wondered what it meant.
“It’ll be good for you too, Jackson,” he said. “You’ve had to walk for too long. I’ll be happy to drive you around.”
Despite the eye contact and the loveliness of his words, Jackson bristled slightly. There it was again. “Are you assuming you’re driving because you’re the guy?”
He nodded slowly and grinned widely. “Of course I am. You know how it goes. The man always drives.”
Jackson stroked down Mandy’s hilt and narrowed her eyes. “If I thought you meant that, you’d be getting better acquainted with Mandy here.”
“Anytime, sweetheart.”
“And, I won’t actually mention that I can’t drive.”
He walked around the car and opened the passenger door for her. His gesture was chivalrous and playful and it took a moment for Jackson to take it in. How strange that in the world of the dead there was still a man who remembered such things, who could make her feel…a little bit weird over it.
“You can’t drive?”
Jackson shrugged. “Nope, never had the money to learn or to own a car. It didn’t matter before, especially in New York City. But after, well, I tried in the early days when cars were still running. A couple of crashes later I decided it might be better to walk. I didn’t trust myself not to fuck up and get hurt, and then the zombies would find me and eat me, so, yup, feel free to take the wheel.”
“I’m gonna have to teach you then,” Luke said. “What if something happens to me? You need to be able to get yourself south.”
“Maybe,” she said, touched by his offer, feeling guilty even that she’d bristled at his words in the first place. “But I’d prefer we keep you in one piece instead.”
Luke waited until she settled into her seat. “Okay. One piece it is. Time to get moving?”
Seat belt on she nodded. “Hell, yeah.”
Chapter Fifteen
Three days later Jackson and Luke sat in an abandoned house, slightly musty blankets from the linen closet around their shoulders for warmth, the bedroom door—sluiced in Tye’s bottle of Davidoff’s Cool Water—barred against any waking dead that might come sniffing. It was likely the scent wouldn’t work, not after what they’d seen, but they’d done it anyway, just in case. Their escape route was secure and they were taking a moment to regroup.
The last of the day’s weak sunlight was filtering in through the windows, leaving Luke to scowl at what that light illuminated: a tin of Spam. The scowl was not just for the Spam, though he hated the stuff, it was for the conversation he knew they had to have.
One that was going to be painful.
He shifted under his blanket as he considered the best way to approach it. Only maybe there was no best way? Perhaps he was just going to have to be blunt. He shifted a little more as he played the last few days back in his mind. They’d driven the whole area—using a fair bit of gas in the process—and waited around the point of the interstate for three long days. Checking and checking. Only Tye was nowhere to be seen. There was nothing at all to suggest he had come this way, and they could wait no longer.
It was becoming too dangerous.
“Jackson,” he began.
She looked up and shot him a smile. “You’re not eating your Spam.”
“I’m not a fan,” he said.
She shrugged. “It’s edible. That’s all that counts. Unless you want to risk the big malls, we’ve got no choice but to eat stuff that’s a bit gross. Personally, I have no problem with it. I think we ate it when I was young. Did you know that it dates back to the Second World War? It was used as a meat substitute as part of rationing in England.”
His stomach rumbled. “I’d risk the malls about fucking now.”
“I wouldn’t let you.”
Luke frowned as he looked into the small can of smushed meat Jackson had opened. The canned mushroom soup they’d eaten yesterday had been bad enough, but this was the tipping point. He too had eaten it when he was younger and had hated whenever his mom had placed it on his plate.
He shook his head as Jackson attacked her can, scooping the meat up and munching it down. Once again, as he had over the last couple of days, he was reminded of how easy he’d had it in comparison to her. Over the last year and a half he’d been safe in his bunker with access to clean water and decent food, while Jackson had eaten whatever the hell she could get. And even before then he’d been lucky, hell if he thought about it, luck had been on his side since the beginning. He’d always found food before the hunger got too much. Never had an issue finding drinking water or a place to bed down. Maybe it was because he’d stayed in an area he was familiar with?
It was the little things that brought it home to him. The way she started looking for somewhere safe to park the car as soon as the sun got low in the sky. The way she didn’t even think to complain when it had rained, just shrugged and suggested they slow down. To her things were pretty good right now. He got that. They had transportation, with enough gas for quite a few days, and somewhere safe to sleep in the car. She probably still thought they were going to find her friend.
He sighed. She was tough and resilient and it almost shamed him at times that he wasn’t more so, in comparison to her. Oh, he’d done his part so far, he knew that. Just yesterday, prior to the mushroom soup hitting his stomach with a ninja kick, he’d taken down three waking dead, leaving just one for Jackson. The admiration he’d seen in her eyes had warmed him as he kept watch, though his grumbling stomach had kind of negated the happy feelings a little.
He’d found them enough gas for the journey south, too, and up till now he’d provided decent food— mushroom soup aside. Yep, he was looking after her…although if he was totally honest with himself, he got the feeling she didn’t need him to. Hell, she could look after herself without so much as a blink and he knew that. Didn’t stop him from wanting to, though.
“Zombies like the enclosed spaces in there,” she said after a moment around a mouthful of Spam. “I didn’t know that in the early days. Got trapped in one,
He could see the sense in that and nodded to her. “I get that, Jack, but we are going to need more food. We have what? Five or six cans left and a few granola bars?”
“All the more reason for you to eat your Spam.”
He growled but scooped a forkful in, swallowing it quickly before the taste could register.
“If it gets to the point where we can’t find any cans or whatnot, we have one other option.”
He swallowed some more, shuddering slightly. “And that is?”
“Rat.”
Luke winced, the Spam suddenly becoming far more appealing. But then he remembered that Tye had caught rats for her, hadn’t he? He vaguely recalled Jackson saying so. Would they taste worse than Spam? Could anything taste worse than Spam? And was
“You want to eat rat?” he asked.
She rolled her eyes and pulled a face at him. “No. I freaking hate them. They’re all stringy and it gives me the heebs to think about the things they’ve been eating before we eat them, but,” she paused and shrugged, “it comes down to putting calories in our system so we’re strong enough for whatever we need to do.”
“You’re right,” he said slowly. “We can’t fight zombies on an empty stomach. It’s surprising isn’t it, how much beheading one takes out of you.”
“Less than it used to,” she said.
