what had happened to them. Had they fled town, leaving their house and all their possessions behind? Or were they now a part of the horror...outside?
“Your carrots are boiling over,” Ben commented, and I jerked up with a whispered curse. Water was bubbling over the rim of the pot and flowing down to the stovetop. “Sorry,” I muttered, moving it to a different burner. “Cooking is not my strong suit. Most of my dinners come in microwave boxes.” The macaroni suddenly followed the carrot’s example, hissing as it overflowed its container. “Dammit!”
“Here.” Ben gently moved me out of the way, turning down the heat and maneuvering the pots around with the ease of familiarity. I watched him stir in the cheese, spoon the noodles and carrots onto tin plates, and wondered at the surreal normalcy of it all. Here we were, cooking macaroni and having dinner, while outside the world was falling to the vampire-zombie apocalypse.
No sleep for me tonight, that’s for certain. Think about something else, Kylie.
“Wow,” I said, as Ben put the bowls on the table, “a man who can shoot a gun and cook? Why are you still single, Ben Archer?”
I couldn’t be positive in the flickering candlelight, but he might’ve blushed. “Mac-n-cheese is not cooking,” he said with a small grin. “And, I don’t know. I’ve never found the right girl, I suppose. What about you?”
“Me?” I sat down at the table, picking up the spoon left on the cloth, hoping it was clean. “I never had the time for...anything like that,” I admitted, as Ben sat down across from me. “It was either work and study or have a life, you know? I never thought about settling down or having a family. I wanted to concentrate on finishing school, getting a good job. Everything else sort of took a backseat.”
“What about now?” Ben asked softly.
I fidgeted. He was giving me that intense, smoldering look again, the one that made my insides do strange twirly backflips. “What do you mean?”
He gave me a you-know-what-I-mean look. “What do you want to do, now that the world is screwed over?” He jerked his head at a window. “Everything is different, and it won’t be normal for a long time, I think. Do you...” He paused, playing with his fork. “Do you ever think you’d want to...settle down? Find a safe place to wait this out and start a family?”
“You mean pull an Adam and Eve and populate the world again?” He didn’t smile at the joke, and I sighed. “I don’t know, Ben. Maybe. But I also want to see if I can help. I know everything is screwed up right now, but I’d like to help out where I can.” I shrugged and prodded my food. “I haven’t really given it much thought, though. Right now, all I want to do is stay alive.”
“An admirable plan,” came a voice from the doorway.
We both jumped. The dark stranger stood in the frame, the light flickering over his strong yet elegant features. I hadn’t even heard him approach; the space had been empty a moment before, and now he was just there.
“Next time, though, perhaps you should avoid going into any towns or settlements at night,” he said. “The rabids are everywhere now, and spreading. Just like the virus. Soon, nowhere will be safe, for anyone.”
His voice was dull, hopeless, and though his face remained calm, I could see the agony flickering in his dark eyes. As if his mask was slipping, cracking, showing glints of guilt, horror and sorrow underneath. I recognized it, because Ben had worn the same mask when he’d stepped into my clinic that day, a stoic front over a mind about to fall apart. This stranger looked the same.
Ben gestured to the chair at the end of the table. “There’s plenty of food, if you want it,” he offered.
“I’ve already eaten.”
“Well, join us, at least,” I added, and that black, depthless gaze flicked to me. “You sort of saved our lives. The least we can do is thank you for it.”
He paused, as though weighing the consequences of such a simple action, before he very slowly pulled out a chair and sat down, lacing his fingers together. Every motion, everything he did, was powerful and controlled; nothing was wasted. His eyes, however, remained dark and far away.
A moment of awkward silence passed, the only sounds being the clink of utensils against the bowls and the occasional shriek of the rabids outside. The man didn’t move; he remained sitting with his chin on his hands, staring at the table. He was so still, so quiet, if you weren’t looking directly at him, you wouldn’t know he was there at all.
“Where are you headed?” the stranger murmured without looking up, an obvious attempt at civility. Ben swallowed a mouthful of water and put the cup down.
“West,” he replied. “Toward Illinois. I have family there, I hope.” His face tightened, but he shook it off. “What about you? If we’re headed the same direction, you’re welcome to come along. Where are you going?”
For a few seconds, there was no answer. I wasn’t sure the stranger was even paying attention, when he gave a short, bitter laugh. My gut clenched with horror and fear. In that moment, his mask slipped away, and I saw the raw agony beneath the smooth facade, the glassy sheen in his eyes that hovered close to madness.
“It doesn’t matter,” he rasped. “Nothing matters anymore. No matter where I go, I’ll be hunted. I could flee to the other side of the world, and they would find me. I thought...” He covered his eyes with a hand. “I thought I could change things. But I’ve only made it far, far worse.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
The stranger drew in a deep breath, appearing to compose himself. “I’ve...done something,” he admitted, lowering his hand. He stared down at the table, the candlelight reflected in his dark eyes. “Something I will never be forgiven for. Something that will likely cause my death. A very painful, drawn-out death, if I know my kin.” Another of his short, bitter laughs. “And it will be completely justified.”
Outside, something shrieked and slammed into the side of the wall. We froze, holding our breath, listening, as the body scrabbled around the base of the house, watching its jerky movements through a slit in the curtain. Finally, it shuffled off, vanishing into the night, and we started breathing again.
I glanced at the stranger. “Whatever it was,” I began, knowing he probably wouldn’t tell me the details, “it can’t be that bad, right?”
No answer. Just a tight, bitter smile.
I took a breath. “Look,” I began, wondering why I wanted to help him, to ease the darkness in his eyes, on his face. Maybe I was trying to return the favor, or maybe I felt that I was seeing only a hint of the agony beneath that cool, flinty shell. The reasons didn’t matter; I reached out and put a hand on his wrist. “Whatever you’ve done, or think you’ve done, it’s over now. You can’t go back and change it. What you do about it, right now, from here on out, that’s the important thing.”
I felt Ben’s eyes on me and realized I could be talking to both of them. And myself. I couldn’t go back and change anything. Maggie and Jenna were gone. The world was full of monsters, or it would be soon. I could not dwell on the past, what I had lost, who I had failed. From here on, I could only move forward.
The stranger blinked, staring at my fingers on his wrist as though surprised to find them there. His skin was pale, smooth and oddly cool.
“Perhaps...you
