Waking Up Dead

She straightened from where she’d been checking under the counter. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Because the world is overrun with zombies.”

“Since when?”

Luke grinned and gestured to the back of the store. “Are you all done?”

“Give me two more minutes. I want to check that add-on back there.”

He nodded and backed out of the doorway, though Jackson could see it was an effort for him. It was sweet in a goofy kind of way, even endearing, but as she watched him make his way back over to a beat up truck and pop the fuel cap, she knew it simply wasn’t going to fly.

He was hot.

He was sweet.

“But you can’t let it make a difference,” she said, tearing her gaze away from the window and edging around the shelving units to the back of the store. “Got to keep yourself tough. Stay strong. Stay independent.”

The mantra played through her mind and it was no surprise that she thought of Tye. He’d never tried to look after her, not really, but then he’d been more interested in someone he could kill the zombies with than anything else, and he simply did as he pleased, ignoring her thoughts completely. She’d often ignored his thoughts too. In that, at least, they had complemented each other. And though they’d shared their journey for more than a month Jackson hadn’t once relaxed her usual guard.

Why did she think it was going to be more difficult with Luke? Even if they managed to find her erstwhile friend.

A few minutes later, after using the skanky toilet inside the add-on, she joined Luke outside. The morning light illuminated his masculine features and she swallowed unsteadily. There was no getting around the hotness. Maybe that had something to do with her worries over what she suspected was going to be a tendency on his part to try and be the Giles to her Buffy.

“No chocolate to be found. Nothing to be found, actually, place is bare. There is a toilet though, but it doesn’t flush.”

He looked up and shot her a smile, the relief in it was obvious—relief no doubt that she was still in one piece. “There’s gas in these cars,” he said, pointing to a tube sticking out of the nozzle of one. “So that’s something, and I found this tube. Just need to suck it out.”

“What are you waiting for?”

He shrugged and smiled again. “Pathetic, I know, but I hate the taste. You’d think as a mechanic I’d be used to it. The smell is fine, but the taste always makes me gag.”

“I don’t mind it,” she said, slightly endeared by his honesty, and the smiles too. “I can do it if you don’t want to.”

He pulled on the tube and shook his head. “No. I’m good.”

Jackson watched as he took a deep breath and popped the tube in his mouth. She rubbed Mandy again and looked around, scanning the buildings, the trees, everywhere. No sign of zombies anywhere. They were okay for the moment. She could let her mind wander for a moment couldn’t she? It wandered to Luke’s lap.

She grinned. It had most certainly not escaped her notice that when he’d awoken he’d had a raging hard- on. She’d felt it through his jeans a good few minutes before he’d actually opened his eyes. Their positioning meant that it had prodded her ass and she’d sort of squirmed a little on his lap as she had tried to work out what to do.

He’d woken before she could make a decision and Jackson had thought the best thing to do was just ignore it. Luke was no doubt embarrassed and she hadn’t wanted to draw attention to something that was a purely physical reaction. Men always got hard-ons in the morning. And while she suspected he was attracted to her, now was so not the time to be thinking of anything along those lines. Anticipation aside, Jackson wasn’t sure there would ever be such a time. How could there be when zombies shadowed their every move?

“Urgh…” Luke’s exclamation pulled her back on track and her grin widened as he removed the tube and spat gas on the ground, before pushing the tube into the canister in front of him. “What did I say? Tastes like shit. What I wouldn’t give for some gum.”

“Dream on, sweetheart.”

He looked up, pushed a few strands of hair out of his eyes and smiled. Jackson felt little butterflies fluttering in her stomach—though it may have been due to hunger.

“How much do you think is in there?” she asked, and even she could hear the slight catch in her voice, so maybe not hunger after all.

“A few gallons, I hope.”

The canister he’d found filled up long before the tube stopped giving them their gas, and Jackson pushed another one across to take the remaining liquid. She placed the top on the first canister, then got ready to do the same with the next.

“We should get another to see us through for a few days,” Luke continued. “I want to get as much here, where I know we’ll find it, before we’re somewhere I’m unfamiliar with.”

Jackson nodded and secured the second canister. She pushed it across to Luke and stood up to do another security sweep. Still nothing. They were okay for a little longer.

“We’ve got a fair bit already.”

They’d lucked out with these cars. Sure there was plenty of gas around but it was a question of it being contaminated in the fuel lines or some such shit, or worse getting to it. It seemed Luke knew the whereabouts of pretty much every garage in the state—he’d visited most of them in his old job—and she suspected he could tell if it was good to use, so maybe it wasn’t so much luck but the company.

Jackson was very pleased, protective tendencies aside, that he’d agreed to come with her. In truth she was almost thankful to the zombie for infiltrating his bunker, even though she felt guilty just thinking it. It had been Luke’s home, after all. But she knew they stood a much better chance of making it to the border together. Plus there was the whole car situation.

Luke stood then and stretched. His sweater and the tees underneath rode up showing her his washboard abs again and Jackson sighed before remembering the wound below his rib cage.

“How’s the hole? No infection?”

He lifted his sweater and smiled. “Nah. It’s all good. A few more days and it should be healed up nicely. Good job too. I’m out of Johnny Walker.”

“Couple of weeks, I reckon, whiskey or not. Hopefully it’ll be healed long before we hit the south. We don’t want it festering in the heat.”

He laughed. “I never fester.”

“There’s no showers out here, Luke. Believe me, in a week or two, you will indeed be festering.”

He laughed and made a show of sniffing his armpit. “All good, so far.”

Maybe it would have been easier if she’d hooked up with someone a little less attractive? But then she’d done that with Tye, hadn’t she, and though she hadn’t had to deal with the sit-on-his-lap-and-get-flustered situation, because she’d never seen him in that way, it still hurt to lose him, just as it would hurt if she lost Luke.

Lost chances and all that.

“There’s another garage a mile down there,” Luke said. “Might be some food there. One can hope at least.”

“We’ve got loads of stuff.” Jackson gestured as Luke grabbed the two gas cans and placed them in the back of the car with the rest of their gear. “Way more than I’ve had since the world ended.”

Luke shook his head. “We don’t have enough food. Maybe a few days, at most.”

A few days worth? She almost laughed. She and Tye had lived day to day, hour to hour sometimes. “Yeah but we’ve got a car! Look on the bright side, I say. I can’t believe we can actually drive. Do you realize that’ll take months, years, off the journey? If I’d had someone to drive with me, and a working car, I’d have been there last year.”

“It’ll make things easier for sure as long as we can keep it fueled.” He paused his packing and gave her the eye. It was that same look he’d given her in the bunker. Like he was trying to work something out and Jackson