Page 23 of Dusk & Desire

Linda gasps in outrage, her face paling as her mouth drops open with the imagined horror of Harriet and Jack hearing our moans of pleasure. I punch my brother’s arm.

“Ouch! What? I was just telling the truth.”

I growl at him. “Sometimes the best thing you can say is nothing at all, Axel,” I say, exasperated beyond belief. I wrap my arm around Linda’s shoulder and kiss the top of her head.

“I’m just saying,” Axel unwisely continues. “On the base? Say goodbye to privacy. We’re probably going to be sleeping on top of each other like in some third-world prison.”

“Then we’ll go back to Jack and Harriet after I’ve spoken to my parents,” Linda says with a determined edge in her voice, something I don’t often hear from her. “Or maybe we can even head to California,” she adds.

Before we can comment, the thrumming sound of a helicopter’srotor vibrates through the bridge underneath us, scaring us all at first until we recognize the sound as human-made. Soon, we spot the aircraft, coming at us from the direction of the base.

“Think it’s worth waving at them?” Axel yells over the increasingly louder sound.

I shake my head, caressing Linda’s arm as she clings to me like a baby monkey. “I really doubt they’re wasting fuel to pick up civilians!” I shout.

“We’re almost there anyway,” my girl adds.

Still, we don’t move as the helicopter approaches and then passes above us. Linda does a cute little greeting wave, and my shoulders shake at how adorable she is.

Once the helicopter disappears in the distance, heading the way we came, we silently carry on. We pass a church and hear banging noises inside, so we walk faster until the sound doesn’t reach us anymore. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess. When we get to a gas station, we take a moment to look around for anything useful, but of course, it’s been completely looted, all the fuel hoses off their hooks and scattered around like dead snakes.

Now that we’re in a city again, we keep our eyes peeled for a functioning car, but on a major road like this, all the good ones have been taken, the empty or broken-down ones left where they last worked, sometimes in the middle of the road. We see roadblocks again, and as we pass them, my stomach clenches so hard I think I’m going to puke. Axel has his bat, Linda her gun, and I took a nice butcher knife from the apartment we slept in, but I’m still worried we’ll get ambushed by lawless mobs and Linda will end up injured. Or worse.

As we stop to skirt potential traps and check the odd car, it takes us nearly two hours to cross Niceville and get to Turkey Creek on the border of Valparaiso.

“Let’s stop here to eat,” I say, pointing at a walkway over the water. I guess that’s as romantic as an early lunch gets when you’re dodging aliens and modern-day bandits, not to mention when your brother is with you and your girlfriend, always grumbling about something.

“Where do you want to bury the food?” Axel asks with a mouth full of canned tuna. Linda and I are sharing a can of fried beans with tomato sauce, taking turns dipping our spoons in. My leg tingles where it’s pressed against hers, dangling off the pedestrian bridge.

Unlike my brother, I swallow my food before answering. “Isn’t there a park with a pond or something nearby? We can hide it there.”

Linda’s suspiciously quiet, so I nudge her with my elbow. “What’s up, pretty girl?”

Her lips twist into a grimace. “It’s just… are you sure we need to hide the food from other people at the base? What if they’re hungry?”

I ruffle her hair, then run my fingers through it to gently untie the windswept knots. The contentment the action brings me makes me realize why animals enjoy grooming each other. “If they’re hungry, we’re going to be hungry pretty damn fast too,” I say, keeping my voice even.

“If food isn’t an issue there, we can pick it up on our way back to the old folks’ home,” Axel adds, surprising me. I raised him to pretty much put our needs first, because the world certainly wasn’t. For him to want to share our scavenged food with Jack and Harriet must mean the couple really grew on him during the half a day we spent together, talking and eating.

Linda perks up, though, smiling at my brother and me, chewing happily.

The familiar click of a gun being cocked makes us freeze with food on the way to or in our mouths.Not again.Can we go one day without being a target?

“Put that down, nice and slow. Step away from the backpacks,” a female voice says.

“Are you kidding me?” Axel mutters, voicing my thoughts, then gives Linda a nod.

I turn to look at the woman who spoke and the two men with her. Only one gun, though, in the shorter man’s hands. The men are dressed identically in ripped jeans and T-shirts. The womanhas a bright red top, short shorts, and fishnet tights, torn at the knees. At first, I wonder why she’s bothering with fashion during an apocalypse. Then I notice the state the trio is in: dirty and unkempt. They obviously haven’t bothered to go near water in the week since the aliens came – maybe even before that.

“Get up and walk away if you know what’s good for you,” the woman says. She’s obviously the one in charge. When we don’t move, she pulls out and opens a switchblade. “Now!” she screams, her voice shrill, making Linda flinch against me.

“Let’s talk about this,” I say carefully. “Are you guys heading to the base?”

The men snicker while the woman clicks her tongue. “Fuck that and fuck you,” the one with the gun says, moving the sight from Axel to me. Linda’s hand clutches at my arm almost painfully. I put my hand over it, bringing it closer to the knife at the side of my backpack, hidden from their view.

“Let’s all head in separate ways then, friends,” Axel says, slowly getting to his feet. “Nobody needs to get hurt.”

“Not your friend,” the woman mocks, pointing her knife at him. “And we’ll be on our way, alright. As soon as you step away from those nice backpacks.”

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