Waking Up Dead

“Yeah. I am,” he said. “We’ll do this together, Jackson. We’ll try to find your friend and then we’ll carry on. See what, if anything, is left.”

“I can’t tell you how happy that makes me,” she whispered. “I really can’t.”

A peculiar judder occurred in Luke’s chest and he smiled at the feeling. “So then on foot? We’ll make it when we’re about a hundred?”

She shrugged. “We’ll be eighty at most.”

“Well then it’s a good job we won’t be on foot, huh?”

She stepped closer so that they were mere inches from one another. “You mean…”

Despite himself, Luke savored the look he could now see on her shadowed face, finally feeling as though he was doing his part. Jackson had probably protected him while he slept but now it was his turn to protect her. He’d get them to Laredo, Texas if it was the last fucking thing he did. He’d apply the same single-mindedness to this as he had to killing the dead, and he’d be damned if anything stopped him.

“Luke?” she prompted.

“Why do you think I brought us here?” he asked, pointing to the back of the building. “It’s where the Batmobile’s stashed.”

Chapter Fourteen

They pulled into the deserted garage midafternoon. Luke had driven past several but every time Jackson pointed one out as a possible extra supply source he’d shook his head and driven on. Eventually she’d closed her eyes and gotten some much-needed sleep.

She could see why now. McGraw’s “stick and spit,” was on a deserted road, plenty of open space for them to look around and be sure they were dead-free. It was a good choice for their first stop.

“Can you see anything?” Luke asked as he slowed the car to a crawl.

Jackson wound down her window, shivering a little from the chill on her exposed face, and craned her head out. The garage was an old-style structure. Painted in fading red, it was surrounded by a few bare tree trunks on the side of the road, with a couple of abandoned cars completing the picture. The weak sun shone dully on the surrounding asphalt and for once Jackson couldn’t see even a single blood splatter. “We’re good. Nothing but clear space. Unless they’re hiding inside.”

“I wouldn’t put it past them right now,” Luke muttered. “So listen, I’ll pull up in front of that pump and check for gas. I don’t reckon they’ll be any in there, though. We’re probably going to have to siphon it out of those cars. I have some tubing but we should probably look for supplies while we’re here. Unlikely they’ll be any, but you never know.”

Jackson waited until Luke pulled to a stop in front of the first pump before jumping out of the car and stretching her legs. “I’ll go inside. You get started on the gas.” It crossed her mind that she might get lucky and find a stash of chocolate or candy. Jackson missed chocolate—badly. She’d give just about anything for a Hershey’s Kiss. “See if I can find anything useful.”

Luke undid his seat belt and followed her out of the car, his brow scrunched up. “You’re going in there by yourself?”

Jackson snorted. “What because I’m so fragile?”

“No, just…well, it’s sensible for us to go in together.”

“Don’t be stupid, Luke. What’s sensible is you cracking on getting our fuel while I try and find whatever in there,” she hiked a thumb in the direction of the garage, “might be of use to us. We don’t want to be hanging out in the open for too long. First rule when on the road: do whatever you have to do quickly and move on as soon as possible.”

“I thought the first rule was to ensure your exits? That’s what you said at the swimming pool.”

Jackson sighed and hefted Mandy. “I’m talking about open-road rules here, not hiding rules. There’s a distinct difference. Open road it’s all about keeping moving. Interiors, all about making sure you have a way to be able to move.”

“Rules aside, we’ll go in together,” he insisted, his brow doing the scrunchy thing again.

A nasty suspicion arose in Jackson’s mind then and she rubbed her fingers along Mandy’s hilt. “Are you going all me-man-I-will-protect-woman on me? Please tell me you’re not, because the whole Batman and Robin thing is not going to work. I don’t want to be Batman, or Robin, for that matter.”

Luke frowned. “No, and the comic-book analogy was stupid. I don’t know why I said it.”

She shrugged. “Guy thing. But, Luke, serious, you know I can take care of myself, right?”

He frowned some more. “I know you’re tough but we need to stick together. It’s just stupid us splitting up and putting ourselves at risk. In fact it’s the whole reason we’re going to have to haunt the interstate for a few days.”

“Low blow,” she said.

“I didn’t mean it to be,” Luke sighed. “But we should stick together.”

“It’s a few yards away.”

“Yes…”

She ran her thumb up and down Mandy’s hilt again. The familiar motion made her feel grounded and right. “We’re working together here.”

“Yeah”

“Which means being efficient and getting things done as quickly as possible. So you do your thing, I’ll do mine, and then we can hit the road again.”

“Jack…”

He didn’t sound convinced but she shot him a smile and left him frowning at the Batmobile before he could voice any more objections. The door to the small building was, of course, unlocked and the room itself, because it was just one room with some sort of add-on, musty in an I-haven’t-been-opened-in-ages kind of way. But someone had opened it at some point because the walls and now-silent fridges were picked completely clean. Jackson held Mandy tightly as she checked the aisles, and around the counter, but as well as a lack of anything edible, there were no zombies. She doubted they’d ever been in here. The lack of droppings and pus was a clear indication. She checked through cupboards and drawers, just in case.

Mild exasperation ran through Jackson’s mind as she thought about Luke’s reaction to her idea of splitting the work. She got that he was naturally protective. If the world hadn’t ended he’d probably have a wife, a passel of kids, and be doing the total man-of-the-house thing. He was clearly the type to want to look after the women in his life and the idea made Jackson smile, chasing the slight irritation aside. Pre-zombie she probably would have let him look after of her. Her brothers had bossed her around constantly and it had been easier to go along with their plans than put up a fight. Two years was a long time though. Two years changed a person. Two years in the land of the waking dead could change them almost beyond recognition, and she knew she had. Jackson was not the same easygoing girl she had been. She’d never be that girl again. She’d learned to take care of herself. To train her mouth not to scream when something horrific happened, or her mind not to freeze when a dead person tried to eat her. It hadn’t been easy, not at all. She’d had to become someone completely different than the person she once was, not just physically but mentally too.

She frowned and stood on her tiptoes to look out of the dusty window to see Luke bent over an abandoned car. That right there was enough to show her the difference. Two years ago she’d have looked out of this same window and given a little sigh, mooning over Luke’s hotness, and wondering how she could get him to notice her slightly overlarge ass. Now? Well, now she was more concerned about how exposed he was looking and the fact that his ax was a shade too far away from his hand. And her ass? He’d have trouble finding it these days. She shook her head, fell back to the balls of her feet, and pulled open another cupboard. Nothing. Not a goddamn thing. She kicked it shut with a growl and circled the store.

Jackson heard him long before he popped his head around the door, and resolved to have a long conversation with him that was so going to feature the word stealth. God, he reminded her of Tye.

“Everything okay?” he asked.