Rebecca Levene - Kill or Cure

My imagination began to get darker as the wine hit a system which hadn't experienced alcohol for a long time. It jarred with the anti-psychotics and my thoughts started to twist. "I'm going upstairs," I said, getting abruptly to my feet. "We should get an early start tomorrow. Haru, why don't you take first watch, wake me after two hours."

Haru nodded without looking up, still stuffing his face with the last of the bread and cheese. Kelis didn't respond at all, but her eyes followed me all the way up the stairs.

The room and the bed were both small. I almost didn't have the energy to get undressed, tempted just to collapse straight onto the dusty blue bedspread with its little pictures of stars and planets hidden beneath the grime. But no, I needed a good night's sleep. With grim determination I made my fingers undo each button on my blouse, then the zipper on my khaki trousers. There was a full length mirror on the door of the wardrobe and I looked at myself in it once I was entirely naked.

If anything, I was even thinner than when I'd first been taken from the base by Queen M, all the food I'd eaten burned off by nervous energy. There were fading bruises on my ribs, a cut on my arm, a bullet wound in my leg, darker bruises around my eyes and a neat row of teeth marks against the bridge of my nose. Still, looking in that mirror, at the flaming red hair and the high cheekbones, I almost recognised the woman I'd once been, the one who'd loved and married him. But then I looked into my own green eyes and thought, no, that woman is gone.

I was still looking at myself when Kelis came through the door. Her eyes caught mine in the mirror, dark and haunted. I wondered if she thought about the girlfriend she'd left behind – if she ever judged herself so harshly by someone else's standards.

I didn't turn round as she walked towards me, not even when her arms circled my waist and pulled me back against her. The material of her t-shirt felt rough against my naked back as she bent to kiss my neck.

"He loved me," she said. "He knew I'd never love him. Even if I'd… I never would have."

"Love is like that," I whispered, the sound trailing off into a moan as her lips hit the sensitive spot at the nape of my neck.

"Blind, you mean?" She finally let go, allowing me to turn round and face her as she tugged her t-shirt over her head in one quick, efficient motion. Her breasts were bare beneath it, small, high and firm.

"Hopeless," I said, leaning forward to take one of her tight brown nipples into my mouth. It felt less intimate than kissing her. Her skin was coffee brown and soft beneath my lips.

"Is it hopeless?" she asked, and I knew she wasn't talking about Soren.

"Yes," I said, moving my fingers down to the fly of her shorts, pushing them hurriedly away from her legs. "I've only ever loved one man and I keep telling myself he's half a world away, but the truth is he's probably dead."

She stopped for a moment, then her hands reached out to cup my breasts, kneading the flesh then pinching the nipples hard enough to hurt. "You can always pretend he's watching us," she said and she almost carried off the light ironic tone. Almost.

I didn't, though. I only thought about her and me as we fell onto the narrow bed. I wanted this, I needed it, and the least I owed her was to admit that for this one night it was all about her. I wanted human warmth, the warmth of her thighs around mine, her hand on me – in me. I wanted to feel connected to something in this world where death could come at any time.

Afterwards I thought she'd get up and leave. I thought I'd want her to, but I didn't. I didn't want this to be that impersonal. I was glad when she pulled me against her, spooning her longer body around mine. It had been so very long since I'd been with another person this way that I found that I was crying. She didn't say anything, and I felt the wet heat of her own tears trickling down my neck. I closed my eyes as we drifted into sleep, and I let myself pretend that our tears were for Soren, because someone's should have been.

Haru's warning cry didn't wake me, because the gun shots already had. The window exploded inward in a lethal shower of glass. Only the thick fabric of the comforter saved us from dying right then. Bullets continued to thunder through the darkness of the window but by then Kelis had snapped awake and rolled off the bed, dragging me with her.

Our guns were in the discarded heap of our clothing, tangled at the foot of the bed. Kelis pulled out her semi-automatic and ammo clips while I fumbled for my Magnum. We didn't bother with the clothes – there wasn't time, and it wasn't like a t-shirt was going to stop bullets. The door was in the lee of the bed, shaded from the gunfire for the few minutes until it splintered into uselessness. We belly crawled across to it, the carpet rough against our naked stomachs. Ironic, really, that this was what would leave us with rug burn.

The stairs were sheltered, the inner sanctum of the house. The part of me that wasn't a fighter, and had never wanted to be, told me to stay there safe and let the others fight this out. But I could still feel the imprint of Kelis' hands on my back, my hips, and I couldn't let her be just another corpse I'd left behind.

Haru was cowering at the bottom of the stairs, flinching as splinters of wood flew past. His gun was in his hand but I knew that it was cold and unused. He didn't have any problem letting other people do his dying for him. He looked at my face first, and after a second his eyes drifted lower – then widened in shock.

"Where the hell did they come from?" I screamed at him. He stopped looking at my breasts and looked back round the stairwell.

"I don't know!" he shouted back. "But they knew we were here – they must have done. They would have come straight in if we hadn't locked the door."

He was right and I could guess what was going on: the people of the town reporting the newcomers to their lords, like the well behaved peasants they were. No doubt whoever was out there thought we were planning on moving in on their property – taking the tithe that was their due. If they knew we were just passing through, they'd probably leave us alone, but I didn't see myself going outside and trying to explain that to them.

"They've got us surrounded," Kelis said. To me the gunfire was just white noise, source-less and ceaseless, but she sounded certain and I supposed she must be right. No point ambushing someone and leaving them an escape route.

"Then we break out," I said. "We fight back. With any luck, they've forgotten what that feels like." Ingo had slipped through the shadows to join us. His eyes registered no surprise at my nakedness. It was possible he hadn't even noticed. "You too," I said to Haru. "We've got a better chance the more guns we can point at them – two out front, two out back."

The air was heavy with the smell of brick dust and hot lead. The living room was at the front of the house and the thin sliver of it I could see round the edge of the stairwell looked like a war zone. The sea-shell Mary and the terracotta Basilica were gone from the mantel. Just dust now, like their owners.

I didn't trust Haru to do as I told him, but Kelis took him by the scruff of his t-shirt and virtually threw him towards the front door. I could see the wide, terrified set of his eyes but I didn't wait to see any more because Ingo had my arm and we were both barrelling round the corner of the stairs, towards the kitchen.

Bullets lanced through the air around us. There were fewer of them now, but it only took one. Maybe they thought we were already dead, or maybe they were just running short of ammo. We'd soon find out.

I didn't give myself time to think before I ran out of the door, confident that Ingo would be right behind me. They must have thought we were dead because they had started to walk out of the cover of the derelict cars towards the house. They looked almost comically surprised to see us – a naked woman and a black man running towards them, guns spitting death.