Nine
Cruz
J onah and I shuffled down the front path with the dead man swinging between us, his weight surprisingly heavy given his lean build. When we reached the street, I glanced over my shoulder at the house directly opposite; its hip-height brick fence was the perfect spot to stow a body so Dawn wouldn’t see it when we left in the morning. I tilted my head in that direction. "Let’s dump him over there."
Jonah was breathing heavier with the effort of hauling the man’s weight. “I’m glad we’re not burying him,” he said. “It’s more than this asshole deserves.”
No argument from me. Darkness surrounded us, with only the moon to guide our way, providing enough light to see where we were going and keep alert for signs of the woman or corpses. A few figures were loitering in the near distance, but their movements were too awkward to be human.
It wouldn’t take much for someone to get the jump on us while we were focused on moving a body, and we had no way of knowing if the woman had kept running or hid when she escaped. While she was still high on adrenaline and whatever else had caused those bloodshot eyes, her movements were unpredictable.
“You handled that well,” I said to Jonah.
“You think so?" He stopped to reposition his hands and yank the guy's legs higher. "I was shitting myself,” he said as we started walking again.
“I've been there.”
“Yeah? Somehow, I doubt you get scared.” We reached the opposite side of the road and stepped up onto the curb. “You just killed a guy. Right in front of us.”
I backed up around the brick fence and dropped the body in amongst the weeds. “I'm sorry you had to see that.”
“But you’re not sorry you did it?”
“No.”
He huffed out a sigh. "I understand why you killed him," he said, staring at the man. "This dickhead looked like he wanted to hurt Liv just for fun." Jonah brushed his hands on the front of his shirt and glanced at our surroundings, but there wasn't much to see. “What I don't understand is how you can be so... fine with it.” His eyes moved over me as he caught his breath.
He’d find out soon enough how quickly he could accept violence. When he left his home and began moving from one unpredictable situation to the next, all the rules would change. “I’ll never be okay with killing someone,” I said, “but I can recognise when there’s no other option. If someone needs to die and there’s no other way around it, you make sure it’s the right person.”
“It’s a mind fuck knowing this is how it works now." We walked back to the house, stopping to take out a couple of corpses that were drawn to the sound of our voices. "How many people have you killed since this whole thing started?"
I shoved a corpse hard enough to send it sprawling onto its back in the middle of the road, then bent to jam my knife through its ear. Giving Jonah an honest answer could lower his opinion of me, but I didn't want to be around people who couldn't handle reality. "Four." My brother had been one of them, but I wouldn't be diving into that memory again. "I've injured a few others and left them for dead."
" Four ? Jesus." He ran his hand through his dark hair and stared at something in the distance. "You think I'm gonna have to do it, too?” he asked, bringing his gaze back to mine.
I wanted to tell him no, but I refused to lie to him. “At some point maybe—and you won’t hesitate if it means keeping your mum safe."
"Great." Whatever had caught his attention before had him looking that way again. I followed his line of sight and spotted two more corpses coming for us. Jonah took care of an elderly woman while I dropped a tall, reed-thin man.
We returned to the house in silence, both of us caught up in our own thoughts.
After securing the front door, we entered the lounge room and found the women sitting side by side on the floral couch.
Liv was checking Dawn’s scalp for injuries while Dawn gazed around the room, trying to come to terms with what happened. With the intruders gone and the overturned lamp and blood on the carpet as evidence, it must have been a surreal experience knowing she’d slept through it all.
“Jonah!”The second she spotted him, Dawn tried to shoot up from the couch.
Liv planted her hands on her shoulders to keep her seated and encouraged Jonah to approach his mother instead. He went straight to her and sank to his knees on the floor, letting her fuss over him until she could convince herself he was fine. The sight reminded me of my mother and the way she used to worry about Diego and me.
Liv squeezed his shoulder and rose from the couch, keeping her attention on me as she crossed the room. I looked for signs of distress, but her eyes were clear, her breathing calm. She stopped before me, and our gazes meshed as I swept some wisps of hair back from her face. "Are you all right?"
"I think so."
She was changing right before my eyes, becoming stronger, more resilient. "Looks like you kicked some ass in here."
"I did what I could." Liv tried to smile, but she pressed her lips together and looked away, the first indicator that she wasn’t coping as well as I initially thought.
Jonah stood and went into the kitchen, returning with a glass of water for his mother. Since he had the situation under control, I wanted to go somewhere private with Liv to check on her injuries. "Dawn, where's that room you mentioned?"
She pointed to the hallway as she finished her mouthful of water. “Third door down. It's all yours.”
"Thanks.”
"I need my things first," Liv said.
While she collected her weapons from the places where they'd landed on the room floor, Dawn stared up at me. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking, and I made a stupid mistake.”
“Mum.”
She ignored Jonah and met my eyes. “Thanks for looking out for us. I hate that you had to do what you did because of me.”
It wasn’t only because of her. If Liv and I hadn’t turned up in town with a working car, there never would have been attention drawn to the house in the first place. “Don’t dwell on it,” I said, grabbing one of the lit candles from the coffee table, “because I won’t be. Keep an eye on your mum, Jonah. She probably has a concussion. Make sure she drinks plenty of water and rests up. We’ll see you both in the morning.”
I locked the bedroom door and set the candle on the nearest bedside table. The security shutters on the outside were already closed, and the candle’s flickering light created shadows that danced on the ceiling.
Floral wallpaper made the room feel smaller, and a queen size bed sat in the centre, clean and made-up ready for use. There was a cross on the wall above the bed flanked by a couple of homemade photo collages of people I'd never get to know.
Before I could focus on Liv, I grabbed the ladder-backed chair from the corner and wedged it under the door handle, a detail I couldn't overlook if we wanted to catch some genuine sleep tonight. No matter how good they appeared to be on the surface, we were still sharing the house with people who were essentially strangers.
We set our weapons on the floor beside the bed, and I went around to Liv, taking her hand and keeping my touch gentle, my expression neutral. “Take a seat,” I said, easing her onto the edge of the mattress.
She settled on the bed and sighed as she looked up at me. Her features were strained, her eyes tired. It had been a long day, and as far as endings went, there were better things we could have been doing than fighting off intruders before we called it a night. “Lift your top, carino. Let me check out your ribs.”
She didn’t argue with me or try to convince me there was no need. She just grabbed the hem of her long-sleeve t-shirt and slid it higher, revealing bare skin and the blue bra she'd changed into after our dip in the river. I sat beside her and lifted the material higher, checking the elastic edge. A puncture marred the fabric, but it looked like she’d been lucky; the knife hadn’t made it all the way through. “Is it all right if I look underneath?”
Liv locked eyes with me and nodded. Her trust in me after what she’d been through filled my chest to overflowing, and I wanted to give her all the care she deserved. “Lie back and try to relax for a minute.”
She scooted backwards and rested her head on the pillow, holding her top out of the way. “It doesn’t feel like he cut me.”
“Let’s take a look.” Sitting beside her, I leaned over her body and slid the edge of her bra high enough to reveal the lower part of her breast. Her skin was soft and smooth, free from damage. The only sign he’d tried to injure her was a small, irritated patch where the tip of the knife must have pressed too hard against her skin. I ran my thumb over the spot and heard her quick intake of breath.
“Does it hurt?” I asked, conscious of keeping my touch impersonal.
Her cheeks reddened, and she shook her head. “He touched me there,” she said, her voice sounding thick in the quiet.
I pulled her bra back into position and lowered her top. Anger trickled through me, and I wished I could have killed the asshole all over again. “I know.”
Liv rubbed her breast hard, as if trying to erase the memory. “I hate it,” she said. “I can still feel it. My brain knows it was a knife, but to my body, it felt like a fingertip that made my skin crawl. I wish I could scrub it away.”
It hurt my heart seeing her this way. I stretched out beside her on top of the covers and rolled onto my side. She turned to face me, and I trailed my fingers over her forehead, down past her troubled eyes, slipping lower until I had her chin captured in my palm. I leaned in and pressed a single kiss on her mouth, breathing her in, watching every flicker of emotion pass over her face.
When Jonah and I turned up, Liv was already restrained, and I had no idea what went on in the minutes before my arrival. Dawn had been knocked out cold and Liv was left alone with two strangers. How did that asshole end up with a swollen face? What about the scratch down his neck?
"Did he do anything else?" I asked in a low voice. "His injuries, the kicks you gave him afterwards… they looked personal."
She gazed at me for a long, drawn-out moment, probably wondering if I was going to make this about me and my feelings. "Not to me," she said. "He punched Dawn. She opened the door, and he barged into her house and punched her in the head . When he tackled me down, I did everything I could to hurt him. The kicks were me letting out my frustration because I hate feeling weak."
It looked like the attack had started near the front door, which meant Liv must have lured the intruders away from Dawn to protect her from further injury. She’d made herself the focus and faced the threat on her own—the opposite of weak. I stroked my thumb over her cheek and let a long beat pass before I voiced the main thought on my mind. "I wish I’d never left you with her."
Her eyes widened for a second, then her gaze moved over my features. "It wasn't your fault."
"That's not what I meant." I kept my voice low so no one else could hear me. "I wish I hadn't left you with her specifically. You would have been safer on your own."
Liv opened her mouth as if to protest, then closed it again and stared at me. She knew. She just didn't want to admit to another woman’s failings.
Dawn had good intentions, but that didn't mean a thing in a world like ours where lives were on the line. If she’d stuck to the plan and left the door locked, it would have given her and Liv time to talk over their next move. Instead, she’d blindly opened it, trusting that Jonah and I were on the other side, and let wolves inside the fucking house.
Nothing had happened that we couldn't overcome, but what about next time?
"We can teach her. Jonah, too. We'll make sure it doesn't happen again," she said. "Everyone knows how to deal with the dead. They're predictable. If you follow the rules, you can mostly stay safe. There are no rules for humans anymore, and we're still figuring one another out."
We'd had more than two years to work on strategies for keeping ourselves safe—three if you counted all the chaos when Ultimus first kicked off. Anyone who was still slipping up now either didn't want to learn or someone else had been taking care of those details for them.
Maybe Dawn's husband had looked after her before he died and somehow kept her from the worst of the virus. Maybe his death had forced her to step into a role she didn't want and wasn’t prepared for. Whatever the reason, making excuses for someone under these circumstances would only put the rest of the group in danger. "There are no laws, but there are still rules. Strangers are a complete unknown, resources are hard to come by, and people are getting more and more desperate. We need to be smart, all of us, or you and I need to leave them behind."
Her eyes were filled with uncertainty, a war between understanding my point of view and wanting to be supportive of people in need. I didn't want to kill that part of her. Not even close. Generosity and kindness still had their place in this world; they had to if we wanted lives worth living, but not at the expense of our physical safety.
"She's a good person." Liv's gaze flicked to the door, then back at me. "She means well, but she's struggling. She just wants a decent life for her son."
"No debate from me there, but that doesn't change reality."
She stared at me for a beat longer, then rolled onto her back and sighed. "We have to take chances sometimes, Cruz. It's hard enough finding people who don't want to hurt us or take what's ours. We can't just toss the good ones out because they make a mistake."
We were on the brink of having an argument when we were essentially on the same page. I wanted to go with a wait-and-see approach and make our decisions based on facts, not emotions—especially in the early days when there was nothing tangible connecting us to new people. Liv wanted to be careful, too. "I'm not suggesting we ditch them right now. I'm saying if there are any more slip-ups like we had tonight, we go our separate ways."
Liv pulled her lower lip between her teeth and gazed up at the ceiling, taking her time before she answered. "She's a woman alone with her son. She's had to make all the decisions for the past two months when it comes to food, safety, their living situation. I wish you didn't have to be so tough on her."
Liv had done the same thing for years with no help. If I hadn't come into her life, and she was left alone after Haruto's death, she still would have survived—thrived even.
When you didn't hold people accountable, it allowed weakness to grow.
I lifted myself up on one elbow and leaned over her. She still had the bump on her forehead from when Jackson and his gang had been chasing her, and as my eyes roamed her features, my chest tightened. A stupid lapse in judgement could have been the end for her tonight. For me too, because what was the point of it all without her? "That prick was playing with you," I said, looking into her eyes. "He would have stabbed you for pure entertainment and no other reason. Why aren't you being tough on Dawn?"
She dragged in a breath and stared at up me. "Because I like the idea of belonging to a group," she said, "of being around another woman for the first time in so long—and yes, she made a mistake, but I've made them, too. I ran straight into a man in Melbourne without thinking and nearly got myself kidnapped or killed. I kicked the keys under the car while we were trying to get away. It shouldn't be easy to toss people aside just because they did something human."
Seconds ticked by as I leaned on my elbow and mulled over her observations. It didn’t take too long to conclude she was right. I sighed, wondering if I could find the balance between following procedures and understanding that not everyone’s thought processes worked the same. I'd slipped up myself while I adapted to our new world, and it would be years before we clawed our way back to anything that resembled normal—if we ever got there in our lifetime.
If we wanted to get technical, I was also the only one in our current group who had any kind of formal training, so maybe I could be a little more understanding.
"I'll take it easier on her," I promised.
Liv stared at me for a moment as if determining whether I meant it. "Please don't say that just because of me."
“It’s not just because of you. I can be guilty sometimes of seeing situations as black and white, right or wrong. I could learn to be more flexible.”
She smiled and stroked her fingers over my cheek. “I like how you shared that as if it’s new information to me.”
Cheeky. I turned my face into her hand and laughed as I kissed her palm. With my arm wrapped around her waist, I pulled her flush against me and kept her close, thankful we still had each other.
It was the strangest time for me to miss my mother, but she would have loved seeing a woman bring out this side of me—and although they'd never meet, I knew with everything in me that she would have loved Liv.