Page 3 of Dusk & Desire

Before we get more than a few blocks away from where we saw the first bodies, my ears pop. I gasp at the familiar sensation, dread twisting in my intestines. They’re back.

“F–fuck Axel, go faster!” I scream, then slam back against my seat when he immediately presses the pedal down. The air hums and people scream louder before a strange metallic shrieking drowns both out. A deepwhoomphsounds, then a ball of fire hits a car not far enough away. My breath catches in my throat when debris hits our windshield, cracking it. Axel swerves, pulling off into a side street.

“They’re killing people,” I say, dumbly. It’s one thing to know it and a whole other thing to see it.

When I look at my lap, I notice Noa’s pale fingers clutched in my own. I cut her circulation right off and she hasn’t said a word. With great difficulty, I force my fingers to loosen around hers.

When the spaceship flies overhead, I instinctively duck, too scared to control my body’s adrenaline-fueled reactions. We need to get out of the city,now.

As Axel maneuvers around the debris and fleeing people, I anxiously pick at the rings adorning Noa’s slender fingers. I wish I could go back a couple of hours when being embarrassed over a mean hacker’s prank was the worst of my problems.

***

“Move faster, Pooh,” Axel hisses at me. He’s taken to calling me Winnie the Pooh. I’d like to believe it’s for my golden locks, but I’m afraid it’s more likely due to my round ass.

I fix the strap of my backpack, the cans inside tinkling as they knock against each other.

“Shh!”

Oh, screw him.

For two days, we’ve been looting grocery stores along with the rest of the mob. Axel nearly peed himself laughing when hecaught me trying to use the self-checkout the first time. Noa just wrapped her arm around my shoulder and then helped me pack. She looked at the tampons and disinfectant before smiling at me, the skin around her eyes crinkling. When she told me that was smart thinking, I nearly forgot we were in the opening minutes of an apocalyptic movie.

Noa’s not here now, though, keeping an eye on our ‘base’ instead; a squat insurance office building, emptied in the initial panic. Because who wants to return to their nine-to-five the day after aliens shoot all our satellites out of the sky and carpet bomb fleeing people? But we haven’t seen any since and we have no idea where they went to. In the movies, they always go for cities like New York or Washington. Or maybe they learned we taste funny and left. I snort at my thoughts and earn a stink-eye look from the brother. How can someone as awesome as Noa be related to a jerk like him?

We reach the bottom of a non-functioning escalator and I groan on the inside. My thighs have been killing me from all this walking around with heavy bags. I woman up and resolve to stop thinking ungrateful thoughts. If it wasn’t for Noa and Axel, I’d be in some bomb shelter now, probably trying not to think about nibbling on someone else’s thighs.

As we reach the exit and I breathe in the fresh night air, a scream shatters the silence. I spin around and freeze at what I see. Three men are ripping the clothes off the screaming woman, jeering at her as she tries to pull free.

“Hey, stop!” I yell. I take a step forward before Axel’s hand pulls me back violently.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he growls.

“They’re hurting her!” I snarl, trying to squirm out of his hold.

“Keep walking!” one of the men yells. Another flashes a knife in our direction.

My mouth falls open, the inherent violence of the object shocking me into motionlessness. Axel takes advantage of the softening of my muscles and starts walking me away from the struggling woman and the band of men about to violate her. Orworse.

“How can they just do that?” I ask Axel with a sob once I can speak again. The woman’s screams start fading in the distance.

Axel flashes me a look. At first, he glares with frustration. Then his brown eyes soften a bit. He clicks his tongue. “You’re too fucking naïve for your own good, Winnie. As soon as the shackles of humanity are removed, we drop our masks. We fuck, we steal, we look out for number one.”

He throws an arm in front of me, making me stop in my tracks. Once our eyes meet, he says slowly and clearly: “We don’t get ourselves killed for something we can’t stop.”

I roll my lips together as the pre-invasion me wars with the me I need to become. Finally, I nod. We’re almost at the office building we’re hiding in when I speak again.

“We need weapons,” I say. “Guns, if we can get them, or knives.”

When Axel doesn’t say anything, I look at him from the corner of my eye. He’s smiling.

“Smartest thing you’ve said, Winnie.”

We climb the last of the stairs to our temporary home and I let my backpack slide down with a groan.

“What did we miss?” Axel asks Noa. The assessing look she gives me makes my heart skip a beat. I look away, busying myself with the supplies we brought to our temporary home. I check my phone out of habit, but there are still zero signal bars. The power comes and goes, though, giving me some hope that humanity is fighting… whatever this is.

“The radio worked for a while,” Noa says and I spin around to focus on her words. Axel jury-rigged a receiver we found in the supply room and we’ve been trying to catch any news from outside of our bubble. I can’t exactly take a plane home to see my family, but maybe word from California would help me sleep more than an hour or two at night.

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