Dainty Dystopia

Chapter 1

ONE

“In my defense,” Jesse said, “she distracted me with her boobs.”

Wyatt didn’t say anything. Just raised an eyebrow. Still a pretty effective move though, because Wyatt had that laconic, grizzled vet rizz down to a fine art.

The impressively unimpressed look slid to where Jesse was currently very much handcuffed to some rusty pipes. “Her boobs, huh,” Wyatt said at last, the way he did, in a voice that operated an octave lower than voices should.

Jesse wilted, the human equivalent of a bag of arugula forgotten in the depths of the crisper drawer.

“I get it, okay? As excuses go, it won’t hold up in court.

Like, if we still had courts. Or a functioning justice system.

Or, you know, rule of law of any kind.” Jesse rattled the pink fluffy cuffs, making the pipes clank. “So wanna do me a solid and—”

And then Jesse stopped.

He stopped, frozen on the realization of the super fucking stupid thing he’d just done. Namely, made a shit ton of noise.

“Fuck.” Jesse shot a panicked glance toward the door of the warehouse, to the deepening shadows all around.

“Shit,” he whispered, bracing himself, screwing his eyes shut, nothing to do now but wait for the inevitable, for the zombie horde that was about to descend in its raving, ravenous madness and pick their bones clean.

Except…

The bones were still boning, all wrapped up in the unimpressive meatsuit Jesse called home.

No agonized groans or bone-chilling shrieks.

No scuff and drag of withering, decaying limbs over concrete.

None of the usual smell either, the stench so sharp and ammonia-heavy that it always made Jesse’s eyes water.

So Jesse risked opening an eye — and found no zombies. Not even the shambling kind. Just Wyatt looking down at him, eyebrow still doing the thing.

“Sun’s too bright,” Wyatt told him, the answer that should’ve been obvious. “They’re holed up in the gas station at the edge of town.”

“Good to know. Great to know.” Jesse rattled the cuffs real gently, making absolutely nothing clank or clang or even clink. “So help. Please. Now. Thank you.”

Wyatt snorted and got busy rooting around in the lock with a length of wire he’d procured from fuck knew where. Jesse mostly just took one shaky breath after the other and tried to calm his freaking-out heart.

Sun’s too bright.

It was, still. Shards of sharp winter light filtered in through the warehouse’s broken windows. Wasn’t much light, but it was still light, still sunlight, and the sight of it loosened something in Jesse’s chest, the brittle tightness there.

Sunlight was good. Zombies hated sunlight. Man, they hated it. Saltwater too. Any kind of water, really. Hydrophobic and photophobic, that was zombies, which was a deadass weird thing to know, but it was a thing that Jesse knew now, what with living in the zombie apocalypse.

In, specifically.

Would’ve been way more fun to have lived through it, but Jesse was in it instead. Still in it. All the way in, neck deep and barely treading water.

The cuffs came open with a click. “You’re good.”

Jesse was not good. Jesse was pretty much the exact opposite of any kind of good. He tossed the cuffs away anyhow. “Thanks, man. I owe you one. Like, on top of all the other shit I already owe you.”

That earned him another snort, which was generous, because the owed and earned scale was tipped pretty much vertical in Wyatt’s direction.

Jesse shook out his wrists. They were a little cut up from struggling with the cuffs. Nothing bad, but he couldn’t risk infection. He’d need to waste an alcohol swap. Jeez, maybe even live on the wild side and crack open the last tube of Neosporin in his kit.

“Wait.” His kit. Fuck, his kit. “Oh god, she took my stuff.” Because the last time Jesse had seen his buxom nemesis, she’d been skedaddling on out the door with all of Jesse’s shit. “Wyatt, man, my gear. She took my gear.”

Wyatt shifted just enough to give Jesse a glimpse of the black hiking pack lying at his feet.

“Jesus,” Jesse breathed. He sagged back against the grimy wall, not even caring about the mold or the weird orange stuff growing there.

That’s how strong the relief was, rushing over him, a freaking megatsunami of it.

“God, Wyatt, you’re a real one, my dude.

Thank you. You don’t even know how much. ”

“Don’t thank me yet.”

Wyatt wasn’t the most expressive guy. On a good day, his face was pretty much always a brick wall. But on that way less than good day, in that shitty moment, in that one fuckass second, even by his standards, Wyatt looked blank. Freaking sounded it too.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jesse asked, the building panic crawling out with his words. “Why can’t I thank you? Wyatt, what the fuck?”

“It’s not yours.”

“Huh?” Jesse glanced over at the bag again. An oversized trail pack, kinda beat up, black and muted gray. It was his pack. Of course it was.

Except…

One of the straps was torn. There was a rip mended neatly where Jesse’s pack had never been ripped. The gray was a little too gray, the black faded. Similar but not the same. Fuck.

“Gotta figure she swapped them out when you were distracted,” Wyatt said. “Gotta figure she meant to take both once she had you restrained.”

Jesse found the untapped well of patheticness he needed to wilt for a second time. The arugula was straight-up refrigerator mush. “Gotta figure,” he whispered.

Wyatt’s bulky shoulder lifted with a shrug. “She was already hauling ass on a dirt bike when I heard you yelling. Wasn’t gonna catch her.”

“What else did she take?” Jesse asked. He didn’t want to ask, but he did it, because Jesse could sidle into the vaguest vicinity of brave once every six months or so. “Wyatt, man. What else?”

No reply. Not even an eyebrow.

Jesse’s heart sank. It Titanic’d all the way down, and nobody was fitting on that fuckass floating door, least of all Jesse. “Everything?” he asked, his voice cracking like crazy. “All of it?”

Wyatt nodded.

All of it. His clothes. His wet weather gear. Some dogeared books, reread too many times. The pair of hiking boots that only needed a little duct tape to make them wearable again. His canned food. Those few precious chocolate bars he’d been saving for a real bad day.

And his med kit. God, his med kit.

His goddamn fucking livelihood, that last connection to his life before, when he’d been a paramedic and a semi-functional human being.

Fuck, that med kit was the whole reason they’d taken the risk of stopping in an infested town in the first place, to scope out the doctor’s office, only to find that it had already been looted and so had the general store and its dinky warehouse too.

That’s where Jesse had found her.

Maddie, she’d called herself. Shivering in the shadows, trying and failing to light a fire. Bird-boned and doe-eyed and disproportionately stacked, clinging to Jesse and fluttering her eyelashes, laying it on thick as peanut butter.

She was so lonely, and Jesse was so handsome and brave. They could keep each other company, right? Have some fun by the fire. They had to be quick, though. Shh, Jesse, babe, gotta be quiet. The silver fox doesn’t even have to know.

And Jesse and his poor, neglected dick had fallen for it, then been fucked up by it — way more muscle than her oversized sweater suggested, a freaking jiu-jitsu black belt hidden under there, and the fluffy pink cuffs of the inevitable.

“We can find you another med kit,” Wyatt said.

He said it like it was simple. Like they could walk into a drugstore and pick up a generic first aid kit.

He said it like it hadn’t taken them the careful work of way too many months to stock the kit Jesse already had, the one he’d just lost, because he was a horndog with way too few braincells and a way too trusting cock.

“Fuck.”

Jesse’s eyes were burning, on the sting of the latest in a long list of humiliations. He ground the heels of his hands into his eyelids until the burn faded. But he didn’t look up at Wyatt. Couldn’t. Because how the fuck could he, after what he’d just done?

“Fuck.”

How many contracts to clear out zombie nests would Wyatt have to take on now? How badly would he have to put himself at risk just because Jesse couldn’t keep his dick in his pants? And maybe that was the most pathetic thing of all — Jesse’s dick was still in his pants.

It didn’t get fondled or sucked or laid. Some lackluster grinding was all the action Jesse’s cock got to see before Jesse found himself trussed up to rusty plumbing.

“I’m so fucking stupid. God, I’m such a stupid fucking idiot. A stupid—”

“Jess, c’mon.” Wyatt hunkered down beside Jesse, his big hand squeezing firm around Jesse’s thigh. “It was a mistake, bud, but that’s all it was.”

“Some fucking mistake,” Jesse spat out.

But Wyatt was already shaking his head, ducking to catch Jesse’s eye. “Hey. Hey now.” And when he had Jesse’s attention, when he knew Jesse was listening, “We all get lonely, bud,” Wyatt said.

And Jesse shouldn’t let him — shoulder it, take away the blame, make things easier on Jesse the way Wyatt always did. But Jesse was a little soft and a lot stupid, and way, way too weak for the shitty life he had to lead now, every single undead fucking day of it.

So, “Yeah,” Jesse said, relenting, taking the easy way out, just like always. “Yeah, I guess.” He sucked in a breath that broke to a shaky laugh. “Still sucks, though. Still stupid.”

The corner of Wyatt’s mouth ticked up. “A little stupid,” he allowed, his big hand flexing on Jesse’s thigh, reassuring and lowkey distracting in equal measure.

Because that was an outta pocket realization, how much time Jesse spent watching those hands. Big hands and kinda rough, knuckles beat up from breaking noses and pulling triggers, from wrapping tight around undead necks and steering wheels and—

Another realization, nothing outta pocket, only panic. “The truck.” Their ticket out of town, out of the restaurant where they were the only meal on the menu. “Wyatt, please tell me that she—”

“She didn’t find it,” Wyatt said. “Or any of my gear.”

Jesse’s breath gusted out of him, heartfelt and defeated. “Let me guess? Because you stowed your stuff safely out of sight, like you told me to do, and I said, ‘What, man, you think the zombies are gonna steal my expired ramen?’”

The silence was heavy. Jesse counted five. He counted ten.

Then, “Something like that,” Wyatt said.

“Something like that,” Jesse echoed. He kicked at the pack in front of him with his good leg. “So this is?”

“Hers. Figure you’re pretty much the same size, so…”

“Great. That’s just great.” Jesse didn’t even try to bite down on the snippiness. But shit, wasn’t like he could just borrow Wyatt’s stuff. Not pants, at least, or boots. Wyatt was way taller than Jesse and crazy bulky. “Really, so freaking great.”

A huff of a laugh, warm against Jesse’s cheek. “C’mon, bud,” Wyatt said. “It’ll be sundown soon. We gotta head out.” He straightened from his crouch and offered Jesse a hand up.

He needed to. The ankle Jesse had twisted days ago was still twisted, but it was swollen now too and stiff as all hell.

“Shit,” Jesse muttered, looking down at it, the bulk of the strapping hidden by the leg of his jeans and the warped, not-at-all waterproof pleather of his half-laced hiking boots. “It’s fucked, man.”

Wyatt shouldered Maddie’s pack, then wrapped an arm around Jesse’s waist, steadying him. “Only gotta make it to the truck, Jess.”

He took Jesse’s weight, all of it. Left Jesse hopping in midair like a puppy hover-swimming over imagined water. Then he helped Jesse clamber up into the cab of the truck. Lifted him, honestly, but Jesse let it happen.

Wasn’t like he had any dignity left to lose.

* * *

They’d reached the outskirts of town, where the byway stretched off into the shadows of the national park, when the setting sun tipped down behind the foothills. The light cut pretty dramatically in that same second, shading blue instead of gold.

Still daylight — but not daylight enough.

Jesse braved a look in the rear view. Here they came. The horde.

Not a big one but a horde was still a horde, swarming like ants, trampling one another in their frantic desperation to chase after the truck.

“They’re gaining,” Jesse murmured, redundantly. Wyatt had eyes.

He used them to clear the last of the roadblocks, then he put his foot down a little. Not enough to burn the gas they couldn’t afford to burn, but enough to get them ahead of the undead tide.

“You think they’re getting faster?” Jesse asked. “I mean, like, in general.”

“Couldn’t say.”

Jesse’s skin played make-believe hypothermia. “So, that’s a yes?”

“It’s not a no,” Wyatt allowed.

Jesse didn’t fight the shiver this time. Just let it shudder through him. It was cold as fuck outside, anyhow. Cold as fuck inside too, but Jesse knew better than to ask for heat.

Gas was gold dust these days. They were already lucky that the truck was a hybrid, charging itself whenever Wyatt got the chance to let it coast, which he did, driving on into the night. They got lucky there too, the roads still clear enough to pass and no avalanches, thank fuck, not yet.

The air got thinner, though, and colder as they went, and somewhere along the way the headlights stopped catching shambling figures stumbling along the roadside.

Too cold, even, for the undead.

That tightness in Jesse’s chest eased just a little more. Exhaustion took its place. He listed until Wyatt’s big hand cupped the back of his head, holding him steady, keeping him safe.