.  Over
the last day or so her remarkably improved health had made it easy to forget
there was still unhealed internal damage.

          They each raised their
voices several more times anyway, straining them to the point of ragged
hoarseness.  Soon Linda’s face was covered in a sheen of sweat and before long
her grip on Noah weakened.  He grabbed onto her when he felt her stumble,
becoming alarmed when he saw the glassy look in her eyes.  She managed to stay
upright, but she was done calling out for their lost companions, and so was
Noah.  Nick and Aubrey were obviously out of hearing range.

          At last, on the brink
of utter exhaustion, Noah turned his head to cast a long backward glance. 
Seeing no zombies in the vicinity, he came to a staggering, gasping halt. 
Linda fell against him, wrapping her arms around him to keep from falling to
the ground.  Noah held her and felt the wild, jackhammer beat of her heart
against his chest.  It took several seconds of catching his breath for the
oddness of the moment to penetrate.  He hadn’t held another human being in his
arms in years.  At first it felt awkward, but he held her closer as the moments
passed.  When he eventually tried easing out of the embrace, she pulled at his
arms, whispering the word “no” with her wet face pressed against his neck.

          So Noah held her a
while longer, relishing the rare moment of physical closeness.  He was in no
hurry for it to end.  But he kept his eyes open and stayed vigilant for any sign
of approaching dead things.

          His hand dropped to the
holster at his side when he heard a crunching of undergrowth behind him.  The
gun was in his hand and out of the holster in barely a second.  Still partly
clinging to Linda, he turned about and aimed the weapon in the direction of the
sound.

          The gun’s barrel was
pointed right at Aubrey’s wide-eyed face.  Nick was right behind her, his
expression one of alarm when he saw the gun.  Noah let out a breath and took
his finger off the trigger.

          He holstered the gun
and said, “Jesus, I thought we’d lost you.”

          Aubrey directed a frown
at Nick as he came closer.  “Not my fault.  Blame Mr. Spontaneous here.”

          Nick grimaced.  “Sorry
about that.  Had it in my head that we should try to get around the horde
without backtracking who knows how far.  It was a dumb impulse.  I’ll try not
to be so stupid next time.”

          Noah was impressed by
Nick’s refusal to deflect the blame.  In his experience, this was a rare thing
in big, macho guys.  His respect for the man continued to grow.

          He shrugged.  “Don’t
worry about it.  The important thing is we’re all okay.  So what’s our next
move?”

          “Break out that atlas
again, for starters.”

          Linda was again
reluctant to let go of Noah, requiring him to be extra gentle but persistent as
he eased out of the embrace.  He couldn’t help noting a tiny hint of a smirk on
Aubrey’s face as he pulled his pack off his shoulders.  She winked when their
eyes met, but he kept his face impassive as he gingerly dropped to a knee and
unzipped the pack.  Her thoughts weren’t difficult to read.  She had several
obvious reasons to hope for a kindling of romantic feelings between her brother
and the woman she’d helped rescue.

          Noah took out the atlas
and passed it to Aubrey, who handed it over to Nick.  When Noah stood up with a
wince, Linda leaned into him and put her head against his shoulder.  Noah
couldn’t help glancing at Aubrey when this happened.

          She was smiling.

          Thinking of Lisa and
his undiminished desire to find her, Noah frowned and considered easing away
from Linda, but he wasn’t quite ready to be that callous.

          Not yet.

Getting around the zombie horde took
the better part of the day.  Using a compass to keep their bearings, they again
started heading westward.  This time they stuck to the woods rather than trying
to find another open stretch of land.  On occasion they strayed close enough to
the clogged pathway to hear a low rumble of dead thing groans, prompting them
to resort to a combination of hand signals and mouthed words for
communication.  They moved at a pace so slow it rivaled that of the creatures
they were trying to elude.

          The time this required
was frustrating for all of them.  This was obvious in their tired, strained
expressions.  For Noah, the urge to take off running again was strong.  He
assumed the rest of them felt something similar.  Everyone wanted to get beyond
the danger zone sooner rather than later.

          After a seeming
eternity, Nick halted them with a raised hand.  They were in a significantly
less dense patch of forest now and he wanted to consult the atlas yet again.  After
doing so, he told Noah to stay with the women while he ventured back in the
direction of the pathway to get the lay of the land.  He took off before anyone
could voice opposition to this idea.  In a way, this move was similar to the
impulsiveness that had led to the earlier mess.  But this time Noah had a strong
sense Nick knew what he was doing.

          This faith was rewarded
some twenty minutes later.  Nick moved with such stealth that there was almost
no advance warning of his return.  At first he was just a dark shape threading
his way silently through the trees, one Noah glimpsed mere seconds before he
stepped fully into view.

          “This way,” Nick said,
tilting his head in the direction they’d been going.  “We’re almost past them.”

          A short while later, they
were able to see the twisting pathway through the thinning trees.  Noah tensed
at his first glimpse of pothole-dotted pavement, but relaxed when he saw it was
clear of zombies.  Audible reactions from the women told him they’d seen the
same thing.

          Noah thought of how
depressing the world’s seeming emptiness had been after he’d come down from the
mountain.  On occasion he’d thought he wouldn’t mind happening across a zombie
just to break up the monotony.  He was sure he would never again entertain
similar thoughts.

          They reached the end of
the pathway less than ten minutes later, at which point Aubrey’s guess that it
intersected with the numbered state road was proven correct.  The sky was getting
darker by the time they started down the road.  From the angle of the sun, Noah
guessed they had maybe an hour of daylight left.

          Three more miles of
walking brought them to a point where a narrower road intersected with the
state road from the right.  Two paved lanes curved away into a deepening gloom. 
They stopped here and had a debate about what to do next.  The way ahead would
eventually take them back to the interstate and around the larger zombie horde
out there, but between here and there it looked like miles of nothing.  After
only a bit of discussion, they decided to walk a bit down this new road and see
what they could see.  They would go about a mile in that direction and, if
nothing looked promising, they would turn around and head back to the state
road and reluctantly pitch camp there for the night.

          But luck was on their
side for once.  About a half mile down the road, they came around a slight bend
and found themselves facing a residential area of moderate size.  Houses arranged
in neat rows occupied much of the space up ahead on the right.  From a
distance, the houses were just dark shapes huddled together beneath a gray
sky.  Finer details were difficult to make out, but there was a definite hint
of the funereal about the scene.  No one had lived here for a very long time. 
It bothered Noah not to see lights burning in any of these suburban windows,
despite being all too aware of the reasons for that.

          Aubrey shuddered.  “Spooky.”

          Nick grunted.  “Just
seems that way because it’s getting dark.  In daylight, it’d look like any
other empty place.”

          “I guess,” Aubrey said,
shrugging.  “Anyway, I’m not too interested in heading back to the road.”

          Nick nodded, glancing
at Noah and Linda.  “What about y’all?  Here or back to the road?”

          Noah shrugged.  “Here’s
fine.  We ought to get into one of those houses while we’ve still got a little
light left.”

          Linda indicated
agreement with a nod.

          With the matter
settled, they resumed walking.  Some of the houses they checked out were in a
state of disrepair too advanced for safe habitation.  Another one was notably
better preserved than the rest, but it was so well boarded-up that getting into
it would have required more work than any of them felt up to after a long day
of fleeing dead things.

          At last, however, a
house in reasonable condition was located.  Like its neighbors, it appeared
empty.  Getting in was easy.  The last person to leave the house had firmly
closed the front door, but it was not locked.  A careful search of the interior
verified that it wasn’t occupied.  Soon everyone was shedding their packs and
scouting about for a place to crash for the night.  There were two bedrooms, a
larger one with a perfectly made queen-sized bed and a smaller one with a twin
bed that had obviously been a child’s room.  This was evident in the Disney
posters tacked to the walls.

          Nick and Aubrey took
the bigger room, while Noah did the gentlemanly thing by encouraging Linda to
take the smaller room.  The living room had a comfortable-looking couch.  He
stretched out on it as the others went off to their rooms for the night.  For a
while, he stared up at the dark ceiling and thought about all that had happened
during that long and terrifying day.

          Before long, though,
these thoughts turned fuzzy and his eyes began to close.   He was asleep within
minutes of lying down.

Noah’s eyes snapped open when he
felt the light touch of cool fingers sliding up the length of his forearm.  His
head was still a little groggy from sleep, though he sensed he hadn’t been out
long.  If he’d been in a deeper slumber, he might not have reacted to the touch
at all.  At first he was afraid and disoriented.  The darkness didn’t help
matters.  It took him a few moments to remember where he was and what he was
doing there.  A dim instinct—some old muscle memory from his pre-apocalypse
life—made him grope for a lamp switch that wasn’t there.

          From somewhere above
him, someone made a shushing sound and lightly stroked his forearm again. 
Initially, this only deepened his confusion, but then he realized there was a
note of the familiar in the sound.  In a few more seconds, his eyes adjusted to
the darkness and the shape above him came into faint focus.

          He opened his mouth to
say something.

          But then her face
dipped toward his and in another moment she was kissing him.  Noah did not
immediately respond in kind.  His body went rigid as conflicting emotions
swirled within him.  Letting Linda kiss him was an act of disloyalty.  His
heart belonged to Lisa Thomas.  The flip side of that was that the idea of his
heart belonging to someone he hadn’t seen in seven years was ridiculous, a
thought that triggered guilt as he pictured Lisa’s face in his head.  But the thought
was there and it wasn’t going away any time soon.  Even so, he was nowhere near
ready to admit it out loud.

          As she kissed him, he
felt the places on her mouth that had been penetrated by the old man’s sewing
needle.  They were these tiny nubs of still-healing flesh.  As he dwelled on
the sensation, it occurred to Noah what an act of courage this advance was on
Linda’s part.  After all she had endured, it would have been unsurprising if
she’d opted to avoid intimacy with men for the rest of her life.

          Noah began to kiss her
back.  Her fervency increased in response.  Shortly thereafter her hand went to
the growing bulge at the crotch of his jeans.  He moaned into her mouth when
she gave it a squeeze.

          He started to say
something when her mouth came away from his.  She pressed a finger against his
lips and shook her head.  After giving his crotch one more gasp-inducing
squeeze, she got up from her kneeling position next to the couch and extended a
hand.

          Noah took her hand
after a slight hesitation, allowing her to pull him to his feet.  She led him
out of the living room and down a dark hallway to the former child’s room.  The
tread of his boots on the hallway’s hardwood floor made him cringe.  He was
walking as lightly as he could, but the sound still seemed huge to his ears. 
All he could think about was Aubrey and Nick hearing the sound from the other
bedroom and immediately deducing what it meant.  This caused a reflexive
embarrassment, but then he wondered why he should care.  He was a grown man
accompanying a grown woman to bed.  There was nothing to be embarrassed about.

          Once they were inside
the little room, Linda told him to sit on the edge of the twin bed.  The window
blind was open, letting in a soft glow of moonlight, which was more than enough
illumination.  Noah did as instructed and watched as she pulled off her shirt. 
In the faint light, it was almost possible to imagine the fading bruises left
by the many beatings she’d taken weren’t there at all.  But he could see the
lovely shape of her slender body well enough as she removed the rest of her
garments.  She was entirely nude within moments and he still hadn’t removed a
stitch of clothing.

          Linda pressed him
backward onto the bed, kissing him again as she angled her bare thigh between
his legs and pressed it against his erection.  By then there were no conscious
thoughts of Lisa in Noah’s head.  All he could think about was how nice this
woman’s naked body felt slowly writhing away atop him.  It’d been so long since
he’d last experienced this feeling that he’d almost forgotten how incredible it
was.

          He broke the kiss and
let out a breath.  “I haven’t had sex in seven years.”

          She kissed him again. 
“So let’s make this memorable.”

          Noah had nothing
further to say after that.  The foreplay went on a while longer and then Linda
began to help him out of his clothes.  When she pulled off his pants and tossed
them on the floor, his throbbing erection stood up like an exclamation mark. 
When she mounted him and guided that hardness into her exquisitely moist
center, he cried out in something like relief.

          This undoubtedly had a
lot to do with all those sexless years that had gone by, but mostly it was all
about Linda.  He was absolutely captivated by the slow, rhythmic movement of
her body.  He loved the shape of it and the way her skin felt as his fingers
roved over it.  She winced a time or two as he probed areas still tender from
the beatings.  More than once he had to force himself to be gentler with her
than he wanted.  The longer it went on, the greater the urge became to turn her
over and really ram it into her.  She sensed this and told him it wasn’t an
option.  She was on top because it was all she could handle in her condition. 
Noah understood this and suppressed the urge.  And any frustration he felt was
soon wiped away as she did some things to distract him.  This included varying
her rhythm and shifting the position of her body in a way that at first seemed
subtle but resulted in a significant increase in ecstatic sensation.  As she
pushed him relentlessly to the brink of orgasm, he understood he was being
expertly manipulated by a woman far more experienced than the girls he’d fucked
in his teen years.  In particular, it exceeded his memories of sex with Lisa in
every way.  He didn’t even feel bad thinking that.  It was just undeniable.

          When it was over, she
gingerly curled herself around him as he was still gasping for breath.  After
he’d recovered somewhat, he tilted his head and saw her smiling in the
moonlight.  He touched her hair and slowly ran his fingers through it, a thing
he often did in those long ago post-coital interludes with Lisa.  Lisa’s hair
had been long and lush and incredibly soft to the touch.  Linda’s hair was
coarser, but the comparison was hardly a fair one.  She didn’t have the luxury
of showering on a regular basis.  Years had passed since conditioner had last
touched these locks.  But brushing his fingers through them felt nice anyway. 
There was something soothing about it.  And the way Linda snuggled closer
against him suggested she felt the same way.

          Linda broke a
minutes-long silence with a question.  “So…was it worth the wait?”

          Noah smiled. 
“Definitely.”

          Linda kissed his chest
and smiled.  “Good.  I’m glad.”

          And that was the end of
the conversation.  They were both asleep within a few more minutes.  For Noah,
it was the longest and deepest sleep in recent memory.  It was also the most
untroubled.  There were no dreams of Lisa, no visions of blood and decay.  He
did dream that night, but when he woke he could recall no images from his
dreams, just a lingering sense of peace.