Six
Cruz
M y body snapped to attention, taut and ready. My gaze flicked to the door then back to Liv.
All the tenderness between us disappeared, and I palmed the side of her face. “Stay here,” I said, pulling the knife from my belt.
She jumped down from her seat on the bench, her eyes flashing at me. “And where are you going?”
"Outside." We didn’t have time to discuss who'd fill which roles in this scenario, and someone needed to take charge. I'd spent years dealing with these challenges before the virus made it onto anyone's radar; I knew how fast they could turn. If the woman was putting on a friendly front to lure us outside, I wanted Liv as far away from danger as possible.
“Stand at the back door—don't open it—and get her talking while I go around the front. It sounds like she's on the other side of the gate, so I'll come up behind her and find out if she’s alone.”
Liv opened her mouth as if to argue, then glanced at the rear door. She took mere seconds to think it over. “I’ll lock up after you, just in case.”
"If it turns bad, leave through the front door and run." I gave her the key fob as the adrenaline kicked in. "When it’s safe, come back for the car and get out of town, querida ."
"Yeah, okay." Liv rolled her eyes. "Let's pretend I'm going to do that."
I smiled despite the seriousness of the situation. "It was worth a try." Rather than argue the point, I went into the lounge room and checked the front windows. Detecting no movement in the yard or on the street, I opened the door and stepped out onto the porch, knowing I could be heading into an ambush situation. Outnumbered and overpowered—without a gun this time to defend myself.
“Be careful, Cruz.”
I glanced over my shoulder and locked eyes with her. "I'll see you soon."
I waited until the lock engaged behind me and crept down the concrete path toward the corner of the house. All the while I scanned my surroundings, searching for telltale signs that people were hiding nearby, listening for sounds that carried on the breeze.
Nothing had changed since we arrived, but I remembered feeling this same sense of isolation down at the waterfall, and that had still turned to shit fast.
As I rounded the corner and approached the carport, my gaze landed on a woman who appeared to be in her early forties; short, with a strong, stocky body and loose, dark curls that brushed her shoulders. She was speaking through the side gate to Liv, who I hoped had stayed inside the house.
A young guy who looked to be somewhere around twenty stood beside her, tall and lean, with shaggy hair the same shade of brown. They both wore flannel shirts, with jeans and work boots. Neither of them carried backpacks.
“Can we talk to you?” she called out, with no idea I was close by. They weren't holding weapons, but the bulkiness under their shirts told me they had to be packing knives or hammers.Knowing they didn’t want to appear threatening created a good first impression, and my tension eased off a bit.
I checked over my shoulder to make sure no one was closing in on me from behind, then focused on the woman and kid again, ready to make a move.
“I'm waiting for my partner,” Liv said from inside the house."When he gets here, we can talk."
“When will he be back?” the woman asked, standing on her tiptoes as if that would help her see over the gate. “Where is he?”
“Right here.” I braced myself as they spun around to face me.
The woman had olive skin, with a recent burn scar that travelled from her temple to her collarbone. When she spotted the Bowie knife in my hand, her eyes shifted quickly from me to the car, then back to the gate.
She had a jittery way about her, but she stood stock still with her male companion. Neither of them reached for their weapons, telling me more about their intentions than any words would have achieved. “We don’t want to start anything,” she said in a rush. “We’re not trying to trick you or take anything from you.”
“What do you want?” I asked. The back door creaked, and my stomach tensed as Liv’s footsteps approached the side fence. She stayed behind the gate, stopping far enough back that I couldn't even see the top of her head from where I stood.
“Information.” The young guy spoke for the first time, and my gaze travelled over him again.He had the look of someone with a foot in both worlds—the voice and height of a man and the lankiness of a teenager. His brown eyes stayed on mine to give the impression of confidence, but the way his jaw clenched told me it was mostly for show.
“We don't want any trouble," the woman said. "We just want to find out where you’re from, where you’re going. How you got a car."
“Names first,” I said.
“Dawn Moretti,” she said. “This is my son, Jonah. My husband, Carlo—Jonah’s dad—was attacked by a freak two months ago. Now it's just the two of us.”
I pushed down the sympathy that rushed to the surface over their recent loss. “Freak?”
“The dead people," Dawn said. "Freaks of nature.”
Liv opened the gate with her sword by her side, sweeping her gaze over Dawn and Jonah. "Stand back for a second," she said, her features impassive.
When he first caught sight of her, Jonah's eyes widened, and he seemed to forget the rest of us were here. I knew exactly what he was thinking, because my reaction to her had been the same. I eyed him off as he took a couple of steps away from Liv, making sure he kept his distance from her and the car.
She strode past mother and son, oblivious to his attention, straight by me with a sidelong glance, then headed for the street where she took a minute to perform a thorough sweep. With my senses tuned into her movements behind me, I monitored the two of them, but no one moved or said a word.
When she returned, apparently satisfied we were alone, Liv lifted her brows. “Should we invite them in for a chat?”
Meeting new people could have gone either way for her today. We'd had shitty luck until now, and I wouldn’t have blamed her if she wanted to play it safe, stay out of sight, and leave me to deal with strangers. Seeing her take charge without showing an ounce of fear made me want to drag her close and tell her I was proud of her. Instead, I gave her a subtle smile and gestured for Dawn and Jonah to follow us inside.
Liv stowed her sword, and we pulled out wooden high-backed chairs at the dining table. I sat opposite her while the newcomers took either end. Dawn exchanged furtive glances with both of us as we settled into our seats.
“This is Liv,” I said, sliding my knife back into its home. “I'm Cruz. Let’s start with the basics. How did you know we were here?”
“The car.” Dawn rested her hands on the table and picked at the already irritated skin around her thumbnail. “We haven’t seen or heard a moving one in about a year."
"You passed right by our place," Jonah added, "so we came outside and followed you.”
Liv sent me a look that spoke volumes before switching her attention to Dawn. “Where do you live?”
“Four houses down on the opposite side of the road.”
“Was it yours before Ultimus?” I kept a close eye on their body language. Both of them displayed a healthy level of nerves, and nothing they’d said or done so far was cause for concern.
“No. We moved in there when everything took a turn.” Dawn tucked her dark curls behind her ear, her gaze shifting from Liv to me. “We used to have a pizza business on the main street,” she said. “You would have passed it on the way here. The three of us lived above the shop, but the rioters and looters went crazy in the beginning and set the building on fire—while we were in it. Our cars, too. It's all gone.”
"What did you do before the virus?" Jonah asked, his tone letting us know we weren’t the only ones deciding if we were around trustworthy people.
"Cop." Liv aimed her thumb in my direction, then pointed to herself. "Executive assistant. What made you choose the place you’re living in now?” She rested her elbows on the table and clasped her hands in front of her, appearing confident and relaxed. Whether she was feeling it didn’t matter. It was all about the facade until we were more familiar with them.
“I knew the lady who used to live there,” Dawn said. “Mrs. Mackley. She was a widow for over twenty years and paranoid about security. Roller shutters on every window. High steel gate at the side. She had a vegetable garden in her backyard, too. Not one of those hobby gardens the average person has— had . It was a small commercial one with fruit trees and a solar watering system." She paused and took a breath, on the verge of nervous rambling. "She supplied all the produce for our organic pizzas, and when everything went south, Carlo, Jonah, and I turned up on her doorstep to ask if we could use her spare bedrooms.”
“She’d already died, though,” Jonah cut in, slouching in his chair. “Looked like she’d been dead for weeks.”
Dawn sent him an admonishing look for his careless delivery, but he was a young guy who’d been through a slew of shit, so I figured we could cut him some slack. “From the virus?” I asked.
“Looked like it,” she said. “Jonah had to break into the house beside hers and climb the fence to get in there. He found her in the bedroom with the door closed. We think she was one of the first ones to die without being bitten and start… wandering around again, you know.”
At the mention of dying in bed alone, Liv’s eyes met mine, and I knew her thoughts had drifted to Haruto. I would have reached across the table to take her hand if we hadn’t been in the middle of a conversation with strangers.
“So, we buried her out the front near her prized rose bushes, and the three of us took over her place,” Dawn continued. “We’ve been there ever since, living a vegan lifestyle thanks to her hard work and ours.”
“Against my will,” Jonah added, looking every bit the sullen kid.
“Because you hate being vegan or you don’t want to stay in Wallin anymore?” Liv asked.
His gaze moved over her, dropping from her face to her breasts. It lingered there a beat too long, returning to her eyes just before I gave into the urge to drag him across the table. “Both. Being vegan sucks, but being stuck here with no girls around is even worse.”
"Are you cooking the food?" Liv glossed over Jonah's comment and gave her attention to Dawn.
Dawn had been watching her son’s display just now, and she frowned as her gaze shifted to Liv. "We haven't for a long time. We tried using the wood-fired barbecue out the back, but the second people see the smoke and smell the food—"
"You're fucked," Jonah finished.
Dawn blew out a slow breath, but she must have decided to pick her battles because she didn’t call him out for his language. "We've been keeping to ourselves as much as we can to avoid trouble, especially since Carlo’s been gone."
“So, why did you come to see us?” I asked. “You have food, a place to stay. What else do you need?”
She pressed her lips together and glanced at Jonah. “Company. A car. This isn’t a long-term solution," she said, picking at the skin around her thumb until a drop of blood appeared. "We want to be part of a group, and Jonah needs to be around men and other people his own age. I can’t make the life for him I wanted when he was little, but I know it can be better than what we have now.”She pressed her index finger to the broken skin, wincing as she held it there.
I understood her desperation for more, the push to find answers to the lost feeling we’d all been left with after the world disintegrated. Liv and I had both abandoned our homes in search of it, and we had no idea what was waiting for us when we reached Bridgehill— if we ever got there.
“We’re not staying here long term,” Liv explained, giving nothing away in her expression. “We're just taking a break overnight before we head off again tomorrow.”
Jonah frowned. "Where are you going?"
"The east coast," I said. "There's a house we know of that looks like it might be a permanent solution."
Dawn shifted in her seat and looked at Jonah again. A silent conversation passed between them, and when Jonah shrugged, Dawn appealed to Liv and me, her eyes filled with restrained hope. “Will you take us with you? We have supplies, food, water. We’re practical and good with our hands. Jonah can handle the freaks, so we wouldn’t be a burden at all.”
“Mum.” He sighed and rubbed his hands down his face. “Chill.”
“I can’t chill,” she said, her voice strained. “I want to chill. That’s the whole point. We need people around us to take some of the pressure off—for all of us. I don’t want to just keep... getting by doing this by ourselves.”
She had the same mindset as us, wanting to build a community where everyone could feel safe, to have a purpose in life other than struggling from one day to the next. Her son remained the only questionable part of this scenario.Was he young enough to mould into the kind of man we needed on our team, or had he been too messed up by all the shit he’d seen during his developmental years to turn him around? If there was even the slightest chance of him overstepping the line with Liv and making her feel unsafe, I didn’t want either of them with us.
“You said Jonah can take care of the freaks,” I pointed out. “Does that mean you don’t?”
Dawn picked at her thumb again until I wanted to clasp her hand to stop her from doing more damage. “Not anymore. This is the first time I’ve left home since Carlo died.”
I nodded in understanding. Her husband’s death had turned her into a borderline agoraphobe, but if she could still cross the street and talk to a couple of strangers, she hadn’t reached the point of no return.
“I kill any that hang around outside our place,” Jonah explained. “Otherwise, we just leave them alone.”
Which meant they weren’t making trips into town to scavenge or dealing with unpredictable situations that required fast thinking and reaction times. They both needed training out in the real world before we could trust either of them to watch our backs, and we’d be throwing them into the worst of it when we left tomorrow.
“Why don't you show us your place, and we can talk some more over there,” Liv suggested, pushing back from the table to stand. I had a feeling she wanted to scope out their living situation to find out what kind of people they were at home.
She slipped her knife from its sheath on her belt, and the movement lifted the hem of her t-shirt to reveal a wedge of bare skin on her stomach. Jonah’s eyes went directly to that spot, hovering, and when she turned to walk away from the table, the little shit lowered his attention to her ass, so caught up in checking her out that he was oblivious to anything else.
Reading a situation these days wasn’t always as straightforward as it used to be. This could be nothing more than a harmless, hormonal guy deprived of the usual experiences someone his age enjoyed. Social media, flirting, kissing, not to mention porn. He hadn’t been around women other than his mother in a long time. Liv just happened to be the first one to step into his life—and she was young and pretty at that.I couldn't blame him for noticing, but I wouldn't tolerate the disrespectful way he kept looking at her.
"Stop it," Dawn whispered, smacking his arm as she slid her chair back to join Liv.
Jonah snapped out of it and sent a fleeting glance my way, his features tense with concern.
Too bad. Too late.
The two of us stood to join the women. Before he could walk away, I gripped a handful of his shirt and shoved him up against the nearest wall. He made a surprised oof sound as his back flattened against the surface, and I glared at him dead in the eye to make sure I had his full attention. “The way you’re looking at Liv, it stops now.”
His eyes went wide, and he struggled against my hold. “I wasn’t—”
“You were.” I pulled him away from the wall and pushed him back against it, giving it some extra zing so he wouldn’t forget our conversation. “If I catch you doing it again, any chance of the two of you coming with us disappears.”
Neither of us moved, and I kept up the stare, daring him to challenge me. If I had my way, I wouldn’t need to tell fellow adults how to behave at all, but when it came to our safety, the rules had to be crystal clear so no one could claim they’d misunderstood.
The room fell silent, and the lack of protest from Dawn said everything.
Jonah could have put up a fight or used this as an excuse to play the victim, but he must have understood the gravity of the situation, because he did neither. The heavy atmosphere gradually lifted, the pressure easing. He looked at me a beat longer, then relaxed and nodded. “Okay.” He lifted his hands in surrender, making sure he didn’t look in the direction of Liv or his mother.
“You don’t get repeated warnings,” I told him. “You’re old enough to learn some fucking self-control. Do it again, and we’re done.”
Jonah nodded and pulled in an audible breath. “I get it, okay?” When his body went slack against the wall, I released him and stood firm to see how he’d handle his freedom. "I'm sorry." He chanced a look at Liv, but his attention didn't stay on her for long. "I haven't seen a girl in forever. I didn't mean to stare."
Liv gave him an assessing look. "Lucky you. I was about to introduce you to my tantōand teach you some manners." When she followed up with a vague smile, I knew we were good.
Jonah didn't know her well enough to understand whether to laugh or take her seriously, so he went with the wiser option of keeping his mouth shut. He sidled past me and gave Liv a wide berth as he met up with his mother at the door.
Dawn delivered an admonishing look and a gentle shove to move him along. She unlocked the front door and passed through with him, leaving it open for Liv and me.
We grabbed our backpacks and followed the two of them, not bothering to lock up since there was nothing of value here. Leaving our car in the driveway, Liv and I travelled the short distance on foot, keeping several steps behind mother and son.
She bumped her shoulder against mine, gazing up at me with an amused look. “Was that necessary? I can look after myself, you know."
"I’m well aware,” I said, scanning each house as we passed by, “but sometimes I want to look after you, too."