Waking Up Dead

“Because we’re fitter. Our muscles more developed.”

“Yup. Still need those calories though.”

He nodded. If rat was all there was, then so be it, he’d suck it up. Because, and though it pained him to admit it, he did not want Jackson thinking he was less able to do what was needed than she was, or than Tye had been.

Tye. Why did he feel slightly threatened by the other man? It was ridiculous, really. The guy was obviously dead, and besides Jackson had told him there was nothing between them but friendship and he’d seen the truth of that in her eyes. He was sure he had. He was also pretty sure he’d seen something else too. A whisper of the same thing he didn’t doubt she saw reflected in his eyes.

Attraction.

The interest he felt for her was not one-sided. Insane maybe, in today’s world but still. They’d snuggled up the last couple of nights—for warmth she said—but Luke had caught a look, a stray touch here and there, and was sure there was more to it than that. What he was going to do about it he didn’t know. They were in built-up areas. Nowhere seemed safe enough for them to do the sort of things he found himself fantasizing about. It’d be just his luck to have his pants around his ankles when the zombies found them. It’d be laughable if it wasn’t so fucked- up.

Luke was also aware that they’d known each other for only a handful of days and he didn’t want to come across as some sort of jerk taking advantage of the nearest woman—not that Jackson was a take-advantage-of kinda girl, but still.

Food was the priority right now, not getting laid, and he wanted to make sure Jackson ate enough. Where these caveman urges to look after her came from, he couldn’t say, especially in light of her bad-assness, but he felt an overwhelming need to feed her and keep her safe. Ridiculous considering she was the toughest woman he’d ever met. It was also odd for him, because there were two competing drives going on. He’d worked that out as he waited by the pumps at the stick and spit for her to return. His was to make her comfortable and safe and hers was to keep being the tough little cookie he knew her to be. Her drive didn’t lessen his, only increased it, and he found himself wondering exactly how that was likely to play out.

“I’d love some steak,” Jackson said wistfully.

“No chance of steak but I can’t believe we’re driving a route other survivors have picked clean” he said, frustrated by the lack of available supplies. “Jesus Christ, there aren’t that many of them. You’d have thought there’d be canned vegetables left or something. No one likes them. They’re always mushed up.”

“There’s nothing anywhere these days,” Jackson said. “So the steak really is just a wild fantasy. I read once, ages ago, in a news article, I think, that there was only enough food in the country to last a month. We’ve had more than two years, so all things considered, it’s not too bad. And at least there are still rats and wild things growing. We’d be in the shit otherwise. Plus, I imagine the farther south we get, the more things we’ll find to pick. I lucked out once on an entire greenhouse full of squash and zucchini. They gave me a churning belly but I eventually ate them all. And there was the time I found the orchard…”

Luke nodded for her to continue and ate the last of his can while she listed all the freebie food she’d found. The aftertaste of the Spam was hideous and he took a long swig of his water to wash it down. Yesterday it had rained for three hours straight so liquid was not a problem, though he’d damn well kill for a cup of coffee.

“So things aren’t yet as bad as they seem,” Jackson finished.

“Okay. Well if worst comes to worst, rat it is.”

She smiled and gripped Mandy to her—yeah she’d named her machete, he’d laughed when she told him, but realized mere moments later why. With realization had come a nasty feeling in his gut. She’d named her weapon because it was the only real thing she had—the only thing she’d relied on for so long.

“How are you gonna catch one?” she asked, playing along. “I can in a pinch, though it always takes me ages.”

“I’ll use the Spam.”

She nudged his empty can and smiled. “They probably hate it too. It’s not my favorite food but I’ll eat anything these days.”

“I am going to find you food,” Luke said, eyeing her skinny frame. She was so petite and he knew she was constantly hungry. Her food disappeared the moment it made it into her hands. The protective urge rose up again and he gritted his teeth. The urge to look after her, to keep her safe, to fill her with food. “We haven’t checked out the shops around here yet and there’s no better time than now. Give me one hour. Wait here, okay.”

He imagined finding a stash of good stuff, Jackson’s eyes lighting up with pleasure, reaching out to hug him…Jesus Christ he was pathetic! His friends, were they still alive, would say he had it bad, and they would not be wrong.

“You’re not going alone.”

He started from his fantasy and righted the Spam tin. “What? Damn right I am. It’s gonna be dark soon. You’ll be safer here.”

“Not going to happen.”

“Jackson—”

She shook her head. “Didn’t we discuss this at the garage?”

“We did, and you said back then, correct me if I am wrong, that it made sense to split up when necessary.”

“That was different. That was a few yards. I’m not losing you, Luke,” she said and he halted his next words when he saw the look in her eye.

There it was again, the glimmer of interest, the same thing he felt, surely? What the hell was he going to do about it? In this world, this totally fucked-up world, what could he do?

“You’re not here to look after me, Luke,” she said after a moment. “You need to get over that right here, right now. I’m not some weak female that you have to coddle and protect. Nothing pisses me off more than you taking that attitude. I can look after myself. We’re each other’s backup and we go together. That’s the way it is now. We look out for one another and we stick together when we need to and do things separately when we don’t, but there’s no leaving the other behind because of some macho bullshit.”

Together. The word spread through him and his heart gave a strange little thump that felt almost like heartburn. He had a nasty suspicion he knew exactly what it meant.

“Jack—”

“As equals,” she added. “Equal risks, equal responsibility. That’s the way we roll, or we don’t roll at all. And it is time to roll it, isn’t it?” She paused. “I know you’ve been thinking it and you haven’t wanted to say, but it’s time we moved on.”

“And Tye?” he asked, relief hitting that he hadn’t been the one to bring the issue up.

“He’s probably taken a different route is all,” she said. “It’ll take him longer to get to Laredo, but he will eventually. Maybe we’ll even find him on the way?”

“Maybe,” he agreed, because if that was what Jackson wanted to believe, who was he to say otherwise?

“So we’ll go,” she added. “And you’ll leave the macho bullshit here.”

Macho bullshit…was it really even that? He paused and wondered for a moment how he’d be reacting if Jackson was Jack—another man rather than a woman. It jolted him slightly when he realized that he would be treating her, him, very differently. And not just the weird heart stuttering and hard-ons. Luke swallowed some more water and took a deep breath. He would have to suppress the urge to take charge and protect. He got that. To stop treating her as he would have the women in his life before the zombies came. Fuck, it was going to be difficult. Jackson was a woman, a beautiful, sassy woman, but one all the same, and bad-ass aside it was his natural male instinct to protect her. His mom had brought him up to look after the women in his life and end of the world or not, suppressing those urges would be hard. Yet, he would try. What else could he do?

“Together,” he said on the exhale. “We’ll go together.”

She shot him a dazzling smile then—and it was every bit as spectacular as he’d imagined it would be. It flickered across her face, making the green in her eyes glimmer and her soft skin beg to be stroked. Understanding dawned with that smile and Luke gritted his teeth to stop from giving a little cheer, or worse,