Kenn Crawford - Dead Hunt

“I was beginning to like peek-a-boo,” Michael laughed, still flushed with embarrassment as Lucy playfully pushed him. “But I will find something else for you later,” he reassured her.

“Thank you,” she said dryly. “And, Michael?”

“Yeah, Luce?”

“I’m sorry I got mad at you. You know…before.”

“That’s ok, Lucy, I understand. I would have done the same thing.”

“Oh, please,” Lucy laughed. “If you woke up and discovered I had changed your clothes and bathed you, you would be dancing with joy.”

“No, I wouldn’t. I would be pissed.”

Lucy didn’t know how to take his response. His face looked as if was being truthful.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because I would have been unconscious and missed it,” he laughed as she punched his arm again.

They ate in silence after that. Lucy glanced at him a few times and occasionally caught him stealing a look between the buttons.

“Oh, for Gods sake!” she said, standing up.

“What? What is it?” Michael asked.

Lucy stood in front of him, unbuttoned the sweater and let it fall to the floor. “Just look already. You’re trying to peek at them without getting caught, and you’re driving me up the wall! So just take a good look and get it over with!”

She held her hands on her hips defiantly and stared off in the distance looking at nothing. When she finally looked down, Michael was reaching for her sweater. As he stood, he gently pulled the sweater up over her arms and shoulders and clasped it in front of her.

“Lucy, you are beautiful, sexy and the most wonderful person I have ever known,” he said in a soothing voice. “I’m sorry if I offended you.”

“Michael,” she started to protest but he silenced her with a gentle finger to her lips.

“Lucy, I could spend hours getting lost just looking in your eyes, watching how your nose crinkles when you concentrate, or how your tongue darts out just a little to wet your lips before you speak. I could fill an entire day just watching how your hair brushes against your cheek. I’m sorry I was staring where I should not have been looking, but you do not need to take your clothes off for me to enjoy the view.”

“So you don’t want to see me naked?” she blurted and recognized how cold it sounded.

Michael just smiled his warm smile.

“What I meant was…” she tried to explain, but he silenced her again with a finger to her lips.

“The view,” he smiled warmly, “is as magnificent as you are.”

Michael leaned towards her. She tilted her head to receive him, but much to her surprise he did not try to kiss her. Instead he leaned into her ear and whispered, “I am sorry. It won’t happen again.”

“Liar,” she smiled. Michael smiled with her.

“Would you believe, I will try my best not to get caught looking?”

“That’s better,” Lucy laughed as she started to button the sweater and sat back down on the floor.

Michael sat across from her, and they laughed at each other as they stuck their fingers in the jar and tried to use them as a knife to spread the peanut butter. While they talked, Lucy noticed his gaze would still sometimes fall to her chest. She also noticed that it no longer upset her.

“You have some peanut butter on the side of your face,” she told him.

Much to his surprise, and hers, she leaned over and licked it from his cheek.

“We have work to do,” Michael said when he recovered from the shock of having Lucy lick his face.

She hadn’t expected to do that, but she had expected Michael to take advantage of the moment. But, being the perpetual gentleman that he was, Michael didn’t even try to kiss her. She imagined herself lying on the bed, unconscious and naked, with Michael leaning over her gently washing away the filth from her body. She imagined how gentle and timid his touch would have been, how he probably cursed himself for having to see her naked without her knowledge. She imagined his hands gently washing her…

“What work?” Lucy asked, forcing her mind back to reality before her thoughts of Michael’s sponge bath got too out of hand.

“Robin has something we need to do for her. She wouldn’t tell me the details except that she wanted the both of us.”

Lucy silently pointed to the smashed camera above the door, then to the camcorder.

“Ahh, yes,” Michael smiled. “We need our privacy for those times when all is not what it seems.”

“Remember the cellar?” she whispered.

“Precisely, my Dear Watson, precisely”

“I thought it was, elementary, my dear Watson?” Lucy laughed.

“It matters not, for in the morrow, all shall be revealed.”

“What?”

“We’ll find out what she wants soon enough,” he told her. “Now for the big decision.”

“Which is?”

“Do we use the door,” he pointed to the boarded up doorway, “or shall we take the scenic route?” He nodded towards the hole in the ceiling.

“Until we know the flood gates won’t be opened again, maybe the scenic route would be best?” Lucy suggested.

“True,” he answered as he motioned her to the dresser.

Michael lifted Lucy’s small frame into the attic. As he was climbing in, Lucy looked back and smiled, “Are you going to be staring at my butt the whole way?”

“Of course not,” he answered. “Occasionally I will look where I am going.”

Lucy laughed, “Can we go shopping, honey? I am in need of a new wardrobe.”

“Why of course, my dear,” he answered. “I hear there’s a lovely boutique just right of that giant hole in the wall up ahead. If you would be so kind as to lead the way, I will try not to stare at your butt the entire time.”

She laughed again, then scurried along the rafters like a mouse. Michael followed along, trying not to fall through the floor. He was more distracted than he originally joked. Even in a smelly, old sweater and baggy pants, Lucy looked breathtaking. And crawling ahead of him on all fours did not exactly help matters either.

When Lucy got close to the hole in the wall that led outside, Michael yelled, “Hold up, Lucy!”

She stopped and waited. He crawled up next to her as she fanned herself with the sweater. Flashes of breast popped in and out of view.

“Michael,” she put a finger under his chin, lifting his gaze. “I’m up here.”

“Sorry,” he said as Lucy smiled at his embarrassment of being caught yet again. “Luce, I…I didn’t get a chance to…ummm…”

“What is it, Michael?”

“I didn’t get a chance to clean up the blood.”

Lucy nodded her understanding, and Michael lowered her into the room below. Lucy slipped on a pool of blood and landed hard on her ass. She gasped as her eyes widened in disbelief. Michael dropped next to her and pulled her shocked face into his chest.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “We should have used the door.”

“No, its ok,” she said, her face still buried in his chest. “I’ll…I’ll be ok.”

She was lying and he knew it. The room looked like it had been spray painted with blood. It was the room Lauren had fallen into, the room where zombies had torn the helpless girl in half.

After Michael helped Lucy make a run for it, he spotted the zombies in this room still eating parts of Lauren. He’d figured he was as good as dead anyway and had nothing to lose and had gone on a rampage. He’d found a shield and sword hanging on a wall, a family crest he’d assumed at the time, and though he had cared little about the shield, he had wanted the sword. It wasn’t exactly sharp, but when swung like a baseball ball, it had removed the zombies’ heads easily enough, spraying the walls with their dead blood.