Chapter Fourteen
Everett
I never thought my life would come to this, but here I am, standing in the National Air and Space Museum, staring at Maisie’s tight ass wriggling beneath the bright, shiny orange of Yuri Gagarin’s space suit.
“I can’t believe we’re the same height!” Maisie exclaims as she pulls the shoulders of the space suit over her own. “Five foot two. Who’d have thought an astronaut would be so short?”
“Fits you like a glove.” I swallow, willing my voice not to crack like a teenager’s. Would Maisie fit me like a glove?
Oh, god. She would.
“Help zip me up?” Maisie asks. The cognitive dissonance of zipping a woman I’m intensely attracted to into a historic space suit while zombie tourists idly watch clangs around my head, and yet does nothing to stop the warm, pulling sensation in my cock beneath the white Apollo suit she helped me squeeze into first. I’m about two inches too tall for it, resulting in a knifelike wedgie parting my ass with literal space gear, which, somehow, my sad, horny body is misinterpreting as foreplay.
It’s been a confusing day. I’ve seemingly felt every emotion there is, from the keys incident to making up to finding Gemma’s townhouse empty to Maisie squeezing my hand and asking me to show her around, trying her best to cheer me up.
Sadness is such a solitary burden that you notice when anyone cares enough to lift even a finger’s weight of it off your heart.
And Maisie saw mine, saw me trapped beneath the wreckage of my hope, and lifted it off me like it was nothing more than a butterfly.
Is it any wonder that now I’m overcome with an increasingly insistent need to serve her, to run my palms down the perfect curves of her breasts and bury my chin in her trembling pussy as I make her shriek my name?
That when I look at her scampering among our nation’s most prized artifacts in those shiny orange pants, grabbing up useful tools and things for her loot bag, I’m relieved that none of my initial plans will force us to part?
I take a deep breath, then count to six. After how last night ended, there’s no guarantee Maisie will want another lesson, so I really need to keep my head on straight about whatever’s in store for us tonight.
And stop staring at her ass.
“Everett! Come check this out.” Maisie’s halfway up a steel ladder, the bright golden foil of the LM-2 lunar module surrounding her like she’s an Our Lady of the Apocalypse prayer candle.
My eyes widen with a schoolboy’s alarm, and she just laughs.
“Don’t get all bent out of shape, Professor. It’s not the one that went to space.”
She tosses her full loot bag in first, then disappears inside, her voice oohing somewhere beyond the forward hatch.
I glance around the sun-bright exhibit, grateful for the massive windows that line this entire side of the museum and the natural light keeping the local zombies dull and senseless.
Unlike the other museums we’ve traipsed through, here there are a couple dozen undead tourists scattered around the exhibits—a testament to the fact that even in an apocalypse, the National Air and Space Museum will always be mobbed.
There are dozens lurking in the dark restrooms, more awake but also more locked up, trapped within the stalls where they died with locks they’re too stupid to unlatch.
Here, though, all is calm and quiet except for the soft tings and exclamations coming from within the lunar module.
That, and the vague unease I feel as a dull-eyed granny still clasping her silver cane stares at me blankly, the dried blood of others spattering her white turtleneck in a very upsetting Fair Isle pattern.
At first, Maisie and I were downing every feeder zombie we saw, but it was draining too much of our battery power, so we decided to conserve it for real threats. I watch the predatory elder as I climb up the steel ladder after Maisie. Got my eye on you, lady.
Inside, Maisie is gleefully flipping switches, picking up hoses, investigating them, then moving on to the next thing.
“I’ve gotta give it to the conspiracy theorists—this contraption doesn’t look like it could handle spaceflight.
” She squints at one of the countless gauges in front of her and shakes her head. “This just says helium. Very suspect.”
I snort as I squeeze my way in, ducking beneath the docking hatch to join her at the controls.
Putting the Fun & Stun down, I grasp the two maneuvering joysticks instead, one in each hand, and shamelessly make flying noises as though the black night of stars visible through the port window isn’t just a backdrop.
My grip around the controllers goes lax, and I sigh.
“I wish I could fly us to the moon for real.”
“You’d take a boring old rock in the sky over your parents? Must be worse than I thought.” Maisie’s pulled down one of the sleeping hammocks and is swinging idly on it. I sit down next to her, the redistribution of weight on the starchy old fabric making her body slide toward mine.
“If you were there with me, it wouldn’t be boring.
” I nudge her with my shoulder, and she blushes.
“Besides, then maybe my parents would finally be proud of me. Astronautics was one of the only endeavors worthy of the son of the Colonels Greer.” My tone is rueful as I remember.
“Dad was so angry the day the school called and told him I needed glasses, ruining any hopes for a piloting career. ‘It’s all that television you watch! Your mother and I have perfect vision.’ ”
Maisie frowns. “They blamed you for needing glasses?”
My eyebrows rise as I take a deep breath in. “They blamed me for everything.”
Her frown deepens. I can tell she wants to ask more, and I almost, almost want to tell her the hundred and one ways I was never good enough for my parents—but Chicken takes that minute to leap down from my shoulder, hissing at the open hatch.
Our eyes lock, and wordlessly we reach for our Tasers.
Then I hear it—a low, throaty rumble building in volume from deeper within the museum.
We poke our heads out of the hatch. The great hall is still dead, though the bloody elder’s eyes seem brighter, and her head is cocked upward at an unnatural angle, looking directly at us.
All the zombie tourists are, in fact. Still unmoving, still dull-eyed, but watching.
Maisie glances between them and the sunny windows.
“They’re waking up early,” she says, more fascinated than anxious at this development. Which is funny, since I’m going to ralph all over the ladder. “Time to go.”
She slips her loot bag on like a backpack and wastes no time with the ladder, jumping nimbly down instead.
When she rises, both her Tasers crackle to life, unmistakably badass.
With Chicken back on my shoulder, I shuffle down the rungs as quickly as possible, fairly certain that if I were to attempt that jump, I’d break an ankle and end up spending the rest of my life in an astronaut suit after all.
We walk quickly through the tourists toward the entrance, their heads slowly rotating to follow us as we move. My Fun & Stun trembles in my hand.
“Jesus Christ,” I hiss, my feet picking up to jog, to run, to fucking flee, but Maisie places a warning hand on my arm.
“Don’t,” she says under her breath. “Running might activate a predator-prey response.”
The groaning is louder now, followed by an explosion of angry, crashing bangs that converts my blood into rocket fuel.
The restrooms. The zombies within sense us, smell us, want us. And we have to walk right by to get to the exit.
Fuck.
“Stay calm,” Maisie murmurs, her eyes darting from zombie to zombie, assessing threats and adjusting our route through them accordingly.
Chicken’s claws dig into the rubber shoulders of my suit as she hisses liberally in every direction.
The entrance is in sight now. So are the restrooms. A former security guard steps suddenly toward us.
Maisie tases him in the heart without blinking.
“Why are they waking up now?” My voice rings with desperation as I tase someone jerking alive to my left. He falls, and animal crackers spill from his pocket.
A dad, formerly. My stomach flips.
“I think it’s the groaning from the others.
” Maisie’s pace picks up despite her determination to remain calm.
“It’s like a wolf pack howling to ral—” Her words are cut off by her shriek as she nearly topples over, an invisible force yanking her out of stride.
No, not invisible. A hand connected to an arm connected to a torso clutches Maisie’s suited shin.
The mutilated guard it belongs to slinks out on its stomach from its hiding spot beneath the bag-check table, trailing guts behind like a gruesome half squid, half federal employee.
Chicken leaps down on the zombie’s head, batting at its snarling face with both paws, the cutest boxer of all time.
The zombie’s other hand scrabbles for Chicken, momentarily distracted from its pursuit of Maisie’s calf.
I scoop Chicken up before I use the rubber-toed boot of Apollo to kick the zombie’s chin upward like a decomposing soccer ball.
The force sends the whole thing squelching backward, releasing its grip on Maisie as she spears it in the heart with her Taser.
She grabs me by the hand, and together, we run, not stopping until we’re clear of the museum, the zombies are appropriately lifeless again, and Maisie’s SUV is in sight.
She laughs, breathless, palm braced against one of the blooming cherry trees.
The pink, downy blossoms arch over us in kiss-colored clouds, so lovely that even the middle-aged man in his stained tan suit hovering nearby can’t detract from it.
And that’s really saying something, since he’s missing both his arms. Maisie glances at his grisly but benign presence and laughs even harder.