Emma Shortt: Waking Up Dead

No, she wasn’t the blonde, but she was woman enough. All fire and sass, he got that from her immediately—the machete being his first clue—and beautiful to boot, in a stick-my-attitude kind of way.

“Listen,” she said, turning and fixing those huge eyes on him. “This is gonna sound odd, but you didn’t happen to see a guy out there? An alive one? Name of Tyrone? Tye?”

“Tye?”

“My friend. We had to split up but we were planning to meet up at that weird pink boutique a couple of blocks over. Kelly’s Clothing.”

Two people still alive? But…of course, one there and one here, why hadn’t he realized? Luke shook his head slowly as the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. A moment later and he understood exactly what that meant. “I was just there, at Kelly’s Clothing Boutique,” he said slowly.

She started. “You were there? Why?”

Luke chose his words carefully. “I was following a pack of zombies. They’d sniffed someone out, and I wanted to find whoever that was.”

“Sniffed someone out? A person? You were looking for another person?”

“I’m always looking for another person,” he said honestly.

“Then…it’s just you? Or is there a bunch of you?”

“Survivors you mean?” he asked. “No. It’s just me.”

She frowned leaving Luke to wonder if she was disappointed, but then she spoke and he realized exactly what she was thinking. “And the boutique? When you were there did you see my friend?”

“No. It was just the zombies,” he said, and he spoke as carefully as he could but made no attempt to sugarcoat his answer. They were, any people who were left, long since past that. “It didn’t seem as if there could be anyone alive in there. I barely made it out myself.”

She narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean it didn’t seem ?”

“The zombies got in before I did,” he said. “And they had to have got whoever was there. There was nowhere for them to escape, and it was an entire pack.” He didn’t add that his last grenades had pretty much totaled the place. There was no need to mention that.

“Jesus…you mean…”

Luke reached out and patted her on the shoulder. “I’m really sorry.”

She opened her mouth, closed it, and then opened it again. “We should never have split up. I knew it was a bad idea. For fuck’s sake.”

“Then why—”

“We had no choice,” she snapped. “Zombies were everywhere.”

“I am sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realize. I only expected to find one person, but it all makes sense now.”

She dropped her head in her hands. “It always does. Nasty, nonstop, horrible, fucking sense.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again, mainly because he did not know what else to say.

Silence held for a moment, just a moment, then she lifted her head. “Forget it.” She bit the words out. “Just forget it.”

Her tone may have been harsh but Luke could see the pain behind it, and he knew exactly what she was feeling, had experienced the same emotions many, many times. He looked away in an attempt to give her some space. Glancing over the windows again, checking the vending machine, the swimming pool, the showers…eventually though, he came back to the woman. He couldn’t help it. Couldn’t quite accept that she was actually sitting next to him. It felt unreal to him and yet…clearly she was not suffering from the same intense emotions that he was. She held her drink in her hand and scowled at something he couldn’t see.

Luke struggled for something, anything, to break the silence, and after a moment settled on her bare legs. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” he said slowly. “But why the hell are you dressed in panties and boots?”

She lifted her drink, swallowed some more soda, and scowled again. “My jeans got covered in zombie pus and I have an open wound.”

“You’ll freeze.” He made to shuck off of his jacket and pass it across to her, but she waved his offer away.

“I’m fine,” she said. “My jacket is Gore-Tex. Weighs less than a pound, all weather resistant.”

“You’re lucky to have that.”

“It wasn’t luck,” she replied. “I peeled it off a dead woman.”

“How…resourceful.”

She shrugged. “Not resourceful enough, or I wouldn’t be sitting here freezing my ass off.”

Luke felt something completely inappropriate to the situation stir as he imagined that ass and maybe it was lack of sleep, or the weirdness of actually talking to a person, but he couldn’t seem to stop the words that fell from his lips. “You’re welcome to sit on my lap and get warm that way.”

She turned and met his gaze, narrowing her eyes at his teasing words. “You’re welcome to get to know my blade a bit better.”

Luke laughed. He couldn’t help it, and inexplicably, considering their dire situation, felt his spirits rise. Yes she was giving him a death glare, and yes she’d just lost her friend, and yes the zombies were everywhere…but she was so fucking cute. Maybe there were possibilities here, assuming they survived, of course, but then wasn’t that always an assumption?

“I’m Luke by the way,” he said—thinking perhaps he should introduce himself before he really tried to hit on her.

She narrowed her eyes a little more, tilted her head, and then a heart beat or two later, smiled back. A little dimple appeared in the left corner of her face and Luke swallowed, his chest suddenly feeling painfully, and oddly, tight.

“Jackson,” she said.

And then the pounding began.

How many were there, Jackson wondered. Five, ten, fifteen? There was no way to know, and with the way her day was going she wouldn’t be shocked to find the entire cast of Firefly , fully zombified, trying to bash their way in. She eyed the vending machine—which was holding firm—and ran her fingers along Mandy’s hilt, comforted in a totally fucked-up way by the feel of the wood. Options played through her mind, plan after plan discarded.

“Is that your last name?”

She looked away from the seemingly unavoidable future kill zone and met Luke’s eyes. Luke who was, she had to admit, a surprise in more ways than one. When she’d first heard his deep, rumbling voice, shock had filled her, and then he’d dragged her through the door, muscles bulging and testosterone seething, and the shock had amplified. Jackson wished she could say it was purely due to the fact that he hadn’t tried to kill her, but that would be a lie. It had an awful lot to do with the fact that he was absolute freaking man candy, almost on a par with the Serenity captain himself. Maybe it was weird thinking that—what with the shitty situation and all, but she couldn’t help it. He was gorgeous. There was no getting around that fact. He was also, clearly, slightly odd. What else could explain the fact that he looked completely relaxed? That he was asking her stupid questions and inviting her to sit on his lap?

“What?”

“I’ve never met anyone called Jackson before,” he said. “It’s a cute name.”

She gaped. “There are zombies pounding on the door.”

He took another swig of his can. “I know.”

“The Lynx didn’t stop them,” she added. “It should have but it didn’t.”

“They must have skipped around it,” he said slowly. “Either that or it’s not strong enough. But look, there’s no point whispering. They know we’re in here.”

Jackson frowned as she realized that was exactly what she had been doing. “Built-in reaction.”

He shrugged. “They won’t leave until they’ve eaten us. Makes no difference keeping the noise down.”

“We’re kinda fucked then.”