Chapter 7
Herd Animals
Allie
“What are you thinking about?” Cam mumbled into her hair.
That felt like a loaded question after what they’d just shared, and Allie wasn’t sure how to answer. She wasn’t even sure if she could formulate a coherent response.
When that mortifying roller coaster of emotion had followed that first soul-crushingly intense orgasm, she was worried she’d freaked him out and ruined everything. The whole Z-terror thing was one thing, but crying after sex might have been too much.
But he’d comforted her while she wept, speaking words that had helped her center herself.
It’d been a cleansing cry, ridding her of old shit and new shit alike, while the whole time, miracle of miracles, Cam hadn’t pulled away.
The care he’d shown, the concern—all from the man who’d just made her come like a freight train—had seized her heart.
How was it possible to feel such affection so quickly?
Then there was the sex. She’d never been with someone who talked like that in bed, alternating between praising her and promising filthy, exciting things.
Those words were part and parcel of the way he’d shattered her, made her shudder and buck and finally scream, overcome by the intensity.
She’d held him tight inside her while he pumped upward, gripping her hips and groaning with hedonistic gratification.
Then he’d knelt above her, prolonging her pleasure in almost agonizing waves, and when he came. ..
The memory of that sound, so raw and sexual, made heat curl in her belly again.
“I guess... I don’t know.” Allie curled closer into him. “I’m not sure I’m the same person I was yesterday. Is that weird?” She sighed. “It’s weird.”
He laughed, a delightful vibration beneath her cheek. “I’m right there with you.” His chest rose and fell on a sigh. “What a fucking wild couple of days. Right?”
“You said it.” Suddenly restless, she sat up, ignoring his protest. “Do you want some coffee or tea? We could eat some food and... talk.”
“Probably a good idea.” He trailed one hand up her spine, making her whole body sing. “I have plenty of questions. I’m sure you do too.”
She nodded, unable to find her voice.
“Allie.”
She turned to look at him, and his warm hand kneaded her shoulder lightly, reassuringly.
“Whatever those answers are? No matter what those answers are? I’m really, really glad to be here with you.”
A flush of heat spread in her cheeks as she nodded. She watched while he got up and dressed, then he occupied himself with perusing her stacks of books. She slipped from the bed, somehow still blushing furiously while she dressed as quickly as possible.
In the kitchen, they worked together to fix food and heat water. Allie showed Cam how to use the kitchen implements along the way. He was attentive to her every word, listening closely and only asking questions like “Is this right?” or saying things like “You got it.”
Had anyone ever taken direction from her so readily and competently? It made her cheeks go warm all over again.
Once they were settled with steaming coffee mugs and plates of reconstituted eggs and canned potatoes with margarine, they ate for a few minutes in silence.
Allie would have enjoyed it if her anxiety hadn’t been increasing by the second.
In the quiet, all those “what ifs” from before were crowding her mind again.
Before she could let them overwhelm her into the Let’s Chips song, she blurted out what felt like her least controversial question. “So, where did you live? Before?”
Cam’s smile wasn’t an entirely happy one. “San Francisco.”
“Wow.” She’d assumed he was from the Midwest, like her. “Was it... Did things get bad out there?”
“Bad enough. We were lucky. We got out earlier than most and didn’t go to any of the shelters.”
Nothing about the zombie apocalypse had been like people had imagined it would be.
There wasn’t a dramatic shift from normal life to anarchy within days.
The government had taken massive pains to downplay outbreaks, as had most other first-world countries, while sketchy reports came in from elsewhere.
Meanwhile, what little they’d known was quite literally coming back to bite them.
By the time the world’s governments had decided to admit that all the reports of incidents at morgues and accident sites and war zones were indicative of a much bigger problem, it was all too late.
A vaccine was in development. Too late. Didn’t work.
Shelters were hastily constructed. Too late.
Cities were evacuated. Too late.
“What about you?” Cam asked.
She sat up a bit. “I’m from up north. Naperville, near Chicago.”
He winced, and she knew why. Chicago had been the first major non-coastal city to be overrun, back in the days when the media was still functioning.
“Before...” She paused and swallowed. “Before, I worked in collections at the public library. Not the one near where I grew up”—the one she’d loved as a child—“but the Nichols branch in another part of town.”
“You were a librarian.”
She nodded, summoning a sad smile. “I loved it.”
After a moment, she continued. “My mom died back when I was in high school. Lung cancer.” Her lovely, strict, old-before-her-time mother.
How would Darla Dawes, staunch tithe-paying Catholic, have reacted to the zombie apocalypse bringing Hell to earth?
Allie had let that idea torment her more often than she’d like.
“But Dad still lived in the old house, and Jamie was younger, so she was in college in the city. We saw each other a lot.”
Cam nodded. She knew he was waiting for her to continue, so she took a breath. Move past it.
“I was at work one day, and the next, word came down that Naperville and the other suburbs were being evacuated. Jamie was home—the rumors had spread into warnings in the city the week before—and the three of us met up and headed south together. I thought we were lucky.”
She shook her head. Say it. Deal with the pain. “I lost them both when a bunch of fast-movers got into our shelter. We shouldn’t have gone there, but my dad... He was convinced the army would save us.”
“That would be the Marines, angel. But I get it.” Mouth curved in a humorless smile, he shrugged. “It wasn’t the army’s fault. They weren’t prepared for this. No one was.” His eyes, blue and soft, were steady on hers. “I’m sorry, Allie.”
Allie remembered the groups of people crammed beyond capacity in the shelter, huddling close even though staying together would be what killed them.
The zombie attacks had proven, more than anything else, that humans were herd animals, and the world had ended because of that, because the Zs could tear so easily through those herds of people huddled together, terrified of losing their loved ones. Of being alone.
She nodded at Cam, not trusting her voice. However, relief mixed with her sadness. She’d given him that piece of her history, at least, even if she wasn’t ready to give him more.
They sipped their coffee. Then something occurred to Allie. “Cam, were you able to leave San Francisco with your family?”
“Yeah. My real family.” He paused. “The people I was born to... Well, I was an only child. My mom left at some point, and eventually, my dad died.”
“Oh, Cam. Was that before or—”
“Before.” His mouth flattened. No softness in those eyes now. “I was twelve.”
A soft sigh escaped her. What could she say? Expressing sympathy seemed so trite, given such tragedy. “That’s awful.”
“Plenty was awful back then. No zombies required.” He took a sip of coffee, his eyes shadowed behind lowered lids.
“But our neighbors in the apartment across the hall, Keyshawna Williams and Odette Rivera, were keeping an eye on me already. After my dad... When they found out I had no other family to take me in, they kind of adopted me. It was supposed to be temporary. Key was a social worker, and taking in kids was frowned on. But they wouldn’t let me go. Despite everything.”
She imagined the boy he must have been. “You went through a lot.”
“I was a mess. Even after therapy helped me deal with the worst of what my dad had done, I was still a mouthy, troublemaking little asshole.” He chuckled, his demeanor warming a little. “Thank God they didn’t give up on me.”
“When did they adopt you?”
“Almost two years after they took me in, I still hadn’t really figured out that they loved me.
Like, really loved me. Despite therapy, despite them both doing their best.” His lips quirked.
“Key had finally gotten pregnant—they’d been trying for a while, so it was a big deal.
I was sure they’d get rid of me before the baby was born.
Who would want an angry older kid with tons of psychological baggage around a newborn? I mean, I wouldn’t have kept me.”
Allie laid her hand over his. After a moment, he turned his palm up and threaded his fingers with hers.
He sighed. “I was sure every day would be the day I’d push them too far, but they were having me listen to the baby’s heartbeat through Dette’s stethoscope and making me talk to him in Key’s belly like I was going to be his actual big brother.” He rolled his eyes good-naturedly.
Allie smiled, imagining a sullen younger version of Cam talking to that unborn baby. “That sounds pretty great, actually.”
“It was, which is why I couldn’t really believe it could be my life.
” He smiled. “Then the baby was born. Odette had been named for her grandmother, and she wanted him to have the name, so he was Odet Rivera Williams—Odie, for short. They brought me to the hospital to meet him, and I was there, holding this tiny sleeping human who smelled so good and felt so fragile, and he made some kind of noise, like a hiccup or something, and I just burst out crying.” He groaned.
Her own humiliating experience with unbidden outbursts fresh in her mind, Allie could empathize. “Oh no.”